Taken form the Independent, UK, Sunday, 29 November 2009
By Brian Brady
Tony Blair will be quizzed over a devastating official memo warning him that war on Iraq would be illegal eight months before he sent troops into Baghdad, it was claimed last night.
The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will consider a letter from Lord Goldsmith, then Mr Blair's top law officer, advising him that deposing Saddam would be in breach of international law, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday.
But Mr Blair refused to accept Lord Goldsmith's advice and instead issued instructions for his long-term friend to be "gagged" and barred from cabinet meetings, the newspaper claimed. Lord Goldsmith apparently lost three stone, and complained he was "more or less pinned to the wall" in a No 10 showdown with two of Mr Blair's most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. Mr Blair also allegedly failed to inform the Cabinet of the warning, fearing an "anti-war revolt".
Lord Goldsmith allegedly threatened to resign over the issue, but was "bullied" into backing down. He eventually issued carefully drafted qualified backing for the invasion.
But according to The Mail on Sunday, his advice was radically different in July 2002, when ministers were allegedly told the US and UK planned "regime change" in Iraq. Then Lord Goldsmith reportedly wrote a letter to Mr Blair on 29 July, flagging up the legal difficulties of the plan of campaign he had apparently thrashed out with President George Bush. The letter pointed out: (1) Although UN rules permitted "military intervention on the basis of self-defence, they did not apply in this case as Britain was not under threat from Iraq; (2) While the UN allowed "humanitarian intervention" in certain cases, that too was not relevant to Iraq; (3) It would be very hard to rely on earlier UN resolutions in the Nineties approving the use of force against Saddam.
Lord Goldsmith ended by saying "the situation might change" – although, in legal terms, it never did. The advice, and the decision to commit it to an official record, reportedly caused great friction between the two men, as it was feared publication of the details could undermine the case for war and damage Mr Blair's credibility.
The revelations follow testimony from a series of by figures at the Chilcot inquiry who have questioned Mr Blair's judgement and honesty, and the legality of the war. The Independent on Sunday understands, after only four days of testimony, the former prime minister was already furious that his reputation could be "shredded" by senior civil servants taking revenge on him during the inquiry into the Iraq conflict, it emerged last night.
Mr Blair has been appalled by the high-profile evidence given by mandarins who have appeared before the Chilcot inquiry since the first round of public hearings began last Tuesday, close friends have revealed. His image has taken a battering over the past six days, as a series of current and former public servants have given evidence that conflicts with the Government's account of the intelligence assessment of Iraq's weapons capability before the invasion in March 2003.
Among the devastating details presented to the inquiry was the revelation that British spies reported 10 days before the invasion that Iraq had "disassembled" what chemical weapons it had – but Mr Blair went ahead and sent troops into battle. Britain's former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, claimed Mr Blair and Mr Bush had signed a secret deal "in blood" to remove Saddam almost a year before the invasion. He said the agreement in effect left officials scrabbling to find "a smoking gun" to justify going to war.
Mr Blair's friends claimed last night that he has found some of the evidence given so far "distasteful", and potentially damaging to his reputation. "It is clear that the headlines so far have not been helpful to him," a former minister said. "But more troubling is the sense that some of the people involved are so keen to stick the knife in. It is quite distasteful."
Another Blair ally said the former leader had made clear his concern that "his reputation could be shredded by the Chilcot process". "He is furious that mandarins are seeking revenge and discovering their principles after the event," one friend added.
Sir Christopher Meyer has attracted much criticism from Blairites following a flamboyant appearance during which he claimed Mr Blair's view on "regime change" in Iraq hardened after a private meeting with Mr Bush in 2002. He also compared Mr Blair unflatteringly to Margaret Thatcher. The former diplomat told the inquiry on Thursday: "She would have insisted on a clear, coherent political/diplomatic strategy and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when we removed Saddam."
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who worked beside Mr Blair in his attempts to gain UN blessing for the invasion, said the war was of "questionable legitimacy" even though it is unlikely to be proved illegal. The former UK ambassador to the UN said the invasion did not have the backing of most UN members or the British public.
Mr Blair assured MPs in the run-up to the invasion that "extensive, detailed and authoritative" intelligence showed "beyond doubt" that Saddam had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons; tried to develop nuclear weapons; and that he had already produced chemical weapons – and used them on his own people. His government produced two dossiers on Saddam's weapons capability, to back up the case for war.
It has since been shown that much of the intelligence received by the Government in the run-up to the war was confused and inaccurate. Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office director general for defence and intelligence at the time, told the inquiry that a report suggested Saddam may not have been able to use chemical weapons. A separate report suggested Iraq might also "lack" warheads capable of spreading chemical agents.
Tim Dowse, the director of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office between 2001-2003, said most evidence suggested Iraq's chemical and biological programme was largely "destroyed" in 1991. He said intelligence in late 2002 suggested Iraq was rebuilding its capability, although its actual position was unclear after weapons inspectors were expelled in 1998.
And now it appears the inquiry could become more uncomfortable for Mr Blair. It is understood the Chilcot panel has already been given Lord Goldsmith's letter. The two are both likely to be interrogated about it when they give evidence in the new year.
Critical evidence from key figures to Chilcot inquiry
# Sir Peter Ricketts "We quite clearly distanced ourselves from talk of regime change... that was not something we thought there would be any legal base for."
# Sir William Patey "We were aware of those drumbeats from Washington [about regime change]. Our policy was to stay away from that end of the spectrum."
# Sir Michael Wood "[Establishing no-fly zones over Iraq] was very controversial ... The US government was very careful to avoid taking any real position on the law."
# Sir William Ehrman "We did, on 10 March, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly."
# Sir Christopher Meyer "Suddenly, because of the unforgiving nature of the military timetable, we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun."
# Sir Jeremy Greenstock "I regarded our participation in the military action against Iraq in March 2003 as legal, but of questionable legitimacy."
Monday, November 30, 2009
Iraq: The war was illegal
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
British Jews attacked for pro-Gaza solidarity
Taken from the Independent, UK, 18 January 2009
By Emily Dugan
British Jews have been attacked for expressing support for Palestinians suffering under Israeli military strikes in Gaza. Police confirmed yesterday that they have provided protection to a number of people believed to be victims of UK-based Zionist extremists angered by expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.
Israel's assault on Gaza has prompted a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, with more than 150 incidents reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation for the protection of Jews. But the past two weeks have also seen aggression within the Jewish community towards those sympathetic to the plight of Gaza.
Rabbi Elchenon Beck, 39, was among six rabbis expressing support for Gaza's Palestinians who were set upon by a gang of what they allege were Zionists while walking back from opposing rallies outside the Israeli Embassy on 6 January. "They were shouting and pushed someone to the floor, so we called the police," Rabbi Beck said. "All the time they are trying to intimidate us, but we get used to it."
Rabbi Aharon Cohen, a Palestinian sympathiser and member of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, had his letter box destroyed by a powerful firework after attending the peace march in Manchester this month.
Mark Gardner, of the CST, said it had not kept records of attacks within the Jewish community, but condemned those using the situation in Israel to justify violence in Britain.
"There's passionate political debate," he said, "but what's vitally important is that it does not spill over so that we become participants in a war by proxy."
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Leaked list reveals BNP strongholds
Taken from the Independent, 19 November 2008
Lancashire was today revealed as a stronghold of BNP supporters with 861 people in the county on a leaked membership list.
West Yorkshire has the second highest rate of membership with 858 people from the county on the list.
And throughout Yorkshire as a whole the party counts more than 1,600 members.
The list, posted on an internet blog, contains 12,000 names including addresses, contact details and some members' jobs.
Some of the towns in Lancashire with the most BNP members include Oldham (78) and Burnley (73) which were the scene of violent race riots in 2001.
In Yorkshire, more than 240 members live in Leeds and 109 are in Bradford - where the 2001 rioting spread after igniting in Lancashire.
