Israeli Occupation Forces Arrest Palestinian Writer Ahmad Qatamesh
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Right Association | April 26, 2011
In the early hours of dawn on Thursday, 21 April 2011, a large force of Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers raided the home of the prominent Palestinian writer and academic Dr. Ahmad Qatamesh (1) in Al-Bireh and arrested him.
An hour earlier, Qatamesh’s wife, 22-year-old daughter and two other female relatives, including a 14-year-old child, were taken hostage by Israeli troops in another apartment to compel him to surrender himself. He was led to “Ofer” detention center in Beitunia.
Ahmad Qatamesh was born in 1950 in a cave in Bethlehem to a refugee family expelled during the Nakba from the village of Al-Malihah, near Jerusalem. Qatamesh earned his diploma in Arabic literature from the UNRWA-run Teacher Training Center in Ramallah.
In 1992, he was arrested by a massive Israeli force in the presence of his then 3-year-old daughter. Accusing him of being a particularly “dangerous” national leader, the Israeli Shabak tortured and ill-treated him (2) for a hundred days, an experience that he articulately exposed in his well-read prison notes titled I Shall not Wear Your Tarboush (fez). After the Shabak failed to produce incriminating evidence, however, an Israeli military court issued an “administrative detention” order against him, in accordance with an emergency law that allows Israel to detain for renewable terms anyone under its jurisdiction without charges, trial or access to the charges against him/her. This unjust procedure was repeatedly condemned as a violation of internationally accepted standards of justice by leading human rights organizations, including Amnesty International. (3)
Qatamesh’s detention was renewed continuously for almost six years, making him the longest serving administrative detainee ever. In April 1998, after a persistent public pressure campaign by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights activists and organizations, Qatamesh was finally released. (4)
Ahmad Qatamesh earned his master’s degree and later his PhD in political science from a Dutch university through distance learning, as he was under a travel ban by the Israeli occupation.
He then became a thesis supervisor for several Palestinian graduate students of the same university. He authored several books on diverse literary, political and philosophical topics, and he was a sought-after speaker in local universities and research centers. In 2010, he taught a course in the School of Humanities at Al-Quds University.
Qatamesh’s wife, Suha Barghouti, who is a board member of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Organization and of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, as well as a Steering Committee member of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), considered his arrest “an attempt to silence his critical voice and prevent his compelling vision for emancipation and self determination from spreading further in the Palestinian public.” She called on human rights organizations to pressure the Israeli authorities for his immediate release and held those authorities fully responsible for his safety and well being.
His daughter, Haneen, who is on a short break from her studies at the American University of Cairo, commented on her traumatizing experience of being held hostage by Israeli soldiers saying: “They tried to intimidate me by exploiting my deep agony over the idea of being denied my father again, but I firmly confronted them and reminded them of the fate of all colonial powers on our land. In response, their commander shouted that I was as ‘obstinate’ as my father.”
Gerarda Ventura, Vice President of the Euromed Platform of NGOs, expressed deep solidarity of European civil society with Palestinians like Ahmad Qatamesh, whom she called “one of the most sensitive and intellectual people I have ever met,” in their civil struggle for “freedom, justice and peace.”
The Addameer-appointed lawyer who visited Qatamesh the day after his arrest stated that he was not interrogated and that he was informed instead that he would get an administrative detention order. This indicates that the Shabak, again, lack any evidence to build a case against him and proves that he was arrested indeed for his writings and peaceful activism and not any “security” reasons as was claimed by the Israeli authorities.
Praising Ahmad Qatamesh as “an excellent writer, principled researcher and devoted human rights advocate … struggling for freedom and respect of fundamental rights,” Palestinian Legislative Council member Dr. Mustafa Barghouti condemned his arrest by Israel as “a shameless attempt at muzzling him in an unjustifiable attack on his freedom of expression.”
Ahmad Qatamesh’s family has appealed to international agencies and human rights organizations to work for releasing him and all the other Palestinian prisoners of conscience. They also called for ending the draconian policy of administrative detention, which is based on emergency regulations from the era of the British Mandate, as a blatant violation of freedoms and human rights, in particular the right to a fair and just due process.
