Iran orders ban on Israeli goods
Press TV – June 30, 2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the implementation of a bill demanding major efforts to enforce a total boycott on goods with Israeli origin.
According to the website of the Iranian government, President Ahmadinejad ordered the implementation of the pro-Palestinian bill, which was ratified by the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) earlier in June.
Iranian lawmakers agreed to task a committee with identifying Israeli companies and institutions to step up efforts for imposing a ban on Israeli products.
Under the Majlis bill, the Iranian Foreign Ministry is required to put forward a proposal for the boycott of Israeli commodities at international meetings including the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement.
The ministry should also present annual reports on the activities of the committee to the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.
The bill also demands the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting not to air television and radio advertisement for Israeli products.
The move comes after Israeli navy commandoes attacked the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla in international waters, killing 9 people onboard and injuring dozens of others.
The Israeli assault has sparked international condemnation and massive protests against Israel’s three-year blockade of the impoverished coastal sliver.
Israel has remained defiant of calls by the UN for an international probe into the deadly attack, saying it is conducting its own independent investigation.
Canada to Supply Uranium to India and China
India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
By Dave Brown – Uranium Investing News
On June 27, The Prime Ministers of Canada and India signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. The deal provides for cooperation in civil nuclear energy including import of uranium and equipment from Canada, underscoring cooperation in the fields of nuclear waste management and radiation safety.
India expects to have 12 new reactors running by 2020, consuming an extra 1,500 tonnes of uranium per year. Other projects are expected, making India’s civilian nuclear sector worth $25-billion to $50-billion over the next 20 years. Dr. Chaitanyamoy Ganguly, the President of the small Indian division of Cameco (TSX: CCO), the world’s largest uranium miner, said Canada could soon be exporting 2,000 tonnes of uranium to India annually. Canada has some natural competitive advantages over other countries in the Indian market because many of India’s reactors are already based on Canadian CANDU technology and because Australia has refused to sell uranium until India signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India has also signed civil nuclear cooperation agreements with the USA, Russia, France, UK, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Namibia.
Cameco signed an agreement on June 24 with China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC), a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), to supply China’s largest nuclear generator with uranium concentrate under a long-term agreement through 2020. The deal would see Cameco supplying approximately 23 million pounds over the next 10 years to CNNC, which currently operates seven reactors with a total capacity of 5,100 MW. The state-owned CNNC, in operation for nearly 50 years, expects to be one of the world’s leading nuclear power companies by 2020 with 10 reactors under construction totaling capacity of 9,100 MW.
Cameco also has also agreed to pursue long-term non binding co-operation opportunities with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co., Ltd. (CGNPC) to supply uranium fuel for its growing fleet of nuclear power plants. This agreement will see a strategic alliance between Cameco and China’s largest clean-energy enterprise with the largest number of nuclear power plants under construction in the world. CGNPC needs uranium to fuel its four existing reactors and indicates that it has about 20,000 MW of nuclear capacity under construction with expectations of over 50,000 MW on line by 2020.
Jerry Grandey, Cameco’s CEO, seemed very pleased with these announcements, “Our plan to double uranium production by 2018 aligns well with China’s vigorous reactor construction program.” Chinese estimates indicate the country is expecting to increase its nuclear capacity from the current 9 GW to at least 70 GW by 2020 with a further increase to at least 120-160 GW planned by 2030… Full article
Aletho News notes that Canadian based Cameco Resources, which is the largest U.S. uranium producer, operates an in situ leaching plant near Glenrock, Wyoming. – link
Jerusalem Politicians Face Expulsion
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth – June 29, 2010
Israeli human-rights groups and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, have condemned a decision by Israel to expel four Palestinian politicians from East Jerusalem by the end of this week.
The Israeli government revoked their residency rights in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, after claiming they were “in breach of trust” for belonging to a “foreign parliament”, a reference to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
All four men belong to Hamas and were arrested a few months after taking part in the Palestinian national elections in January 2006. They remained in jail until recently as “bargaining chips” for the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who is being held captive by Hamas.
Observers say Israel’s move reflects its anger at Hamas’s growing hold on the political sympathies of Jerusalem’s 260,000 Palestinians and is designed to further entrench a physical separation Israel has been imposing on East Jerusalem and the adjacent West Bank.