Essex has just over 670 members and the West Midlands more than 580. In Kent 417 people are signed up and in Leicestershire there are 409.
But there are hotspots of BNP membership across the country.
In Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, where there are nine BNP councillors on the city council, there are more than 100 members.
London has close to 500 members on the list and more than 230 members are listed as living in Manchester.
Burnley Council Labour Leader Julie Cooper said: "It doesn't surprise me that there are so many members in Lancashire and in Burnley. The BNP in Burnley have worked very hard to prey on vulnerable communities and appeal to the selfish side in all of us.
"Most of their support comes from traditional Labour areas where there is a lot of deprivation.
"But I think the tide is turning. We have four BNP members on the council now but we used to have seven and I believe that we can bring that down to three at the next election.
"It is such a shame because Burnley has got so much going for it and so many people here are doing a lot of good work."
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The publication of the list was inappropriate and put the lives of people “we disagree with” in danger. Although the original source of the list on Blogger has been taken down there are many websites still hosting the bnpmemberslist.
Whatever people say – groups like The BNP, National front, Combat 18 etc are all racist groups. The BNP may appear to be more mainstream and have a clean cut image but deep down it is another matter.
It has been alleged that hate groups like the above have set up websites that publish names and address of left wing politicians and ordinary people that stand up against fascism. Websites such as redwatch.org / redwatch.net (note: domain name keeps changing) is one prime example. here is a video report youtube.com
The majority of the members of hate groups have grown up in areas where there is a lot of deprivation but most of them have a disillusioned life. One of the highest profile BNP members was uncovered in 2006 – ballerina Simone Clarke. She joined the party to stand up against mass immigration (something unfamiliar to her that every party stands against).
The astonishing thing about Simone Clarke was that at that time she was in a relationship with fellow English National Ballet star Yat-Sen Chang, a Cuban immigrant of Chinese descent. They even have a five year old daughter, Olivia. The relationship didn’t last as Yat-Sen Chang, refused to back her politics. Simone Clarke is currently engaged to local BNP politician Richard Barnbrook who allegedly made the comment of Simone and Yat’s relationship "I'm not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people." - Need I Say more!
Here are some points why many people consider the BNP to be a fascist party Click Here!
Stand up against fascism - for more info Click Here!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
World recalls end of World War I
World recalls end of World War I
Taken from BBC News, Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Ceremonies are being held across the globe to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I.
Four years of trench warfare between Germany and the Allies killed some 20m people and redrew the map of Europe.
A major commemoration will take place in Verdun, north-east France, where French and German troops fought for eight months.
The battle was the war's longest, and Verdun has since become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.
Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and the Duchess of Cornwall will be the guests of honour of French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the event.
Pacific century
Remembrance ceremonies have already been held in Australia, which lost 60,000 men in the conflict.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used a speech at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to issue a call for peace.
"We have all endured a most bloody century," he said.
"Let us resolve afresh at the dawn of this new century... that this might be a truly pacific peaceful century."
A lone bugler then played the Last Post, which is used to to commemorate the war dead in Commonwealth countries.
In the UK, three of the four surviving British World War I veterans - Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108 - will represent the RAF, Army and Royal Navy respectively during a ceremony at London's Cenotaph.
Mr Patch, Britain's oldest survivor of the trenches, will read an act of remembrance.
World War I led to the creation of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.
Useful reading:
(1) Echoes of conflict 90 years on (BBC)
Monday, August 18, 2008
'Librarian' of global paedophile ring jailed
Taken from Daily Mirror, 18.08.2008
Twenty-seven year old Philip Thompson, who acted as the ‘librarian’ of the network that spanned 33 countries, was jailed today for three years nine months – but warned he could remain behind bars for much longer.
The self-taught British computer expert used his skills to moderate an invitation-only website forum that featured ‘borderline illegal’ images of children playing in their underwear.
Police said the gateway site was used to prove users had a perverted interest in children and once users were accepted as members they would then be linked up to other more secretive online environments.
It was here that thousands of more disturbing images and videos, as well as information about vulnerable children, were exchanged.
The capture of Thompson, of Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, has saved 15 children from the evil clutches of the vile paedophile ring and led to dozens more arrests, it has emerged.
Police have so far pinpointed 360 suspects involved in this global trade of child pornography, the court was told.
Thompson, who lived with his mother, pleaded guilty to 27 charges, including 16 counts of making indecent photographs of children, seven counts of distributing indecent photographs of children and one count of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.
Prosecutor Harry Hadfield told Teesside Crown Court that when cops raided the unemployed driver’s home in February this year they recovered two desktop computers and a laptop, as well as a selection of other computer paraphernalia.
Forensic analysis by computer experts established that the defendant had 241,000 indecent photographs of children, being one of the largest seizures of indecent photographs in the UK,’ he told the court.
Mr Hadfield said: “The defendant’s role was to police the website, which gave him the opportunity to transfer these images to his computer.
“The evidence recovered from his computer showed he had amassed a vast collection of indecent photographs of children.
“It appeared the defendant kept some of the most serious images to use as trading chips.”
“I hope this result acts as a deterrent and sends out a clear warning that activity such as this will not be tolerated.”
Of the near 250,000 images on Thompson’s computers, more than 3,000 were of levels four and five - the worst kind of child abuse images.
“The Crown would say that this collection of indecent photographs and the subsequent police investigation revealed that this defendant has been involved in the distribution of these photographs for the last four or five years,” Mr Hadfield said.
He added that 51 arrests had been made as a result of the investigation into Thompson and inquiries were continuing.
The international child abuse network was infiltrated by police in the largest deployment yet of undercover officers in the UK used in a child protection inquiry.
Detective Sergeant Becky Driscoll, of Cleveland Police, said Thompson thought he was operating ‘below the radar’.
“He was integral. He played a key role. He was trusted by others members of this site, so much so that he stored horrific images of child abuse on their behalf,” she said.
“He described the 250,000 child abuse images as his collection. He was prepared to share that with acquaintances he found on his forum.”
Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Ceop, added: “This website, whilst appearing to operate on the margins of legality, was clearly a front for the sinister, sexual abuse of children and an image trading ground for paedophiles.
“There is a simple message for those individuals like Thompson, who think they can go to this website - or indeed any space on the internet - and discuss their sexual interest in children and share images.
“You leave a digital footprint. We will track you down and hold you to account.”
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Oil giants return to Iraq
Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total set to sign deal with Baghdad
Taken from The Independent, UK, Friday 20 June 2008
By Patrick Cockburn
Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return. By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003.
The deals are for repair and technical support in some of the country's largest oilfields, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad said yesterday. The return of "Big Oil" will add to the suspicions of those in the Middle East who claimed that the overthrow of Saddam was secretly driven by the West's desire to gain control of Iraq's oil. It will also be greeted with dismay by many Iraqis who fear losing control of their vast oil reserves.
Iraq's reserves are believed to be second only to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, but their exploitation has long been hampered by UN sanctions, imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The major oil companies have been eager to go back to Iraq, but are concerned about their own security and the long-term stability of the country. The two-year no-bid agreements are service agreements that should add another 500,000 barrels of crude a day of output to Iraq's present production of 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d).
The companies have the option of being paid in cash or crude oil for the deals, each of which will reportedly be worth $500m (£250m). For Iraq, the agreements are a way of accessing foreign expertise immediately, before the Iraqi parliament passes a controversial new hydrocarbons law.
But they mean that the four oil companies, which originally formed the Iraq Petroleum Company to exploit Iraqi oil from the 1920s until the industry's nationalisation in 1972, will be well-placed to bid for contracts for the long-term development of these fields. The oilfields affected are some of the largest in Iraq, from Kirkuk in the north to Rumaila, on the border with Kuwait. Although there is oil in northern Iraq, most of the reserves are close to Basra, in the far south.
