Israel must stop imprisoning Palestinians without a reason
June 29, 2011, For many years now, Israel has been dumping Palestinians behind bars, or sending them to agonize in open-ended detainment in desert detention camps, purely for political reasons.
In hundreds of cases, there is absolutely no legal ground, even according to the Israeli military laws, for the prolonged incarceration of these indisputably innocent Palestinians.
Israel often doesn't even try to justify this flagrant, vindictive and oppressive policy. It just contents itself with invoking the security mantra, utterly ignoring the most elementary considerations of equity and justice.
Palestinians are arrested and kept away from their families for years without justifiable reasons.
http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2011/06/israel-must-stop-imprisoning.html
Thursday, June 30, 2011
What Robert Gates, US Treasury T. Geithner, IMF board of directors, Kissinger, Iranian regime and Turkey which opens up banks in Erbil have in common
Turkey: Haydar Duymaz, who has been imprisoned for three years from PKK case in Tekirdag F-type Prison No. 2 , was put in a single cell one month ago after being attacked by guardians and the administrator of the prison. Duymaz's lawyer Sezin Uçar, announcing that Duymaz turned the hunger-strike into a death fast, unless the torture event in the prison is investigated by a delegation of Ministry of Justice.
Lawyer Uçar said the followings; "Our applications about the torture applied on my client to competent authorities remained inconclusive. My client wasn't treated despite being seriously injured and still no action has been launched against the names involved in the torture event. Despite all my insistence, my client has started a death fast three days ago which he will not stop until the torture event is investigated."
Warning the authorities about the health condition of Uçar who has been suffering from serious health problems after being tortured, Uçar continued as follows; " I disapprove of my client's death fast as he may at any time lose his life unless his demands are met. His family also doesn't have any chance to convince him to give up the fast as there is a visit prohibition penalty applied on him."
KARAJ, Iran, -- Kurdish political prisoners entered 26th days of their hunger strike but their demands are not being responded by the prison’s officials, report said today. According to the reports of Human Rights Committee, these three detainees have been held in a suspended condition for the last two years.
Enwer Xizri, Kamran Shexi and Seyd Ibrahim Seydi are entering their 26th day of hunger strike in Rejaishahir prison of Karaj city. These prisoners of conscious had been held in compartment number 350 in Ewin House of Detention in Tehran. But they were transferred to Rejaishahir prison and accommodated along with the criminal prisoners.
It should be noted that one of their demands is to separate them from the criminal prisoners and put them in the section allocated for the political prisoners.
BANE, -- Kurdish workers have been one of the main victims of Iranian state-terror in East Kurdistan. Iranian Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) killed a worker in the city of Bane. According to our local correspondence IRGC opened fire on a group of Kurdish workers in the areas of Bilesin of Bane city and killed one. The worker who was killed is identified as Serdar Purbenefsh and is the father of three children.
The Iranian regime is working to black list the Kurdish resistance movement led by Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), but this the Kurdish people who have been subjected to the state-terror of Iranian Mullah Regime.
Kurdish people are deprived of their very basic national and human rights. They even do not have access to decent employment and impoverished as a result of that. Systematic and consistent unemployment of the Kurdish people who are regarded as “separatist” and “terrorist” by the state, forced hundreds to Kurds to work on the borders carrying goods into the country.
Iranian Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) who is responsible for the implementation of state terrorism in Kurdistan, assault the Kurdish workers and kill them on the border regions. In their latest assault they murdered Serdar Purbenefsh who was the father of three.
KURDISTAN, -- Giving information about the operations against the HPG guerrillas in inertia position, People’s Defence Forces press office HPG-BIM reported that Turkish and Iranian armies have carried out a common military operation.
The operation on June 27 which included the Vargenîma and Ahmet Bendi regions on the boundary line of Hakkari is reported to continue on both sides of the border.
Separately, Turkish army has launched a bombardment on the valleys in Dersim, new operations in Hakkari, Siirt and Muş and declared some regions in Sirnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakir as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas.
Dersim valleys under bombardment
Following yesterday's clash in Dersim where three MKP (Maoist Communist Party) militants have lost their lives, the military operation is expanding in the rural areas of Hanusagı and Bunrak villages of Dersim.
While the Pülümür Valley, Kutu Brook and Vartinik Hamlet are reportedly hit by dropped bombs for long hours with two cobra helicopters, it has been informed that a military operation has been launched in Hasangazi Village territory of Pülümür district.
Post-explosion operation in Hakkari
With the participation of a large number of soldiers, Turkish army has launched another operation in Hakkari region following the explosion reported during the passage of a military vehicle on Hakkari-Cukurca way close to the Gecimli village. Hakkari Governor Muammer Türker reported no loss of lives or injuries in the explosion.
Air-supported operation in Siirt
Following the explosion reported at early morning hours during the passage control of soldiers at the 20th kilometre of the Siirt-Eruh highway, an air-supported operation has launched in the region. No reports of deaths or injuries came after the explosion.
Operations in three regions of Varto
Also Operations have been launched reportedly in three regions of Varto this morning. The operations in rural and forested areas of Icmeler (Reqasa) village and at Buzlugöze (Rindalîya) Village rural are joined by thousands of soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Chief of General Staff has declared many regions in Sirnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakir as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas. The ban on the regions, names announced on the web-site of the Chief of General Staff, will stand as of July 1st till October 1st.
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=article&nuceID=2567
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rojhelat-Info-Rojhelat-EU/163919120292326
Lawyer Uçar said the followings; "Our applications about the torture applied on my client to competent authorities remained inconclusive. My client wasn't treated despite being seriously injured and still no action has been launched against the names involved in the torture event. Despite all my insistence, my client has started a death fast three days ago which he will not stop until the torture event is investigated."
Warning the authorities about the health condition of Uçar who has been suffering from serious health problems after being tortured, Uçar continued as follows; " I disapprove of my client's death fast as he may at any time lose his life unless his demands are met. His family also doesn't have any chance to convince him to give up the fast as there is a visit prohibition penalty applied on him."
KARAJ, Iran, -- Kurdish political prisoners entered 26th days of their hunger strike but their demands are not being responded by the prison’s officials, report said today. According to the reports of Human Rights Committee, these three detainees have been held in a suspended condition for the last two years.
Enwer Xizri, Kamran Shexi and Seyd Ibrahim Seydi are entering their 26th day of hunger strike in Rejaishahir prison of Karaj city. These prisoners of conscious had been held in compartment number 350 in Ewin House of Detention in Tehran. But they were transferred to Rejaishahir prison and accommodated along with the criminal prisoners.
It should be noted that one of their demands is to separate them from the criminal prisoners and put them in the section allocated for the political prisoners.
BANE, -- Kurdish workers have been one of the main victims of Iranian state-terror in East Kurdistan. Iranian Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) killed a worker in the city of Bane. According to our local correspondence IRGC opened fire on a group of Kurdish workers in the areas of Bilesin of Bane city and killed one. The worker who was killed is identified as Serdar Purbenefsh and is the father of three children.
The Iranian regime is working to black list the Kurdish resistance movement led by Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), but this the Kurdish people who have been subjected to the state-terror of Iranian Mullah Regime.
Kurdish people are deprived of their very basic national and human rights. They even do not have access to decent employment and impoverished as a result of that. Systematic and consistent unemployment of the Kurdish people who are regarded as “separatist” and “terrorist” by the state, forced hundreds to Kurds to work on the borders carrying goods into the country.
Iranian Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) who is responsible for the implementation of state terrorism in Kurdistan, assault the Kurdish workers and kill them on the border regions. In their latest assault they murdered Serdar Purbenefsh who was the father of three.
KURDISTAN, -- Giving information about the operations against the HPG guerrillas in inertia position, People’s Defence Forces press office HPG-BIM reported that Turkish and Iranian armies have carried out a common military operation.
The operation on June 27 which included the Vargenîma and Ahmet Bendi regions on the boundary line of Hakkari is reported to continue on both sides of the border.
Separately, Turkish army has launched a bombardment on the valleys in Dersim, new operations in Hakkari, Siirt and Muş and declared some regions in Sirnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakir as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas.
Dersim valleys under bombardment
Following yesterday's clash in Dersim where three MKP (Maoist Communist Party) militants have lost their lives, the military operation is expanding in the rural areas of Hanusagı and Bunrak villages of Dersim.
While the Pülümür Valley, Kutu Brook and Vartinik Hamlet are reportedly hit by dropped bombs for long hours with two cobra helicopters, it has been informed that a military operation has been launched in Hasangazi Village territory of Pülümür district.
Post-explosion operation in Hakkari
With the participation of a large number of soldiers, Turkish army has launched another operation in Hakkari region following the explosion reported during the passage of a military vehicle on Hakkari-Cukurca way close to the Gecimli village. Hakkari Governor Muammer Türker reported no loss of lives or injuries in the explosion.
Air-supported operation in Siirt
Following the explosion reported at early morning hours during the passage control of soldiers at the 20th kilometre of the Siirt-Eruh highway, an air-supported operation has launched in the region. No reports of deaths or injuries came after the explosion.
Operations in three regions of Varto
Also Operations have been launched reportedly in three regions of Varto this morning. The operations in rural and forested areas of Icmeler (Reqasa) village and at Buzlugöze (Rindalîya) Village rural are joined by thousands of soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Chief of General Staff has declared many regions in Sirnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakir as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas. The ban on the regions, names announced on the web-site of the Chief of General Staff, will stand as of July 1st till October 1st.
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=article&nuceID=2567
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rojhelat-Info-Rojhelat-EU/163919120292326
Enforced disappearances in Pakistan
Ever since Pakistan declared its support for the US-led “war on terror”, hundreds if not thousands of people accused of links to terrorist groups have been arbitrarily detained. Many of them have become victims of enforced disappearance.
Custodial safeguards required by Pakistani law have routinely been ignored as people have been improperly arrested without warrant, detained without reference to any law, held in undeclared places of detention, denied access to lawyers, family and courts, and often subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.
The Pakistan government began using the practice of enforced disappearances widely after it joined the US-led "war on terror" in 2001. Domestic political opponents of the Pakistani government were also targeted, in particular members of Pakistan's Sindhi and Baloch nationalist groups advocating greater autonomy.
In Balochistan, a province in southwest Pakistan, the human rights situation is particularly dire. Arbitrary detention, abductions, enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions are overwhelmingly committed with impunity. At least 100 Baloch activists, teachers, journalists and lawyers were subjected to enforced disappearance and were subsequently executed extrajudicially, in so-called “kill and dump” operations, between July 2010 to February 2011.
Their bullet-riddled bodies, most bearing torture marks, have been recovered across Balochistan. Previously, the bodies of missing persons were rarely recovered.The confrontation between Baloch groups and the state is characterized by human rights abuses committed by all sides.
Amnesty International believes that genuine security in Pakistan must include full observance of human rights and rule of law, and that this must be at the core of any counter-terrorism strategy. In its 2008 report, Amnesty International confronted the Pakistani authorities with evidence that government officials were obstructing attempts to trace those who have disappeared.
The evidence included official court records and affidavits of victims and witnesses of enforced disappearances. The tactics included denying detention had taken place and denying all knowledge of the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons; refusing to obey judicial directions; concealing the identity of the detaining authorities (for example, by transferring the disappeared to other secret locations); threatening harm or repeat disappearance; and filing spurious criminal charges long after a person has been subjected to enforced disappearance, to create a facade of legality.
By holding people in secret detention, the government of Pakistan has not only violated their rights but also failed in its duty to bring to justice those suspected of involvement in attacks targeting civilians. Where there is reason to believe that people have participated in the planning or perpetration of such attacks, they should be investigated, charged, receive a prompt and fair trial and, if found guilty, punished, in accordance with international standards.
Read more:
‘As if Hell Fell on Me’: The Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan (June 2010) Denying the Undeniable: Enforced Disappearances in Pakistan (July 2008) Pakistan: Working to stop human rights violations in the "war on terror" (December 2006) Pakistan: Human rights ignored in the “war on terror” (September 2006)
Custodial safeguards required by Pakistani law have routinely been ignored as people have been improperly arrested without warrant, detained without reference to any law, held in undeclared places of detention, denied access to lawyers, family and courts, and often subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.
The Pakistan government began using the practice of enforced disappearances widely after it joined the US-led "war on terror" in 2001. Domestic political opponents of the Pakistani government were also targeted, in particular members of Pakistan's Sindhi and Baloch nationalist groups advocating greater autonomy.
In Balochistan, a province in southwest Pakistan, the human rights situation is particularly dire. Arbitrary detention, abductions, enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions are overwhelmingly committed with impunity. At least 100 Baloch activists, teachers, journalists and lawyers were subjected to enforced disappearance and were subsequently executed extrajudicially, in so-called “kill and dump” operations, between July 2010 to February 2011.
Their bullet-riddled bodies, most bearing torture marks, have been recovered across Balochistan. Previously, the bodies of missing persons were rarely recovered.The confrontation between Baloch groups and the state is characterized by human rights abuses committed by all sides.
Amnesty International believes that genuine security in Pakistan must include full observance of human rights and rule of law, and that this must be at the core of any counter-terrorism strategy. In its 2008 report, Amnesty International confronted the Pakistani authorities with evidence that government officials were obstructing attempts to trace those who have disappeared.
The evidence included official court records and affidavits of victims and witnesses of enforced disappearances. The tactics included denying detention had taken place and denying all knowledge of the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons; refusing to obey judicial directions; concealing the identity of the detaining authorities (for example, by transferring the disappeared to other secret locations); threatening harm or repeat disappearance; and filing spurious criminal charges long after a person has been subjected to enforced disappearance, to create a facade of legality.
By holding people in secret detention, the government of Pakistan has not only violated their rights but also failed in its duty to bring to justice those suspected of involvement in attacks targeting civilians. Where there is reason to believe that people have participated in the planning or perpetration of such attacks, they should be investigated, charged, receive a prompt and fair trial and, if found guilty, punished, in accordance with international standards.
Read more:
‘As if Hell Fell on Me’: The Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan (June 2010) Denying the Undeniable: Enforced Disappearances in Pakistan (July 2008) Pakistan: Working to stop human rights violations in the "war on terror" (December 2006) Pakistan: Human rights ignored in the “war on terror” (September 2006)
What Robert Gates as a former CIA director and the French President Mr Sarkozy who oppose Turkey´s entrance in the EU have in common
By Thierry Meyssan Translated from French to English by Robert Thompson
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10060
French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated in the Knesset that the Israeli state had to return part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, accept that Jerusalem would be the capital of two states, stop all settlement activity, lift all the checkpoints in the West Bank, and end the blockade of Gaza.
At the airport as he was leaving. http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2008/06/suicide-or-thwarted-false-flag.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10060
French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated in the Knesset that the Israeli state had to return part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, accept that Jerusalem would be the capital of two states, stop all settlement activity, lift all the checkpoints in the West Bank, and end the blockade of Gaza.
At the airport as he was leaving. http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2008/06/suicide-or-thwarted-false-flag.html
IMF financial terrorism
On June 28, New York Times writer Liz Alderman headlined, "France's Lagarde Named New Head of IMF," saying: She'll assume "one of the most powerful positions in global finance as a worsening crisis in Greece threatens the euro currency union and rattles financial markets worldwide."
Washington's choice all along, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner endorsed her over Mexico's central bank governor Agustin Carsten, her only competitor after IMF board of directors excluded Israeli central bank governor Stanley Fischer. Allegedly because of age, he, in fact, lacked support outside Israel, and US officials stuck with traditional IMF policy of a European in charge.
An American always heads the World Bank, yet Washington dominates all international lending agencies, assuring it anoints officials heading them, public discourse notwithstanding.
Read more
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/meaner-tougher-imf-with-lagarde.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/imf-financial-terrorism.html
Washington's choice all along, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner endorsed her over Mexico's central bank governor Agustin Carsten, her only competitor after IMF board of directors excluded Israeli central bank governor Stanley Fischer. Allegedly because of age, he, in fact, lacked support outside Israel, and US officials stuck with traditional IMF policy of a European in charge.
An American always heads the World Bank, yet Washington dominates all international lending agencies, assuring it anoints officials heading them, public discourse notwithstanding.
Read more
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/meaner-tougher-imf-with-lagarde.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/imf-financial-terrorism.html
"They are trying to obtain a result by swinging the judicial institutions around the Kurdish people like the sword of damocles."
Call on the France state to give up its hostility towards the Kurdish people
30 June 2011, The crisis is an "AKP production" which was planned targeting Kurdish deputies. People’s Union of Kurdistan (KCK) stated that the crisis caused by the hindrance of the elected deputies entrance in the parliament is an "AKP production" which was planned targeting Kurdish deputies.
Presidency of KCK Executive Committee made a statement concerning the YSK (Supreme Election Board) crisis, police attack on people and the PKK trial in France.
Noting that the Kurdish people are under a total attack, the statement underlined that the Turkish government and international hegemonic powers move in cooperation as long as a solution is insisted for the Kurdish question.
The statement said; "Putting all sorts of cheatings, lies, slanders, intrigues and conspiracies into action and increasing the political and military attacks and constraints, they are trying to obtain a result by swinging the judicial institutions around the Kurdish people like the sword of damocles."
Drawing attention to YSK's decision to strip off Hatip Dicle of his legal membership in the parliament and the non-release of five detained Kurdish deputies, the statement remarked that the current crisis in the parliament was caused by the AKP which hindered the entrance of the elected deputies into the parliament.
The statement, pointing out that the Kurdish people, regardless of the elders, youngsters and children, are subjected to gas bombs and fatal stick blows every day as it were a civil war, remarked that during the attacks on people, 50-year-old Hatice İdin lost her life, 60-year-old Halime Kaya is fighting to survive under intensive care due to a stick blow she got on the head and another person has lost an eye because of a gas bomb.
Calling attention to the case opened against 18 Kurdish politicians in France, the statement noted that the case is "an intriguer policy of criminalizing Kurdish associations, institutions". "The indictment argued by the France Prosecutor bases completely on lie and a disgusting insult to Kurdish freedom struggle and people", said the statement.
Calling on the France state to give up its hostility towards the Kurdish people, KCK said; "We are calling on our people in Europe to raise their democratic responses and not to remain silent against this unfair attitude of the French state."
Translation: Berna Ozgencil
ANF / BEHDINAN http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
30 June 2011, The crisis is an "AKP production" which was planned targeting Kurdish deputies. People’s Union of Kurdistan (KCK) stated that the crisis caused by the hindrance of the elected deputies entrance in the parliament is an "AKP production" which was planned targeting Kurdish deputies.
Presidency of KCK Executive Committee made a statement concerning the YSK (Supreme Election Board) crisis, police attack on people and the PKK trial in France.
Noting that the Kurdish people are under a total attack, the statement underlined that the Turkish government and international hegemonic powers move in cooperation as long as a solution is insisted for the Kurdish question.
The statement said; "Putting all sorts of cheatings, lies, slanders, intrigues and conspiracies into action and increasing the political and military attacks and constraints, they are trying to obtain a result by swinging the judicial institutions around the Kurdish people like the sword of damocles."
Drawing attention to YSK's decision to strip off Hatip Dicle of his legal membership in the parliament and the non-release of five detained Kurdish deputies, the statement remarked that the current crisis in the parliament was caused by the AKP which hindered the entrance of the elected deputies into the parliament.
The statement, pointing out that the Kurdish people, regardless of the elders, youngsters and children, are subjected to gas bombs and fatal stick blows every day as it were a civil war, remarked that during the attacks on people, 50-year-old Hatice İdin lost her life, 60-year-old Halime Kaya is fighting to survive under intensive care due to a stick blow she got on the head and another person has lost an eye because of a gas bomb.
Calling attention to the case opened against 18 Kurdish politicians in France, the statement noted that the case is "an intriguer policy of criminalizing Kurdish associations, institutions". "The indictment argued by the France Prosecutor bases completely on lie and a disgusting insult to Kurdish freedom struggle and people", said the statement.
Calling on the France state to give up its hostility towards the Kurdish people, KCK said; "We are calling on our people in Europe to raise their democratic responses and not to remain silent against this unfair attitude of the French state."
Translation: Berna Ozgencil
ANF / BEHDINAN http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
Robert Gates blames EU for US "Turkish democratic example´s" Turkey 'drift.'
Meanwhile, Turkey bombs Kurdish "rebels" in their own #¤¤ country since 7.000 years back and the French-Jewish CIA promoted to power President Nicolas Sarkozy who opposes the entrance of Turkey in the European Union, airdrops weapons to Libyan "rebels." Yeah..It´s sooo #¤¤ hard to figure out what the hell is going on! Isn´t it!
A small example among many:
Iraq: President discusses future cooperation between US and Iraq with US Ambassador
First Turkish Airlines lands in Basra
Iraqi civilian injured in Mosul blast
Civilians killed including 4 cops, injured in 2 Baghdad explosions
Soldier wounded in Mosul blast
Police lieutenant killed by sticky bomb in Falluja
Iraqi civilian injured in Mosul blast
The former Minister of Reconstruction and Housing was hurt today in an armed attack against her convoy, Kirkuk security forces said. The source told Aswat al-Iraq that "unknown armed group attacked ex-minister Bayan Di'za'i near Touzkhormato area , near Kirkuk, while traveling to Baghdad.
