Report: Marines Broke International Law

Taken from Yahoo News, Apr 14, 2007

By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. Marine unit broke international humanitarian law by using excessive force during a shooting spree last month that left 12 people dead, an Afghan human rights group said in a report Saturday.

The troops fired indiscriminately at pedestrians, people in cars, public buses and taxis in six different locations along a 10-mile stretch of road in Nangahar province after an explosives-rigged minivan crashed into their convoy on March 4, according to the report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.

Six people were killed near the blast site, while the other six died on the road as the troops sped away, said Ahmad Nader Nadery, the group's spokesman.

The dead included a 1-year-old boy, a 4-year-old girl and three women, the report said. Thirty-five people were wounded in the shootings.

"In failing to distinguish between civilians and legitimate military targets the U.S. Marines Corps Special Forces employed indiscriminate force," the report said. "Their actions thus constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian law standards."

The group said its report was based on interviews with victims and their families, witnesses, local community leaders, hospital officials and police.

A U.S. military commander has also determined that the Marines used excessive force and referred the case for possible criminal inquiry, a senior U.S. defense official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

U.S. military officials said after the incident that the suicide attack was part of an ambush that included militant gunmen shooting at Marines, which may have caused some of the civilian casualties.

The human rights group's report said "there is some evidence at the immediate site of the incident to support this claim, but it is far from conclusive and all witnesses and Afghan government officials interviewed uniformly denied that any attack beyond the initial (suicide car bombing) took place."

The group also alleges that U.S. troops serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force in southern Afghanistan returned to the area after the bombing for an investigation and a cleanup operation, which involved the removal of all bullet shells and cartridges.

The group said it interviewed a member of Afghanistan's National Police criminal investigations office who said his unit had searched around the site after the incident, but that "ISAF forces had collected all shells, magazines, cartridges from the spot and we could not find any trace or sign of them."

U.S. military officials were not available to comment on that allegation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly pleaded for Western troops to show more restraint amid concern that civilian deaths shake domestic support for the foreign military involvement that he needs to prop up his government, increasingly under threat from a resurgent Taliban.

The initial U.S. military investigation concluded that the Marines' response was "out of proportion to the threat that was immediately there," the senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday in Washington.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe's results have not been released. The findings have been forwarded to U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Another official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the initial military investigation concluded that there was a "reasonable suspicion" the Marines violated the rules for the use of deadly force, and that crimes, possibly including homicide, may have been committed in the aftermath of the convoy being struck.

One Marine was wounded in the blast, which also killed the bomber.

Army Maj. Gen. Francis H. Kearney III, head of Special Operations Command Central, opened an investigation into the incident after taking the highly unusual step of ordering the unit of about 120 Marines out of Afghanistan.

"We deeply regret the loss of life and casualties that resulted from the (suicide car bombing) and the actions that followed," Lt. Col. Lou Leto, spokesman at Kearney's command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., said in a statement. "We will work to prevent similar events from occurring in the future."

The Marines are in a special operations unit that deployed from Camp LeJeune, N.C., in January with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. After Kearney ordered them out of Afghanistan, they returned to their unit's ships in the Persian Gulf.

The unit is one of four Marine Special Operations Command companies established since the command was created in February 2006. The one ordered out of Afghanistan was the first to deploy abroad.

U.S. Decides Against Freeing 5 Iranian Agents

Administration Resists Tehran's Pressure, State Department Recommendation

Taken from The Washington Post, April 14, 2007; Page A12
By Robin Wright

After intense internal debate, the Bush administration has decided to hold on to five Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents captured in Iraq, overruling a State Department recommendation to release them, according to U.S. officials.

At a meeting of the president's foreign policy team Tuesday, the administration decided the five Iranians will remain in custody and go through a periodic six-month review used for the 250 other foreign detainees held in Iraq, U.S. officials said. The next review is not expected until July, officials say.

The five, seized in a Jan. 11 raid by U.S. forces in the Kurdish city of Irbil, are at the center of increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran. The decision is certain to further irritate Tehran, which has ratcheted up pressure on the United States and on its allies and even its friends in the Iraqi government to win freedom for the Irbil five.

The decision came as Iraq's government spokesman, on a White House visit Friday, urged better ties. "We feel that the improvement and the better relations between the United States and Iran could minimize -- could make the [Iranian] interference less," Ali Dabbagh said in a news briefing with White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Differences over the five Iranians reflect an emerging divide on how to deal with Iran. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went into the meeting Tuesday advising that the men be freed because they are no longer useful, but after a review of options she went along with the consensus, U.S. officials say. Vice President Cheney's office made the firmest case for keeping them. Their capture signals that Iran's actions are monitored and that Iranian operatives face seizure.

The administration has expressed concern about Tehran's role in Iraq. Iran has long aided Shiite militias but more recently has also armed some Sunni militias, officials say. Officials also allege that Iran has provided roadside explosives that have killed U.S. troops. But Washington needs Iran's cooperation to stabilize Iraq.

Since the capture, Iran has threatened not to attend a key meeting in Egypt next month of Iraq's neighbors - as well as the United States and international groups involved in Iraq - that Washington hopes will foster cooperation on Iraq. Without Iran, which exerts great influence in Iraq, the meeting could have only a marginal impact, according to Iraqi officials and Middle East experts.

When the Iraqi government did not obtain release of the five detainees, Iran refused to allow a plane carrying Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fly over Iran en route to Japan last week. Iran has also been pressing the detainees' case at the United Nations.

Some U.S. officials now say the seizure of 15 British sailors last month by the Revolutionary Guard may have been part of an effort to pressure Washington through Britain, its close ally and the second-largest troop contributor in Iraq. One reason Washington does not want to free the Iranians is to avoid the appearance of a deal to win the 15 Britons freedom last week, U.S. officials acknowledged.

The January raid on Iran's liaison office in Irbil was the second by U.S. troops. In December, U.S. troops in Baghdad nabbed Brig. Gen. Mohsen Chirazi, the No. 3 official in the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, and Col. Abu Amad Davari. They were soon released under Iraqi government pressure.

In January, the United States again targeted two high-ranking Iranians, including Gen. Minojahar Frouzanda, the Revolutionary Guard intelligence chief, and Mohammed Jafari, deputy head of Iran's National Security Council, U.S. officials say. They eluded capture.

The United States is invoking Iraqi law as well as U.N. Security Council resolutions 1546, 1637 and 1723 authorizing the U.S.-led coalition operating in Iraq as grounds to detain the Iranians.

The U.N. resolutions allow the multinational force to take steps to protect itself.

The Irbil five are members of the elite Quds Force, an arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps charged with Iran's clandestine foreign operations. The Quds Force has ties to the Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant groups as well as to Iraqi political movements that the United States has supported.

The administration's decision comes at an awkward time. Washington is about to send a fourth message to Iran asking for information on the whereabouts of former FBI agent Robert A. Levinson, who has been missing since he flew to Iran's Kish Island five weeks ago. The Financial Times and Reuters reported Friday that Levinson may have met on Kish Island with Daoud Salahuddin, a convert to Islam once known as David Belfield who is still wanted by the FBI for the 1980 murder in Bethesda of Iranian dissident Ali Tabatabai.

Army Is Cracking Down On Deserters

Taken from The New York Times, April 9, 2007
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years, resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time for both junior soldiers and combat-tested veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army records show.

The increased prosecutions are meant to serve as a deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are ambivalent about heading — or heading back — to Iraq and may be looking for a way out, several Army lawyers said in interviews. Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, military lawyers and mental health experts said.

“They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out,” said Dr. Thomas Grieger, a senior Navy psychiatrist. Though there are no current studies to show how combat stress affects desertion rates, Dr. Grieger cited several examples of soldiers absconding or refusing to return to Iraq because of psychiatric reasons brought on by wartime deployments.

