The Feds Are Cultivating Their Own “Homegrown Terrorists”
By Seth Freed Wessler | ColorLines |December 10 2010
The FBI caught another homegrown terrorist this week, except like many recent plots the agency has “uncovered,” the attack was a plant, a plan concocted by the FBI itself. It’s the latest in a growing number of terrorism plots that the FBI stirs up by infiltrating communities and helping to devise attack plans. The practice raises serious questions about the government’s implementation of it’s ongoing war on terror.
The recent case involves 21-year-old from Baltimore named Antonio Martinez, who’d reportedly converted to Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Hussain and planned to blow up a bomb outside a military recruitment center in Baltimore. None of the plot, however, existed before the FBI instigated it and Martinez had no contact with any real terrorist organization.
The FBI deployed an informant to pose as an accomplice by adding Martinez as a friend on Facebook and communicated with him through Facebook messages. Martinez reportedly updated his status with comments about his devotion to Jihad. Once the young man had been identified as a target, the FBI informant helped imagine and orchestrate the plot, and supplied Martinez with a fake bomb and a vehicle to transport it. After he attempted to detonate the explosive remotely, the FBI arrested Martinez. If convicted of charges, he could face life in prison.
The case is the second since Thanksgiving and one of many more over the past decade, in which the federal government has deployed informants to “catch” terrorists inside the country. It’s all part of the FBI’s wider practice of targeting American Muslims—largely, according to some reports, Muslim converts as well as American born black Muslims. But far from stopping ongoing plots and interrupting “radicalization,” the FBI is fabricating plans, providing the tools to carry out attacks and inciting suspects to do so.
As U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein told the AFP, “There was no actual danger,” because the people posing as accomplices were FBI employees.
Nonetheless, the FBI claims that Martinez posed a real threat because, according to Richard McFeely, an FBI special agent, the young man was “absolutely committed to carrying out an attack which would have cost lives.”
“The case,” reports the AFP:
bore a striking resemblance to that of a Somali-American arrested in Portland, Oregon, last month after trying to set off what he thought was an explosives-laden van parked near a Christmas tree ceremony.
The device was actually a dummy bomb supplied by undercover FBI agents who had contacted him months before and pretended to be accomplices, and the would-be attacker, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was charged with “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.”
The informant program targeting American Muslims is part of a larger and developing FBI policy. As I wrote in October:
An extensive investigation, Anjali Kamat reports that the FBI has repeatedly used secret informants to gather questionable information and even entrap groups of people into supporting acts of terrorism. These informants are often Muslim men found guilty of non-terrorism related crimes and who face deportation or jail time.
In numerous cases, documented at length by the DN investigation, there are serious questions as to whether the tactic is creating crimes out of thin air. In one case, an FBI informant befriended a Muslim business owner. When that business started failing, the informant, who was himself facing deportation, offered the other man a loan that was allegedly laundered for weapons buying. The exchange led to terrorism convictions.
Karen Greenberg of the NYU Center for Law and Security explains, “the conviction rate for cases that involve informants is almost 100 percent.” But according to James Wedick, a former FBI agent, “90 percent of the cases that you see that have occurred in the last 10 years are garbage.”
Wedick also says that economic strains are often the way that informants entrap others. In Newburgh, NY, an FBI informant allegedly entrapped four black Muslim men from a poor neighborhood, pushing them to participate in an attempted attack on a synagogue in the area
High profile domestic terrorism plots appear to have increased in recent months, but they’ve been largely concocted. As the 10th anniversary of September 11th approaches, the government appears to be one of the key players in the maintenance of a believable terrorist threat.
Amna Akbar, fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice of New York University School of Law, says, “What’s really interesting is that there’s been a significant increase in high profile so-called homegrown terrorism cases recently where the the actual threat is constructed by the government. There does not seem to be very much actual threat to justify the ongoing ‘war on terror’ and there are serious questions about why the government is going to such lengths in these cases.”
Stage-Managing the War on Terror
Ensnaring Terrorists Demands Creativity
By Stephan Salisbury | TomDispatch | July 6, 2010
Informers have by now become our first line of defense in our battles with the evildoers, the go-to guys in the never-ending domestic war on terror. They regularly do the dirty work — suggesting and encouraging the plots, laboring as bag men to move the money, fashioning the bombs, and eliciting the flamboyant dialogue, even while following the scripts of their handlers to the letter. They have attended to all the little details that make for the successful and now familiar arrests, criminal complaints, trials, and (for the most part) convictions in the ever-distracting war against… what? Al-Qaeda? Terror? Muslims? The inept? The poor?
The Liberty City Seven, the Fort Dix Six, the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy, the Newburgh Four — each has had their fear-filled day in the sun. None of these plots ever came close to happening. How could they? All were bogus from the get-go: money to buy missiles or cell phones or shoes and fancy duds — provided by the authorities; plans for how to use the missiles and bombs and cell phones — provided by authorities; cars for transport and demolition — issued by the authorities; facilities for carrying out the transactions — leased by those same authorities. Played out on landscapes manufactured by federal imagineers, the climax of each drama was foreordained. The failure of the plots would then be touted as the success of the investigations and prosecutions.
A band of virtually homeless and penniless men in Florida, we were told, were planning to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. They just needed the right combat boots to pull it off, and a little free money.
A cell of New Jersey roofers, handymen, and cab drivers was scheming to use a laminated pizza delivery map to guide them through a devastating attack on Fort Dix, the enormous military base in Burlington County, south of Trenton.
Ex-cons in Detroit, mostly known for patronizing a weekly soup kitchen to stave off hunger, were also planning to set up their own country in Michigan under Islamic law.
And a band of Orange County New York parolees and former drug peddlers placed bombs at two Bronx synagogues and was preparing to launch missile attacks on military cargo planes at Stewart National Guard Air Base in Newburgh.
In the Liberty City Seven case, which revolved around two informants paid in excess of $130,000 for their services, the government tried the hapless defendants three times before finally wresting a conviction from a jury. One defendant was acquitted at the first trial, another in the third, and five were eventually convicted of at least some terrorism-related charges. In the Fort Dix case, jurors were shown horrific films said to be on a computer owned by one of the defendants, who claimed an FBI informant demanded more and more videos for viewing.
Another defendant actually called the Philadelphia police, mid-plot, and said he was being pressured to commit radical acts by what turned out to be an FBI informer. Prosecutors dismissed this as an obvious decoy maneuver. The key informer in that case — the FBI eventually paid two people to spy on the group — an Egyptian on probation, received $236,000 for his services.
Most recently, this duplicitous landscape of war-on-terror “success” has been illuminated yet again by the case of four alleged Newburgh, New York, conspirators — the Newburgh Four — and in the botched arrest and fatal shooting (a first for federal authorities) of an African American imam in Detroit, leader of the so-called Ummah Conspiracy. As the details have slowly emerged, these two cases offer vivid examples of how government-scripted many of the terror plots “uncovered” in the U.S. in recent years have turned out to be. Each case, in fact, offers a window onto a stark world in which nothing is what it seems to be.
The “Un-Terrorism Case”
In the years following 9/11, when I was reporting my book, Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, many defense and immigration attorneys I interviewed insisted that the mere mention of “terrorism” has often been enough to knock down any and all defenses. In the Newburgh conspiracy, however, the federal judge, Colleen McMahon, has shown a more questioning attitude toward what, in a May 28, 2010, pre-trial hearing, she took to calling the “un-terrorism case.”
After their May 2009 arrests, the four Newburgh conspirators were portrayed as Jew-hating Muslim converts who intended to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes based at Stewart Airport in Newburgh. “It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder at the time, describing the defendants as “extremely violent.”