Since the US invasion, Iraqis have been wary of foreign involvement in their oil industry. Many are convinced that the hidden purpose of the US invasion was to take over Iraqi oil, but the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussein Shahristani, has said that Iraq will hold on to its natural resources. "If Iraq needs help from international oil companies, they will be invited to co-operate with the Iraqi National Oil Company [Inoc], on terms and conditions acceptable to Iraq, to generate the highest revenue for Iraq".
Inoc's technical expertise has deteriorated sharply during the long years of sanctions. Iraq is currently exporting 2.1 million b/d and is expecting to have oil revenues of $70bn this year, but its government administration is too dysfunctional and corrupt to rebuild the electricity or water supply systems. The government has $50bn in the Federal Bank of New York.
Mr Shahristani has been highly critical of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for auctioning off oil concessions in Iraqi Kurdistan without reference to the oil ministry in Baghdad.
In an interview with The Independent last year, he said Inoc would never do business with any oil company that signed up with the KRG, and he also doubted if the oil could be exported without pipelines. "Are they going to carry it out in buckets?" he asked.
Several of the small oil companies who have signed contracts in Kurdistan are hoping that in the long term there will be an agreement between the Kurds and the central government and they will then sell out to the majors at a large profit.
The technical support agreements, as the service agreements are known, may open the door to Iraq for the majors. Mr Shahristani has said that Iraq will open up the same fields for bidding for long-term development projects soon. "We're going to announce the first licensing round by the end of this month or early next month," he said.
The high price of oil means that Iraq is not under immediate pressure to maximise its oil revenues. The Iraqi parliament has suspected anything which looks like giving foreign companies ownership of Iraq's oil through a production sharing agreement.
The nationalisation of Iraq's oil is one the few acts of Saddam Hussein's long years in power which is still highly popular, and Iraqi members of parliament are fearful of anything that looks like back-door privatisation in the interests of foreigners.
Big four have history of control
For the four oil giants, the new agreements will bring them back to a country where they have a long history. BP, Exxon Mobil, Total and Shell were co-owners of a British, American and French consortium that kept Iraq's oil reserves in foreign control for more than 40 years.
The Iraq Petroleum Company (once the Turkish Petroleum Company) was formed in 1912 by oil companies eager to grab the resources in parts of the Ottoman Empire.
The company was formalised in 1928 and each of the four shareholders had a 23.75 per cent share of all the oil produced. The final 5 per cent went to Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian businessman.
In 1931, an agreement was signed with Iraq, giving the company complete control over the oi fields of Mosul in return for annual royalties. After Saddam's coup in 1958, nationalisation came in 1972.
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It's sad to see a country that was only a decade ago was one of the most advanced economies in the Arab world with women entitled freedoms like being able to work, go to school, being destroyed for the sake of oil and oil supply. Most people knew from the begining that the war in Iraq was about Oil and gaining control of the Middle East - in September 2007, Alan Greenspan a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, said in his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” a few months earlier the Australian Defence Minister admitted his country's troops are in Iraq to secure oil interests. Brendan Nelson is believed to be the first government minister from any country with forces in Iraq to publicly admit oil was a key factor in their presence. 'Obviously the Middle itself, not only Iraq but the entire reason, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particulary, to the rest of the world,' he told a radio programme. He said Australian forces were there for 'resource security'. Yes, we depend on the oil from the Middle East, yet we spend billions of developing weapons or sending people to the moon when this money could be used to investigate alternative fuels. You have to ask why this has not happened.
Friday, June 20, 2008
'Shopped' son faces jail over gun
Taken from ITN, UK
20/06/2008
A teenager whose father called the police after finding a gun and bullets in his bedroom faces jail when he is sentenced later.
Paul Metcalfe, 19, from Nelson, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to possession of 11 cartridges and a blank firing handgun, converted to fire real bullets.
Despite being shopped by his 45-year-old father Neil, Metcalfe has forgiven him, believing it was the right thing to do.
He said: "Although I'm scared of going to prison, I feel dad saved me. I was angry with him at the time. Now I know why he did it and respect him for it."
Mr Metcalfe said: "How would you feel if you hadn't done that and then you came back home and found your son with a bullet hole in his head?
"You just have to realise that these are weapons - they are dangerous."
Metcalfe was "minding" the bullets and gun for another, unidentified individual, who has not been named, Burnley Crown Court was told.
He showed the ammunition to his sister's boyfriend and a neighbour - who told his father, who was living at another house after splitting from Metcalfe's mother.
When Mr Metcalfe went round to investigate, he found the bullets wrapped in a plastic bag on top of an airing cupboard.
"Sick with worry", Mr Metcalfe called police who then also found the gun hidden in a sofa bed and Metcalfe was arrested.
He told officers he was "looking after it" - after being put under pressure to do so, the court heard.
Metcalfe has not told police who it belongs to.
Possession of a handgun carries a mandatory five year jail term - but Metcalfe's lawyer, Hugh Barton, pleaded with Judge Christopher Cornwall to make an exception.
He said the five-year minimum term was "purely deterrent" but in this case it would not be a deterrent because Metcalfe has learnt his lesson.
Metcalfe has no previous convictions and was put under pressure and intimidated into minding the weapon, Mr Barton said.
In such a case five years would be "arbitrary and disproportionate", he added.
And he said a five-year term for Metcalfe could actually deter other people from informing police on their loved ones if they found a firearm belonging to their son or father.
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This is brilliant news that parents are taking the correct steps to not only protect their children but society. Only a few days earlier twin girls shopped their drunk mum after she nearly drove into their house. A breath test revealed she was about two and a half times the drinkdrive limit - 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. Cox at first denied drink driving but changed her plea when she realised her girls would testify against her at Barnsley magistrates' court in South Yorks. So all round great news,we need more people to speak out and stop the disese that is ruining our society.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Mother turns in sons to police for blinding man in drunken assault
This is a beautiful story that I came across from the UK...
Taken from Telegraph, UK, 30/05/2008
By Laura Clout
A mother turned in her own sons to police after they boasted of carrying out an unprovoked assault which left a father blind in one eye.
Carol Saldinack said she felt compelled to make the "agonising" decision after learning of the role her sons Luke Newman, 27, and Oliver Clark, 24, played in the violent attack on 36-year-old Marc Parkinson after a night out drinking.
The 51-year-old, who lives in Norfolk, said she has no regrets despite being ostracised from her family and subjected to threats, and she urged others to follow her example.
The pair, along with 25-year-old Benjamin Hammond, were jailed for two years at Chichester Crown Court last week for grievous bodily harm.
The group had been drinking in Chichester, West Sussex, in June last year when they launched the unprovoked attack on Mr Parkinson outside a takeaway restaurant.
The company director, who has two children, was left with a detached retina, extensive cuts and bruising, a perforated eardrum and bruised ribs. He is now blind in one eye, his business has folded and he has been forced to sell his home to pay off debts.
Mrs Saldinack, who has six children, told the Daily Mirror she was trembling with nerves as she picked up the telephone to call police, after hearing that her sons had bragged about the attack.
She said: “Luke was apparently walking around with a newspaper report of the attack as if it was a trophy. I felt angry, appalled, shocked and sickened.
“All I could think was 'this man might die, my sons could be killers’. In minutes I rang police and said: 'About the fight in Chichester, I know who's responsible’.”
The pair’s homes were raided by police the following day and the they two were later identified by witnesses in line-ups.
Despite now living in fear from threats, Mrs Saldinack insisted she has no regrets and said others in her situation should do the same.
“I’d urge anyone who finds themselves in this situation to search their own heart and do the right thing”, she said.
“Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends - someone always knows who’s responsible for things like this. They need to come forward.
“Think of the victim’s family and their hell. If you feel you can cope with the consequences, speak up and tell the truth.”
Mr Parkinson thanked Mrs Saldinack, telling the newspaper it was a “brave thing” to do.
Detective Inspector Jim McKnight of Sussex Police said: “The call we received in this case obviously helped in the investigation. However, there was strong evidence, including forensics, which led to the convictions.