At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, “there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger with an axe to prevent his deployment,” Dr. Grieger said in an interview.

The Army prosecuted desertion far less often in the late 1990s, when desertions were more frequent, than it does now, when there are comparatively fewer.

From 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army prosecutions of desertion tripled compared with the five-year period from 1997 to 2001, to roughly 6 percent of deserters, from 2 percent, Army data shows.

Between these two five-year spans — one prewar and one during wartime — prosecutions for similar crimes, like absence without leave or failing to appear for unit missions, have more than doubled, to an average of 390 per year from an average of 180 per year, Army data shows.

In total, the Army since 2002 has court-martialed twice as many soldiers for desertion and other unauthorized absences as it did on average each year between 1997 and 2001. Deserters are soldiers who leave a post or fail to show up for an assignment with the intent to stay away.Soldiers considered absent without leave, or AWOL, which presumes they plan to return, are classified as deserters and dropped from a unit’s rolls after 30 days.

Most soldiers who return from unauthorized absences are punished and discharged. Few return to regular duty.

Officers said the crackdown reflected an awareness by top Army and Defense Department officials that desertions, which occurred among more than 1 percent of the active-duty force in 2000 for the first time since the post-Vietnam era, were in a sustained upswing again after ebbing in 2003, the first year of the Iraq war.

At the same time, the increase highlights a cycle long known to Army researchers: as the demand for soldiers increases during a war, desertions rise and the Army tends to lower enlistment standards, recruiting more people with questionable backgrounds who are far more likely to become deserters.

In the 2006 fiscal year, 3,196 soldiers deserted, the Army said, a figure that has been climbing since the 2004 fiscal year, when 2,357 soldiers absconded. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 871 soldiers deserted, a rate that, if it stays on pace, would produce 3,484 desertions for the fiscal year, an 8 percent increase over 2006.

The Army said the desertion rate was within historical norms, and that the surge in prosecutions, which are at the discretion of unit commanders, was not a surprise given the impact that absent soldiers can have during wartime.

“The nation is at war, and the Army treats the offense of desertion more seriously,” Maj. Anne D. Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, said. “The Army’s leadership will take whatever measures they believe are appropriate if they see a continued upward trend in desertion, in order to maintain the health of the force.”

Army studies and interviews also suggest a link between the rising rate of desertions and the expanding use of moral waivers to recruit people with poor academic records and low-level criminal convictions. At least 1 in 10 deserters surveyed after returning to the Army from 2002 to mid-2004 required a waiver to enter the service, a report by the Army Research Institute found.

“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,” said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting.“We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.” (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)

The officer said the Army National Guard last week authorized 34 states and Guam to enlist the lowest-ranking group of eligible recruits, those who scored between 16 and 30 on the armed services aptitude test. Federal law bars recruits who scored lower than 16 from enlisting.

Desertions, while a chronic problem for the Army, are nowhere near as common as they were at the height of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1971, for instance, about 5 percent of enlisted men deserted.

But the rate of desertion today, after four years of fighting two ground wars, is “being taken much more seriously because we were losing so many soldiers out of the Army that there was a recognized need to attack the problem from a different way,” said an Army criminal defense lawyer.

In interviews, the lawyer and two other Army lawyers each traced the spike in prosecutions to a policy change at the beginning of 2002 that required commanders to welcome back soldiers who deserted or went AWOL.

Before that, most deserters, who are often young, undistinguished soldiers who have fallen out of favor with their sergeants, were given administrative separations and sent home with other-than-honorable discharges.

The new policy, ordered by the secretary of the army, effectively eliminated the incentive among squad sergeants to urge returning AWOL soldiers to stay away for at least 30 days, when they would be classified as deserters under the old rules and dropped from the roll.

But some unit commanders, wary of scrutiny from their superiors, go out of their way to improperly keep deserted soldiers on their rosters, and on the Army’s payroll, two officers said in interviews. To counter that, the Army adopted a new policy in January 2005 requiring commanders to formally report absent soldiers within 48 hours.

Such problems are costly. From October 2000 to February 2002, the Army improperly paid more than $6.6 million to 7,544 soldiers who had deserted or were otherwise absent, according to a July 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Most deserters list dissatisfaction with Army life or family problems as primary reasons for their absence, and most go AWOL in the United States. But since 2003, 109 soldiers have been convicted of going AWOL or deserting war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually during their scheduled two-week leaves in the United States, Army officials said.

With the Iraq war in its fifth year, a new subset of deserter is emerging, military doctors and lawyers said: accomplished soldiers who abscond reluctantly, as a result of severe emotional trauma from their battle experiences.

James, a 26-year-old paratrooper twice deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, went AWOL in July after being reassigned to Fort Bliss, Tex., an Army post in the mountainous high-desert region near El Paso.

“The places I was in in Iraq and Afghanistan look exactly like Fort Bliss,” said James, who agreed to talk about his case on the condition that his last name not be printed. “It starts messing with your head — ‘I’m really back there.’ ”

In December, he and another deserter, Ronnie, 28, who also asked that his last name not be used, tried to surrender to the authorities at Fort Bliss. A staff sergeant told them not to bother, James said.

James and Ronnie, who both have five years of service, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and abuse alcohol to self-medicate, said Dr. David M. Walker, a former Air Force psychiatrist who has examined both men.

With help from lawyers, James and Ronnie returned to Fort Bliss on Tuesday. They were charged with desertion and face courts-martial and possibly a few months in a military brig. “If I could stay in the military, get help, that’s what I want,” said Ronnie, who completed an 18-month combat tour in Kirkuk, Iraq, with the 25th Infantry Division in 2004.

The Army said combat-related stress had not caused many soldiers to desert.

Major Edgecomb, the spokeswoman, said more than 80 percent of the past year’s deserters had been soldiers for less than three years, and could not have been deployed more than once.

Morten G. Ender, a sociologist at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said soldiers’ decisions to go AWOL or desert might come in response to a family crisis — a threat by a spouse to leave if they deploy again, for instance, or a child-custody battle.

“It’s not just that they don’t want to be in a war zone anymore,” Dr. Ender said. “We saw that a lot during Vietnam, and we see that a lot in the military now.”

Top US Generals Reject War Tsar Role For Iraq And Afghanistan

Taken from The Guardian, UK, April 12, 2007

By Ewen MacAskill

Three retired generals approached by the White House about a new high-profile post overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and reporting directly to the president have rejected the proposed post, leaving the administration struggling to find anyone of stature willing to take it on.

One of the four-star generals said he declined because of the chaotic way the war was being run and because Dick Cheney, the vice-president and the leading hawk in the Bush administration, retained more influence than pragmatists looking for a way out.

The deputy White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, confirmed yesterday that George Bush was considering restructuring the administration to create a new post, dubbed the war tsar by US media. It would involve co-ordinating the work of the defence, state and other departments at what she described as a critical stage in the wars. One of the retired generals approached, Marine General John Sheehan, told the Washington Post: "The very fundamental issue is they don't know where the hell they're going."

The unwillingness of the generals to take the job undermines recent attempts by the Bush administration to put a positive spin on the Iraq war. Mr Bush has claimed repeatedly over the past few weeks that there are signs his strategy of pouring extra US troops into Baghdad and neighbouring Anbar province is working.

The proposal to create the job comes after the departure of Meghan O'Sullivan, the 37-year-old who had the top national security council job on Iraq and Afghanistan. She was responsible for policy but had no power to implement it. The proposed war tsar would have the power to issue orders, and would be answerable directly to the president and his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the national security council, said the White House had sought advice from a number of people about the job but insisted it had not been offered to anyone. "The White House is looking into creating a higher profile position that would have the single, full-time focus on implementing and executing the recently completed strategic reviews for both Iraq and Afghanistan."

