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Archives for October 2014

U.S. Intelligence Official: No evidence ISIL is planning imminent attack on America

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Obama’s plan to support the Shi’a and Kurds in Iraq could worsen sectarianism fighting, and a new report says arms sent to moderate Syrian rebels have ended up in ISIS’s hands.

– by The Real News Network

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: On the Hill, the jihadist extremist organization known as ISIS is on everyone’s radar.

REP. MIKE MCCAUL, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (R-TX): But the only way you can defeat ISIS is to attack them wherever they exist.

DESVARIEUX: At Wednesday’s hearing, titled “One Flight Away: An Examination of the Threat posed by ISIS Terrorists with Western Passports”, officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the State Department, all testified before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security. When asked if ISIS posed a threat to the United States, the panelists were unanimous in their assessment.

TROY MILLER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION OFFICIAL: I do believe that it could be a short-term and long-term threat to the United States.

DESVARIEUX: But on closer examination of the testimony from Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Jennifer Lasley said ISIS is not a threat to the U.S. in the near-term.

JENNIFER LASLEY, HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL: We currently have no credible information to indicate that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, is planning to attack the homeland.

As I said, we don’t see a near-term threat directly from them. No evidence yet of that.

DESVARIEUX: But an attack on the homeland is what seven out of ten Americans think ISIS is capable of, according to a recent CNN/ORC poll. And almost half of Americans see ISIS as a very serious threat to the U.S. That’s about the same percentage of those that thought the same of al-Qaeda in 2003. On the Hill, ISIS is being compared to al-Qaeda, which may strike an emotional chord with many Americans, since the anniversary of 9/11 is on Thursday. But critics are concerned that another push for a war against terrorism won’t get to the root causes of Sunni extremism.

MATTHEW HOH, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY: So what you have is, say, in Iraq with the Islamic State, is you have this organization that requires war, it requires chaos to function. It’s a parasitic organization. And it needs the United States to come in and be involved, because it eats the United States to be a villain, it needs the United States to fulfill that Crusader motif. It also needs the Sunni population–this is the most important thing–it needs the Sunni population to feel that they need the Islamic State’s help, that the Islamic State is actually fulfilling a role for them.

So if the United States jumps back into the Iraqi Civil War, takes the sides of the Shia or the Kurds, well, that pushes the Sunnis up against the wall, because you have this intersectarian, interreligious fighting going on in Iraq. If we go in and take one side, well, then the other side becomes desperate, and they turn to groups like the Islamic State.

And so, I think, by not understanding that dynamic, not understanding the political situation that exists in these countries, this sectarian fighting, this interreligious fighting, one side pushing the other side, one side persecuting the other side, that if we just lay over this veneer of this simple good-versus-bad narrative that we possess, then it becomes very complicated and we play right into the hands of these extreme groups.

DESVARIEUX: Matthew Hoh served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq. He says that the civil war in Iraq was caused by our decade-long occupation of the country, and more military involvement will only prolong the civil war. Hoh said the American public should be wary of any officials trying to trap Americans into another conflict.

HOH: You have both the head of our counterterrorism center and Homeland Security saying that the Islamic State has no sleeper cells, has no members in the U.S., and that the Islamic State is not an imminent threat to the United States. And so I’m afraid that we’re falling right into this trap, falling right into this debate that the Islamic State needs and wants. They need us to come into the conflict, because they need the conflict to be continue to be stirred up. They need to have the U.S. as a villain to play that Crusader role in order to, one, fit their narrative and aid in their recruitment.

And the second thing is they want to fight us. These are men and women who believe in this religious conflict. And so they want to fight us. So by jumping right back in, rushing right back into the conflict, we give the Islamic State exactly what they need, and also what they want, as well as making the conflict much more difficult to achieve any type of political solution, because if we go in there on behalf of the Shias and the Kurds, then what incentive do the Shias and the Kurds have to give any concessions to the Sunnis? What reasons do they have to enter into any real negotiations? Why would the Kurds give up that increased territory they took over the last few months? Why would the Shia in Baghdad make any real reformations, bring the Sunnis back into the government, if the Americans are on their side? Why would you do that?

DESVARIEUX: But Democrats and Republicans both want further militarization.

HARRY REID, U.S. SENATOR (D-NV): As commander in chief, the president has the authority he needs now to act against ISIS. I believe the vast majority of members of Congress agree with that. For now, it’s critical we support our commander in chief as he takes this decisive action.

DESVARIEUX: This action would mean giving the White House authority to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. The White House wants Congress to tack on what’s known as Title 10 authority to a stopgap spending bill that lawmakers were hoping to pass this week. That bill, if passed, would prevent another government shutdown. But there are those cautious to arm such factions, since evidence has been released linking ISIS with these moderate Syrian rebels.

