Court Rejects Request That Secret NSA Evidence Used Against Terrorism Suspect Be Shared With Suspect’s Lawyers
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | June 17, 2014
We’ve been following the case of Adel Daoud, an American citizen charged with terrorism. He’s one of the many, many folks that was arrested following one of the FBI’s infamous home grown plots (i.e. he was never actually involved in any terrorism, as all of his “co-conspirators” were actually FBI agents or informants, and there was never any actual threat or chance that he’d pull off an actual terrorist attack). Back during the (pre-Snowden) debates on renewing Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, Senator Dianne Feinstein used Daoud’s case as a specific example of when the program had been useful in stopping terrorism.
That caught the attention of Daoud’s lawyers, who noted that this was the first they’d heard of this, and it seemed pretty clear that the government had withheld the evidence that was used to bring Daoud to trial in the first place (which is, as you know, not really allowed). After asking for the evidence, the district court first said no, but then ordered that some of the documents being filed actually be shared with Daoud’s attorneys (who have the necessary security clearances). The DOJ, of course, flipped out at this idea that the lawyers for someone they’re trying to lock up forever should actually be able to see the evidence used against him and how it was collected.
This resulted in an appeals court hearing, which bizarrely had to happen twice after the FBI so scared court staff that they failed to record the public portion of the oral hearings. The hearings were also odd in that, at one point, everybody but DOJ folks and the judges were kicked out of the courtroom, raising serious questions about basic due process.
Unfortunately, Judge Richard Posner’s ruling (right after coming out with his good ruling on the public domain) has found that the evidence does not need to be shared with Daoud’s lawyers. He slams the district court judge for overreacting and over-valuing the concept of the “adversarial process” in the court room. Seriously.
The judge appears to have believed that adversary procedure is always essential to resolve contested issues of fact. That is an incomplete description of the American judicial system in general and the federal judicial system in particular. There are ex parte or in camera hearings in the federal courts as well as hearings that are neither or both. And there are federal judicial proceedings that though entirely public are nonadversarial, either partly or entirely.
Posner basically says that the district court judge herself should have looked over the materials first, to determine if it makes sense to pass them on, rather than defaulting to saying that they should be shared with the lawyers. As such, he basically reveals that the “secret hearing” that was held was to go over the material with the appeals court judges, and they’re satisfied that nothing needs to be revealed to Daoud’s attorneys.
… our study of the materials convinces us that the investigation did not violate FISA. We shall issue a classified opinion explaining (as we are forbidden to do in a public document) these conclusions, and why therefore a remand to the district court is neither necessary nor appropriate.
Posner also, not surprisingly, rejects the objection by Daoud’s lawyers to that secret hearing, noting that it was necessary to determine if the DOJ lawyers were being fully honeset with the court:
Their objecting to the classified hearing was ironic. The purpose of the hearing was to explore, by questioning the government’s lawyer on the basis of the classified materials, the need for defense access to those materials (which the judges and their cleared staffs had read). In effect this was cross-examination of the government, and could only help the defendant.
Defense counsel’s written motion cites no authority for forbidding classified hearings, including classified oral arguments in courts of appeals, when classified materials are to be discussed. We don’t think there’s any authority it could cite.
And, voila, the secret law and secret courts and secret evidence continue unabated…
For a very good analysis of this ruling, I recommend Steve Vladeck’s take, in which he notes that Posner seems to (somewhat bizarrely) confuse sharing details with Daoud’s lawyers in secret, with “openness” to the public. As Vladeck notes, the district court judge recognized that not everything had to happen publicly, but was (reasonably) concerned that just having a judge look over the secret FISA court ruling would not be sufficient, since the judge would not have the same view as the defense attorneys. Posner seems to ignore or misinterpret all of that.
The problem, from Judge Coleman’s perspective, is that it may not always be possible for a district judge to determine whether disclosure is necessary (as opposed to whether it “may be necessary”) without the benefit of adversarial presentation. That is to say, § 1806(f) conditions the disclosure of classified FISA materials to a defendant (or, at least, his security-cleared counsel) upon a finding by the district judge that may, in some cases, only be possible with defense counsel’s participation. This is why, in her order mandating disclosure, Judge Coleman devoted so much of her energy to the importance of adversarial proceedings, especially in criminal cases—not because all proceedings in U.S. courts are adversarial (they’re not), but because, in this context specifically, adverse-ness makes it easier for a judge to have faith that she is comporting with her statutory and constitutional obligations.