Gen Sheehan said Mr Cheney and his allies "are still in the positions of most influence" in spite of two leading pragmatists, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, winning support in the past four months for a diplomatic approach. After two weeks of discussing the job with Mr Hadley, Gen Sheehan rejected it: "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks.'"

Mr Cheney last week reiterated claims of links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in spite of newly released US intelligence assessments saying there had been no evidence. Mr Cheney, unlike Mr Gates and Ms Rice, also favours air strikes against Iran's nuclear sites.

The US continued to put pressure on Iran yesterday. Major-General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, in Baghdad yesterday repeated claims that Tehran was supplying Iraqi insurgents with explosive devices used in ambushes on US and British troops but also claimed Iran was training insurgents to use the explosives. He said the information had been gleaned from interrogation of detainees as recently as this month, some of whom said they had been in Iranian training camps. "We know that they [the explosive devices] are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them," he said.

US Generals Urge Climate Action

Taken from The BBC, 15 April 2007

Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts.

They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions.

Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni.

The report says the US "must become a more constructive partner" with other nations to fight global warming and deal with its consequences.

It warns that over the next 30 to 40 years, there will be conflicts over water resources, as well as increased instability resulting from rising sea levels and global warming-related refugees.

"The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts.

'Pay now - or later'
Writing in the report, Gen Zinni, a former commander of US Central Command, says: "It's not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism."

He adds: "We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind.

"Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."

The report was issued by a Virginia-based national security think-tank, The CNA Corporation, and was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals.

Climate scientists broadly endorsed the report.

But Stanford scientist Terry Root, a joint author of this month's international scientific report on the effects of global warming on life on Earth, said its timescale might be too alarmist, as some of the predicted events - while likely to occur - could take longer than 30 years to happen.

Pope Says Evolution Can't Be Proven

Taken from The Washington Post, 11/04/07
By By MELISSA EDDY, Associated Post

BERLIN - Benedict XVI, in his first extended reflections on evolution published as pope, says that Darwin's theory cannot be finally proven and that science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity's view of creation.

In a new book, "Creation and Evolution," published Wednesday in German, the pope praised progress gained by science, but cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer.

"The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science," the pope said.

He stopped short of endorsing intelligent design, but said scientific and philosophical reason must work together in a way that does not exclude faith.

"I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science," the pope was quoted as saying in the book, which records a meeting with fellow theologians the pope has known for years.

In the book, Benedict reflected on a 1996 comment of his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that Charles Darwin's theories on evolution were sound, as long as they took into account that creation was the work of God, and that Darwin's theory of evolution was "more than a hypothesis."

"The pope (John Paul) had his reasons for saying this," Benedict said. "But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory."

Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.

"We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory," he said.

Evolution has come under fire in recent years by proponents - mostly conservative Protestants - of "intelligent design," who believe that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by a higher force rather than evolving from more primitive forms.

The book, which was released by the Sankt Ulrich publishing house, includes reflections of the pope and others who attended a meeting of theological scholars at the papal summer estate in Castel Gandolfo in early September.

The pope's remarks were consistent with one of his most important themes, that faith and reason are interdependent.

"Science has opened up large dimensions of reason ... and thus brought us new insights," the pope wrote. "But in the joy at the extent of its discoveries, it tends to take away from us dimensions of reason that we still need.

"Its results lead to questions that go beyond its methodical canon and cannot be answered within it," he said.

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Latest news: (Also taken from from AP)
Pope Benedict XVI offers a personal meditation on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in his first book as pontiff, criticizing the "cruelty" of capitalism's exploitation of the poor but also decrying the absence of God in Marxism. In "Jesus of Nazareth," released Friday, Benedict touches on themes that have begun to emerge in his 2-year-old papacy: the spiritual weaknesses of modern materialistic life, in which people seem to think they can do without God.

Benedict stresses that the book, which he began writing in 2003 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is an expression of his "personal search for the face of the Lord" and is by no means an official part of Roman Catholic Church doctrine. The 448-page book is due in bookstores in German, Italian and Polish on Monday, the pope's 80th birthday. The English-language edition is set for release May 15 and translations are planned for 16 other languages.

While "Jesus of Nazareth" is Benedict's first book as pope, he has written dozens of books on all aspects of theology and Catholic teaching.

Pope 'Did Not Help Girls Abused By Florence Priest'

This week, an Italian priest was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for possessing cocaine with the intention of selling it, according to local media. Father Stefano Ciacca, 44, was arrested last September in possession of half a kilogramme (about a pound) of cocaine with a street value of about half a million euros (675,000 dollars).

This is not the only controversial news hitting the Vatican...

Taken from The Independent, UK,
By Peter Popham

"How much suffering there is in the world!" Pope Benedict XVI lamented in his Easter sermon yesterday, naming Darfur, Iraq, Somalia, the Congo, Lebanon and other trouble spots around the globe.

But there was no space in his list for the abused women of the parish of Regina della Pace ("Queen of Peace") on the outskirts of Florence. For more than three years, these women have been trying to persuade the Church to take vigorous action against a parish priest whom they say persuaded them to have sex with him when they were minors, and continued to do so regularly for years.

Confronted by their testimony, the church authorities first transferred the priest to another parish, and then out of the diocese. But he remains a priest, and has received only token punishment. In the United States, failure to take firm action against abusive priests left the Church in Boston with a legacy of bitter mistrust and legal bills totalling more than $150m (£76m). In Italy, however, it would appear that the lessons have not been learnt.

Fr Lelio Cantini, now in his eighties, became the parish priest of Regina della Pace in the mid-Seventies. A self-styled "charismatic", he was accompanied by a clairvoyant woman who had visions of Jesus and drew up lists of those parishioners whom she said were the "elect of God".

Don Lelio ruled the parish with an iron hand, banishing dissidents from Mass and forbidding them absolution. But, in private, he showed a different side: in the church's presbytery he induced girls as young as 10 to have sex with him, explaining that this was a way of attaining "total unity with God".

A woman of 45, married with two children, said she had suppressed all memory of the abuse the priest inflicted on her until a couple of years ago. It started, she explained, when she was aged 10. "The Prior [as Cantini insisted on being called] would call me into his office or his bedroom, get me to undress and explain that, by doing what he asked, I would realise the most complete eucharistic communion," she said.

"He told me to think of the Madonna, who bore Jesus when she was only 12. He said I was the Beloved of the Song of Songs and that what happened between us was the same as what happened in the Garden of Eden." She said the relationship continued for 15 years, and that remembering it even now caused her vomiting attacks. "I was absolutely incapable," she said, "of making a free and aware choice."

Another woman, identified by the initials D A, now in her forties, said her sexual liaison with Fr Cantini "began when I was 17 and continued until I got married. He said I was in need of affection and that he would give it to me. Then he embraced me in the name of Jesus."

The victims kept their memories to themselves until chance reunions prompted them to share their stories and take them to the curia of Florence, the governing body of the church in the city, in January 2004.

They made written and oral submissions to the Archbishop of Florence and others - with the sole result that, in September 2005, Fr Cantini was transferred to another parish "for reasons of health".

Disgusted by the failure to take their complaints seriously, the victims wrote to Pope Benedict in March 2006 demanding more serious action. In response, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, then head of the Italian Bishops' Conference, informed them that Fr Cantini had left the diocese.

Further pressure led to disciplinary measures: Fr Cantini was banned from hearing confession or celebrating Mass for five years, "and every day for one year he must recite Psalm 51" - the one that begins, "Have mercy upon me, O God ... Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity." The victims say they regard the disciplinary measures "with astonishment and pain".

