'Daniel Pearl Detainee' Is Dead

Taken from The BBC, 18 May 2007

A Pakistani man detained over the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl has died weeks after being released.

Saud Memon owned the property in the city of Karachi where Pearl's body was found after his kidnap in 2002.



Mr Memon's family say he disappeared in 2003 and was held in Guantanamo Bay before being dumped by unidentified men outside his Karachi home last month.

They deny he had anything to do with the murder. Doctors say Mr Memon died of tuberculosis and meningitis.

Court order
Mr Memon's family say he was in extremely bad health when he was returned to them, weighing just 18kg (44 pounds). He was also suffering psychiatric problems, they say.

The 44-year-old textiles businessman owned the shed and land where Pearl's body was found in a shallow grave after his kidnapping and beheading in January 2002.

Mr Memon's family say he went missing for four years. They believe he was picked up by American FBI agents while on a trip to South Africa, taken to Guantanamo Bay and later handed to Pakistan.

Pakistani authorities said at the time of Pearl's murder they wanted to question Mr Memon but that they could not find him. They never acknowledged his detention.

But earlier this month Mr Memon was produced before Pakistan's Supreme Court, which is investigating "disappearances" of terror suspects allegedly being held by Pakistani intelligence agencies.

The court was alarmed at his condition and ordered he receive medical treatment and not be taken back into custody.

However, Mr Memon, a father of five, died at the Liaquat National Hospital in Karachi on Friday, his family said.

"We don't know who had been holding him for the past more than four years, but my brother had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or Daniel Pearl's murder," his brother told The Associated Press news agency.

Convictions
Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002.
Pictures of his murder appeared on internet sites later, but the identity of the killer was not clear.

British-born Islamist Ahmed Omar Sheikh was sentenced to death for the murder six months later, while three other men were given life imprisonment.
They are appealing against the verdict.

In March, alleged al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to personally beheading Pearl, according to an incomplete Pentagon transcript of his testimony at a military tribunal.

Three Swedes Freed From Ethiopia

Taken from The BBC, 19 May 2007

Three Swedish men have been released by Ethiopia after being detained for five months on suspicion of helping Islamist militants in Somalia.

A spokeswoman for Sweden's foreign ministry said the three men, who were originally arrested in Somalia, were now back in Sweden.

Spokeswoman Nina Ersman said the three had not been charged with any offence.
Ethiopia has said it detained a number of people after its army helped drive Islamists out of Somalia's capital.

Two of the men are Swedish nationals and one has permanent residency status in Sweden. Their names have not been released.

Sweden's foreign ministry had been demanding the release of the detainees for several weeks.
"I would like to express my gratitude to all foreign ministry officials who made this possible," Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in a statement.

A lawyer for the three men said there had been no notification from Ethiopia that they would be released.

Ethiopia's government said in April that it had detained 41 people from 17 countries after its army helped Somalia's transitional government drive militias allied to the Union of Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu at the end of last year.

Some detainees were deported from Kenya, where many Somalis fled the fighting in Mogadishu.

Ethiopia has defended the detentions as part of its efforts to combat international terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

Human rights groups say US agents have been allowed to interrogate the detainees as part of the hunt for al-Qaeda suspects in the region.

Bank Of New York Accused By Russians Of Money Laundering

Taken from The times, UK, 18/05/2007
Tom Bawden in New York

Russia’s customs service said that it was suing the Bank of New York for $22.5 billion (£11.3 billion) in compensation for an alleged money-laundering scheme in which US companies colluded with Russian banks to defraud its Government.

The Federal Customs Service said that the Bank of New York, the world’s largest “custodian” of assets, played a central role in a laundering campaign in the late 1990s to help clients to avoid Russian taxes and import duties and to hide money obtained through crime.

Maxim Smal, a lawyer for the customs service, said that between 1996 and 1999 “an illegal scheme was organised to legalise monetary resources that were brought into Russia without paying taxes.

“Violations were discovered that, I think, border on the criminal and this is why we decided to file a claim in the court and seek damages.”

Russia’s suit, which will be detailed at a press conference today, stems from a previous case involving the Bank of New York, which is in the process of merging with Mellon Financial.

Lucy Edwards, a former vice-president in the bank’s Eastern European division, and her husband, Peter Berlin, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to help to move $7 billion to small US companies from Russian banks in order to hide the money from the authorities.

The couple were sentenced to six months’ house arrest, put on probation for five years and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine and $685,000 in compensation.

Their sentencing came after the Bank of New York had admitted failing to report $7 billion in suspicious Russian transactions and agreeing a $38 million payout.

Before a press conference yesterday, Andrey Strukov, head of the customs service legal department, would only say: “The Federal Customs Service confirms the filing of the suit against the Bank of New York. [It] is filing the suit for $22.5 billion in damages inflicted against the Russian Federation.”

However, the Bank of New York questioned the merit of the Russian lawsuit, which it said it had not seen.

“We understand from press reports that a lawsuit has been filed against the company by a Russian agency described as the Federal Customs Service,” the bank said.

“While we have not seen the complaint, based on our knowledge of the facts, we believe any such suit would be totally without merit, if not frivolous, and we would expect to defend it vigorously.

“The company was previously approached by lawyers purporting to represent this agency, who claimed to be able to dispose of the matter for a tiny fraction of the amount now claimed.

“It should be noted that the events related to the lawsuit occurred more than ten years ago and were previously resolved by the company.”

Bank of New York’s $16.6 billion takeover of Mellon, first announced in December last year, brings together New York’s oldest bank, founded in 1784, with the Pittsburgh institution that bankrolled the Pennsylvanian steel industry in the 19th century.

It revives a failed attempt by Bank of New York to buy Mellon in 1998 for $23.7 billion, which foundered with a disagreement over the carve-up of senior positions. Mellon went on to sell its consumer banking division to Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001 for $2.1 billion.

The new entity will have $16.6 trillion of assets under custody for which it will carry out low-margin back-office functions, such as record-keeping and fund accounting.

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Who said there was no such thing as a "get rich quick scheme" - It has been provenly tested by many exiled Oligarchies!

EU Accused Of Artificially Inflating Its Aid Figures

You hear stories of millions of pounds given to foreign countries in terms of aid and you wonder what happens to all this money, why do these countries not improve themselves? Well here is the answer...

Taken from The Independent, UK, 11 May 2007
By Jerome Taylor

European countries are artificially inflating the amount of aid they claim to be donating to poor countries and nearly half of those surveyed have not even met their promised aid targets, according to a damning new report released today.

Charities across Europe have accused their governments of making "misleading claims" about their aid figures by including items which should not be counted as development aid, including debt relief and money spent on foreign students and refugees.

The problem is so widespread that the report calculates at least one third of all the aid Europe gives to the developing world is not genuine aid but "inflated aid".

"One way or another half of the donor countries are missing their genuine aid targets," said Jasmine Burnley of ActionAid, one of the charities that helped compile the report.

"The fact that items such as debt relief and refugee costs are allowed to be counted is a problem with aid accounting and needs to be addressed."

In 2002 the 15 member states that belonged to the EU at the time committed to substantial increases in the amount of aid they would give to poor countries and set a target of donating at least 0.39 per cent of their gross national income (GNI) by 2006. That pledge was then reiterated in 2005 during the run-up to the Gleneagles G8 summit which placed reducing poverty in the developing world at the top of its agenda.

The EU claims it has already met its 2006 target but today's report, which was compiled by more than 1,800 NGOs across Europe, argues that once inflated aid is taken away, genuine aid actually fell far short of the target, only reaching 0.31 per cent. If the current trend continues poor countries will have received €50bn (£34bn) less from Europe by 2010 than they have been promised.

Four countries, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, failed to even reach their promised 2006 targets in the first place. Italy remained the smallest contributor of foreign aid in Europe despite being a G8 member.

Meanwhile Germany, France and Austria, three of Europe's largest economies, only managed to meet their 2006 targets with the help of inflated aid, the report revealed.

France and Austria were named as the two worst offenders for exaggerating their aid figures, with "inflated aid" accounting for at least half of the amount of money they give.

Official figures show the UK has met its promised targets but campaigners yesterday criticised the Government for continuing to include foreign debt, which includes debt relief to Iraq, in its annual aid figures. "If you go down that road then one day military assistance will end up being counted as aid," said Marco Serena from the development charity BondUK. "Aid should be aid that reduces poverty. Full stop."

But a spokesman for Britain's Department for International Development defended the inclusion of debt relief in its aid figures.