A recent report by Conflict Armament Research found that ISIS is now in possession of lethal weapons formerly owned by moderate Syrian rebels, as well as a bulk of arms produced in the United States. You can see in pictures like these some of the arms that they mention. The report states that antitank rockets captured from ISIS forces in Syria are identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013.

Such evidence could raise some questions. The White House has invited all members of Congress to a special closed briefing on ISIS on Thursday. But we’ll have to see if any members will question the president’s decision.

For The Real News Network, Jessica Desvarieux, Washington.

Israel's plan to build 600 new homes in E. Jerusalem earns UN’s anger

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United Nations

– by RT

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his frustration at Israel’s settlement program, which plans 600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The new units are set to expand four existing settlements in the Palestinian city.

“I once again strongly condemn the continued settlement activity by Israel,” the UN chief told journalists after a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah.

The Israeli government also plans to seize one square kilometer of farmland near Bethlehem, “intended for the construction of settlement units, parks, a synagogue and agricultural roads,” according to a report by the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

It is possible to appeal the seizure within a period of two months, in line with Israel’s tax law. The new construction plans come shortly after last month’s announcement of the most significant construction plan in the past several decades – the idea of building more than 2,500 homes in the area with a majority Arab population.

Like Ban, the EU has joined the international chorus of condemnation, strongly suggesting that such plans threaten to upset a very fragile peace with the Palestinians.

The UN chief also urged the two sides to return to the negotiating table.

“I urge Palestinians to show courage and continue engaging in the… peace process… [and] Israelis to do the same,” Ban warned, adding, “Time is not on the side of peace. We need to act immediately to prevent a deepening of an already unsustainable status quo.”

President Mahmoud Abbas has also recently warned the UN General Assembly that continuing the occupation would ensure that the Palestinian population would eventually turn into fragmented ghettos. He will be seeking a UN resolution and a “firm timetable” to stop the Israeli occupation.

But the move also comes as the government admitted to a covert building freeze in the disputed area. Israeli media is alleging that Ban got the entire matter wrong and sees his comments as misdirected. They believe the UN head might have been referring to building tenders in a wholly Jewish neighborhood in the capital, leaving intact the building freeze.

According to Arutz Sheva daily, the decision was in fact the approval of building tenders at some future date in the Jewish neighborhood of Israel’s capital, and leaves intact the building freeze gripping the area.

This summer’s 50-day military conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Administration has caused immense damage and loss of life. Dubbed operation Protective Edge, it killed more than 2,200 people – the vast majority of them Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children.

Ban’s visit to Ramallah comes on the heels of combined efforts by the US, EU, Turkey, Qatar, Germany and Kuwait to rebuild the Gaza Strip. So far they’ve raised $5.4 billion, smashing through the $4 billion target set by the Palestinian Authority.

Islamic State now controls half of Syrian border town and intensifies attacks in Iraq

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Smoke rises from parts of Kobane bombed by US and Saudi warplanes. Photo: Getty Images

Smoke rises from parts of Kobane bombed by US and Saudi warplanes. Photo: Getty Images

– by The Age

Mursitpinar: Jihadists have fought their way into  the centre of the Syrian border town Kobane, while in Iraq more than 180,000 have fled fighting in Anbar province.

The breakthrough on Monday, nearly a month after the assault on the town on the Turkish frontier began, gave Islamic State half of Kobane, despite the desperate efforts of its Kurdish defenders, backed byUS-led air strikes.

US and Saudi warplanes targeted seven sites around Kobane, the US military said.

Fighting spread to less than a kilometre from the barbed wire frontier fence, with the jihadists carrying out three suicide car bomb attacks in the border zone, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Kobane has become a highly visible symbol of resistance to IS and its fall would give the jihadists control of a long stretch of the Turkey-Syria border. But concern has also been growing over Iraq, where IS fighters have been threatening to seize more territory.

Fighting in Iraq’s western Anbar province has forced up to 180,000 people to flee since the city of Hit fell to Islamic State militants earlier this month, the United Nations said on Monday.

IS fighters extended that advance by overrunning a military base the Iraqi army had abandoned eight kilometres west of Hit earlier on Monday, according to an army officer and members of a government-backed Sunni militia.

In Baghdad, three bombs exploded in Shiite parts of the capital on Monday, killing 30 people, police and medical officials said, continuing a wave of attacks targeting Iraq’s majority religious group.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but IS fighters earlier claimed a string of attacks in Baghdad on Sunday that left 45 dead.

As a result of the fighting and air strikes in Anbar, carried out by the Iraqi government and a US-led military coalition, up to 30,000 families or 180,000 individuals had fled Hit, the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

In Kobane, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported more heavy fighting on Monday inside the city.

Rami Abderahman, of the Observatory, said IS militants had taken about half of the town.

“They now control the cultural centre, which means they have advanced further inside the town,” he said.

In a blow to US hopes, Turkey denied it had agreed to let the United States use its Incirlik air base in the fight against IS and sources at the Turkish Prime Minister’s office said talks on the subject were continuing.

