Taken from The New York Times, February 13, 2007
By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 — Three weeks after promising it would show proof of Iranian meddling in Iraq, the Bush administration has laid out its evidence — and received in return a healthy dose of skepticism.
The response from Congressional and other critics speaks volumes about the current state of American credibility, four years after the intelligence controversy leading up to the Iraq war. To pre-empt accusations that the charges against Iran were politically motivated, the administration rejected the idea of a high-level presentation, relying instead on military and intelligence officers to make its case in a background briefing in Baghdad.
Even so, critics have been quick to voice doubts. Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the White House was more interested in sending a message to Tehran than in backing up serious allegations with proof. And David Kay, who once led the hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq, said the grave situation in Iraq should have taught the Bush administration to put more of a premium on transparency when it comes to intelligence.
“If you want to avoid the perception that you’ve cooked the books, you come out and make the charges publicly,” Mr. Kay said.
Administration officials say their approach was carefully calibrated to focus on concerns that Iran is providing potent weapons used against American troops in Iraq, not to ignite a wider war. “We’re trying to strike the right tone here,” a senior administration official said Monday.
“It would have raised the rhetoric to major decibel levels if we had had a briefing in Washington.”
At the State Department, the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, officials had anticipated resistance to their claims. They settled on an approach that sidelined senior officials including Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, and John D. Negroponte, who until last week was the director of national intelligence. By doing so, they avoided the inevitable comparisons to the since-discredited presentation that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made to the United Nations Security Council in 2003 asserting that Iraq had illicit weapons.
The White House and the State Department both made clear on Monday that they endorsed the findings presented in Baghdad. Asked for direct evidence linking Iran’s leadership to the weapons, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said: “Let me put it this way. There’s not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when its comes to something like that.”
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said: “While they presented a circumstantial case, I would put to you that it was a very strong circumstantial case. The Iranians are up to their eyeballs in this activity, I think, very clearly based on the information that was provided over the weekend in Baghdad.”
In Australia, however, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he “would not say” that Iran’s leadership was aware of or condoned the attacks. “It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it’s clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit,” according to an account posted on the Voice of America Web site.
An Iranian government spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, has sought in denying the charges to exploit the lingering doubts about American credibility. “The United States has a long history of fabricating evidence,” Mr. Hosseini, a Foreign Ministry official, told reporters in Tehran.
The administration’s scramble over how to present its evidence started in January, after President Bush accused Iran of meddling in Iraq. Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, demanded that the United States present its evidence, and Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador in Baghdad, responded that America would “oblige him by having something done in the coming days.”
That set Bush administration officials racing to produce a briefing that would hold up to scrutiny. Military officials in Baghdad developed the first briefing, a wide-ranging dossier that contained dozens of slides about Iranian activities inside Iraq, which was then sent to Washington for review, administration officials said.
But after a careful vetting by intelligence officials, senior administration officials, including National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, concluded that there were aspects of the briefing that could not be supported by solid intelligence. They sent the briefing back to Baghdad to be shored up, a senior official said.
The evidence that military officials presented Sunday was a stripped-down version of the original presentation, focusing almost entirely on the weapons, known as explosively formed penetrators, and the evidence that Iran is supplying the weapons to Shiite groups.
Both Democratic and Republican officials on Capitol Hill said that while they do not doubt that the weapons are being used to attack American troops, and that some of those weapons are being shipped into Iraq from Iran, they are still uncertain whether the weapons were being shipped into Iraq on the orders of Iran’s leaders.
Several experts agreed. “I’m not doubting the provenance of the weapons, but rather, the issue of what it says about Iranian policy and whether Iran’s leaders are aware of it,” said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Philip D. Zelikow, who until December was the top aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said American politics and the increased unpopularity of the war in Iraq is obscuring the larger issue of the Iran evidence, which he described as “abundant and so multifaceted.”
“People have lost their moorings,” Mr. Zelikow said. He said the administration was trying to overcome public distrust by asking, in essence, “Don’t you trust our soldiers?”
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Skeptics Doubt U.S. Evidence On Iran Action In Iraq
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Witchcraft Brings Murder To Pacific Paradise
Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 10/02/2007
By Nick Squires in Goroka
Once hailed as an untouched Shangri-La, the mist-shrouded highlands of Papua New Guinea are undergoing a dramatic resurgence in sorcery and witchcraft.
Age-old beliefs in black magic and evil curses are back with a vengeance in jungle-clad mountain valleys which were unknown to the outside world until the 1930s.
More Pictures (from Telegraph): Sorcery in the jungle
Suspected witches – mostly women but including some men and even children – have been subjected to horrific torture before being hanged or thrown off cliffs.
A growing Aids crisis and the collapse of health services have sapped villagers' faith in Western medicine and prompted a return to ancestral beliefs.
Barely educated villagers living in remote mountain valleys are blaming the increasing number of Aids deaths not on promiscuity or a lack of condom use but on malign spirits.
When Raphael Kogun's uncle died two years ago, his family blamed a middle-aged married couple who they were convinced had become possessed by evil spirits. "We chopped their heads off with an axe and a bush knife," said the 27-year-old farmer from Goroka, in Eastern Highlands province.
"I felt sorry for them but they were witches, they deserved to die. If they were still alive they could hurt people with their magic. We buried the bodies but then the police found out and started digging them up."
Two of Kogun's brothers were arrested under the Act of Sorcery incorporated into PNG's criminal code, but the case collapsed because witnesses were too afraid to testify. The number of witch killings has been estimated at 200 a year in the neighbouring province of Simbu alone, although definitive figures are impossible to come by.
A report by Amnesty International in September found there was a "conspiracy of silence" surrounding the murders. Belief in evil spirits is ubiquitous throughout Papua New Guinea, where more than 850 languages are spoken by 5.5 million people.
In the highlands they are known as "sangumas" and can assume the form not only of humans, but animals such as dogs, pigs, rats and snakes.
A surge in the illegal growing of marijuana in the emerald green valleys has contributed to black magic paranoia, experts say.
We're seeing a big rise in witchcraft cases. We hear of a killing almost every week," said Hermann Spingler, a German Lutheran pastor who heads the Melanesian Institute, a cultural study centre in Goroka. "They take the law into their own hands and torture people to make them 'confess'. They drag women on ropes behind vehicles, burn them with hot wire, chop off hands, fingers. People have been buried alive."
He expects more witch murders as PNG's Aids crisis worsens. The country has the highest rate of Aids in the Pacific region, with the government estimating that around two per cent of the population is HIV positive.
That is almost certainly an under-estimate. "The problem is far worse than the official statistics show. In some ante-natal clinics 30 per cent of women are positive," said Claire Campbell, an Australian Aids campaigner working for the World Health Organisation.
"It's only 75 years since the first white man walked over the hills," said Mal Smith-Kela, PNG's only white provincial governor.
"I've flown into villages where they tried to work out what sex the helicopter was by looking at the exhaust pipes." Last month police in Goroka uncovered the grisly killings of four women accused by villagers of using sorcery to cause a fatal road crash.
After being tortured with hot metal rods and made to confess, they were murdered and buried upright in a pit.
"The villagers believe they have to kill the 'witches', otherwise the whole clan is at risk from black magic," said Jack Urame, 38, a member of the Dom tribe who has researched sorcery killings for the Melanesian Institute.
"What is disturbing is that children are witnessing these things – the belief in sorcery and witchcraft is being passed on to the next generation."
Island's Cargo Cult Celebrates 50 Years Worshipping The US
Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 18/02/2007
By Nick Squires in Lamakara
As global public opinion sours towards the United States, Americans weary of the relentless negativity can take heart from an exotic corner of the South Pacific.
The US's standing in the world may have plummeted under President George W Bush, but a bizarre cargo cult in the Vanuatu island nation holds America in god-like esteem.
The Jon Frum movement celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding yesterday with a lavish feast in which village men dressed up as US soldiers and marched in front of a giant Stars and Stripes flag on a bamboo pole.
Miniature American flags festooned trees lining the black sand parade ground which forms the focus of Lamakara village, the headquarters of the cult, on the jungle island of Tanna.