But rather than accept—or at least sympathize with—Judge Coleman’s efforts to square a circle, Judge Posner derided them by suggesting that the government has a right to keep these materials secret, repeatedly criticizing calls (one is left to wonder from where) for “openness.” “Not only is federal judicial procedure not always adversarial,” Posner wrote; “it is not always fully public.” This is true, but entirely beside the point; Judge Coleman wasn’t seeking to open the proceedings; she was seeking to provide security-cleared defense counsel (who, just like everyone else, are subject to the Espionage Act) with access to classified information.
Mexico: Jailed Activist’s Family Threatened
Weekly News Update on the Americas | June 15, 2014
A group of Mexican legislative deputies announced on June 2 that they would call on the federal Governance Secretariat to guarantee the security of family members of Nestora Salgado, an imprisoned community activist from the largely indigenous town of Olinalá in the southwestern state of Guerrero. The announcement came one day after an attack on a bus that Salgado’s daughter Saira Salgado was riding from Olinalá to Mexico City for a scheduled meeting with legislators. Armed men stopped the bus shortly after it left Olinalá and without explanation executed a woman passenger. Saira Salgado said the victim was dressed the way she herself is usually dressed. After the murder, the men left without harming or robbing the other passengers. Deputy Roberto López, of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), charged that the attack was not an isolated incident.
Nestora Salgado is a naturalized US citizen from Olinalá who migrated to the US and settled in Washington state. In recent years she began visiting her hometown and became involved in community affairs there; eventually she was elected head of the community police force. Community police forces are legally recognized in Guerrero, and Salgado originally had good relations with the state government. But in August 2013 she ordered the arrest of a local official, Armando Patrón Jiménez, in connection with cattle rustling and the deaths of two ranchers. Five days later Salgado herself was arrested on charges of kidnapping and was removed to a federal women’s prison at Tepic in the western state of Nayarit. She has been held there ever since without access to a lawyer; her daughter’s meeting with legislators was intended to discuss their plan to have her transferred to a more accessible prison in Mexico City.
Mexican and US activists have organized a campaign for Salgado’s release, along with a petition drive. The US government had done nothing to help with Salgado’s case despite her status as a US citizen, Deputy Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, of the small leftist Labor Party (PT), said on June 2. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/3/14; Desinformémonos (Mexico) 6/8/14)
US missile defense system proves to be useless after $40 bln spent
RT | June 17, 2014
Despite a decade of testing and tens of billions of dollars’ worth of research, a major missile defense program in the United States has proven to be anything but successful, a new investigation suggests.
Nevertheless, the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, plans on conducting next week its ninth exercise of that costly system since 2004, and the outcome of the drill is expected to influence whether or not more than a dozen new interceptors are added to the United States’ arsenal.
According to a recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times, however, that system has so far been marred by mistakes that raise questions about its ability to thwart any major attack and the cost incurred during the last decade.
The results of the Times probe, published by the paper on Sunday this week, show that Pentagon officials with inside knowledge of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, say the program has suffered from mishaps more often than the US government would have expected.
“[A] decade after it was declared operational, and after $40 billion in spending, the missile shield cannot be relied on, even in carefully scripted tests that are much less challenging than an actual attack would be,” David Willman wrote for the Times over the weekend.
“Official pronouncements about the GMD system, The Times found, have overstated its reliability.”
Results have been mixed to say the least since as far as 1999 when GMD testing first began — half of the first 16 tests of the system’s ability to intercept a mock enemy warhead failed, the Times acknowledged. The system was finally upgraded to “operational” in 2004, but five of the eight tests held in the last decade have failed as well.
The GMD system is expected to intercept incoming missiles, like hypothetical attacks waged by adversaries such as Iran or North Korea. Even when US officials have scripted test drills to try out this ability, however, the GMD program has hardly acted as expected. The last successful intercept occurred five-and-a-half years ago, and the last three attempts — two in 2010 and one last July — all were unsuccessful.