The men were indeed arrested only after placing bogus bombs (courtesy of the FBI) near two Bronx synagogues. New York Police Chief Raymond Kelly said the plotters believed “it would be alright” to kill Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement noting that the uncovered plot cooked up by “the jihadist terrorists” showed “that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance.” New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated that vigilance remains a necessity for all concerned.
With their anti-Semitic bona fides established and the men caught in the act, all that seemed left was a perfunctory trial, followed by life in prison for James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen. A decade earlier, Cromitie had been arrested for dealing drugs behind a school. Payen, a Haitian immigrant, is a crack addict and certified paranoid schizophrenic, often found living on the street; his earlier deportation had been on hold due to his mental instability. Onta and David Williams, not related, had pasts pocked by drug busts and spotty work at minimum wage jobs scrounged from Newburgh’s depressed economy. All four men were black.
Almost immediately, however, questions about the conspiracy began to arise. For one thing, the FBI informer who broke the case was a Pakistani named Shaheed Hussain, who arrived in Newburgh in the summer of 2008 driving a flashy Mercedes, showing lots of money, and promising jobs to down-and-out African American hangers-on at Masjid al-Ikhlas, Newburgh’s main mosque. Convicted in a fraudulent driver’s license scheme in 2002, he agreed to work undercover for the FBI shortly afterward to avoid deportation and turned out to have been an informer in a previous terrorism case in Albany in 2004.
The Albany case, in which an imam and a pizza shop owner were convicted of money laundering as part of a phantasmagorical scheme to kill a Pakistani diplomat with a missile, was bitterly contested by defense attorneys. They claimed that the elaborate plan had been concocted by Hussain himself. The jury didn’t buy it, convicting both imam and pizza shop owner.
The Newburgh case shares much with the Albany case, especially a fondness for baroque plotting, the flashing of great wads of money in front of needy people, and the aggressive use of an informant by the FBI in a house of worship, in this case Masjid al-Ikhlas. The intricate plotting and the use of an informer made it into the criminal complaint, but all that flashing money didn’t. There was no mention of the enticing job offers made by the seemingly well-to-do informer. Nothing about his offer of a $250,000 payment for carrying out the plot. Nothing about the BMW he pushed on Cromitie, who didn’t even have a driver’s license. Nothing about the $25,000 he was ready to pay anyone willing to act as a “lookout.”
Maybe Cromitie wasn’t the brightest hustler in town, but he was quite capable of grasping the significance of such sums of money in distressed Newburgh. He assured Hussain that dangling cash would lure participants, no matter what. “They will do it for the money,” he said. “They’re not even thinking about the cause.”
Nor did the complaint mention, as the defense now maintains, that even the anti-Semitic talk was triggered by the informant. He baited the defendants, telling them that Jews were responsible for the U.S. wars in the Middle East and for other acts of violence against Muslims. Cromitie had an unexpected reaction during one of these conversations, according to government transcripts. “I’m not gonna hurt anybody,” he said, after being badgered about possible attacks. “The plane thing… is out of the question.”
On the streets of Newburgh, relatives and neighbors say that they have never heard the four men even mention Jews or jihad, let alone link the two together in murderous rants. Lord McWilliams, the severely ill brother of David Williams, called such a characterization “crazy.” Hussain, he insisted, had promised his brother so much money that he would have been able to pay for the liver transplant that Lord desperately needed.
In fact, more substantial members of the mosque had pegged Shaheed Hussain as an informer almost the moment he arrived, but had no idea what to do about him. “Maybe the mistake we made was that we didn’t report him,” Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, imam at Masjid al-Ikhlas, told congregants shortly after the May 2009 arrests. “But how are we going to report the government agent to the government?”
The Ummah and the Death of an Imam
Money also played a role in the deadly Detroit case involving 53-year-old Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, born Christopher Thomas, and gunned down during a sting operation run by the FBI in a Dearborn, Michigan, warehouse on October 28th of last year. For at least three years, FBI informants had filed copious reports on the conversations and activities of Abdullah, as he ministered to his largely indigent congregation at Masjid al-Haqq, a mosque so poor it could not even pay property taxes in disintegrating Detroit. Al-Haqq was evicted from its long-time home on Michigan Avenue early in 2009 and moved its operation — a soup kitchen and religious services regularly attended by several dozen largely African American families, ex-convicts, former addicts and alcoholics, and homeless men and women — into a house on Clairmount Street on Detroit’s west side.
It is from this pathetic building, surrounded by an increasingly vacant and collapsing neighborhood, that the FBI contends Abdullah was plotting rebellion, hiding weapons, and planning efforts to move stolen goods. A 43-page criminal complaint describes Abdullah as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African Americans” whose “primary mission is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state (‘The Ummah’) within the borders of the United States, governed by Shariah law.”
The complaint opens with page after page of over-the-top political trash talk, provided by three informants listening to (and sometimes recording) Abdullah’s sermons and conversations, tying the imam to H. Rap Brown, a 1960s radical and a former leader in the Black Panther Party now serving life in prison for the shooting deaths of two Georgia state troopers. According to the complaint, Abdullah was rarely without a gun or knife. He daydreamed about cop killing, engaged in elaborate revolutionary plotting, and enthusiastically told anecdotes about past violent encounters, largely with police. In effect, the complaint conjures up an old-time boogeyman: the angry, gun-toting Black Panther given over to “anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric” — now dressed up with sympathy for Osama bin Laden.
But in its efforts to be all-inclusive, the complaint also features an extraordinary section that describes an FBI informant offering Abdullah $5,000 “to pay to have someone ‘do something’ during the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit.” The imam rejected the offer. “Abdullah said he would not be involved in injuring innocent people for no reason,” the complaint blandly states. So much for entrapment on the political front.
Despite page after page of braggadocio from Abdullah, following the rebuff over Super Bowl violence, no further effort was apparently mounted to entice him into a terrorist “plot.” The complaint outlines no grounds for charges of treason, none for terrorism, and nothing even for a charge of material support for terrorism (that reliable catch-all used to ensnare dozens of American Muslims and institutions and even human-rights groups). Despite the heavy emphasis on descriptions of violent radicalism, the criminal complaint ultimately accuses Abdullah and several congregants of the pettiest of fencing operations — 54 powertools, 46 TVs, and the like — involving small amounts of money ($100, $200, $500).
FBI agents worked out a simple but comprehensive sting. Undercover operatives rented a warehouse and offered the imam and his congregants money for help in moving batches of furs and small electronic items. Money, goods, trucks, warehouse, and plans were all supplied by covert federal agents, and all activities were reported, virtually in real time, by informers close to Abdullah and inside the mosque.
Then, as the sting unfolded on October 28th, Abdullah was gunned down by FBI agents as they sought to round up the purported members of the fencing operation. No one else was harmed. The FBI claimed Abdullah fired first, killing a police dog, which was taken by helicopter to a veterinary hospital. After he was shot, the imam was handcuffed behind the back and dragged from the warehouse into a trailer full of TVs and other “stolen” goods. Presumably, at this point he was dead, though no information has been released describing his condition or the circumstances of his removal from the warehouse. Abdullah’s body was photographed in the trailer and picked up by the Wayne County medical examiner, who then declined to release autopsy findings. The head of the local FBI office claimed that he was “comfortable with what our agents did” to protect themselves.
This whole murky incident with a still unfolding aftermath has caused deep anxiety and not a little anger in Detroit’s African American and Muslim communities. Why was the imam shot in the back? Why was the dog given emergency medical treatment and the imam handcuffed and dragged around? Was he dead when the shooting ended? Did he even have a gun?