Older men dressed as officers marshalled the crowd of several thousand cult devotees, while 50 young men shouldered their bamboo rifles and came to attention in a perfectly orchestrated drill.
The letters USA were daubed across their chests and backs in red paint as they paraded beneath a relentless tropical sun, a drill sergeant barking orders in Bislama, Vanuatu pidgin English.
A tin band and small boys with bamboo flutes played The Star Spangled Banner against a background of roars from nearby Mount Yasur, a live volcano in which the spirit of Jon Frum is said to live. "For us, America is very good," said village chief Isaac Wan, 67, the leader of the cargo cult, barefoot but dressed in a smart American naval officer's uniform and sitting under a large US flag.
"There's a friendship between Tanna people and America from the war. When they came here looking for people to help them build airstrips and carry their supplies, we gave them 1,000 men."
The origins of the cult date back to the 1930s, when Britain and France jointly ran what was then the colony of New Hebrides.
Tanna's inhabitants bridled at colonial rule and the missionaries who badgered them to embrace Christianity, stop drinking the mildly narcotic drink kava and abandon other customary ways, known in pidgin English as kastom.
Village elders tell of how a mysterious outsider came to their forbears in a series of apparitions, telling them to go back to their traditional ways. The idea of a messiah-like outsider was given a huge boost during the Second World War, when hundreds of Tannese men were recruited by the Americans to build roads, airstrips and bases. They were impressed by the large amounts of cargo – tanks, weapons, medicine and food – brought by the US military. The shadowy spirit figure they already believed in gradually assumed a name and a nationality – Jon Frum is believed to be a contraction of John From America, a reference perhaps to a soldier who showed particular generosity.
The movement was officially founded on Feb 15, 1957, to celebrate the release of cult leaders who had been imprisoned by the ruling Anglo-French authorities. For the last 50 years cultists have clung to the belief that by dressing up as GIs and venerating US symbols they can somehow tempt back the wartime cargo.
In a thatched hut in the centre of the village a cult shrine says: Jon Promise America – One Day He'll Be Returning.
Around a fifth of the 30,000 people who live on Tanna are cult believers, with the rest either traditional animists or Christian church-goers.
Sri Lankans Forced Into Labor In Iraq
Taken from Yahoo News, Sat Feb 17 2007
By KRISHAN FRANCIS, Associated Press Writer
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - In Sri Lanka's war-torn north and east, where killings happen every day and work is nearly nonexistent, it doesn't take much to entice a man to leave.
So when an employment agency offered a steady paycheck for laboring amid Dubai's soaring glass and steel towers, 17 young Sri Lankan men paid their fee to the job brokers — $2,000, a small fortune on this tropical island — and signed up.
But instead of going to work, they were locked in a room guarded by a man with a pistol. They had been sold to another agency, they were told, for $1,200 apiece.
It took them two weeks to realize where they were in IRAQ.
"We knew Iraq was dangerous, and Sri Lanka was dangerous, but at least we thought our parents will get to see our corpses if we die here," said Krishnan Piraitheepan 32, shortly after returning to Sri Lanka this month with the help of the International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based intergovernmental organization.
Thousands of Sri Lankans, and tens of thousands of other people from such poverty-battered countries as the Philippines, India and Nepal, go to the oil-rich Middle East every year to work.
Their pay, usually $200-$400 a month, can be many times what they would earn at home, even after the agency fees that can leave families deeply indebted.
So they become maids in Kuwait, and drivers in Saudi Arabia. They work as nannies in Dubai and Bahrain.
Some, like the 17 Sri Lankans, end up in Iraq.
While there are no reliable statistics on forced labor in Iraq, government officials and aid groups warn the Sri Lankans' case highlights the potential for abuse. The situation is further distorted because a number of countries that are major labor suppliers to the Middle East, including Sri Lanka, ban their citizens from traveling to Iraq.
"This case should be an eye-opener to all of us, especially the governments and the job agencies," said Priyantha Kulatunge, an IOM official helping oversee the group's return.
Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of the Oakland-Calif.-based corporate watchdog CorpWatch, estimates only a small percentage of the 30,000-50,000 migrant workers in Iraq are there against their will — but many more may not have realized what it means to work in a war zone.
"Many people have claimed to be trafficked," Chatterjee said. "Probably many were, probably others discovered a situation that was dangerous."
He worries more about workers' inability to leave. With some employers still holding employee passports — a practice the U.S. Defense Department has forbidden for its contractors since mid-2006 — leaving a job can be extremely difficult.
___
When the Sri Lankans arrived in Dubai in mid-December, they were met by a representative of Arabian Express, the Colombo-based company that arranged their jobs.
The man told them they would be working elsewhere in Dubai, and put them on another plane. There was a sign on arrival saying they had landed at Irbil Airport.
"I had no idea what country Irbil is in. The only city that I knew in Iraq was Baghdad," said Karunapandy Jeyaruban, 24, who had left his wife and infant son for what he thought would be a construction job.
The men were taken to a house and put into a room. Their passports were confiscated. An armed guard was posted.
When they asked about work, they were ignored. When two men insisted, they were pistol-whipped.
But when a handful of the men spent a few days building a grocery store, and others were sent to clean a home, each group heard the same strange story: They were in Iraq.
It turned out they were in northern Iraq, in the semiautonomous Kurdish area. The violence is more muted than in southern Iraq — but still occurs regularly.
When the men discovered what had happened, they were furious.
"We protested because we had been promised work as carpenters, but were told that we had been bought for $1,200 each ... and that we can't leave," said Jeyaruban.
Arabian Express insists it doesn't know how the men ended up in Iraq.
Its agent waited for the Sri Lankans at Dubai's airport but they never arrived, said Fazal Marzook, the managing director. "I suspect that they met some other people who may have brainwashed them, promising higher salaries in Iraq."
But the Sri Lankans' story is not uncommon. Since 2003, the IOM has evacuated more than 6,000 foreigners "in difficult situations" from Iraq.
Others have been less fortunate.
In 2004, a dozen Nepalese workers, some of whom did not know they were being sent to Iraq, were taken hostage by militants and killed in videotaped executions.
At the time, Nepal had already banned its citizens from working in Iraq, but an estimated 17,000 Nepalese were believed to be there, mostly as laborers, cooks or security guards. Today, officials estimate 3,000 Nepalese are still working in Iraq.
Vincent Houver, the International Organization for Migration's regional coordinator based in Jordan, said anecdotal evidence suggests most new migrants are going to the Kurdish region.
Yazaqr Anwar, a residency official in the Kurdish region, said about 30,000 foreign workers live there.
Many are lured by promises of well-paying jobs, but some go unwittingly.
The increasing violence has pushed up prices for migrant labor, "encouraging smuggling activities and abuse by some recruitment agencies," the IOM warned in a statement.
The IOM also has received reports of "significant groups" of foreign workers stranded in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, Houver said.
___
For the Sri Lankans, the knowledge they were in Iraq changed little. They had no access to telephones and no passports. They were terrified to flee.
After three weeks, though, they decided they had to escape.
The house was under construction, and some walls were just plastic sheeting. So one man sliced through it, and the rest followed him into the streets of Irbil.
Eventually they found a U.N. office, and officials there handed them to the IOM, which got their passports back and flew them home.
Back in Sri Lanka, it's easy to see why they left.
While much of this country remains idyllic, the northern and eastern regions — home to all 17 men — have been savaged by two decades of fighting between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels, who want a homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. More than 3,600 people have been killed in the 18 months since a 2002 cease-fire collapsed.
Most of the 17 men know of dead bodies, of neighbors who disappeared. And, as Tamils, they also have faced constant government scrutiny, with roadblocks and random arrests.
So when Arabian Express offered two years of work at $500-$600 a month, they jumped.
"Every day at least two people are shot ... so my family wanted me to leave," said Nadaraja Vanitharajah, 22, again living in his village of Thandikulam, not far from the front lines.
His story would surprise few here: Injured by a land mine, he dropped out of high-school and sold vegetables until he was attacked by men from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority.