“The tests are scripted for success,” Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of operational testing and evaluation for the Pentagon, told the Times. “What’s amazing to me is that they still fail.”
Because of this tainted track record, all eyes are expected to be on a drill later this month on June 22. MDA Director Navy Vice Adm. James Syring told Congress recently that the upcoming intercept flight test remains his “highest priority,” and with good reason:14 new intercepts could be added to a MDA system currently composed of 30 if the upcoming test is a success, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel hinted that failure would mean a halt in funding.
Speaking before Congress, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said “not just friends of the United States but even our enemies” will monitor the next round of testing in order to gauge the current abilities of the MDA program.
“I’m also optimistic we have identified the cause of the intercept failure involving our first-generation EKV last July when the CE-1 failed to separate from the booster’s third stage,” Syring said. “We have accounted for this issue in the upcoming flight test and we are working toward a correction for the entire fleet before the end of the year.”
Regardless, Syring is appealing to Congress for $99.5 million to begin what he described Wednesday to the Times as “redesign improvement” that would stop short of a complete overhaul, sources familiar with the matter told the paper.
The Presbyterian Church’s Tough Love Of Israel
By Sam Bahour | TPM | June 14, 2014
The 2 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) is about to make history in the Middle East, yet again. In the coming days, local delegates from the Church will travel to Detroit to attend the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly to consider a set of eight overtures that ask church leaders to review support of two states for Palestine and Israel in light of unfolding facts on the ground. Other issues to be considered are backing of equal rights and unblocked economic development for all inhabitants of Israel, and divesting from the likes of Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions. The Church is clearly stepping up to the plate and realigning its policies with its values.
Political America and Corporate America should be taking note.
Reminiscent of the struggle against Apartheid South Africa, the Church is poised to step in where successive US administrations have failed to hold Israel accountable to international and humanitarian law, not to mention sheer common sense.
The U.S. has paid never-ending lip service to the need to end Israel’s 47-year military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. During the past two decades, the U.S. has coupled lip service with the monopolizing of a peace process that has led the international community to a dead end; not to mention leaving Muslim and Christian Palestinians on the ground, in the occupied territory as well as in Israel, standing naked in front of a state bent on militarily controlling another people and discriminating against over 20 percent of their own non-Jewish population. Presbyterians have had enough and are taking the lead to change the equation and stop the damage being perpetrated by Israel.
Political America should not take lightly the new reality that mainstream churches and civil society have reached a point where they can no longer blindly repeat calls for a resolution based on “two states” when Israeli actions on the ground, by way of continued illegal settlement building and much more, have created a single state reality between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to exactly this at the outset of the last failed round of U.S.-led negotiations when he testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2013 and noted, “I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting, I think we have some period of time – a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it’s over.” The Presbyterian Church is crying out from the highest mountain it can that for a two-state solution not to be “over” immediate action must be taken. They are calling for the Church to review this core issue over the next two years.
Corporate America should also be closely following the Presbyterian General Assembly’s proceedings.
In the 2012 Assembly, delegates addressed the issue of divesting from firms that benefit from or contribute to Israel’s military occupation by attempting to pass a resolution calling for divestment from Israel. When the so-called pro-Israel lobby got word of this, they mobilized to introduce and pass a counter overture that promotes “positive investment” instead of divestment. In a perfected Orwellian move, these lobbyists publicly promote investment in Palestine, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the systematic Israeli polices strangling the Palestinian economy.
Investment in Palestine — without divestment from the Israeli occupation — only continues to underwrite the status quo of military occupation. For investment to be successful occupation must be dismantled and sovereign control of Palestine’s economic resources passed to the Palestinians.
In this month’s Assembly, the divestment resolution will be brought to the floor once again for a vote. Now it comes at the heels of Secretary Kerry’s failed blitz to resolve the conflict and a momentous trip by the Pope to Bethlehem where he prayed at the illegal Separation Wall. The US-based organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, recently noted that the Israel lobby’s efforts have included offering Presbyterian leaders all-expenses-paid trips to Israel. Presbyterians can use this opportunity to straighten the White House’s spine based on what the administration already knows: Israel is intentionally blocking progress in the peace talks while jeopardizing US strategic interests in the region, not to mention the fate of Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Palestinian civil society and Palestinians — Christians and Muslims — have urged everyone interested in seeing peace with justice to divest from the occupation and to invest only where the occupation does not benefit. We struggle to remain hopeful while a cement wall as high as 24 feet tall snakes through our homeland. After all, we do not seek a beautified prison. We want the prison walls dividing Palestinians from Palestinians to come tumbling down, and that will not happen unless economic pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation. Thus, the upcoming Assembly’s overture that calls for divestment from firms benefiting from the occupation, while affirming “Occupation-Free Investment in Palestine,” is spot on.