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Security sources announced today that unknown gunmen killed a director general with the Ministry of Planning in Sadr City. "Unknown gunmen assassinated Jamal Faisal Al-Lami, DG at the Ministry of Planning, and fled to an unknown location," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. The victim is the brother of the executive directory of Questioning and Justice Authority who was assassinated on 26 May 2011 by weapons equipped with silencers.
MP: Unified parliamentary stance on Iranian bombardment needed
/ Aswat al-Iraq: Kurdish Alliance MP Firhad al-Atroushi suggested that the Iraqi Parliament should have a unified stance towards the Iranian bombardment against the villages in Kurdistan region.
Atroushi pointed out, during today's parliamentary session, that "the common borders with Iraq are being bombed in addition to Iranian infiltration inside our territories obliges us to have a unified stand against these attack." "We should contact the government and specialized authorities to solve this problem," he added.
He pointed out that this bombardment resulted in great losses to the farmers, "so we ask the parliament, as part of the federal power, to adopt a clear cut stand on this question, particularly the Security and Defense Commission."
Libya: French army airdrops weapons to Libyan rebels
Syria: Syrian army storm village kills 7 in northwestern villages
Syrian tanks enter northwestern villages
Israel: Minister says Israel will ban Hamas prisoners from phone calls
UN office: 200 Palestinians displaced between June 8-21
Activists: Detainee families to protest in Ramallah
Israeli innovators build new `Silicon Valley
Report: Jordan to oppose Palestinian statehood bid
Flotilla activists deny Israeli claims of violent intent
Israeli forces fire at truck driver near Nablus
Egypt police clash with protesters in Cairo
Yemen: 48 dead
SALFIT (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces uprooted dozens of olive trees on Tuesday in Deir Istiya in the northern West Bank, local officials told Ma'an. Village mayor Nazmi Sulaiman said some of the trees uprooted had been planted more than five years ago on land belonging to Kamal Muhammad Abdul Rahman. The mayor said such procedures were part of an Israeli plan to forces villagers from their land. The village is close to the illegal Jewish-only Rafafa settlement.
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israel's decision to toughen conditions of Palestinian prisoners constitutes violation of human rights and international conventions on rights of war prisoners, the Palestinian Authority said Monday.
Its decision amounts to collective punishment and all countries must abide by international conventions at all times, the PA said in a statement calling the responsibility "a duty, not a choice."
"Is it disturbing that a country, which claims to be democratic, uses the abuse of human rights as an act of government policy," the statement from the Palestinian Government Media Center said.
Turkey staged about two dozen attacks against Kurds during the rule of Saddam. The Turkish and Iranian armies carries out joint military operation, destruction and crimes on the boundary line of Şemdinli/Hakkari.
Dersim valleys under bombardment
Air-supported operation in Siirt
Explosion operation in Hakkari
Operations in three regions of Varto
Meanwhile, the Turkish Chief of General Staff has declared many regions in Sırnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakır as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas. The ban on the regions, names announced on the web-site of the Chief of General Staff, will stand as of July 1st till October 1st.
Support to Dicle by worldwide known names
29 June 2011, Worldwide known names demanded the revoke of Hatip Dicle's parliamentary mandate Among them being Prof. Noam Chomsky, Professor. Dr. Michael Gunter, author Margaret Owen and Professor. Dr. Norman Peach, worldwide known names demanded the revoke of Hatip Dicle's parliamentary mandate.
The signers of the 'Declaration of solidarity with Hatip Dicle' whose membership in the parliament was stripped of by the Supreme Election Board (YSK), declare their solidarity with the elected independent candidate of the Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block, Mr. Hatip Dicle - and call on the Supreme Electoral Board of Turkey (YSK ) - and other responsible bodies - to reverse the decision to revoke his parliamentary mandate immediately.
The signature text notes that the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) and Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block are an important representation for Turkey's democratization and a peaceful solution of the Kurdish problem and says; "The revoke of Hatip Dicle's parliamentary membership is a significant step towards the democratic demands of the Kurdish people, Turkey's democratization and stabilization of the country."
Some of the signers of the campaign express their opinions as follows;
Dr. Joey Moses (Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and Chair of the National Association of democratic Lawyers, Western Cape, South Africa);
"Following the approval of Hatip Dicle's candidacy for the elections and his being elected through democratic ways, the approach towards Hatip Dicle's voters, which hindered Dicle's entering the parliament, is wrong and regrettable. This situation is contrary to international law, as well as to Turkey's constitution and democracy which give Dicle the right to represent his voters in the parliament. Dicle's parliamentary membership should immediately be revoked to enable him get this representment."
Frieda Brepoels (Member of the European Parliament for Flanders, Greens/EFA Member);
"Turkey is a country with different societies whom it should accord their rights. There is still no solution to the Kurdish Question seen on the horizon despite the numerous demands of the European Parliament. Only with the recognition of all rights of Kurdish citizens can Turkey progress in the way to a constructive democracy."
Prof. Kariane Westrheim (Chair European Union Turkey Civic Commission);
"The EU Turkey Civic Commission EUTCC calls Turkey's Supreme Electoral Board to revoke the decision to strip off Hatip Dicle of his legal membership which he won through legal ways. This is an arbitrary decision taken at a bad time against not only Hatip dicle but also all Kurdish people."
Faizel Moosa (Chief Executive Officer of “Struggle Veterans' Action Commitee of South Africa” which represents the veterans of the liberation struggle formed against the apartheid regime in South Africa);
"On behalf of all freedom-lovers and people who formerly experienced oppression in my country, in South Africa, I put my signature under the call for solidarity with Hatip Dicle. As our Mabida (Nelson Mandela) said; "Your fight for freedom is at the same time our fight, just like the struggle for freedom and democracy given for all the oppressed people in the world. All fights are for the humanity."
Some of the signatories of the campaign are as follows;
Professor. Noam Chomsky, Prof. Dr. Michael Gunter from America, Prof Dr. Latif Waid from England, Prof. Dr. Norman Peach, Prof. Dr. Rudolph Bauer, Prof. Dr. Georg Auernheimer from Germany, Prof. Kariane Westrheim from Norway, European Parliamentarians Sarah Ludford, Frieda Brepoels, Jürgen Klute, Gabriele Zimmer, former AP Vice President Luisa Morgantini from Italy, International PEN Vice President Lucina Kathmann from Mexico, German parliament members Jan van Aken, Harald Weinberg, Sabine Leidig, Heidrun Dittrich, Ingrid Remmers, Andej Hunko, Ulla Jelpke, Sevim Dagdelen, Switzerland Amnesty International Turkey Coordinator Maya Heuschmann, NADAL Chair Dr. Joey Moses from South Africa, former Copenhagen Mayor from Denmark, Journalist Manuel Martorell from Spain, Journalist Edgar Auth from Germany, INSAF representative Wilfred Dcosta from India, author Margaret Owen from the UK.
The call, signatures and information about the campaign can be read at the website http://www.solidarity-dicle.blogspot.com/
Translation: Berna Ozgencil
ANF / AMSTERDAM
Human rights violations in Turkey
29 June 2011, In an annual report the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the top judicial body to rule on human rights violations in Europe, found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights. In an annual report the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the top judicial body to rule on human rights violations in Europe, found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights among the 47 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In statistical data on violation judgments by country for the period between 1959 and 2009, Turkey topped the chart with 18.81 percent of all violation judgments, followed by Italy with 16.57 percent and Russia 6.34 percent. Within this timeframe, 2,295 judgments were entered for Turkey and only in 46 cases did the court find no violations. The most common human rights violation committed by Turkey was the denial of the right to a fair trial. Italy scored second with 2,021 judgments against it. In 2009 alone, Turkey again topped the list in terms of violations of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In a tally of the number of judgments entered for Turkey, 356 cases out of a total of 1,625 put the country in the worst violator class. In only nine cases out of the 356 did the court find there was no violation, while stating that at least one violation occurred in the rest of the cases. Russia followed Turkey in 2009 with 210 judgments against it.
In terms of pending applications as of Jan. 1, 2010, the report found that Turkey has the second highest number of complaints lodged against it with 11 percent of the total 119,300 applications. Russia led the pack in this category with 28.1 percent of the applications. In its report, the court described Turkey as a “high case-count state.”
More than half of the judgments in which the court found a violation included a violation of Article 6 of the convention, the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. In recent rulings, the court found that in most cases Turkey was in breach of this article and noted lengthy trials as a violation the convention. There have been excessive delays, in violation of the “reasonable time” requirement, in civil and criminal proceedings taking place in Turkish courts.
In October 2009 the European Commission on Enlargement to the European Union attested that Turkey had made some progress on the observance of international human rights law. However, the implementation of some ECtHR judgments requiring legislative amendments has been an outstanding issue for several years. Further efforts are needed to strengthening the institutional framework on human rights, in particular with regards to the establishment of an independent human rights institution and of an ombudsman.
Iran: -- The execution of people in Iran has been continuously going on with no stop.
Twenty six people were executed in Wekilabad prison in Mashhad district. According to International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, 26 people who were charged with drug-trading were hanged in Wekilabad Prison.
The charge of drug-trading held against them is not being confirmed by any independent sources. Iran has executed many political activists in the past labelling them as “drug-dealers” to justify their execution. The Iranian authorities have also confirmed the allegation that in the last year they had executed 140 people in Wekilabad prison. It should be noted that the numbers of execution carried out in Mashhad province are very rarely published by the Iranian authorities.
KARAJ, Iran, -- Kurdish political prisoners entered 26th days of their hunger strike but their demands are not being responded by the prison’s officials, report said today. According to the reports of Human Rights Committee, these three detainees have been held in a suspended condition for the last two years.
Enwer Xizri, Kamran Shexi and Seyd Ibrahim Seydi are entering their 26th day of hunger strike in Rejaishahir prison of Karaj city. These prisoners of conscious had been held in compartment number 350 in Ewin House of Detention in Tehran. But they were transferred to Rejaishahir prison and accommodated along with the criminal prisoners.
One of their demands is to separate them from the criminal prisoners and put them in the section allocated for the political prisoners.
KARAJ, Iran, -- Three Kurdish political prisoners who have been on hunger strike for the last 25 days, are reported to be at critical condition. They need urgent attention. According to our correspondence Enwer Xizri, Kamran Shexi, Seyd Ibrahim Seydi had launched a hunger strike to protest against their being held with the criminal prisoners. They have been on the hunger strike for the last 25 days and are reported to be threatening condition.
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx
http://en.aswataliraq.info/Default.aspx
A small example among many:
Iraq: President discusses future cooperation between US and Iraq with US Ambassador
First Turkish Airlines lands in Basra
Iraqi civilian injured in Mosul blast
Civilians killed including 4 cops, injured in 2 Baghdad explosions
Soldier wounded in Mosul blast
Police lieutenant killed by sticky bomb in Falluja
Iraqi civilian injured in Mosul blast
The former Minister of Reconstruction and Housing was hurt today in an armed attack against her convoy, Kirkuk security forces said. The source told Aswat al-Iraq that "unknown armed group attacked ex-minister Bayan Di'za'i near Touzkhormato area , near Kirkuk, while traveling to Baghdad.
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Security sources announced today that unknown gunmen killed a director general with the Ministry of Planning in Sadr City. "Unknown gunmen assassinated Jamal Faisal Al-Lami, DG at the Ministry of Planning, and fled to an unknown location," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. The victim is the brother of the executive directory of Questioning and Justice Authority who was assassinated on 26 May 2011 by weapons equipped with silencers.
MP: Unified parliamentary stance on Iranian bombardment needed
/ Aswat al-Iraq: Kurdish Alliance MP Firhad al-Atroushi suggested that the Iraqi Parliament should have a unified stance towards the Iranian bombardment against the villages in Kurdistan region.
Atroushi pointed out, during today's parliamentary session, that "the common borders with Iraq are being bombed in addition to Iranian infiltration inside our territories obliges us to have a unified stand against these attack." "We should contact the government and specialized authorities to solve this problem," he added.
He pointed out that this bombardment resulted in great losses to the farmers, "so we ask the parliament, as part of the federal power, to adopt a clear cut stand on this question, particularly the Security and Defense Commission."
Libya: French army airdrops weapons to Libyan rebels
Syria: Syrian army storm village kills 7 in northwestern villages
Syrian tanks enter northwestern villages
Israel: Minister says Israel will ban Hamas prisoners from phone calls
UN office: 200 Palestinians displaced between June 8-21
Activists: Detainee families to protest in Ramallah
Israeli innovators build new `Silicon Valley
Report: Jordan to oppose Palestinian statehood bid
Flotilla activists deny Israeli claims of violent intent
Israeli forces fire at truck driver near Nablus
Egypt police clash with protesters in Cairo
Yemen: 48 dead
SALFIT (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces uprooted dozens of olive trees on Tuesday in Deir Istiya in the northern West Bank, local officials told Ma'an. Village mayor Nazmi Sulaiman said some of the trees uprooted had been planted more than five years ago on land belonging to Kamal Muhammad Abdul Rahman. The mayor said such procedures were part of an Israeli plan to forces villagers from their land. The village is close to the illegal Jewish-only Rafafa settlement.
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israel's decision to toughen conditions of Palestinian prisoners constitutes violation of human rights and international conventions on rights of war prisoners, the Palestinian Authority said Monday.
Its decision amounts to collective punishment and all countries must abide by international conventions at all times, the PA said in a statement calling the responsibility "a duty, not a choice."
"Is it disturbing that a country, which claims to be democratic, uses the abuse of human rights as an act of government policy," the statement from the Palestinian Government Media Center said.
Turkey staged about two dozen attacks against Kurds during the rule of Saddam. The Turkish and Iranian armies carries out joint military operation, destruction and crimes on the boundary line of Şemdinli/Hakkari.
Dersim valleys under bombardment
Air-supported operation in Siirt
Explosion operation in Hakkari
Operations in three regions of Varto
Meanwhile, the Turkish Chief of General Staff has declared many regions in Sırnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakır as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas. The ban on the regions, names announced on the web-site of the Chief of General Staff, will stand as of July 1st till October 1st.
Support to Dicle by worldwide known names
29 June 2011, Worldwide known names demanded the revoke of Hatip Dicle's parliamentary mandate Among them being Prof. Noam Chomsky, Professor. Dr. Michael Gunter, author Margaret Owen and Professor. Dr. Norman Peach, worldwide known names demanded the revoke of Hatip Dicle's parliamentary mandate.
The signers of the 'Declaration of solidarity with Hatip Dicle' whose membership in the parliament was stripped of by the Supreme Election Board (YSK), declare their solidarity with the elected independent candidate of the Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block, Mr. Hatip Dicle - and call on the Supreme Electoral Board of Turkey (YSK ) - and other responsible bodies - to reverse the decision to revoke his parliamentary mandate immediately.
The signature text notes that the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) and Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block are an important representation for Turkey's democratization and a peaceful solution of the Kurdish problem and says; "The revoke of Hatip Dicle's parliamentary membership is a significant step towards the democratic demands of the Kurdish people, Turkey's democratization and stabilization of the country."
Some of the signers of the campaign express their opinions as follows;
Dr. Joey Moses (Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and Chair of the National Association of democratic Lawyers, Western Cape, South Africa);
"Following the approval of Hatip Dicle's candidacy for the elections and his being elected through democratic ways, the approach towards Hatip Dicle's voters, which hindered Dicle's entering the parliament, is wrong and regrettable. This situation is contrary to international law, as well as to Turkey's constitution and democracy which give Dicle the right to represent his voters in the parliament. Dicle's parliamentary membership should immediately be revoked to enable him get this representment."
Frieda Brepoels (Member of the European Parliament for Flanders, Greens/EFA Member);
"Turkey is a country with different societies whom it should accord their rights. There is still no solution to the Kurdish Question seen on the horizon despite the numerous demands of the European Parliament. Only with the recognition of all rights of Kurdish citizens can Turkey progress in the way to a constructive democracy."
Prof. Kariane Westrheim (Chair European Union Turkey Civic Commission);
"The EU Turkey Civic Commission EUTCC calls Turkey's Supreme Electoral Board to revoke the decision to strip off Hatip Dicle of his legal membership which he won through legal ways. This is an arbitrary decision taken at a bad time against not only Hatip dicle but also all Kurdish people."
Faizel Moosa (Chief Executive Officer of “Struggle Veterans' Action Commitee of South Africa” which represents the veterans of the liberation struggle formed against the apartheid regime in South Africa);
"On behalf of all freedom-lovers and people who formerly experienced oppression in my country, in South Africa, I put my signature under the call for solidarity with Hatip Dicle. As our Mabida (Nelson Mandela) said; "Your fight for freedom is at the same time our fight, just like the struggle for freedom and democracy given for all the oppressed people in the world. All fights are for the humanity."
Some of the signatories of the campaign are as follows;
Professor. Noam Chomsky, Prof. Dr. Michael Gunter from America, Prof Dr. Latif Waid from England, Prof. Dr. Norman Peach, Prof. Dr. Rudolph Bauer, Prof. Dr. Georg Auernheimer from Germany, Prof. Kariane Westrheim from Norway, European Parliamentarians Sarah Ludford, Frieda Brepoels, Jürgen Klute, Gabriele Zimmer, former AP Vice President Luisa Morgantini from Italy, International PEN Vice President Lucina Kathmann from Mexico, German parliament members Jan van Aken, Harald Weinberg, Sabine Leidig, Heidrun Dittrich, Ingrid Remmers, Andej Hunko, Ulla Jelpke, Sevim Dagdelen, Switzerland Amnesty International Turkey Coordinator Maya Heuschmann, NADAL Chair Dr. Joey Moses from South Africa, former Copenhagen Mayor from Denmark, Journalist Manuel Martorell from Spain, Journalist Edgar Auth from Germany, INSAF representative Wilfred Dcosta from India, author Margaret Owen from the UK.
The call, signatures and information about the campaign can be read at the website http://www.solidarity-dicle.blogspot.com/
Translation: Berna Ozgencil
ANF / AMSTERDAM
Human rights violations in Turkey
29 June 2011, In an annual report the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the top judicial body to rule on human rights violations in Europe, found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights. In an annual report the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the top judicial body to rule on human rights violations in Europe, found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights among the 47 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In statistical data on violation judgments by country for the period between 1959 and 2009, Turkey topped the chart with 18.81 percent of all violation judgments, followed by Italy with 16.57 percent and Russia 6.34 percent. Within this timeframe, 2,295 judgments were entered for Turkey and only in 46 cases did the court find no violations. The most common human rights violation committed by Turkey was the denial of the right to a fair trial. Italy scored second with 2,021 judgments against it. In 2009 alone, Turkey again topped the list in terms of violations of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In a tally of the number of judgments entered for Turkey, 356 cases out of a total of 1,625 put the country in the worst violator class. In only nine cases out of the 356 did the court find there was no violation, while stating that at least one violation occurred in the rest of the cases. Russia followed Turkey in 2009 with 210 judgments against it.
In terms of pending applications as of Jan. 1, 2010, the report found that Turkey has the second highest number of complaints lodged against it with 11 percent of the total 119,300 applications. Russia led the pack in this category with 28.1 percent of the applications. In its report, the court described Turkey as a “high case-count state.”
More than half of the judgments in which the court found a violation included a violation of Article 6 of the convention, the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. In recent rulings, the court found that in most cases Turkey was in breach of this article and noted lengthy trials as a violation the convention. There have been excessive delays, in violation of the “reasonable time” requirement, in civil and criminal proceedings taking place in Turkish courts.
In October 2009 the European Commission on Enlargement to the European Union attested that Turkey had made some progress on the observance of international human rights law. However, the implementation of some ECtHR judgments requiring legislative amendments has been an outstanding issue for several years. Further efforts are needed to strengthening the institutional framework on human rights, in particular with regards to the establishment of an independent human rights institution and of an ombudsman.
Iran: -- The execution of people in Iran has been continuously going on with no stop.
Twenty six people were executed in Wekilabad prison in Mashhad district. According to International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, 26 people who were charged with drug-trading were hanged in Wekilabad Prison.
The charge of drug-trading held against them is not being confirmed by any independent sources. Iran has executed many political activists in the past labelling them as “drug-dealers” to justify their execution. The Iranian authorities have also confirmed the allegation that in the last year they had executed 140 people in Wekilabad prison. It should be noted that the numbers of execution carried out in Mashhad province are very rarely published by the Iranian authorities.
KARAJ, Iran, -- Kurdish political prisoners entered 26th days of their hunger strike but their demands are not being responded by the prison’s officials, report said today. According to the reports of Human Rights Committee, these three detainees have been held in a suspended condition for the last two years.
Enwer Xizri, Kamran Shexi and Seyd Ibrahim Seydi are entering their 26th day of hunger strike in Rejaishahir prison of Karaj city. These prisoners of conscious had been held in compartment number 350 in Ewin House of Detention in Tehran. But they were transferred to Rejaishahir prison and accommodated along with the criminal prisoners.
One of their demands is to separate them from the criminal prisoners and put them in the section allocated for the political prisoners.
KARAJ, Iran, -- Three Kurdish political prisoners who have been on hunger strike for the last 25 days, are reported to be at critical condition. They need urgent attention. According to our correspondence Enwer Xizri, Kamran Shexi, Seyd Ibrahim Seydi had launched a hunger strike to protest against their being held with the criminal prisoners. They have been on the hunger strike for the last 25 days and are reported to be threatening condition.