“We would always seek to support and protect individuals who provide us with information in difficult circumstances.”
Thursday, March 06, 2008
UK children rescued from worldwide sex abuse ring
Taken from The Guardian, UK, 6 March 2008
Detectives in three continents believe they have broken one of the most sophisticated paedophile rings ever. Eight British children between six and 14 years old have been rescued and arrests made in the UK, Australia and the US.
The ring used advanced techniques to avoid detection and one member boasted of belonging to the "greatest group of paedos ever to gather in one place".
Police traced the victims to addresses in the UK, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) Centre said. Some had been abused by their parents. The arrests followed a two-year inquiry which began in Australia, spread to Europe and was coordinated by the FBI in the US.
The US was chosen as the base for police operations as most of the sex ring's members were American residents, police said.
A total of 22 people were arrested last week, including two men in the UK, in the final strike against the ring. Six further British men have already been jailed for their roles in trading and receiving pictures and videos on the network.
The newsgroup members gained access to the ring by providing pictures of child sexual abuse.
According to US court documents, one member in Florida labelled one folder of images "mild" and another "wild". James Freeman, who used the nickname "Mystikal", bragged: "All I can say is they are worth the download." According to the US indictment against Freeman, seen by the Guardian, he wrote: "My thanks to you and all the others that together make this the greatest group of paedos ever to gather in one place."
Paul Griffiths, who heads the victim identification team at Ceop, based in the UK, said the children were subjected to horrendous abuse. "In every image there is a child. These images are crime scene photos where children are being subjected to sexual abuse. This is not 'child pornography'.
"It's important to remember too, though, that these children were not missing. They were located in the place where they were supposed to be safe - their own home - where their abuse was recorded and made available over the internet to satisfy sickening sexual desires of a deviant group of individuals."
Australian police said the international covert operation had uncovered 2,500 "customers" in 19 countries. As a result of the two-year operation, 400,000 images of child abuse were seized.
Police also closed four commercial child sex web sites and arrested more than 100 people for allegedly purchasing child sex material. Officers in the UK used facial recognition software and a database called Childbase as they raced to identify victims from clues in each image.
The FBI's executive assistant director, Stephen Tidwell, said the online gang was run like a business, with indecent images used as a substitute for cash. He said: "This is beyond a quantum exponential leap for us to see folks that have gone to this much trouble to produce this kind of volume of horrific exploitation of children. But with 400,000 [images] we're going to be at this for years, trying to find the victims."
Peter Crawford from Queensland police's state sexual crimes squad, said: "It has been the most significant infiltration of an international child exploitation network by a law enforcement agency anywhere in the world. The major challenge for this investigation was to unravel the intricate web that networked offenders had weaved to protect themselves, incorporating strict guidelines, rules and encryption."
Members of the ring all used aliases, such as Box of Rocks, Crazy Horse, Lizzard, Methusaleh and Pickleman. In one example cited in the indictment, Raymond Roy, known as Nimo, posted videos of Thai children "to give everyone something to do for an afternoon".
"This one may offend here, so a word of caution, these girls are heavily drugged," Roy wrote on July 10 2007, according to the court documents. "Not much action to speak of, the girls are [sic] to [expletive deleted] up to move or resist. Three girls, the first one being the youngest, around eight or nine yo [years old]."
Noting the sophisticated process the porn ring used to outwit police, Tidwell compared the growing number of child pornography crimes to those of cocaine dealers, terrorists and the mafia. "If they had good operational security, that's a bad thing for us," he said. "When you've got that, you've got a real challenge for law enforcement."
Sunday, November 25, 2007
US is‘worst’ imperialist: archbishop
Taken from the Times, UK, November 25, 2007
By Abul Taher
Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by “clearing the decks” with a “quick burst of violent action” had led to “the worst of all worlds”.
Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”
He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.
“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”
In the interview in Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, Williams makes only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He said the Muslim world must acknowledge that its “political solutions were not the most impressive”.
Corruption, bribes and trafficking: a cancer that is engulfing Afghanistan
Taken from The Times, UK, November 24, 2007
By Anthony Loyd in Kabul
He paid the money to a go-between at a rendezvous in Kabul’s Najib Zarab carpet market. For two days he was lorded in the office of General Azzam, then Chief of Staff to the Interior Minister, helping himself to chocolate and biscuits. “I must have eaten a pound of the stuff,” he recalled.
But on the third day he received a different welcome. “Get this mother****** out of my office,” Azzam screamed, said the general. Hustled outside, he quickly discovered his error. He should have paid $150,000 (£73,000) rather than a paltry 150,000 Afghanis for the bung.
Now living in disgruntled internal exile in northern Afghanistan, his verdict on his former employers is succinct.
“Everyone in the Ministry of Interior is corrupt,” he told The Times. “They wouldn’t sleep with their wives without wanting a backhander first.”
He never, though, expressed surprise. Governmental corruption in Afghanistan has become endemic and bribes to secure police and administrative positions along provincial drug routes is an established procedure.
“The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes,” said one analyst.
“The people around him tell him of a cuckoo land,” said Shukria Barakzai, a Pashtun MP who is both a friend and critic of Karzai. “He circles within a small mafia ring who are supporting the destruction of the system. At the beginning there were only 10 to 15 of them but since then they have spread like a cancer in Afghanistan.”
The Ministry of Interior, key to establishing security in the country, remains the worst offender. Disaffected police officers have named, to The Times, General Azzam, recently appointed Chief of Operations after his stint as Chief of Staff, and his deputy General Reshad as the prime recipients of bribes.
The lawmen say they categorise Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as A, B or C states. ‘A’ denotes those with the highest potential profits for drug-running; ‘C’ states are the least remunerative.
This summer a border police vehicle was stopped outside Kabul and found to have 123.5kg of heroin, with a value of nearly $300,000, bagged in the back. The five men inside, an officer, three policemen and a secretary, were under the command of Haji Zahir, formerly Border Police commander of Nangarhar province. Haji Zahir was questioned and removed from his post. He was never charged.
Even the lowlier posts in provinces free of poppy traffic have a price. “To buy a position as a detective in any province you pay $10,000,” explained one police colonel, now on indefinite leave because he refused to pay a bribe. “Then you pay your superior a cut of the money you make through bribes or trafficking.”
One former governor told The Times that every judge in his province had been corrupt. He claimed there were cases of the police handing detainees to the Taleban, or helping to transport Taleban commanders from one province to another.
“The Government has essentially collapsed,” he said. “It has lost its meaning in the provinces, it has lost the security situation and lost its grip on civil servants. Corruption is playing havoc with the country.”
The international community has played its own part in contributing to the crisis. One analyst in Kabul said: “It’s not Afghan culture. It’s a culture of impunity. We created it. We came in in 2001 with cases of cash and made certain people untouchables.”
The dozens of drug-funded villas — “narcotechture” in expat parlance — that have sprung up around foreign embassies in Kabul’s Sherpur district are a testament to the untouchable status of former warlords.
Corruption among police and local authorities is worst in southern Afghanistan, where drug profits are highest. Despite his repeated public denials, President Karzai’s half-brother Wali, head of Kandahar’s provincial council, continues to be accused by senior government sources, as well as foreign analysts and officials, as having a key role in orchestrating the movement of heroin from Kandahar eastward through Helmand and out across the Iranian border.
Britain has been keen for Kabul to begin arresting top drug smugglers in its ranks. Yet diplomats fear the country’s judicial system is so weak that the men would quickly be released or escape. Meanwhile, America has been lacklustre in lobbying for high-level arrests, fearing such detentions would further destabilise matters.
The Afghan Government fears that if corrupt officials in the south were replaced by staunch law enforcers, the huge profits from heroin trafficking would end up with the Taleban.