Israel has not said where the three MPs and a former cabinet minister will be expelled to. The loss of residency effectively leaves the politicians stateless, in breach of international law, according to human-rights lawyers.
Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Adalah legal centre for the Arab minority in Israel, said a “very dangerous precedent” was being set. “It is the first time Palestinians in East Jerusalem have had their residency revoked for being ‘disloyal’ and this could be used to expel many other residents whose politics Israel does not like.
“This is a draconian measure characteristic of dark and totalitarian regimes,” he said.
The January 2006 vote for the Palestinian Legislative Council, in which Hamas won a majority of seats against its Fatah rivals, was the first time the Islamic party had participated in a national election.
Jerusalem politicians were allowed to stand only after the international community insisted that Israel honour the terms of the Oslo accords.
Unlike the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, East Jerusalem was annexed to Israel following the 1967 war and its Palestinian inhabitants were given the status of “permanent residents”. Israel has violated international law by building large settlements throughout East Jerusalem that are now home to 200,000 Jews.
After the 2006 vote, the government of Ehud Olmert responded to Hamas’s success in East Jerusalem by initiating procedures to revoke the residency of three MPs – Mohammed Abu Tir, Ahmed Attoun and Mohammed Totah – and Khaled Abu Arafeh, who Hamas appointed as the PA’s minister for Jerusalem affairs.
Before the revocations could take effect, however, Israel arrested the men, as well as dozens of other Hamas legislators, in retaliation for Sgt Shalit’s capture four years ago.
Since their release, all four politicians have had their Israeli identity cards confiscated and been told they must leave the city within a month.
Mr Abu Tir, 60, was supposed to leave on June 19, but has so far evaded expulsion. “I will not willingly leave the place my family has lived for 500 years,” he said last week.
The deadline for the other three expires on Saturday.
Unusually, the plight of the Hamas politicians has won the support of Mr Abbas, who also heads Fatah and has been seeking to overturn Hamas’s rule in Gaza.
Calling the expulsions one of “the biggest obstacles yet on the path to peace”, Mr Abbas has vowed to put pressure on the US to reverse Israel’s decision.
During a meeting with three of the men last week, he said: “We cannot stand idly by while people are expelled from their homeland, which we consider a crime.” Mr Abbas is reported to fear that Israel is hoping to establish a new precedent for expelling thousands of Palestinians from the city.
Hatem Abdel Kader, Fatah’s minister for Jerusalem affairs, was warned this month by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, that he would have his residency revoked if he continued his political activities in the city.
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said Israel was issuing “a very clear warning to Hamas and all those who promote terror” that they would face a “backlash”.
Lawyers for the four Hamas politicians petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court this month for an injunction on the expulsions until a hearing can be held on the men’s residency rights. Last week, however, the court declined to stop what it called “deportations”, saying it would issue a ruling at a later date.
Mr Jabareen, whose Adalah organisation is advising the politicians, said he was “astonished” by the court’s position, and that in all previous expulsion cases an injunction had been issued before the expulsion took place.
He added: “Under international law, an occupying power cannot demand loyalty from the the people it occupies. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are ‘protected persons’ in law and cannot be expelled.”
Israel has based its decision on the Entry into Israel Law of 1952, which governs the naturalisation process for non-Jews. It allows the interior minister to revoke citizenship and residency in some cases.
“The purpose of this law is to oversee the entry into Israel of foreigners,” said Mr Jabareen. “The Palestinians of East Jerusalem did not enter Israel; Israel entered East Jerusalem by occupying it in 1967.”
The revocations of the politicians’ residency comes in the wake of a rapid rise in the number of Palestinians who have been stripped of Jerusalem residency on other grounds, usually because Israel claims the city is no longer the “centre of their life” and typically because a resident has studied or worked abroad.
In 2008, more than 4,500 Palestinians lost their Jerusalem residency, interior ministry figures show. The number has been steadily rising since 1995, when 91 Palestinians were stripped of their rights. According to Israel, a total of 13,000 Palestinians have had their residency revoked since 1967.
The loss of residency is seen by the Palestinians as part of a wider Israeli strategy to weaken their hold on East Jerusalem and its holy sites.
Israel has built sections of its separation wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, cutting off some 60,000 residents from their city.