Was Abdullah’s death an instance of score settling for his unrepentant association with Rap Brown, known as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin since the 1970s? In a conversation I had recently with a black leader in Philadelphia, he said that rumors are spreading on the street of nationwide interrogations of African American Muslims who, in the past, associated with al-Amin. (In Philadelphia, a mosque founded by civic-minded entrepreneur Kenny Gamble, well known for his efforts to assist the black community, has been attacked by anti-Islamic groups for its purported association with “The Ummah.”)
Members of Abdullah’s congregation and prominent Muslims in Detroit told me that Abdullah was indeed incensed by the poverty and racism he saw all around him and could indeed deliver harsh attacks on the government — but that hardly distinguished him in a city as ravaged and beaten down as Detroit. Moreover, those who knew Abdullah insist that they never heard him promote any violent separatist effort on behalf of any organization.
National Islamic organizations, such as the Muslim Alliance in North America, insist as well that “The Ummah” is nothing more than an association of largely African American mosques. (“Ummah” is an Arabic term that refers to the Muslim community.) The alliance calls the FBI description of the Ummah “an offensive mischaracterization.” (Abdullah El-Amin, an imam at the largest African American Detroit mosque, told the New York Times that he had heard Abdullah discuss a separatism that would be “sort of like the Pennsylvania Dutch have their own communities and stuff.” There are similar comments from Abdullah in the criminal complaint.)
In any event, the indictment that followed Abdullah’s death, naming 11 of his congregants and associates, makes no mention of radical politics or the shadowy “Ummah” or “offensive jihad” — all highlighted in the earlier criminal complaint. The 11 were indicted as petty criminals, charged with selling and receiving stolen goods, tampering with vehicle identification numbers, and weapons offenses.
Many officials and organizations, including Congressman John Conyers, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, the local chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil-rights and advocacy organization, the ACLU, and the NAACP, have called for an investigation of the killing — calls unanswered so far by the Obama administration. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is reviewing the case. The state attorney general named a prosecutor to look into the matter after the FBI refused to hand over documents to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office because, the bureau said, the documents were “classified.”
In early June, Cyril Wecht, a well-known forensic pathologist asked by CAIR to review the autopsy findings (they were finally released in February), said Abdullah’s face was pierced by wounds and lacerations consistent with a dog attack. His jaw was fractured. Wecht also said there were two gunshot wounds in Abdullah’s back, not one. This prompted Wayne County Medical Examiner Carl Schmidt to defend his findings and accuse Wecht of emotionalism, according to a Detroit Free Press report. “We don’t always say what others would like us to say,” Schmidt commented. “We can only describe what we see.”
As the wait for reviews and investigations and answers drags on, the immediate area served by Abdullah’s mosque — blighted, black, and destitute — frays further, and is in danger of losing a small but critical social and economic resource. Abdullah ran a well-attended soup kitchen for years, worked to rid the neighborhood of gang violence, and sought to provide support for the poor, the homeless, and ex-convicts. His family and his depleted mosque are now struggling to keep the house of worship and soup kitchen going. Mosque attendance has plummeted and contributions, never robust, have evaporated; law-enforcement investigators continue to fan out through the community.
“People are still scared,” said Omar Regan, one of Abdullah’s 13 children, who makes his living as an actor, comedian, and motivational speaker based in Los Angeles. “They are still interrogating people. The more people push about injustice, the more they harass Muslims in that area [of Detroit]. My father took care of all these people. They leaned on him. He was a reason a lot of them didn’t commit suicide. They came for food. For shelter.”
Regan is incensed that the FBI provided the money to acquire stolen goods, the actual goods as well, and even the warehouses to store them in, while working out plans for moving the goods through informants and undercover employees clustered around Luqman Abdullah and the Masjid al-Haqq mosque. And now Omar Regan’s father is dead.
“It’s the FBI setting the whole thing up,” he lamented. “How can that be legal?”
It’s a question more and more people are asking as the war on terror grinds on, now directed by the Obama administration. If nothing else, the cases of the Newburgh Four and the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy show that street-smart accused conspirator James Cromitie knew what he was talking about when he said that chronically poor people will “do it for the money” and “don’t care about the cause.”
This simple fact underlies both the Detroit and Newburgh cases. The FBI contends that the Detroit sting was not about terror, but about mundane criminal activity. If that’s the case, why was the criminal complaint larded with characterizations of Luqman Abdullah’s supposed violent political views? What relevance does H. Rap Brown, now in prison, have to moving stolen goods in Dearborn?
Beyond that, what justification do federal authorities have for characterizing “the Ummah” as a threatening separatist movement? Many Muslim leaders argue that such a characterization is a fantasy akin to tales spun by the FBI’s most imaginative informers. Both Newburgh and Detroit are, indeed, instances of “unterrorism,” as the Newburgh judge said of the “plot” before her. Yet both are starkly framed by the on-going war on terror, both involve elaborate set-ups arranged by federal informers and covert agents, and both ensnared inept, virtually destitute black people scrambling to get by in post-racial America.
It remains to be asked: How expansive will the stage become for creative informers and their government directors now working the theater of the Great Recession?
Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His most recent book is Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland (Nation Books). Catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Salisbury discusses how terror cases are created via entrapment and informers by clicking here, or to download to your iPod, click here.
[Note on sources: The criminal complaint for the Detroit Ummah conspiracy can be found in pdf file format by clicking here.]
Revelations on Rafik Hariri’s assassination
By Thierry Meyssan | Voltairenet | 29 November 2010
While western media have announced that indictments against Hezbollah will be issued shortly by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the Russian magazine Odnako challenges the entire UN investigation. Thierry Meyssan posits that the weapon used to assassinate former Prime Minister Rafik Hairiri was supplied by Germany. Former German prosecutor and first commissioner in charge of the UN probe, Detlev Mehlis, seemingly doctored evidence to cover up his country’s involvement. These revelations embarrass the Tribunal and reverse the tide in Lebanon.
All the conflicts rocking the Middle East today crystallize around the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). Peace hinges on it, and so does war. For some, the STL should bring about the dissolution of the Hezbollah, quell the Resistance and establish a Pax Americana. Others consider that the STL is flouting the law and subverting the truth to ensure the takeover of a new colonial order in the region.
The Tribunal was created on 30 May 2007, pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 1757, to prosecute the alleged sponsors of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination. In the political context at that time, this implied nothing more and nothing less than bringing to trial serving Presidents Bashar el-Assad of Syria and Emile Lahoud of Lebanon, not exactly favourites of the neo-conservatives. However, the charges were not pursued since they were based on flimsy evidence planted by false witnesses. With no accused left, the Tribunal could easily have disappeared in the meanders of bureaucracy were it not for a turn of events that catapulted it back into the epicenter of the turbulent Middle East political scene.
On 23 May 2009, Atlanticist journalist Erick Follath disclosed on Der Spiegel Online that the prosecutor was poised to indict new suspects: certain Hezbollah military leaders. For the past 18 months, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, has been proclaiming his party’s innocence. He maintains that the real aim of the proceedings is to decapitate the Resistance and clear the region for the Israeli army. For its part, the U.S. administration in a sudden surge of righteousness pledged that no one would be allowed to shun international Justice.
In any event, the indictment – which all believe to be imminent – against Shia leaders for the assassination of a Sunni leader is of such a nature as to spark off a fitna, namely a Muslim civil war, plummeting the region into new depths of bloodshed and violence.