Palestinians did not invent the non-violent tool of divestment. After unsuccessfully trying to secure their rights using a multitude of other means, Palestinians have focused their efforts on non-violent methods of resisting military occupation that have been used throughout history by others: boycott, divestment, sanction, international law, civil disobedience, diplomatic efforts, economic resistance, and the like. Supporting these tools is supporting non-violence; the alternative is to push Palestinians into using violent means of resistance. If nonviolence is deemed unacceptable then violence becomes that much more likely.
The upcoming Presbyterian vote provides an important opportunity to say yes to nonviolence as the means to overcoming Israeli occupation and discrimination.
Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank, and blogs at epalestine.com.
Judge Finds Courts Cannot Protect US Citizens Tortured by US Government Officials Abroad
By Kevin Gosztola | Firedoglake | June 17, 2014
A federal district court dismissed a case that was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a United States citizen and against US government officials who allegedly tortured, abused and subjected him to rendition and incommunicado detention in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. The dismissal was another stark example of how it is nearly impossible for torture victims to push for justice in an American court of law.
Amir Meshal was in the Horn of Africa when, on January 24, 2007, Kenyan soldiers captured and interrogated him. He was “hooded, handcuffed and flown to Nairobi, where he was taken to the Ruai Police Station and questioned by an officer of Kenya’s Criminal Investigation Department” and was told that the police had to “find out what the United States wanted to do with him before he could send him back to the United States.” He remained in detention without access to a telephone or his attorney for a week, according to the US District Court of the District of Columbia’s decision [PDF].
On February 3, “three Americans,” who turned out to be FBI agents, interrogated Meshal and told him he would be handed over to the Kenyans and remain stuck in a “lawless country” if he did not cooperate. The agents also accused him of “having received weapons and interrogation resistance training in an al Qaeda camp.” Supervising Special Agent Chris Higgenbotham, one of the officials sued, threatened Meshal with being transferred to Israel where the Israelis would “make him disappear.” Meshal was informed that another US citizen he had met in Kenya, Daniel Maldonado, who was also seized by Kenyan soldiers, “had a lot to say about” him and his story “would have to match.”
Meshal was flown by Kenyan officials to Somalia with twelve others on February 9. He was “detained in handcuffs in an underground room with no windows or toilets,” which was referred to as “the cave.” This was allegedly to prevent pressure from Kenyan courts to halt his detention and interrogation by FBI agents.
About a week later, Meshal was transported in handcuffs and a blindfold to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was held there in incommunicado detention for a week before Ethiopian officials started \regularly transporting him to a villa with other prisoners where he could be interrogated by FBI agents. He remained in detention for three months and was moved into solitary confinement twice.
Finally, on May 24, he was taken to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa and flown back to the US. He was detained for four months and lost eighty pounds. US officials never charged him with a crime.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote in the decision, “The facts alleged in this case and the legal questions presented are deeply troubling.” But, he added, “Although Congress has legislated with respect to detainee rights, it has provided no civil remedies for US citizens subject to the appalling mistreatment Mr. Meshal has alleged against officials of his own government.”
In the past couple of years, Sullivan acknowledged, three federal appeals courts, including the appeals court for the DC Circuit, had rejected cases brought by citizens, including military contractors, who alleged they had been tortured or abused by US government officials. He claimed, “Only the legislative branch can provide United States citizens with a remedy for mistreatment by the United States government on foreign soil; this court cannot.”
ACLU National Security Project Director Hina Shamsi reacted, “While we appreciate the court’s outrage at the appalling mistreatment Mr. Meshal suffered at the hands of his own government, we are deeply disappointed at the court’s conclusion that it does not have the power to provide him a remedy.