It has also shut down all Palestinian political institutions in Jerusalem associated with the Palestinian national movements, and banned events – including a literature festival last year – that it claims are financed with PA money.
Last week police forced the closure of Hamas’ political office near the Old City. Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, had earlier accused Hamas of trying to buy property in Jerusalem.
In early 2006, shortly before they were arrested, Mr Abu Tir and Mr Abu Arafeh were revealed to have established a diplomatic channel with several prominent Israeli rabbis to negotiate Sgt Shalit’s release and the terms of a possible peace deal. The talks were effectively foiled by their arrests.
In a related move, Israeli officials have also been threatening to revoke the citizenship of Palestinian leaders inside Israel, including Haneen Zoubi, the Israeli MP who was onboard last month’s aid flottilla to Gaza that Israeli commandos attacked, killing nine passengers.
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
HRW Report Says Britain, France, Germany Use Foreign Torture Intel
Al-Manar TV – 29/06/2010
Britain, France and Germany use foreign intelligence obtained through torture in the fight against terrorism, a new report from Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
The use by three heavyweight European powers of information from secret services in countries that routinely rely on torture was damaging the reputation of the entire European Union, said the rights group.
“Berlin, Paris and London should be working to eradicate torture, not relying on foreign torture intelligence,” said Judith Sunderland, Western Europe researcher for HRW. “Taking information from torturers is illegal and just plain wrong.”
The report, “No Questions Asked: Intelligence Cooperation with Countries that Torture,” found: “The actual practices of these leading EU states contradict the EU’s anti-torture guidelines, which make eradicating torture and ill-treatment a priority in its relations with other countries.”
Intelligence services in the three countries lack detailed instructions on how to assess and respond to information from countries that torture, said the rights group.
Torture-tainted information has been used in criminal proceedings in France and Germany, despite domestic and international rules banning the use of such evidence in proceedings, said HRW.
“France, Germany, and the UK can engage in necessary intelligence cooperation without undermining the global torture ban,” said the rights group.
“To do so, they must make genuine inquiries of countries that provide information to determine whether torture was used to obtain it.”
Israeli Ministers Reject Bill to Prevent Discrimination in State Schools
by Khalil Bendib
Al Manar – 28/06/2010
The Israeli Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday rejected a bill aimed at preventing discrimination against students enrolled in the official state education system.
In their bill, MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) and Kadima Mks Shlomo Molla and Shai Hermesh, proposed that the education minister be obligated to enforce within a specific timeline the cessation of discrimination found in any particular school.
According to the proposal, the Israeli education ministry would have the right to revoke state funding should the offending school not heed the warning by the mentioned date. The proposal would also allow the state to implement economic sanctions against the school.
Despite the Israeli cabinet’s disapproval, MK Horowitz still intends to bring the bill forward for a preliminary reading in the Knesset.
“If the MKs vote against the bill in the Knesset, like the ministers did today, it will be proof of the ideological and moral hole within the current government and its leader,” Horowitz said.
Horowitz added that the rejection of the bill demonstrated “the continuation of [Education Minister] Gideon Sa’ar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s silence and disregard regarding the affair in Immanuel.”
The bill had been submitted before the Ashkenazi parents in the ultra-Orthodox community of Immanuel were given a two-week jail term for refusing a court order to send their daughters to school with girls of Sephardi, or Middle Eastern, origin. On Sunday, the court ordered the parents released from jail immediately, after a deal was reached to see the girls integrated in classes for the remaining three days of the school year.
MK Molla said after the vote that “precisely toady, as the Immanuel affair hovers above us like a black could, the government should have approved the bill to clarify in a distinct voice that it opposes discrimination and racism in all forms and in all sectors.”
Israel Releases Abducted Lebanese Shepherd, Leaves Scars All Over His Body
Islamic Resistance of Lebanon | June 28, 2010
It seems that the Lebanese citizens remain to be subject to the “Israeli” enemy’s atrocities while the UN Interim Forces set a blind eye to all violations, and it seems that its only mission is to keep record of these “Israeli” violations.
In this context, a Lebanese shepherd was abducted on Sunday the 27th of June 2010 by “Israeli” forces, and then released 24 hours later, with scars of torture and violence covering his body.