During his 15 and 16 November official visit to Moscow, Saad Hariri – current Lebanese Prime Minister and son of the deceased – reiterated that the political exploitation of the Tribunal exposes his country to the risk of a new conflagration. President Medvedev retorted that Russia wants Justice to be served and reproves any attempt to discredit, weaken or delay the Tribunal’s proceedings. This position of principle arises from the confidence that the Kremlin decided to place in the STL. But it risks being severely eroded by Odnako’s revelations.
Indeed, we deemed it desirable to delve into the circumstances of Rafik Hariri’s assassination. The data we unearthed has opened a new avenue, making one wonder why it had never been explored until now. In the course of our lengthy investigation, we encountered a great number of actors, too many no doubt, so that the news of our work spread quickly, alarming those for whom the assassination trail implicating the armed Lebanese Resistance represents a real godsend. Aiming to intimidate us, the Jerusalem Post on 18 October launched a preventive attack through a piece referring to our work. In a purely libelous vein, it accuses the author of this article of having received 1 million dollars from Iran to exonerate Hezbollah.
Getting down to facts, Rafik Hariri’s convoy was attacked in Beirut on 14 February 2005. Twenty-three people were killed and one hundred injured. A preliminary report commissioned by the Security Council calls attention to the unprofessional conduct of the Lebanese magistrates and police. To redress the situation, the SC assigned its own investigators, providing them with the important means that Lebanon was unable to offer. From the outset of the investigation, it was generally accepted that the attack had been perpetrated by a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives.
Having been established to compensate for the Lebanese lack of professionalism, one would have expected the United Nations mission to scrupulously observe the classical criminal procedures. Not so! The crime scene – on the basis of the topography still intact as well as the photos and video footage shot on that day – was not examined in detail. The victims were not exhumed and no autopsies were performed. For a long time, no attempt was made to ascertain the modus operandi. After discarding the hypothesis of a bomb buried in the ground, the investigators espoused the one involving the van without bothering to verify it.
And yet, this version is implausible: looking at the crime scene, anyone can easily observe the very large and deep crater that a surface explosion could not have dug out. Faced with adamant Swiss experts who refused to endorse the official version, on 19 October the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) recreated the crime scene behind closed doors. It didn’t take place in Lebanon, nor in the Netherlands which is the seat of the STL, but in France, one of the countries funding the Tribunal. The buildings surrounding the crime scene were reconstructed and earth was brought in from Beirut. The convoy was reconstituted, including the armoured vehicle. The aim was to demonstrate that the height of the concrete buildings had confined the explosion, making it possible for the blast to produce the crater. The results of this costly experiment have never been divulged.
When looking at the photos and videos taken immediately after the attack, the first most striking feature is the blaze. Car parts and various types of objects are burning all around. Then, the bodies of the victims: they are charred on one side and intact on the other. An astonishing phenomenon which bears no resemblance to what is normally caused by conventional explosives. The theory that the van was transporting a mix of RDX, PETN and TNT does not account for the damages which occurred.
What is more, from the photos showing Rafik Hariri’s corpse one can observe that his solid gold wristwatch has melted, whereas the collar of his luxury shirt still hugs his neck in pristine condition.
So, what really happened?
The explosion generated a blast of an exceptionally intense heat and exceptionally brief duration. Thus, the flesh exposed to the blast was instantly carbonized, while the body underneath was not burnt.
High-density objects (such as the gold watch) absorbed the heat and were destroyed. Conversely, low-density objects (like the delicate fabric of Hariri’s shirt collar) didn’t have enough time to absorb the heat and were unaffected.
Rafik Hariri’s remains
Moreover, the videos show that a number of limbs were severed by the explosion. Oddly, the cuts are clean, as if made on clay statues. There is no sign of shattered or jutting bones, nor of any torn flesh. The reason is that the explosion sucked up all the oxygen and dehydrated the bodies, rendering them friable. In the hours that followed, several on-the-spot witnesses complained of breathing ailments. Wrongfully, the authorities interpreted them as a psychosomatic reaction following their psychological trauma.
Such observations constitute the abcs of any criminal inquiry. They should have been the starting point, yet they do not figure in any of the reports submitted by the “professional experts” to the Security Council.
When we asked a number of military experts what kind of explosives would be capable of generating such damage, they mentioned a new type of weapon which has been developed over several decades and is featured in reports appearing in scientific journals. The combination of nuclear and nanotechnology science can trigger an explosion the exact strength of which can be regulated and controlled. The weapon is set up to destroy everything within a given perimeter, down to the nearest centimeter.
According to the same military specialists, this weapon can also produce other types of effects: it exerts a very strong pressure on the area of the explosion. The minute it stops, the heaviest objects are propelled upwards. Accordingly, cars were sent flying through the air.
There is one unequivocal fact: this weapon is equipped with a nano-quantity of enriched uranium, emanating radiations which are quantifiable. Now, it just so happens that one of the passengers in Rafik Hariri’s armoured car survived the explosion. Former Minister Bassel Fleyhan was taken to a topnotch French military hospital for treatment. The doctors were astounded to discover that he had been in contact with enriched uranium. But no one linked this to the attack.
Technically speaking, the weapon is shaped like a small missile, a few tens of centimeters long. It must be fired from a drone. Actually, several witnesses assured they had heard an aircraft flying over the scene of the crime. The investigators asked the United States and Israel, whose surveillance satellites are permanently switched on, to provide them with the pertinent images. On the day of the attack, the United States had deployed AWACS aircraft over Lebanon. The live feeds could help to establish the presence of a drone and even to determine its flight path. But Washington and Tel Aviv – which indefatigably urge all parties to cooperate with the STL – turned down the request.
Hezbollah intercepted and released videos from Israeli drones surveying Rafik Hariri’s movements and the scene of the crime.
At a press conference held on 10 August 2010, Hassan Nasrallah showed a video which, according to him, was shot by Israeli military drones and intercepted by his organisation. All of Rafik Hariri’s movements had been registered for months, until the final day when all the surveillance converged on the bend in the road where the attack was staged. Thus, Tel-Aviv had been surveying the area prior to the assassination. Which is not to say, as Mr Nasrallah himself points out, that they were the authors of the crime.
So, who fired the missile?
This is where things get complicated. According to the military experts, in 2005, Germany was the only country which had a handle on this new technology. It is, therefore, Berlin which supplied and set up the crime weapon.
Hence, it is easy to understand why former Berlin Attorney General Detlev Mehlis – a very controversial figure within his own profession – was eager to preside over the UN Investigation Commission. He is, in fact, notoriously linked to the German and U.S. secret services. Assigned in 1986 to shed light on the attack against the La Belle disco in Berlin, he diligently covered up all Israeli and U.S. fingerprints to falsely accuse Libya and justify the bombing of Mouammar Khadafi’s palace by the U.S. Air Force. In the early 2000s, Mr Mehlis was lavishly paid for his stint as researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a think-tank linked to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby) and at the Rand Corporation (a think-tank attached to the U.S. military industrial complex). All elements which cast a shadow over his impartiality in the Rafik Hariri affair and should have sufficed to have him taken off the case.
Mehlis was seconded by Commissioner Gerhard Lehmann, who is also a well-known German and U.S. secret services agent. He was formally identified by a witness as having taken part in the programme run by the Bush Administration in Europe, involving the abduction, detention and torture of prisoners in “black holes”. His name is mentioned in the ad hoc Report by the Council of Europe. Notwithstanding, he managed to dodge all judicial proceedings on the strength of a strong though unlikely alibi provided by his colleagues in the German police.
Mehlis and Lehmann propagated the theory of the explosives-laden suicide van to deflect the investigation from the German weapon that was used to commit the crime.