At that point, simply getting by seemed too dangerous. So his women relatives gathered their gold wedding jewelry and brought it to him.
"We pawned all the family jewelry to get the money," said Vanitharajah. Now, he's out $2,000 and has no work. "The lenders could come anytime. I don't know what to do."
___
Associated Press correspondents Frank Jordans in Geneva, Sarah DiLorenzo in New York and Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal, contributed to this report.
Jailed 2 Years, Iraqi Tells Of Abuse By Americans
Taken from New York Times, February 18, 2007
By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET
DAMASCUS, Syria — In the early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three months in captivity.
He struggled to quell his hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for letting his family discuss his case with a reporter.
But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet. They scanned his irises into their database.
Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:
“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.
“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.
In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.
“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?
“I thought if I don’t sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”
Shoving the memories of his detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running through a cold rain to his waiting parents. “My heart was beating so hard,” he said.
“You can’t believe how I cried.”
His mother, Intisar al-Ani, raised her arms in the air, palms up, praising God. “It was like my soul going out, from my happiness,” she recalled. “I hugged him hard, afraid the Americans would take him away again.”
Just three weeks earlier, his last letter home — with its poetic yearnings and a sketch of a caged pink heart — appeared in The Times in one of a series of articles on Iraq’s troubled detention and justice system.
After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.
Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.
American detention officials acknowledged that guards used electric devices called Tasers to control detainees, but they said they did so rarely and only when the guards were physically threatened. The officials said that detainees had several ways to report abuse without repercussions, and that all claims were investigated.
Officials declined to give specific details about why they had detained Mr. Ani or why they had freed him.
“He was released because the board that reviewed his case didn’t believe he any longer posed a threat,” said First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, a spokeswoman for detention operations, in a written answer to questions. “He was originally detained as a security threat. I don’t have anything more.”
The Detention System
The American detention camps in Iraq now hold 15,500 prisoners, more than at any time since the war began. The camps are filled with people like Mr. Ani who are being held without charge and without access to tribunals where their cases are reviewed, the Times examination published last December found.
Mr. Ani, a women’s clothing merchant, said he was detained in 2004 after American soldiers who were searching for weapons in his six-family apartment building found an Iraqi military uniform in the basement. His joy upon being released in January was short-lived. Days later, he said, a Shiite militia ransacked his home in Baghdad, looking to kill him. He hid, going from house to house, until he could move his family out of Iraq.
Now he is among the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis who have taken refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan, where sectarian rifts are springing up.
In one area of Damascus, Shiite refugees from Iraq have established a mini version of Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood. Sunni refugees, in turn, are forming their own enclaves. In interviews, former detainees seethed with rage at the United States.
One, a 43-year-old man from Samarra, Iraq, said he was released last year despite having fought American troops.
“I wish to go back to Iraq and fight against the Americans, God willing,” vowed the man, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdulla, for fear of reprisal.
Mr. Ani has other priorities, still exhausted from his detention and preoccupied with finding a permanent home. But he regularly turns his television to a new station called Al Zawra, transfixed by its running montage of videotaped attacks on American troops.
The station is owned by a Sunni, Meshaan al-Juburi, a former Iraqi politician who was indicted last year on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars; he denied the charges and returned to Syria, where he lived before the war. The station has become an information center for the Sunni insurgency and in the process has exasperated American and Iraqi forces. In an interview at his office here, Mr. Juburi said that he opposed Al Qaeda’s use of suicide bombers to kill Iraqi civilians but was soliciting support for Iraqis intent on killing American troops. When the image of a roadside bomb blowing up an American Humvee appears on the large flat screen on his office wall, his eyebrows rise and he urges his visitors to watch, “This is a good one.”
A Nightmare Begins
Mr. Ani’s ordeal began on Oct. 14, 2004, when soldiers brought him in for what he described as desultory questioning.
“ ‘Are you married? How many children? Sunni or Shiite? Which mosque do you pray in?’ ” Mr. Ani said he was asked. “I said I didn’t pray, and they said, ‘Are you not Muslim,’ and I said, ‘Yes, but I’m not praying and going to mosques.’ ”
“They never asked me about terrorism,” he said. “I’m a normal person, just a usual man, and don’t have anything to do with anyone who was fighting against the Americans.”
Mr. Ani spent a total of 44 days at two other American facilities before being sent to Camp Bucca. In all, he said, he was questioned just once at each site.
Mr. Ani said the electric prods were first used on him on the way to Camp Bucca. “I was talking to someone next to me and they used it,” he said, describing the device as black plastic with a yellow tip and two iron prongs. He said the prods were commonly used on him and other detainees as punishment.
“The whole body starts to shake and hurt,” he said. “And you lose consciousness for a couple of seconds. One time they used it on my tongue. One guard held me from the left and another on my back and another used it against my tongue and for four or five days I couldn’t eat.”
In a separate interview, the insurgent from Samarra said such a device had been used on him for speaking out of turn. Ahmed Majid al-Ghanem, 50, a former Baath Party official who was also freed from Camp Bucca and is now living in Syria, said in a separate interview that he witnessed the electric prods being used as punishment on other detainees.
The Times interviewed Mr. Ani at his apartment in Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he sat on a couch with his parents, wife and children. When he demonstrated how he had been held for the electric prod, his 4-year-old daughter, Al Budur, mimicked his actions.
Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a detention system spokesman, said: “Every use of less than lethal force, to include use of Tasers, is formally reported by facility leadership, ensuring soldiers are in accordance with proper use. Touching a Taser to someone’s tongue is not one of the approved uses.”
Mr. Ani said guards treated him kindly when he arrived at the jail on Nov. 20, 2004. He recalls being given soap, and, when his hands cracked from the cold, a soldier bringing him lotion and socks.
But soon new guards came “who had had special thoughts,” he said. “They were not allowing us to talk. They cut off the salt, gave us food that was not fit for dogs. One guard named David sometimes brought us outside to stay in the sun, or when it was cold. He also didn’t respect our faith, telling us not to pray here, and when we moved not to pray there.”
The detainees also began fighting among themselves. Those who spoke to the American guards were ostracized. Long toilet lines further raised tensions.
One day the guards searched a makeshift prayer area, Mr. Ani said, “and they started to step on the Korans, which fell down.”
“A fight started,” he continued. “There was a huge demonstration. The prisoners started to throw their shoes at the guards, and we started to beat them with empty plastic bottles. The guards shot at us with rubber bullets, but then prisoners were killed and others were injured.”
A Pentagon statement at the time described such an incident in January 2005, saying that four detainees were killed when guards were compelled to use deadly force to quell the riot and that it was set off by a search for contraband. Colonel Curry said an investigation concluded that a detainee leader had fabricated the Koran allegations to instigate violence.
Mr. Ani and other former detainees said there were frequent demonstrations to protest various grievances. Mr. Ghanem said he was released in late 2003 after hunger strikes forced camp officials to review his case and those of others.
Detention officials said they were also fighting radicalization at the camps and were trying to identify and isolate extremists. Former detainees said in interviews that the influence of Islamic extremists was still growing. At Camp Bucca, they said, hundreds of men formed a group called the Brothers. Members shaved their beards and otherwise masked their ideology so they would be placed with other detainees.
Mr. Ani generally slept in a wooden barrackslike structure, with a mattress on the ground and a nail on the wall for hanging clothes. Once, when the guards found an improvised needle that he said was used to repair clothes, he was taken to an isolated cell, where he was kept for 24 days.
“You cannot see the difference between day and night,” he said. “There was no opening, not even in the door.”
Colonel Curry said it was standard to discipline detainees when they did not follow procedure.
Mr. Ani despaired of ever being released. His letter that was printed in The Times ended with, “I hope I can be dust in the storms of Bucca so that I can reach you.”
Dangers Beyond Jail
“I didn’t see any kind of solution for me,” Mr. Ani said after his release. “The only solution was to die,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “I was hoping to die.”