Intiqad correspondent to South Lebanon Fatima Shoeib visited the Lebanese abducted citizen and shepherd Imad Hassan Atwi- 37 years old- in Tyr Governmental Hospital, where he received treatment for his injuries.
Released Shepherd Imad Hassan Atwi told Al Intiqad that he was grazing his sheep a hundred meters away from the Blue Line when suddenly soldiers captured him and started hitting him brutally, “I am nothing but a shepherd who has been present in this area for the past 20 years. This time I fell in the hands of “Israeli” forces and was unable to run away as “Israeli” soldiers surrounded me and hit me brutally on my head, chest and back until I passed away,” he said.
Atwi added “They threw me to the ground, sat on my chest, and hit me on my head until I passed away. They transferred me then on a stretcher off which I fell multiple times until I was put in the vehicle. I was then transported to Roweisat Al Alam point, from there again transported to the intelligence center where 9 detectives conducted investigations with me. Their accusation was that I aimed at abducting Zionist soldiers… At that point, I mocked them questioning if I was able to abduct any soldiers with a stick I use to graze the cattle…”
“When I denied the charges, they started questioning me about fellow brothers from my village Sheba’a. They even showed my photos taken by reconnaissance planes and asked me to determine the owners of the houses in the village, but again I said I knew nothing. That was when they threatened me that I will stay imprisoned for 20 years, but my answer was that I will be with my children tomorrow.” Atwi added.
Atwi, who was hospitalized for serious injuries, was handed over at the Naqura border crossing.
He was received by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) at the Naqoura border crossing and later handed over to the specialized Lebanese forces. He was transferred to the Tyre governmental hospital for having had incurred some bruises. Enquiry into incident is still underway.
Thousands of Gazans trek to Cairo for medical treatment
IRIN – 29/06/2010
Cairo – Thousands of Gazans are taking advantage of an open border crossing with Egypt since 1 June to seek treatment for a range of illnesses in Cairo hospitals.
“Israel’s blockade has left everything in Gaza in tatters. People can’t find the simplest things to meet their needs,” said 40-year-old Gazan Sayed Abu Asi, whose six-year-old son Mohamed has a severe deformity in his right leg.
Due to the scarcity of medical equipment and medicines in Gaza, he said he had been trying for months to bring his son to Egypt for treatment but the Rafah border crossing had always been closed.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered an indefinite opening of the border, Gaza’s only conduit to the outside world not controlled by Israel (apart from the illegal tunnels between Gaza and Egypt), the day after Israel’s military action against an aid-carrying flotilla on 31 May.
On 1 June, Abu Asi and his son made it through the Rafah crossing and now the boy is being treated in Nasser Medical Institute in northern Cairo, one of several hospitals giving free treatment to Palestinians.
According to the Egyptian government, some 16,000 Gazans have crossed into Egypt so far at a controlled rate of around 500 a day. All those IRIN spoke to complained of the helplessness they felt in Gaza, with severe limits on imports and exports and the inability to rebuild damaged homes and infrastructure.
“The situation in Gaza is worse than words can say,” said Sami Abdeen, who was also receiving treatment at the Nasser Medical Institute. “There’s no food, no medicine, nothing at all. Israel doesn’t even let cement into the Strip for us to build our homes, which it destroyed last year.”
Israel has partly eased its three-year economic blockade of Gaza by allowing in some humanitarian items it used to ban. However, the UN, aid agencies and the international community have been urging Israel to completely lift the blockade, which it says is in place for security reasons.
Gaza health care ‘never been worse’
Six-year-old Mohamed from Gaza has a severe deformity in his right leg In a 14 June press statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Gazan suffering could not be addressed simply by providing aid. “The closure imposed on Gaza chokes off any real possibility of economic development. Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty, and warfare, while the quality of Gaza’s health care system has reached an all-time low,” it said.
The ICRC said stocks of essential medical supplies in Gaza were depleted “because of a standstill in cooperation between the Palestinian authorities in Ramallah and Gaza”. At the end of May 2010, 110 of the 470 medicines considered essential, such as chemotherapy and haemophilia drugs, were unavailable. More than 110 of the 700 disposable items that should be available were also out of stock
“The state of the health-care system in Gaza has never been worse,” said Eileen Daly, the ICRC’s health coordinator in Gaza. “Health is being politicized: that is the main reason the system is failing. Unless something changes, things are only going to get even worse. Thousands of patients could go without treatment and the long-term outlook will be increasingly worrisome.”