La Repubblica newspaper reports that Fr Cantini is living in a town on the Tuscan coast, still accompanied by his mysterious "clairvoyant" and with a troop of followers. Those who say he made their lives a misery say they will bring him to justice.

Israel 'Shocked' As Vatican Boycotts Holocaust Memorial Service

Taken from The Times, 12/04/2007
By Richard Owen

Israel expressed “shock” today at the Vatican’s decision to boycott a ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, this weekend because of an exhibit accusing Pius XII, the wartime pontiff, of turning a blind eye to the Nazi extermination of the Jews.



Monsignor Antonio Franco, the papal nuncio (ambassador) in Israel, said he would refuse to participate in the annual memorial service for the victims of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem as long as the museum continued to display a photograph of Pius XII with a caption saying he had “recognised” the Nazi regime and done nothing to condemn the Shoah, or Holocaust.

“I do not intend to go to Yad Vashem if things remain as they are,” Monsignor Franco said. The photograph and caption first appeared two years ago. He said Israel had rejected repeated Vatican requests for them to be removed.

Pius XII (reigned 1939-1958), who before being elected Pope was nuncio in Berlin and then Secretary of State (Vatican Prime Minister), has long been accused by Jewish groups of “German sympathies”. A biography by the Roman Catholic author John Cornwell described him as “Hitler’s Pope”.

The Vatican, which has begun proceedings to have Pius XII beatified - a step toward sainthood - insists that Pius XII helped thousands of Jews to escape during the Nazi occupation of Rome, and that if he had spoken out it would have made matters worse for Jews in Germany itself.

Iris Rosenberg, of the Yad Vashem museum, said this would mark the first time a foreign ambassador had bocotted the ceremony. “We are shocked and disappointed that the Vatican’s delegate to Israel has chosen not to respect the memory of the Holocaust and not to participate in the official ceremony in which the state of Israel and the Jewish people join in memory of the victims,” she said.

She said the museum “would continue to present the historical truth on Pius XII as it is known to scholars today.” Jewish historians complain that although the Vatican has opened up its archives on Pius XII’s record before he became Pope, papers relating to his pontificate remain inaccessible.

Monsignor Franco however said in a letter to Yad Vashem that he found the Pius XII caption offensive to Catholics. “I respect the memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust but also the memory of the Pope,” he said.

“The right of one does not infringe on the right of the other.” He said Pius XII had done “nothing to be ashamed of”.

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said the Yad Vashem ceremony “honours the victims of the most traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people and one of the most traumatic in the history of humanity”. Whether envoys attended it was “a matter for their consciences”.

Ex-Mossad Head Blames Bibi For Bungled Attempt On Mashaal

Danny Yatom says he did not recommend Mashaal as a target to then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1997

Taken from YNet News, 11.04.07

By Tzvika Brott

One of the most damaging blunders in the history of the Mossad intelligence agency was the botched attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan in 1997.

In his first public comments about the operation, Labor MK Danny Yatom, the man who stood at the helm of the Mossad at the time, denied that he had recommended Mashaal as a target to then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Speaking to Yedioth Ahronot, Yatom said the idea to target Hamas officials was raised following two deadly suicide bombing attacks in Jerusalem.

"After two attacks in Jerusalem, Bibi Netanyahu convened the cabinet and asked the heads of the security agencies to present possible Hamas targets," Yatom said.

"Ami Ayalon, the then Shin Bet head, said he had no targets. Amnon Shahak, the then chief of staff, said something similar. I came with a list of defined targets for which I got approval but none of them was in Jordan or related to Khaled Mashaal," said Yatom.

A ten-man Mossad squad carrying Canadian passports injected Mashaal with a lethal poison and two of its members were arrested. Yatom took responsibility for the operation's failure and resigned.

Bibi changed his mind

Under pressure from the US, Netanyahu agreed to send an antidote to save Mashaal's life in return for the release of the two agents.

Yatom said that although Netanyahu originally accepted his targets, the prime minister changed his mind and decided to go for Mashaal in Jordan.

"When we started to work on the targets, I received a call from Netanyahu's military secretary who told me that he had changed the target and that we were going for Jordan. I asked him how a decision like this could be taken without me," Yatom said.

Yatom added that he later realized that the then Defense Minister Itzik Mordechai and Shin Bet chief Ayalon had convinced Netanyahu that Mashaal should be targeted.

"I immediately decided to fly to King Hussein despite the risk of him putting me in jail. We had a very difficult meeting. But we managed to restore relations with Jordan," said Yatom.

He added that part of his mission to Jordan was to ensure that the remaining eight Mossad agents returned to Israel safely.

Ophir Akonis, Netanyahu's media advisor, said in response: "The operation's failure was not the selection of Mashaal as a target … but in the execution that was overseen by Danny Yatom. We regret the fact the Yatom is harming national security ethics for the sake of internal politics."

Yatom is running for the May 28 Labor leadership race.

Australia: War Crimes Accused Set For Croatia

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald., 13.04.2007
By Leonie Lamont

AN AUSTRALIAN accused of war crimes during the Balkans war is likely to be handed over to Croatian authorities, after a Sydney court agreed to his extradition yesterday.

Dragan Vasiljkovic, 51, has been in custody since January last year, when Croatia sought his extradition for alleged offences including torture and the murder of civilians and prisoners of war between 1991 and 1993.

Vasiljkovic was known as "Captain Dragan" during the war when he commanded Serbian paramilitary units, and Central Local Court heard during the extradition hearing that Serbs regarded him as a hero.

The Croatian Government has alleged he did nothing to stop his unit maltreating captured Croatian soldiers, and that he kicked a POW in the head. It alleges that in 1993 he commanded subordinates to interrogate and "liquidate" two POWs, and that he ordered a tank to fire on a village, causing the death of two civilians and serious injury to others.

Vasiljkovic - who has changed his name to Daniel Snedden and was referred to as such by the deputy chief magistrate, Paul Cloran, yesterday - migrated to Australia in 1967 but returned to the Balkans during the war.

Outside court, Father Rade Radan, of the Serbian Orthodox Church, said Vasiljkovic would not get a fair trial. Vasiljkovic told the court the extradition request was political payback for the 2005 arrest of a Croatian "war hero", Ante Gotovina.

His barrister indicated that a Federal Court appeal was likely.

Bosnia Revokes Soldier Citizenships

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, April 11, 2007

Bosnia has revoked the citizenships of hundreds of Muslim volunteers who came to fight in its 1992 to 1995 war, a move seen as part of an anti-terrorism drive requested by the United States.

A Bosnian Muslim soldier is greeted by a woman

The citizenships had been awarded to foreigners who fought alongside Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Croats and Serbs.

Washington had called for them to be deported during the late 1990s and again after the September 11 attacks.

Barisa Colak, the country’s justice minister, said: "Of the 367 who were stripped of Bosnian citizenship, most come from Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Tunisia, Sudan and Russia."

Appeals allowed
Colak said a state commission had found that their citizenships were illegally issued and would be revoked immediately.

He said all the men would be able to appeal against the ruling before facing deportation.

The minister did not say what criteria had not been met in the citizenship process, or whether the men were suspected of links to terrorism, as local media had speculated.

A further 349 men had passed the review over the past year, Colak said, and the commission would need another year to examine all the cases.

Most of the volunteers who stayed in Bosnia after the war married local women, and many now live in Islamic communities in remote rural areas.

Human rights activists and associations of war veterans say the government decision violates the rights of the former soldiers

They argue that the men will now be separated from their Bosnian families and may even end up in prison in their countries of origin.

Political decision
Serif Patkovic, a former army commander from the central town of Zenica, now home to about 60 per cent of the former fighters, said the decision was political.