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx
http://en.aswataliraq.info/Default.aspx
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
"War in Iraq"
There is no #¤¤¤ "war in Iraq"! It´s orchestrated, instigated, destabilization, extermination, war crimes, eliminations, assassinations, crimes against humanity and peace and genocide that has been going on for just as long as the same crimes have been going on against the Kurds, for decades! And we know exactly when this was staged again, how and which are participating in it! Mass-genocidals have #¤¤ exterminated people and committed genocides since the Ottoman genocide and have never stopped!
There are in total 14 millions of Iraqis massacred and killed in a full fledged genocide going on for decades simultaneous as the Kurdish genocide, extermination of Iraqis, Palestinians, Kurds, Afghans, Tamils, Baloch, Pashtuns, the indigenous people all over the region and beyond, with promoted dictators and genocidal, totalitarian military states, crimes against humanity and peace and actually EVERYTHING Hitler ever was and who also used communism as a pretext to start wars and genocides!
There are in total 14 millions of Iraqis massacred and killed in a full fledged genocide going on for decades simultaneous as the Kurdish genocide, extermination of Iraqis, Palestinians, Kurds, Afghans, Tamils, Baloch, Pashtuns, the indigenous people all over the region and beyond, with promoted dictators and genocidal, totalitarian military states, crimes against humanity and peace and actually EVERYTHING Hitler ever was and who also used communism as a pretext to start wars and genocides!
Instigated extermination, genocide! In their own country and it´s the same actors committing crimes against humanity as during the Armenian genocide!
The Turkish and Iranian armies carried out a joint military operation on the boundary line of Şemdinli/Hakkari. Giving information about the operations against the HPG guerillas in inertia position, People’s Defence Forces press office HPG-BIM reported that Turkish and Iranian armies have carried out a common military operation.Orchestrated, The operation on June 27 which included the Vargenîma and Ahmet Bendi regions on the boundary line of Şemdinli/Hakkari is reported to continue on both sides of the border.
Separately, Turkish army has launched a bombardment on the valleys in Dersim, new operations in Hakkari, Siirt and Muş and declared some regions in Sırnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakır as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas.
Dersim valleys under bombardment
Following yesterday's clash in Dersim where three MKP (Maoist Communist Party) militants have lost their lives, the military operation is expanding in the rural areas of of Hanusagı and Bunrak villages of Ovacık/Dersim.
While the Pülümür Valley, Kutu Brook and Vartinik Hamlet are reportedly dropped bombs for long hours with two cobra-type helicopters, it has been informed that a military operation has been launched in Hasangazi Village territory of Pülümür district.
Post-explosion operation in Hakkari
With the participation of a large number of soldiers, Turkish army has launched another operation in Hakkari region following the explosion reported during the passage of a military vehicle on Hakkari-Cukurca way close to the Gecimli village. Hakkari Governor Muammer Türker reported no loss of lives or injuries in the explosion.
Air-supported operation in Siirt
Following the explosion reported at early morning hours during the passage control of soldiers at the 20th kilometer of the Siirt-Eruh highway, an air-supported operation has launched in the region. No reports of deaths or injuries came after the explosion.
Operations in three regions of Varto
Also Operations have been launched reportedly in three regions of Varto this morning. The operations in rural and forested areas of Icmeler (Reqasa) village and at Buzlugöze (Rindalîya) Village rurals are joined by thousands of soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Chief of General Staff has declared many regions in Sırnak, Hakkari and Diyarbakır as temporary security zone and banned the entrance of civilians into these areas. The ban on the regions, names announced on the web-site of the Chief of General Staff, will stand as of July 1st till October 1st.
Amnesty International: Attacks target activists in South Kurdistan
29 June 2011, Kurdish authorities must immediately launch an independent investigation into attacks on those with links to pro-reform protests, Amnesty International said today after a human rights lawyer was shot. Kurdish authorities must immediately launch an independent investigation into attacks on those with links to pro-reform protests, Amnesty International said today after a human rights lawyer was shot.
Karwan Kamal, a lawyer defending the protesters in the city of Sulaimaniya, was directly hit and two others were hurt when a gunman fired at them on Sunday night. “There is strong reason to believe that Karwan Kamal was targeted for his work to defend pro-reform protesters,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director.
“The Kurdish authorities must carry out a thorough and impartial investigation into this shooting and bring to justice those responsible. Attacks on human rights defenders must not be tolerated. People in Iraq’s Kurdistan region must be allowed to exercise their legitimate rights to freedom of expression and assembly without fearing for their safety.”
Translation: Berna Ozgencil
ANF / BEHDİNAN/AMED http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
Yeah..Instead of ending this #¤¤ siege, spreading where people are under siege in Libya, Syria and over the whole #¤¤ region.
Yeah..Instead of ending this #¤¤ siege with crimes against humanity and genocidal strategic allies all over the #¤¤ region, where the US-Turkish "democratic example" is promoted, citizens are under sieges and massacred over whole #¤¤ continents and Israeli and British leaders are to drill for natural gas!
This is pure #¤¤ bullshit being repeated over and over again, for #¤¤ decades, while cooperating with the US-"Turkish guys" and with the Azeri Turkic Iranian regime in ongoing genocides and exterminations all over the region and beyond since the Turkish coup and the regime was promoted to power and people were sent to Gaza to start the collective suicide i.e #¤¤ genocides and exterminations!
Flotilla activists deny Israeli claims of violent intent http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=400819
This is pure #¤¤ bullshit being repeated over and over again, for #¤¤ decades, while cooperating with the US-"Turkish guys" and with the Azeri Turkic Iranian regime in ongoing genocides and exterminations all over the region and beyond since the Turkish coup and the regime was promoted to power and people were sent to Gaza to start the collective suicide i.e #¤¤ genocides and exterminations!
Flotilla activists deny Israeli claims of violent intent http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=400819
This would be AFTER the US and CIA promoted and installed Saddam and the Baath party to power.
It would really be about time for the rest of the Americans to wake #¤¤ up and realize what these Aliens and their promoted Turks and Azeri Turks, dictators, totalitarian military genocidal states are all about!
The US - "Turkish democratic example" is a genocidal state that have been and still is promoted and used over whole continents
And THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL the US and its Treasury department, Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Bilderbergers, NATO, the UN-"Security" council will will keep spread it around this globe, after genocides since early 19th century, exterminating #¤¤¤ EVERY ONE, Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the tribal belt, Baluchistan, Libya. Where Palestinians, Kurds, Libyans, Syrians and the most gross crimes against humanity staged simultaneously are used as means to promote "The US democratic example" and the aided Pakistani state for decades.
That is busy non stop with extermination and instigated genocides on Kurds into the gallows in Iran in cooperation with the US Treasury department and ACTUALLY HAVE NEVER GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THEIR NEIGHBOURS, or actually in cooperation with US.Jews and every other #¤¤ criminals USED whole peoples and the crimes committed against them to further their own interests! GENOCIDAL interests! EXTERMINATIONS gong on since the Turkish state was promoted by Jews, the US and Britain #¤¤ hundreds years ago!
Have never give a #¤¤ damn about Iraqis, Kurds, Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Iranians, but have been occupied for decades with their crimes in cooperation with the US administrations, Britain, Israeli leaders, Bilderbergers, Kissinger, Iranian regime, war criminals, genocidals, psychopaths and are just as guilty of crimes against humanity all of them as Gaddafi's, the Syrian regime, the Israeli state and a whole bunch of psychopaths that have ravaged the whole region and a whole continent for #¤¤ 100 years pursuing a total ethnically cleansing of the indigenous people..
More over, it´s not unthinkable that Robert Gates as a former CIA director and scandals, and who is cashing in on military contracts and sells ...together with criminal genocidal psychopaths in Turkey....has personal interests in that human rights defenders has 21 years of documents concerning human rights violations and crimes confiscated and jailed in Turkey.
The US - "Turkish democratic example" is a genocidal state and THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL the US its Treasury department, NATO, the "Security council", Bilderbergs, Madeline Albright that qualifies more than enough to be charged for crimes against humanity together with Turkey, the Syrian and Iranian regime, Kissinger and his company which there is no #¤¤ information about, and the US Treasury department, will keep spread it, at the same time people all over the whole #¤¤ world are engaged trying to come to solutions in the Kurdish question and end this genocidal war-fare!
That is busy non stop with extermination and instigated genocides on Kurds into the gallows in Iran in cooperation with the US Treasury department and ACTUALLY HAVE NEVER GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THEIR NEIGHBOURS, or actually in cooperation with US.Jews and every other #¤¤ criminals USED whole peoples and the crimes committed against them to further their own interests! GENOCIDAL interests! EXTERMINATIONS gong on since the Turkish state was promoted by Jews, the US and Britain #¤¤ hundreds years ago!
Have never give a #¤¤ damn about Iraqis, Kurds, Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Iranians, but have been occupied for decades with their crimes in cooperation with the US administrations, Britain, Israeli leaders, Bilderbergers, Kissinger, Iranian regime, war criminals, genocidals, psychopaths and are just as guilty of crimes against humanity all of them as Gaddafi's, the Syrian regime, the Israeli state and a whole bunch of psychopaths that have ravaged the whole region and a whole continent for #¤¤ 100 years pursuing a total ethnically cleansing of the indigenous people..
More over, it´s not unthinkable that Robert Gates as a former CIA director and scandals, and who is cashing in on military contracts and sells ...together with criminal genocidal psychopaths in Turkey....has personal interests in that human rights defenders has 21 years of documents concerning human rights violations and crimes confiscated and jailed in Turkey.
The US - "Turkish democratic example" is a genocidal state and THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL the US its Treasury department, NATO, the "Security council", Bilderbergs, Madeline Albright that qualifies more than enough to be charged for crimes against humanity together with Turkey, the Syrian and Iranian regime, Kissinger and his company which there is no #¤¤ information about, and the US Treasury department, will keep spread it, at the same time people all over the whole #¤¤ world are engaged trying to come to solutions in the Kurdish question and end this genocidal war-fare!
Kurds deserve more respect
25 June 2011, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. Meghan L. O'Sullivan, professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government wrote an article titled "Kurds deserve more respect". In the article O'Sullivan argues that much attention, and rightly so, has been put to the so called Arab Spring, while "few have focused on another development that could help promote moderation in the region: the tentative, but growing, role of the region's Kurdish population".
According to O'Sullivan "policy makers in the United States and Europe need to set aside their traditional way of viewing the world exclusively as a collection of nation-states and recognize the possibilities behind Kurdish empowerment."
Underlining that "the history of the Kurds in the Middle East is a seemingly endless tale of oppression, thwarted ambitions and tragedy", O'Sullivan points out that "for all their historic suffering, a series of developments may now be changing the fortune of the Kurds in fundamental ways."
O'Sullivan points out that "in Turkey, Kurds may be on the cusp of the most promising moment in decades to address their grievances." O'Sullivan underlines that "rather than feeding new clamoring for a Kurdish state, an increase in influence may lead the region's Kurds to adopt a “globalization” strategy. According to O'Sullivan "Western allies should favour this outcome, not simply because it would be good for the Kurds, but because it would be good for their own interests. Kurds tend to be moderates. It is for all of these reasons that O'Sullivan writes that "President Barack Obama's administration to incorporate a Kurdish angle into its new Middle East strategy".
The full article can be read at
http://www.therecord.com/opinion/columns/article/552919--kurds-deserve-more-respect
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
Well..Yeah..That´s just enough..While Kurds are tortured to death and hanged in Iran in a ongoing extermination all over the region under the US Treasury department, just like the "Iranian terrorists", the Iraqi eliminations and exterminations continues, just like in Libya, Syria, Baluchistan, the Tribal belt, Tamils, Pahstuns, Afghanistan, Palestinians are deprived their livelihoods and homes etc..etc..and they are rioting in Athene, because this is OBVIOUS no #¤¤¤ Marathon!
More like a synchronized extermination chaos..
According to O'Sullivan "policy makers in the United States and Europe need to set aside their traditional way of viewing the world exclusively as a collection of nation-states and recognize the possibilities behind Kurdish empowerment."
Underlining that "the history of the Kurds in the Middle East is a seemingly endless tale of oppression, thwarted ambitions and tragedy", O'Sullivan points out that "for all their historic suffering, a series of developments may now be changing the fortune of the Kurds in fundamental ways."
O'Sullivan points out that "in Turkey, Kurds may be on the cusp of the most promising moment in decades to address their grievances." O'Sullivan underlines that "rather than feeding new clamoring for a Kurdish state, an increase in influence may lead the region's Kurds to adopt a “globalization” strategy. According to O'Sullivan "Western allies should favour this outcome, not simply because it would be good for the Kurds, but because it would be good for their own interests. Kurds tend to be moderates. It is for all of these reasons that O'Sullivan writes that "President Barack Obama's administration to incorporate a Kurdish angle into its new Middle East strategy".
The full article can be read at
http://www.therecord.com/opinion/columns/article/552919--kurds-deserve-more-respect
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
Well..Yeah..That´s just enough..While Kurds are tortured to death and hanged in Iran in a ongoing extermination all over the region under the US Treasury department, just like the "Iranian terrorists", the Iraqi eliminations and exterminations continues, just like in Libya, Syria, Baluchistan, the Tribal belt, Tamils, Pahstuns, Afghanistan, Palestinians are deprived their livelihoods and homes etc..etc..and they are rioting in Athene, because this is OBVIOUS no #¤¤¤ Marathon!
More like a synchronized extermination chaos..
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
While criminalising the whole Kurdish people into the gallows in Iran in the "strategic-allie-genocides" its a whole LOT knocking at our computer here
Maureen Murphy / Al Jazeera: Criminalising Palestinian solidarity
It would REALLY be about time some COMPLETE #¤¤ IDIOTS starts to realize what´s at stake here!
Actually, we can tell the poppy fields are growing in full bloom! Some have #¤¤ just two braincells left and those two are fighting with each other!
It would REALLY be about time some COMPLETE #¤¤ IDIOTS starts to realize what´s at stake here!
Actually, we can tell the poppy fields are growing in full bloom! Some have #¤¤ just two braincells left and those two are fighting with each other!
¤%¤¤ Genocidal war-fare with genocidal tactics
Brazilian plastic mines, found on outskirts of Misrata. Found: FN F2000 (belgium) assault rifle with telescope sight & 40mm FN EGLM grenade launcher http://t.co/LoCVh9N
Ahmed Omar Aghliw was killed in Misrata. His brother Abdel Aziz Omar Aghliw was killed in FEB. Martyrs of todays battle for AlQa’aa 32km S Zintan: Saleh Omar Drderha Zintan, Fathi Mustafa Abu Shaaslah of Misrata.
3 martyrs and 21 injured in battle to gain Alqalas ammunition storage & military base. F. fighters now in control
Ahmed Omar Aghliw was killed in Misrata. His brother Abdel Aziz Omar Aghliw was killed in FEB. Martyrs of todays battle for AlQa’aa 32km S Zintan: Saleh Omar Drderha Zintan, Fathi Mustafa Abu Shaaslah of Misrata.
3 martyrs and 21 injured in battle to gain Alqalas ammunition storage & military base. F. fighters now in control
International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi
The investigation into murder and persecution of civilians in Tripoli, Benghazi and Misrata beginning on February 15. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and his intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi. http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/libya
Let´s take a look at the West Bank while Recep Tayyip Erdogan tells Bashar al-Assad to cease repression and they need mouth cover in Turkey.
Committee: Soldiers order Palestinian farmers to stop work
27/06/2011, NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Monday stopped Palestinian farmers working on their land in villages in the northern West Bank, a local agricultural committee said.
Farmers were working in Jurish and Aqraba villages as part of a land reclamation project but soldiers said the farmland had been confiscated and now belonged to Israel, committee coordinator Yousif Deiriyya said. Deiriyya added that forces confiscated a backhoe.
The committee for the union of agricultural workers said Friday that Israeli forces confiscated a vehicle from farmers and ordered them to stop work in the same area.
Land reclamation projects aim to improve the source of income for families which rely on agriculture and also serve to protect vulnerable land from Israeli confiscation.
The project is carried out by the committee for the union of agricultural workers in partnership with Palestinian non-governmental organizations under the management of agricultural relief committees. It is funded by the Dutch government.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx
27/06/2011, NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Monday stopped Palestinian farmers working on their land in villages in the northern West Bank, a local agricultural committee said.
Farmers were working in Jurish and Aqraba villages as part of a land reclamation project but soldiers said the farmland had been confiscated and now belonged to Israel, committee coordinator Yousif Deiriyya said. Deiriyya added that forces confiscated a backhoe.
The committee for the union of agricultural workers said Friday that Israeli forces confiscated a vehicle from farmers and ordered them to stop work in the same area.
Land reclamation projects aim to improve the source of income for families which rely on agriculture and also serve to protect vulnerable land from Israeli confiscation.
The project is carried out by the committee for the union of agricultural workers in partnership with Palestinian non-governmental organizations under the management of agricultural relief committees. It is funded by the Dutch government.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx
Actually, we do not believe the Romans ever left Jerusalem and the Middle East..
They killed and ethnically cleansed the native people, threw Paul in jail and took over the whole concept somewhere between the Thessalonians and Timothy and built their own power base around it. Then they came back and finished the cleansing and massacred a whole lot more native people as "heretics".
Several of the letters are thought by most modern scholars to be pseudepigraphic, that is, not actually written by Paul of Tarsus even if attributed to him within the letters themselves, or, arguably, even forgeries intended to justify certain later beliefs. Details of the arguments regarding this issue are addressed more specifically in the articles about each epistle.
Serious! The ethnically cleaning and genocides of the indigenous people in this region, Libya and spread far beyond is still going on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles
On 30 August 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy will pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation when it is estimated that the number of Libyans who died - killed either through combat or mainly through starvation and disease - is at a minimum of 80,000 or even up to one third of the Cyrenaican population. In exchange, Libya will take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies. The treaty was ratified by Italy in 6 February 2009, and by Libya on 2 March, during a visit to Tripoli by Berlusconi
Pappé estimates that between 1928 and 1932 the Italian military "killed half the Bedouin population directly or through starvation in camps." In his book Cerinaica today, Dr. Todesky, who in 1931 was the director of the Italian Army Health Services, states "From May 1930 to September 1930 more than 80,000 Libyans were forced to leave their land and live in concentration camps, they were taken 300 at a time watched by soldiers to make sure that the Libyans go directly to the concentration camps" and "By the end of 1930 all Libyans who live in tents were forced to go and live in the camps. 55% of the Libyans died in the camps."
Well..That have never hindered neither Gaddafis or any one else, neither before or after this treaty, to keep killing Libyans until today...have it..So..is it now we shall start wonder how many indigenous Libyans there are left besides those that have fled..is it..
Several of the letters are thought by most modern scholars to be pseudepigraphic, that is, not actually written by Paul of Tarsus even if attributed to him within the letters themselves, or, arguably, even forgeries intended to justify certain later beliefs. Details of the arguments regarding this issue are addressed more specifically in the articles about each epistle.
Serious! The ethnically cleaning and genocides of the indigenous people in this region, Libya and spread far beyond is still going on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles
On 30 August 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy will pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation when it is estimated that the number of Libyans who died - killed either through combat or mainly through starvation and disease - is at a minimum of 80,000 or even up to one third of the Cyrenaican population. In exchange, Libya will take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies. The treaty was ratified by Italy in 6 February 2009, and by Libya on 2 March, during a visit to Tripoli by Berlusconi
Pappé estimates that between 1928 and 1932 the Italian military "killed half the Bedouin population directly or through starvation in camps." In his book Cerinaica today, Dr. Todesky, who in 1931 was the director of the Italian Army Health Services, states "From May 1930 to September 1930 more than 80,000 Libyans were forced to leave their land and live in concentration camps, they were taken 300 at a time watched by soldiers to make sure that the Libyans go directly to the concentration camps" and "By the end of 1930 all Libyans who live in tents were forced to go and live in the camps. 55% of the Libyans died in the camps."
Well..That have never hindered neither Gaddafis or any one else, neither before or after this treaty, to keep killing Libyans until today...have it..So..is it now we shall start wonder how many indigenous Libyans there are left besides those that have fled..is it..
Monday, June 27, 2011
As we said: The Turkish elections are as militarized as elections in Congo
And there is no way in Hell any Jewish lobbyists in the US or Robert Gates or any one else will be able to promote Turkey as a US-democratic example, not with a calculated intention to destroy the Syrian people in whole or in part by the Syrian regime in cooperation with every other psychopath, or a genocidal war-fare with total destruction in Libya and hundreds of thousands maimed and killed, while the Turkish state is busy with its own crimes and genocidal war-fare against the Kurds, at the same time Iraqis are attacked, killed, maimed, eliminated, assassinated, exterminated in the masses, while #¤¤ idiots believes its just refer to the earlier US administration and British government when it comes to Iraq, or even with a Gaza flotilla!
Canadian MP Hon. Jim Karygiannis: Turkey must recognise Kurdish rights
17 June 2011, The Turkish government cannot afford to continue to ignore and belittle the plight of the Kurdish people living within its borders. For decades, the Kurdish people have lived under a government that has repressed cultural expression and freedom of speech and violated human rights.
I believe the international community should demonstrate a willingness to try and address this serious situation.
This past week, I visited several cities in eastern Turkey as an international observer to view the parliamentary elections. What I witnessed only reminded me of the history of oppression perpetrated by the Turkish government on minorities within their country.