This situation has driven Abu Asi and thousands of other Gazans to Egypt.
“Most of these people suffer chronic diseases because of the hard conditions they experience in Gaza. Some have kidney failure, others have cancerous tumours, but the majority have bone deformities,” Bahaa Abu Zeid, manager of the Nasser Medical Institute, told IRIN, adding that the hospital has been receiving around 70 Palestinian patients a day.
“The bitter reality is that there is a complete generation of Gazans who will be dependent for the rest of their lives,” Abu Asi said. “They’re young people who lost their legs in Israeli attacks. They’ll grow up always needing help from others.”
Jordan ‘not to give up nuclear rights’
Press TV – June 28, 2010
The head of Jordan’s Atomic Energy Commission says that it is not ready to surrender its peaceful nuclear rights in negotiations with the United States.
The US wanted Jordan to sign a nuclear agreement similar to a deal they reached with the United Arab Emirates, Khaled Tukan told AFP on Monday.
The UAE “has relinquished its rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” he said, adding, “Why should we give up our rights?”
The nuclear chief also said Article 4 of the NPT stipulates that “all countries have the right to full utilization of peaceful nuclear energy, research and development.”
“We are sticking and adhering to the NPT, and (we want) full rights and privileges under the NPT,” he said.
Tukan noted that Jordan was in ongoing negotiations with the United States and the latest round of talks was held in Washington last week.
“But I think we still don’t have common ground. They started to understand our viewpoint, but still (there is) no common ground.”
Jordan has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with several countries in a bid to produce atomic energy for power generation and water desalination.
Shabtai Rosenne and the Qibya Coverup
Richard Silverstein | June 17, 2010
Shabtai Rosenne, from the days he served in the Israeli foreign service (AP)
Shabtai Rosenne is the 93 year-old Israeli appointee to the panel investigating the IDF’s attack on the Gaza flotilla last month. He has had a distinguished career as an scholar specializing in international law and in the diplomatic corps. I’ve written here about the ludicrousness of placing a nonagenarian in such a key position on such a sensitive political body. But Nahum Barnea published a new charge against Rozen that strengthens my argument.
In 1953, there were repeated cross-border attacks from Israel and Jordan on each other’s territory in which citizens of both countries were killed. Some attacks were carried out by military forces and some by irregular forces attempting to take vengeance on the other side for the losses of the 1948 War. Finally fed up with this violence, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s prime minister resolved to strike a savage blow against a Jordanian target that would end the guerilla attacks once and for all.
Ben Gurion and his defense minister, the notorious Pinhas Lavon, planned the attack on the West Bank village of Qibya without notifying the rest of the cabinet. Foreign minister Moshe Sharett was informed in general terms though given no specifics about the exact nature of the attack.
During an all-day assault, Israeli forces under the command of Ariel Sharon, destroyed 41 buildings in the village including the school. Many homes were dynamited with the residents still within them. 60 residents were killed. The response by the international community was, much like the Gaza flotilla incident, pure outrage. In the aftermath of the bloodbath and the ensuing furor, the IDF turned to the foreign ministry to devise a way to mitigate the damage to Israel’s reputation.
In his memoir, Sharett explains that a plan was devised to deny the army had anything to do with the attack and to claim it was the result of attacks from Israeli border settlements who were angry with the continuing incursions against them from the Jordanian side. As a result, Ben Gurion released this entirely mendacious statement:
None deplores it more than the Government of Israel, if … innocent blood was spilled … The Government of Israel rejects with all vigor the absurd and fantastic allegation that 600 men of the IDF took part in the action … We have carried out a searching investigation and it is clear beyond doubt that not a single army unit was absent from its base on the night of the attack on Qibya.
We can see that the lies of current Israeli governments find their paternity in one of the august founders of the modern state.
Sharett further notes that at a strategy meeting, Shabtai Rosenne, one of his senior advisors, suggested that in order to make Ben Gurion’s claim credible that Israel should pass a law enabling it to collectively punish the border settlements for their alleged misdeeds. Sharett was aghast. He didn’t believe the world would buy the original claim that the army wasn’t involved. He thought Rozen’s further subterfuge was an insult to the world’s intelligence.
