43 Israeli soldiers protest abuses, spying on Palestinians
Ma’an – 13/09/2014
JERUSALEM (AFP) — Forty-three reservists and former members of an elite Israeli army intelligence unit condemned alleged “abuses” of Palestinians in the occupied territories, in an open letter published on Friday.
The letter, addressed to Israel’s prime minister, armed forces chief and head of military intelligence and distributed to media, said information gathered by Unit 8200 was used by civilian intelligence agencies to coerce Palestinians uninvolved in militant activity.
The signatories of the letter said they would refuse to be party to such acts in future.
“There’s no distinction between Palestinians who are, and are not, involved in violence,” an English language copy of the letter says.
“Information that is collected and stored harms innocent people. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself.”
The soldiers also said that they had spied on the sexual “preferences” of Palestinians in order to use them as blackmail against individuals they wanted to “turn into collaborators” for the Israeli occupation forces.
The admission verifies long-standing Palestinian claims that the Israeli military has pressured gay Palestinians into working with them by using their sexuality against them.
“We cannot continue to serve this system in good conscience, denying the rights of millions of people,” the 43 soldiers and officers wrote.
The signatories gave just their ranks and first names or first initials.
“Those among us who are reservists, refuse to take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians,” the letter, seen by AFP said.
“We call for all soldiers serving in the Intelligence Corps, present and future, along with all the citizens of Israel, to speak out against these injustices and to take action to bring them to an end.”
The letter, published less than three weeks after the Israeli military’s fierce military offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, slammed the “collective punishment of inhabitants” of the coastal territory.
Army questions their motive
It did not specifically mention the July-August war which took the lives of more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, 67 of them soldiers.
The army on Friday questioned the accuracy and motivation of the protesters’ accusations.
“The Intelligence Corps has no record that the … violations in the letter ever took place,” it said in a statement.
“Immediately turning to the press instead of their officers or relevant authorities is suspicious and raises doubts as to the seriousness of their claim.”
Members of Unit 8200, considered among Israel’s best and brightest, carry out electronic communications monitoring and surveillance, similar to work performed by the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ.
The unit is one component of the broader military intelligence corps and shares information with Israel’s civilian intelligence agencies.
A former commander of the unit, reserve Brigadier General Hanan Gefen, accused the letter’s authors of a grave breach of trust.
“If this is true and if I were the current unit commander, I would put them all on trial and would demand prison sentences for them, and I would remove them from the unit,” he was quoted as saying by Maariv newspaper on Friday.
“They are using information that reached them in the course of their duties to promote their political position.”
One of the signatories, speaking on condition of anonymity, told top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper: “I think that all of us who signed the letter did so because we understood that we are unable to sleep well at night.”
Most Israeli men perform three years of compulsory military service after school, and women two years, followed by regular spells of reserve duty for years afterwards.
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Ma’an staff contributed to this report.
Autopsy shows Palestinian prisoner died after being tortured
Ma’an – 12/09/2014
HEBRON – Palestinian detainee Raed al-Jabari, 35, died after being tortured while in Israeli prison custody, a Palestinian official said Thursday.
Issa Qaraqe, former minister of prisoner affairs, said in a news conference that the results of an autopsy showed that internal bleeding and a concussion were the cause of death.
Israeli Prisons spokeswoman Sivan Weizman told AFP Tuesday that he had hanged himself in a bathroom at Eshel prison.
She said a medical team had tried to revive him but that he was pronounced dead on arrival at Soroka hospital in the city.
Qaraqe said the autopsy did not find any signs of bruising around al-Jabari’s neck and that the main cause of death was bleeding and concussion likely to have been caused by blows to the head.
The victim also had bruising on his face and lips.
Dr. Saber al-Alul took part in the autopsy on Thursday at the Israeli forensic science institute but was prevented from revealing the autopsy results.
Another committee then conducted an autopsy on the body at the Palestinian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Abu Dis.
African-Americans Far more Likely to be Injured by Police than Whites
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | September 9, 2014
Being a black person in the United States comes with much greater risk than being white when involved in police incidents, federal health reporting statistics show.
Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Sunlight Foundation examined non-fatal injuries stemming from law enforcement encounters and found a significant gap in how whites and blacks are treated.
From 2001 to 2012, “black people suffered over five times as many nonfatal injuries per capita from law enforcement as white people did cumulatively,” Damian Ortellado wrote for the Sunlight Foundation. For black men, the injury rate per 100,000 people came out to 117, while for white men it was 21 per 100,000. In fact, white men had fewer total injuries than black men despite being involved in five times as many police incidents.
The numbers also showed that the same racial disparity existed among women as well as men, Ortellado found. “Using the same injury estimate to population count methodology yields nearly identical comparisons between black women and white women, where black women receive five times the rate of nonfatal injuries caused by law enforcement when compared to white women,” he wrote.
Profits Soar As Pentagon Leans on Private Corporations for Special Ops
New research shows how US Special Operations Command is outsourcing many of its most sensitive information activities, including interrogation, drone and psychological operations
By Jon Queally | Common Dreams | September 9, 2014
Private military contractors are reaping billions of dollars in profitable rewards from the U.S. government’s global network of clandestine counter-terrorism and other overseas operations, according to a new report that examines the high-levels of integration between for-profit corporations and the Pentagon’s global military and surveillance apparatus.
The new report—titled US Special Operations Command Contracting: Data-Mining the Public Record—written by researcher Crofton Black and commissioned by the U.K.-based Remote Control Project, shows that “corporations are integrated into some of the most sensitive aspects” of operations conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Command (or USSOCOM). Those activities, according to the report include: flying drones and overseeing target acquisition, facilitating communications between forward operating locations and central command hubs, interrogating prisoners, translating captured material, and managing the flow of information between regional populations and the US military.
“[USSOCOM] is outsourcing many of its most sensitive information activities, including interrogation, drone and psychological operations,” explained Black in a statement. “Remote warfare is increasingly being shaped by the private sector.”
And Caroline Donnellan, manager of the Remote Control project, said, “This report is distinctive in that it mines data from the generally classified world of US special operations. It reveals the extent to which remote control activity is expanding in all its facets, with corporations becoming more and more integrated into very sensitive elements of warfare. The report’s findings are of concern given the challenges remote warfare poses for effective investigation, transparency, accountability and oversight. This highlights the difficulties in assessing the impact and consequences of remote control activity.”
Reviewing its contents for The Intercept on Monday, journalist Ryan Gallagher observed how the unprecedented research documents troubling ways in which these private corporations have engaged in overseas operations. Describing it as a “corporate bonanza” for these contractor, Gallagher reports:
USSOCOM tendered a $1.5 billion contract that required support with “Psychological Operations related to intelligence and information operations.” Prospective contractors were told they would have to provide “military and civilian persuasive communications planning, produce commercial quality products for unlimited foreign public broadcast, and develop lines of persuasion, themes, and designs for multi-media products.” The contract suggested that aim of these “persuasion” operations was to “engage local populations and counter nefarious influences” in parts of Europe and Africa.
A separate document related to the same contract noted that one purpose of the effort was to conduct “market research” of al-Qaida and its affiliates in Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Northern Nigeria, and Somalia. Four American companies eventually won the $1.5 billion contract: Tennessee-based Jacobs Technology and Virginia-based Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI-WGI, and SRA International.
Notably, while some 3,000 contractors provided service in some capacity to USSOCOM, just eight of the contractors earned more than 50 percent of the $13 billion total identified in Black’s report. Those were: Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, Boeing, Harris Corporation, Jacobs Engineering Group, MA Federal, Raytheon, and ITT Corporation.
Read the executive summary of the report here. Read the full report here.
127 Palestinians Detained in Past Week
IMEMC News & Agencies | September 7, 2014
Israeli forces took at least 127 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank into custody, during the first week of September alone, according to recent statements by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
PPS said, according to Ma’an news, that most detainees came from the Hebron district, where 28 Palestinians were taken by Israeli forces.