The comments come after US national security adviser Susan Rice said Turkey had agreed to let forces from a US-led military coalition use its bases for activities inside Iraq and Syria and to train moderate Syrian rebels.

Syria’s air force, meanwhile, carried out strikes against rebels at more than double its usual rate on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The intensified air strikes by President Bashar al-Assad’s government will add to the fear among Dr Assad’s opponents that he is taking advantage of the US strikes to crush other foes, including the “moderate opposition” that Washington backs.

The Observatory said the Syrian air force had struck 40 times on Monday in areas in Idlib and Hama provinces, including dropping oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel. Typically, Damascus has carried out no more than 12 to 20 raids a day.

AFP, Reuters

The U.S. Soldier who killed herself after refusing to take part in torture

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us-suicide-soldier

– by Greg Mitchell, Huffington Post

More than a decade ago, when I was the editor of Editor & Publisher, I was, as far as I know, the first writer with a national platform who regularly drew attention to the then largely-hidden tragedy of the rising rate of suicides among American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan–and then after they return home.

Despite the decline in fighting in those two theaters for many years, that suicide rate remains at very high or record levels. Last year there was this troubling report.

I have written about dozens of sad, tragic, individual cases. But one of the saddest of all concerns a young soldier who died eleven years ago last month. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture — another wrong turn by the United States following 9/11 — Alyssa Peterson refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003.

Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the US Senate committee probe and various press reports that the “Gitmo-izing” of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it. I featured her in my book on Bush and media falures in Iraq, So Wrong for So Long.

Spc. Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers who died in Iraq. Her death under these circumstances should have drawn wide attention. It’s not exactly the Tillman case, but a cover-up, naturally, followed.

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Arizona, native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. She was a valuable Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on September 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

A “non-hostile weapons discharge” leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials “said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson’s own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian.” And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, “just on a hunch,” he told me in late 2006. He made “hundreds of phone calls” to the military and couldn’t get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations.

Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston worked, reported:

Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.

The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been “reprimanded” for showing “empathy” for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: “She said that she did not know how to be two people; she… could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire.”

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. “But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” the documents disclose.

The official report revealed that a notebook she had written in was found next to her body, but blacked out its contents.

The Army talked to some of Peterson’s colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told me:

The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were.

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, which suggested that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note. It did not emerge.

Peterson a devout Mormon — her mother, Bobbi, claims she always stuck up for “the underdog” — had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and was sent to the Middle East in 2003, reportedly going in place of another soldier who did not wish to go.

A report in the Arizona Daily Sun of Flagstaff — three years after Alyssa’s death — revealed that Spc. Peterson’s mother, reached at her home in northern Arizona, said that neither she nor her husband Richard had received any official documents that contained information outlined in Elston’s report.

In other words: like the press and the public, even the parents had been kept in the dark. (Someone has posted a song tribute at YouTube, “The Ballad of Alyssa Peterson.”)

Kayla Williams, an Army sergeant who served with Alyssa, told me that she talked to her about her problems (including questioning her religious faith) shortly before she killed herself. Williams also was forced to take part in torture interrogations, where she saw detainees punched. Another favorite technique: strip the prisoners and then remove their blindfolds so that the first thing they saw was Kayla Williams. (Here’s the sad story of another soldier who revealed in his suicide note that he’d been forced to commit war crimes.)

She also opted out, but survived, and is haunted years later. She wrote a book about her experience in the military, Love My Rifle More Than You.

Here’s what Williams told Soledad O’Brien of CNN:

I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes.

Kayla Williams would end up attending her memorial service.

When I wrote a piece about Peterson a few years ago, her brother, Spencer Peterson, left a comment:

Alyssa is my little sister. I usually don’t comment on boards like this, and I don’t speak for the rest of my family (especially my folks), but I think she probably did kill herself over this. She was extremely sensitive and empathetic to others, and cared a lot more about the welfare and well-being of the people around her than she cared about herself…. Thank you to everyone for your continued support of our troops and our family. Alyssa’s death was a tremendous loss to everyone who knew her, and we miss her sweet and sensitive spirit. No one is happier than I am that (many of) our troops are coming home from Iraq, and I pray that the rest of our brave soldiers return home safely as soon as possible. Support our troops–bring them home!

Inside the Anda Cell: Excerpts from Arun Ferreira’s Prison Memoir

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Book excerpts from Arun Ferreira Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir

From 28 May to 14 June 2007, I was slapped with five more cases relating to Naxalite violence in Gondia, a district about 150 kilometres from Nagpur. Gondia and especially Gadchiroli, the other district lying at the extreme end of Maharashtra, are areas of intense Maoist activity. In almost all of Gadchiroli and parts of Gondia, armed Naxal squads have fought the police and paramilitary forces with support from the local tribals and peasants. This is in keeping with the Maoist strategy to establish revolutionary centres in rural areas in the hope of eventually growing to seize power throughout the country. It is no coincidence that these districts are also among the poorest areas in Maharashtra. In 2011, Gadchiroli had the lowest ranking on the state’s Human Development Index.