Various earth samples were taken from the scene of the crime. They were first mixed, then divided into three jars that were sent to three different laboratories. In the first two no trace of explosives was found. The third jar was kept by Mehlis and Lehmann, who personally sent it to the third laboratory. Here, remnants of explosives were detected. In principle, if the decision is made to resort to three judiciary experts, in case of disagreement it is the majority opinion that prevails. No way! Mehlis and Lehmann violated the protocols. They deemed that theirs was the only reliable sample and embarked the Security Council on a false trail.
The profoundly flawed character of the Mehlis-Lehmann investigations has amply been proven. Their successors acknowledged as much sotto voce and declared entire sections of proceedings nul and void.
Amidst their manipulations, the most famous one relates to the false witnesses. Five individuals purported to have seen the preparations for the attack and incriminated Presidents Bashar el-Assad and Emile Lahoud. While these allegations were fueling the drums of war, their lawyers exposed the lies and the prosecution backed down.
Detlev Mehlis, President of the UN Investigation Commission violated all the rules of the criminal procedure, fabricated evidence and used false witnesses to exonerate Germany and accuse Syria.
Based on these false testimonies, Detlev Mehlis arrested – in the name of the international community – four Lebanese generals and had them incarcerated for four years. Pushing his way with his cow-boys into private homes, without a warrant from the Lebanese authorities, he also detained for questioning members of their entourage. With his assistants – who spoke Hebrew to each other – he manipulated the families. Thus, on behalf of the international community, he showed the wife of one of the generals a doctored picture to prove that her husband had not only obscured his implication in the murder, but was also two-timing her.
Concurrently, he tried the same maneuver on the son of the “suspect”’, but in this case to convince him that his mother was a woman of loose morals, a situation which had plunged his desperate father into a murderous folly. The aim was to induce a family crime of honour, thereby tarnishing the image of respected and respectable people.
Even more incredible is Lehmann’s proposition to liberate one of the four imprisoned generals in exchange for his false testimony against a Syrian leader.
Moreover, German journalist Jürgen Cain Külbel highlighted a disturbing detail: it would have been impossible to trigger the explosion by remote control or by marking the target without first disactivating the powerful interference system built into Rafik Hariri’s convoy. A system among the most sophisticated in the world, manufactured in … Israel.
Külbel was approached by a well-known pro-Palestinian advocate, Professor Said Dudin, to promote his book. However, the outrageous declarations frequently made by Dudin served to torpedo it instead. Külbel, a former East German criminal police officer, was quick to find out that Dudin had a long-standing reputation for being a CIA mole within the German left-wing. The journalist published a number of old East-German reports attesting to this fact and was sentenced and briefly imprisoned for illicit dissemination of documents; meantime, Dudin was settling into the German Embassy in Beirut for the purpose of infiltrating the families of the four generals.
Overlooked in the Middle East, Germany’s role in this region is worth spotlighting. After Israel’s war of aggression against Lebanon in the Summer of 2006, Chancellor Angela Merkel deployed a very large contingent to join the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The 2,400 soldiers from Germany control the maritime infrastructure to prevent arms supplies from reaching the Resistance via the Mediterranean. On that occasion, Ms Merkel declared that the mission of the German army was to protect Israel. A wind of rebellion arose among the officers. By the hundreds, they sent letters to remind her that they had enlisted to defend their homeland not a foreign country, be it an ally.
An unprecedented development took place on 17 March 2008 and 18 January 2010, when the German and Israeli governments held a joint Council of Ministers meeting where various programmes were adopted, especially in the defense sector. At this stage, there shouldn’t be too many secrets left between the Tsahal and the Bundeswehr.
The investigation conducted by Detlev Mehlis is both steeped in ridicule as regards the false witnesses, and tainted with the illegal detention of the four generals. To the extent that the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention formally and firmly condemned this excess of power.
This being said, the opprobrium that befalls Mr Mehlis’ work should not reflect on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon which is in no way responsible for his manipulations. But here, again, things get complicated. The credibility of the STL rests on its ability to curb, in the first place, all those who attempted to mask the truth and falsely accused Presidents Bashar el-Assad and Emile Lahoud, with the intention of provoking a war.
Now, it transpires that the Tribunal refuses to try the false witnesses, giving the impression that it is covering up the manipulations under Mehlis’ watch and is in fact pursuing the similar political objectives (this time against Hezbollah, and perhaps against others in the future). Even worse, the Tribunal will not hand over to Jamil Sayyed (one of the four generals illegally detained) the minutes of his accusers’ hearings, thereby barring him from requesting compensation and making it look as if it condones four years of arbitrary detention.
In more prosaic terms, the Tribunal is shirking its responsibilities. On the one hand, it must judge the false witnesses to thwart further manipulations and to make plain its impartiality; on the other hand it refuses to undertake a “clean-up” operation which might force it to arrest Prosecutor Mehlis. However, Odnako’s revelations on the German lead render this posture untenable. All the more since it’s already too late: General Jamil Sayyed filed a complaint in Syria and a Syrian examining magistrate has already indicted Detlev Mehlis, Commissioner Gerard Lehmann plus the five false witnesses. One can imagine the commotion at the STL should Syria decide to call on Interpol to have them arrested.
Just as the Mehlis commission was supposed to compensate for the lack of professionalism on the part of the Lebanese forces of law and order, the STL should equally have ensured the impartiality that the Lebanese courts may have been short of. But things are far off target, which raises the question of the Tribunal’s legitimacy.
Kofi Annan didn’t want the Lebanon Tribunal to exert international jurisdiction, but to function as a national Lebanese tribunal with an international character. It would have been subjected to Lebanese law while half of its members would have been nationals of other countries. The plan did not materialize because the negotiations came to a sudden end. More precisely, an agreement was reached with the Lebanese government presided at the time by Fouad Siniora, the former authorised representative of the Hariri estate, but it was never ratified either by Parliament or by the president of the Republic. Hence, the agreement was endorsed unilaterally by the UN Security Council (Resolution 1757 of 30 May 2007). The end result is a hybrid and fragile entity.
As pointed out by Kofi Annan, this Tribunal is not analogous to any other so far created within the purview of the United Nations. “It is neither a subsidiary organ of the UN, nor a component of the Lebanese judiciary system”; it is simply “a conventional organ” sitting between the executive authority of the Lebanese government and the UN. Judging by the international rule of separation of powers and independence of the judiciary, the STL cannot be regarded as a genuine tribunal, but rather as a joint disciplinary commission within the executive frameworks of the UN and the Lebanese Government. Whatever decision it may make will inevitably be coated with suspicion.
Worse still, any Lebanese government can terminate it since, not having been ratified, the related agreement was binding only on the previous government. As a result, the present Lebanese coalition government has become a battlefield between partisans and foes of the Tribunal. In an attempt to maintain governmental stability, week after week Lebanese President Michel Sleimane has been dissuading the Council of Ministers from taking a vote on any issue linked with the STL. This embargo cannot hold out forever.
Bad news coming in pairs, suspicions have now extended to the President of the STL, Antonio Cassese. This reputable international jurist was President of the International Criminal Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He happens to be an ardent supporter of the Jewish colonialisation of Palestine. A personal friend of Elie Wiesel, Cassese received and accepted an honorary award, presented by Wiesel himself. He should normally have withdrawn and resigned when Hassan Nasrallah disclosed that Israeli drones had been reconnoitering the crime scene as well as the victim’s movements for months.
According to the President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Antonio Cassese, the armed resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan should be tried for “terrorism”.
Worst of all, Judge Cassesse personifies an interpretation of international law that causes division in the Middle East. Although his official curriculum vitae obscures it, he took part in the 2005 negotiations between member states of the European Union and those bordering the Mediterranean Sea (“Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean”). His definition of terrorism blocked the discussions. According to him, terrorism is exclusively the act of individuals or private groups, never states. It follows that a struggle against an occupying army would not be considered to be “resistance” but rather “terrorism”. In the local context, this juridical view is consistent with a colonial framework and disqualifies the STL.