1. Also spelled “Katamesh” and “Qatamish.”
2. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE02/004/1998/en/7090ae54-d9de-11dd-af2bb1f6023af0c5/mde020041998en.pdf
3. Ibid.
4. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/16/news/mn-39885/3authorities.
Michigan State Police Copying Data from Cell Phones?
Mark Fancher, attorney at the ACLU Michigan, joins us to talk about police extracting personal information from cell phones during traffic stops, the Michigan State Police stonewalling the ACLU’s investigation, and more.
Ugandan Government Asks ISPs to Block Facebook, Twitter
By Rebekah Heacock | OpenNet Initiative | 18 April 2011
With the exception of Ethiopia, which blocks a number of political and security-related websites, and a few cases of isolated Internet censorship related to political events, most of sub-Saharan Africa has historically been free of technical filtering. This week, however, the government of Uganda wrote to the heads of three of the country’s major ISPs asking them to block Facebook and “Tweeter” [sic] “to eliminate the connection and sharing of information that incites the public.”
The request comes on the heels of a week of opposition protests over rising fuel and food prices. The protests have been widely advertised on Twitter using the hashtag #walk2work, and opposition leaders Kizza Besigye and Norbert Mao, among others, have been repeatedly arrested.
Several contacts in Uganda are reporting that, as of Monday, the sites are accessible, though one contact reports that both Facebook and Twitter were temporarily inaccessible through Uganda Telecom on Friday. Uganda’s Observer newspaper is reporting that access has been suspended.
Last week, Uganda’s Commissioner of Police called for the government to “guard against misuse of communication networks to protect social values and national identity,” pointing to the Ugandans at Heart blog, which covers political and social issues in the country, and its associated Ugandans at Heart Google Group as examples of sites that “pose a serious national security threat if their net publications are not regulated.”
‘Democracy’ meddling, twittering agitation
Compiled by Maidhc Ó Cathail |The Passionate Attachment | April 16, 2011
In “Muslims Are Their Own Worst Enemy,” Paul Craig Roberts decries “the willingness of some Muslims to betray their own kind for U.S. dollars”:
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman, head of the Foundation for Democracy, which describes itself as “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
By now we all know what that means. It means that the U.S. finances a “velvet” or some “color revolution” in order to install a U.S. puppet. Just prior to the sudden appearance of a “green revolution” in Tehran primed to protest an election, Timmerman wrote that
“the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques. Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”
So, according to the neocon Timmerman, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, it was U.S. money that funded Mousavi’s claims that Ahmadinejad stole the last Iranian election.
In a 2009 piece on NED’s funding of Iran’s so-called “Green Revolution,” Daniel McAdams notes the endless gullibility of those who prefer to believe otherwise:
Frankly, what I find more disturbing than the fact that the US government continues meddling in this new magical era of Obama is how many in the United States continue to be taken in by these events color-coordinated from afar…. As if hoping, somehow, that this time it will all be true. That the “people power” really is on the march. That it is a binary world where there are evil incumbents — the old guard — oppressing thrusting “reformers” who are Twittering away toward the bright tomorrow of a world where everyone wants to be just like us! Democracy!
Daniel McAdams’ excellent 2006 piece on the information war waged by “democracy promoters” against Belarus’ Lukashenko should be a salutary reminder to all those who are unwittingly cheering on the very same forces, which the New York Times belatedly admits, “helped nurture the Arab Uprisings”:
Imagine you are in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, setting up tents and loudspeakers without a permit to occupy the park with a group of several thousand protesters, guzzling beer and vodka. How long do you think it would be before the Secret Service or other uniformed local and federal officers moved in to disburse you? Five minutes?
Yet when less than one percent of the 500,000 Belarusians who voted for the political opposition were recently disbursed from October Square, one block from the presidential residence, the United States and the European Union (where member country France had been engaged in brutally beating youth protesting for more job security) announced a new round of sanctions against the country.
Aside from this absurd double standard is the fact that democracy itself is subverted in this new, revolutionary method of changing governments – all in the name of democracy, of course. Somehow in the new world of color-coded revolutions, a public display of only one percent of those who voted for the opposition – not of all voters, mind you, but just of those who voted for the opposition – is enough for the West to conclude that they represent the true will of the people. It is a new Bolshevism of the West in which a tiny minority is said to in fact be the majority. The media plays into this deception, with its breathless but highly selective reporting of such incidents. The Western media makes no effort to gain actual facts, preferring to rely on salacious but unverified tales of beatings and mass arrests made available in copious quantities by those who stand to benefit most by their dissemination.