Patkovic said: "These people have won honours for their participation in the war and we shall defend them with all legal means. Some of them are invalids, they have wives and children to support here."

He said the state court had already overruled one case of revoked citizenship and appeals in other cases were under way.

Syrian-born Aiman Awad, chairman of the Ensaria Association of Naturalised Citizens, also criticised the process.

Awad, who had lived in the region since 1982, said: "I fulfilled all conditions for the citizenship. They want to revoke it only because I was a member of El Mujaheed brigade [an army unit of Islamic fighters]."

4 Serbs Convicted In Srebrenica Deaths

Taken from Yahoo News, Apr 10, 2007

By MISHA SAVIC, Associated Press

BELGRADE, Serbia - Four members of a notorious Serb paramilitary unit who were videotaped gunning down Bosnians near Srebrenica were convicted of war crimes on Tuesday, two years after the footage forced Serbia to admit its role in the 1995 slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

It was the first ruling by a Serbian court related to the systematic killings in the final months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia — Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

Trials of Serbs in Serbia have only become possible since the 2000 ouster of President Slobodan Milosevic, and the Srebrenica case has been a key test of the ability of Serbia's judiciary to deal with wartime atrocities.

"The only appropriate punishment for such a crime is the longest one," said Serbia's pro-Western president, Boris Tadic. "Until we explain to the people what really happened, we will not be able to close that chapter."

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, a former U.N. envoy to the Balkans, welcomed the verdict, saying "it shows that the countries in the formerly war ravaged region are now themselves starting to feel a responsibility for the crimes that were committed — often in their names — in the repeated wars of the 1990s."

But, the families of the victims and their representatives in Serbia expressed dissatisfaction with the sentences, saying they were not harsh enough.

"They killed children and one of them was released and another one sentenced to five years," said Safeta Muhic, sister of one of the victims. "I am not satisfied and I never will be."

The four Serbs found guilty Tuesday were seen in a video that surfaced in June 2005 when it was shown at the war crimes trial of Milosevic before the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The video shows members of a notorious Serbia paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions.

Apparently filmed by a Scorpion who believed the footage would never become public, it shows men in camouflage uniforms wearing red berets emblazoned with the Serbian flag taking the six prisoners — some still in their teens — from a truck, hands tied behind their backs. The troops shouted "Yalla, yalla" — or "Go, go" in Arabic — mocking the victims' Muslim religion.

Four were then shot one by one in the back. They slumped into the tall grass, and the two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a barn where they, too, were killed. At times, the paramilitary troops cursed and sneered at the prisoners.

The unit's commander, Slobodan Medic, and a fellow paramilitary were each sentenced to 20 years in prison — the maximum sentence possible — while the only defendant who admitted to shooting the victims, Pero Petrasevic, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Another Scorpions member, accused as an accomplice, was sentenced to five years in jail, while a fifth was cleared.

The verdict followed a February decision by the U.N.'s highest court, the Netherlands-based International Court of Justice, clearing Serbia of direct responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide.

In Belgrade, presiding judge Gordana Bozilovic-Petrovic, who read the verdict, said the recording presented evidence that proved the guilt "beyond any doubt" and that Medic, "as the commander, had the authority to issue such an order."

The accused did not face the death penalty, which is not allowed under Serbian law.

The last known Scorpion mission was in Serbia's province of Kosovo in 1999 during NATO bombing that stopped Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

Serbia's Darkest Pages Hidden From Genocide Court

Taken from The International Herald, April 8, 2007

By Marlise Simons

THE HAGUE: In the spring of 2003, boxes with hundreds of documents arrived at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague containing hundreds of pages marked "Defense. State secret. Strictly confidential." The cache contained minutes of wartime meetings of Yugoslav political and military leaders, including Slobodan Milosevic, and promised the best inside view yet of Serbia's role in the Bosnian war of 1992-95.

But there was a catch. Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained court permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye, citing national security. Its lawyers blacked out many sensitive - those who have seen them say incriminating - pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the court's public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from another court, the International Court of Justice, nearby. And they say Belgrade's goal was achieved in February, when that court, dealing with Bosnia's lawsuit against Serbia, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous war damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the Court of Justice pressed for access to the uncensored archives. Legal scholars and human rights groups say that it is deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn't the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling - 170 pages long - was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored military archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide them.

Two of the judges themselves criticized that failure, in strongly worded dissents. One, the court's vice president, Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh of Jordan, wrote that "regrettably the court failed to act," adding, "It is a reasonable expectation that those documents would have shed light on the central questions."

At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, and said ample evidence was already available in tribunal records.

As part of its ruling, the court said that the 1995 massacre at the supposed safe haven of Srebrenica - when in nearly 8,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys were killed - was an act of genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces, but that it lacked proof that these forces were acting under the "direction" or "effective control" of Serbia.

The ruling raised some eyebrows because aspects of Serbian military involvement are already known from records of earlier trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In late 1993, for instance, more than 1,800 officers and noncommissioned men from the Yugoslav Army were serving in the Bosnian Serb Army, and were deployed, paid, promoted or retired by Belgrade. These and many other men, including top generals, tribunal records showed, were given dual identities, and to handle this, Belgrade created the so-called 30th Personnel Center of the General Staff, a secret office for dealing with the officers listed on active duty in both armies.

The court took note of that information, but said that Belgrade's "substantial support" did not automatically make the Bosnian Serb Army a Serbian agent.

But lawyers who have seen the archives and further secret personnel files say than they address Serbian control and direction even more directly, revealing in new and vivid detail how Belgrade financed and supplied the war in Bosnia, and how the Bosnian Serb Army, though officially separate after 1992, remained virtually an extension of the Yugoslav Army.

They said the archives showed that Serbian forces, including secret police, played a role in the takeover of Srebrenica and in the preparation of the massacre there.

The story of the blacked-out documents, pieced together from more than 20 interviews with lawyers and court officials and from public records, offers rare insight into secret proceedings in The Hague where hearings, though usually public, can turn into closed sessions and deals often happen behind closed doors.

It took the tribunal prosecutors two years of talks, court orders and diplomatic pressure for the Belgrade government to hand over the documents, the much-coveted minutes of the Supreme Defense Council, created in 1992 when Serb-dominated Yugoslavia was fighting for more land for Serbs outside its borders in Croatia and Bosnia.

Before the handover, lawyers familiar with the case said, a team from Belgrade made it clear, in letters to the tribunal and in meetings with prosecutors and judges, that they wanted the documents expurgated to keep them from harming their case at the International Court of Justice.

The Serbs made this no secret even as they argued their case for "national security," said a lawyer involved in the negotiations, adding, "The senior people here knew about this."

Confidentiality rules to protect "national security interests" have often been invoked at the tribunal, including by the United States, which has privately provided intelligence like intercepts and satellite images to assist prosecutors.

When Belgrade's lawyers met with judges to request secrecy for their archives, they produced a letter of support from Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor.

During a recent interview, Del Ponte confirmed that she had sent such a letter in May 2003 to the former foreign minister of Serbia, Goran Svilanovic, saying that she would accept that "reasonable" portions of the records be kept under seal.

"It was a long fight to get the documents and in the end because of time constraints we agreed," she said. "They were extremely valuable for the conviction of Slobodan Milosevic."

Milosevic, the former Serb leader, however, died before his trial was completed.

After the tribunal judges approved Belgrade's request to keep secret sections of the military archives, Vladimir Djeric, a member of the Serbian team handling the documents, told lawyers there that "we could not believe our luck." Djeric, now a private lawyer in Belgrade, said by telephone that he could not discuss his former duties at the Foreign Ministry.