The methods of the Special Tribunal do not differ from those applied by the Mehlis Commission. STL investigators collected mass files on Lebanese students, social security recipients and subscribers of public utility services. On 27 October, in the absence of the Lebanese judges, they even tried to snatch medical records from a gynecological clinic frequented by the wives of Hezbollah members. It is obvious that these probes have no link whatsoever with the Rafik Hariri assassination. Everything leads the Lebanese to believe that the information is actually earmarked for Israel, of which, in their eyes, the STL is merely an offshoot.
All these problems had clearly been foreseen by President Putin when, in 2007, he had vainly made a pitch for a different wording of the STL founding resolution. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin had denounced the “juridical loopholes” of the system. He deplored that the Security Council should threaten to resort to force (Chapter VII) to achieve unilaterally the creation of this “conventional organ”. He had emphasised that while the Tribunal should be working towards the reconciliation of the Lebanese people, it was devised in such a way as to divide them even more. Finally, Russia – as China – refused to endorse Resolution 1757.
The truth ultimately seeps through. The Israeli drone videos released by the Hezbollah expose Israel’s involvement in the crime preparations. The facts revealed by Odnako point to the use of a sophisticated German weapon. The puzzle is nearly complete.
Wikileaks leaks toxic acid in every direction, except to Israel
By Dr. Tariq Shadid • December 1st, 2010
Let us ponder for a second about the meaning of ‘leaking’. When something is leaking, it is usually understood that some fluid substance that is supposed to be flowing in a certain direction, is escaping from its designed route because of a defect in the structure that was built to guide it. Usually, if you have a leaking pipe in your water system, your main problem is that you are unable to control the flow of it, and water goes into directions where you don’t want it to be going.
However, the definition of ‘Wikileaking’ seems to be following entirely different laws of nature. Indeed, the information is flowing away from the secret pipelines it was originally guided into. However, the strange thing about ‘Wikileaking’ is that Israel, a country widely known for its secret dealings and cunning intelligence service, is managing to keep dry feet in spite of the massive political flooding allegedly caused by Wikileaks’ founding father, Julian Assange.
The lack of control that is so typical of other forms of ‘leaking’, certainly does not seem to apply to ‘Wikileaking’ – instead it looks like it is under perfect control, and carefully guided in such a way that it only serves the interests of one state, namely that of Israel.
Assange takes a leak, the world jumps up
Barely a country in the world that is actively involved in Middle East and other international affairs, either by choice or by geographical location, has been spared by Assange’s latest opening of his Pandora’s box of revelations. It is hard to visit a news source these days, without the word ‘Wikileaks’ jumping into your view at least once, and revealing some scandalous backdoor deal, secret agreement or embarrassing hidden relationship between governments who on the surface seem to be diametrically opposed to each other in the political spectrum.
Since the list of countries that have faced these embarrassments includes Obama’s United States, many anti-imperialist activists around the world have been anxiously awaiting the latest leaks, and are now engaging in discussions about the implications of many of these so-called astounding revelations. Julian Assange is being hailed worldwide by people who are critical of their governments as the activist who was able to embarrass governments, helped only by a small group of independent supporters. His star is rising rapidly, and although sounds of cynicism can be heard here and there, the overwhelming noise resounding in progressive circles is one of loud cheers for this long-awaited ‘champion of the ordinary man’.
What many seem to be failing to be notice however, is that although the list of countries that were painfully embarrassed by the publication of their secret cables, memo’s and meetings, includes the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Egypt and the United States – where Obama is suffering from serious problems from a ‘Tea Party’ he was not invited to – one of the main actors in the dirty political game of Middle East animosities and alliances is remaining completely unharmed: Israel.
Much ado about old news
What are Wikileaks telling us? That Saudi Arabia poured oil on the flames against Iran? We already knew that. That Abbas’ administration as well as the Egyptian government were very well informed about Israel’s genocidal military assault on Gaza in the winter of 2009? There is nothing new about that either. The list goes on and on, and the main victims of embarrassment are leaders of Arab governments. But what is so new about that? Doesn’t almost every Arab in the world who reads newspapers, watches Al Jazeera and has a certain degree of understanding of Middle East politics, already know about the extent and scope of secret relations in the region? Even many people living outside of the Arab world are largely aware of this.
Oana Lungescu, spokeswoman for NATO, called Wikileaks’ revelations about the presence of American nuclear missiles in Europe – mainly the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany – ‘dangerous’ on November 29. Why exactly would something be dangerous, if it is a commonly known fact that has now only been confirmed yet again? Didn’t earlier revelations have no effect, so why would these new ones do that? Does the fact that Obama, Sarkozy, and the Chinese leadership have all condemned Wikileaks and its founder, make any significant difference?
The answer to these questions is: yes, these revelations are indeed causing unpleasant domestic situations all around the world, and creating electoral problems and other political embarrassments for governments everywhere – except in one place, namely Israel.
No worries: Assange will tell you who to trust
Julian Assange, ‘master revealer’ of international conspiracies, apparently also is highly irritated by people questioning the events of 9/11. In an interview in the Belfast Telegraph on July 19, 2010, he was asked about the 9/11 attack, and answered: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”
Apparently Julian ‘Robin Hood’ Assange finds the story of pilots who fly an airplane full of people straight into a humongous skyscraper full of unsuspecting citizens, just because some hysterical hijacker is holding a box-cutter against their jugular veins, perfectly believable. He apparently also believes that when you fly an airplane into the top floors of one of the world’s largest buildings, in a horizontal direction, the building will not only spontaneously collapse all the way down to its basement in a vertical direction, but will indeed be transformed into a powdery dust – except of course the completely undamaged passport of one of the alleged hijackers, that was miraculously found among the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Unless you, dear reader, also believe in fairy tales, this should certainly make you wonder. So much for your credibility, Mr Assange.
Cui Bono?
In politics there is a golden rule for understanding what may be the driving force behind unexpected mysterious events. This rule is known as ‘Cui Bono’, which is Latin for: ‘who benefits?’
Browse through all the news sources available on the latest Wikileaks revelation, and try to find even only one revelation that actually damages Israel, even though so many of the revealed documents are directly or indirectly connected to Middle East politics, and to a large extent to Israeli affairs. Did you find any document among them that either creates difficulties for the government of the Zionist entity, or even slightly embarrasses it? Think about it well, you will find that the answer is a very simple “No”.
Does it not strike you as interesting or remarkable, that many of the revelations about Middle East affairs are of direct benefit to Israel? If it hasn’t, read them again, and give it some thought.
Cui bono? Israel. Therefore, who is the prime suspect behind the phenomenon ‘Julian Assange’? You tell me, or just prove me wrong by showing me one Wikileaks document that would make Binjamin Netanyahu and his rogue companions scratch their heads, or even become only slightly uncomfortable. My suspicion grows stronger every day, and is not deterred by Interpol’s announcement on December 1 that Julian Assange is wanted for an alleged sexual harassment case in Sweden. It is obvious that he is a man who has angered many people of power, regardless of whether he is actually guilty in that harassment case or not. The problem however is that none of these people of power are Israeli, and that says a lot. You never bite the hand that feeds you, do you, Julian?
The tribulations of the Tuareg
Disenfranchised and impoverished, the Tuareg now stand accused of being allied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Jeremy Keenan | Al-Jazeera | November 20, 2010
Many media reports are linking the Tuareg tribesman of the Sahara to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [EPA]
Are the Tuareg tribesmen of the Sahara, as many media reports are now intimating, allied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)?