"Debt relief frees up reserves to improve health care and education. For example, the debt deal agreed at Gleneagles has helped Zambia provide free healthcare for thousands of people," he said.

A breakdown of the EU's debt relief also revealed that the vast majority of the debt written off by European countries last year was almost entirely in relief for just two countries, Iraq and Nigeria - €8bn out of €10.5bn in 2006.

The report's authors are particularly scathing about the way European countries use debt cancellation to top up their aid figures. "Aid is about providing new resources to solve current problems," the report states, "not about clearing European balance sheets to rectify mistakes of the past - mistakes that were often a shared responsibility of lender and borrower."

Last year European governments marked spending on foreign students and refugees inside their borders as an aid expense, adding at least €2.7bn to the total inflated aid quota.

Contractor Deaths In Iraq Soar To Record

If you feel sorry for mercenaries then you will fell sorry for anybody. This story is for you…

Taken from The New York Times, May 19, 2007
By JOHN M. BRODER and JAMES RISEN

Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone, according to new government numbers.



At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.

That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews.

The numbers, which have not been previously reported, disclose the extent to which contractors — Americans, Iraqis and workers from more than three dozen other countries — are largely hidden casualties of the war, and now are facing increased risks alongside American soldiers and marines as President Bush’s plan to increase troop levels in Baghdad takes hold.

As troops patrol more aggressively in and around the capital, both soldiers and the contractors who support them, often at small outposts, are at greater peril. The contractor deaths earlier this year, for example, came closer to the number of American military deaths during the same period — 244 — than during any other quarter since the war began, according to official figures.

“The insurgents are going after the softest targets, and the contractors are softer targets than the military,” said Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense for manpower during the Reagan administration. “The U.S. is being more aggressive over there, and these contractor deaths go right along with it.”

Truck drivers and translators account for a significant share of the casualties, but the recent death toll includes others who make up what amounts to a private army.

Among them were four American security guards who died in a helicopter crash in January, 28 Turkish construction workers whose plane crashed north of Baghdad the same month, a Massachusetts man who was blown up as he dismantled munitions for an American company in March and a Georgia woman killed in a missile attack in March while working as a coordinator for KBR, the contracting company.

Donald E. Tolfree Jr., a trucker from Michigan, was fatally shot in the cab of his vehicle while returning to Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad, in early February. His daughter, Kristen Martin, 23, said Army officials told her he was shot by an American military guard confused about her father’s assignment. The Army confirms the death is under investigation as a possible friendly-fire episode.

Ms. Martin said she waited three weeks for her father’s body to be returned home, and expressed resentment that dead contractors were treated differently from soldiers who fall in battle.

“If anything happens to the military people, you hear about it right away,” she said in a telephone interview. “Flags get lowered, they get their respect. You don’t hear anything about the contractors.”

Military officials in Washington and Baghdad said that no Pentagon office tracked contractor casualties and that they had no way to confirm or explain the sharp rise in deaths this year.

Army Lt. Col. Joseph M. Yoswa, a spokesman for the military in Iraq, said in an e-mail statement, “the responsibilities for tracking deaths, injuries, locations and any other essential requirements lie with the contractor. Unless there is something specifically stated in the contract about accounting for personnel, there is no requirement for the U.S. government to track these numbers.”

Companies that have lost workers in Iraq were generally unresponsive to questions about the numbers of deaths and the circumstances that led to casualties. None acknowledged that they had seen an increase this year.

But a spokesman for American International Group, the insurance company that covers about 80 percent of the contractor work force in Iraq, said it had seen a sharp increase in death and injury claims in recent months. The Labor Department records show that in addition to the 146 dead in the first three months this year, another 3,430 contractors filed claims for wounds or injuries suffered in Iraq, also a quarterly record. The number of casualties, though, may be much higher because the government’s statistical database is not complete.

The Labor numbers were provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The New York Times. Other figures came from a variety of government agencies, private contractors and insurers handling casualty claims.

American military casualties in Iraq have mounted to almost 3,400 dead. The new contractor statistics suggest that for every four American soldiers or marines who die in Iraq, a contractor is killed.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who pushed for the buildup of military forces in Iraq, said the contractor casualties were a symptom of a larger failure to send enough troops earlier to provide security throughout Iraq.

“We’re now putting these people in danger that I never thought they’d be under because we cannot secure the country,” he said.

Other lawmakers also expressed concern about the numbers. Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, said that he was shocked at the extent of casualties among contractors and that he planned to hold hearings this fall on the use of private workers in Iraq.

Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, has introduced legislation to force the government to release detailed records on the use of contractors in Iraq and the names and job descriptions of all those killed and injured, information that is virtually impossible to get right now. The military releases names and biographical information about its wartime casualties, but businesses are not required to provide such information, and the Labor Department refuses to do so, citing privacy laws.

“By keeping the knowledge of this force hidden, it changes one’s perception and one’s evaluation of the war,” Ms. Schakowsky said. “There are almost a thousand dead and a large number of injuries. I think it masks the fact that we are privatizing the military in this country.”

Contract workers say that as the tempo of military operations has increased in recent months, so have the attacks on contractors. Convoys of trucks operated by companies are often not as well armored or protected as military units, they say.

A top security industry official said he was told recently by American military and contracting officials that 50 to 60 percent of all truck convoys in Iraq were coming under attack. Previously, he said, only about 10 percent had been hit.

“There is a definite spike in convoy attacks,” said the official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential. Gordon Dreher, 48, who drove a fuel truck supplying American troops in Iraq, said he and other drivers faced almost constant attacks from insurgents.

“I’ve been shot at, had my truck blown out from under me, had an I.E.D. hit about six feet away from me, and lost part of my hearing,” he said, referring to an improvised explosive device. “I’m used to getting shot at now, having tracer rounds hit off my truck. I got ambushed twice on one convoy run.”

Mr. Dreher broke his back in January from driving fast on rough roads, and is back home in Brick, N.J., awaiting surgery. “When they do a surge, they need more fuel for choppers and tanks,” he said. “My buddies who are still there tell me that they have been getting spanked pretty good lately.”

Mark Griffin, a 53-year-old truck driver from Georgia who left Iraq last November, said even then attacks were accelerating. “It got progressively worse pretty much every month I was there.”

He worked for KBR driving trucks in Anbar Province to supply Marine bases with ammunition, water and other essentials. He said that by late 2006 truck drivers and their Marine convoy escorts were finding 20 to 30 roadside bombs on each convoy trip through Anbar, the restive Sunni heartland. “The number of I.E.D.’s got worse, and the size and damage got worse, progressively, over time,” he said.

Labor Department statistics show that deaths and injuries among contractors have risen during times of heightened American military activity. For example, the number of contractors killed from January through March tops the previous quarterly record of 112 killed at the end of 2004, during the American military offensive in Falluja and related operations nearby.

The worsening casualty trends appear to be continuing into the second quarter of this year, as insurgents launch a wave of mortar and rocket attacks on Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified government center. Earlier this month, for example, two Indians, a Filipino and a Nepalese working for the American Embassy in Baghdad were killed by rocket fire in the Green Zone.

Nearly 300 companies from the United States and around the world supply workers who are a shadow force in Iraq almost as large as the uniformed military. About 126,000 men and women working for contractors serve alongside about 150,000 American troops, the Pentagon has reported. Never before has the United States gone to war with so many civilians on the battlefield doing jobs — armed guards, military trainers, translators, interrogators, cooks and maintenance workers — once done only by those in uniform.

In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, for example, only 9,200 contractors — mostly operating advanced weapons systems — served alongside 540,000 military personnel. But at the end of the cold war, Congress and the Pentagon were eager to seize on the so-called peace dividend and drastically scale back the standing Army. The Bush administration expanded the outsourcing strategy to unprecedented levels after the invasion of Iraq.

Many contractors in the battle zone say they lack the basic security measures afforded uniformed troops and receive benefits that not only differ from those provided to troops, but also vary by employer. Weekly pay ranges from $60 for Iraqi translators and laborers to $1,800 for truck drivers to as much as $6,000 for private security guards employed by companies like Blackwater. Medical and insurance benefits also vary widely, from excellent to minimal.

Conditions in Iraq are harsh, and many civilians who arrive there, drawn by patriotism, a sense of adventure or the lure of money, are overwhelmed by the environment. If they raise questions about the 12-hour workdays, the lack of armor plating on trucks or the periodic shelling of bases, supervisors often tell them to pack up and go home.