Arun Ferreira

The five new cases allowed the police to get me back into their custody for another twenty-three days, till 19 June. I was shifted to Amgaon, a police station in the interiors of Gondia, where I was subjected to more sleep deprivation, harassment and interrogation. This time though, I was fortunate to get away relatively lightly. But my co-accused were not so lucky. The police, under the direct supervision of the sub-divisional police officer, a man named Korate, injected petrol into the rectums of two of them. A couple of staff lifted their legs while an inspector infiltrated the 20 ml of petrol into their bodies. The vapours of gasoline burned the intestine linings, which resulted in agonizing days of anal bleeding, blood clots and continuous belching. I wonder how Korate knew that exactly 20 ml of petrol would cause such enormous pain yet not kill. Such knowledge could only have been acquired by some sort of training. Ashok Reddy did manage to complain to the court about this. However the state-appointed doctor, obviously a friend of Korate’s, diagnosed Ashok’s condition as piles and exonerated the officer and his accomplices.

I was, for reasons best known to them, protected from such treatment. The police would come by to interrogate me every couple of days—whenever they got a list of questions from a superior. When I didn’t reply to their first question, they never got further down the list, and that’s where the torture would start.

‘Arre, Bajirao ko bulao,’ the inspector would call.

A narrow belt attached to a wooden handle would be brought in by a constable—an implement that policemen across Maharashtra fondly call ‘Bajirao’. It takes its name from Peshwa Baji Rao, a lieutenant of Shahu Maharaj, a ruler who is credited with greatly expanding the Maratha Empire. Maharashtra’s police personnel, largely dominated by the Maratha caste, find this instrument similarly trustworthy. The Bajirao belt was deployed carefully, only on the palms or soles of the feet. When whipped, the cluster of nerves at the heel pad causes enormous pain but displays no external injuries, so I wouldn’t have any proof if I tried to complain to a magistrate. However, doctors know that such foot whipping can cause permanent nerve damage. It reduces the elasticity of the heel pad causing agonizing aches, especially on cold nights, for years afterwards. Such torture, though not so visible to the naked eye, leads to irreversible harm to the body.

Once in a while, often due to the inexperience or over enthusiasm of the torturer, this permanent damage extends to death. No wonder Maharashtra still retains its privileged position of having the highest number of custodial deaths in India. It recorded 22 in 2011, way ahead of Gujarat, which came next with 7 deaths. Invariably, the government’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) attributes these deaths to natural causes or to suicide. People like Korate and his seniors are never held responsible.

Book-Colours-of-The-Cage_A-Prison-MemoirMuslims are represented in prison in greater proportion than in the outside world. In Maharashtra, they account for 36 per cent of the prison population, whereas in society their share is 10.6 per cent. Muslim festivals in prison are important events. During the Ramzan fast, entire barracks are emptied out to accommodate Muslims. Food is served in these barracks at timings suitable for their roza, and prison authorities sell fruit and dates during this month. For those in cellular confinement like the anda barrack, such community gatherings are not allowed. However the cries of the azaan and the sharing of iftaar delicacies lend a festive air to even the anda.

In my section of the phasi yard, Asghar was the only Muslim inmate. He was allegedly a co-conspirator of Javed (who was in the anda) in setting off blasts on the Mumbai rail tracks. Before he was arrested, Asghar Kadar Shaikh, a resident of Mumbai, had worked part-time as an auto-rickshaw driver and the rest of the time as a florist. In jail, he worked as gardener in the compound surrounding the phasi yard. He was also entrusted with the job of keeping the gallows clean, oiled and functioning. Despite the grim task he was expected to do, he was extremely friendly and witty. He always had a unique take on the world around him, and made for good conversation in the yard.

‘Prisons will improve only if election rules are changed,’ Asghar would often philosophize.

‘How come?’

‘Once prisoners are allowed to vote, politicians will then pay heed to our needs.’

‘You mean, inmates can’t vote? But isn’t that a fundamental right?’

‘Not for us. Hum voting kar nahin sakte lekin chunav ladh sakte,’ he answered. (We couldn’t vote but we could stand for elections.) He explained how Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 disqualifies any imprisoned person, whether awaiting trial or convicted, from voting. However, Section 8 and Section 11A of the same act allowed undertrials and convicted persons under certain offences with sentences less than two years to contest elections.

‘Dekho,’ he went on, ‘in slums or villages, the needs of the poor are only fulfilled during general elections. We need to become a vote bank. Politicians would then value our voice and improve prison conditions.’

‘But such change will be superficial and short-termed, much like charity.’

‘Sahi hai,’ he’d continue, ‘but it will still be an improvement.’