Tantalizing glimpses of the secrets of the Defense Council - whose agenda included the military budget, promotions and retirement of generals - can be gleaned elsewhere. Parts of the archives that were not censored and were obtained by The New York Times include minutes of sessions from 1993 to 1995, when the war in Bosnia was in full swing. These wartime meetings in Belgrade were attended by the presidents of then-Yugoslavia, its constituent states of Serbia and Montenegro and the top military command, including sometimes General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader who was twice indicted by the war crimes tribunal on charges that include genocide. He is a fugitive.

A recent book, "Unspoken Defense," by former President Momir Bulatovic of Montenegro, who attended many sessions of the Defense Council, said that in 1994, when more than 4,000 men on Serbia's payroll were fighting in Bosnia, the council discussed abolishing the 30th personnel center because its discovery might cause political problems. Yugoslav officers were also objecting to their service in Bosnia, the book said.

Lawyers and human rights groups have searched with special interest for council records from the summer of 1995, when Srebrenica was overrun by army and police officers, many of them, tribunal records show, in the pay of Serbia. Following the massacre there, the council met three times, with Mladic attending at least one session. Verbatim transcripts of those days are missing even from the secret archives, lawyers said.

Bosnia's team at the World Court was convinced that the archives and the military personnel files were central to their case. Before hearings opened in 2006, Bosnia asked the court to request that Serbia provide an uncensored version of the documents. The court refused, saying that "extensive evidence" was already available from public records at the war crimes tribunal.

When Bosnia pressed during hearings, the court ignored the request.

In an interview, Rosalyn Higgins, a Briton who is president of the World Court, declined to say why the judges refused to subpoena the uncensored archives. She said it was the practice of the court not to discuss its findings. "The ruling speaks for itself," she said.

But the dissents from Khasawneh, of Jordan, and another judge criticized the court's refusal to seek the evidence. The second dissent, by Ahmed Mahiou of Algeria, said that judges had given several reasons, "none of them sufficiently convincing," including a fear of creating the impression that the court was taking sides, that it might intrude on the sovereignty of a state, or that it might be embarrassed if Serbia refused.

Phon van den Biesen, a lawyer on the Bosnian team, said that the unexpurgated documents most likely would have demonstrated that the Bosnian Serb forces were agents of Serbia, controlled by Belgrade. "This would have made Serbia liable for the Srebrenica genocide," van den Biesen said. "We believe all this can be found in the documents. The cuts are made whenever the agenda turns to financing and to personnel matters. That's why Serbia went to such lengths to hide them from us."

William Schabas, professor of International Law at the University of Ireland in Galway, who closely follows the World Court, said its judges may have wanted to avoid a diplomatic showdown with Serbia and that since it is a civil and not a criminal court, it was more used to relying on materials put before it, rather than aggressively pursuing evidence.

Antonio Cassese, a former president of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague and now a law professor in Italy, said: "I was rather taken aback that the judges didn't see the documents. But this is not an aggressive criminal court, but a very traditional civil court. They gave something to everybody."

Natasha Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, said she was shocked at the court's inaction.

"It was well known in the Serbian government that the archives spelled out the responsibility of the state," she said. It was vital for the public in Serbia to know the reality of the war, she said.

After the verdict, she said, she met with a leading member of the Serbian team, a scholar, whom she promised not to identify by name.

"He was very pleased," Kandic said, "but I confronted him, I said, you did not tell the truth."

Her friend the scholar replied, she said, "It's normal. Every country will do everything possible to protect the state. Bosnia wanted a lot of money for damages."

Kandic went on: "I said that one day the truth will come out. And my friend said: 'But that's the future. Now it's important to protect the state.' "

Le Pen's Mask Slips As He Plays The Race Card Against Sarkozy

Taken from The Independent, UK, 10 April 2007
By John Lichfield

The candidate who claims to be closest to the people rarely leaves his office, except to go to the radio or TV studio. The candidate who promises never to lie to the electorate refuses to say what he would do if elected.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, 78, is the "invisible man" of the French presidential campaign: invisible but ever-present, like a virus.

He began the campaign pretending to be a more mellow, and more tolerant, man. But in his latest broadcast appearance - he seldom appears in public - the veteran far-right leader reverted to his favourite theme: xenophobia.

The front-running, centre-right candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, "comes from an immigrant background," Mr Le Pen told a radio interviewer on Sunday. By comparison, he, Mr Le Pen, was a candidate of the terroir: literally, a candidate rooted in the native earth.

"It's obvious, there's a difference," Mr Le Pen said. "There is a choice there which might be considered fundamental by a certain number of French people".

This is Jean-Marie Le Pen at his most poisonous and his most plausible - and also his most effective.

Mr Sarkozy, 52, the man who is favourite to be the next President of France, is indeed half-Hungarian and a quarter-jewish on his maternal, French side. He does not look particularly French; his name does not sound French.

Ask almost anyone in France if this will make a difference to their choice in the presidential election on 22 April and 6 May and they will say "no". Mr Le Pen knows, however, that it does make a difference, for a significant minority of French people, especially people on the hard right, tempted to vote for Mr Sarkozy.

Mr Le Pen, and he alone, has been prepared to break the taboo and make a public issue of Mr Sarkozy's Hungarian and Jewish blood. When challenged - as he knew he would be - he immediately pointed out that Mr Sarkozy had himself boasted of his immigrant background during the campaign. If Mr Sarkozy had not mentioned his family, Mr Le Pen said, he would not have mentioned it either.

At 78, fighting his fifth - and presumably last - presidential campaign, Mr Le Pen has lost none of his tactical brilliance or his moral cynicism. He knows, better than anyone, how to touch the buttons of inchoate anger and xenophobia.

Although placed fourth by the polls, Mr Le Pen insists that a "tsunami" of "rejection of the system" will carry him into the crucial top two places in the first round on 22 April. Can he repeat his extraordinary coup of 2002 and reach the second round?

Mr Le Pen has been creeping up in the opinion polls, to around 13 or 14 per cent. Last time he knocked out the Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, with just under 17 per cent.

There are two candidates ahead of him this year: the unconvincing Socialist, Ségolène Royal, and the likeable but undynamic centrist François Bayrou.

Mr Le Pen predicts that they will cancel one another out, and he will dart between them, with about 20 per cent of the vote, and reach the second round.

There are a number of reasons to believe that Mr Le Pen will fail. First, he has never scored more than 18 per cent in a national election. Second, he is an old man and beginning to look his age. (His decision barely to go on the road is partly strategic but may also be intended to conserve his flagging energy.)

Finally, he has a candidate running against him this time - Mr Sarkozy - who has stolen and moderated many of his favourite issues: immigration, insecurity, excessive taxation and nationalism.

Another shock cannot not be ruled out, however. Mr Le Pen predicts that somewhere around 5 per cent of the 30 per cent of voters now supporting Mr Sarkozy will return to the far right on 22 April. Hence his decision to make Mr Sarkozy's Hungarian - and implicitly his Jewish - blood an election issue.

And there is a further complication. Pollsters in France have never managed accurately to gauge Mr Le Pen's support. Le Pen voters systematically lie. This year his electorate is even harder to plumb than ever.

An unknown but significant minority of far left voters - and even Arab and African - voters say they are tempted to vote Le Pen this time out of bloody-mindedness, frustration or determination to "make the system explode". Last fling or not, Mr Le Pen may have one shot left in his locker.

Female Sailor Was Forced To Strip, Another "Cried Like A Baby" In His Cell - But Iranian Video Shows All The Crew Happy!