In releasing Mr. Ani, the American military transferred him to Camp Cropper in Baghdad and gave him $25, which he and his parents used to hire a taxi. Along the way home, they had to dodge Shiite-controlled checkpoints, and just days later, he said, he narrowly escaped capture by a Shiite militia. Mr. Ani and other Iraqis say they believe these militias have found a way to learn when Sunni men are released from jail and then hunt and kill them.
Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, commander of American detainee operations, said that he had heard such concerns and that he was trying to alter the process of releasing detainees to improve their safety.
Mr. Ani said that for him there was only one way to stay alive: flee Iraq.
He said he was scared and puzzled about his next step. He said he felt that he could not stay in Syria, if only because work was scarce. But he must compete with other refugees for the attention of another host country.
“Until now, I can’t sleep, really,” he said. “Whenever I hear something noisy I stand up. I’m in a very bad psychological situation. I can’t stop thinking of what we should do. I don’t have a future here. How should we live?”
When his uncle put on Al Zawra, the satellite television station, Mr. Ani turned to look at the scenes of Sunni children who had been killed and the attacks on American soldiers.
“I am an Iraqi,” he said. “I love my country. Of course, everyone who is an Iraqi at the moment, we are thinking how can we support our country.”
“The United States through its actions made people hate the Americans much more than before.”
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Italy: CIA Agents Must Be Charged Over ‘Kidnap And Torture’, Says Judge
Taken from The Times, UK, February 17, 2007
By Richard Owen
An Italian judge yesterday ordered 26 Americans, most of them believed to be CIA agents, to stand trial for the kidnapping and torture of a Muslim cleric.
In the first criminal court case arising from the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, the judge also indicted five Italians, including the former head of Italy’s military intelligence.
The trial threatens embarassing revelations over the CIA programme in which terror suspects were seized in one country and taken to another. The tactic has been one of the most controversial in the US led War on Terror.
Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was allegedly kidnapped on a Milan street in February 2003 by CIA agents in collusion with their Italian counterparts. He was flown from Aviano to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then to Egypt, where he claims that he was tortured. He was released in Cairo this week.
The trial is likely to encourage prosecutors in other European countries to pursue similar cases. A prosecutor in Munich has issued arrest warrants against 13 people for an alleged kidnapping of a German citizen.
It will also increase pressure on other European Governments to disclose the extent of their cooperation with the rendition programme. The Government in Spain has agreed to declassify an intelligence report on the CIA’s use of Spanish airports after a request from a judge.
A European Parliament report into rendition, approved this week, claims that Britain allowed 170 secret CIA flights connected to the illegal seizure of terror suspects to make stopovers at its airports, second in number only to Germany.
Washington acknowledges secret transfers of terror suspects to third countries but denies using torture.
Yesterday Caterina Interlandi, a Milan judge, set a trial hearing for June 8. The US citizens charged include Bob Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan and Jeff Castelli, described as head of CIA operations in Italy. None of the Americans is expected to return to stand trial in Italy, where defendants can be tried in absentia.
It is unclear whether the centre-left Government of Romano Prodi will seek their extradition. The previous Italain Government, headed by the staunchly pro-American Silvio Berlusconi, rejected earlier extradition requests.
The Italians who will stand trial include Nicolò Pollari, then head of Sismi, Italy’s military intelligence service. In preliminary hearings Mr Pollari denied that Italian intelligence had any role in the kidnapping. He complained that he was unable to defend himself because documents which would prove his case were classified. Prosecutors say that the kidnapping was a breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised Italy’s antiterrorism efforts.
A key witness in the trial will be Luciano Pironi, an Italian police officer who has admitted stopping Abu Omar so that CIA agents could seize him, for which he is serving a 21-month prison sentence. He claimed that the operation was approved by both the Italian and US Governments, but that he was told the purpose was to recruit the imam as an informer, not to fly him abroad to be tortured.
Guido Meroni, who represents six of the accused Americans, claimed that the evidence against them was circumstantial, based on telephone interceptions and their presence in hotels close to the kidnapping operation.
At the time of his abduction Mr Hassan was under investigation for alleged links to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. He has vowed to return to Italy and sue Mr Berlusconi for €10 million (£6.7 million) in compensation.
Mr Hassan claims that he was bundled into a white van, beaten and blindfolded as he made his way to the mosque. During interrogations he was blindfolded “with my hands tied up to my back, totally naked, and my body hanging from the ceiling by my feet while my head was suspended upside down”.
He said that he was held “in a tiny cell, [with] no lavatory, weak lighting and a very small hole in the ceiling for ventilation.” He added: “I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body specially in my head, nipples, testicles and penis.”
The US Administration was saying little about the arrests. Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said: “It’s a judicial matter in Italy.” Any view about possible prosecutions or extraditions would remain a matter for “internal dialogue,” he added.
Spotlight on abduction
# The CIA practice of extraordinary rendition was revealed in November 2005. It involves the US transfer of untried terror suspects, or those suspected of links to terror groups, to camps overseas, with flights using European airports as stopovers.
# President Bush admitted in September 2006 that 14 suspects had been detained in secret centres abroad, but declined to say where.
# At least 1,245 flights were operated by the CIA through European airspace and airports between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2005, according to a report for the European Parliament this week.
# The most stopovers were logged for Germany (336) followed by Britain (170) and Ireland (147).
# The flights were allowed by 14 EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.
CIA Man Sentenced For Afghan Abuse
Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, 13 Feb 2007
A former CIA contractor has been sentenced to eight years and four months in prison for assaulting an Afghan prisoner who later died.
David Passaro, the first civilian to be charged with abusing a detainee in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced on Tuesday after being found guilty last August.
He was sentenced to 100 months on a felony count of assault causing serious injury and six months each on three misdemeanour counts of simple assault, to run concurrently.
Death after interrogation
Passaro, a former Special Forces medic, was convicted last August of beating Abdul Wali, who died of his injuries two days after a June 2003 interrogation.
Prosecutors said Passaro beat the prisoner so badly that he pleaded to be shot to end his pain.
The indictment said Passaro worked at a US military base in Afghanistan that was frequently subjected to rocket attacks and Wali was a suspect in the attacks.
Passaro's lawyers portrayed their client as someone who went out of his way to offer care to Wali.
They said Passaro even performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in an unsuccessful bid to revive him.
Guidelines broken
Guidelines given to interrogators have been an issue since a scandal broke over the abuse and humiliation of prisoners by Americans at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.
Prisoners released from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the United States is holding suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda members, also say they were tortured or abused.
Critics say US government guidelines on what constitutes torture, issued since the September 11 attacks, have created a climate in which abuses of detainees have flourished.
US: Army Giving More Waivers In Recruiting
Taken from the New York Times, February 14, 2007
The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.
It has also increased the number of so-called “moral waivers” to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.
The number of waivers for felony convictions also increased, to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006, from 8 percent.
Waivers for less serious crimes like traffic offenses and drug use have dropped or remained stable.
The Army enlisted 69,395 men and women last year.
While soldiers with criminal histories made up only 11.7 percent of the Army recruits in 2006, the spike in waivers raises concerns about whether the military is making too many exceptions to try to meet its recruitment demands in a time of war. Most felons, for example, are not permitted to carry firearms, and many criminals have at some point exhibited serious lapses in discipline and judgment, traits that are far from ideal on the battlefield.
The military automatically excludes people who have committed certain crimes. They include drug traffickers, recruits who have more than one felony on their record or people who have committed sexually violent crimes. A felony is defined as a crime that carries a sentence of a year or more in prison.
Bill Carr, the under secretary of military personnel policy, said the military granted waivers selectively and scrutinized a recruit’s full record, the nature of the crime, when it was committed, the degree of rehabilitation and references from teachers, employers, coaches and clergy members.
In many cases, Mr. Carr said, the applicant may have committed the crime at a young age and then stayed out of trouble. To his knowledge, he said, recruits who are issued moral waivers are not tracked once inside the military.
“If the community backs them, we are willing to take a hard look,” Mr. Carr said, referring to the waiver process, which includes checks of local, state and federal records.
The majority of moral waivers are for serious misdemeanors, most often committed by juveniles. As Douglas Smith, the public information officer for the Army’s recruiting command, said, “We understand that people make mistakes in their lives and they can overcome those mistakes.”