Kabul has, though, made efforts. A new agency, the directorate of local government (IDLG), was supposed to give the President rather than the Ministry of Interior more say over the appointment of provincial governors, a system notorious for its corrupt procedures. However, many of the IDLG staff were simply transferred from the Interior Ministry, tainting its potential from the start. Afghan anti-corruption agencies similarly lack cohesion and clout.
His own force is already under suspicion from rival anti-corruption players in the offices of the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Finance, who in turn face allegations of embezzlement and bribery. Wasifi did time in an American penitentiary 20 years ago for dealing heroin. “You expect my guys to be clean working for $200 a month versus the millions in drug bribes?” he asked. “I don’t see any serious measures being taken to solve the problem.”
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
100 arrests hit world paedophile ring
Taken from the Guardian, UK, November 5, 2007
By David Batty and agencies
More than 100 people in 19 countries have been arrested in an operation to dismantle a major international paedophile network, police said today.
The arrests follow an investigation into an Italian-based website that produced "tailor-made" child abuse images for 2,500 customers, according to the European police agency Europol.
In the past five months 46 people in the UK have been arrested in the operation, codenamed Koala, according to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).
There have also been 21 arrests in France, 11 in Spain and eight in Sweden.
"We have identified 2,500 customers from around the world. School teachers, swimming instructors, lawyers, IT executives," said Europol investigator Menno Hagemeijer. Some customers even travelled to the studio to watch and record the abuse and make their own videos.
"These [videos] were tailor-made orders. We want this girl in this pose in this lingerie," said Belgian prosecutor Michele Coninsx.
Europol and the EU prosecution body Eurojust launched the operation last year following the arrest of Marzola Sergio, 42, who ran the website.
He produced most of his videos in Ukraine, where police have identified 21 victims so far.
One of the videos showed a father sexually abusing his daughters aged nine and 11, according to Ceop.
Jim Gamble, chief executive of Ceop, said there were likely to be further arrests from the global investigation.
He said: "Yet again we see the technology used by paedophiles to facilitate child abuse now turned against them as a result of co-ordinated and effective international law enforcement cooperation.
"Operation Koala uncovered the true meaning of 'online child abuse': in this case, the exchanging of images in which real children were subjected to horrific sexual abuse, often to order."
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Thatcher honours Commonwealth war dead
Today is Remembrance Sunday - when we read about the second world war, we usually hear about how Britain stood up and fought against Nazi Germany (and quite rightly so) and how after a while the Yanks would join in to save the butts of the British. We never get to read anything about the volunteers from other countries (such as India & Pakistan) who made great contibution in the fight against the Nazis in the media let alone from the British Monarch or her Government - so I was surprised to read this in the times online...
Taken from the Times, UK, November 9, 2007
By Jack Malvern
Baroness Thatcher attended a wreath-laying ceremony today to honour Commonwealth soldiers killed fighting for Britain.
Lady Thatcher was a guest alongside the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres and foreign dignitaries at the event held ahead of Remembrance Sunday at the Memorial Gates on Constitution Hill, London.
The Gates were completed five years ago, in remembrance of the five million volunteers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Africa and the Caribbean, who fought and died in the two world wars.
Dr Chartres and Lord Bilimoria, the chairman of the Memorial Gates Commemorative Trust, spoke to the assembled crowd of dignitaries and veterans before a two-minute silence.
The Bishop said: “This morning we particularly remember the men of the Commonwealth, and we remember and give thanks to those who spent themselves defending others.”
Baroness Thatcher, who helped raise money to build the Memorial Gates, did not make a speech at the event, but she laid a wreath of poppies at the foot of the gates.
Lord Bilimoria said: “Lady Thatcher played an instrumental role in helping to raise the money for these gates. To have her backing and for her to be here is just so special, I could see she was genuinely moved by the ceremony.”
Children from Westminster School were invited to watch the event, and organisers were keen to encourage younger people to learn about the events of the first and second world wars.
Peter Cleminson, national chairman of the Royal British Legion, said: “I think inevitably the public sometimes forgets the role that volunteers from other countries played. But we do our best to remind them, and an occasion like this helps to remind people of the great contribution made by the Sikhs, the the Nepalese, the Ghurkas, the Indian army and by Africans and Caribbeans in both world wars.”
Meanwhile, the insurers Lloyd’s of London held its annual wreath-laying ceremony this morning in the underwriting room of its City of London offices.
John Stuttard, the Lord Mayor of London and representatives from the Admiralty and the British Legion took part in the event, which included a two-minute silence and the annual ringing of the Lutine Bell, which is only otherwise tolled to mark disasters.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Partitioning India Over Lunch (And Another Fine Mess!)
Today is the 60th Anniversary of India and Pakistan's Independence from the British Rule. Whilst people all over the world celebrate with joy, this news piece shows what happened during the last period of the British Rule and why so many innocent people died and why there are still problems in that region...
Taken from the BBC, Friday, 10 August 2007
Memoirs of a British civil servant never seen in public until now show how much the partition of India was decided by just two men, the BBC's Alastair Lawson reports.
In a quiet village in the northern English county of Yorkshire, Robert Beaumont rifles through his father's archives.
The various and somewhat tatty pieces of paper he unearths are no ordinary collection of paternal memoirs.
They are the thoughts and reflections of his father, Christopher Beaumont, who played a central role in the partition of India in 1947, which resulted in arguably the largest mass migration of peoples the world has ever seen.
Christopher Beaumont was not an admirer of Mountbatten
After the death in 1989 of Mountbatten's Private Secretary, Sir George Abell, Beaumont was probably not exaggerating when he claimed to be the only person left who "knew the truth about partition".
'Bending the border'
It is estimated that around 14.5 million people moved to Pakistan from India or travelled in the opposite direction from Pakistan to India.
In 1947, Beaumont was private secretary to the senior British judge, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who was chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Boundary Commission.
Radcliffe was responsible for dividing the vast territories of British India into India and Pakistan, separating 400 million people along religious lines.
It was a time of mass migration, uncertainty and bloodshed
The family documents show that Beaumont had a stark assessment of the role played by Britain in the last days of the Raj.
"The viceroy, Mountbatten, must take the blame - though not the sole blame - for the massacres in the Punjab in which between 500,000 to a million men, women and children perished," he writes.
"The handover of power was done too quickly."
The central theme ever present in Beaumont's historic paperwork is that Mountbatten not only bent the rules when it came to partition - he also bent the border in India's favour.
The documents repeatedly allege that Mountbatten put pressure on Radcliffe to alter the boundary in India's favour.
On one occasion, he complains that he was "deftly excluded" from a lunch between the pair in which a substantial tract of Muslim-majority territory - which should have gone to Pakistan - was instead ceded to India.
Beaumont's papers say that the incident brought "grave discredit on both men".
Punjab 'disaster'
But Beaumont - who later in life was a circuit judge in the UK - is most scathing about how partition affected the Punjab, which was split between India and Pakistan.
"The Punjab partition was a disaster," he writes.
"Geography, canals, railways and roads all argued against dismemberment.
"The trouble was that Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were an integrated population so that it was impossible to make a frontier without widespread dislocation.
"Thousands of people died or were uprooted from their homes in what was in effect a civil war.
"By the end of 1947 there were virtually no Hindus or Sikhs living in west Punjab - now part of Pakistan - and no Muslims in the Indian east.
"The British government and Mountbatten must bear a large part of the blame for this tragedy."
Personality clash
Beaumont goes on to argue that it was "irresponsible" of Lord Mountbatten to insist that Beaumont complete the boundary within a six-week deadline - despite his protests.
On Kashmir, Beaumont argues that it would have been "far more sensible" to have made the flash-point territory a separate country.
According to Beaumont, the "formidably intelligent" Radcliffe "did not get on well" with Mountbatten.
"They could not have been more different," he writes.
Mountbatten's address (Real Player)
"Mountbatten was very good-looking and had a well-deserved history of personal bravery but, to put it mildly, he had few literary tastes.