Cynthia I. Morgan, a Tennessee trucker who spent more than a year in Iraq as a convoy commander, said that the common answer from her bosses to such complaints was, “Aisle or window, chicken or pasta” — meaning “Get on the next plane out of here.”

U.S. Embassy In Iraq To Be Biggest Ever

You'll be pleased to know that at least some projects in Iraq are on time and on schedule, unfortunately it is not in the interest or benefit of Iraq...

Taken from Yahoo News, 19/05/2007
By ANNE GEARAN, AP

The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world's largest and most expensive foreign mission, though it may not be large enough or secure enough to cope with the chaos in Iraq. The Bush administration designed the 104-acre compound — set to open in September in what today is a war zone — to be an ultra-secure enclave. Yet it also hoped that downtown Baghdad would cease being a battleground when diplomats moved in.

Over the long term, depending on which way the seesaw of sectarian division and grinding warfare teeters, the massive city-within-a-city could prove too enormous for the job of managing diminished U.S. interests in Iraq.



The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing.

The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. Still, not all has gone according to plan.

The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term.

The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq's government.

"What you have is a situation in which they are building an embassy without really thinking about what its functions are," said Edward Peck, a former top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.

"What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it's blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?"

The compound will have secure apartments for about 615 people. The comfortable but not opulent one-bedrooms have offered hope for State Department staff now doubled up in tinny trailers.

Morale is at an ebb among the embassy staff, most of whom rarely leave the heavily fortified Green Zone during their one-year tours in Iraq. The barricaded zone houses both the current, makeshift U.S. Embassy and the new compound about a mile away. A recent string of mortar attacks has meant further restrictions.

On Saturday, three mortar shells or rockets slammed into a Green Zone compound where British Prime Minister Tony Blair was meeting with Iraqi leaders. The attack wounded one person. One round hit the British Embassy compound.

The new U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, is reviewing staffing and housing needs, and fielding complaints about any suggestion employees either double up again or live elsewhere.

"We do believe that the embassy compound was right-sized at the time that it was presented to the Congress," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel this month. "There have been some additional issues since that time. "

Rice's senior adviser on Iraq, David Satterfield, said the embassy is not disproportionately expensive and will serve U.S. interests for years. The second-most expensive embassy is the smaller $434 million U.S. mission being built in Beijing.

"We assume there will be a significant, enduring U.S. presence in Iraq," Satterfield said.

The Baghdad Embassy will open in September and be fully staffed by the end of the year, Satterfield said. U.S. diplomats will move from a dogeared Saddam Hussein-era palace they have occupied since shortly after the 2003 invasion, to the growing irritation of many Iraqis.

The International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, has identified the complex as the world's largest embassy. The organization notes that the embassy is a sore point with Iraqis who are fed up with war, violence and roadblocks and chafing under the perception the U.S. still calls the shots more than four years after Saddam's ouster.

The embassy also is a prime target.

The area around the construction site was hit with mortar fire this month. Other areas of the U.S.-controlled Green Zone were hit on consecutive days last week.

The increase in mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone has raised concern, especially because they are occurring during a U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad.

The embassy has ordered its staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings. The order was issued one day after a rocket attack killed four Asian contractors in the Green Zone this month.

It is unclear who is responsible for the recent attacks. Some barrages came from Shiite-dominated areas in eastern Baghdad. But the Green Zone also is within range of Sunni militant strongholds to the south.

The State Department and Congress have tussled this year over a $50 million request for additional blast-resistant housing. The department says it did not anticipate needing so many fortified apartments when the embassy was in the planning stages three years ago and Iraq was a less violent place.

The new Democratic-controlled Congress has grumbled about the approximately $1 billion annual cost of embassy operations in Iraq and told the administration the embassy is overstaffed at roughly 1,000 regular employees. Add security contractors, locally hired staff and others and the number climbs to more than 4,000.

"This is another case where poor planning, skyrocketing costs and security concerns are colliding in the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, and we need to make adjustments," said Sen. Patrick Leahy chairman of the Senate panel that pays for State Department operations.

"They want hundreds of additional embassy staff who they cannot safely house within the new embassy compound. It's time for a reality check," said Leahy, D-Vt.

Former US Ambassador In On-Air Spat With 'Superior' BBC Man

Taken from Yahoo News, Thursday, May 17 12:53 pm
From Agence France-Presse

Straight-talking former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton accused a top BBC presenter of being leftwing and "a superior Brit" in a colourful on-air spat Thursday.

The controversial ex-diplomat, who left the UN post in January, made the comments after fiercely defending the United States' role in Iraq and saying that force should be used against Iran if necessary.



BBC presenter John Humphrys, the main anchor on the broadcaster's flagship Today radio programme, raised Bolton's hackles by asking if the US administration was not a "busted flush" after Iraq.

"You're absolutely wrong ... The people who express the point of view that you just expressed I think were largely anti-American beforehand anyway," said the ex-ambassador.

When Humphrys suggested that billionaire philanthropist George Soros might take that view, Bolton shot back: "Are you kidding me? This is a man of the extreme left."

"I'm sure you would find a great deal in common with him as would many others on the continent," he added, referring to widespread anti-American sentiment in Europe.

The BBC man defended himself, saying he was impartial but just asking questions as a devil's advocate and adding: "Maybe they don't do it like that in the United States."

Bolton: "I know, you're a superior Brit, aren't you?"

Moving on, Humphrys asked Bolton if World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, under fierce pressure to resign amid a scandal over his girlfriend's pay package, was "about to go."

"I see you're a gravedigger as well," retorted Bolton. "I'm not at all sure I see that demise happening."

Bolton and Wolfowitz were both widely seen as part of a neo-conservative group which pushed for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But Bolton denied he was a neo-con Thursday, although he said the movement was still alive.

"I'm not a neocon, number one, but number two, I don't think the neocon adventure is over," he said.
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What a bafoon Bolton must feel from this interview. The Full transcript can be listened here using Real Player. Note: This broadcast is the last quarter of the show (it lasts 29 minutes). The Interview with Bolton happens between 10:10 and 19:37 minute of the file - so please fast forward to the section.

One thing is for certain, The UK press and media are far more demanding in questioning the accountability of their politicians than that the US press. Most UK politicians fear going into live TV debates or even being questioned by News agencies.

Senators Want CIA To Release 9/11 Report

Taken from Yahoo News, May 17 2007
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press

A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that would force the CIA to release an inspector general's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA has spent more than 20 months weighing requests under the Freedom of Information Act for its internal investigation of the attacks but has yet to release any portion of it.

The agency is the only federal office involved in counterterrorism operations that has not made at least a version of its internal 9/11 investigation public.

Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., and two other intelligence committee leaders — chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and senior Republican Kit Bond of Missouri — are pushing legislation that would require the agency to declassify the executive summary of the review within one month and submit a report to Congress explaining why any material was withheld.

The provision has been approved by the Senate twice, but never made into law.

In an interview, Wyden said he is also considering whether to link the report's release to his acceptance of President Bush's nominations for national security positions.

"It's amazing the efforts the administration is going to stonewall this," Wyden said. "The American people have a right to know what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11.... I am going to bulldog this until the public gets it."

Completed in June 2005, the inspector general's report examined the personal responsibility of individuals at the CIA before and after the attacks. Other agencies' reviews examined structural problems within their organizations.

Wyden, who has read the classified report several times, wouldn't offer any details on its findings or the conversations he has had with CIA Director Michael Hayden, former CIA Director Porter Goss and former National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

But he did say that protecting individuals from embarrassment is not a legitimate reason for protecting the report's contents from public review. He also said the decision to classify the report has nothing to do with national security, but rather political security.

Hayden declined to be interviewed about the report. In a statement Thursday, his spokesman Mark Mansfield said the CIA director wants the agency to learn from any past mistakes, but doesn't want to dwell on them.

"Given the formidable national security challenges our nation faces, now and down the road, General Hayden believes it is essential for the Agency to move forward," Mansfield said. "That's where our emphasis needs to be."

The agency's actions prior to Sept. 11 have gotten renewed attention with the release of a memoir by former CIA director George Tenet. He has been criticized for not doing more to warn Bush about the al-Qaida threat.

In interviews about his memoir, he has said instead he worked the bureaucracy beneath the president by asking then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others for action.

Bond said some intelligence officials have dismissed the inspector general's report as "ancient history," which he doesn't accept. He said the report has additional information which would be useful to the public.