Fewer than 3 in 10 people ages 17 to 24 are fully qualified to join the Army. That means they have a high school diploma, have met aptitude test score requirements and fitness levels, and would not be barred for medical reasons, their sexual orientation or their criminal histories.
The Defense Department has also expanded its applicant pool by accepting soldiers with criminal backgrounds and medical problems like asthma, high blood pressure and attention deficit disorder, situations that require waivers. Medical waivers have increased 4 percent, totaling 12,313 in 2006. Without waivers, the soldiers would have been barred from service.
In the last three years, the percentage of moral waivers for all new enlistments in the four services combined has fallen 3 percent, with spikes in the Army and Air Force. In all, 125,525 such waivers have been issued since 2003. The Marine Corps issues far more moral waivers than the Army — 20,750 in 2006 — but only because it has a stricter policy on drug use. It requires waivers for one-time marijuana use while the other services do not. Rules on waivers vary by service.
“The data is crystal clear; our armed forces are under incredible strain, and the only way that they can fill their recruiting quotas is by lowering their standards,” said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. He has requested more detailed data from the Defense Department on the use of waivers.
Mr. Belkin said the increases in moral waivers in the Army posed a problem only to the extent that the military failed to track these recruits or provide special integration training for them.
Since more than 125,000 service members with criminal histories have joined the military in the last three years, Mr. Belkin said, “you have a sizeable population that has been incarcerated and is not used to the same cultural norms as everybody else.”
“The chance that one of those individuals is going to commit an atrocity or disobey an order is higher,” he said. “Many of those individuals can be good soldiers, but in some cases they have special needs. The military should address those needs rather than pretending they don’t exist.”
Recruiters ask potential recruits to reveal whether they have been arrested or convicted of crimes. City, county and state records are checked, as are federal fingerprint databases. The military searches for convictions but also looks at cases that were dismissed, dropped or settled in some way. If someone is found not guilty, depending on the crime, extenuating circumstances are explored, said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense Department spokesman.
The system is far from foolproof, though. Juvenile records can get tricky because of privacy laws; not every state will release sealed information. And if someone has moved to a different state, the criminal history may not always show up.
Decisions on the most serious crimes rise up the chain of command, Mr. Smith said. He said the military invested a lot of money training soldiers and tried to screen its recruits to maximize success.
A General Accounting Office report that looked at attrition from 1990 to 1993 found that service members who were granted moral waivers were more likely to be discharged from the Air Force because of misconduct. But most who were granted moral waivers succeed in completing their term and were more likely to re-enlist.
It is not uncommon for young criminal offenders to turn to the military, hoping for a waiver, experts say, because their records typically narrow their job opportunities.
Beth Asch, a senior economist for the RAND Corporation, said the increase in waivers bore monitoring but was not atypical of what had happened to the military during past recruitment crunches. The moral waivers, Ms. Asch said, particularly for felons, still constitute a relatively small proportion of all enlistments.
“It is something that should be tracked with concern,” she said. “It shouldn’t increase without monitoring but, so far, it is within historic norms.”
John D. Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and former judge advocate general of the Navy, said the military must tread carefully in deciding which criminals to accept. There is a reason, he said, why allowing people with criminal histories into the military has long been the exception rather than the rule.
“If you are recruiting somebody who has demonstrated some sort of antisocial behavior and then you are a putting a gun in their hands, you have to be awfully careful about what you are doing,” Mr. Hutson said. “You are not putting a hammer in their hands, or asking them to sell used cars. You are potentially asking them to kill people.”
Friday, February 16, 2007
Spain Furious As US Blocks Access To Madrid Bombing 'Chief'
Taken from The Times, UK , 15.02.07
By Sean O’Neill
Exclusive: on the first day of the Madrid bombing trial, the splits that have emerged between Spain and the US over the War on Terror, which have their roots in the Iraq conflict, are laid bare
Spanish officials told The Times last night that they are furious to have been denied access to Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a Syrian-born terrorist who has been part of the al-Qaeda leadership since the late 1980s.
"This is Spain's most wanted man in the terrorist world - it is galling to know that he is in the hands of an ally and they will not help us," a Spanish official said.
Madrid’s anger became known on the day that 29 men went on trial in the Spanish capital in connection with the bomb attacks which killed 191 people in March 2004.
Setmarian, 49, who lived in Madrid, married a Spanish woman and holds Spanish citizenship, inspired and established Spain’s first Islamist terror cells.
Searches after the March 2004 bombings uncovered documents which appeared to link the terrorists to Setmarian and he his thought to have issued a coded order giving the go-ahead for the attack.
Setmarian was in Afghanistan in late 2001 when the Taleban regime fell and moved with his family to Pakistan where he continued to be active in al-Qaeda.
A tall man with a pale complexion and flame red hair, Setmarian travelled widely and was often mistaken for a Westerner. He was frequently described as having “Irish looks”.
During the mid-1990s he lived in London where he associated with Abu Hamza al-Masri and succeeded the radical cleric as editor of al-Ansar, a propaganda magazine for Algerian terror groups. He also associated with Abu Qatada, the extremist Jordanian cleric currently in prison in Britain.
His suspected role in the Madrid attacks and his knowledge of London meant that he was initially suspected of having played a part in the planning of the 7/7 suicide bomb attacks in 2005.
At the time of those attacks he was still at large in Pakistan where two of the London bombers are known to have received military and explosives training.
Setmarian, who pledged lifelong allegiance to bin Laden and the global jihad, has boasted on al-Qaeda websites of training thousands of foreign recruits at camps where he specialised in bombmaking and the use of poisons.
He was detained in October 2005 as he shopped for breakfast in Quetta, close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistani intelligence agents shot Setmarian’s Saudi bodyguard dead but were under specific instructions to take Setmarian alive.
The FBI had offered a $5 million reward for his capture and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan stated in his recent memoirs that his country has received substantial sums in bounties from the US authorities.
Within a month of his capture Setmarian was handed over to the United States authorities and spirited away for interrogation at one of their secret prisons. His first stop was probably Bagram airbase, near Kabul, but his current whereabouts are unknown.
Setmarian’s wife and three children moved from Pakistan following his detention and are now believed to be living in Qatar where she is reported to be an English teacher at a private school.
Spanish intelligence agents were said to have been allowed to question inmates of Guantanamo Bay about Setmarian in 2002. But access to suspects in US custody was blocked after Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq following the Madrid bombs.
Spain has made repeated requests to both Pakistan and the US to locate and speak to Setmarian about the train bombings but to no avail. The Spanish courts have discovered that they cannot issue an extradition request because the man they want to talk to has not been officially arrested.
Guantanamo Guard Rekindles Friendship With Former Captive
Taken from The Independent, UK, 12 February 2007
In a heart-felt exchange of e-mails and telephone calls, a female guard, identified only as Thompson, says she misses the conversations she had with Mr Begg and applauds his campaign to close the American prison camp.
Ms Thompson, originally from the Virgin Islands but now based in Arizona, spent several months guarding Mr Begg and a number of other British detainees during 2004. For long periods she was the only guard with whom Mr Begg had contact and on one occasion she tried to help him when he had a mental breakdown.
Now the policewoman and army reservist has written to him asking if he would be happy to continue their relationship even though they are no longer captor and captive.
In an e-mail sent to Mr Begg last week, she said she had read his book about his captivity with "amazement" which had made her "laugh and cry". Mr Begg said he had sent her back an e-mail with his telephone number.
"I got a call later in the week," he said. "She asked: 'Do you know who it is?' I immediately recognised her voice and I asked what she was doing now? She said: 'You're not going to like this - I've become a full-time duty soldier.' I said that seemed a bit strange because I didn't think she really liked the military lifestyle. She replied that she liked the money." In her e-mail, Ms Thompson explained that she was grateful that in his book Mr Begg had been "just" about some of the soldiers, who had guarded him. "I was happy to talk to her because she had been one of the guards who had shown me compassion," said Mr Begg. "She had not been prejudgmental and had taken an interest in Britain and my culture."