San Francisco to require ID scans, photos of everyone who goes to a venue
By Cory Doctorow | Boing Boing | April 12, 2011
San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission has proposed that all bars, clubs, and venues should be required to photograph and collect ID from everyone who comes in for a drink or a show. The photos and personal information would be retained so that police could get a list of every person who was in the club on any given night. Leaving aside the (obvious) fourth amendment issues inherent in governments collecting massive databases of presumed-innocent people’s lawful activities and movements, this is also a security nightmare, in which thousands of club staff and their friends would have access to personal information that would be of great interest to stalkers, creeps and identity thieves.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation will present their critique of this proposal to the Commission at a public meeting on April 12.
Events with strong cultural, ideological, and political components are frequently held at venues that would be affected by these rules. Scanning the ID’s of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would have a deeply chilling effect on speech. Participants might hesitate to attend such events if their attendance were noted, stored, and made available on request to government authorities. This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state.We are deeply disappointed in the San Francisco Entertainment Commission for considering such troubling, authoritarian, and poorly thought-out rules. The Commission should reject this attack on our most basic civil liberties. San Francisco cannot hope to remain a hub of cultural and political activity if we are stripped of our civil liberties the moment we walk through the door of a venue.
EFF to San Francisco Entertainment Commission: Don’t Turn SF into a Police State
Bahraini Bookshop Owner Dies under Torture while in Police Custody
Al-Manar | April 13, 2011
Abdul Karim Al-FakhrawiAbdul Kareem al-Fakhrawi, a prominent Bahraini businessman, was martyred on Tuesday due to severe torture while in prison, the opposition al-Wefaq group said.
Fakhrawi is the fourth Bahraini, tortured to death, since anti-government protests began in the country in mid-February. The 49-year-old businessman disappeared on or around April 4, when he went to file a police report against policemen who had earlier raided his home, reports said.
Fakhrawi had been a potential parliamentary candidate in Bahrain’s 2006 elections.
The circumstances surrounding his disappearance, detention, and death remain unclear but according to sources his brother identified the body at a local morgue. The Bahrain interior ministry has not commented on the incident.
Fakhrawi owned the Fakhrawi bookshop chain and was an investor in the independent daily al-Wasat.
His death comes just a day after Bahrain buried blogger Zakria Rashid al-Asherri, 40, martyred while in police custody.
Bahraini forces have severely suppressed the anti-regime protests with the help of Saudi, the UAE and Kuwaiti troops.
Signs of abuse on bodies of detained
In recent days Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) among other rights groups had criticized the Bahraini government crackdown.
“Bahrain should investigate the death in police custody of three people,” U.S.-based HRW said on Wednesday, saying one of the bodies bore signs of physical abuse.
The opposition says hundreds have been arrested and four have died in police custody over the past 10 days.
“It’s outrageous and cruel that people are taken off to detention and the families hear nothing until the body shows up with signs of abuse,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for the New York-based group.
HRW said it had seen the body of Ali Saqer, one of the men who died in police custody, and that it bore signs of severe physical abuse.
Bahrain has accused human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, of doctoring pictures of the corpse. “We viewed Ali Saqer’s body just prior to his burial and its condition was exactly as shown in the photo that Nabeel Rajab circulated,” Stork said.
Bahrain to try independent journalists
Press TV – April 11, 2011
Bahrain intends to try three former editors-in-chief of a leading independent newspaper for their coverage of the popular revolution against the kingdom’s royal family.
Bahraini authorities banned the publication of Al Wasat — Bahrain’s most popular opposition newspaper — earlier in the month. They then forced the daily to fire its chief editor Mansur al-Jamri so it would be allowed to reprint.
The former opposition activist is now forced to attend trial alongside two of his former workmates on charges of “unethical” reporting of the government protests, the Associated Press reported.
The editors are accused of “publishing fabricated news,” “harming public safety” and “damaging national interests.”
Bahraini people, emboldened by the popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, have been demanding an end to the two-century-plus rule of the Al Khalifa dynasty since February 14.