"We have no desire to embarrass or throw cold water on the enthusiasm of the great men and women of the CIA, but let's just take a clear and open look at what the IG found and see if we have all of those problems corrected," Bond said.

In an October 2005 statement Goss said the officers involved in counterterrorism were "stars who had excelled in their areas" singled out by the CIA to take on difficult assignments.

"Unfortunately, time and resources were not on their side, despite their best efforts to meet unprecedented challenges," he said.

Goss rejected a recommendation from CIA Inspector General John Helgerson that the agency form accountability review boards to examine any personal culpability. Bond said that move was regrettable.

In his statement, Goss also noted that the agency had received a Freedom of Information Act request for the report, and that a review process was ongoing. But the CIA has not released any documents to The Associated Press or other organizations that began requesting the information at least 20 months ago.

The law requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 days, but officials rarely meet those deadlines and often blame lengthy backlogs.

Groups including the National Security Archive have clashed with the agency over its FOIA policies. Last year, the archive gave the CIA its prize for the agency with the worst FOIA record. Called the "Rosemary Award," it's named after President Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods, who erased 18 minutes of a key Watergate conversation on the White House tapes.

The citation noted that CIA's oldest FOIA requests could apply for drivers' licenses in most states. "CIA has for three decades been one of the worst FOIA agencies," archive Director Thomas Blanton said this week.

Many of the individuals highlighted in the inspector general's report are likely to have retired.

But some are believed still to be in senior government positions, making the report's findings even more sensitive at the CIA and perhaps elsewhere within the intelligence community.

The AP has reported that the two-year review of what went wrong before the suicide hijackings harshly criticized a number of the agency's most senior officials.

That includes Tenet, former clandestine service chief Jim Pavitt and former counterterrorism center head Cofer Black, according to individuals familiar with the report, who spoke in 2005 on condition they not be identified.

Yet the report also offered some praise for actions of Tenet and others.

Pavitt is now a principal with The Scowcroft Group, an international business advisory firm, and Black is vice chairman of Blackwater USA, an international security firm whose clients include the CIA and other U.S. agencies.
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Lets hope we get access to this report so that we can truly see what the CIA was doing at around 9-11 and why the agency failed to gather intelligence to stop it from happening. In an article written in Haaretz newspaper - "Greaseball" is an American expression that is used, among other things to describe a member of the Mafia or any other slippery or sleazy type. This was the term used at Mossad headquarters in Glilot to describe CIA director George Tenet. The nickname was used by members of the Cosmos unit of the Mossad's North American desk (which is responsible, among other things, for contacts with foreign intelligence services), because of his body language and his manner of speech. He does seem a shady character, but do most of the Bush Administration, past and present.

Billions In Oil Missing In Iraq, U.S. Study Says

Taken from The New York Times, May 12, 2007
By JAMES GLANZ

Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily. The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.

The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.



Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the United States goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.

The draft report, expected to be released within the next week, was prepared by the United States Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts, and was provided to The New York Times by a separate government office that received a review copy. The accountability office declined to provide a copy or to discuss the draft.

Paul Anderson, a spokesman for the office, said only that “we don’t discuss draft reports.” But a State Department official who works on energy issues said that there were several possible explanations for the discrepancy, including the loss of oil through sabotage of pipelines and inaccurate reporting of production in southern Iraq, where engineers may not properly account for water that is pumped along with oil in the fields there.

“It could also be theft,” the official said, with suspicion falling primarily on Shiite militias in the south. “Crude oil is not as lucrative in the region as refined products, but we’re not ruling that out either.”

Iraqi and American officials have previously said that smuggling of refined products like gasoline and kerosene is probably costing Iraq billions of dollars a year in lost revenues. The smuggling of those products is particularly feared because officials believe that a large fraction of the proceeds go to insurgent groups. Crude oil is much more difficult to smuggle because it must be shipped to refineries and turned into the more valuable refined products before it can be sold on the market.

The Shiite militia groups hold sway around the rich oil fields of southern Iraq, which dominate the country’s oil production, the State Department official said. For that reason, he said, the Shiite militias are more likely to be involved in theft there than the largely Sunni insurgents, who are believed to benefit mostly from smuggling refined products in the north.

In the south, the official said, “There is not an issue of insurgency, per se, but it could be funding Shia factions, and that could very well be true.”

“That would be a concern if they were using smuggling money to blow up American soldiers or kill Sunnis or do anything that could harm the unity of the country,” the official said.

The report by the accountability office is the most comprehensive look yet at faltering American efforts to rebuild Iraq’s oil and electricity sectors. For the analysis of Iraq’s oil production, the accountability office called upon experts at the Energy Information Administration within the United States Department of Energy, which has long experience in analyzing oil production and exports worldwide.

Erik Kreil, an oil expert at the information administration who is familiar with the analysis, said a review of industry figures around the world — exports, refinery figures and other measures — could not account for all the oil that Iraq says it is producing. The administration also took into account how much crude oil was consumed internally, to do things like fuel Iraqi power plants and refine into gasoline and other products.

When all those uses of the oil were taken into consideration, Mr. Kreil said, Iraq’s stated production figures did not add up.

“Either they’re producing less, or they’re producing what they say and the difference is completely unaccounted for in any of the places we think it should go,” Mr. Kreil said. “Either it’s overly optimistic, or it’s unaccounted for.”

Several analysts outside the government agreed that such a large discrepancy indicated that there was either a major smuggling operation in place or that Iraq was incapable to generate accurate production figures.

“That’s a staggering amount of oil to lose every month,” said Philip K. Verleger Jr., an independent economist and oil expert. “But given everything else that’s been written about Iraq, it’s not a surprise.”

Mr. Verleger added that if the oil was being smuggled out of Iraq, there would be a ready market for it, particularly in smaller refineries not controlled by large Western companies in places like China, the Caribbean and even small European countries.

The report also contains the most comprehensive assessment yet of the billions of dollars the United States and Iraq spent on rebuilding the oil and electricity infrastructure, which is falling further and further behind its performance goals.

Adding together both civilian and military financing, the report concludes that the United States has spent $5.1 billion of the $7.4 billion in American taxpayer money set aside to rebuild the Iraqi electricity and oil sectors. The United States has also spent $3.8 billion of Iraqi money on those sectors, the report says.

Despite those enormous expenditures, the performance is far short of official goals, and in some cases seems to be declining further. The average output of Iraq’s national electricity grid in 2006, for example, was 4,300 megawatts, about equal to its value before the 2003 invasion. By February of this year, the figure had fallen still further, to 3,800 megawatts, the report says.

All of those figures are far short of the longstanding American goal for Iraq: 6,000 megawatts.

Even more dispiriting for Iraqis, by February the grid provided power for an average of only 5.1 hours a day in Baghdad and 8.6 hours nationwide. Both of those figures are also down from last year.

The story is similar for the oil sector, where — even if the Iraqi numbers are correct — neither exports nor production have met American goals and have also declined since last year, the report says.

American reconstruction officials have continued to promote what they describe as successes in the rebuilding program, while saying that problems with security have prevented the program from achieving all of its goals. But federal oversight officials have frequently reported that the program has also suffered from inadequate oversight, poor contracting practices, graft, ineffective management and disastrous initial planning.

The discrepancies in the Iraqi oil figures are broadly reminiscent of the ones that turned up when some of the same energy department experts examined Iraq’s oil infrastructure in the wake of the oil-for-food scandals of the Saddam Hussein era. In a United Nations - sponsored program that was supposed to trade Iraq’s oil for food, Mr. Hussein and other smugglers were handsomely profiting from the program, investigations determined.

In reports to Congress before the 2003 invasion that ousted Mr. Hussein, the accountability office, using techniques similar to those called into play in its most recent report, determined that in early 2002, for example, 325,000 to 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day were being smuggled out of Iraq, the majority through a pipeline to Syria.

But substantial amounts also left Iraq through Jordan and Turkey, and by ship in the Persian Gulf, routes that could also be available today, said Robert Ebel, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“Any number of adjacent countries would be glad to have it if they could make some money,” Mr. Ebel said.

Mr. Ebel said the lack of modern metering equipment, or measuring devices, at Iraq’s wellheads made it especially difficult to track smuggling there. The State Department official agreed that there were no meters at the wellheads, but said that Iraq’s Oil Ministry had signed a contract with Shell Oil to study the possibility of putting in the meters.

The official added that an American-financed project to install meters on Iraq’s main oil platform in the Persian Gulf was scheduled to be completed this month.