This question has become especially pertinent since the abduction of seven employees of two French companies from their living quarters in Arlit, northern Niger, in September.
The immediate reports on the hostage taking, for which AQIM has claimed responsibility, said that the kidnappers were heard to speak Arabic and Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg. This information subsequently appeared to be contradicted by a Tuareg guard who, having himself been attacked by the assailants, said that he heard them speaking Arabic and Hausa. He made no mention of Tamashek, but his evidence seems to have been ignored on the presumption that he would be unlikely to incriminate his own people.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of media articles and broadcasts have followed the leads given by the Niger government, Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), the president of Mali, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, and Brice Hortefeux, the French interior minister, whose statements suggested that AQIM ‘subcontracted’ the abduction to the Tuareg.
Media hot seat
The Tuareg are the indigenous population of much of the Central Sahara and Sahel.
Today, their largest concentrations are in northern Niger and northern Mali where they comprise approximately 10 per cent of the national populations, numbering around 1 million in Niger and perhaps a fraction less in Mali.
Other Tuareg populations are in southern Algeria and south west Libya, where they comprise small minorities of around 50,000 or less in each country, with perhaps 25,000 to 50,000 in Burkina Faso and a small scattering in Mauritania.
It is among these larger communities, notably northern Mali and to a lesser extent Niger, that AQIM has embedded itself.
The following points go some way to answering this question:
• Although AQIM has claimed responsibility for the Arlit abduction, we do not yet know for certain the individuals involved in the raid. Individual Tuareg may or may not have been involved.
• Although the Tuareg ‘communities’ have always denied taking part in such criminal activities, most of their leaders and spokespersons recognise that ‘black sheep’ are to be found among all peoples. Among the Tuareg, especially in Niger and Mali where the recent (2007-2009) Tuareg rebellions have stuttered to unsatisfactory and perhaps only temporary states of ‘peace’, a not inconsiderable number of young ‘ex-rebel’ fighters have turned to banditry and ‘criminality’ as a means of economic survival. Some of this ‘opportunism’ is undoubtedly associated with AQIM’s activities. Indeed, many of the young, former rebels of Niger who have taken to banditry now live in and around Tamanrasset, the capital of Algeria’s extreme south, and might therefore well presume that their banditry in northern Niger is being sanctioned by the Algerian state.
• As Nicolas Roux remarked recently in addressing this subject in People with Voices: “If a French national were involved in a terrorist organisation, no one would declare ‘The French’ to be part of such activities.”
• In a similar vein, Boutali Tchewiren, the president of the Alhak-Nakal (Right to Land) Association and former spokesman of the Niger Tuaregs’ rebel MNJ (Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice Mouvement), responded immediately to the accusatory comments from Niamey and Paris. “Just because some of the kidnappers spoke Tamashek, the whole Tuareg community should not be accused,” he told AFP. Tchewiren also rebuked Kouchner, who said that: “Those who took these men and women could be Tuaregs working to order. They will sell them to the terrorists, who are not themselves very numerous.” “That,” Tchewiren said, “is a serious accusation. It’s too gross and ridiculous to accuse the Tuareg people in this way. The Tuareg community is not responsible for the actions of a few individuals, even if they’re members of this community.”
• Similar objections came from Mali’s Tuaregs. On September 20, two Mali MPs, Alghabasse Ag Intalla and Bajan Ag Hamatou, who are both representatives of the Tuareg community, sent a strongly written protest to the French ambassador to Mali about the way in which the Tuareg were being stigmatised. They wrote: “You know, Excellency, that there has not been a single day, since a certain time, when ‘The Tuaregs’ have not been put in the hot seat by a press article, radio or other form of communication in regard to their supposed involvement in this or that infamy perpetrated in their region.”
‘Putative terrorists’
The point of what I have to say goes far beyond the mere question of whether some Tuareg may have been implicated in the Arlit heist. It is directed to the overall situation of the Tuareg since 2003, when the Americans launched the new Saharan-Sahelian front in the so-called ‘global war on terror’ (GWOT).
It is often argued that extreme Islamist movements find their support not only among ideologues but also – through their promise of a better ‘social alternative’ – from among the socially deprived, repressed and marginalised. In the Sahara-Sahel, especially since 2003, that has been the Tuareg. Indeed, the impact of the GWOT on the Tuareg peoples has been nothing short of catastrophic.
On the above premise, and when we consider what the Tuareg have endured at the hands of Washington and their own governments during the GWOT, not to mention the exploitation of their lands by foreign mining and oil companies, we might well ask why the Tuareg, instead of condemning AQIM, are not queuing up to join it ranks.
In fact, the reality of the GWOT in the Sahara-Sahel has not been about fighting ‘terrorists’, but about how the local governments, linked into the GWOT through Washington’s Pan Sahel (PSI) and Trans-Sahara Counter-terrorism initiatives of 2004 and 2005 respectively, have been provoking the Tuareg into taking up arms so that they might be categorised as ‘terrorists’ or, as one US state department analyst argued rather quaintly in the context of the assumed link between terrorism and trafficking, ‘putative terrorists’.
What the Tuareg have had to endure in the so-called GWOT is both shocking and shameful. Let me summarise:
The kidnapping of 32 European hostages in the Algerian Sahara in 2003, under the direction of Algeria’s intelligence and security services, the DRS, brought the immediate collapse of one of the main pillars of the Tuareg economy in southern Algeria. The loss of some 10,000 tourists in southern Algeria alone, spending an estimated $750 each, meant an annual loss of approximately $7.5mn, most of which found its way into the local Tuareg community.
Many of these Tuareg, faced with penury, were forced into shadowy and sometimes even ‘criminal’ activities, such as working for the various trans-Saharan trafficking businesses, either as fuel suppliers, drivers or guides.
From 2004 onwards, the governments of Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania all used the pretext of the GWOT to crack down on legitimate opposition, civil society and ‘troublesome’ ethnic minorities such as the Tuareg. Tuareg communities throughout the region were constantly being provoked by their governments into rebellious behaviour, with the purpose of demonstrating to Washington the potential threat of terrorism within the Sahara-Sahel region. The pay-off for local governments was the financial and military largesse that comes with the blessing of Washington.
‘Explosion of anger’
The US-Algerian plan to create ‘false-flag’ terrorism incidents in the Sahara-Sahel was formulated in September 2002, with the first (botched) effort at kidnapping European tourists taking place in October that year. Tuareg in the region were aware of this incident and the following month wrote to the Algerian prime minister accusing the government of ‘sabotage’. The same Tuareg, in the name of the ‘citizens of Tamanrasset’, had already written to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the Algerian president, warning him that unless the government ceased its harassment of local people “there was likely to be an explosion of local anger, the outcome of which could not be predicted”.
In July 2005, that anger exploded into two days of rioting during which some 40 of Tamanrasset’s commercial and government buildings were set on fire. Some 150 Tuareg youths were detained, with 64 jailed and the remainder fined. When their cases eventually came to court, it was revealed that the riots had been led by the secret police, acting as agents provocateurs. One prominent local citizen expressed the views of many when he said: “Now that they [the Algerian authorities] have the Americans behind them, they have become even bigger bullies.”
In 2004, four weeks after the arrival of US PSI special forces in the Sahel, Niger’s government provoked the Tuareg into taking up arms by imprisoning a leading Tuareg politician on trumped up accusations of murder. He was released after 13 months without any charges brought against him.