Debates and discussions with Asghar would continue for days. He often articulated his preference for a death sentence to being imprisoned for his whole natural life. An instant death would immediately end the suffering of his family. It would, he held, allow them to start life afresh.

By June 2008, the number of us in the yard branded as terrorists started increasing. We got three more Muslim boys, Sajid Ansari, Muzzamil Sheikh and Majid Shafi, who had been arrested in 2006 and were accused of planting bombs in a Mumbai train that year. They had been thrashed by the prison authorities in Mumbai and arrived with multiple fractures and bruises. Sajid and Majid were young fathers who had only enjoyed a few months of parenthood before they were arrested. Muzzamil was still unmarried. The three were deeply religious and adherents of Ahl al-Hadeeth, believers in the strict interpretation of the Koran. Sajid and Muzzamil were residents of Mumbai and had earlier been members of SIMI. We had intense discussions on politics and Islam. They despised the Indian state’s treatment of Muslims and would never fail to express their views passionately. I had hoped to learn Urdu from Sajid, who was an excellent calligrapher and now regret having failed. Majid, on the other hand, was a romantic. He’d often speak about his family, his baby girl and the football he missed in Kolkata. From our discussions it became evident that Sajid, Muzzamil and most of their numberkaari were arrested merely because of their previous allegiance to SIMI. Majid, on the other hand, was implicated in the concocted police story because he lived close to the Bangladesh border. All of them faced the Herculean task of defending themselves from being convicted of a crime that had left 209 dead and over 700 injured. The well-oiled gallows haunted them daily.

You can order the book online here.

Israel jailed influential Palestinian writer "to remove him from society"

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Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh for The Electronic Intifada

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh for The Electronic Intifada

– by Patrick O. Strickland, The Electronic Intifada

Prominent Palestinian professor and writer Ahmad Qatamesh spent a total of eight and a half years in Israeli prison without being charged or brought to trial.

During two separate stints in Israeli lockup, Qatamesh was held in administrative detention, a draconian practice in which Israel imprisons Palestinians for infinitely renewable six-month terms without charge or trial, using “secret evidence” against them.

“Administrative detention is one of the most difficult of Israel’s tactics because prisoners have nothing but uncertainty,” Qatamesh told The Electronic Intifada. “They never know when or if they will go home, and neither do their families.”

Sitting in the living room of his home in al-Bireh, a central West Bank city near Ramallah, the veteran prisoner explained the Israeli occupation’s use of administrative detention as a method of targeting influential Palestinians — resistance and civil society figures alike.

As one of those who has been targeted multiple times, Qatamesh rejects Israel’s claim that administrative detention is used solely as a security measure.

Indeed, it was used to collectively punish Palestinians in the West Bank after three Israeli teens, later found slain, went missing there in June.

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and present-day Israel were arrested during the popular demonstrations that followed the nationalist-motivated 2 July kidnapping and brutal murder of Muhammad Abu Khudair, a sixteen-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem.

As of 7 August, that arrest campaign had resulted in the number of prisoners held in administrative detention soaring to an estimated 450, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Though arrests have continued since then, these are the latest available statistics.

There have been numerous hunger strikes in Israeli jails undertaken by Palestinian detainees in recent years in a bid to demand their freedom. Dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails across the occupied West Bank and Israel agreed in June to end a mass hunger strike against administrative detention.

“Secret evidence”

Qatamesh, who has spent a total of thirteen years in Israeli prison, was first arrested and locked up for four and a half years in the 1970s for charges related to activism with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Marxist political party deemed illegal by Israel.

“These years were easier than later on,” he recalled. “We still had the hope to liberate the homeland.”

When he was rearrested in 1992, he was accused of “illegal activities” as an organizer and leader in the PFLP, a charge he denies until today. Rather than bring charges against him, Israel instead put him in administrative detention and barred him and his lawyer from seeing the secret evidence against him.

Israeli intelligence were apparently unable to prove his involvement in any illegal activities despite three months of interrogation, during which Qatamesh says he was tortured. Though a military judge decided that he ought to be released shortly after the interrogation period ended, it would be six and a half years before that order was carried out.

During his more than six years of detention in the 1990s, Qatamesh says that “Israeli interrogators and secret intelligence used very specific types of torture — not punching, but psychological pressure, [such as] isolation and sleep deprivation,” among other techniques.

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh done while the cartoonist was imprisoned by Israel last year.

In those years, Qatamesh would regularly participate in collective hunger strikes with other administrative detainees and prisoners. “It wasn’t like today,” he said. “There wasn’t the same attention [in the media] at that time.”

“But times had also changed,” he remembered. “Many of us were older and others had been in and out prison. We were starting to get tired. There was still hope as the intifada took place outside, but we wanted to get out of prison and be a part of it.”

Leading up to his 1998 release, Qatamesh says Israel was facing mounting pressure and calls for his release as he received regular visits from European Union politicians, as well as Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations and left-wing groups.