"Radcliffe... was very quietly civilised. It was a relationship so like chalk and cheese that Lady Mountbatten had to use all her adroitness to keep conversation between them on an even keel."
Beaumont died in 2002 - his son Robert remembers him with great affection.
"He was also a man of supreme honesty, who spoke out on numerous occasions against the official British version of events surrounding partition without in any way being disloyal to his country," Robert Beaumont recalls.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
U.K. May Seek Extradition Over British Cameraman's Gaza Death
Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 06/08/2007
By Akiva Eldar
Britain may seek the extradition of Israel Defense Forces troops in the shooting death of a British television cameraman in May 2003 in the southern Gaza Strip unless Attorney General Menachem Mazuz reverses his position and carries out a criminal investigation against those suspected of involvement.
In a letter to the family of James Miller, a 34-year-old photojournalist shot and killed in Rafah, Lord Peter Goldsmith, Britain's attorney general, says he wrote Mazuz on June 26 and gave him six weeks to respond. The deadline is on Tuesday.
According to Goldsmith, after an inquest by a coroner, Dr. Andrew Scott Reid, Miller had been unlawfully killed by troops of the Israel Defense Forces.
"Dr. Scott Reid wrote to me and invited me to consider instituting criminal proceedings in the United Kingdom against... members of the Israeli Defence Forces... for an offence of willful killing contrary to section I of the Geneva Conventions Act 1957."
While Goldsmith's letter does not explicitly discuss a possible request for an extradition, British law requires that any suspects be in British custody for charges to be brought up against them.
Israel and Britain have an extradition treaty, and a refusal to extradite military personnel may result in a crisis between the two countries.
Justice Ministry sources confirmed that Goldsmith's letter had been received, but could not say how they would respond in the matter.
According to attorneys for the Miller family, Avigdor Feldman and Michael Sfard, as of last night there had still not been an official Israeli response to the letter from the British attorney general.
Miller was killed while filming a documentary in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt. According to Alrahman Abdallah, a freelance journalist who accompanied Miller as his translator, the photographer was shot as he tried to exit a Rafah house while holding a white flag.
A British inquiry, in part based on evidence from the video recording of the incident, showed that Miller was shot in the neck by an IDF patrol.
At the time the IDF expressed its sorrow for Miller's death and said that "the entry of photographers into war zones during exchanges of fire endangers both sides."
However, according to eyewitnesses, there had been calm in the area at the time of the shooting.
Initially, the IDF suggested that Miller had been killed by Palestinians. Ballistic tests carried out on behalf of Miller's family showed that IDF troops killed Miller, and the Military Advocate General ordered an investigation into the killing.
Following a lengthy investigation, it was decided in March 2005 not to press criminal charges against those involved because of insufficient evidence. The commander of the Israeli force that shot and killed Miller faced disciplinary proceedings for illegal use of firearms, but was exonerated.
Miller's family filed a suit against the State of Israel for murder, and in 2006 a British jury ruled the killing a murder.
In his letter to the Miller family, Lord Goldsmith points to the conclusions of an expert analysis of the video of the shooting, which he says was sent to Mazuz. According to the British attorney general, the conclusions of the expert "disproved the [Israeli] suggestion that the shots came from two areas... [and] identified the direction of the shot that killed James as coming from the armoured vehicle."
In Goldsmith's letter, received by Haaretz, the British attorney general writes that the ballistic tests carried out in Israel "could only show that the bullet that killed James did not come from the rifle barrels of the weapons that were examined." In essence, the senior British official is charging Israeli authorities with tampering with evidence, there having "been a significant opportunity for the rifle barrels to have been changed."
Requests to try those responsible and compensate the family - Miller is survived by his wife Sophy and two children - were raised at high-level talks between the two countries, including meetings between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his then counterpart, Tony Blair.
According to Feldman, the Israeli government did not treat these requests with the required seriousness and has not considered it necessary to compensate the families.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
How MI5 Had Me Kidnapped And Thrown Into CIA's Dark Prison
Taken from The Daily Mail, UK, 28th July 2007
By DAVID ROSE
James Bond interviewed informants in nightclubs and luxury hotels.
Le Carré's George Smiley preferred park benches or safe houses in Belgravia. But when Bisher Al-Rawi met the men from MI5, they chose somewhere more prosaic: a table in the basement section of McDonald's in Kensington, West London.
"I always had a Filet-O-Fish," Al-Rawi says drily. "They would only drink. One supposes they didn't like the food."
In the clear: Bisher Al-Rawi has been deemed to pose no threat to America or its allies
It wasn't the only difference between Britain's real and fictional spies. Having risked his life and reputation to inform MI5 about Islamic radicalism in London in the months after 9/11, Al-Rawi was betrayed.
The reward for his unpaid help was a secret emailed "telegram" from the British Security Service to the CIA, in which they told the Americans that Al-Rawi was carrying a timing device for a bomb – in reality, an innocuous battery-charger bought from Argos – on a business trip to Gambia.
Al-Rawi, the telegram added, was an "Iraqi extremist" associate of the London-based preacher Abu Qatada, who was regarded by the Security Services as Osama Bin Laden's "Ambassador" in Europe. The telegram did not, however, mention the crucial fact that he had been seeing Abu Qatada at MI5's behest.
A few months earlier, in the spring of 2002, Abu Qatada was wanted under the Government's 2001 Terrorism Act, which allowed foreign nationals believed to be involved in terrorism to be detained without charge, and had supposedly gone into hiding.
At this time Al-Rawi visited Abu Qatada numerous times with the knowledge of his MI5 handlers, in the hope of arranging a meeting between them. In addition, Al-Rawi had told MI5 all about his own life and his other activities and tried to provide an insight into Britain's Islamic scene.
All of it was thrown in his face. Arrested and interrogated on his arrival in Gambia in 2002, a month later Al-Rawi was flown on an illegal CIA "rendition" flight halfway across the world and spent four-and-a-half years detained without charge in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
From the beginning, he says, the main basis of his hundreds of interrogations was the information he had already freely given to MI5.
Terror suspects on an American flight from Kabul to Cuba
Last week, in two days of interviews, Al-Rawi told his story for the first time, almost four months after his release. He is the first man to describe in detail the CIA's rendition flights, but he also gives a powerful insight into the regime at America's prison at Guantanamo Bay.
He was speaking out for one reason – to help his friend, Jamil el-Banna, who was arrested in Gambia with him and shared his ordeal. Like Al-Rawi, he has now been deemed to pose no threat by the Americans. But el-Banna, a Jordanian who settled in Britain and who has five British children, is still in his cell in Guantanamo because the Government has refused to allow his return.
Al-Rawi looks older than his 39 years and thinner than in photos from before his arrest. Clean-shaven, in designer jeans and a sweatshirt, he remains animated and articulate, punctuating even the grimmest episodes with an expansive, mischievous laugh.
His family came to Britain when Al-Rawi was 16 after his father, a wealthy businessman, was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
For a time he went to top public school Millfield and later studied engineering at London's Queen Mary and Westfield College. After his father died in 1992 his mother, brother and sister acquired UK citizenship, but Al-Rawi remained an Iraqi, hoping that this would one day make it easier to retrieve property the family had left behind.
Passionate about outdoor activities such as rock-climbing, parachuting and scuba-diving, during the Nineties he ran his own engineering business and learned to fly helicopters.
It was through his business that Al-Rawi got to know Jamil el-Banna.
MI5 target: Abu Qatada
Al-Rawi thinks he met Abu Qatada through a mosque and gradually the friendship progressed as Al-Rawi attended the preacher's prayer meetings in Acton, West London. "I got to know his kids," he says. "My relationship with Abu Qatada wasn't much different from with a lot of people in the community."
Years later, after 9/11, officials would claim that Abu Qatada had been "Osama Bin Laden's ambassador in Europe".