In May 2006, Algeria’s DRS, accompanied by some 100 US special forces, supported and orchestrated a Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali. Four months later, the DRS, with the complicity of the US, paid the same Tuareg substantial sums of money to attack the renowned Algerian ‘outlaw’ Mokhtar ben Mokhtar in northern Mali in order to give the impression to the outside world that there really was ‘terrorism’ in the Sahara. At least five Tuareg were killed.
In early 2007, a major Tuareg uprising, again provoked by the Niger government, but with Algeria’s DRS believed to have been involved, broke out in northern Niger and lasted for almost three years. As in Mali, where an equally protracted rebellion began a few months later, a conclusive peace agreement is still awaited.
Disenfranchised
The main cause of the Niger rebellion was the Tuaregs’ demand for a share in the benefits of the exploitation and development of their region’s natural resources, notably the massive uranium mining operations being undertaken by international companies.
In Mali, the underlying cause of the rebellion was the perceived disenfranchisement and marginalisation of the Tuareg and the failure of the government to fulfill the commitments of a peace agreement ensuing from an earlier rebellion during the 1990s.
In both countries, fighting became gruesome, especially in Niger where the regime of the now deposed President Mamadou Tandja adopted the genocidal strategy of attacking and killing Tuareg civilians, especially old men, women and children. The UN failed to acknowledge written notification of Niger’s genocide, let alone act on it, while the UN secretary general’s special envoy subsequently failed abjectly to even make meaningful contact with the rebels before himself being taken hostage by AQIM.
In February 2008, Malian forces swept through Mali’s north east region, ransacking and looting the border garrison town of Tin Zaouatene and driving the entire civilian population into the desert. Although no one was reported killed, the action provoked revenge attacks against the Malian army by Tuareg rebels and an escalation of the overall conflict.
The number of Tuareg killed in these and related incidents is not known precisely, but can be estimated at around 500.
As for their economy and livelihoods, tourism, reduced to near zero in southern Algeria after the 2003 hostage-takings, has gone the same way, but in bigger numbers, in Niger and Mali. Recently, Point Afrique, the main charter flight operator into the region, curtailed flights to Tamanrasset, Djanet and Timimoun in southern Algeria; Agades in Niger; Atar in Mauritania and Gao in Mali. Estimated tourist numbers across the region have fallen from close to 100,000 a year to almost zero, an estimated loss of perhaps $50mn to $75mn.
With the Niger army killing Tuareg livestock and AQIM’s circumscription of nomadic movement in Mali, pastoralism, along with most other commercial activities (other than banditry and drug trafficking), has also been decimated. Not surprisingly, most NGOs have also left the region.
‘Terror zone’
Two new sets of maps of the Sahara-Sahel epitomise the anger of the Tuareg towards their own governments, Washington and foreign mining and oil companies.
One, produced by the Pentagon in 2003, just after it fabricated its new Sahara-Sahelian front in the GWOT, portrays the Tuareg domain as a ‘Terror Zone’.
The second, produced by the regions’ governments, shows the same Tuareg domain as a chequer-board of mining and oil prospecting concessions licensed to hundreds of foreign oil and mining companies.
The first map reflects Washington’s self-fulfilling prophecy. The US’ original act of ‘state terrorism’ in the Sahara-Sahel, implemented by Algeria’s DRS, is finally taking on a life and momentum of its own and threatening to change the face of north west Africa for good.
The second reflects how the Tuareg are being dispossessed of their lands without a word of consultation and in contravention of a raft of international conventions and protocols relating to the rights of indigenous peoples.
Marginalised by their governments; ignored by the international community and deprived by the GWOT of their livelihoods, but still skilled fighters, the question now being asked is whether the Tuareg, especially in Mali, where the AQIM presence is greatest, will attempt to take matters into their own hands.
Jeremy Keenan is a professorial research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, and author of The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.
Rape Story – Phillip D. Zelikow… 911 Myth Maker
By Andrew | Rense | 10-12-7
When you ask people to revisit the events of 9/11 and reconsider what really happened, you enter the twilight zone of public mythology where people don’t want to rethink unhappy events and where you challenge their personal egos. Did you know that for the same reason that 2/3 of the women raped never report it, 2/3 of the victims of fraud never seek redress either? They find themselves at odds with their own egos; they simply don’t want to admit that they have been so violated or duped. I believe that the story of Philip Zelikow is important to help people beyond their own egos and see how America is being raped.
Most people have never heard of Philip D. Zelikow, but he is best known as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. He basically wrote the 9/11 Commission Report. Immediately prior to Bush appointing him to head the 9/11 Commission, Zelikow was the executive director of the little known Aspen Strategy Group whose members include Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rica, and Paul Wolfowitz. Although most people don’t know anything about Zelikow, they recognize Cheney, Rice and Wolfowitz as the Neoconservatives most responsible for stampeding America into the current unfortunate conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Strategy_Group#Group_Members
Zelikow’s record gets really interesting when we consider that he went on to write the 9/11 Commission Report. He earned a law degree from the University of Houston Law School and a Ph. D. from Tufts University. He wrote books too. He wrote a book on The Kennedy Tapes, and another on Why People Don’t Trust Government. One of his areas of expertise is PUBLIC MYTHOLOGY. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_D._Zelikow
While at Harvard he actually wrote about the use, and misuse, of history in policymaking. As he noted in his own words, “contemporary” history is “defined functionally by those critical people and events that go into forming the public’s presumptions about its immediate past. The idea of ‘public presumption’,” he explained, “is akin to [the] notion of ‘public myth’ but without the negative implication sometimes invoked by the word ‘myth.’ Such presumptions are beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community.” So Zelikow, the guy who wrote The 9/11 Commission Report, was an expert in how to misuse public trust and create PUBLIC MYTHS.
If 9/11 was nothing but a huge HOAX, you would naturally expect that the event itself would have to be perfectly scripted.
In 1998, Zelikow actually wrote Catastrophic Terrorism about imagining “the transformative event” three years before 9/11. Here are Zelikow’s 1998 words; Readers should imagine the possibilities for themselves, because the most serious constraint on current policy [nonaggression] is lack of imagination. An act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and/or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America’s history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented for peacetime and undermine Americans’ fundamental sense of security within their own borders in a manner akin to the 1949 Soviet atomic bomb test, or perhaps even worse. Constitutional liberties would be challenged as the United States sought to protect itself from further attacks by pressing against allowable limits in surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and the use of deadly force. More violence would follow, either as other terrorists seek to imitate this great “success” or as the United States strikes out at those considered responsible. Like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a “before” and “after.” The effort and resources we devote to averting or containing this threat now, in the “before” period, will seem woeful, even pathetic, when compared to what will happen “after.” Our leaders will be judged negligent for not addressing catastrophic terrorism more urgently.
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/visions/publication/terrorism.htm
If we can get people to see that the guy who wrote The 9/11 Commission Report got his Ph.D. in PUBLIC MYTHS and actually had his hand in scripting the 9/11 event itself in 1998, they might be more receptive to the idea that the official story of 9/11 should be revisited.
The other problem is getting them to look again at an unhappy event. Don’t show them the unhappy pictures or the long videos of planes crashing into the WTC Towers or of the Towers collapsing. Instead show them short videos of what the first reporters said immediately after the explosions at the Pentagon and at Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
and
On September 11, 2001, the immediate reports on the ground told the truth. I think most people can see that it was later that the myth-makers retold the myth the way Zelikow scripted it to be remembered. This may be 2007, but when we consider the power of mythology the psychology of the average man hasn’t changed in 4000 years. And when everyone in the political community believes the same myth, it becomes a parallel reality. With TV reinforcing the 9/11 myth every single day, it has become stronger than any belief system that I can remember, but we must explore ways to challenge it.
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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