During World War I, and in the months and years following its end, Turkey (known at the time as the Ottoman Empire) began the systematic execution of over one million Armenians. The Armenian Genocide is still widely considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century and, though recognized by 22 nations around the world, has never been officially acknowledged by the Turkish government. In addition, the Ottoman Empire was also responsible for the Pontian Greek Genocide of over 350,000 persons within its borders during forced deportations.
While observing the elections in Mus, a largely Kurdish region in eastern Turkey, I saw police and military personnel numbering in the hundreds in a single town, many armed with riot gear. In addition, several troop transports sat in intersections, with water cannons and machine guns mounted to their roofs.
While I was told that this immense presence was meant only to keep the peace, it seemed more like an intimidation tactic - several groups of police, each in numbers ranging from 50 to 75, patrolled the streets hours before the polls even opened.
In the past, a rule was set stating that no police or military personnel would be allowed within 100 meters of any polling station during the casting of ballots. However, this year the rule was altered to allow them to stay within 15 meters. Even with this drastic change, I still observed armed police officers standing directly outside polling stations and, in one case, even next to the ballot box itself.
Also, I received reports that Kurdish citizens were warned by military officials that their health coverage benefits would be revoked if they were caught voting against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). These reports were later confirmed by Insan Haklari Dernegi, a human rights association based in Ankara that was also observing the election process.
It would seem that such intimidation tactics worked, as cities with large military and police presences reported overwhelming votes for the ruling party, while smaller towns and villages with little to no police interaction showed an abundance of votes for independent candidates.
Turkey has a party-list proportional representation system. Under Turkish electoral law, every party must receive at least 10 percent of the vote in order to elect a member to Parliament. According to Turkey’s Supreme Election Board, 27 parties registered to participate in this most recent election, meaning that only a third of the parties involved would actually be able to elect a member. Even with this barrier, Kurdish representatives, mostly independent candidates, still managed to secure 36 seats in Parliament.
I feel that Canada can play an important role in addressing the situation faced by Kurds living in Turkey. Canadians pride themselves on living in a peaceful democracy where people from various multicultural communities exchange opinions and work together to resolve problems.
Canadian members of the Kurdish and Turkish Diasporas should develop a dialogue with respect to helping bring about a peaceful co-existence in Turkey between the two communities.
As the Liberal Critic of Multiculturalism, I look forward in working with both communities to start to the dialogue and also support them in providing sustainable for nation building.
I believe in the power and potential of the human race and that R.A.C.E. stands for Respecting our neighbours, Accepting our differences, Celebrating our rich diversity and Embracing our heritage.
Hon. Jim Karygiannis P.C., M.P.
Scarborough-Agincourt
Constituency Office
www.karygiannismp.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rojhelat-Info-Rojhelat-EU/163919120292326
I believe the international community should demonstrate a willingness to try and address this serious situation.
This past week, I visited several cities in eastern Turkey as an international observer to view the parliamentary elections. What I witnessed only reminded me of the history of oppression perpetrated by the Turkish government on minorities within their country.
During World War I, and in the months and years following its end, Turkey (known at the time as the Ottoman Empire) began the systematic execution of over one million Armenians. The Armenian Genocide is still widely considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century and, though recognized by 22 nations around the world, has never been officially acknowledged by the Turkish government. In addition, the Ottoman Empire was also responsible for the Pontian Greek Genocide of over 350,000 persons within its borders during forced deportations.
While observing the elections in Mus, a largely Kurdish region in eastern Turkey, I saw police and military personnel numbering in the hundreds in a single town, many armed with riot gear. In addition, several troop transports sat in intersections, with water cannons and machine guns mounted to their roofs.
While I was told that this immense presence was meant only to keep the peace, it seemed more like an intimidation tactic - several groups of police, each in numbers ranging from 50 to 75, patrolled the streets hours before the polls even opened.
In the past, a rule was set stating that no police or military personnel would be allowed within 100 meters of any polling station during the casting of ballots. However, this year the rule was altered to allow them to stay within 15 meters. Even with this drastic change, I still observed armed police officers standing directly outside polling stations and, in one case, even next to the ballot box itself.
Also, I received reports that Kurdish citizens were warned by military officials that their health coverage benefits would be revoked if they were caught voting against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). These reports were later confirmed by Insan Haklari Dernegi, a human rights association based in Ankara that was also observing the election process.
It would seem that such intimidation tactics worked, as cities with large military and police presences reported overwhelming votes for the ruling party, while smaller towns and villages with little to no police interaction showed an abundance of votes for independent candidates.
Turkey has a party-list proportional representation system. Under Turkish electoral law, every party must receive at least 10 percent of the vote in order to elect a member to Parliament. According to Turkey’s Supreme Election Board, 27 parties registered to participate in this most recent election, meaning that only a third of the parties involved would actually be able to elect a member. Even with this barrier, Kurdish representatives, mostly independent candidates, still managed to secure 36 seats in Parliament.
I feel that Canada can play an important role in addressing the situation faced by Kurds living in Turkey. Canadians pride themselves on living in a peaceful democracy where people from various multicultural communities exchange opinions and work together to resolve problems.
Canadian members of the Kurdish and Turkish Diasporas should develop a dialogue with respect to helping bring about a peaceful co-existence in Turkey between the two communities.
As the Liberal Critic of Multiculturalism, I look forward in working with both communities to start to the dialogue and also support them in providing sustainable for nation building.
I believe in the power and potential of the human race and that R.A.C.E. stands for Respecting our neighbours, Accepting our differences, Celebrating our rich diversity and Embracing our heritage.
Hon. Jim Karygiannis P.C., M.P.
Scarborough-Agincourt
Constituency Office
www.karygiannismp.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rojhelat-Info-Rojhelat-EU/163919120292326
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Deliberately inflicting on the conditions of life, calculated to bring physical destruction in whole or in part, indeed.
And don´t give us some crap from mainstream media that no ones knows what happens in Syria, just like they did claim with Libya, at the same time Russian leaders sits with their veto´s and are "concerned" about something and the embassies in Damascus are full of people from every #¤¤ where, because it´s all over the #¤¤ net the same way as the crimes in Libya.
LET´S JUST ESTABLISH THE FACT THAT THE UN BODY WITH ITS MEMBERS MAKING IT ALL UP, IS TOTALLY #¤¤ WORTHLESS! The members in the UN body making it up are either direct involved in crimes against humanity or complicit in them and have been so for #¤¤ decades! Meanwhile, a #¤¤ wanted war criminal states that any ones opposing this "system" are terrorists!
Damascus, Alkiswah: Redha Alawiyeh's body. 25-June-2011. Security killed 13 years old child Rida Ridwan Alawiye. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z54kTmw0A0s
Thamer Al-shari another child died under torture by security forces. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d1TpqWr8JA
Another killed by forces in Homs .. 21-06-11 .. http://t.co/yTUCltz
Homs: Murder of the young Abdul-ellah Ghurbal 22-Jun-2011
Homs: Maher Arabi before his death 24-June-2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qr7pGY54Gk
Homs: Tamer Alzakrbat's death on Friday 24-June-2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBRJnJdCwI
Damascus Suburbs, Alkiswah: Martyr Mohamad Jalal Alsheikh killed by Syrian security forces on 24-6-2011 in city of Alkiswah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQyOX8JfGM
Hems, Alrastan: Rajaa Alyousef, mother to 4 children was killed by Syrian security security forces on 6-1-2011. She remained without help bleeding for 4 hrs until she passed away due to intensive fire from Syrian security forces. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ7bLWF_s28
Homs: A report confirming the death under torture of Ubaida Akram, a 35 yrs old man who was arrested two weeks ago and remained in custody of regime security until the release of his body today. 26-June-2011
BBC: More Syrians flee to camp cities on Turkish border http://ow.ly/5qxo7
Syrian troops move into another village near the Turkish border and a town near Lebanon, amid reports of deadly shootings at protesters' funerals
CBS News: Syrian refugees flee to Lebanon http://ow.ly/5qpG8 Syrian refugees flee to Lebanon - Syrians escaping violent government crackdowns are crossing into Lebanon.
Jableh : al-azzy neighborhood is under tight blockade and many casualties reported due to gunfire by regime securities. 25-June-2011
BBC: Syria send more troops to Turkey and Lebanon borders http://ow.ly/5qplc Syrian army widens border sweep. Syrian troops move into another village near the Turkish border and a town near Lebanon, amid reports of deadly shootings at protesters' funerals.
NY Times: Forces Make Arrests Across Syria; 5 Dead. Scores were arrested and five were reported killed during the funerals of six protesters.
Keswah another City facing attack. After the killing of 5 Syrians including a 12 years old child due to gunfire opened at demonstrations yesterday in Kesweh, Damascus suburbs.
The number of killed escalated to 20 confirmed so far today, among them 5 children, three of which are 17 years old. A young man in Hama died from injuries. Homs : a wounded 17 years old student named Udai Al-Khaled who was shot in the chest and went in a coma passed away at Al-Ber hospital. 23-June-2011.
A Syrian activist group said Friday left a total of 20 protesters dead. The killed lived in AlKisweh, Daraa, Homs, AlQusayr and Hama.
Damascus Suburbs, Harasta: Intensive deployment of Syrian security forces establishing checkpoints.
Barza: The funeral of Khaldon Habasheye and Imad Younes started in the Salam Mosque. Thousands are attending the funeral.
SMH: Toll climbs as Syrian unrest widens http://ow.ly/5qlQP
Damascus suburbs: Security forces opened heavy gunfire on Jisr Masraya area near to Douma. They are also blocking al Hajariyah area and opening gun fire there also. Several wounded are supported, many of them being transported to Hamdan hospital. Security forces are preventing families of the wounded to enter the hospital
Damascus: The army is surrounding Barzeh neighborhood putting it under siege. Soldiers are patrolling the side streets and alleys. Security forces and agents of the airforce intelligence bureau are arresting residents according to a list
4 killed in university dorms in Mezza and up to 1200 detained. Accounts of female students being stripped and male students coming to protect them. Today dorms are a ghost town.
Syria killed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FRuxt9aePo&feature=related
Daraa: The sound of the firing of heavy machine guns is heard in Daraa.
Massacre by Syria n regime in Darra, Hamza http://t.co/Id4kUGx http://t.co/Lt1KgZo http://t.co/uFvcbRS
14 year old boy murdered by security forces in Hama: http://t.co/knNcDCs
Hama: the 14 yr old martyr Mohammad Alnasr 21-June-2011. 2 children killed One child was killed and the friend was shot while attending his funeral. http://t.co/Uftcdb2 & http://t.co/MPYIz08 14 years old killed by forces in Hama... 21-06-11 ... http://t.co/akkSXRX
Hamah: The funeral of the martyrs of the massacre at Alsafa Graveyard 22-Jun-2011
Hamah: Killed: Yasser Shaqra 21-Jun-2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DcU9HVoUuik
Hama: Child Al Hader http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFd43ki8RBo
Alkhalidia: Murdered: Muhammad Rateb Aljowdi 22-Jun-2011
S.N.N Citing Youth Coordinators of Alhassaka: "There are a number of martyrs and wounded after the events of yesterday night. Up to now, the number is unknown because the security forces and police surround Alwatani Hospital."
Damascus: 6 more students are arrested this morning to join the approximately 150 others that have been arrested from the dorms
Amnesty International: More than 80 children have been killed by regime thugs and security forces.
Idleb: Anas Mohammad, also known as Anas Qatrun, was detained when he was trying to deliver food to the people of Jisr Alshughur during the siege imposed by the army and the security forces on 11th June 2011. After a few days he appeared in the Syrian State TV admitting that he was a terrorist and an insurgent. Since then there are no news about him.
Idleb: More military support arrived in Jisr al Shoghoor through Joren village. Around 100 buses packed with security forces and special forces fully equipped with weapons and anti-aircraft guns are witnessed there.
Syria: Deraa http://t.co/xq6QsjZ
Reforms on TV and massacres on the ground, 21.06.2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o88wamuWwJ4&NR=1
LET´S JUST ESTABLISH THE FACT THAT THE UN BODY WITH ITS MEMBERS MAKING IT ALL UP, IS TOTALLY #¤¤ WORTHLESS! The members in the UN body making it up are either direct involved in crimes against humanity or complicit in them and have been so for #¤¤ decades! Meanwhile, a #¤¤ wanted war criminal states that any ones opposing this "system" are terrorists!
Damascus, Alkiswah: Redha Alawiyeh's body. 25-June-2011. Security killed 13 years old child Rida Ridwan Alawiye. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z54kTmw0A0s
Thamer Al-shari another child died under torture by security forces. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d1TpqWr8JA
Another killed by forces in Homs .. 21-06-11 .. http://t.co/yTUCltz
Homs: Murder of the young Abdul-ellah Ghurbal 22-Jun-2011
Homs: Maher Arabi before his death 24-June-2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qr7pGY54Gk
Homs: Tamer Alzakrbat's death on Friday 24-June-2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBRJnJdCwI
Damascus Suburbs, Alkiswah: Martyr Mohamad Jalal Alsheikh killed by Syrian security forces on 24-6-2011 in city of Alkiswah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYQyOX8JfGM
Hems, Alrastan: Rajaa Alyousef, mother to 4 children was killed by Syrian security security forces on 6-1-2011. She remained without help bleeding for 4 hrs until she passed away due to intensive fire from Syrian security forces. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ7bLWF_s28
Homs: A report confirming the death under torture of Ubaida Akram, a 35 yrs old man who was arrested two weeks ago and remained in custody of regime security until the release of his body today. 26-June-2011
BBC: More Syrians flee to camp cities on Turkish border http://ow.ly/5qxo7
Syrian troops move into another village near the Turkish border and a town near Lebanon, amid reports of deadly shootings at protesters' funerals
CBS News: Syrian refugees flee to Lebanon http://ow.ly/5qpG8 Syrian refugees flee to Lebanon - Syrians escaping violent government crackdowns are crossing into Lebanon.
Jableh : al-azzy neighborhood is under tight blockade and many casualties reported due to gunfire by regime securities. 25-June-2011
BBC: Syria send more troops to Turkey and Lebanon borders http://ow.ly/5qplc Syrian army widens border sweep. Syrian troops move into another village near the Turkish border and a town near Lebanon, amid reports of deadly shootings at protesters' funerals.
NY Times: Forces Make Arrests Across Syria; 5 Dead. Scores were arrested and five were reported killed during the funerals of six protesters.
Keswah another City facing attack. After the killing of 5 Syrians including a 12 years old child due to gunfire opened at demonstrations yesterday in Kesweh, Damascus suburbs.
The number of killed escalated to 20 confirmed so far today, among them 5 children, three of which are 17 years old. A young man in Hama died from injuries. Homs : a wounded 17 years old student named Udai Al-Khaled who was shot in the chest and went in a coma passed away at Al-Ber hospital. 23-June-2011.
A Syrian activist group said Friday left a total of 20 protesters dead. The killed lived in AlKisweh, Daraa, Homs, AlQusayr and Hama.
Damascus Suburbs, Harasta: Intensive deployment of Syrian security forces establishing checkpoints.
Barza: The funeral of Khaldon Habasheye and Imad Younes started in the Salam Mosque. Thousands are attending the funeral.
SMH: Toll climbs as Syrian unrest widens http://ow.ly/5qlQP
Damascus suburbs: Security forces opened heavy gunfire on Jisr Masraya area near to Douma. They are also blocking al Hajariyah area and opening gun fire there also. Several wounded are supported, many of them being transported to Hamdan hospital. Security forces are preventing families of the wounded to enter the hospital
Damascus: The army is surrounding Barzeh neighborhood putting it under siege. Soldiers are patrolling the side streets and alleys. Security forces and agents of the airforce intelligence bureau are arresting residents according to a list
4 killed in university dorms in Mezza and up to 1200 detained. Accounts of female students being stripped and male students coming to protect them. Today dorms are a ghost town.
Syria killed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FRuxt9aePo&feature=related
Daraa: The sound of the firing of heavy machine guns is heard in Daraa.
Massacre by Syria n regime in Darra, Hamza http://t.co/Id4kUGx http://t.co/Lt1KgZo http://t.co/uFvcbRS
14 year old boy murdered by security forces in Hama: http://t.co/knNcDCs
Hama: the 14 yr old martyr Mohammad Alnasr 21-June-2011. 2 children killed One child was killed and the friend was shot while attending his funeral. http://t.co/Uftcdb2 & http://t.co/MPYIz08 14 years old killed by forces in Hama... 21-06-11 ... http://t.co/akkSXRX
Hamah: The funeral of the martyrs of the massacre at Alsafa Graveyard 22-Jun-2011
Hamah: Killed: Yasser Shaqra 21-Jun-2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DcU9HVoUuik
Hama: Child Al Hader http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFd43ki8RBo
Alkhalidia: Murdered: Muhammad Rateb Aljowdi 22-Jun-2011
S.N.N Citing Youth Coordinators of Alhassaka: "There are a number of martyrs and wounded after the events of yesterday night. Up to now, the number is unknown because the security forces and police surround Alwatani Hospital."
Damascus: 6 more students are arrested this morning to join the approximately 150 others that have been arrested from the dorms
Amnesty International: More than 80 children have been killed by regime thugs and security forces.
Idleb: Anas Mohammad, also known as Anas Qatrun, was detained when he was trying to deliver food to the people of Jisr Alshughur during the siege imposed by the army and the security forces on 11th June 2011. After a few days he appeared in the Syrian State TV admitting that he was a terrorist and an insurgent. Since then there are no news about him.
Idleb: More military support arrived in Jisr al Shoghoor through Joren village. Around 100 buses packed with security forces and special forces fully equipped with weapons and anti-aircraft guns are witnessed there.
Syria: Deraa http://t.co/xq6QsjZ
Reforms on TV and massacres on the ground, 21.06.2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o88wamuWwJ4&NR=1
Actually, it´s the American tax payers, among some, that are paying for the ongoing crimes, genocide and extermination of the Baloch
And have done so for decades. In the same way the vast majority of U.S. arms transfers to Turkey, used in crimes against humanity against the Kurds in a ongoing instigated genocide going on for decades, have been subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Just like the crimes against the Palestinians.
At the same time Pakistan is shipping oil to NATO in Afghanistan the crimes and genocide against the Baloch is ongoing, just as a continuing of a extermination and genocide instigated decades ago.
A legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as: Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
"Intent to destroy, in whole or in part." That´s also done through politiced and that´s exactly what has been and still are done against the Baloch, Tamils, Kurds, Iranians, Palestinians, Afghans etc...
And what we now see crimes committed against Libyans and the crimes by the Syrian regime against the Syrian people, that are VERY obvious done in calculated intentions to bring groups of the Libyan and Syrian people to their physical destruction in whole or in part.
Just as the calculated intentions are very clear, to bring Baloch and the Kurds both in groups and as a whole people to both their physical, political, cultural and in all aspects of life to their destruction and that has been going on for decades.
Article 2 of United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, covers very much the crimes committed against the Baloch, Kurds, Pathuns in the tribal belt, Somalis, Iraqis, Afghans, Kashmirs, Palestinians, Tamils etc...AND the crimes against the Libyans and the Syrian people.
Again: The vast majority of U.S. arms transfers to Turkey have been subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. In many cases, these taxpayer funds have been supporting military production and employment in Turkey, not in the United States.
Of the $10.5 billion in U.S. weaponry delivered to Turkey since 1984, 77% of the value of those shipments - $8 billion in all - has been directly or indirectly financed by grants and subsidized loans provided by the U.S. government. Many of the largest deals - such as Lockheed Martin's sale of 240 F-16s to the Turkish air force and the FMC Corporation's provision of 1,698 armored vehicles to the Turkish army - involve coproduction and offset provisions which steer investments, jobs, and production to Turkey as a condition of the sale. For example, Turkey's F-16 assembly plant in Ankara - a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) - employs 2,000 production workers, almost entirely paid for with U.S. tax dollars.
At the same time Pakistan is shipping oil to NATO in Afghanistan the crimes and genocide against the Baloch is ongoing, just as a continuing of a extermination and genocide instigated decades ago.
A legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as: Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
"Intent to destroy, in whole or in part." That´s also done through politiced and that´s exactly what has been and still are done against the Baloch, Tamils, Kurds, Iranians, Palestinians, Afghans etc...
And what we now see crimes committed against Libyans and the crimes by the Syrian regime against the Syrian people, that are VERY obvious done in calculated intentions to bring groups of the Libyan and Syrian people to their physical destruction in whole or in part.
Just as the calculated intentions are very clear, to bring Baloch and the Kurds both in groups and as a whole people to both their physical, political, cultural and in all aspects of life to their destruction and that has been going on for decades.
Article 2 of United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, covers very much the crimes committed against the Baloch, Kurds, Pathuns in the tribal belt, Somalis, Iraqis, Afghans, Kashmirs, Palestinians, Tamils etc...AND the crimes against the Libyans and the Syrian people.
Again: The vast majority of U.S. arms transfers to Turkey have been subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. In many cases, these taxpayer funds have been supporting military production and employment in Turkey, not in the United States.
Of the $10.5 billion in U.S. weaponry delivered to Turkey since 1984, 77% of the value of those shipments - $8 billion in all - has been directly or indirectly financed by grants and subsidized loans provided by the U.S. government. Many of the largest deals - such as Lockheed Martin's sale of 240 F-16s to the Turkish air force and the FMC Corporation's provision of 1,698 armored vehicles to the Turkish army - involve coproduction and offset provisions which steer investments, jobs, and production to Turkey as a condition of the sale. For example, Turkey's F-16 assembly plant in Ankara - a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) - employs 2,000 production workers, almost entirely paid for with U.S. tax dollars.