Mr Begg remembers one occasion when, after she returned from leave, she gave him a Cadbury's Creme Egg because he had told her that there was a Cadbury's factory where he lived in Birmingham. "Normally, back in Birmingham, I hated Creme Eggs but I can tell you I devoured this one. It made a huge difference in that type of situation."
Mr Begg, who now campaigns as a spokesman for the charity Caged Prisoners, says he will not reveal Ms Thompson's true identity unless she agrees.
"I must protect her confidentiality," he said. "She was the only white woman soldier from the Virgin Islands so it would be easy to identify her. I don't want to put her at risk. The soldiers from the Virgin Islands were very different from the other guards. I think it was because they came from a different culture themselves. They showed us empathy and understanding.Once I lost my mind and started hitting the walls. She was in the room with me and kept saying that she wished there was something she could do for me."
Mr Begg hopes to be able to develop the relationship so that they continue learning from each other: "I don't think she is looking for atonement or anything like that. She doesn't believe she was responsible for what happened to me nor [does she believe she] has done anything wrong.
She was only part of the system. She even congratulated me for my work I am doing to shut down Guantanamo. What this relationship demonstrates is that it wasn't all hatred in Guantanamo ... It meant I couldn't hate all the Americans."
EU Endorses Damning Report On CIA
Taken from The BBC, 14 February 2007
The European parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights, condemning member states which colluded in the operations.
The UK, Germany and Italy were among 14 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said.
The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice.
The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.
The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining.
Vigilance
The final version denounces the lack of co-operation of many EU member states and it condemns the actions of secret services and governments who accepted and concealed renditions.
It is unlikely, the report says, that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory, something the British government, among others, has denied.
"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way. We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again," said Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document.
The parliament also called for an "independent inquiry" to be considered and for closure of the US' Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Human rights campaigning group Amnesty International welcomed the EU lawmakers' vote, but urged member states to carry out independent investigations.
Revealing facts
Although the report has no force in EU law, Mr Fava said during the parliamentary debate that the related investigation, over a year, had uncovered much new evidence.
Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.
It said there was a "strong possibility" that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.
It also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used as the flights made their journey across Europe towards countries such as Afghanistan.
It was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centres were operated in Poland and Romania, the report said.
'Incommunicado detention'
Centre-right MEPs - the largest group in parliament - have been highly critical of the report, saying it is primarily motivated by anti-Americanism.
EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said the commission would act on the truth, even if it were uncomfortable or unpalatable. But he called for a relaunching of the Euro-Atlantic relationship and said Europe must continue to work with its US partners.
During the course of their investigation, delegations of MEPs travelled to countries including Romania, Poland, the UK, the US and Germany to investigate claims of European involvement in so-called extraordinary renditions.
The governments of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK were criticised for their "unwillingness to co-operate" with investigators.
The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".
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Further information:
Full List of Countries that took part:
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
BBC: Key excerpts of report
Limit Muslim Migration, Australia Warned
Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, February 16, 2007
Barney Zwartz
LIFE can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent, as shown by France, a Jewish expert on Islam says.
The Australian Jewish News yesterday quoted Raphael Israeli as saying Australia should cap Muslim immigration or risk being swamped by Indonesians.
Professor Israeli told the Herald that was a misunderstanding. But he said: "When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia."
Professor Israeli, an expert on Islamic history from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has been brought to Australia by the Shalom Institute of the University of NSW. The Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council is co-hosting many of his activities.
He said Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.
"Greeks or Italians or Jews don't use violence. There is no Italian or Jewish Hilaly [a reference to the controversial cleric Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly of Lakemba mosque]. Why?"
Professor Israeli said that when the Muslim population increased, so did the risk of violence.
"Where there are large Muslim populations who are prepared to use violence you are in trouble.
If there is only 1 or 2 per cent they don't dare to do it - they don't have the backing of big communities. They know they are drowned in the environment of non-Muslims and are better behaved."
In Australia, Muslims account for about 1.5 per cent of the population.
Professor Israeli said that in France, which has the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Muslims were changing the country's political, economic and cultural fabric, and demanding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies.
"French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.
"If you are on a collision course, what can you do? You can't put them all in prison, and anyway they are not all violent. You can't send them all back. You are really in trouble. It's irreversible."
Professor Israeli said that in Australia a few imams had preached violence. "You should not let fundamentalist imams come here. Screen them 1000 times before they are admitted, and after they are admitted screen what they say in the mosque."
He said some Muslims wanted to impose sharia (Islamic law) in their adopted countries, and when propaganda did not work they turned to intimidation.
Professor Israeli said his task was to describe, not prescribe. He also said his warning did not include immigrants, including Muslims, who simply wanted to improve their lot. As long as they respected the law and democracy, their numbers — Buddhist, Muslim or Jew — were immaterial. It became material when a group accepted violence.
"The trains in London and Madrid were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists but by Muslims, so it is them we have to beware," he said.
Keysar Trad, of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said "Not only religious clerics need to be screened before entering Ausralia but also academics … this type of academic does nothing but create hatred, suspicion and division … We should review not only what the man has said but also those who have sponsored him, to see if they endorse those comments."
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
In The Chaos Of Iraq, One Project Is On Target: A Giant US Embassy
With all the chaos still happening in Iraq, this is a good story published last year illustrating the priorities of the US government in Iraq…
Taken from the Times, UK, 03.05.2006
By Daniel McGrory
THE question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?
Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call “George W’s palace” rising from the banks of the Tigris.
In the pavement cafés, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects’ claims that the diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it.
While families in the capital suffer electricity cuts, queue all day to fuel their cars and wait for water pipes to be connected, the US mission due to open in June next year will have its own power and water plants to cater for a population the size of a small town.
Officially, the design of the compound is supposed to be a secret, but you cannot hide the giant construction cranes and the concrete contours of the 21 buildings that are taking shape.
Looming over the skyline, the embassy has the distinction of being the only big US building project in Iraq that is on time and within budget.
In a week when Washington revealed a startling list of missed deadlines and overspending on building projects, Congress was told that the bill for the embassy was $592 million (£312 million).
The heavily guarded 42-hectare (104-acre) site — which will have a 15ft thick perimeter wall — has hundreds of workers swarming on scaffolding. Local residents are bitter that the Kuwaiti contractor has employed only foreign staff and is busing them in from a temporary camp nearby.
After roughing it in Saddam’s abandoned palaces, diplomats should have every comfort in their new home. There will be impressive residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff to work in. There will be what is rumoured to be the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants offering delicacies from favourite US food chains, tennis courts and a swish American Club for evening functions.
The security measures being installed are described as extraordinary. US officials are preparing for the day when the so-called green zone, the fortified and sealed-off compound where international diplomats and Iraq’s leaders live and work, is reopened to the rest of the city’s residents, and American diplomats can retreat to their own secure area.
Iraqi politicians opposed to the US presence protest that the scale of the project suggests that America retains long-term ambitions here. The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, said the embassy’s size “is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country”.
A State Department official said that the size reflected the “massive amount of work still facing the US and our commitment to see it through”.
BEHIND SCHEDULE
A US Inspector General’s report into reconstruction found that although $22 billion had been spent, water, sewage and electricity, infrastructure still operated at prewar levels
Despite “significant progress” in recent months, less than half the water and electricity projects have been completed
Only six of the 150 planned health centres have been completed
US officials spent $70 million on medical equipment for health clinics that are unlikely ever to be built. More than 75 per cent of the funds for the 150 planned clinics have been allocated
Task Force Shield, the $147 million programme to train Iraqi security units to protect key oil and electrical sites failed to meet its goals. A fraud investigation is under way
Oil production was 2.18 million barrels per day in the last week of March. Before the war it was 2.6 million
Iraq MP Wanted In Kuwait For Terrorist Blasts
Taken from the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, February 8, 2007
By James Glanz and Marc Santora (original article belongs to New York Times)
A MEMBER of Iraq's Parliament was convicted of planning attacks on the US and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983 that left five Americans dead, Iraqi and US officials have claimed.
The MP, Jamal Jafaar Mohammed ali Ebrahimi, was sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Kuwait for the attacks, the officials said on Tuesday.