As sizable as a discrepancy of as much as 300,000 barrels a day would be in most parts of the world, some analysts said it could be expected in a country with such a long, ingrained history of corruption.

“It would be surprising if it was not the case,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which closely follows security and economic issues in Iraq. He added, “How could the oil sector be the exception?”
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It's strange that oil stocks go missing in Iraq when they are located in some of the most guarded places in American hands. How could this be you may ask? It's not long ago that it was reported that there was a lot of corruption and mis-spening by US contractors and mercesonaries. All the blame seems to be going to everyone exepect for the US government. In the same week a plunge in American petrol stocks to a 16-year low has prompted the IEA to call on Opec to open its taps and bring more crude oil to the market before the summer. The IEA’s warning and continued disruption to Nigerian oil exports pushed the price of Brent crude up almost a dollar to $66.67. Continued strong petrol demand in America is confounding the oil market and the Paris-based agency pointed to 930,000 barrel per day (bpd) oil and product stock draw in the first quarter of this year. Overall, world demand for oil is expected to rise by 1.8 per cent in 2007, an increase of 1.5 million bpd compared with last year’s rise in demand of 0.7 million bpd. Isn't it time we looked to consume less fossil fuels by designing better engines that consume less fuel but at the same time is more efficient or we look at alternative fuels to power motor cars? We like spending monies on buying arsenal to kill each other yet saving the planet seems to be the least of our worries.

Fighting West's Islamophobia

Muslim groups in US should battle Islamophobia by explaining how America, Islam in fact share same values

Taken from Ynet News, Israel, 05.12.07
By Rabbi Levi Brackman

After six Muslims were arrested this week for plotting a terrorist attack on an American army base I heard an interview with a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

He was expressing concern for the safety of his community and thus stressing that these six were in no way representative of Islam or American Muslims and he criticized the media for portraying them as such. As a Jew who has suffered from anti-Semitism I felt instant sympathy for this man’s cause. However, it was undeniable that he did not say enough to calm the nerves of his audience.

People have questions about the way Muslims think precisely because they are unclear about who represents the faith. Most Jews and Christians I know living in the United States feel their countries’ core values, such as equality, the respect for human life, freedom of religion, and justice for all, are in step with their religion. This should come as no surprise; most Jews and Christians are taught this from childhood onwards.

Islamic values correspond with America's?

Whereas, it is true that many of the basic values of democracies are biblical, these are not exclusively Judaic or Christian. In fact one prominent American Muslim I know when asked which countries’ values are closest to those of Islam without hesitation he replied the values of the United States of America.

This is where people get confused. Because if this is in fact true why is it that six Muslims were arrested this week for plotting to attack the United States and slaughtering hundreds of US soldiers in Fort Dix to “defend their religion”?

The answer is because the radicals do not see American values as dovetailing with those of Islam. However, while it is clear to me, as a person who has relationships with Muslims, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims living in the United States share American values as their own, many Americans still need to be educated.

This is demonstrated by a conversation I recently had with a former member of the United States government. He claimed that whilst it is possible for Muslims to live as minorities in predominantly Christian countries this was not the case for Christian and Jewish minorities in Muslim countries.

When I pointed out that Jews live very peacefully in countries like Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan—both have Muslim majorities—he was astounded and replied, “Well I did not know that and am very pleased to hear it.”

Terrorism harms Islam

Sadly the voices of those Muslims who preach tolerance and human rights are drowned out by the shouting of the terrorists. Because of terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam around the world many people wrongly label Islam as a terrorist religion and all Muslims as terrorists or as potential terrorists. Although this type of bigotry and stereotyping is as repulsive any other types of fascism, it can only be effectively countered with the cooperation of the Muslim community.

Americans and non-Muslims need to hear the voices of those prominent Muslims who say that classical American values and Islamic values are one and the same. The message needs to be loud and clear: we are on the same side. The fact that we are not hearing this enough is partly the fault of the Media, but organizations like CAIR are also to blame.

A different message

CAIR and others must begin to take a different approach to the unacceptable levels of Islamophobia in the West. In addition to the interview I listened to this week, a quick survey of their website shows that they focus mainly on the anti-Muslim bias in America and parts of its media. By doing this they ensure that their communities feel threatened which feeds the hate and resentment some Muslims feel towards the USA. They actually reinforce the impression that Islam is under siege by the USA when in fact it is not. This strategy must be modified.

In addition to their campaign against Islamophobia and the statements against terrorism in the name of Islam which they make regularly, organizations like CAIR must explain how America and Islam in fact share the same values.

This message must be stressed in public, to the media and within their own communities especially to the youth. This way young Muslims living here can feel that, despite the imperfections of America, the United States is still their country, and the average non-Muslim American can know that most American Muslims are on the same side as they are. Undoubtedly this would go a long way to remove much of the fuel that drives Islamophobia.

US Detainee 'Mentally Tortured'

Taken from The BBC, 15.10.2007

Pakistani-born US resident detained at Guantanamo Bay has said he was "mentally tortured" there, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

Majid Khan, who has been accused of planning to blow up petrol stations in the US, also described how he tried to commit suicide by chewing on an artery.

Mr Khan presented a Statement of Torture to the US military tribunal reviewing his "enemy combatant" status.

He was among 14 "high-value" detainees moved to Guantanamo Bay in September.

The men were previously held in secret CIA prisons but are now being detained in a maximum security wing at the base in Cuba.

Mr Khan moved to the US in the late 1990s, where he went to high school in Baltimore.

The US government says that, on his return to Pakistan, family members introduced him to senior al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He is also accused of having links with fellow Guantanamo detainee Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and of passing money to the Islamist militant group, Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

'Extensive torture'
At the tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on 15 April, Mr Khan denied he had any connection with Islamist militant groups such as al-Qaeda.

"I am not an enemy combatant," he asserted.

"I am not an extremist."

"I have never been to Afghanistan and I have never met Osama bin Laden."

Afterwards, Mr Khan's personal representative read out a written statement, in which he alleged psychological torture.

"I swear to God this place in some sense worst than CIA jails. I am being mentally torture here," he said.

"There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions."

Mr Khan complained about how US guards had taken away pictures of his daughter, given him new glasses with the wrong prescription, shaved his beard off, forcibly fed him when he went on hunger strike, and denied him the opportunity for recreation.

This led him to attempt to chew through his artery twice, Mr Khan said.

Later, Mr Khan produced a list of further examples of psychological torture, which included the provision of "cheap, branded, unscented soap", the prison newsletter, noisy fans and half-inflated balls in the recreation room that "hardly bounce".

Al-Qaeda Cited Often As Padilla's Trial Opens

Say Suspect Formed 'Support Cell' With Ties to Group
Taken from Washington Post, Tuesday, May 15, 2007; A03

By Peter Whoriskey

After Jose Padilla was arrested five years ago as the "dirty bomber," his mug shot, tanned and glowering, became the face of domestic U.S. terrorism.

But as his trial on charges of participating in a "conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim" opened here Monday, the case against the former Taco Bell worker and convert to Islam has shifted and shrunk, reflecting the Bush administration's difficulties in pursuing terrorism suspects.

In the case presented to the jury, Padilla is no longer alleged to have plotted to set off a radioactive, or "dirty," bomb. Nor is he alleged to have played a role in any other specific violent plots, in the United States or anywhere else.

Prosecutors instead repeatedly emphasized their belief that Padilla and his two co-defendants formed a South Florida "support cell" that had ties to al-Qaeda. Again and again, prosecutors invoked the terrorist group's name in their hour-long opening arguments -- by one defense account, 91 times.

"Jose Padilla was one of the recruits," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier told the jury. "We will prove he was an al-Qaeda terrorist trainee."

Defense attorneys responded by suggesting that because the prosecution case lacks specifics, prosecutors were relying on scare tactics -- the "politics of fear" aroused by baseless links to the terrorist group -- to persuade the jury.

"Jose was not a member of any support cell because there was none," one of his attorneys, Anthony Natale, told the jury. "He was not a party to any criminal attacks . . . there are no victims to speak of."

After he was arrested in May 2002, Padilla became the most prominent of the Bush administration's terrorism suspects because of the president's decision to detain a U.S. citizen militarily as an "enemy combatant." Once the Supreme Court seemed to tilt against that tactic -- 3 1/2 years later -- the administration moved him to the civilian justice system.

Since Padilla landed in criminal court in January 2006, the prosecution seems to have faltered.