Scores of protesters have been killed and many others gone missing since the beginning of the revolution during government-sanctioned crackdown.
Bahraini forces have reinforced their violent armed attacks on the protesters with the help of troops dispatched from neighboring Arab states in the Persian Gulf.
The much-condemned military intervention has been led by Saudi Arabia.
Iraqi scientists, doctors fall prey to target killings
By DINA AL SHIBEEB | Al Arabiya | 09 April 2011
Iraqi scientists and doctors are increasingly expressing alarm about threats to their lives as the numbers targeted in killings rise while a weak government seems unable to provide adequate security.
The latest victim in the spree of apparently targeted killings was Zaid Abdul Mun’im, head of research of the molecular department at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. He died after a bomb went off in his car on April 3.
Prior to his death, Mohammed Alwan, a prominent Baghdadi surgeon and the dean of faculty of medicine of the same university, was assassinated on March 29.
Neither of the men had any known political affiliations.
“A government that cannot protect its people, does not deserve to be a government,” said Hikmat Jamil, head of the self-funded group International Society of Iraqi Scientists, and a professor of medicine at the Wayne State University in Michigan.
“We have sent letters to al-Mustansiriya University and the government condemning the assassination of Dr. Mun’im,” he told alarabiya.net.
The British newspaper The Independent placed the death toll of Iraqi academics at more than 470 by the end of 2006.
Reports from the Iraqi Physicians Union said that more than 500 of Iraq’s leading medical professionals have been assassinated and more than 7,000 have been forced to leave the country after receiving death threats.
Analysts have offered many theories as to why physicians and academics have been targeted, but nothing has been substantiated. Some point the finger at Israeli intelligence services. Others believe the U.S. is aware of the planned killings and silently endorses them.
“The [incidents of targeted killings] seem to be continuing since 2003, and I don’t think it will stop in the near future,” said Iyad al-Zamily, founder and editor-in-chief of the Iraqi cultural website, Kitabat.com, based in Germany.
“Some of the academics were forced to seek protection by militias and political parties and to change their political views to blend in, since the government is not capable of protecting them,” he added.
Mr. al-Zamily said he believes there are solutions to combat these target killings, but they get lost amid the political divisiveness which ends up exacerbating security problems.
While the Iraqi parliament is mulling laws to protect Iraqi physicians, them carrying a weapon being the latest, al-Zamily said “all Iraqis are entitled to protection, as everyone is [a target].”
Adil E. Shamoo, an Iraqi-American who is a senior analyst for the think tank Foreign Policy In Focus in Washington and author of Who Assassinated Iraqi Academics? said: “The evidence so far is sufficient to warrant a thorough investigation by an independent body. Iraqis, Americans, and the world need to know the truth.”
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, and the U.S. have called on the Obama Administration to “open a serious and transparent investigation” into possible “crimes against humanity.”
Before the 2003 toppling of its then-president Saddam Hussein, Iraq was known for its healthcare. Technologically, its facilities were more advanced than most other Middle East countries. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion, students in the region flocked to Baghdad’s universities and other educational institutions.
(Dina Al Shibeeb of Al Arabiya, can be reached via email at: dina.ibrahim@mbc.net)
Bahrain bans main opposition daily
Press TV – April 3, 2011
The Bahraini government has banned the publication of a leading independent newspaper due to its coverage of the popular revolution in the Persian Gulf littoral state.
Bahrain’s Information Affairs Commission suspended Al-Wasat daily, which has been critical of the government’s brutal crackdown on demonstrators in the country, BNA state news agency reported without giving further details.
The commission also ordered a case to be opened for further investigation by the Public Prosecution.
Masur al-Jamri, a former opposition activist during the uprising in the 1990s, is the editor-in-chief of the Bahraini newspaper.
Last week, Bahrain’s state television accused Al-Wasat of publishing “fabricated and false news” about the “security developments in Bahrain.”
The Bahraini police, backed by Saudi and UAE troops, have intensified the clampdown on anti-government protesters who demand a constitutional monarchy.
Rights groups and opposition parties say hundreds of people have been detained or have gone missing since the protests began in mid-February, with at least 25 people killed and 1,000 others wounded so far.
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Aaron Siri’s Book: Vaccines, Amen
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we’ve been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
And he does. … continue
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