Mr Jamal, as he is known, was elected to Parliament in 2005 as a part of the Shiite coalition that now governs Iraq.
"We are actively investigating these serious allegations and continue to be in contact with the Iraqi Government to pursue this case," said Lou Fintor, a spokesman at the US embassy in Iraq.
The bombings in Kuwait led to at least seven Americans being taken hostage in Lebanon, and several other terrorist acts aimed at freeing 17 prisoners sentenced to death for the bombings.
The hostage-takings also led to a scandal in the administration of the US president at the time, Ronald Reagan, as Washington sought the hostages' freedom with the offer of a secret arms deal to help Iran, which was then at war with Iraq.
Mr Jamal, who was in Iraq until a week ago, is now in Iran, according to two associates. The presence of a wanted terrorist in the Parliament of Iraq's US-backed Government is an embarrassment for the US, particularly given Iran's role in sheltering Mr Jamal.
The US has warned Iran against meddling in Iraq and US forces have detained a number of Iranians on charges of providing assistance to illicit armed groups.
Iran said on Tuesday that it held the US responsible for the safety of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq on Sunday. Although the diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, was abducted on a Baghdad street by men wearing Iraqi military uniforms, Iran has accused the US of directing the operation. US officials deny any involvement.
Mr Jamal's long-unnoticed presence in the Iraqi Government was a mystery that Iraqi officials could not explain.
He served as a security adviser to the former Iraqi prime minister, Dr Ibrahim al-Jaafari, officials in Washington said. It was then that they first suspected that he was involved in the 1983 embassy attacks.
It was unclear when US officials first raised the issue with the present Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, but one official said there have been discussions for several months.
Mr Jamal was first identified as a wanted terrorist a month ago by Strategic Policy Consulting, an Iranian dissident group in Washington that gets much of its information from the People's Mujahideen, the largest and most militant group opposed to Tehran.
It was only on Tuesday, when CNN reported the allegations, that US officials acknowledged they were investigating.
Several Iraqi officials who know Mr Jamal said there was little doubt that he was involved in the bombing in Kuwait.
The story of how he came to power, his close association with many Iraqi officials, and his long association with Iran all underscore the complicated and intertwined nature of the relationship between the two nations.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Bangladesh Shaken By War Of The Dynasties
Taken from The Independent, UK, 12 February 2007
By Justin Huggler
Bangladesh has suffered a silent coup. In a country that only a few months ago was celebrating a Nobel Peace Prize for one of its best known sons, Muhammad Yunus, armed soldiers now patrol.
Elections have been cancelled, and political leaders are being rounded up. At least nine former ministers have been arrested without charge. Human rights have been suspended. It is now illegal to oppose government decisions. All political activity is banned.
For the past 15 years, politics in the world's third most populous Muslim country has been dominated by twin matriarchs - divas who hate each other so much they will not cross paths, let alone speak to each other: Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
They lead the two big political parties, the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League, and they have alternated as prime minister since democracy was restored in 1991. But the feud between them finally boiled over this year as they refused to wait for elections to decide who should be prime minister next. As Khaleda Zia tried to fix the elections, Sheikh Hasina brought her strongmen on to the streets. At least 45 people were killed.
With the chaos at its peak, President Iajuddin Ahmed stepped in on 11 January, declaring a state of emergency, and cancelling the elections. The international community looked on with relief. But the story that was not told was how the military had seized power: how the generals went to the President and told him to declare the emergency, and how they are behind the "caretaker" government.
A country that only months ago was relishing its emergence on the world stage, with economic growth of 6 per cent, is looking, again, into the abyss of military rule. People are asking whether the era of the grandes dames is finally over. Much has been made of the fact that politics here has been dominated by women for more than a decade. But it was no triumph of feminism.
Sheikh Hasina's and Khaleda Zia's power came from dead men. They are relatives of the two most powerful figures in Bangladesh's 36-year history as an independent country.
Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the man who led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan only to be assassinated for his own authoritarian attempts at single-party rule. The cadres of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League still wear the black coats favoured by him.
Khaleda Zia is the widow of General Ziaur Rahman, who seized power and became military dictator shortly after Sheikh Mujibur's death, only to be assassinated himself.Their dependence on dead relatives did not stop them from putting on airs. Khaleda Zia, in particular, ruled Bangladesh "in an imperial fashion", according to Ataur Rahman, a professor of political science at Dhaka University. The word in Dhaka is that they are now under unofficial house arrest, guarded by security forces for their own "protection".
The issues between them in the run-up to the elections scheduled for 22 January seemed relatively minor. Sheikh Hasina's Awami League complained that the election commissioners were biased, having barred the league's political ally, General Ershad, a former dictator, from standing.
But really, the BNP was blatantly trying to fix the elections, says Professor Rahman. "It wasn't just election engineering, it was election designing," he says. "It shouldn't have been an issue for the BNP. They were winning anyway. They were doing it for five or 10 seats. They must be crying now."
What the parties have done is put the country back in the hands of the military. The chief of the caretaker government, in effect the acting prime minister, is Fakruddin Ahmed. "He has his allies in the World Bank, the UN and donor countries, but he is only one actor," says Professor Rahman. "You need a lot of force to back this government, otherwise the political parties would overwhelm it."
All Dr Ahmed's allies would have been powerless against the well-organised party machines but for the military's backing. Only the army can frighten the party cadres, and that means real power is in the hands of a man who until now has been largely silent and invisible: the chief of staff, Lt-Gen Moeen Ahmed.
Gen Ahmed insisted this week that "the army has no intention of taking over". But elections have been postponed for at least three months, and few expect them to be held that soon. "I don't envisage an election," smiles Professor Rahman.
And the "caretaker" government is not just reforming the election process. It has set about implementing its own policies. The hawkers who once sold their wares to passengers arriving by ferry on the Buriganga river - one of Dhaka's few tourist sights - have disappeared. The slums, too, are being emptied. At least 3,000 families have been evicted from Dhaka and Chittagong, and the government is ignoring a court order that they be resettled.
Dhaka may be calm, but in political circles, the climate is fearful. Of the 500 politicians invited to a fashionable party this week, only 50 dared turn up. The press has been warned that the government has the right to censor anything without warning.
"It's a coup, of course. It's a quasi-military government," says Nurul Kabir, the editor of New Age, the only newspaper that has dared to criticise the state of emergency. "The Awami League and the BNP were engaged in a cold power struggle, devoid of any political principles. But now the government has suspended the fundamental human rights of all citizens."
Most Bangladeshis are convinced that the detained politicians are knee-deep in corruption, says Mr Kabir. "The politicians of mainstream parties for the last 10 to 15 years used state power to amass personal wealth. It was visible corruption," he says. "We believe they should be brought to justice. But [the authorities] don't even have specific charges against them yet and they are being sent to jail. This is not done."
Most Bangladeshis have welcomed the state of emergency because it has calmed streets that a month ago were witnessing ever worsening violence, or were suffering transport blockades that had brought the economy to a standstill.
But Mr Kabir says Bangladesh is sailing into dangerous waters. "Politics is forbidden now, there is no politics," he laughs. "Our position is simple; you cannot correct the legal system by illegal means."
Sunday, February 11, 2007
New York To Test Ways To Prevent Nuclear Terror
Iran's nuclear program is not a threat to Israel and the country is prepared to settle all outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency within three weeks, its top nuclear negotiator said Sunday. Ali Larijani, speaking at a forum that gathered the world's top security officials, said Iran doesn't have aggressive intentions toward any nation. The IAEA, led by Mohamed ElBaradei, has said it has found no evidence that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. It seems New York is not taking any risks...
Taken from the New York Times, February 9, 2007
By ERIC LIPTON
Starting this spring, the Bush administration will assess new detection machines at a Staten Island port terminal that are designed to screen cargo and automatically distinguish between naturally occurring radiation and critical bomb-building ingredients.
And later this year, the federal government plans to begin setting up an elaborate network of radiation alarms at some bridges, tunnels, roadways and waterways into New York, creating a 50-mile circle around the city.