The two sources who first told U.S. authorities that Padilla was a potential dirty bomber are not expected to testify, presumably because the federal government does not want them to, or because prosecutors fear the testimony would be inadmissible. One of the two sources was Abu Zubaida, identified as a top al-Qaeda operative, who says he was tortured in U.S. custody.

None of Padilla's statements during military interrogations at the Charleston naval brig, in which he allegedly confirmed his interest in a dirty bomb, is expected to be presented in court. For those interrogations, the suspect was not offered a lawyer, as required in criminal procedures.

Now, the essence of the allegations against Padilla is that, with the support of the South Florida support cell, he attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in July 2000.

The key piece of evidence is a "mujaheddin data form" bearing Padilla's fingerprints and personal information, which prosecutors say was discovered at a reputed al-Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan.

Defense attorneys have attacked the authenticity and origins of the document, advising jurors that expert witnesses have found that the writing on the form came from two inks from two pens.

"The government is really trying to put al-Qaeda on trial in this case, and it doesn't belong in this courtroom," said Jeanne Baker, a lawyer for co-defendant Adham Hassoun.

For all the menace that Padilla seemed to pose five years ago, he is in some ways also a bit player in the trial. His co-defendants, Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, appear to have had busier roles in the South Florida support cell that forms the heart of the prosecution.

The cell is charged with sending money and recruits to aid in "violent jihad" movements in Lebanon, Somalia, Kosovo and Chechnya.

Hassoun is described by prosecutors as "the recruiter," Jayyousi as the fundraiser, and Padilla, a recruit.

To build the case, authorities tapped thousands of calls, and a selection of them "will tell the story of the case," according to Frazier.

But Padilla's voice appears on only seven, and his defense attorneys characterized his interaction with the "recruiter" as the innocent conversations between a young man with a troubled marriage, Padilla, and an older man at his mosque, Hassoun. Padilla wanted to become more proficient in Arabic and become an imam, Natale said, so he traveled to Egypt, eventually remarrying a woman there.

In this time "when fear runs high," Natale told jurors, the prosecutors erred by looking at the case through the "goggles of guilt."

UK: Terror Suspect Cannot Be Deported

Taken fron The BBC, 14. 05. 07

An Algerian terror suspect cannot be deported after a judge ruled he is not a threat to national security.

Moloud Sihali, previously cleared of taking part in an alleged poison plot, had faced return to his home country.

He said he could face torture if sent back under a controversial deal between the UK and Algerian governments.

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission said ministers could appeal their decision - but also ruled three other Algerians should be deported.

Mr Sihali, 30, was cleared in 2005 by a jury at the Old Bailey of taking part in an alleged terrorist conspiracy to spread the poison ricin in London.

He was later placed under restrictive bail conditions amounting to a form of house arrest while he mounted legal challenges to the Home Office's attempts to deport him.

In a judgement at SIAC, Mr Justice Mitting ruled Mr Sihali was not a threat to national security and should not be deported under a special arrangement between the UK and Algeria for terrorist suspects.

Mr Justice Mitting relaxed the bail conditions while giving the Home Office 10 days to appeal.

Three other Algerians lost appeals against deportation. The first man, known only as U, is already appealing. Lawyers for the other men, W and Z, are considering whether there are separate grounds for an appeal.

Previously, Mr Sihali had told the BBC he had no connections to terrorism and had unfairly been labelled "suspicious".

"I do not know what will happen to me if I go back to Algeria," he said. "Will I be prosecuted? Will I be persecuted? That is what I fear."

Home Office disappointed
Home Office minister Tony McNulty said he welcomed the court's approval for the deportation of three of the four men.

"The court has once again upheld our view that it is safe to deport such individuals to Algeria and accepted that diplomatic assurances from Algeria are valid and can be relied upon to ensure a person who threatens the UK can be deported safely," he said.

"We are disappointed, however, that the SIAC has determined that Sihali does not pose a threat to our national security.

"The government's highest priority is to protect public.

We will be examining the determination closely to establish whether we have an avenue to appeal to the Court of Appeal and, if so, we will seek to overturn the decision."

Massoud Shadjareh, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a campaign group, welcomed the ruling on Mr Sihali, saying SIAC was upholding due process in the UK.

"We cannot combat terrorism if we lose our basic values," said Mr Shadjareh.

The government has a "memorandum of understanding" on returning terrorism suspects to Libya, Syria and Jordan. A different diplomatic agreement is in place with Algeria covering the treatment of returnees.

In April, Siac blocked the deportation of terrorism suspects to Libya on human rights grounds, a major blow to the policy.

Critics of the government's policy say none of the deals guarantee the safety of those returned.

Israeli Defence Force Probes 'Incidents' With UN Observers Off Lebanon Coast

Taken from Harretz, Isreal
By News Agencies

Israel has investigated complaints against its army regarding two incidents involving UN peacekeepers off the coast of Lebanon, an IDF spokesperson said on Saturday.

The army said it had handed peacekeepers its findings from an investigation into the April 30 incident between one of its naval vessels and the German ship.

The Israeli source said Israel had handed peacekeepers its findings from an investigation into the April 30 incident between one of its naval vessels and the German ship. Another incident involving several Israeli fighter jets that approached the frigate last Wednesday was "being checked," the source said.

The source said no complaint had been received regarding a third incident mentioned by the German spokesman, said to have involved Israeli forces and a Swedish speedboat.

Israel's military spokesman's office would not comment on any of these incidents, but said Israel coordinates with international troops in Lebanon that were expanded under a truce that ended Israel's war against Hezbollah guerrillas last year.

"Any irregular incident is checked and resolved with the cooperation of both sides," a military spokeswoman said.

On Friday, a German spokesman confirmed a report from the Rheinische Post daily which stated several Israel Air Force fighter jets made an approach towards the German frigate Niedersachsen off the Lebanese coast on Wednesday.

The paper added that on April 30 the Niedersachsen had signaled it was "ready for combat" on board when an Israeli speedboat approached the vessel traveling at around 30 knots without initially identifying itself.

One day earlier, IDF forces approached a Swedish speedboat that was also part of the UN group, the report added.

The German spokesman gave no further details.

A series of incidents in October between German UN peacekeepers and the IDF in the region prompted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to apologize for what he described as the "misunderstandings" that had occurred.

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It's not the first time Israel has attacked/ threatened to attack UN forces. Many peacekeepers and observers have died or been injured due to the Israeli aggression. Blame the incident is usually due to communication problems by Israel with the UN - Yeah right! Billions of dollars worth of arsenal are sent to Israel for free or a reduced rate (to defend themselves) yet they use these weapons to attack neighbouring countries as well as UN peacekeepers. During the Second Lebanon war over three thousand Lebanese died and the country was reduced to rubble - thanks to the Weapons we send to Israel. We seem to easily forget in June 8, 1967, while in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula, USS Liberty was attacked and damaged by Israeli forces; 34 crewmen were killed and 173 wounded. Considerable controversy surrounds this attack. Germany recently provided Israel with two nuclear capable submarines - let’s hope the Germans are not the first to be the experimented with the nukes.

Israeli Committee Approves Construction Of Three New Jewish Neighborhoods In East Jerusalem

Tzipora Livni, The Foreign Affairs Minister and Vice Prime Minister of Israel pledged in comments published Saturday that Israel would make further withdrawals from the West Bank to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state, but added that the process was being hindered by moderate Palestinian leaders' inability to rein in terrorists. In an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, Livni said the 2005 pullback from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements would not be the last Israeli withdrawals from Palestinian areas. Well it seems that Israel withdrawls parts from the Palestinian territory yet gains more in other ways - talk about being two faced…

Taken from Haaretz, Isreal, 10.05.07 - By Meron Rappaport

Jerusalem's Planning and Construction Committee has approved a plan to build three new Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

According to the committee's chairman, Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Pollak, the plan is intended to create continuity between Jerusalem and the Etzion settlement bloc south of the city, and between Jerusalem and the Beit-El area settlements north of the city.

The committee approved the plan roughly 10 days ago. The decision states that due to the National Planning and Construction Committee's decision to reject the Safdie Plan for expanding Jerusalem westward, "the committee sees fit to announce its intention to change the district outline plan in order to allow construction in additional areas of the city: Walaja, Givat Alona, the Atarot airport area, and more."