Ethnic Cleansing’ in Balochistan
KARACHI, Jun 23, 2011 (IPS) - The pain and anger in 25-year-old Rukhsana Langho’s voice could be heard over the telephone line from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, 700 kms north of the port city of Karachi. "We hate Pakistan and we want freedom," she says, bitter over the disappearance of her brother more than a year ago.
Men believed to be part of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency abducted 35-year-old Mir Ghaffar Langho in Karachi on Dec. 11, 2009. He has been missing since then. "His wife and daughter were with him when he was picked up, blindfolded, pushed into a car and taken away," says Langho.
Mir Ghaffar Langho is among the 14,000 Baloch men who have gone missing over the past decade. "If you see the way our 160 martyred brothers have been tortured, you’d be ashamed to call yourself a Pakistani too," she says.
Langho was referring to the mutilated corpses of students, teachers, political workers, rights activists, singers, poets, labourers, and shopkeepers that have been turning up in threes and fours every few days for the last ten months. Their skulls have been drilled, eyes pulled out from sockets, limbs snapped or sliced; some have been singed and seared beyond recognition.
These men are the "cream of Baloch society," the latest targets in what is believed to be "ethnic cleansing" committed by the Pakistani government, says Malik Siraj Akbar, a young Baloch journalist who is alarmed at the scale of the killings.
Akbar says the modus operandi is always the same. "Men, between 20 and 40, usually staunch nationalists, are picked up from a public place in broad daylight by armed people, intelligence men in uniform and in plainclothes," he says. "Of late the bodies that have been found dumped have chits on them with the name of the dead and a remark saying ‘It’s an Eid gift,’ or ‘This is what happens to a Hindustani agent (an Indian spy)’," he says.
The military has denied the charges and says militants posing as members of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force, are behind the abductions and killings. But Balochistan’s chief minister Aslam Raisani said in a BBC interview in November 2010 that Pakistan’s security agencies were "definitely" behind the abductions and killings.
By Zofeen Ebrahim
PAKISTAN: ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Feared in Balochistan - IPS ipsnews.net
Men believed to be part of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency abducted 35-year-old Mir Ghaffar Langho in Karachi on Dec. 11, 2009. He has been missing since then. "His wife and daughter were with him when he was picked up, blindfolded, pushed into a car and taken away," says Langho.
Mir Ghaffar Langho is among the 14,000 Baloch men who have gone missing over the past decade. "If you see the way our 160 martyred brothers have been tortured, you’d be ashamed to call yourself a Pakistani too," she says.
Langho was referring to the mutilated corpses of students, teachers, political workers, rights activists, singers, poets, labourers, and shopkeepers that have been turning up in threes and fours every few days for the last ten months. Their skulls have been drilled, eyes pulled out from sockets, limbs snapped or sliced; some have been singed and seared beyond recognition.
These men are the "cream of Baloch society," the latest targets in what is believed to be "ethnic cleansing" committed by the Pakistani government, says Malik Siraj Akbar, a young Baloch journalist who is alarmed at the scale of the killings.
Akbar says the modus operandi is always the same. "Men, between 20 and 40, usually staunch nationalists, are picked up from a public place in broad daylight by armed people, intelligence men in uniform and in plainclothes," he says. "Of late the bodies that have been found dumped have chits on them with the name of the dead and a remark saying ‘It’s an Eid gift,’ or ‘This is what happens to a Hindustani agent (an Indian spy)’," he says.
The military has denied the charges and says militants posing as members of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force, are behind the abductions and killings. But Balochistan’s chief minister Aslam Raisani said in a BBC interview in November 2010 that Pakistan’s security agencies were "definitely" behind the abductions and killings.
By Zofeen Ebrahim
PAKISTAN: ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Feared in Balochistan - IPS ipsnews.net
Arab Times: Regime In Damascus Condemned To History
It is no longer acceptable to support a government that uses its arsenal against its citizens, who tolerated oppression for 40 years, instead of using it to fight the common enemy. It is also unacceptable to expect reforms from the Syrian president who did not fulfill his promise during the past 10 years of leadership. He always intensifies arrests, killings, and expels people when faced with opposition.
He consolidates instruments of aggression in villages and cities by stationing machine guns and gets people shelled with helicopters. Will the United Nations -UN wait for the government to kill the entire populace before taking any action?
It is really shameful for the world to procrastinate action while blood letting is steadily increasing. It is especially annoying to reopen the door for this government. In fact, certain dictatorial countries and Russia, China and Iran obstructed decisions that were about to be issued and coerced others to back out and reduce the action to mere monitoring.
Is it not disgusting for some capitals, which were accusing the monster of heinous actions, to receive delegations of Syrian government and listen to their point of view which is based on fraud and fabrication? This gives an impression that deals are taking place behind the scene at the expense of the blood of Syrians.
However, even if the entire world succumbs to the game of interests, it doesn’t mean the Arab League should not bother to even issue a statement, condemning the ugly incidents in Syria. The inaction indicates lack of the will to unite in favor of Syrians against the government of massacre.
The Arab apex body should realize that it will be brought to account in the future for its failure to suspend Syria, like Libya. This situation has compelled us, as Arabs, to review the league that continues to flutter steadily. It is in bondage of dictatorial governments that legitimize all forbidden actions to suit their interests.
Read full article:
Regime in Damascus condemned to history
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/170424/reftab/36/t/Arab-silence-on-Syria-shameful/Default.aspx
He consolidates instruments of aggression in villages and cities by stationing machine guns and gets people shelled with helicopters. Will the United Nations -UN wait for the government to kill the entire populace before taking any action?
It is really shameful for the world to procrastinate action while blood letting is steadily increasing. It is especially annoying to reopen the door for this government. In fact, certain dictatorial countries and Russia, China and Iran obstructed decisions that were about to be issued and coerced others to back out and reduce the action to mere monitoring.
Is it not disgusting for some capitals, which were accusing the monster of heinous actions, to receive delegations of Syrian government and listen to their point of view which is based on fraud and fabrication? This gives an impression that deals are taking place behind the scene at the expense of the blood of Syrians.
However, even if the entire world succumbs to the game of interests, it doesn’t mean the Arab League should not bother to even issue a statement, condemning the ugly incidents in Syria. The inaction indicates lack of the will to unite in favor of Syrians against the government of massacre.
The Arab apex body should realize that it will be brought to account in the future for its failure to suspend Syria, like Libya. This situation has compelled us, as Arabs, to review the league that continues to flutter steadily. It is in bondage of dictatorial governments that legitimize all forbidden actions to suit their interests.
Read full article:
Regime in Damascus condemned to history
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/170424/reftab/36/t/Arab-silence-on-Syria-shameful/Default.aspx
Ocalan: "Promises not enough, concrete steps needed to avoid deeper crisis."
26 June 2011, Boycotting parliament right decision. Government promises not enough, concrete steps needed before 15 July to avoid deeper crisis, said Ocalan During the weekly meeting with his lawyers, last Friday.
Abdullah Ocalan commented the current situation stressing that "we are witnessing a conspiracy not just against Hatip Dicle. We are witnessing something darker, inside the AKP as well".
Ocalan also voiced support for BDP's decision and held ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) responsible for YSK's ruling against Dicle.
Talking about the meeting he had with Turkish officials "speaking on behalf of the government" on 14 June, Ocalan confirmed that "We spoke about many issues. The CHP has expressed curiosity about the content of these talks. It is important to tell the public opinion about these talks".
Stressing the importance of the meetings, Ocalan added that "We have reached a certain stage. The discussion phase has ended. There is no issue left to discuss. Now it is time for the government to take a decision on the issues we have discussed. That's why I called the Turkish parliament to hold an emergency session. If the parliament and government declare that they are in favour of a democratic solution then we will enter a practical phase.”
Ocalan warned if Turkish government will not respond before July 15 the negotiations will fail and a crisis will deepen in Turkey.
“We now have to options” Ocalan said. “A democratic constitutional solution or a revolutionary people's war. As for the first road, it is necessary to put into practice the solution to the Kurdish question. The government knows what it should do in order to get this started. As for the second road, clearly if no practical steps are taken the people will start their revolutionary war".
Commenting the decision by the Election Board on Hatip Dicle, Ocalan stated that “This is a dark conspiracy against Diyarbakir. This decision is not only against Dicle or Diyarbakir but Kurdish people” he said.
Ocalan said he respects the boycott decision of the elected MPs and insisted that they will go to parliament only if Turkish government steps up to give Hatip Dicle's electoral rights and his parliamentary seat back.
The High Election Board of Turkey announced Tuesday that Hatip Dicle, who was elected as an independent representative from Diyarbakir city, could not take a seat in the newly elected parliament. He was supported by Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) which won 36 seats in the 550-member parliament. The remaining 35 MPs announced that they will boycott the new parliament after the decision of YSK.
Journalist Çandar suggested gradual amnesty for PKK members
25 June 2011, The journalist put forward a seven-points plan to favor peace solution
Journalist Cengiz Çandar, known for his work on the Kurdish problem, suggested a gradual amnesty for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members and leaders to reach a social peace.
Releasing his report on Kurdish case in a conference held by the Foundation for Economic and Social Studies in Turkey (TESEV) in İstanbul yesterday, Çandar also recommended seven more steps that need to be taken by the parties involved in the issue.
According to Çandar these recommendations could simultaneously be accepted among sides that are politically, socially and ethnically different:
1. The first step towards a resolution is to create a climate of mutual trust between the sides (the government and PKK). The precondition for such trust would mean that the majority of the defendants charged in the KCK case, particularly the elected mayors, ought to be released and the case must be dropped.
2. The climate of trust between the sides would only be possible once the disarmament takes place. Therefore, the “inaction” status of the PKK must be kept at status quo continually. In order to consolidate this “inaction” status of the PKK, the operations and attacks on the PKK by the Turkish Armed Forces and other security forces must be stopped.
Diminishing the possibility of creating proactive settings by stopping the operations and making the “inaction” status long lasting would obstruct the people (who exist in both sides) from engaging in actions in favor of “the continuance of war”. Moreover, the suspension of operations by the state could be achieved only if the military authority would be subordinate to civil authority and only if the civil authority would embrace this approach.
3. Another significant step necessary to show that it is possible for the Kurdish people to engage in politics openly, legally and legitimately, along with dropping the KCK case, is the allowance of the accurate and broadest possible Kurdish representation at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which would also give reason for people to get off the mountains and disarm. However, in order for such condition where Turkey’s “domestic peace” and “PKK becoming Turkish” to be achieved, the state must lower the threshold percentage of votes to less than the original number of ten percent. Besides being a very important practical solution to free the Kurdish Question from violence, this restructuring is also a democratic necessity; and therefore must be adopted.
4. The listed steps towards a possible solution to the Kurdish problem would be insufficient and inefficient unless accompanied by mandatory legal changes. First of all, a new constitution must be written which should include a new definition of citizenship. Moreover, the next important problem that must be solved is to find a satisfactory solution for the broad Kurdish demand for a right to be educated in their mother tongue.
5. The new constitution and legal reforms should aim to give a new status to Kurds in Turkey. The hope that Kurdish people can gain a new status is also a consensus among the Kurdish people who are not a part of the PKK or even against the PKK and its ideology. In accordance with this, Turkey should remove its reservation on the Council of European Local Governance Charter.
6. The people who were interviewed before the report was put together have all agreed on the fact that Abdullah Öcalan is a very significant political actor who can play the role of “partner to the solution”.
As a result, any change that is to be made to the status of Öcalan’s detention conditions, in the long and short run, cannot be held separate from the solution to the Kurdish question and the disarmament of the people in the mountains. The changes in Öcalan’s situation could range from improving the detention conditions in the short-term to Öcalan’s release in the medium-term. The people who gave out opinions seem to agree upon one type of a short term change in Öcalan’s condition; this is the transition to house arrest.
7. A gradual amnesty implementation is commonly recognized as a possible step towards ruling out the “fighters up in the mountains” both by the government officials and managers of the PKK as well as the Kurds in opposition to the PKK who were interviewed during the course of writing this report. In the meantime, they all seem to agree upon the fact that in order to stop the PKK armed forces and demilitarize the Kandil Mountains, an amnesty application is necessary.
Of course, in order to achieve the ultimate "social peace," the "progressive amnesty implementation" must not only be applied to the present PKK members but also to all the other thousands of people who have quit the PKK yet were forced to live abroad and/or people who have been criminally investigated/persecuted due to their actions at protests.
In this case, people who have never been affiliated with the PKK but have been sent abroad because of the developments around the Kurdish issue must also benefit from the amnesty rights. All of this could happen through the issuance of a special law.
Çandar meet with high ranking bureaucrats, politicians, current cabinet members, opinion leaders, Öcalan’s lawyers and the PKK’s current leaders in the east and in Europe to prepare the report.
Çandar also emphasized his worries about the Supreme Election Board’s recent decision to strip imprisoned Kurdish deputy Hatip Dicle of his membership of parliament.
He particularly underlined his findings about the role of PKK in peace process, saying; “Firstly, we named the case, ‘Kurdish uprising.’ Then, we stated the basic theory which was that if there is an uprising, there must be an armed force. This definition brought us to accept that the Kurdish question and the PKK cannot be separated.
Consequently, it not possible to imagine a solution to the Kurdish issue by excluding the PKK.
Authorities meeting with Öcalan became an acceptable step for society. If you cannot solve the problem using military methods, you need to change the parameters and include other parties to the issue. The part in prison has to be considered as a legal representative of the Kurdish movement and an appropriate part to negotiate.
The report titled “Down the Mountain – How could the PKK be disarmed? The Kurdish Question Freed from Violence” is the fourth and last published report of the Political Reports on the Kurdish Question Series which summarizes previously conducted research on the issue of the Kurdish Question by the TESEV Democratization Program.
Previous publications have offered a roadmap towards a solution for the Kurdish Question such as policy proposals from the region for the government and constitutional and legal recommendations. By making the demands from the region public through their previous publications, TESEV’s Democratization Program has opened up a debate in the west and north of Turkey on solving the Kurdish Question. Moreover, this last report explores the necessary conditions that would lead the PKK being disarmed.
Prior to writing the report, Cengiz Çandar interviewed approximately forty people in a period of six months, including state and government officials such as the president of Turkey, Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister of Justice, PKK executives such as Murat Karayılan and Zübeyir Aydar, people who have quit PKK, Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers, representatives of non-governmental organizations and political parties, all people who are closely related to the Kurdish Question in Turkey.
This report contains the most comprehensive research findings concerning the necessary conditions for the disarmament of PKK that have been done to date. Therefore, the conclusions drawn from this report will be a guide in terms of finding possible future solutions. There have always been opposing sides on the opinion about how to solve the Kurdish Question, and consequently, the PKK; however, the report makes an emphasis on the existence of intersecting points of view regarding theoretically differing sides on how to proceed with solving the problem, especially after the elections of June 12th 2011.
ANF / NEWS DESK
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
Abdullah Ocalan commented the current situation stressing that "we are witnessing a conspiracy not just against Hatip Dicle. We are witnessing something darker, inside the AKP as well".
Ocalan also voiced support for BDP's decision and held ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) responsible for YSK's ruling against Dicle.
Talking about the meeting he had with Turkish officials "speaking on behalf of the government" on 14 June, Ocalan confirmed that "We spoke about many issues. The CHP has expressed curiosity about the content of these talks. It is important to tell the public opinion about these talks".
Stressing the importance of the meetings, Ocalan added that "We have reached a certain stage. The discussion phase has ended. There is no issue left to discuss. Now it is time for the government to take a decision on the issues we have discussed. That's why I called the Turkish parliament to hold an emergency session. If the parliament and government declare that they are in favour of a democratic solution then we will enter a practical phase.”
Ocalan warned if Turkish government will not respond before July 15 the negotiations will fail and a crisis will deepen in Turkey.
“We now have to options” Ocalan said. “A democratic constitutional solution or a revolutionary people's war. As for the first road, it is necessary to put into practice the solution to the Kurdish question. The government knows what it should do in order to get this started. As for the second road, clearly if no practical steps are taken the people will start their revolutionary war".
Commenting the decision by the Election Board on Hatip Dicle, Ocalan stated that “This is a dark conspiracy against Diyarbakir. This decision is not only against Dicle or Diyarbakir but Kurdish people” he said.
Ocalan said he respects the boycott decision of the elected MPs and insisted that they will go to parliament only if Turkish government steps up to give Hatip Dicle's electoral rights and his parliamentary seat back.
The High Election Board of Turkey announced Tuesday that Hatip Dicle, who was elected as an independent representative from Diyarbakir city, could not take a seat in the newly elected parliament. He was supported by Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) which won 36 seats in the 550-member parliament. The remaining 35 MPs announced that they will boycott the new parliament after the decision of YSK.
Journalist Çandar suggested gradual amnesty for PKK members
25 June 2011, The journalist put forward a seven-points plan to favor peace solution
Journalist Cengiz Çandar, known for his work on the Kurdish problem, suggested a gradual amnesty for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members and leaders to reach a social peace.
Releasing his report on Kurdish case in a conference held by the Foundation for Economic and Social Studies in Turkey (TESEV) in İstanbul yesterday, Çandar also recommended seven more steps that need to be taken by the parties involved in the issue.
According to Çandar these recommendations could simultaneously be accepted among sides that are politically, socially and ethnically different:
1. The first step towards a resolution is to create a climate of mutual trust between the sides (the government and PKK). The precondition for such trust would mean that the majority of the defendants charged in the KCK case, particularly the elected mayors, ought to be released and the case must be dropped.
2. The climate of trust between the sides would only be possible once the disarmament takes place. Therefore, the “inaction” status of the PKK must be kept at status quo continually. In order to consolidate this “inaction” status of the PKK, the operations and attacks on the PKK by the Turkish Armed Forces and other security forces must be stopped.
Diminishing the possibility of creating proactive settings by stopping the operations and making the “inaction” status long lasting would obstruct the people (who exist in both sides) from engaging in actions in favor of “the continuance of war”. Moreover, the suspension of operations by the state could be achieved only if the military authority would be subordinate to civil authority and only if the civil authority would embrace this approach.
3. Another significant step necessary to show that it is possible for the Kurdish people to engage in politics openly, legally and legitimately, along with dropping the KCK case, is the allowance of the accurate and broadest possible Kurdish representation at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which would also give reason for people to get off the mountains and disarm. However, in order for such condition where Turkey’s “domestic peace” and “PKK becoming Turkish” to be achieved, the state must lower the threshold percentage of votes to less than the original number of ten percent. Besides being a very important practical solution to free the Kurdish Question from violence, this restructuring is also a democratic necessity; and therefore must be adopted.
4. The listed steps towards a possible solution to the Kurdish problem would be insufficient and inefficient unless accompanied by mandatory legal changes. First of all, a new constitution must be written which should include a new definition of citizenship. Moreover, the next important problem that must be solved is to find a satisfactory solution for the broad Kurdish demand for a right to be educated in their mother tongue.
5. The new constitution and legal reforms should aim to give a new status to Kurds in Turkey. The hope that Kurdish people can gain a new status is also a consensus among the Kurdish people who are not a part of the PKK or even against the PKK and its ideology. In accordance with this, Turkey should remove its reservation on the Council of European Local Governance Charter.
6. The people who were interviewed before the report was put together have all agreed on the fact that Abdullah Öcalan is a very significant political actor who can play the role of “partner to the solution”.
As a result, any change that is to be made to the status of Öcalan’s detention conditions, in the long and short run, cannot be held separate from the solution to the Kurdish question and the disarmament of the people in the mountains. The changes in Öcalan’s situation could range from improving the detention conditions in the short-term to Öcalan’s release in the medium-term. The people who gave out opinions seem to agree upon one type of a short term change in Öcalan’s condition; this is the transition to house arrest.
7. A gradual amnesty implementation is commonly recognized as a possible step towards ruling out the “fighters up in the mountains” both by the government officials and managers of the PKK as well as the Kurds in opposition to the PKK who were interviewed during the course of writing this report. In the meantime, they all seem to agree upon the fact that in order to stop the PKK armed forces and demilitarize the Kandil Mountains, an amnesty application is necessary.
Of course, in order to achieve the ultimate "social peace," the "progressive amnesty implementation" must not only be applied to the present PKK members but also to all the other thousands of people who have quit the PKK yet were forced to live abroad and/or people who have been criminally investigated/persecuted due to their actions at protests.
In this case, people who have never been affiliated with the PKK but have been sent abroad because of the developments around the Kurdish issue must also benefit from the amnesty rights. All of this could happen through the issuance of a special law.
Çandar meet with high ranking bureaucrats, politicians, current cabinet members, opinion leaders, Öcalan’s lawyers and the PKK’s current leaders in the east and in Europe to prepare the report.
Çandar also emphasized his worries about the Supreme Election Board’s recent decision to strip imprisoned Kurdish deputy Hatip Dicle of his membership of parliament.
He particularly underlined his findings about the role of PKK in peace process, saying; “Firstly, we named the case, ‘Kurdish uprising.’ Then, we stated the basic theory which was that if there is an uprising, there must be an armed force. This definition brought us to accept that the Kurdish question and the PKK cannot be separated.