“It is a sad day for Mr. Meshal and for all Americans, who have a right to expect better of their government and their courts than immunity for terrible government misconduct,” Shamsi added.
The judge’s decision “sends a deeply troubling and negative signal,” Shamsi told Firedoglake. “We’re considering our next steps in this case.”
Meshal was only seeking to hold particular US government officials responsible for the torture and abuse he had experienced. Nonetheless, Sullivan essentially accepted the government’s “national security” argument—that Meshal was “attacking the nation’s foreign policy, specifically joint operations in the Horn of Africa and executive policies which permit FBI agents to conduct and participate in investigations abroad.”
“As the government points out, these claims have the potential to implicate ‘national security threats in the Horn of Africa region; substance and sources of intelligence; the extent to which each government in the region participates in or cooperates with U.S. operations to identify, apprehend, detain, and question suspected terrorists on their soil; [and] the actions taken by each government as part of any participation or cooperation with U.S. operations.’”
In other words, allowing Meshal to sue US government officials would interfere with affairs that were entirely in the control of the Executive Branch and violate separation of powers. US government officials can engage in all manner of conduct against an individual so long as he or she is in the custody of a foreign government.
Jose Padilla, a US citizen who was detained as an enemy combatant and allegedly tortured for three years while he was in US military custody on the mainland, had his case dismissed. A US citizen and government contractor who alleged he had been “illegally detained, interrogated and tortured for nearly ten months on a US military base in Iraq” had his case dismissed. And US citizens Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, who were US government contractors allegedly detained, arrested and tortured by the US military in Iraq, had their case dismissed.
These were the cases that Sullivan believed were “binding precedent” he had to follow yet he noted that a dissenting opinion in Vance’s case had warned that the judicial branch was “creating a doctrine of constitutional triviality where private actions are permitted only if they cannot possibly offend anyone anywhere.”
Judge Ann Claire Williams added, “That approach undermines our essential constitutional protections in the circumstances when they are often most necessary.” Sullivan added that the court feared this prediction was “arguably correct.”
FBI Supervising Special Agent Chris Higgenbotham forced Meshal to sign forms and told Meshal when he did not want to sign, “If you want to go home, this will help you get there. If you don’t cooperate with us, you’ll be in the hands of the Kenyans, and they don’t want you.”
Another Supervising Special Agent, Steve Hersem, told Meshal if he “confessed his connection to al Qaeda” only then would he be granted due process in a civilian court. Otherwise, if he didn’t “confess” he would be transferred to Somalia. Hersem also told Meshal he would “send him to Egypt, where he would be imprisoned and tortured if he did not cooperate and admit his connection with al Qaeda, and told him ‘you made it so that even your grand-kids are going to be affected by what you did.’”
While in Ethiopia, an unidentified FBI agent said he would only be sent home if he was “truthful.” Meshal repeatedly ask to speak to his lawyer but agents denied his requests.
The reality is that covert operations in America’s dirty wars are now more sacrosanct to the US government than the rights US citizens are supposed to enjoy.
US government officials deliberately refused to provide Meshal with a probable cause hearing or some form of due process. In fact, one of the only reasons the US Embassy got involved and he was eventually transported back to the US is because McClatchy Newspapers became aware of his detention and published a story under the headline, “American’s rendition may have broken international, US laws.”
If a US media organization had not found out about his mistreatment, how much longer would he have been held and interrogated by FBI agents who were threatening him daily?
French arms sales rise by 42%
MEMO | June 17, 2014
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Lodrian said on Monday that French arms sales increased by 42 per cent or €6.7 billion in 2013 compared to 2012 and are expected to exceed seven billion Euros this year. Lodrian was speaking during the opening of the Eurosatory 2014 arms fair in the Paris suburb of Villepinte.
France recorded a strong comeback in the Middle East market, said Lodrian. The region is responsible for generating 40 per cent of France’s total exports and it has also increased its presence in the Asia and Latin America markets.
In 2013, France’s biggest contract was an agreement to renew the Saudi Arabian navy’s fleet of ships, worth €500 million; a contract to sell a communication satellite to Brazil is worth €300 million.
The minister pointed out that French exports of munitions for use by armoured vehicles grew by 5 per cent in 2013. He noted that the Scorpion programme to update light weapons will soon be launched at the cost of five billion Euros over ten years.