The effort, which could be expanded to other cities if proven successful, is a major shift of focus for the Department of Homeland Security. As it finishes installing the first generation of radiation scanners at the nation’s ports and land border crossings, the department is trying to find ways to stop a plot that would use a weapon built within the United States.
“How do you create deterrence against terrorism?” said Vayl S. Oxford, director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, the Homeland Security agency coordinating the work. “You complicate the ability for the terrorist to do what they want.”
But even as the new campaign begins, some members of Congress and antiterrorism experts are raising concerns that the initiative, like previous Homeland Security programs, could prove extraordinarily costly and provide few security gains.
“This is just total baloney,” said Tara O’Toole, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Energy during the Clinton administration, where she oversaw nuclear weapons safety efforts. “They are forgetting that no matter what type of engineering solution they try in good faith to come up with, this is a thinking enemy and they will look for a way around it.”
While Homeland Security officials repeatedly declined to estimate the costs of a nationwide detection system, agency documents show they might spend more than a billion dollars on the cargo-screening equipment alone.
Local officials in New York are sparring with Homeland Security over a plan to immediately transfer to local and state authorities the burden of maintaining and operating the network of detection machines when it is completed within several years.
“We are concerned they will put money forward for a piece of hardware and then move to another project,” said Raymond W. Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner. He added that while the city supports the plan, he is not convinced that the proposed detection network makes sense. “Whether or not it works, whether or not it causes too many false alarms, which causes a whole other set of problems, all of these things are still to be determined,” he said.
Mr. Oxford said he is aware of the concerns about costs, which is still the subject of negotiations, and the performance of the new detection machines. But with a threat like a nuclear attack, the country cannot afford to wait until all the details are worked out, he said.
“Our philosophy is not to wait for perfection, because perfection never comes,” he said.
The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, among the newest agencies at Homeland Security, was established in April 2005, in response to criticism that efforts to combat nuclear terrorism were too disorganized.
The office focuses on blocking two types of plots: a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb. A nuclear attack by terrorists is considered unlikely, because of the difficulty of obtaining the required radioactive materials, such as highly enriched uranium.
The detonation of a dirty bomb is considered much more feasible. It only requires dynamite or another conventional explosive to detonate a widely available radioactive source — like the cesium or cobalt in certain medical devices. The blast might cause injuries or deaths, but the radioactive residue would cover a two- to three-block area and not pose an immediate health threat. Possible panic and economic disruption could be among the most serious consequences, experts say.
The Securing the Cities detection network, as the New York experiment is called, is intended to stop a nuclear or radiological threat as far away from a city as possible. “Detecting it in the core of Manhattan is too late,” Mr. Oxford said.
The network would most likely include truck inspection stations along highways approaching New York, which would be equipped with radiation detection devices, agency budget documents say. Devices might also be installed at highway tollbooths and at spots where rail, boat and subway traffic could be monitored.
The detection equipment, some of which would be mobile, would be electronically connected and monitored so if a suspicious vehicle passed one spot without being stopped, it might be intercepted after passing another detector.
Some New York agencies already have a limited supply of radiation detection equipment, but the new system would be much more extensive and go much further outside the city.
Mr. Kelly said that the city would, at least initially, use any new detection equipment to screen vehicles heading into Lower Manhattan. The project would complement a city program to install cameras, license plate readers and devices that can block vehicle traffic, creating a “ring of steel” around the financial district.
The actual design of the Homeland Security system and the protocols for how responses to alarms will be handled, are still being negotiated by federal officials and authorities in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York state.
Benn H. Tannenbaum, a physicist and nuclear terrorism expert at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, said the system would never create anything close to an impenetrable barrier, particularly for a nuclear bomb, since the required ingredients have low levels of radioactivity and can easily be shielded. But the project still might be worthwhile, he said. “If nothing else, it makes the terrorist think twice before they do something like this,” he said.
Ms. O’Toole, the former Department of Energy official, pointed to Homeland Security’s BioWatch program, set up in about 30 cities in 2003 to monitor the air for a possible biological attack.
The equipment was installed quickly, but there was no detailed plan in place for how to respond to positive alarms, which meant three weeks of confusion among Houston authorities in October 2003, after tularemia, a naturally occurring pathogen, was discovered. “There is this disconnect between these grand schemes for technology and reality,” Ms. O’Toole said.
Laura S. H. Holgate, vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based research group, said the government should put far more energy into a global effort to prevent nuclear materials from getting into the hands of terrorists.
The testing planned on Staten Island at the New York Container Terminal is intended to police concerns about false alarms.
Three sets of new types of detection machines have been installed there. For the first time, such machines sound an alarm when something radioactive passes through, and simultaneously identify the radioactive isotope. That allows officials to distinguish between innocuous items that can emit low levels of radiation, such as granite or kitty litter, and real threats.
Officials at the Government Accountability Office and some members of Congress are concerned that Homeland Security is moving too quickly to buy the new machines. Initial tests have shown them to be not much more effective than existing machines that are a fraction of the cost.
“We know this system is going to be expensive,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “We need to be sure it will perform as promised.”
US Officer's Claim Sparks New Call For Hicks Torture Inquiry
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and other mistakes have damaged America's reputation, and work must be done to prove the U.S. is still a force for good in the world. It seems that the case of Prisoner Abuse is still wide open...
By Penelope Debelle
DAVID Hicks' father, Terry, has called for an independent inquiry into claims his son was sexually tortured, after a witness report in the US described a similar assault by the US millitary at the same site in Afghanistan where Hicks was held.
The US report, released under freedom-of-information laws, was made by a senior military officer and describes an incident in February 2002 in which a prisoner was allegedly anally assaulted by military police at the US joint interrogation facility at Kandahar.
David Hicks told his family when they visited him at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 that he had been anally assaulted during interrogation by the US in Afghanistan while he was hooded and restrained.
"He said he was anally penetrated a number of times," Mr Hicks said yesterday. "They put a bag over his head, he wasn't expecting it and didn't know what it was. It was quite brutal."
Mr Hicks said his son could not see who assaulted him but could hear American voices.
"This report runs along very similar lines to what David has already told us," he said of the military officer's report. "Yet the Government has always said nothing happened to David."
Mr Hicks said his son reported the assault as part of torture allegations made to the Red Cross and the Australian consul, who referred it to the American military, but no evidence of abuse was found.
The Federal Government has said all allegations of physical abuse raised by David Hicks were dealt with, including in an investigation by the US Naval Criminal Investigation Service that found no evidence of abuse.
The sworn witness report by a US officer with "04" status, indicating the rank of major or above, said the incident it referred to happened while eight prisoners were being processed at the Kandahar site where Hicks was also processed.
The officer described seeing a military policeman preparing to undertake an anal probe of a shackled prisoner. "Without warning the (prisoner), and in a cruel way, he pushed both his fingers into the (prisoner's) anus," the officer said.
The prisoner reacted violently, screaming and falling to the ground, he said.
Terry Hicks said yesterday that the military could not investigate itself. "It's got to go to an independent investigation, not the military," he said.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said yesterday that Canberra could easily have asked that David Hicks be brought home and, given Australia's close ties with the US, there would be a high probability such a request would be acceded to.
But the Government wants the US to try Hicks because his alleged offences cannot be tried under Australian law, he said.
It has emerged that Hicks' case could face further delays because he may not be the first to be tried. The military prosecutor who last week filed charges against him, Colonel Morris Davis, said two others were also listed for charging. He rejected criticism of the charges' timing, saying notice was given to Hicks' lawyers that charges were pending before they visited Guantanamo Bay recently.
Colonel Davis said a meeting was held in his office in Washington on January 26 with Hicks' US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, and one of his Australian lawyers, Michael Griffin. He said he told them he intended to charge Hicks by the end of the next week, and Mr Griffin had asked for the charges to be timed for while they were at Guantanamo Bay.
Colonel Davis said he told him prosecutors would do their best but it would probably be the end of the week. "To allege this was a calculated act timed to aggravate (Hicks' lawyer David McLeod) and complicate the Hicks case is absurd," he said.