Consequently, it not possible to imagine a solution to the Kurdish issue by excluding the PKK.
Authorities meeting with Öcalan became an acceptable step for society. If you cannot solve the problem using military methods, you need to change the parameters and include other parties to the issue. The part in prison has to be considered as a legal representative of the Kurdish movement and an appropriate part to negotiate.
The report titled “Down the Mountain – How could the PKK be disarmed? The Kurdish Question Freed from Violence” is the fourth and last published report of the Political Reports on the Kurdish Question Series which summarizes previously conducted research on the issue of the Kurdish Question by the TESEV Democratization Program.
Previous publications have offered a roadmap towards a solution for the Kurdish Question such as policy proposals from the region for the government and constitutional and legal recommendations. By making the demands from the region public through their previous publications, TESEV’s Democratization Program has opened up a debate in the west and north of Turkey on solving the Kurdish Question. Moreover, this last report explores the necessary conditions that would lead the PKK being disarmed.
Prior to writing the report, Cengiz Çandar interviewed approximately forty people in a period of six months, including state and government officials such as the president of Turkey, Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister of Justice, PKK executives such as Murat Karayılan and Zübeyir Aydar, people who have quit PKK, Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers, representatives of non-governmental organizations and political parties, all people who are closely related to the Kurdish Question in Turkey.
This report contains the most comprehensive research findings concerning the necessary conditions for the disarmament of PKK that have been done to date. Therefore, the conclusions drawn from this report will be a guide in terms of finding possible future solutions. There have always been opposing sides on the opinion about how to solve the Kurdish Question, and consequently, the PKK; however, the report makes an emphasis on the existence of intersecting points of view regarding theoretically differing sides on how to proceed with solving the problem, especially after the elections of June 12th 2011.
ANF / NEWS DESK
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=home
The INSLAW affair by Gordon Thomas and Joel Bleifuss
The Author Gordon Thomas and Joel Bleifuss, publisher of In These Times, as an investigative reporter, columnist and editor have wrote about this affair and we take the liberty to "merge" their writings together in some kindá "summary".
In 1967, communications expert William Hamilton returned to the United States from Vietnam, where he had devised a network of electronic listening posts to monitor the Vietcong as its forces moved through the jungle. Hamilton was offered a job with the National Security Agency. His first task had been to create a computerized Vietnamese-English dictionary that proved to be a powerful aid to translating Vietcong messages and interrogating prisoners.
It was an era when the computers grew smaller and faster; more sophisticated sensors were able to separate thousands of conversations; photographic spectrum analysis lifted from millions of dots only the ones that were of interest; microchips made it possible to hear a whisper a hundred yards away; infrared lenses let one see in the black of night.
Work had started on the computer-driven Facial-Analysis Comparison and Elimination System (FACES) that would revolutionize the system of identifying a person from photographs.
Based on forty-nine characteristics, each categorized on a 1 to 4 scale, FACES could make 15 million binary yes/no decisions in a second. Interlinked computers did simultaneous searches to eventually make a staggering 40 million binary decisions a second. Computers themselves had begun to reduce in size but retained a memory that contained the equivalent information of a five-hundred-page reference book.
Still working for the NSA, Hamilton saw an opening in this ever-expanding market; he would create a software program to interface with data banks in other computer systems. Its application in in- telligence work would mean that the owner of the program would be able to interdict most other systems without, their users’ being aware. A patriotic man, Hamilton intended his first client for the system would be the United States government.
Just as NASA had given the country an unassailable lead in space technology, so William Hamilton was confident he would do the same for the U.S. intelligence community. Encouraged by the NSA, the inventor worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. Obsessive and secretive, he was the quintessential researcher; the NSA was full of them.
After three years, Hamilton was close to producing the ultimate surveillance tool — a program that could track the movements of literally untold numbers of people in any part of the world. Hamilton resigned from the NSA and purchased a small company called Inslaw. The company’s stated function was to cross- check court actions and discover if there was common background to litigants, witnesses and their families, even their attorneys — anyone involved or becoming involved in an action. Hamilton called the system Promis.
By 1981, he had developed it to the point where he could copyright the software and turn Inslaw into a small, profit-making company. The future looked promising.
The NSA protested that he had made use of the agency’s own research facilities to produce the program. Hamilton hotly rejected the allegation but offered to lease Promis to the Justice Department on a straightforward basis: each time the program was used, Inslaw would receive a fee. The proposed deal itself was unremarkable; Justice, like any governinent department, had hundreds of contractors providing services. Unknown to Hamilton, Justice had sent a copy of Hamilton’s program to the NSA for “evaluation.”
The reasons this was done would remain unclear. Hamilton had already demonstrated to Justice that the Promis program could do what he claimed: electronically probe into the lives of people in a way never before possible. For justice and its investigative arm, the FBI, Promis offered a powerful tool to fight the Mafia’s money-laundering and other criminal activities. Overnight it could also revolutionize the DEA’s fight against the Colombian drug barons. To the CIA, Promis could become a weapon every bit as effective as a spy satellite. The possibilities seemed endless.
As CIA Director-designate Robert Gates pleads ignorance to knowledge of CIA misdeeds before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the lawmakers might do well to remember his sworn testimony of March 6, 1986.
At the time, CIA Director William Casey had nominated Gates for the number-two position at the agency. In an effort to impress the senators considering his nomination, Gates said: “Casey and I have consulted extensively, even in my present position [as deputy director for intelligence] in all areas of intelligence policy including not just analysis and estimates but also organization, budgeting and covert action. I will now have a formal role in all of these areas.”
If Gates really had “a formal role in all of these areas” – which appears likely – he certainly knows more than he has let on. And someone should ask Gates what he knows about the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Fla.
As the Wackenhut letterhead puts in, the company provides “security systems and services throughout the world.” As Wackenhut’s Director of Special Investigations Service Wayne Black told the “Washington Times”‘ Deanna Hoagin earlier this year: “We are similar to a private FBI.” The company’s board of directors reads like a who’s who of the intelligence community.
In 1984, for example, former Deputy CIA Director Bobby Inman, currently one of Gates’ main boosters in Washington, was a director of the company.
And among those on the 1983 board were two former FBI special agents, one retired Air Force general, one former commander in chief of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), one former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, former CIA Director William Rabor, Nixon-appointed FBI Director Clarence Kelley and former CIA Deputy Director Frank Carlucci (who would later become Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser [former Managing Director of The Carlyle Group too]).
Further, the 1983 board included Robert Chasen, a former FBI special agent who was Carter’s commissioner of customs until 1980, when he became a vice president of Wackenhut. Also in 1980, soon-to-be CIA chief William Casey served as Wackenhut’s outside legal counsel–the same year he managed the Reagan-Bush election campaign.
It was in 1980 that Wackenhut began working closely with Southern California’s Cabazon Indians and their tribal administrator John Philip Nichols. The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Jonathan Littman reported this month that Nichols, a white American who spent years in South America, has boasted to friends about working on the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro and the successful assassination of Salvador Allende.
The Cabazons hired Nichols as their administrator in 1978. Littman reports that thanks to Nichols’ connections and grantsmanship, “federal and state agencies are helping to finance nearly $250 million worth of projects on the 1,700-acre reservation” belonging to the 30-member Cabazon tribe. According to Littman, these projects include a HUD and mafia-financed casino, a 1,800-unit housing complex and a $150 million waste incinerator/power plant that was built with tax-exempt state bonds.
But most intriguing is the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture, which began in 1980 when the tribe was asked to design a security system for Crown Prince Fahd’s palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia. This was followed by Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture proposals to develop biological weapons for the Pentagon and assemble night-vision goggles for the Guatemalan and Jordanian governments.
Why was a security firm so interested in working with a small tribe of native Americans? One good reason can be found in a May 26, 1981, inter-office memo from Wackenhut executive Robert Frye to the above-mentioned Robert Chasen. Frye described an 11-day business trip with Nichols “to explore the apparent potential for the Cabazon-Wackenhut joint venture.” Frye wrote that the reservation has “several key ingredients necessary” for a weapons plant, including “lack of opposition by adjacent governing bodies and ‘irate citizens’ over the siting of such a facility.”
John Philip Nichols is no longer officially running the reservation. According to Littman, son Mark Nichols [later fired, daughter Alexis now on board] is the tribal administrator while the elder Nichols serves as a “mental-health counselor to Cabazon reservation employees.”
In January, 1985, Nichols was sentenced to four years in prison for capital solicitation of murder. He served 19 months. No one was killed in that murder-for-hire scheme. However, in 1981, Alfred Alvarez, a Cabazon Indian tribal vice president, and two non-Indians were murdered execution style.
Alvarez’s sister says her brother and his friends died because they were about to expose mismanagement on the Cabazon reservation. Mike Kataoka of the Palm Springs “Press-Enterprise” reports that in 1985, when Nichols was arrested for hiring the hitman, the U.S. Justice Department was investigating his possible involvement in those 1981 deaths. No charges were ever filed.
The Cabazon/Wackenhut connection was of particular interest to Danny Casolaro, the Washington-based journalist who was found dead in the Martinsburg, W. Va., Sheraton on August 10. Casolaro’s friends, family and professional associates fear he was murdered–and that the crime was related to his investigations into a series of corporate and governmental scandals.
Casolaro’s brother, Anthony, told the Washington-based “Corporate Crime Reporter,” “Danny was trying to track monies Wackenhut spent and what Danny found was that [Wackenhut] had ear-marked a half million dollars for what they call ‘research.’"
Anthony Casolaro said that the money “ties in Wackenhut with this Indian reservation and organized crime and CIA guys . . . Those same people showed up with Inslaw and one of them shows up in the October Surprise.”
The “October Surprise” was the alleged campaign deal between Iran and the 1980 Reagan campaign to delay the release of the U.S. hostages held in Tehran (see “In These Times,” June 24, 1987, Oct. 12, 1988 and April 27, 1991).
“Inslaw was Inslaw Inc. of Washington D.C.–a firm that has brought suit in federal court, charging that the Reagan Justice Department stole the company’s Promis case-management software program.
Two judges have thus far ruled in the company’s favor. (see “In These Times,” May 29, 1991, "Software Pirates").
Inslaw further alleged that the Justice Department turned the stolen software over to Earl Brian, a friend of both former President Ronald Reagan and former Attorney General Edwin Meese. Inslaw charges that the software was a payback for Brian’s help in arranging the October Surprise.
Former Israeli intelligence agent Ari Ben-Menashe alleges that Brian–now the head of United Press International–was directly involved in arranging the 1980 deal. Ben-Menashe claims that Brian “worked very closely” on the deal with Robert Gates, who was then a top CIA official.
Wackenhut is also linked to the Inslaw scandal.
Michael Riconosciuto–a weapons-systems designer and software specialist–was director of research for the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture in the early ’80s. In a March 1991 affidavit for the Inslaw case, Riconosciuto claimed that “in connection with [Riconosciuto's] work for Wackenhut,” he modified the stolen Promis software for foreign sales. “Earl W. Brian made [the software program] available to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who was then a Department of Justice contracting official with responsibility for the Promis software.”
Videnieks, a former Customs Service official under Commissioner Chasen, served in the Justice Department from 1981 through 1990. In his affidavit, Riconosciuto said Videnieks had threatened to retaliate against Riconosciuto if he cooperated with a House Judiciary Committee probe of the Inslaw case. Seven days after filing the affidavit (which was not, technically, part of the committee investigation), Riconosciuto was arrested on drug-selling charges. He is now in a Seattle jail awaiting trial.
The 1980s were a decade of privatization. As a for-profit intelligence service, Wackenhut appears to have taken on the kind of work that in earlier years the FBI and CIA would have done (and still do), albeit illegally.
Wackenhut is now the object of an investigation by the House Interior Committee. Early in 1990, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., a consortium of seven oil companies that run the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, hired Wackenhut to spy on environmentalists, whistleblowers and other oil company critics. Wackenhut tactics included setting up a phoney environmental organization and having agents pose as reporters. It is alleged in press reports that the company also monitored Rep. George Miller (D-CA) whose house subcommittee has been investigating environmental crimes allegedly committed by the consortium which is composed of British Petroleum, Exxon, ARCO, Phillips, Unocal, Mobil and Amerada Hess.
In the meantime, one of those characters the world of international wheeling and dealing regularly produces had heard about Promis.
Earl Brian had been California’s secretary of health during Reagan’s time as state governor. Largely because Brian spoke Farsi, Reagan had encouraged him to put together a Medicare plan for the Iranian government.
During his visits to Tehran, Brian had come to the attention of Rafi Eitan, who was then one of the helmsmen steering the arms-for-hostages deal ever closer to the rocks. He invited Brian to Israel. They immediately struck up a rapport. Brian was captivated by his host’s account of capturing Eichmann; Rafi Eitan was equally fascinated by his guest’s description of Californian life in the fast lane.
Rafi Eitan soon realized that Brian could not widen his own circle of contacts in Iran and over the years the two men had stayed in touch; Brian had kept Rafi Eitan informed about Promis.
In 1990 Brian arrived in Tel Aviv. He was more than weary from his long flight; the paleness on his face came from anger that the Justice Department was using a version of the Promis program to track money-laundering and other criminal activities.
Rafi Eitan’s instincts told him that his old friend could not have arrived at a more opportune time. Once more conflict had flared between Mossad and the other members of the Israeli intelligence community. The cause was a new Arab uprising, the Intifada. Promis could be an effective weapon to counter its activities.
The revolution had spread with remarkable speed, stunning the Israelis and galvanizing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shin Bet blamed Aman; both blamed Mossad for its failure to provide advance warning from Lebanon. Beset by deepening interservice strife, the Israeli intelligence community was unable to agree on a coordinated policy to deal with mass Arab resistance. An added thorn was the criticism from the United States over the growing evidence on TV screens of the brutal methods deployed by Israeli soldiers.
U.S. networks, began to screen footage which, for sheer brutality, matched what had happened in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The Intifada coalesced to form the United National Leadership of the Uprising. Every Arab community was postered with instructions in Arabic on how to stage strikes, close shops, boycott Israeli goods, refuse to recognize the civil administration. It was reminiscent of the resistance in the last days of the German occupation of France in World War II.
The world watched as Israel not only failed to stop the Intifada but also lost the propaganda war. Commentators made the comparison that here was a modern-day David-versus-Goliath conflict, with the IDF cast in the role of the Philistine giant.
Yasser Arafat used the Intifada as an opportunity to regain control over his dispossessed people. Around the world his voice cracked with fury on radio and television that what was happening was the direct result of Israel’s policy of stealing Arab land. He urged every Arab to rally in support. One day Arafat was in Kuwait urging Hamas to provide its deadly skills. The next he was in Lebanon, meeting with the leaders of Islamic Jihad. Arafat was achieving what had, only a short time before, seemed impossible-uniting Arabs of all persuasions in a common cause. To them all he was “Mr. Palestine” or “Chairman.”
Mossad was constantly flummoxed by Arafat’s strategies as he flitted between Arab capitals. It had little or no warning where he would turn up, or whom he would next rally to his side.
All this and more Rafi Eitan explained to his houseguest, Earl Brian. In turn Brian described how Promis worked. In his view, there was still work to be done to bring the program up to speed. Rafi Eitan realized that Promis could then have an impact on the Intifada. For a start, the system could lock on to computers in the PLO’s seventeen offices scattered around the world to see where Arafat was going and what he could be planning.
Rafi Eitan put aside his foraging for scrap metal and focused on how to exploit the brave new world Promis offered. To achieve such a breakthrough would once more undoubtedly make him a powerful figure in the Israeli intelligence community. But the wounds inflicted on him by his former peers had gone deep. He had been turned out into the cold with little more than a modest pension. Promis offered an opportunity to make amends; handled properly, it could make his fortune.
However, for all his brilliance, Rafi Eitan was no computer genius; his skills in that area extended to little more than switching on his modem. But his years at LAKAM had given him access to all the experts he would need.
When Earl Brian returned to the United States, Rafi Eitan put together a small team of former LAKAM programmers. They deconstructed the Promis disc and rearranged its various components, then added several elements of their own. There was no way for anyone to be able to claim ownership of what Promis had become. Rafi Eitan decided to keep the original name because it was “a good marketing tool to explain what the system was.”
Intelligence operatives, untrained in computer technology beyond knowing which keys to tap, would be able to access information and judgments far more comprehensive than they could ever carry in their own heads. A Promis disc could fit a laptop computer and choose from a myriad of alternatives the one that made most sense.
But before it could be sold, according to Ben-Menashe, Rafi Eitan needed to add one further element. Ben-Menashe claims he was summoned a played a large part in inserting a “trapdoor,” a built-in chip that, unknown to any purchaser, would allow Rafi Eitan to know what information was being sought.
Ben-Menashe knew someone who could create a trapdoor that even the most sophisticated scanners would be unable to detect. The man ran a small computer research and development company in Northern California. He and Ben-Menashe had been schoolboy friends, and for five thousand dollars he agreed to produce the microchip. It was, Ben-Menashe admitted, cheap at the price.
The next stage would be to test the system. Jordan was selected as the site, not only because it bordered on Israel, but because it had become a haven for the leaders of the Intifada. Consequently, long before the Intifada, Jordan had become a proving ground for Mossad to develop its electronic skills. In the 1970s, Mossad technicians had tapped into the computer IBM had sold to the country’s military intelligence service. The information gained had supplemented that provided by the deep-cover katsa Rafi Eitan had placed inside King Hussein’s palace. Promis would offer much more.
To sell it directly to Jordan was impossible because normal business links between both countries were still some years away. Instead, Earl Brian’s company, Hadron, made the deal. When the company’s computer experts installed the program in Amman’s military headquarters, they discovered the Jordanians had a French-designed system to track the movements of PLO leaders. Promis was secretly wired into the French system. In Tel Aviv, Rafi Eitan soon saw results as the trapdoor showed which PLO leaders the Jordanians were tracking.
The next stage was to prepare the sales pitch for Promis. Yasser Arafat was selected as the ideal example. Whenever Arafat moved, the details were entered on a secure PLO computer. But Promis could hack into its defenses to discover what aliases and false passports he was using. Promis could obtain his phone bills and check the numbers called. It would then cross-check those with other calls made from those numbers. In that way, Promis would have a “picture” of Arafat’s communications. On a trip he would inform the local security authorities of his presence, and steps would be taken to provide protection. Promis could obtain the details by interdicting police computers.
Rafi Eitan realized that neither Earl Brian nor his company had the resources to market Promis globally. That would require someone with superb international contacts, boundless energy, and proven negotiating skills. There was only one man Rafi Eitan knew who had those requirements: Robert Maxwell.
Maxwell needed little convincing and, in his usual ebullient manner when there was a deal to be profited from, said he had a computer company through which to sell Promis. Degem Computers Limited was based in Tel Aviv and was already playing a useful role in Mossad’s activities. Maxwell had allowed Mossad operatives, posing as Degem employees, to use the company’s suboffices in Central and South America. Now Maxwell saw an opportunity not only to make a healthy profit from marketing Promis through Degem, but to further establish his own importance to Mossad and ultimately Israel.
There was no doubting Maxwell was a brilliant marketeer of Promis — or, as far as Mossad was concerned, of the effectiveness of the system. The service had been the first to obtain the program and it had been a valuable tool in its campaign against the Intifada. Many of its leaders had left Jordan for safer hideouts in Europe after several had been assassinated in Jordan by kidons.
A spectacular success came when an Intifada commander who had moved to Rome called a Beirut number that Mossad’s computers already had listed as the home of a known bomb maker. The Rome caller wanted to meet the bomb maker in Athens. Mossad used Promis to check all the travel offices in Rome and Beirut for the travel arrangements of both men. In Beirut, further checks revealed the bomber had ordered the local utility companies to suspend supplies to his home.
A further search by Promis of the local PLO computers also showed the bomber had switched flights at the last moment. It did not save him. He was killed by a car bomb on the way to Beirut airport. Shortly afterward, in Rome, the Intifada commander was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
Meantime, Mossad was using Promis to read the secret intelligence of a number of services. In South Africa, a katsa in the Israeli embassy used Promis to track the country’s banned revolutionary organization and their contacts with Middle Eastern groups. In Washington, Mossad specialists at the Israeli embassy used Promis to penetrate the communications of other diplomatic missions and U.S. government departments.
The same was happening in London and other European capitals. The system had continued to yield valuable information for Mossad. By 1989, over $500 million worth of Promis programs had been sold to Britain, Australia, South Korea, and Canada. The figure would have been even bigger but for the CIA marketing its own version to intelligence agencies. In Britain, Promis was used by MI5 in Northern Ireland to track terrorists and the movements of political leaders like Gerry Adams.
Maxwell had also managed to sell the system to the Polish intelligence service, the UB. In return the Poles, according to Ben-Menashe, allowed Mossad to steal a Russian MiG-29. The operation was a reminder of the theft of the earlier version of the MiG from Iraq. A Polish general in charge of the UB office in Gdansk, in return for $1 million paid into a Citibank account in New York, had arranged for the aircraft to be written off as no longer airworthy, though the plane had only recently arrived from its Russian aircraft factory.
The fighter was dismantled, placed into crates marked “Agricultural Machinery,” and flown to Tel Aviv. There the plane was reassembled and test-flown by the Israeli air force, enabling its pilots to counter the MiG-29s in service with Syria.