“This means that future equipment will include more than 2,500 armoured vehicles connected to each other by sophisticated electronic systems,” said Lodrian. “The Scorpion programme will allow the Leclerc tank to be in use until 2040.”
Eurosatory 2014 will enable French industrialists “to improve their exports”, the minister added. Nearly 1,500 exhibitors from 58 countries are taking part in the arms fair, which lasts until Friday.
Now it is official: Israeli campaign to control Wikipedia content
By Brenda Heard | Friends of Lebanon | June 16, 2014
Wikimedia has struck a deal with Israeli officials to promote students’ multi-lingual writing and re-writing of history, geography and science topics in Wikipedia. Unwitting readers of Wikipedia likely take accounts of Middle Eastern history at face value, not realising the extent of manipulation occurring behind the seemingly authoritative guise of an encyclopaedia. From word choice, to basic information given or omitted, to biased sources cited, Wikipedia is devolving into a completely untrustworthy source.
Of course there has been an Annual Wikipedia Academy Conference since 2009, where Israelis receive Wikipedia training and encouragement. And of course groups such as CAMERA, a pro-Zionist Israel public relations organisation, have been actively editing Wikipedia since at least 2008. And of course Israel has been actively funding hasbara on the internet for years and isn’t shy about its “digital diplomacy.” There’s even a “Jewish Internet Defense League” that claims to be the “cutting edge of pro-Israel digital online advocacy.” After all, the professed need for incessant national promotion campaigns fits into the “we are the ones under attack” theme.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has twice participated in the Israeli Presidential Conference. As he said at the 2011 Wikimania conference held in Haifa, “I love coming to Israel.” But it is Wales’ exchange with a Lebanese blogger that strongly calls into question Wikipedia’s public goal of offering a credible, neutral “sum of all human knowledge.” When the blogger asked Wales about his participation in the 2011 Israeli Presidential Conference, Wales snubbed the inquiry outright. Wales responded with trite, vacuous remarks in defence of Israel and then refused to communicate further. (An unripened e-conversation that amused several pro-Zionists.)
Surely Wikipedia management is aware that Israel is one of the most controversial topics in Wikipedia. One academic study determined that the “Israel” page was rivalled only by the “Adolf Hitler” page as being the most highly contested page contained in all of the study’s three language sets. From a researcher’s point of view, then, it is illogical to encourage additional bias in the most contentious topic. Yet that is precisely what Jimmy Wales has done and what this newly announced partnership does.
It can be very valuable to research Israeli sources—from newspapers to government agencies. But we should assess these sources with the knowledge that the information provided is filtered by an Israeli perspective, most likely Zionist. We should balance those sources with a variety of views from numerous perspectives. The key problem with anonymous, reference style sources like Wikipedia is that we might assume the neutrality they claim. Has Wikipedia offered similar partnerships with countries worldwide? Why not involve students in China, Peru, India, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Ethiopia, Vietnam, or the many other countries who might like a say in how the world is depicted? We have to wonder why favourtism has been allowed by Wikipedia and whether it will be openly revealed in its pages. Naturally, non-governmental Israelis should participate in building Wikipedia, but on equal terms with any other Wikipedian. Otherwise, Wikipedia is not what it pretends to be.