Taken from Daily Mail, UK, 9th April 2007
"MoD bans military staff from selling their stories"
by LUCY BALLINGER

Britishe Soldiers that were captured in alleded Iraian Waters were accused of "behaving like reality TV stars" after the UK Ministray of Defense said there were "exceptional circumstances" behind their 13-day ordeal, bracketing them with winners of the Victoria Cross.

Earlier, released hostage Faye Turney had said she "felt like a traitor" when she was ordered by her captors to pen "confession" letters.



The 26-year-old mother told how she was forced to admit that she had been trespassing in Iranian waters. She claimed her captors said if she did not write the letters then she would be imprisoned "for several years".

Leading Seaman Turney was one of several of the sailors and marines who have chosen to profit from their ordeal. She is likely to receive more than £100,000 for her dramatic story.
Not all the captives agreed to accept money from the media.

The most senior member of the crew, Royal Navy Lieutenant Felix Carman admitted he found the subject of being paid "a bit unsavoury". He said he would hand over any money he is offered to charity.





In an interview with the Sun Mrs Turney told how she feared she would be raped by her Iranian captors after being separated from her colleagues and stripped to her underwear.

She told how she had mouthed to her Captain, Chris Air: "Are they going to rape me?"

"I mouthed it to him again and again, but he didn't answer. With a blindfold on, I was led away from the rest of the guys. All I could hear from behind me was one of them shout, 'They're going to execute us'," she said.

"It was the first time I got really scared. I genuinely believed they might do it. I'd already been prodded in the side with a pistol. I asked, 'What are you doing to them?' But they didn't answer me.

"I was thrown into a tiny cell and ordered to strip off. They took everything from me apart from my knickers. Then some cotton pyjamas were thrown in for me to wear and four filthy blankets. The metal door slammed shut again."

A few hours later she was told to wrap a black Islamic cape around her and then taken to see the officer in charge.

"I asked him, 'Where are my friends? I want to see them.' He rubbed the top of my head and said with a smile, 'Oh no, they've gone home. Just you now'. I was taken back to my cell again and that was my lowest moment.

"All I could think of was how completely alone I was. They could do anything now and nobody would know.

"At that moment I just totally lost it. All I could think of was what my family must be going through. What would my husband Adam be telling Molly (their three-year-old daughter)? Did they even know I was missing? I cried my eyes out."

Mrs Turney told how she "felt like a traitor" when she was ordered to write the confession letters on Iranian TV.

She said she was held in isolation for five of the 13 days. One morning she was given the impression by her captors that she was being measured for a coffin. "I heard the noise of sawing and nails being hammered near my cell. I couldn't work out what it was. Then a woman came into my cell to measure me up from head to toe with a tape.

"She shouted the measurements to a man outside. I was convinced they were making my coffin."

In the evenings she was blindfolded and taken to a room where she was interrogated two or three times a night for hours at a time.

"They asked which were my ship's ports of call, where were other coalition ships in the Gulf, how do Royal Navy ships protect themselves, how do we communicate, what was the U.S. doing?

"That could have put my colleagues at risk, and there was no way in hell I was ever going to do that, no matter what they did."

Mrs Turney said she refused to answer the questions, but the threats became intense. "An interrogator said to me, 'You don't understand, you must cooperate with us. Do you not want to see your daughter again?'."

On her fifth day in captivity, she said, she was told: "If I confessed to being in Iranian waters and wrote letters to my family, the British people and the Iranian people, I'd be free within two weeks.

"If I didn't, they'd put me on trial for espionage and I'd go to prison for 'several years'. It was a horrible dilemma. If I did it, I feared everyone in Britain would hate me. But I knew it was my one chance of fulfilling a promise to Molly that I'd be home for her birthday on May 8.

"I decided to take that chance and write in such a way that my unit and my family would know it wasn't the real me. There was nothing damaging to security in anything I wrote, I made sure of that. And I never meant a word of it."

In fresh video clips aired on Iran's stare-run Arabic satellite TV channel Al-Alam today several of the sailors and marines can be seen dressed in tracksuits, playing chess and table tennis. In the footage, crew members can be heard laughing and chatting.

Iranian Video Clip From Sky News, UK (Opens In Windows media Player)

The newscaster who spoke over the beginning of the footage said the video proved "the sailors had complete liberty during their detention, which contradicts what the sailors declared after they arrived in Britain."

The youngest of the British sailors held by Iran also spoke today of his "nightmare" at the hands of his captors.



Arthur Batchelor, 20, told the Daily Mirror he "cried like a baby" in his cell.

He said fellow captive Faye Turney risked beatings from guards for whispering reassurances to him as he sat petrified and blindfolded on a boat after they were snatched at sea.

The sailor also revealed his guards mockingly nicknamed him "Mr Bean".

He told the newspaper: "It was beyond terrifying. They seemed to take particular pleasure in mocking me for being young.

"They tried to persuade me that I was responsible for all that was happening to us because I was the boat's navigator - but I knew we had been inside Iraqi waters when we were seized.

"A guard kept flicking my neck with his index finger and thumb. I thought the worst, we've all seen the videos. I was frozen in terror and just stared into the darkness of my blindfold."

News that Mrs Turney alone is likely to make at least £100,000 was condemned by former Defence Ministers, ex-soldiers - and families who have lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At Westminster, even some Labour MPs suspected a Government spin operation designed to distract attention away from embarrassing questions over the capture itself.

PR expert Max Clifford said he had been approached by the fathers of two of the hostages for advice on how to do a deal with the media.

He described the decision as a "propaganda exercise" because it "suited" the MoD for the stories to be told.

"They were very encouraging, they were very happy about them doing this, that's the way they (the fathers) were putting it to me," said Mr Clifford.

Mike Aston, whose 30-year-old son Russell was one of six Redcaps killed by an Iraqi mob, said he was "absolutely amazed" by the "tacky and sordid" decision.

He said: "Regarding my son's death, I can put my hand on my heart and say that I've never sought or made a penny out of it. I think to actually sell my story would besmirch my son's memory.

On the unofficial website the Army Rumour Service, some contributors suggested the hostages who decide to sell should leave the Armed Forces - and all proceeds should be donated to families of those killed in Iraq.

One wrote: "Bloody ridiculous! Two sodding weeks, not a scratch, fed and watered, cigs, new suits. Heroes my a***!"

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It is difficult to imagine the ordeal the crew must have gone through but from all the video coverage the evidence does suggest that the captured UK sailors (whether taken from Iraqi or Iranian Waters) were looked after by the Iranian Authorities. I did not approve of the sailors being paraded on Iranian TV but it did show that the soldiers were healthy and in good spirits. They seemed calm and relaxed even when they were reading out messages on Iranian TV apologising for trespassing into Iranian waters but when they came back to the UK and read out “scripts” of their ordeal in Iran at a press conference – it seemed all too manufactured.

The only crime the Iranians committed was making Faye Turney wear a very unfeminine outfit – The crew are lucky to be in the UK, If the Iranians pressed charged for Spying (which these sailors were doing) then it would’ve been 7 years in jails. I hope we don’t get into a similar situation again, I doubt whether the Iranians will be this hospitable again.

Iran Has 'Joined The Nuclear Club Of Nations' Says Ahmadinejad

Taken from The Daly Mail, UK, 9th April 2007

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stunned the international community by declaring his country has joined the "nuclear club of nations".



He said: "With great honour, I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale."

Iran is now on a collision course with the West for dramatically expanding the uranium enrichment programme that the United Nations has demanded it halt.


The country's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani confirmed that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.

Until now, Iran was only known to have 328 centrifuges operating.

President Ahmadinejad was speaking at a ceremony at the Natanz facility to mark the one-year anniversary of Iran's first success in enriching small amounts of uranium.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful but uranium enrichment can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material for a nuclear warhead.