It was weeks before the theft was discovered by Moscow during a routine inventory of aircraft supplied to Warsaw Pact countries. A strong protest was made by Moscow to Israel — backed by the threat to stop the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. The Israeli government, its air force having discovered all the MiG’s secrets, apologized profusely for the “mistaken zeal of officers acting unofficially” and promptly returned the aircraft.
By then the UB general had joined his dollar fortune in the United States. Washington had agreed to give him a new identity in return for the USAF being allowed to conduct its own inspection of the MiG.
Shortly afterward Robert Maxwell flew to Moscow. Officially he was there to interview Mikhail Gorbachev. In reality he had come to sell Promis to the KGB. Through its secret trapdoor microchip, it gave Israel unique access to Soviet military intelligence, making Mossad one of the best-briefed services on Russian intentions. From Moscow Maxwell flew to Tel Aviv.
In London Robert Maxwell’s newspaper empire was in grave financial trouble. Soon, without a substantial injection of capital, it would have to cease operations. But, in the City of London, where he had previously always found funding, there was a reluctance to go on providing it. Hard-nosed financiers who had met Maxwell sensed that behind his bluster and bully-boy tactics was a man who was losing the financial acumen that in the past had allowed them to forgive so much. In those days he had raged and threatened at the slightest challenge. Bankers had curbed their anger and caved in to his demands. But they would no longer do so. In the Bank of England and other financial institutions in the City, the word was that Maxwell was no longer a safe bet.
Their information was partially based on confidential reports from Israel that Maxwell was being pressed by his original Israeli investors to repay them the money that had helped him to acquire the Mirror Group. The time limit on repayments had long gone and the demands from the Israelis had become more insistent. Trying to fend them off, Maxwell had promised them a higher return on their money if they waited. The Israelis were not satisfied: they wanted their money back now. This was why Maxwell had come to Tel Aviv: he hoped to cajole them into granting him another extension. The signs were not good. During the flight, he had received several angry phone calls from the investors, threatening to place the matter before the City of London regulatory body.
There was a further matter for Maxwell to be concerned over. He had stolen some of the very substantial profits from ORA that he had been entrusted to hide in Soviet Bloc banks. He had used the money to try to prop up the Mirror Group. Maxwell had already stolen all he could from the staff pension fund, and the ORA money would not stretch very far.
And, unlike the Israeli investors, once that theft was uncovered, he would find himself confronting some very hard men, among them Rafi Eitan. From his hotel suite, Maxwell began to strategize. His share of the profits from Degem’s marketing of Promis would not be able to stem the crisis. Neither would profits from Maariv, the Israeli tabloid modeled on his flagship Daily Mirror. But there was one possibility, the Tel Aviv-based Cytex Corporation he owned, which manufactured high-tech printing equipment. If Cytex could be sold quickly, the money could go some way to solving matters.
Maxwell ordered Cytex’s senior executive, the son of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to his suite. The executive had bad news: a all quick sale was unlikely. Cytex, while holding its own, faced increasing competition. This was not the time to take it to the market. To sell would also throw skilled people out of work at a time when It unemployment was a serious problem in Israel. The reaction provoked a furious outburst from Maxwell as his last hope of rescue faded. Tactically he made an error in lambasting the prime minister’s son, who now told his father that Maxwell was in serious financial trouble. The prime minister, aware of the tycoon’s links to Mossad, informed Nahum Admoni. He called a meeting of senior staff to see how to deal with what had become a problem.
Later it emerged that several options were discussed. Mossad could ask the prime minister to use his own considerable influence with the Israeli investors not only to wait a while longer for their money, but to mobilize their own resources and contacts to find money to bail out Maxwell. This was rejected on the grounds that Maxwell had managed to upset Shamir with his cavalier attitude. Everyone knew that Shamir had a strong sense of self-preservation and would now wish to distance himself from Maxwell.
Another option was for Mossad to approach its highly placed sayanim in the City of London and urge them to support a rescue package for Mossad. At the same time Mossad-friendly journalists in Britain could be encouraged to write supportive stories about the troubled tycoon.
Again those suggestions were discounted. Reports Admoni had received from London suggested that many of the sayanim would welcome the end of Maxwell and that few journalists outside Mirror newspapers would dream of writing favorable stories about a tycoon who had spent years threatening the media.
The final option was for Mossad to break off all contact with Maxwell. There was a risk there: Maxwell, on the evidence of his present unpredictable state of mind, could well use his newspapers to actually attack Mossad. Given the access he had been given, that could have the most serious consequences.
On that somber note, the meeting concluded that Admoni would see Maxwell and remind him of his responsibility to both Mossad and Israel. That night the two men met over dinner in Maxwell’s hotel suite. What transpired between them would remain a secret. But hours later, Robert Maxwell left Tel Aviv in his private plane. It would be the last time, it would turn out, that anyone in Israel would see him alive.
Back in London, Maxwell, against all the odds, seemed to be succeeding in holding on to his newspaper group. He was likened to an African whirling dervish as he went from one meeting to another seeking financial support. From time to time he called Mossad to speak to Admoni, always informing the director general’s secretary that the “little Czech” was on the line.
The sobriquet had been bestowed on Maxwell after he had been recruited. What was said in those calls would remain unknown. But a clue would later emerge from the former katsa, Victor Ostrovsky. He believed Maxwell was insisting it was payback time; that the huge sum of money he had stolen from the Mirror pension fund should now be returned to him. At the same time, Maxwell also proposed that Mossad should, on his behalf, lobby for Mordechai Vanunu to be freed and handed over to him.
Maxwell would then fly the technician to London and personally interview him for the Daily Mirror. The story would be Vanunu’s “act of atonement,” written in a way that would show Israel’s compassion. With the chutzpah characteristic of so many of his actions, Maxwell added it would be a huge circulation booster for the Mirror and would unlock those doors still closed to him in the City of London.
Ostrovsky was not alone in believing that the preposterous plan finally decided Mossad that Robert Maxwell had become a dangerous loose cannon. On September 30, 1991, further evidence of Maxwell’s bizarre behavior came when he telephoned Admoni. This time there was no disguising the threat in Maxwell’s words. His financial affairs had once more taken a turn for the worse, and he was being investigated in Parliament and the British media, so long held at bay by his posse of high-priced lawyers and their quiver of writs.
Maxwell then said that unless Mossad arranged to immediately return all the stolen Mirror pension fund money, he could not be sure if he would be able to keep secret Adnioni’s ineeting with Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the KGB. Kryuchkov was now in a Moscow prison awaiting trial for his role in an abortive coup to oust Mikhail St Gorbachev. A key element of the plot had been a meeting Kryuchkov had on Maxwell’s yacht in the Adriatic shortly before the coup was launched.
Mossad had promised that Israel would use its influence with the United States and key European countries to diplomatically recognize the new regime in Moscow. In return, Kryuchkov would arrange for all Soviet Jews to be released and sent to Israel. The discussion had come to nothing. But revealing it could seriously harm Israel’s credibility with the existing Russian regime and with the United States.
That was the moment, Victor Ostrovsky would write, when “a small meeting of right wingers at Mossad headquarters resulted in a consensus to terminate Maxwell.” If Ostrovsky’s claim is true — and it has never been formally denied by Israel — then it was unthinkable that the group was acting without the highest sanction and perhaps even with the tacit knowledge of Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, the man who had once had his own share of killing Mossad’s enemies.
The matter for Mossad could only have become more urgent with the publication of a book by the veteran American investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, which dealt with Israel’s emergence as a nuclear power. News of the book had caught Mossad totally by surprise and copies were rushed to Tel Aviv. Well researched, it could nevertheless still have been effectively dealt with by saying nothing; the painful lesson of the mistake of confronting Ostrovsky’s publisher (also the publisher of this book) had been absorbed. But there was one problem: Hersh had identified Maxwell’s links to Mossad.
Those ties mostly involved the Mirror Group’s handling of the Vanunu story and the relationship between Nick Davies, ORA, and Ari Ben-Menashe. Predictably, Maxwell had taken refuge behind a battery of lawyers, issuing writs against Hersh and his London publishers. But Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, refused to be cowed. In Parliament, more pointed questions were asked about Maxwell’s links to Mossad. Old suspicions surfaced. MPs demanded to know, under parliamentary privilege, how much Maxwell knew about Mossad’s operations in Britain. For Victor Ostrovsky, “the ground was starting to burn under Maxwell’s feet.”
Ostrovsky would claim that the carefully prepared Mossad plan to kill Maxwell hinged on being able to persuade him to keep a rendezvous where Mossad could strike. It had a striking similarity to the plot that had led to the death of Mehdi Ben-Barka in Paris.
On October 29, 1991, Maxwell received a call from a katsa at the Israeli embassy in Madrid. Maxwell was asked to come to Spain the next day, and, according to Ostrovsky, “his caller promised that things would be worked out so there was no need to panic.” Maxwell was told to fly to Gibraltar and board his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, and order the crew to set sail for the Canary Islands “and wait there for a message.” Robert Maxwell agreed to do as instructed.
On October 30, four Israelis arrived in the Moroccan port of Rabat. They said they were tourists on a deep-sea fishing vacation and hired an oceangoing motor yacht. They set off toward the Canary Islands.
On October 31, after Maxwell reached the port of Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, he dined alone in the Hotel Mency. After dinner a man briefly joined him. Who he was and what they spoke about remain part of the mystery of the last days of Robert Maxwell. Shortly afterward, Maxwell returned to his yacht and ordered it back to sea. For the next thirty-six hours, the Lady Ghislaine sailed between the islands, keeping well clear of land, cruising at various speeds. Maxwell had told the captain he was deciding where to go next. The crew could not recall Maxwell showing such indecision.
In what it claimed was a “world exclusive,” headlined “How and why Robert Maxwell was murdered,” Britain’s Business Age magazine subsequently claimed that a two-man hit team crossed in a dinghy during the night from a motor yacht that had shadowed the Lady Ghislaine. Boarding the yacht, they found Maxwell on the afterdeck. The men overpowered him before he could call for help.
The magazine concluded the body was dropped overboard and the assassins returned to their yacht. It would be sixteen hours before Maxwell was recovered. More certain, on the night of November 4-5, Mossad’s problems with Maxwell were laid to rest in the cold swell of the Atlantic. The subsequent police investigation and the Spanish autopsy left unanswered questions. Why were only two of the yacht’s eleven-man crew awake? Normally five shared the night watch. To whom did Maxwell send a number of fax messages during those hours? What became of the copies? Why did the crew take so long to establish Maxwell was not on board? Why did they delay raising the alarm for a further seventy minutes? To this day no convincing answers have emerged.
Three Spanish pathologists were assigned to perform the autopsy. They wanted the vital organs and tissue to be sent to Madrid for further tests. Before this could be done, the Maxwell family intervened, ordering the body embalmed and flown forthwith to Israel for burial. The Spanish authorities, unusually, did not object. Who or what had persuaded the family to suddenly act as it did?
On November 10, 1991 , Maxwell’s funeral took place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the resting place for the nation’s most revered heroes. It had all the trappings of a state occasion, attended by the country’s government and opposition leaders. No fewer than six serving and former heads of the Israeli intelligence community listened as Prime Minister Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
Those who stood among the mourners included a man dressed in a somber black suit and shirt, relieved only at the throat by his Roman collar. Born into a Lebanese Christian family, he was a wraithlike figure-barely five feet tall and weighing little over a hundred pounds. But Father Ibrahim was no ordinary priest. He worked for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. His discreet presence at the funeral was not so much to mark the earthly passing of Robert Maxwell, but to acknowledge the still-secret ties developing between the Holy See and Israel. It was a perfect example of Meir Amit’s dictum that intelligence cooperation knows no limits.
INSLAW Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas
Chapter 10, excerpts, pages 203-219 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312252846?tag=coolavin
By Joel Bleifuss, In These Times, http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/about/author/10
In 1967, communications expert William Hamilton returned to the United States from Vietnam, where he had devised a network of electronic listening posts to monitor the Vietcong as its forces moved through the jungle. Hamilton was offered a job with the National Security Agency. His first task had been to create a computerized Vietnamese-English dictionary that proved to be a powerful aid to translating Vietcong messages and interrogating prisoners.
It was an era when the computers grew smaller and faster; more sophisticated sensors were able to separate thousands of conversations; photographic spectrum analysis lifted from millions of dots only the ones that were of interest; microchips made it possible to hear a whisper a hundred yards away; infrared lenses let one see in the black of night.
Work had started on the computer-driven Facial-Analysis Comparison and Elimination System (FACES) that would revolutionize the system of identifying a person from photographs.
Based on forty-nine characteristics, each categorized on a 1 to 4 scale, FACES could make 15 million binary yes/no decisions in a second. Interlinked computers did simultaneous searches to eventually make a staggering 40 million binary decisions a second. Computers themselves had begun to reduce in size but retained a memory that contained the equivalent information of a five-hundred-page reference book.
Still working for the NSA, Hamilton saw an opening in this ever-expanding market; he would create a software program to interface with data banks in other computer systems. Its application in in- telligence work would mean that the owner of the program would be able to interdict most other systems without, their users’ being aware. A patriotic man, Hamilton intended his first client for the system would be the United States government.
Just as NASA had given the country an unassailable lead in space technology, so William Hamilton was confident he would do the same for the U.S. intelligence community. Encouraged by the NSA, the inventor worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. Obsessive and secretive, he was the quintessential researcher; the NSA was full of them.
After three years, Hamilton was close to producing the ultimate surveillance tool — a program that could track the movements of literally untold numbers of people in any part of the world. Hamilton resigned from the NSA and purchased a small company called Inslaw. The company’s stated function was to cross- check court actions and discover if there was common background to litigants, witnesses and their families, even their attorneys — anyone involved or becoming involved in an action. Hamilton called the system Promis.
By 1981, he had developed it to the point where he could copyright the software and turn Inslaw into a small, profit-making company. The future looked promising.
The NSA protested that he had made use of the agency’s own research facilities to produce the program. Hamilton hotly rejected the allegation but offered to lease Promis to the Justice Department on a straightforward basis: each time the program was used, Inslaw would receive a fee. The proposed deal itself was unremarkable; Justice, like any governinent department, had hundreds of contractors providing services. Unknown to Hamilton, Justice had sent a copy of Hamilton’s program to the NSA for “evaluation.”
The reasons this was done would remain unclear. Hamilton had already demonstrated to Justice that the Promis program could do what he claimed: electronically probe into the lives of people in a way never before possible. For justice and its investigative arm, the FBI, Promis offered a powerful tool to fight the Mafia’s money-laundering and other criminal activities. Overnight it could also revolutionize the DEA’s fight against the Colombian drug barons. To the CIA, Promis could become a weapon every bit as effective as a spy satellite. The possibilities seemed endless.
As CIA Director-designate Robert Gates pleads ignorance to knowledge of CIA misdeeds before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the lawmakers might do well to remember his sworn testimony of March 6, 1986.
At the time, CIA Director William Casey had nominated Gates for the number-two position at the agency. In an effort to impress the senators considering his nomination, Gates said: “Casey and I have consulted extensively, even in my present position [as deputy director for intelligence] in all areas of intelligence policy including not just analysis and estimates but also organization, budgeting and covert action. I will now have a formal role in all of these areas.”
If Gates really had “a formal role in all of these areas” – which appears likely – he certainly knows more than he has let on. And someone should ask Gates what he knows about the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Fla.
As the Wackenhut letterhead puts in, the company provides “security systems and services throughout the world.” As Wackenhut’s Director of Special Investigations Service Wayne Black told the “Washington Times”‘ Deanna Hoagin earlier this year: “We are similar to a private FBI.” The company’s board of directors reads like a who’s who of the intelligence community.
In 1984, for example, former Deputy CIA Director Bobby Inman, currently one of Gates’ main boosters in Washington, was a director of the company.
And among those on the 1983 board were two former FBI special agents, one retired Air Force general, one former commander in chief of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), one former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, former CIA Director William Rabor, Nixon-appointed FBI Director Clarence Kelley and former CIA Deputy Director Frank Carlucci (who would later become Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser [former Managing Director of The Carlyle Group too]).
Further, the 1983 board included Robert Chasen, a former FBI special agent who was Carter’s commissioner of customs until 1980, when he became a vice president of Wackenhut. Also in 1980, soon-to-be CIA chief William Casey served as Wackenhut’s outside legal counsel–the same year he managed the Reagan-Bush election campaign.
It was in 1980 that Wackenhut began working closely with Southern California’s Cabazon Indians and their tribal administrator John Philip Nichols. The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Jonathan Littman reported this month that Nichols, a white American who spent years in South America, has boasted to friends about working on the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro and the successful assassination of Salvador Allende.
The Cabazons hired Nichols as their administrator in 1978. Littman reports that thanks to Nichols’ connections and grantsmanship, “federal and state agencies are helping to finance nearly $250 million worth of projects on the 1,700-acre reservation” belonging to the 30-member Cabazon tribe. According to Littman, these projects include a HUD and mafia-financed casino, a 1,800-unit housing complex and a $150 million waste incinerator/power plant that was built with tax-exempt state bonds.
But most intriguing is the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture, which began in 1980 when the tribe was asked to design a security system for Crown Prince Fahd’s palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia. This was followed by Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture proposals to develop biological weapons for the Pentagon and assemble night-vision goggles for the Guatemalan and Jordanian governments.
Why was a security firm so interested in working with a small tribe of native Americans? One good reason can be found in a May 26, 1981, inter-office memo from Wackenhut executive Robert Frye to the above-mentioned Robert Chasen. Frye described an 11-day business trip with Nichols “to explore the apparent potential for the Cabazon-Wackenhut joint venture.” Frye wrote that the reservation has “several key ingredients necessary” for a weapons plant, including “lack of opposition by adjacent governing bodies and ‘irate citizens’ over the siting of such a facility.”
John Philip Nichols is no longer officially running the reservation. According to Littman, son Mark Nichols [later fired, daughter Alexis now on board] is the tribal administrator while the elder Nichols serves as a “mental-health counselor to Cabazon reservation employees.”
In January, 1985, Nichols was sentenced to four years in prison for capital solicitation of murder. He served 19 months. No one was killed in that murder-for-hire scheme. However, in 1981, Alfred Alvarez, a Cabazon Indian tribal vice president, and two non-Indians were murdered execution style.
Alvarez’s sister says her brother and his friends died because they were about to expose mismanagement on the Cabazon reservation. Mike Kataoka of the Palm Springs “Press-Enterprise” reports that in 1985, when Nichols was arrested for hiring the hitman, the U.S. Justice Department was investigating his possible involvement in those 1981 deaths. No charges were ever filed.
The Cabazon/Wackenhut connection was of particular interest to Danny Casolaro, the Washington-based journalist who was found dead in the Martinsburg, W. Va., Sheraton on August 10. Casolaro’s friends, family and professional associates fear he was murdered–and that the crime was related to his investigations into a series of corporate and governmental scandals.
Casolaro’s brother, Anthony, told the Washington-based “Corporate Crime Reporter,” “Danny was trying to track monies Wackenhut spent and what Danny found was that [Wackenhut] had ear-marked a half million dollars for what they call ‘research.’"
Anthony Casolaro said that the money “ties in Wackenhut with this Indian reservation and organized crime and CIA guys . . . Those same people showed up with Inslaw and one of them shows up in the October Surprise.”
The “October Surprise” was the alleged campaign deal between Iran and the 1980 Reagan campaign to delay the release of the U.S. hostages held in Tehran (see “In These Times,” June 24, 1987, Oct. 12, 1988 and April 27, 1991).
“Inslaw was Inslaw Inc. of Washington D.C.–a firm that has brought suit in federal court, charging that the Reagan Justice Department stole the company’s Promis case-management software program.
Two judges have thus far ruled in the company’s favor. (see “In These Times,” May 29, 1991, "Software Pirates").
Inslaw further alleged that the Justice Department turned the stolen software over to Earl Brian, a friend of both former President Ronald Reagan and former Attorney General Edwin Meese. Inslaw charges that the software was a payback for Brian’s help in arranging the October Surprise.
Former Israeli intelligence agent Ari Ben-Menashe alleges that Brian–now the head of United Press International–was directly involved in arranging the 1980 deal. Ben-Menashe claims that Brian “worked very closely” on the deal with Robert Gates, who was then a top CIA official.
Wackenhut is also linked to the Inslaw scandal.
Michael Riconosciuto–a weapons-systems designer and software specialist–was director of research for the Wackenhut/Cabazon joint venture in the early ’80s. In a March 1991 affidavit for the Inslaw case, Riconosciuto claimed that “in connection with [Riconosciuto's] work for Wackenhut,” he modified the stolen Promis software for foreign sales. “Earl W. Brian made [the software program] available to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who was then a Department of Justice contracting official with responsibility for the Promis software.”
Videnieks, a former Customs Service official under Commissioner Chasen, served in the Justice Department from 1981 through 1990. In his affidavit, Riconosciuto said Videnieks had threatened to retaliate against Riconosciuto if he cooperated with a House Judiciary Committee probe of the Inslaw case. Seven days after filing the affidavit (which was not, technically, part of the committee investigation), Riconosciuto was arrested on drug-selling charges. He is now in a Seattle jail awaiting trial.
The 1980s were a decade of privatization. As a for-profit intelligence service, Wackenhut appears to have taken on the kind of work that in earlier years the FBI and CIA would have done (and still do), albeit illegally.