After six years and seven months of imprisonment without charge or trial, Qatamesh returned to his home in al-Bireh.

Following that release, Qatamesh says he abstained from all political activity, including involvement with the PFLP. For several years, he taught at Birzeit University, where he lectured on philosophy, history and politics.

“Bigger than I am”

Upon his release, Qatamesh wrote about his experience being tortured in his first book, I Shall Not Wear Your Tarboosh. He wrote two more books, one titled A History of the Secret Revolution, and another about the one-state solution in Palestine.

After he was rearrested yet again in 2011, he says that Israeli interrogators repeatedly asked him about the ideas expressed in his writing. “They accused me of being PFLP, then Hamas, and finally they told me I was a threat to their state,” he recalled.

“I hadn’t been a part of any political group for years. It was harder than when I was younger. I just wanted to go home and be with my family,” he said, referring to his wife, Suha, and his daughter, who was 21 years old when he was arrested the last time. Israeli soldiers pointed guns at her and forced her to call her father to demand his surrender.

Qatamesh says Israeli authorities “made me into something bigger than I am. That’s why they used administrative detention.”

For two and a half years, Israeli military courts continually rubber-stamped the intelligence establishment’s requests to extend Qatamesh’s administrative detention order. His health declined during this time and he suffered from regular fainting and chronic debilitating headaches.

In April 2013, the international human rights group Amnesty International called for Israel to unconditionally release Qatamesh.

“Ahmad Qatamesh is a prisoner of conscience who is being detained solely for expressing nonviolent political beliefs,” stated Amnesty International’s Ann Harrison, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program.

During his third stint in prison, however, it took the military judges longer to recognize the lack of evidence against the aging writer.

It wasn’t until August 2013 that an Israeli military court ruled that it would only extend Qatamesh’s administrative detention order for one more six-month interval unless Israeli intelligence or the military could bring provide evidence demonstrating his involvement in resistance activities banned by Israel.

After seven consecutive administrative detention orders, he was released on 28 December 2013 and returned home to his family.

“Clearest case”

Gavan Kelly, an advocacy officer for Addameer, a Ramallah-based group that monitors Israel’s arrests of Palestinians and advocates for prisoners’ rights, said that “Qatamesh is the clearest case of Israel using administrative detention to remove influential people from Palestinian society.”

International law permits the use of administrative detention in exceptional cases, but Israeli policy flies in the face of international law, according to Kelly, who said the number of Palestinians locked up without trial has “hovered between 200 and 300 over the last couple years.”

According to the Israeli legislation titled Emergency Powers Law Detention (also known as the 1979 Emergency Law), the defense minister can order the detention of a citizen for indefinitely renewable six-month periods. Though it is only supposed to be applicable during a state of emergency, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has considered the country in a state of emergency since its establishment in 1948.

In practice, the law targets Palestinian citizens of Israel and has rarely been used against their Jewish compatriots.

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh done while the cartoonist was imprisoned by Israel last year.

For Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and in the Gaza Strip, military order 1651.56 authorizes military commanders to detain individuals if there are “reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention,” according to Addameer’s website.

Because the military order does not limit the number of times an administrative detention order can be renewed and the terms are vague, the fate of imprisoned Palestinians is often left to military commanders.

During his last two and a half years in prison, Qatamesh says the only explanation he was ever given by interrogators or intelligence officers was that he “is a threat to their state.”

Abusive detention practices

“The last couple years have seen historically low numbers [of administrative detainees],” Addameer’s Kelly said.

According to Addameer data, the number of administrative detainees peaked at more than 1,050 Palestinians in March 2003, during the second intifada.

That came after a mass arrest campaign in which Israeli occupation forces rounded up more than 15,000 Palestinians, mostly males 15 to 45 years old, between March 2002 and and October 2002.

But even after the intifada tapered off a few years later, the use of administrative detention remained widespread. Israel held a monthly average of 830 administrative detainees in 2007.

Other Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups agree with Addameer’s assessment that Israel’s use of administrative exceeds “exceptional cases.”

In February 2013, Human Rights Watch called on Israel to “end abusive detention practices” while four Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike were gaining international attention.

“Israel’s international legal obligations require it to inform those arrested of the reasons for the arrest at the time, to promptly inform them of any charges against them, and to bring them before a judge, and in criminal cases, to provide a fair and public trial in which the defendant may challenge any witnesses against them,” the international rights group observed.

“Administrative detainees are stuck in prison while the world changes outside,” Qatamesh said. “The prisoners are always thinking about their cities, villages, refugee camps.”

Moazzam Begg’s letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

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Moazzam Begg leaves Belmarsh prison in south London after his release. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Moazzam Begg leaves Belmarsh prison in south London after his release. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Moazzam Begg, who was recently released from prison after new evidence exonerated him from terrorism charges, wrote the following appeal to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi for the release of British citizen Alan Henning .