The Walaja area is in southwestern Jerusalem, and consists primarily of territory annexed from the West Bank following the Six Day War. Construction in Walaja would create continuity between the Gilo and Malha neighborhoods of the capital and Beitar Ilit and the Etzion bloc. Some of the land in the area is owned by Jewish entrepreneurs, some is defined as state land, and some is defined as being in absentee ownership.

Pollak told Haaretz that up to 10,000 housing units can be built in the area. "If you strengthen Walaja, you strengthen the connection with the Etzion bloc through the tunnel road," said Pollak.

Government sources said the proposed neighborhood will in all likelihood be ultra-Orthodox, as the Jewish landowners in the area have already contacted ultra-Orthodox organizations.

The Jerusalem committee's decision will be sent to the planning authority that approves the Jerusalem outline plan for further examination. The authorization process is a long one, as in addition to the local committee and the district planning and construction committee's approval, the plan must also be approved by the National Planning and Construction Committee because some of the areas are not currently designated for construction.

A government source said the plan is problematic, and not just from a political standpoint, because it would prevent the construction of a Jerusalem airport on the one hand, and create an ultra-Orthodox bloc in the southern part of the city on the other. The ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods are currently concentrated in the northern part of the city.

Billionaire Gambler Sued By Iran In UK Court

Well you couldn't make this up Part 3.....

Taken from The Times, UK, May 11, 2007
By Michael Herman and Alex Spence

A billionaire trader who is one of the world’s most prolific gamblers has won a £60m High Court battle with the Iranian military over a missing aeroplane, Times Online has learnt.

Fouad al-Zayat - known in casinos across the world as the "Fat Man" - was accused by the Iranians of taking payment for a luxurious jumbo jet which was never delivered.

Mr al-Zayat claimed that he had failed to deliver the plane, meant for use by the country’s President, because of a dispute over money.



The disclosure will drag the shy Mr al-Zayat into the limelight once again. The Syrian born entrepreneur, who is said to have gambled more than £200m, was reluctantly exposed to publicity in March when he was successfully sued by Aspinalls casino over a £2m gambling debt.

The case also shows that despite the kidnapping of British soldiers last month, the Iranian Government still uses the British courts to settle costly disputes.

Jason McCue, Mr al-Zayat’s solicitor, said that the British courts should not be used by the Iranian Government to settle costly and needless disputes.

“This whole case is preposterous. The Iranian military kidnap our troops one week and then try and use our courts the next to settle a private commercial dispute that has nothing to do with the UK.

“The Iranians are working flat out to develop nuclear weapons and British taxpayers' are footing the bill for court time to decide whether we should help them boost their coffers,” he said.

The case centres on a deal that Mr al-Zayat brokered during 2002 with intermediaries acting for Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian President.

The Iranian leader had ordered a £49m passenger jet through Mr al-Zayat’s companies in Britain, Cyprus and the Middle east.

The deal got bogged down in a complex dispute about payments. During a trip to Lebanon in May 2004, Mr al-Zayat claims that he was kidnapped at gunpoint by members of the Iranian Revolutionary guard in Beirut.

According to reports, he was held under guard in the Iranian embassy for a week and was released only after he had signed a document agreeing to pay back the money that the Iranians claimed that he owed them.

Mr al-Zayat is an imposing figure. He is 6ft tall and has acquired his nickname because of a large waistline.

He stays at the Four Seasons, Park Lane, when in London. He is a well-known figure among the wealthy Lebanese and Syrian communities in Knightsbridge and Kensington and has the reputation of being extremely generous.

Four years ago, Mr al-Zayat told a newspaper that he had lost large sums at the roulette table in London.

“This is the only sin I have," he said. "I have lost a lot of money. I know it's wrong to lose money like this, but if you've ever been to a casino you will understand what the atmosphere is like,” he said.

Mr al-Zayat, who is married with three children, built his fortune on a string of lucrative deals. Former business partners say that he acted as an intermediary in contracts for the supply of defence-related equipment in Cyprus and the Middle East.

He has been named in the US courts as a businessman who gave tens of thousands of dollars to a corrupt Republican congressman. Robert Ney was sentenced to 30 months in jail after telling the court that he accepted money from a number of sources, including gambling chips from Mr al-Zayat.

The Iranian Ministry of Defence sued Mr al-Zayat and his aircraft leasing business FAZ Aviation in London’s High Court.

The Iranians argued that since FAZ Aviation’s “principal place of business” at the time it began legal proceedings was London, a UK court should hear its claim for recovery of the money lost on the aircraft.

But on Wednesday Mr Justice Langley, sitting in the commercial court, dismissed the Iranian's case. He ruled that FAZ Aviation – which is incorporated in Cyprus and has its registered office in Nicosia – did not conduct sufficient business in London at the time of the claim. The UK courts, therefore, had no jurisdiction to intervene in this dispute, he said.

The Iranian Government’s solicitors at Norton Rose declined to comment on its client’s plans.

The decision is the second time that a British court has refused to help Iran recover its alleged losses. Earlier this year it asked the Serious Fraud Office to apply for a freezing order on Mr Al-Zayat’s assets as part of an Iranian criminal investigation into the Airbus deal.

The freezing order was initially granted but subsequently revoked after a judge discovered it had been requested by an Iranian military judge.

The SFO will appeal this at a hearing next Tuesday. If the appeal fails, Mr Al-Zayat will be able to sue the British Government for compensation over his treatment.

Zimbabwe To Head Key U.N. Commission

Well you couldn't make this up Part 2.....

Taken from The Washington Post, May 12, 2007
By LILY HINDY, The Associated Press

Zimbabwe, a country suffering from acute food shortages and rampant inflation, won approval to lead the important U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development despite protests from the U.S., European nations and human rights organizations.

Africa nominated Francis Nhema, Zimbabwe's minister of environment and tourism, for the post, and the 53-member commission approved that recommendation Friday in a vote of 26-21 with three abstentions, said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, the commission's vice chair.

The post rotates every year among regions of the world and it was Africa's turn to sit in the chair.

"We're very disappointed in the election of Zimbabwe as chair," said the U.S. representative to the commission Dan Reifsnyder, deputy assistant secretary for environment and science at the State Department.

"We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organization to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can't now feed itself," Reifsnyder said.

Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline, medicines and most other basic goods. Official inflation is running at about 2,200 percent annually, the highest in the world.

President Robert Mugabe, an 83-year-old who has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980, has been widely criticized for mismanaging the economy.

In 2000, Mugabe's government began violently seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms as part of a program to redistribute land to poor blacks. The chaotic way the seizures were carried out disrupted the agriculture-based economy in Zimbabwe, a former regional breadbasket. Drought, government corruption and repressive policies have compounded the problems.

The newly elected chairman dismissed questions Friday night about his country's international standing and the appropriateness of Zimbabwe holding such a position in a global body.

"I think it's not time to point fingers," Nhema said. "There is never a perfect method, it's always a method which is appropriate to each country. So it's important not only to look at Zimbabwe but to look at each other and see what we can learn."

Several European nations have also called Zimbabwe's candidacy inappropriate.

On Friday, the Pan African Parliament, a body of the African Union, voted to send a mission to Zimbabwe to investigate alleged human rights abuses "relating to the arrests and detention, assault and murder of political activists and members of the media."

"Zimbabwe is hardly a model of good governance or sustainable development or even responsible leadership," said Benjamin Chang, deputy spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said before the vote. "Our concern is that it's potential chairmanship would undermine the commission's credibility."

Jennifer Windsor, executive director of the human rights group Freedom House, said before the vote that it was "preposterous" for Zimbabwe to lead any U.N. body. Freedom House is independent non-governmental organization that has monitored political rights and civil liberties in Zimbabwe since 1980.

She said Mugabe's government "clearly has nothing but scorn for the U.N.'s founding principles of human rights, security and international law."

The Commission on Sustainable Development was established by the General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in June that year, and implementation of key environmental and development agreements.

The commission meets annually in New York, and its current session that opened Wednesday is focusing on energy for sustainable development, industrial development, air pollution and climate change.

Anger As Serbia Becomes Rights Watchdog

Well you couldn't make this up Part 1.....

Taken from The Times, UK, May 12, 2007
By Richard Beeston

Serbia took over the chairmanship of the Council of Europe yesterday, raising concerns that the Continent’s main human rights watchdog will be led by a country with a decidedly chequered past.

Despite disquiet among some Western European countries, Serbia took up the chairmanship unopposed. Vuk Draskovic, the Serbian Foreign Minister, will chair the council’s committee of ministers, the main decision-making body. The post is rotated every six months among the 47 member states in alphabetical order.