Barnea writes:
Sharett was angered. He hadn’t expected those advisers closest to him would lend themselves to such a fabrication which no one in the world would believe.
So 57 years ago Shabtai Rosenne prepared lies on behalf of a state which had committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians. Today, he is called upon again to defend Israeli soldiers who killed in cold blood. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose. But this time, we know Rosenne’s past and raise it to discredit the proceedings of this farce of an inquiry endorsed so heartily by Barack Obama and Bibi Netanyahu.
Former ambassadors question silence on the ‘excesses’ of Israel
DAN OAKES | Sydney Morning Herald | June 29, 2010
A former Australian ambassador to Israel has accused the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, of being silent on the ”excesses” of Israel and questioned why her partner has been given a job by a prominent Israel lobbyist.
In a letter to the Herald, Ross Burns, who served as an ambassador between 2001 and 2003, said Ms Gillard has been ”remarkably taciturn on the excesses of Israeli actions in the past two years”.
Ms Gillard has been part of the Australian delegation to the last two meetings of the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, founded by the Melbourne property developer Albert Dadon.
Mr Dadon employs Ms Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, as a real estate salesman, at Ubertas. Mr Burns said yesterday that Ms Gillard was at the forum’s inaugural meeting in Israel last June, six months after the Israeli army invaded the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1000 Palestinians.
She was also the acting prime minister when the invasion took place, and issued a statement at the time criticising the Palestinian group Hamas for firing rockets into southern Israel. It did not condemn Israel for causing civilian casualties.
The former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, have since expressed unease at the subsequent blockade of Gaza by Israel.
”It looks a bit funny when you go on this tour to promote bilateral relations, but you don’t seem to have any reservations about the issue that was number one on the horizon,” Mr Burns said.
Another former Australian ambassador to Tel Aviv, Peter Rodgers, who served in the Israeli capital from 1994 to 1997, also criticised the government’s attitude towards Israel.
He said last night that under successive governments, Australia’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had become increasingly unbalanced, and that this was unlikely to change under Ms Gillard’s stewardship.
”There’s been a marked swing away from the old attempt to be even-handed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to a much more determined pro-Israeli position, and I think Gillard is part of that,” Mr Rodgers said.
The Herald sought comments from Ms Gillard, Michael Danby, a prominent Jewish federal MP – and a supporter of Ms Gillard in last week’s leadership coup – and Mr Dadon for this article, but received no response.
Copyright © 2010 Fairfax Media
UK: Spies told to reveal instructions which ‘turned blind eye to torture’
By Abul Taher | Daily Mail | 27th June 2010
MI5 and MI6 have been ordered by a High Court judge to release secret guidelines which human rights groups claim instructed spies to turn a blind eye to the torture of British terror suspects abroad.
The guidelines will be released to six British former Guantanamo Bay detainees who are suing the Government for allegedly being complicit in their torture by the Americans.
The guidelines were issued to agents in 2002 and 2004.
‘We believe they will reveal a policy of complicity to torture, which explains all these cases over the years of MI5 agents knowing a Briton is being tortured but doing nothing about it,’ said Katherine O’Shea of Reprieve, a charity which has given legal help to former Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The release is likely to damage David Miliband, the front-runner to become Labour leader. As Foreign Secretary, he told Parliament that the Government was never complicit in the torture of Britons abroad.
In February, the High Court overruled Mr Miliband’s attempt to stop former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, 31, seeing a CIA document which showed MI5 knew he was being tortured.
Mr Miliband argued the release would jeopardise intelligence-sharing accords between Britain and America which would damage the national interest. Mr Mohamed is a claimant in the latest case with Bisher Al Rawi, 49, Jamil El Banna, 58, Richard Belmar, 30, Omar Deghayes, 40, and Martin Mubanga, 37.
All six claim that during their detention they were questioned by British agents who not only knew they were being tortured, they also supplied further questions for interrogators.
The Foreign Office said last night that it was considering Mr Justice Silber’s ruling. A spokesman said: ‘We will look at whether their disclosure raises any national security issues that may need to be protected.’
Even if publication is blocked, advocates can still read the documents and give the six an outline of what they contain.
Aletho News 