Begg wrote the letter whilst still detained in Belmarsh jail. He approached the Foreign Office to facilitate this appeal but they refused to assist and thus the letter never publicly went out.

Henning was subsequently beheaded.



Shashi Tharoor sacked as Congress spokesperson for praising Narendra Modi

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Shashi Tharoor

New Delhi: Congress MP and former Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor has been sacked as party spokesperson on the charge that he has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi once too often.

The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) had wanted action against Tharoor for his praise of Narendra Modi and accepting the Prime Minister’s invite to him to participate in ‘Swachh Bharat-Abhiyaan’ campaign.

KPCC president V M Sudheeran said praises lavished on Modi repeatedly by Tharoor had hurt Congress and UDF workers who worked sincerely and tirelessly for his victory in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency for a second time.

Party president Sonia Gandhi has reportedly agreed with those in the Congress who allege that Mr. Tharoor has embarrassed and hurt the party with his “unnecessary adulation of PM Modi” in columns on news media.

He had consistently rejected suggestions that he was moving closer to the BJP by asserting that he was a “proud Congressman” and never endorsed the “Hindutva agenda” of the BJP.

“As a loyal worker of the Congress, I accept the decision of the party president,” said Shashi Tharoor.

The action against Tharoor comes at a time questions connected to the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar at her hotel room in January have resurfaced. The Delhi Police are yet to pinpoint how she died; a team of doctors from AIIMS has said the 52-year-old died of poisoning, and not from an overdose of Alprax anti-depressant pills as another report had claimed previously.

Meerut woman denies rape, forceful conversion, says she eloped

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meerut-woman-conversion

Meerut: The young woman from Meerut, who in August claimed she was abducted, gang-raped and forcefully converted to Islam, has retracted her earlier statement, telling police that she had in fact eloped with the accused.

The 22-year-old Hindu woman approached the police complaining of a threat from her family, and in a written statement, denied rape or conversion. She told police that she had gone with the Muslim man out of her own will.

In August, after the woman’s complaint, the accused along with seven others were arrested. The BJP workers in the state, including Yogi Adityanath, the BJP’s bypoll campaign in-charge in the State, had branded the incident as “love jihad”.

Right-wing Hindu groups launched an elaborate campaign in the State against “love jihad” in which they claimed Muslim men lured Hindu girls, tricked them into marriage and forced them to accept Islam.

Police said the woman left her home on Sunday due to the alleged threats and reached a women’s police station.

She was presented before a magistrate and is currently staying in Meerut Nari Niketan, Meerut Rural SP was quoted as telling The Hindu.

The accused Muslim man, Kaleem, and eight others were arrested after the woman had alleged on August 3 that she had been abducted, gang-raped and forcibly converted to Islam.

The UN is a colossal fraud just ideas—or disaster—will triumph

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United Nations

– by Fidel Castro

Absolutely no one has the right to destroy cities; murder children; pulverize homes; sow terror, hunger and death anywhere.

If today it is possible to prolong life, health and the productive time of persons, if it is perfectly possible to plan the development of the population in accordance with growing productivity, culture and development of human values, what are they waiting for to do so?

Global society has known no peace in recent years, particularly since the European Economic Community, under the absolute, inflexible direction of the United States, decided that the time had come to settle accounts with what remained of two great nations which, inspired by the ideas of Marx, had achieved the great feat of ending the imperialist colonial order imposed on the world by Europe and the United States.

In former Russia, a revolution erupted which moved the world.

It was expected that the first great socialist revolution would take place in the most industrialized countries of Europe, such as England, France, Germany or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This revolution, however, took place in Russia, whose territory extended into Asia, from northern Europe to southern Alaska – which had been Czarist territory, sold for a few dollars to the country which would later be the most interested in attacking and destroying the revolution and the country where it occurred.

The greatest accomplishment of the new state was the creation of a union capable of bringing together its resources and sharing its technology with a large number of weak, less developed nations, unwilling victims of colonial exploitation. Would a true society of nations be convenient or not, in the current world, one in which respect is shown for rights, beliefs, culture, technologies and resources in accessible places around the world, which so many human beings would like to visit and know? And wouldn’t the world be much more just today—when in fractions of a second anyone can communicate with the other side of the planet—if people saw in others a friend or brother, and not an enemy disposed to kill, with weapons which human knowledge has been capable of creating?

Believing that human beings could be capable of having such objectives, I think that absolutely no one has the right to destroy cities; murder children; pulverize homes; sow terror, hunger and death anywhere. In what corner of the world can such acts be justified? If it is remembered that, when the last global conflict’s killing ended, the world placed its hopes in the creation of the United Nations, it is because a large part of humanity imagined it with such a perspective, although its objectives were not fully defined. A colossal fraud is what is seen today, as problems emerge which suggest the possible eruption of a war, with the use of weapons, which could mean the end of human existence.

There are unscrupulous actors, apparently more than a few, which consider meritorious their willingness to die, but above all to kill in defense of their indecent privileges.