But Al-Rawi insists that although Abu Qatada supported Muslim causes in places such as Chechnya and Kashmir, he never heard him advocate attacks against the West, and that when he was asked whether Muslims in Britain should emulate 9/11, "he went purple with rage, saying, 'That's the last thing we should do.' He said if anyone had asked him, he would have advised against 9/11."
Several times before 9/11 Al-Rawi was asked to be an interpreter at meetings between MI5 officers and Arabic speakers, including Abu Qatada.
Al-Rawi claims MI5 were on cordial terms with Abu Qatada long before 9/11 and had been cultivating him as a useful source on general matters affecting the Muslim community.
"On two occasions I asked the officers in private, 'Is it OK to have a relationship with Abu Qatada? Is this a problem?' They always said it's fine, it's OK."
Several weeks after the Twin Towers attacks, two MI5 men, who called themselves Alex and Matt, came to his home.
"The family was freaking out so I took them to sit in the conservatory and closed the door. They'd done their homework very well – they knew a lot about me. It was like an interview."
They came back a week later but because his family felt uncomfortable, Al-Rawi says they began to meet at a pub in Victoria, and later at McDonald's. "In those early days they were always offering me money. I was clear with them. I told them I wasn't going to be paid. I agreed to talk to MI5 because I believed it would do some good."
But Al-Rawi was concerned lest he might somehow incriminate himself, by speaking of people who – unbeknown to him – really might have links with terrorism. He also sought assurances that everything he said was in confidence.
Soon afterwards, he was asked to meet an MI5 lawyer called Simon. "He gave me very solid assurances about confidentiality," Al-Rawi says. "He promised they would even protect my family if they had to. He said that if I were ever arrested, I should co-operate with the police and if ever a matter got to court he would come as a witness and tell the truth."
Last night, MI5 declined to comment on this or other aspects of the case. Despite repeated and detailed requests, a spokesman did not return calls.
Under the Government's 2001 Terrorism Act, foreign nationals such as Abu Qatada were allowed to be detained without charge. Shortly before the law was passed, Abu Qatada disappeared. Like most of his associates, Al-Rawi had no idea of his whereabouts. But one day in early spring, a stranger phoned and asked to meet him at a London mosque. He took him to a house where Abu Qatada was staying. "He asked me if I could help him find somewhere new."
Through a friend, Al-Rawi found him a flat. "Less than a week later I saw Alex in McDonald's.
He asked me, 'Bisher, do you know where Abu Qatada is?' I thought to myself, if I was going to tell a lie, now was the time to do it. But I didn't. I said, 'Yes, I do.'"
A few days later, they met again, this time with Alex's boss, Martin. "He seemed excited. Until then British authorities had no idea where Abu Qatada was."
Soon afterwards Al-Rawi told Abu Qatada that he had informed MI5 he knew where he was.
"He looked at me in amazement. He didn't like it, yet at the same time he tolerated it. I really thought I could bring them together."
So began the crazy weeks when Al-Rawi acted as go-between, taking messages between the preacher and MI5. "The balancing act was extreme. Yet I really believe that if they had met, history might have been different. Maybe if Abu Qatada could have talked to MI5 he would have stayed out of jail, and the young hotheads would have listened to him. Who knows? Perhaps there would have been no 7/7."
Free: Bisher Al-Rawi in London with Anas el-Banna, the ten-year-old son of his friend who is still in Guantanamo
Finally, in early summer 2002, Al-Rawi says, he was sure that Abu Qatada was ready to meet MI5 officers, but quickly changed his mind. Soon afterwards Al-Rawi had a final phone call from Alex. "It was a brief conversation terminating our relationship. It was very tense, like breaking off with a girlfriend. But I was also relieved – it was a huge load off my shoulders."
Eventually, in October 2002, Abu Qatada was arrested under the 2001 Terrorism Act. Later MI5 claimed in court they were unaware of his whereabouts for almost a year. Al-Rawi finds this implausible. "As I told Abu Qatada at the time, all they had to do was follow me on my motorbike. I am certain that they did."
It was Al-Rawi's brother, Wahhab, who had the idea of setting up a business in Gambia. A family friend told them that peanut-processing plants – where nuts are shelled in situ and turned into oil – could be lucrative.
Wahhab travelled ahead to Gambia and on November 1, 2002, Al-Rawi, el-Banna and another friend, Abdullah el-Janoudi, tried to board a flight from Gatwick to Banjul, Gambia's capital.
The previous evening, MI5 and the police visited el-Banna and, according to an MI5 memo disclosed to his lawyers, tried to recruit him. El-Banna refused but officers promised he could travel to Gambia 'without a problem' and later return to the UK.
It was not to be. The three men were stopped at Gatwick airport, searched and detained for five days at Paddington Green police station. Among a number of 'suspicious' items found in Al-Rawi's luggage were a $24 battery-charger, drill bits, a gas cylinder and a bundle of electrical wires wrapped around set of tweezers.
Al-Rawi insisted they were tools and parts he needed for the peanut-processing plant.
Two days after their release, the three men went ahead with their plans and flew to Gambia.
But by now the damage had been done. On the day of the arrests, MI5 sent its first telegram to the CIA, describing the charger as "a timing device [that] could possibly be used as some part of a car-based IED [improvised explosive device]". A second telegram three days later failed to correct this, repeating the claim that Al-Rawi was "an Islamic extremist" and saying the men would soon be on their way.
In a report last week on the case, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee cited testimony it was given in secret from MI5, claiming that the service had sent 'caveats' with the telegrams asking for no action to be taken. These, it was clear, were ignored.
"This case shows a lack of regard on the part of the US for UK concerns," said the committee.
"This has serious implications for the working of the relationship between the US and UK intelligence and security agencies."
It added that MI5 "could not have foreseen" that the US would disregard the caveats and that both Al-Rawi and el-Banna had been formally "cleared for release" by the Guantanamo authorities. The committee said MI5 "should have told Ministers about the case at the time" and were concerned it took several years and a court case by the two men's lawyers to bring it to their attention.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the committee concluded that the false information about the battery-charger was not the main reason for the men's arrest. In any event, all three were held when they arrived in Banjul, together with Wahhab and his local agent, who had come to the airport to meet them.
The following morning, Al-Rawi was confronted by his interrogators, led by an American called Lee. "From the beginning, the questions made it plain that the Americans had been given the contents of my own MI5 file which was supposed to be confidential," says Al-Rawi.
"Lee even told me the British were giving him information. I had agreed to help MI5 because I wanted to prevent terrorism, and now the information I had freely given them was being used against me in an attempt to prove that I myself was some kind of terrorist."
He was also accused of having planned to start a Gambian terrorist training camp. During his last week there, one of the Americans came to Al-Rawi's cell. "He told me, 'We know you were working for MI5.' He said I was going to Afghanistan but if I told the truth, I would get out. He said he would go to the media if I didn't [get out]. Needless to say, he never did."
Days before the men's illegal rendition, MI5 told the parliamentary committee, the Americans informed them it was going to happen. Nevertheless, the British said they would not attempt to extend consular protection to Al-Rawi and el-Banna but only to Wahhab and el-Janoudi – the UK citizens – who were promptly released. El-Banna and Al-Rawi were shackled, blindfolded and hooded, then taken to a car.
"My hands were cuffed behind my back," says Al-Rawi. "It was incredibly uncomfortable. I could barely breathe through the hood.
"At last we got to the airport – I knew because I could hear jet engines. I had to sit for a while in some kind of waiting room, with two Gambian guards either side of me. They were nice, they could see I was in pain and one of them started to massage my feet. They stood me up and walked me a few paces, then let go. Two other guys grabbed me really hard and started dragging me. I thought, 'Ah-ha, these are the Americans.'"
Then, he says, six or seven Americans, dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, cut off his clothes and removed his hood. "They dressed me in two layers of nappies and tracksuit bottoms and a top. There was no light in the room. One of them shone a torch in my eye. He was trying to blind me, make it impossible to see. I was so angry and despairing but I tried to be witty. I told him, 'Excuse me, but I think your torch needs a new battery.'"