Additional Resources:
“The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis” (Yasseri T., Spoerri A., Graham M., and Kertész J., 2014)
Israel’s Ministry of Education & Wikimedia Israel Agree On New, Unique Initiative (Wikimedia Foundation, 10 June 2014)
“Initiative: Teachers, Students to Write for Wikipedia” (Israeli National News, 10 June 2014)
“Public schools to integrate Wikipedia into curriculum” (Israel Hayom News, 10 June 2014)
“Education Ministry and Wikipedia collaborate to write content for the internet site” (Jerusalem Post, 10 June 2014)
“EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group’s plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia” (The Electronic Intifada, 21 April 2008)
“The Mideast Editing Wars” (Gershom Gorenberg, 1 May 2008)
“Israel’s cyber warriors” (Lucy Tobin, 12 February 2009)
“Israel deploys cyber team to spread positive spin” (Jonathan Cook, 21 July 2009)
“Positive Views of Israel, Brought to You by Israelis” (Ethan Bronner, 17 February 2010)
“Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook” (Ali Abunimah, 1 April 2012)
“Jimmy Wales and Palestine” (Joey Ayoub, 12 January 2012)
“Israel to pay students to defend it online” (AP, 14 August 2013)
“Haifa University launches course in pro-Israel propaganda” (Ben White, 15 April 2014)
“University of Haifa’s ‘Cyber Warriors’ will help fight the delegitimization of Israel using new media” (U of Haifa, 30 March 2014)
Zvezda TV crew freed after harsh interrogation, ransom demands by Ukraine radicals
RT | June 17, 2014
Zvezda TV channel correspondent Evgeny Davydov, left, and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov who were detained in Dnepropetrovsk are welcomed on their arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after their release. (RIA Novosti/Alexey Kudenko)
Reporters from Russia’s Zvezda TV channel have been freed from captivity in Ukraine, where Right Sector fighters detained, interrogated, and beat them for ransom. Risking their lives, they didn’t turn off their phones, which was crucial for their release.
A plane carrying Evgeny Davydov and Nikita Konashenkov landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport at 15:44 GMT on Monday. A few hours before their arrival in the Russian capital, the two journalists were handed over to Russian naval attaché Eduard Belashev in the city of Dnepropetrovsk.
The journalists spent two days in captivity, and were subjected to long questioning, intimidation, and beatings.
Recent images of the two men show the areas around their eyes covered in bruises. Their colleagues say that Davydov has complained of pain in his ear and partial hearing loss.
Zvezda TV channel has shared details of the reporters’ detention and release. The channel’s head, Aleksey Pimanov, said that Davydov and Konashenkov were freed due to “diplomatic efforts.” The station’s management sent pleas to new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and the Ukrainian judiciary demanding the journalists’ immediate release.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the release “good news” and the “result of persistent work of all of our structures with the active participation and support of the Russian media.” Moscow says the “illegal practice of detaining journalists in Ukraine” must stop, and that the right to peaceful and objective press coverage of events in Ukraine must be safeguarded.
Zvezda TV channel correspondent Evgeny Davydov, center, with his family and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov on their arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. (RIA Novosti/Alexey Kudenko)
The reporters were detained on June 14 while on their way to the airport. Saturday was meant to be the last day of their business trip in turbulent Ukraine and they were expected to fly home. They had been in Ukraine for over a month.
Constantly on the phone with Zvezda TV channel’s editors, Evgeny and Nikita successfully passed several checkpoints. However, they were stopped and detained at a post of the Ukrainian National Guard near Pokrovskoye, and the connection with the reporters was temporarily lost.
Zvezda journalists in Moscow launched a massive operation trying to find their colleagues. Both the Right Sector and the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) refused to comment on the detentions.
Eventually, the channel managed to determine the address of where Evgeny and Nikita were being held. This finding showed that Right Sector fighters were behind the detention – the building is shared by the SBU and the radical group. As Zvezda journalists found out later, the man who interrogated their detained colleagues was Maksim Miroshnichenko, the Right Sector’s press secretary in Dnepropetrovsk.
During the interrogation process, the journalists kept one of their phones constantly connected to the channel’s headquarters. The recording will now be transferred to authorities, who will launch a torture case. The use of force against the reporters can be heard on the recording.
Throughout the questioning, which was full of cursing, Miroshnichenko reportedly tried to force the journalists to admit they lied about the true purpose of their visit. Under pressure, the interrogators forced the Russian crew to denounce their reporting on the use of white phosphorus by the Ukrainian military in an aerial assault on the outskirts of Slavyansk on Thursday.
After the channel managed to determine the journalists’ whereabouts, representatives of the Right Sector contacted Zvezda demanding a US$200,000 ransom for the reporters, who they called “scum.” Failure to provide the money would result in consequences, with the captors sending a message to family members that the journalists would be “kept for some 10 years.”
On Monday, a YouTube video surfaced showing Davydov and Konashenkov with bruises on their faces. In the footage, the two are seemingly being forced to say they have “no complaints” about their treatment by the Right Sector, and that the visible hemorrhages on their bodies were caused by a fight with a colleague.