Many are surprised to hear the statements made by some European NATO spokespeople, expressed in the style and look of the Nazi SS. On occasion, they even wear dark suits, in the middle of summer.

We have a powerful enough adversary, our closest neighbor: the United States. We warned them that we would withstand the blockade, although this would imply a very high cost for our country. There is no greater price than capitulating to an enemy, which for no reason, or right, attacks you. This was the sentiment of a small, isolated people. The rest of the hemisphere’s governments, with a few exceptions, went along with the powerful, influential empire. This was not a personal attitude on our part, but rather the sentiment of a small nation which had been not only the political, but also the economic property of the U.S. since the beginning of the century. Spain had ceded us to this country, after we had suffered almost five centuries of colonialism, and innumerable deaths and material losses in our struggle for independence.

The empire reserved the right to intervene militarily in Cuba, on the basis of a constitutional amendment imposed on an impotent Congress, incapable of resisting. Besides being owners of almost all of Cuba, vast land holdings, the largest sugar mills, mines, and banks – with even the prerogative of printing our currency – they did not allow us to produce enough grain to feed the population.

When the USSR collapsed, and the socialist camp disappeared as well, we continued resisting. Together, the revolutionary state and people continued our independent march.

I do not wish, nevertheless, to dramatize our modest history. I prefer rather to emphasize that the empire’s policy is so dramatically ludicrous that its relegation to the dustbin of history will not long be delayed. Adolph Hitler’s empire, inspired by greed, went down in history with no more glory than that of the encouragement given to aggressive bourgeois governments of NATO, which became the laughing stock of Europe and the world, with their euro, which along with the dollar, will soon become wet paper, and they will be required to depend on the yen, and rubles as well, given the emerging Chinese economy, closely linked to Russia’s enormous economic and technical potential.

Cynicism is something which has become symbolic of imperial policy.

As is known, John McCain was the Republican candidate in the 2008 elections. This individual came into the public light as a pilot who was shot down while his plane bombed the populous city of Hanoi. A Vietnamese missile hit the aircraft in action, and the plane and pilot fell into a lake located close to capital, on the city’s outskirts.

Upon seeing the airplane crash and a wounded pilot attempting to save himself, a retired Vietnamese soldier who was making his living in the area came to his aid. As the old soldier offered his help, a group of Hanoi residents who had suffered the aerial attacks, came running to settle accounts with the murderer. The soldier himself persuaded his neighbors not to do so, since the man was taken prisoner and his life must be respected. Yankee authorities themselves communicated with the government, begging that no action be taken against the pilot.

In addition to the Vietnamese government’s policy of respecting prisoners, the pilot was the son a U.S. Navy Admiral who had played an outstanding role in WWII, and was still holding an important position.

The Vietnamese had captured a big fish in that bombing, and, of course, thinking about the eventual peace talks which would put an end to the unjust war unleashed on them, they developed a friendship with McCain, who was very happy to take advantage of the opportunity provided by that adventure. No Vietnamese, of course, recounted any of this to me, nor would I have ever asked anyone to do so. I have read about it, and it coincides completely with a few details I learned later. I also read one day that Mr. McCain had written that when he was a prisoner in Vietnam, while he was tortured, he heard voices in Spanish advising the torturers as to what they should do and how. They were Cuban voices, according to McCain. Cuba never had advisors in Vietnam. The military there knew very well how to conduct their war.

General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible. With these launchers, they fired from such a close point that it was impossible to neutralize them, without affecting the invaders as well. Other pertinent measures, all difficult and complex, were utilized to impose a shameful surrender on the surrounded European forces.

The fox McCain took as much advantage as possible of the yankee and European invaders’ military defeats. Nixon could not persuade his National Security Council advisor Henry Kissinger to accept the idea suggested by the President himself, who in a relaxed moment said: Why don’t we drop one of those little bombs, Henry? The true little bomb dropped when the President’s men attempted to spy on their adversaries in the opposing party. This surely couldn’t be tolerated!

Despite this, Mr. McCain’s most cynical behavior has been in the Near East. Senator McCain is Israel’s most unconditional ally in Mossad’s machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq, as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations. This state already has a multi-million dollar income, and threatens Saudi Arabia and other nations in this complex region which supplies the greatest part of the world’s oil.

Would it not be preferable to struggle to produce food and industrial products; build hospitals and schools for billions of human beings who desperately need them; promote art and culture; struggle against epidemics which lead to the death of half of the sick, health workers and technicians, as can be seen; or finally eliminate illnesses like cancer, Ebola, malaria, dengue, chikungunya, diabetes and others which affect the vital systems of human beings?

If today it is possible to prolong life, health and the productive time of persons, if it is perfectly possible to plan the development of the population in accordance with growing productivity, culture and development of human values, what are they waiting for to do so? Just ideas will triumph, or disaster will triumph.

Signature of Fidel Raul Castro

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