Wackenhut is now the object of an investigation by the House Interior Committee. Early in 1990, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., a consortium of seven oil companies that run the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, hired Wackenhut to spy on environmentalists, whistleblowers and other oil company critics. Wackenhut tactics included setting up a phoney environmental organization and having agents pose as reporters. It is alleged in press reports that the company also monitored Rep. George Miller (D-CA) whose house subcommittee has been investigating environmental crimes allegedly committed by the consortium which is composed of British Petroleum, Exxon, ARCO, Phillips, Unocal, Mobil and Amerada Hess.
In the meantime, one of those characters the world of international wheeling and dealing regularly produces had heard about Promis.
Earl Brian had been California’s secretary of health during Reagan’s time as state governor. Largely because Brian spoke Farsi, Reagan had encouraged him to put together a Medicare plan for the Iranian government.
During his visits to Tehran, Brian had come to the attention of Rafi Eitan, who was then one of the helmsmen steering the arms-for-hostages deal ever closer to the rocks. He invited Brian to Israel. They immediately struck up a rapport. Brian was captivated by his host’s account of capturing Eichmann; Rafi Eitan was equally fascinated by his guest’s description of Californian life in the fast lane.
Rafi Eitan soon realized that Brian could not widen his own circle of contacts in Iran and over the years the two men had stayed in touch; Brian had kept Rafi Eitan informed about Promis.
In 1990 Brian arrived in Tel Aviv. He was more than weary from his long flight; the paleness on his face came from anger that the Justice Department was using a version of the Promis program to track money-laundering and other criminal activities.
Rafi Eitan’s instincts told him that his old friend could not have arrived at a more opportune time. Once more conflict had flared between Mossad and the other members of the Israeli intelligence community. The cause was a new Arab uprising, the Intifada. Promis could be an effective weapon to counter its activities.
The revolution had spread with remarkable speed, stunning the Israelis and galvanizing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shin Bet blamed Aman; both blamed Mossad for its failure to provide advance warning from Lebanon. Beset by deepening interservice strife, the Israeli intelligence community was unable to agree on a coordinated policy to deal with mass Arab resistance. An added thorn was the criticism from the United States over the growing evidence on TV screens of the brutal methods deployed by Israeli soldiers.
U.S. networks, began to screen footage which, for sheer brutality, matched what had happened in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The Intifada coalesced to form the United National Leadership of the Uprising. Every Arab community was postered with instructions in Arabic on how to stage strikes, close shops, boycott Israeli goods, refuse to recognize the civil administration. It was reminiscent of the resistance in the last days of the German occupation of France in World War II.
The world watched as Israel not only failed to stop the Intifada but also lost the propaganda war. Commentators made the comparison that here was a modern-day David-versus-Goliath conflict, with the IDF cast in the role of the Philistine giant.
Yasser Arafat used the Intifada as an opportunity to regain control over his dispossessed people. Around the world his voice cracked with fury on radio and television that what was happening was the direct result of Israel’s policy of stealing Arab land. He urged every Arab to rally in support. One day Arafat was in Kuwait urging Hamas to provide its deadly skills. The next he was in Lebanon, meeting with the leaders of Islamic Jihad. Arafat was achieving what had, only a short time before, seemed impossible-uniting Arabs of all persuasions in a common cause. To them all he was “Mr. Palestine” or “Chairman.”
Mossad was constantly flummoxed by Arafat’s strategies as he flitted between Arab capitals. It had little or no warning where he would turn up, or whom he would next rally to his side.
All this and more Rafi Eitan explained to his houseguest, Earl Brian. In turn Brian described how Promis worked. In his view, there was still work to be done to bring the program up to speed. Rafi Eitan realized that Promis could then have an impact on the Intifada. For a start, the system could lock on to computers in the PLO’s seventeen offices scattered around the world to see where Arafat was going and what he could be planning.
Rafi Eitan put aside his foraging for scrap metal and focused on how to exploit the brave new world Promis offered. To achieve such a breakthrough would once more undoubtedly make him a powerful figure in the Israeli intelligence community. But the wounds inflicted on him by his former peers had gone deep. He had been turned out into the cold with little more than a modest pension. Promis offered an opportunity to make amends; handled properly, it could make his fortune.
However, for all his brilliance, Rafi Eitan was no computer genius; his skills in that area extended to little more than switching on his modem. But his years at LAKAM had given him access to all the experts he would need.
When Earl Brian returned to the United States, Rafi Eitan put together a small team of former LAKAM programmers. They deconstructed the Promis disc and rearranged its various components, then added several elements of their own. There was no way for anyone to be able to claim ownership of what Promis had become. Rafi Eitan decided to keep the original name because it was “a good marketing tool to explain what the system was.”
Intelligence operatives, untrained in computer technology beyond knowing which keys to tap, would be able to access information and judgments far more comprehensive than they could ever carry in their own heads. A Promis disc could fit a laptop computer and choose from a myriad of alternatives the one that made most sense.
But before it could be sold, according to Ben-Menashe, Rafi Eitan needed to add one further element. Ben-Menashe claims he was summoned a played a large part in inserting a “trapdoor,” a built-in chip that, unknown to any purchaser, would allow Rafi Eitan to know what information was being sought.
Ben-Menashe knew someone who could create a trapdoor that even the most sophisticated scanners would be unable to detect. The man ran a small computer research and development company in Northern California. He and Ben-Menashe had been schoolboy friends, and for five thousand dollars he agreed to produce the microchip. It was, Ben-Menashe admitted, cheap at the price.
The next stage would be to test the system. Jordan was selected as the site, not only because it bordered on Israel, but because it had become a haven for the leaders of the Intifada. Consequently, long before the Intifada, Jordan had become a proving ground for Mossad to develop its electronic skills. In the 1970s, Mossad technicians had tapped into the computer IBM had sold to the country’s military intelligence service. The information gained had supplemented that provided by the deep-cover katsa Rafi Eitan had placed inside King Hussein’s palace. Promis would offer much more.
To sell it directly to Jordan was impossible because normal business links between both countries were still some years away. Instead, Earl Brian’s company, Hadron, made the deal. When the company’s computer experts installed the program in Amman’s military headquarters, they discovered the Jordanians had a French-designed system to track the movements of PLO leaders. Promis was secretly wired into the French system. In Tel Aviv, Rafi Eitan soon saw results as the trapdoor showed which PLO leaders the Jordanians were tracking.
The next stage was to prepare the sales pitch for Promis. Yasser Arafat was selected as the ideal example. Whenever Arafat moved, the details were entered on a secure PLO computer. But Promis could hack into its defenses to discover what aliases and false passports he was using. Promis could obtain his phone bills and check the numbers called. It would then cross-check those with other calls made from those numbers. In that way, Promis would have a “picture” of Arafat’s communications. On a trip he would inform the local security authorities of his presence, and steps would be taken to provide protection. Promis could obtain the details by interdicting police computers.
Rafi Eitan realized that neither Earl Brian nor his company had the resources to market Promis globally. That would require someone with superb international contacts, boundless energy, and proven negotiating skills. There was only one man Rafi Eitan knew who had those requirements: Robert Maxwell.
Maxwell needed little convincing and, in his usual ebullient manner when there was a deal to be profited from, said he had a computer company through which to sell Promis. Degem Computers Limited was based in Tel Aviv and was already playing a useful role in Mossad’s activities. Maxwell had allowed Mossad operatives, posing as Degem employees, to use the company’s suboffices in Central and South America. Now Maxwell saw an opportunity not only to make a healthy profit from marketing Promis through Degem, but to further establish his own importance to Mossad and ultimately Israel.
There was no doubting Maxwell was a brilliant marketeer of Promis — or, as far as Mossad was concerned, of the effectiveness of the system. The service had been the first to obtain the program and it had been a valuable tool in its campaign against the Intifada. Many of its leaders had left Jordan for safer hideouts in Europe after several had been assassinated in Jordan by kidons.
A spectacular success came when an Intifada commander who had moved to Rome called a Beirut number that Mossad’s computers already had listed as the home of a known bomb maker. The Rome caller wanted to meet the bomb maker in Athens. Mossad used Promis to check all the travel offices in Rome and Beirut for the travel arrangements of both men. In Beirut, further checks revealed the bomber had ordered the local utility companies to suspend supplies to his home.
A further search by Promis of the local PLO computers also showed the bomber had switched flights at the last moment. It did not save him. He was killed by a car bomb on the way to Beirut airport. Shortly afterward, in Rome, the Intifada commander was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
Meantime, Mossad was using Promis to read the secret intelligence of a number of services. In South Africa, a katsa in the Israeli embassy used Promis to track the country’s banned revolutionary organization and their contacts with Middle Eastern groups. In Washington, Mossad specialists at the Israeli embassy used Promis to penetrate the communications of other diplomatic missions and U.S. government departments.
The same was happening in London and other European capitals. The system had continued to yield valuable information for Mossad. By 1989, over $500 million worth of Promis programs had been sold to Britain, Australia, South Korea, and Canada. The figure would have been even bigger but for the CIA marketing its own version to intelligence agencies. In Britain, Promis was used by MI5 in Northern Ireland to track terrorists and the movements of political leaders like Gerry Adams.
Maxwell had also managed to sell the system to the Polish intelligence service, the UB. In return the Poles, according to Ben-Menashe, allowed Mossad to steal a Russian MiG-29. The operation was a reminder of the theft of the earlier version of the MiG from Iraq. A Polish general in charge of the UB office in Gdansk, in return for $1 million paid into a Citibank account in New York, had arranged for the aircraft to be written off as no longer airworthy, though the plane had only recently arrived from its Russian aircraft factory.
The fighter was dismantled, placed into crates marked “Agricultural Machinery,” and flown to Tel Aviv. There the plane was reassembled and test-flown by the Israeli air force, enabling its pilots to counter the MiG-29s in service with Syria.
It was weeks before the theft was discovered by Moscow during a routine inventory of aircraft supplied to Warsaw Pact countries. A strong protest was made by Moscow to Israel — backed by the threat to stop the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. The Israeli government, its air force having discovered all the MiG’s secrets, apologized profusely for the “mistaken zeal of officers acting unofficially” and promptly returned the aircraft.
By then the UB general had joined his dollar fortune in the United States. Washington had agreed to give him a new identity in return for the USAF being allowed to conduct its own inspection of the MiG.
Shortly afterward Robert Maxwell flew to Moscow. Officially he was there to interview Mikhail Gorbachev. In reality he had come to sell Promis to the KGB. Through its secret trapdoor microchip, it gave Israel unique access to Soviet military intelligence, making Mossad one of the best-briefed services on Russian intentions. From Moscow Maxwell flew to Tel Aviv.
In London Robert Maxwell’s newspaper empire was in grave financial trouble. Soon, without a substantial injection of capital, it would have to cease operations. But, in the City of London, where he had previously always found funding, there was a reluctance to go on providing it. Hard-nosed financiers who had met Maxwell sensed that behind his bluster and bully-boy tactics was a man who was losing the financial acumen that in the past had allowed them to forgive so much. In those days he had raged and threatened at the slightest challenge. Bankers had curbed their anger and caved in to his demands. But they would no longer do so. In the Bank of England and other financial institutions in the City, the word was that Maxwell was no longer a safe bet.
Their information was partially based on confidential reports from Israel that Maxwell was being pressed by his original Israeli investors to repay them the money that had helped him to acquire the Mirror Group. The time limit on repayments had long gone and the demands from the Israelis had become more insistent. Trying to fend them off, Maxwell had promised them a higher return on their money if they waited. The Israelis were not satisfied: they wanted their money back now. This was why Maxwell had come to Tel Aviv: he hoped to cajole them into granting him another extension. The signs were not good. During the flight, he had received several angry phone calls from the investors, threatening to place the matter before the City of London regulatory body.
There was a further matter for Maxwell to be concerned over. He had stolen some of the very substantial profits from ORA that he had been entrusted to hide in Soviet Bloc banks. He had used the money to try to prop up the Mirror Group. Maxwell had already stolen all he could from the staff pension fund, and the ORA money would not stretch very far.
And, unlike the Israeli investors, once that theft was uncovered, he would find himself confronting some very hard men, among them Rafi Eitan. From his hotel suite, Maxwell began to strategize. His share of the profits from Degem’s marketing of Promis would not be able to stem the crisis. Neither would profits from Maariv, the Israeli tabloid modeled on his flagship Daily Mirror. But there was one possibility, the Tel Aviv-based Cytex Corporation he owned, which manufactured high-tech printing equipment. If Cytex could be sold quickly, the money could go some way to solving matters.
Maxwell ordered Cytex’s senior executive, the son of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to his suite. The executive had bad news: a all quick sale was unlikely. Cytex, while holding its own, faced increasing competition. This was not the time to take it to the market. To sell would also throw skilled people out of work at a time when It unemployment was a serious problem in Israel. The reaction provoked a furious outburst from Maxwell as his last hope of rescue faded. Tactically he made an error in lambasting the prime minister’s son, who now told his father that Maxwell was in serious financial trouble. The prime minister, aware of the tycoon’s links to Mossad, informed Nahum Admoni. He called a meeting of senior staff to see how to deal with what had become a problem.
Later it emerged that several options were discussed. Mossad could ask the prime minister to use his own considerable influence with the Israeli investors not only to wait a while longer for their money, but to mobilize their own resources and contacts to find money to bail out Maxwell. This was rejected on the grounds that Maxwell had managed to upset Shamir with his cavalier attitude. Everyone knew that Shamir had a strong sense of self-preservation and would now wish to distance himself from Maxwell.
Another option was for Mossad to approach its highly placed sayanim in the City of London and urge them to support a rescue package for Mossad. At the same time Mossad-friendly journalists in Britain could be encouraged to write supportive stories about the troubled tycoon.
Again those suggestions were discounted. Reports Admoni had received from London suggested that many of the sayanim would welcome the end of Maxwell and that few journalists outside Mirror newspapers would dream of writing favorable stories about a tycoon who had spent years threatening the media.
The final option was for Mossad to break off all contact with Maxwell. There was a risk there: Maxwell, on the evidence of his present unpredictable state of mind, could well use his newspapers to actually attack Mossad. Given the access he had been given, that could have the most serious consequences.
On that somber note, the meeting concluded that Admoni would see Maxwell and remind him of his responsibility to both Mossad and Israel. That night the two men met over dinner in Maxwell’s hotel suite. What transpired between them would remain a secret. But hours later, Robert Maxwell left Tel Aviv in his private plane. It would be the last time, it would turn out, that anyone in Israel would see him alive.
Back in London, Maxwell, against all the odds, seemed to be succeeding in holding on to his newspaper group. He was likened to an African whirling dervish as he went from one meeting to another seeking financial support. From time to time he called Mossad to speak to Admoni, always informing the director general’s secretary that the “little Czech” was on the line.
The sobriquet had been bestowed on Maxwell after he had been recruited. What was said in those calls would remain unknown. But a clue would later emerge from the former katsa, Victor Ostrovsky. He believed Maxwell was insisting it was payback time; that the huge sum of money he had stolen from the Mirror pension fund should now be returned to him. At the same time, Maxwell also proposed that Mossad should, on his behalf, lobby for Mordechai Vanunu to be freed and handed over to him.
Maxwell would then fly the technician to London and personally interview him for the Daily Mirror. The story would be Vanunu’s “act of atonement,” written in a way that would show Israel’s compassion. With the chutzpah characteristic of so many of his actions, Maxwell added it would be a huge circulation booster for the Mirror and would unlock those doors still closed to him in the City of London.
Ostrovsky was not alone in believing that the preposterous plan finally decided Mossad that Robert Maxwell had become a dangerous loose cannon. On September 30, 1991, further evidence of Maxwell’s bizarre behavior came when he telephoned Admoni. This time there was no disguising the threat in Maxwell’s words. His financial affairs had once more taken a turn for the worse, and he was being investigated in Parliament and the British media, so long held at bay by his posse of high-priced lawyers and their quiver of writs.
Maxwell then said that unless Mossad arranged to immediately return all the stolen Mirror pension fund money, he could not be sure if he would be able to keep secret Adnioni’s ineeting with Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the KGB. Kryuchkov was now in a Moscow prison awaiting trial for his role in an abortive coup to oust Mikhail St Gorbachev. A key element of the plot had been a meeting Kryuchkov had on Maxwell’s yacht in the Adriatic shortly before the coup was launched.
Mossad had promised that Israel would use its influence with the United States and key European countries to diplomatically recognize the new regime in Moscow. In return, Kryuchkov would arrange for all Soviet Jews to be released and sent to Israel. The discussion had come to nothing. But revealing it could seriously harm Israel’s credibility with the existing Russian regime and with the United States.
That was the moment, Victor Ostrovsky would write, when “a small meeting of right wingers at Mossad headquarters resulted in a consensus to terminate Maxwell.” If Ostrovsky’s claim is true — and it has never been formally denied by Israel — then it was unthinkable that the group was acting without the highest sanction and perhaps even with the tacit knowledge of Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, the man who had once had his own share of killing Mossad’s enemies.
The matter for Mossad could only have become more urgent with the publication of a book by the veteran American investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, which dealt with Israel’s emergence as a nuclear power. News of the book had caught Mossad totally by surprise and copies were rushed to Tel Aviv. Well researched, it could nevertheless still have been effectively dealt with by saying nothing; the painful lesson of the mistake of confronting Ostrovsky’s publisher (also the publisher of this book) had been absorbed. But there was one problem: Hersh had identified Maxwell’s links to Mossad.
Those ties mostly involved the Mirror Group’s handling of the Vanunu story and the relationship between Nick Davies, ORA, and Ari Ben-Menashe. Predictably, Maxwell had taken refuge behind a battery of lawyers, issuing writs against Hersh and his London publishers. But Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, refused to be cowed. In Parliament, more pointed questions were asked about Maxwell’s links to Mossad. Old suspicions surfaced. MPs demanded to know, under parliamentary privilege, how much Maxwell knew about Mossad’s operations in Britain. For Victor Ostrovsky, “the ground was starting to burn under Maxwell’s feet.”
Ostrovsky would claim that the carefully prepared Mossad plan to kill Maxwell hinged on being able to persuade him to keep a rendezvous where Mossad could strike. It had a striking similarity to the plot that had led to the death of Mehdi Ben-Barka in Paris.
On October 29, 1991, Maxwell received a call from a katsa at the Israeli embassy in Madrid. Maxwell was asked to come to Spain the next day, and, according to Ostrovsky, “his caller promised that things would be worked out so there was no need to panic.” Maxwell was told to fly to Gibraltar and board his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, and order the crew to set sail for the Canary Islands “and wait there for a message.” Robert Maxwell agreed to do as instructed.
On October 30, four Israelis arrived in the Moroccan port of Rabat. They said they were tourists on a deep-sea fishing vacation and hired an oceangoing motor yacht. They set off toward the Canary Islands.
On October 31, after Maxwell reached the port of Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, he dined alone in the Hotel Mency. After dinner a man briefly joined him. Who he was and what they spoke about remain part of the mystery of the last days of Robert Maxwell. Shortly afterward, Maxwell returned to his yacht and ordered it back to sea. For the next thirty-six hours, the Lady Ghislaine sailed between the islands, keeping well clear of land, cruising at various speeds. Maxwell had told the captain he was deciding where to go next. The crew could not recall Maxwell showing such indecision.
In what it claimed was a “world exclusive,” headlined “How and why Robert Maxwell was murdered,” Britain’s Business Age magazine subsequently claimed that a two-man hit team crossed in a dinghy during the night from a motor yacht that had shadowed the Lady Ghislaine. Boarding the yacht, they found Maxwell on the afterdeck. The men overpowered him before he could call for help.
The magazine concluded the body was dropped overboard and the assassins returned to their yacht. It would be sixteen hours before Maxwell was recovered. More certain, on the night of November 4-5, Mossad’s problems with Maxwell were laid to rest in the cold swell of the Atlantic. The subsequent police investigation and the Spanish autopsy left unanswered questions. Why were only two of the yacht’s eleven-man crew awake? Normally five shared the night watch. To whom did Maxwell send a number of fax messages during those hours? What became of the copies? Why did the crew take so long to establish Maxwell was not on board? Why did they delay raising the alarm for a further seventy minutes? To this day no convincing answers have emerged.
Three Spanish pathologists were assigned to perform the autopsy. They wanted the vital organs and tissue to be sent to Madrid for further tests. Before this could be done, the Maxwell family intervened, ordering the body embalmed and flown forthwith to Israel for burial. The Spanish authorities, unusually, did not object. Who or what had persuaded the family to suddenly act as it did?
On November 10, 1991 , Maxwell’s funeral took place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the resting place for the nation’s most revered heroes. It had all the trappings of a state occasion, attended by the country’s government and opposition leaders. No fewer than six serving and former heads of the Israeli intelligence community listened as Prime Minister Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
Those who stood among the mourners included a man dressed in a somber black suit and shirt, relieved only at the throat by his Roman collar. Born into a Lebanese Christian family, he was a wraithlike figure-barely five feet tall and weighing little over a hundred pounds. But Father Ibrahim was no ordinary priest. He worked for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. His discreet presence at the funeral was not so much to mark the earthly passing of Robert Maxwell, but to acknowledge the still-secret ties developing between the Holy See and Israel. It was a perfect example of Meir Amit’s dictum that intelligence cooperation knows no limits.
INSLAW Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas
Chapter 10, excerpts, pages 203-219 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312252846?tag=coolavin
By Joel Bleifuss, In These Times, http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/about/author/10
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