Their documents also surfaced on the internet, showing they were accredited by the Central Election Commission of Ukraine. But, in violation of all norms of international law and the Geneva Convention, the reporters were forced to sign statements which falsely declared their lack of professional ethics.
“Everything is done on the orders of the Kremlin in order to use this information in international politics to the detriment of Ukraine,” Davydov’s forced statement allegedly read.
Konashenkov’s written testament apparently claimed that they covered Ukrainian roadblocks, “also on Moscow’s orders,” in order to make “untrue photographs.”
Upon their safe return to Russia, the journalists were taken to hospital for treatment. Before they boarded the ambulance, they gave a few comments to the press crew that greeted them at the airport. They thanked the Russian authorities and media channels for helping secure their release. They also briefly shared the details of their abduction.
“We were traveling from Donetsk to Dnepropetrovsk. We had a direct return flight from Dnepropetrovsk to Moscow on Saturday. About 120 km from Dnepropetrovsk, we were stopped at a roadblock. This was the National Guard’s checkpoint. They stopped us, asked us for our documents, checked all our personal possessions, examining everything,” the duo told journalists.
“Seeing our Russian passports and that we are Zvezda TV staff, their face expressions changed. They smirked and said that they have a jackpot in their hands. They abducted us, blindfolded us, and placed us in a car, before driving us somewhere to a field, then to some base. They threw us in a cellar.”
A press conference with Konashenkov and Davydov is scheduled to take place later on Tuesday.
Russian journalists from a range of media outlets have been repeatedly detained during the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Another set of Zvezda crew members were abducted two weeks ago and released after several days of interrogation on accusations of espionage. RT contributor and UK national Graham Phillips was detained for over 36 hours by Kiev military forces back in May. Earlier, two Russian journalists working for LifeNews TV channel were also captured by Kiev forces, forced on their knees at gunpoint and taken to Kiev for interrogations which lasted almost one week.
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From the Archives
American media distortion on Palestine
By Alison Weir | MEMO | May 1, 2013
… We have conducted a number of statistical studies on this issue and found that US media were covering Israeli deaths in far greater detail than they were covering those of Palestinians.
For example, the New York Times was reporting on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate seven times greater than they were covering Palestinian children’s deaths; this didn’t even include the far larger number of words and amount of personal information given about Israeli victims compared to Palestinians. We also found that primetime network news programmes were covering Israeli children’s deaths at rates up to 14 times greater than the coverage given to Palestinians.
I discovered a system of reporting from the region in which a violent conflict between an officially “Jewish state” and the Muslims and Christians it had dispossessed (and was in the process of dispossessing further) was being covered most of the time by journalists with legal, familial or emotional ties to Israel. A great many are Israeli citizens (though this is almost never disclosed) or married to Israelis, their children also being Israeli.
I discovered that the Associated Press control bureau for the region, from which virtually all news reports that appear in US newspapers were transmitted, was located in Israel and was staffed almost entirely by Israeli and Jewish journalists (many of whom had served in the Israeli military).
I learned that the son of the New York Times bureau chief was serving in the Israeli military while his father was reporting on the conflict. In fact, I discovered that it was common for journalists in the region reporting for American media to have close personal ties to the Israeli military; that at least one staff member had been serving in the Israeli military even as he was reporting for the NY Times ; that US News & World Report’s senior foreign correspondent, who had covered and written about the Middle East for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli army during the time he was reporting there; that Middle East “pundit” Jeffrey Goldberg, whose commentary pervades both the print and broadcast media, is an Israeli citizen who served in the Israeli military.
I learned that CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer lived in Israel for many years, at one point travelled around the US as the “voice of Israel” and had worked for an Israel lobby publication.
I learned that Time magazine’s bureau chief was an Israeli citizen, and that NPR’s long-time correspondent from the region had an Israeli husband who had served in the military and may be an Israeli citizen herself.
I also discovered that this pattern of Israel-centrism went beyond the regional reporting. In fact, the regional filtering of the news may not even be the most significant factor in the broken media reporting on this issue that Americans receive.
Within US-based journalism per se I discovered patterns of Israel-centrism that were deeply troubling. In some cases I personally experienced the intentional suppression of information on Palestine. Following are a few examples. … Read full article
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