But Britain and the United States accuse Iran of intending to produce weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said Iran should suspend enrichment immediately. He said: "We are concerned that Iran appears to have confirmed more nuclear enrichment activity. This is a further breach of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and UNSC (UN Security Council) resolutions.

"Iran knows exactly what it must do: comply with UNSC resolutions 1737 and 1747 by suspending all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities before discussions can begin on assistance with a modern civil nuclear power programme."

He added: "We have always made it clear that we are happy for Iran to have a civil nuclear power programme but they have to satisfy the international community that that is what it is seeking to develop.

"The international community stands together in ensuring that Iran does not develop the means to acquire nuclear weapons."

The expansion of enrichment is a strong show of defiance toward the United Nations, which has vowed to ratchet up sanctions as long as Iran refuses to suspend the process.

The Security Council first imposed limited sanctions in December, then increased them slightly last month and has set a new deadline of late May for Tehran to stop enrichment.

The escalation of the dispute follows comes with tensions between Iran and the West high following its 13-day detention of 15 British sailors and marines.

The personnel, who were seized by Revolutionary Guards off the Iraqi coast, have said they were put under psychological pressure by their captors to force them to "confess" to being in Iranian waters when captured.

In his speech, President Ahmadinejad said the door to negotiations with the West remains open. "Iran welcomes any suggestion and dialogue to resolve the issues," he said.

He insisted Iran has been cooperative with the UN nuclear watchdog, allowing it inspections of its facilities. But he warned; "Don't do something that will make this great nation reconsider its policies."

Larijani said his country was willing to offer assurances that its program is peaceful. But he said the West must accept its nuclear programme as a fact.

"We are ready to reach understanding with the Westerners through a corridor of real negotiations - in the current situation, in which Iran's nuclear activities have been concluded," state television quoted Larijani as saying.

"The understanding regards assuring the other party about the peacefulness of Iran's nuclear activities," he said. "But we do not give in our rights." On April 9, 2006, Iran announced it had first enriched uranium using an array of 164 centrifuges.

Across Iran, school bells rang on Monday to mark the "national day of nuclear energy." The government sent out SMS messages of congratulations to millions of mobile phone users.


In Tehran, some 200 students formed a human chain at Iran's Atomic Energy Organization while chanting "death to America" and "death to Britain." The students burnt flags of the US and Britain.

Iran has said its next step is to set up 3,000 centrifuges, but it is not clear where the project stands. In mid-January, the hard-line president had been expected to announce that installation of the 3,000 had begun, but he did not. Instead, Ahmadinejad said Iran will gradually announce its successes step by step.

Experts say the Natanz plant needs between 50,000 to 60,000 centrifuges to consistently produce fuel for a reactor or build a warhead.

In the enrichment process, uranium gas is pumped into a "cascade" of thousands of centrifuges, which spin the gas at supersonic speeds to purify it.

Uranium enriched to a low level, at least 3 percent, can be used as fuel, while at a far higher level, more than 90 percent, it can be used to build a weapon.

Iran currently has two cascades of 164 centrifuges each operating at an aboveground portion of the Natanz facility in central Iran. The two cascades have produced small quantities of non-weapons grade enriched uranium, U.N. nuclear inspectors have said.

Two smaller assemblies are known to have been set up in a heavily protected underground portion of Natanz, and have been going through "dry testing" - without gas - since November, according to inspectors.

Large Anti-US Rally Held In Iraq

Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 09/04/2007
By Anthony Pickles and agencies

Thousands of Shiites have converged on the holy city of Najaf for an anti-US rally called by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as the country marked the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Some Sunni religious groups were also seen participating in the rally.

Large crowds of men, women and children, holding flags and anti-US banners, gathered in Najaf and the nearby twin city of Kufa for the protest which is also seen as a show of strength for the cleric who himself has been in self-exile for more than two months.

A day earlier, the fundamentalist cleric issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy." The rally will initially begin in Kufa and then head to Najaf's Sadrain Square.

Members of Sadr's movement were seen guiding the crowds, while Iraqi police and army soldiers guarded key checkpoints in and around Najaf and Kufa. At many places Iraqi and US flags were painted on the ground and being trampled by the Shiite crowd.

One banner read: "Brothers Sunni and Shiite, this country would not be sold." Another said: "Death to America."

Iraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen clerics - including one Sunni. Thirty members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group, travelled several hundred miles from Basra to attend the rally.

It was not immediately known whether Sadr himself would address the rally later in Najaf. A senior official in his organisation in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a "call for liberation."

He said: "We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty."

The demonstration was peaceful, but two ambulances were seen moving slowly with the marching crowd, poised to help if violence or stampedes broke out.

In the statement distributed in Najaf on Sunday, Sadr called on Iraqi forces to stop co-operating with America. "You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy," the statement said.

He urged his followers not to attack fellow Iraqis but to turn all their efforts on American forces. "God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them - not against the sons of Iraq," it said.

Scores Of Christians Gather In Jerusalem

Taken from The The Jerusalem Post, 06.04.07

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

Christian pilgrims from around the world filled the narrow cobblestone streets of Jerusalem's Old City on Good Friday, some carrying large wooden crosses as they followed the route Jesus took on the way to his crucifixion.

Pilgrims from the United States, India, South Korea, the Philippines, Russia and many other countries retraced Jesus' final walk through Jerusalem on the day of his death. Many held candles and sang hymns in languages including English, Latin and Hindi.

"I can imagine Jesus walking here with the cross," said Alex Kim, an 18-year-old pilgrim from Seoul, South Korea.

And Dragan Petrodic, wearing a Serbian flag on his shoulder, said, "I'm here to see and kiss all the places where God has been."

Nearby, an Arab vendor shouting in Russian hawked small crosses for $10 apiece.

Clergymen in colorful robes, representing different Catholic and Orthodox denominations, filed early Friday into the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where many believe Jesus was crucified and buried. In a yearly tradition, the church's doors were unlocked by a member of the Muslim family that has held the key for centuries.

Inside the church, pilgrims pressed their heads to the long, smooth stone where Jesus' body is believed to have been washed after being removed from the cross.

The calendars of five major Christian sects coincide this year, a convergence that happens only once every four years, and crowds were expected to be larger than usual.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said hundreds of police were deployed around the Old City to maintain order as thousands of pilgrims retrace the route that Jesus took as he carried his own cross to the site of his crucifixion.

There are 14 stations along the route, known as the Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrows, each marking an event that befell Jesus on his final walk. The final five stations are inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where many Christians believe Jesus was stripped, crucified, and finally laid to rest before being resurrected on Easter Sunday.

The proprietor of a pizzeria near the Via Dolorosa's fourth station, giving his name only as Nasser, said he remembered bigger crowds before Israeli-Palestinian violence erupted in 2000. While Asian and African pilgrims were well represented, he said, western Europeans had yet to return in large numbers.

"Many tourists are still scared. They're still keeping away," he said.

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Below are two good talkbacks taken from the Haaretz website (who also published the same article) regarding this event.

"Christians should, on this Good Friday, reflect on conditions throughout the "holy land". Let them know the suffering of the inhabitants of Bethlehem; let them know the real reasons why so many Palestinian Christians have had to leave that city. Let them wonder IF, in future years, they will be able repeat their treck along the Via Dolorosa if Israel has its way and makes all of Jerusalem Jewish." - David James Vickery, Canada

"It is a very Christian sentiment to think that quotas based on religious belief, as exists in Jerusalem, are wrong. Jerusalem is a city which was designated, by the same UN resolution that created Israel, to be shared by two states and two peoples. However, one state has taken it and refuses to allow Christians or Muslims living six miles to the south in Bethlehem free access of worship to holy sites. That is flagrantly wrong. " - Katie, Ohio, USA