Al-Rawi says that over his clothes "they put a harness, and shackled and cuffed me again, fixing the chains through the harness. They dragged me forcefully up the stairs and into the plane.
They forced me on to a stretcher and tied me to it so tightly I could hardly move at all.
"I felt trussed like an animal, lying on my back. There were belts restraining my feet, legs and my body. They covered my eyes with a blindfold and then goggles, and put something over my ears. I could still hear the plane's engines. I knew we were about to take off.
"To say it was extremely stressful is a real understatement. All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming. But somehow you just hold on.
"At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't – it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go.
"They hadn't told me I was wearing nappies and I was desperate to urinate. I was fighting not to soil myself, and it was adding to the pain. I asked three times to go to the toilet, and still they would not let me. My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back.
"Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden."
At last, Al-Rawi says, he felt the plane descending. He had landed in Kabul. Released from the stretcher and thrown forcefully into a truck, he was driven to the most notorious of the CIA's "black sites" – the Afghan Dark Prison.
Al-Rawi's blindfold had been removed, but the darkness was absolute. The unheated cell was so cold he could feel ice crystals on the water he was occasionally given to drink. "For three days or so I just sat in the corner, shivering. The only time there was light was when a guard came to check on me with a dim torch – as soon as he'd detect movement, he would leave.
"I tried to do a few push-ups and jogged on the spot to keep warm. There was no toilet-paper but I tore off my nappies and tried to use them to clean myself. I kept telling myself, 'They haven't killed me yet, this is good.'"
After about a fortnight, he and el-Banna were taken to Bagram, where interrogations began again. On the way, "they really beat me up. Of course I was hooded, so I couldn't see anything. But you know how in cartoons when people get hit on the head they see stars? I thought, ah, now I know what those cartoons mean. I saw stars".
He and el-Banna came under pressure to incriminate Abu Qatada, who was by now being held at the high-security Belmarsh prison. He was later transferred to Long Martin where he is still fighting deportation from the UK – where he faces no criminal charge. However, he has been convicted in absentia of terrorist offences in Jordan on the evidence of co-defendants who had been tortured.
This, says Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who represents Al-Rawi, el-Banna and Abu Qatada, is the real reason why el-Banna is still in Guantanamo. The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, says she is considering whether to rescind his status as a refugee.
If so, he would be taken to Jordan – and there, perhaps, finally tortured into giving evidence.
Al-Rawi and el-Banna were taken to Guantanamo in March 2003 – a regime of isolation and casual brutality. Until his release on March 31 this year, Al-Rawi was held in Camp 5, where communication between inmates is impossible.
During his years in prison, Al-Rawi sank into depression. "One tried hard to be normal, to maintain balance. The thing was, the people around me were suffering so much and in the end you can't help feeling pretty bad yourself. Jamil knew his mother wasn't well and he begged to be allowed to phone her, to speak to her before she died. They refused and she passed away last year."
Only his lawyers, including Peirce, Clive Stafford Smith and Zachary Katznelson from the campaign group Reprieve, and the letters from wellwishers kept him going. "The first lawyer I met was an American, Brent Mickum. I felt like a drowning man in the ocean who had suddenly been given a lifeline."
MI5, it was evident, had not fulfilled its promise to help Al-Rawi if he ever got into trouble. But after he had been in Guantanamo for about six months, an officer came to see him. "It was someone I hadn't seen before. He asked me, 'Do you feel betrayed?'"
Later, his former handler Alex paid a visit. "He was nice enough. He asked if I wanted anything. I asked for a book. He never came back and I never got the book."
His last and strangest visit came from MI5 officers Matt and Martin. Al-Rawi says they tried to recruit him again, saying: "You know, Bisher, if you agree to work for us when you get back to Britain, we'll get you out." There was to be yet another broken promise. When Al-Rawi came before a Guantanamo tribunal supposed to assess whether his detention was justified, he asked for Matt, Alex and Simon to corroborate his story as witnesses.
The British refused to identify them, and the Americans said that because he did not know their full, real names, they could not be traced.
Al-Rawi has now been cleared by the Americans of being involved in terrorism and deemed to pose no threat to America or its allies.
Perhaps surprisingly, he says he feels no bitterness towards America or Americans in general. MI5, however, has left him deeply disappointed. "I used to think of them as cool, tough, as gentlemen. I used to speak about them in the Muslim community, saying they had a level of dignity and that we could trust them.
"When I got back home, one of the first messages I got was from a friend who said, 'Bisher, they weren't very honourable, were they?' I suppose he was right. All the credit for what I went through goes to them."
Monday, July 09, 2007
Interpol Chief Blasts UK Cooperation On Terrorism
Four men were found guilty of plotting to bomb London's transport network on 21 July 2005. The men had tried to detonate rucksacks laden with explosives on the Tube and a bus, killing themselves and passengers. But the bombs failed to go off sparing the city a repeat of the horrors of the 7/7 attacks, two weeks earlier. Only a few weeks ago, the UK survived the failed car bombs in London and the burning jeep at Glasgow airport. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former UK spy, writing in the periodical Policing: A Journal of Policing and Practice, said that 1,700 terrorists in 200 networks, "scattered across the country" are thought to be plotting 30 attacks at any one time. She warned of the "pressing demand" for the police to create a secret network of Muslim spies capable of improving intelligence gathering. With information like this you would have thought that intelligence was shared between allied countries to track and tackle this problem - It appears that this is not the case...
Taken from Yahoo News, Mon Jul 9 2007
By Mark Trevelyan, Reuters
Britain's counter-terrorism efforts are "in the wrong century," the head of Interpol said on Monday, accusing it of failing to share information on militants and consult a vital global police database. The harsh and embarrassing criticism from Ronald Noble, boss of the 186-nation police organization, came as investigations into a suspected al Qaeda car bomb plot involving Indian and Arab medics stretched from Britain as far as Australia.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stressed the need for countries to exchange information on suspected militants, but Noble said Britain was not passing on such data.
"The UK has not shared its terrorist watch list with Interpol," he said in an open letter on the organization's Web site, www.interpol.int.
He said this could have damaging consequences if other countries approached Interpol for information on suspects.
"The UK might lose a significant investigative lead; the country consulting Interpol would obtain no or incomplete information; and those individuals on the UK terrorist watch list would remain free to plan and carry out more terrorist attacks."
Noble also slammed a failure by British authorities to systematically check the passports of foreign visitors against an Interpol global database containing details of more than seven million lost and stolen passports.
There was a "clear link between stolen passports and al Qaeda-linked terrorist activity," he told the BBC.
"The UK's anti-terrorist effort is in the wrong century."
WARNING LIST
British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told parliament that all terrorist suspects identified by Interpol were placed on a British "warnings index." Work was under way to enable British law enforcement officials to access the organization's stolen passport database.
She did not reply to the charge that Britain was failing to pass on its own counter-terrorism information to Interpol, and a ministry spokesman said he had no further comment.
Noble has long warned that countries are playing into the hands of terrorists and criminals if they fail to clamp down on the use of stolen passports, but he said only 17 nations were systematically checking the database.
"On the other hand, all countries systematically check our bags to see if we are carrying bottles of water or other liquids. These priorities seem misplaced," he said.
Britain has been a frequent target of al Qaeda-inspired attacks, including one in which four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 others in 2005. Four men were found guilty on Monday of a botched attempt to replicate those attacks.
In the latest case, one man has been charged and seven people are under arrest - one in Australia -- over last month's two failed London car bombs and an attack on a Scottish airport.
Counter-terrorism minister Alan West was delivering an interim report to Brown on Monday on how to improve security screening of skilled foreign workers entering Britain, following revelations that most of the suspects were doctors or medical staff. Three are Indian, the rest from the Middle East.