The move came as Serbian pro-democracy parties negotiated a new coalition government, so preventing the feared resurgence of ultranationalist parties loyal to late leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Nevertheless, the appointment remained controversial, with worries that a Serbian chairmanship would diminish the standing of the Council of Europe, which is supposed to uphold rights across the Continent.

The main charge against Belgrade is that it has failed over the past decade to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is responsible for trying war crimes suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Belgrade has been accused of shielding Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, and General Ratko Mladic, his military commander, who was indicted on charges of genocide for ordering the murder of more than 7,000 men and boys from the town of Srebrenica. Only three months ago Serbia was found to have breached the Convention on Genocide by failing to apprehend General Mladic.

Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor for the tribunal, wrote to the Council of Europe that it was “rather embarrassing that a state which is harbouring these fugitives” should preside over it.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also written to Belgrade demanding that the Serbian authorities uphold the commitments that they made on joining the Council of Europe in 2003.

“Serbia is the only country ever judged to have violated the Genocide Convention, and it’s persisting in that violation by not turning over Ratko Mladic,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Programme of Human Rights Watch.

Terry Davis, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, defended Serbia’s chairmanship, insisting that it was the right of all member states to have their turn at running the organisation.

“The real question is, should Serbia be a member of the Council of Europe? I say yes,” he said.

Critics Say LAPD Has 'Warrior Culture'

Taken from Yahoo News, May 12 2007
By ANDREW GLAZER, Associated Press

The Police Department's violent response at the end of an immigrant demonstration is the latest incident highlighting what critics describe as the force's "warrior culture."

It's an ethos that's been on display before - the use of clubs and tear gas to disperse 15,000 peaceful anti-war protesters in Century City in 1967 the Watts riots, the Rodney King beating in 1991, the harsh crackdown on demonstrators at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

Public outcry and inquiries that followed each event haven't deterred some officers from cracking a few kneecaps to assert order, even in front of cameras.

Chief William Bratton's criticism of his department and decision to quickly reassign two high-ranking officers after the immigration rally near two weeks ago were roundly applauded, though skeptics say it's not nearly enough to address deep-seated issues that produce violent responses by some officers.

Bratton was appointed in 2002 to steer the LAPD after a rogue anti-gang unit scandalized the department by assaulting and framing people in the tough Rampart district. Dozens of criminal convictions were tossed out as a result of the scandal.

Bratton has since had some success in improving community relations, including his swift action following the May 1 immigration rally violence.

However, skeptics say none of these efforts are enough to address the deep-seated culture that has caused repeated bouts of excessive force.

"The LAPD is a big ocean liner and it will take a long time to turn around," said Joe Domanick, a senior fellow of criminal justice at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. "(Bratton) has not focused on the paramilitary culture and us-against-them mentality that seems to still persist in the LAPD."

He said the culture originated during the reign of William H. Parker, hired as chief in 1950, who imagined the city's police force as an urban army.

Domanick said Parker's view was: "We're the only thing standing between chaos and anarchy.

We are the professionals. We know better. No one tells us better."

After the King beating, lawyer Warren Christopher, who later became secretary of state, was tapped to lead a commission in dissecting the department.

The Christopher Commission examined five years of reports, police radio communications and hearings and interviews with dozens of residents and police, and found that "a significant number of officers" routinely used excessive force.

"The Department not only failed to deal with the problem group of officers but it often rewarded them with positive evaluations and promotions," according to the report.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice led a similar investigation after the Rampart scandal and, in a 2000 report, found little had changed.

The anti-gang unit, known as CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums), "developed an independent subculture that embodied a 'war on gangs' where the ends justified their needs,' the report said. "They resisted supervision and control and ignored LAPD's procedures and policies."

Since then, Bratton has had to take a number of actions in response to police use of force.

He restricted police from firing on cars in most cases after officers killed a 13-year-old car theft suspect who rammed a squad car in 2005. In 2004, Bratton banned police from carrying long metal flashlights after video showed a Hispanic police officer using one to repeatedly beat a black suspect who was lying on the ground.

Critics say it will take a lot more to change the LAPD's warrior culture.

Particularly telling of a resistance to change was the department's decision to put Cmdr. Louis Gray in charge of policing the May 1 rally, said National Lawyers Guild attorney Carol Sobel.

Gray was the one who gave the order to fire rubber bullets at demonstrators outside the 2000 convention, said Sobel, who said one of the rubber projectiles hit her between the eyes.

"The institutional memory is very short," said Sobel, who worked with police afterward to revise crowd control protocols.

Bob Baker, president of the police union, turned down a request for an interview, but issued a statement defending the police response after the May 1 clash, saying officers responded appropriately when some members of the crowd threw bottles and rocks at police.

"As Chief Bratton says, 'sometimes policing isn't pretty and there is little if any time for reflection and discussion before action,'" Baker said. "... In the coming days it will become clear what transpired. Until then there should be no rush to judgment."

US Admits Afghan Civilians Killed

Taken from The BBC, 11 May 2007

US-led forces have admitted civilians were killed in fighting with Taleban insurgents this week in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

Local officials say at least 21 people died when US-led forces called in air strikes against militants near Sangin.

In turn, a local elder ordered the killing of a Taleban commander for ambushing the US-led ground forces and triggering the air strikes.

The fighting, near the town of Sangin, has been continuing.

"There are confirmed reports of civilian casualties; however, it is unknown... how many," a statement from US-led coalition troops said.

It said up to 20 wounded villagers had been treated by coalition forces.

It is the third time in recent months that US special forces, who operate outside Nato remit, have been accused of causing significant civilian casualties.

Public discontent in Afghanistan is growing over the rising number of civilian casualties and the government's failure to improve the lives of most Afghans.

'Human shields'
The US military say they called in air strikes on Tuesday night after US special forces and Afghan troops came under mortar, rocket and small arms fire while on patrol 25km (15 miles) north of Sangin.

The aircraft destroyed "three enemy command and control compounds", spokesmen said on Wednesday. They said troops had killed a "significant" number of militants.

Locals said villages had been hit, and children and women were among the dead.

One villager quoted by Reuters news agency denied Taleban fighters had used them as "human shields".

However, in the aftermath of the battle, a Taleban commander, Haji Wali Mohammad, was killed at the orders of a local elder who criticised his men for using local people's homes to fight from.

The elder said that by ambushing the Americans, the Taleban had brought the bombs to the villages.

The elder was then killed in retaliation by other Taleban fighters, according to reports from local people.

There are more than 11,000 US troops in Afghanistan outside of the Nato mandate who are involved in counter terrorism and training the Afghan security forces.

The US-led coalition statement on Friday said a joint inquiry into the incident was being conducted with the Afghan army.

It said a wounded child had died after being evacuated by the coalition for treatment.

Karzai pressure
Foreign forces and Afghan troops are trying to drive militants from the lawless, opium-producing region of Sangin.

The rising number of civilian casualties there and elsewhere in the country is putting President Hamid Karzai under increasing pressure.

On Tuesday, the Afghan Senate urged him to open direct talks with local Taleban militants, and for attacks on them to stop.

Earlier that day, the US military had said it was "deeply ashamed" over the killings of 19 Afghan civilians by US Marines in early March.

Correspondents say that casualties in remote battle sites in Afghanistan are almost impossible to verify.

Taleban fighters are often accused of seeking shelter in peoples' homes, leading to civilian casualties, and it is often difficult to determine if people killed in such air strikes were militants or civilians.

US Attack 'Kills Iraqi Children'

Taken from The BBC, 8 May 2007
By James Shaw

An attack by a US helicopter against suspected insurgents in Iraq has killed a number of children at a primary school, Iraqi security sources say.



The attack took place in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad, the sources say.

A spokesman for the US military said there had been helicopter activity in the area but he was not able to confirm any other details.

The school is in the village of al-Nedawat close to the Iranian border.

Investigation
One police officer said the helicopter was shot at from the ground during the morning.

The school was said to have been hit when the aircraft returned fire.

The officer said police had spoken to eyewitnesses and that six children had been killed and six injured but the figures have not been independently confirmed.

A spokesman for the US forces in Iraq, Lt-Col Chris Garver, said the US tried to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, which was why it was taking the reports seriously and conducting an investigation.

There has been an escalation of violence in Diyala in recent weeks.

On Sunday, a convoy of US armoured vehicles was hit by a bomb which killed six soldiers and a Russian journalist who was travelling with them.