PPS further stated that 23 of the detainees were from the Jenin district, in the northern West Bank, 21 from Ramallah, 20 from Jerusalem, 12 from Bethlehem, eight from Tulkarem, six from Nablus, three from Qalqiliya, and six from the Tubas/Salfit district.
Israeli forces abducted 10 Palestinians overnight, on Saturday, seven of whom were taken from Hebron, with one from Bethlehem, and two from Beit Sira village, western Ramallah district.
More than 7,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including some 2,000 detained during the massive arrest campaigns which have taken place over the last three months.
See also — 08/31/14 PPS: 597 Palestinians Arrested During August
Federal Court Blocks Release of Possible Torture Video
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | September 7, 2014
Efforts to expose videos and photos that documented torture at Guantánamo have been blocked by a federal appeals court in New York that sided with the Obama administration in its refusal to turn over the information.
The case centered on the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, dubbed the 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks. Captured in 2001 and held at Guantánamo since then, al-Qahtani has been subjected to torture and other harsh treatment during his detention, according to his lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).
CCR filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to force the administration to release photos and videos depicting its client’s abuse at the U.S. prison in Cuba.
There are reportedly 58 videos in the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kevin Gosztola wrote at Fire Dog Lake, which show Qahtani’s “activities in his cell and his interactions” with U.S. military personnel. Two videos allegedly depict “forced cell extractions” involving Qahtani that resulted in abusive or aggressive behavior on the part of his jailers.
But those recordings will not see the light of day anytime soon. The government successfully argued “with adequate specificity” that the footage and images “could logically and plausibly harm national security because these images are uniquely susceptible to use by anti-American extremists as propaganda to incite violence against United States interests domestically and abroad,” Judge José Cabranes wrote in the court’s opinion.
To Learn More:
Court: Releasing Images of Guantanamo Prisoner Would Incite Violence, Especially Since He Was Tortured (by Kevin Gosztola, Fire Dog Lake)
No Daylight for US Govt Photos, Video That May Show Gitmo Torture (by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams)
Circuit Keeps Lid Closed on al-Qahtani Footage (by Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service)
Center for Constitutional Rights v. Central Intelligence Agency (Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Group Sues U.S. Government to Force Release of Only Known Remaining Torture Video (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Prisoner hospitalized after being tortured in Israeli jail
Ma’an – 03/09/2014
RAMALLAH – A Palestinian prisoner has been moved to a hospital ward after undergoing torture at Israel’s Russian Compound detention center, a Palestinian Authority prisoners committee said Wednesday.
Muhammad Hussein Rabee, 33, from Beit Anan village near Ramallah, suffered health complications as a result of being tortured while being held at the Jerusalem detention center for 40 days, the committee said.
He was first moved to Hadassa hospital last week, and is now in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Rabee was detained on July 27 and his family did not find out his whereabouts until 30 days later.
“We did not know where Muhammad was until after a month of his detention, and his lawyer was not allowed to visit him until after 35 days of being at the Russian compound,” his brother Usama told Ma’an.
Rabee’s lawyer said he had been “harshly tortured.”
Former prisoner Khaldun Jumhur, who was being held in the Russian Compound with Rabee, said that interrogators used a method of putting pressure on the victim’s neck, as well as beating him on his hands, legs and head.
A doctor at the detention center requested an x-ray for Rabee, but was refused by the Shin Bet agency.
The Prisoner Affairs Committee demanded human rights organizations to hold Israel accountable for torturing Palestinian prisoners.
Some 4,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails launched hunger-strike action in 2013 to protest the death of Arafat Jaradat, who died in Israel’s Megido jail after being tortured by Israeli interrogators.
Around 7,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, more than 2,000 of whom were arrested over summer alone.
UK’s MI6 aided torture of Nepal rebels: Report
Press TV – August 31, 2014
British secret service MI6 has been accused of aiding Nepal’s authorities in the torture of Maoist rebels during the South Asian country’s civil war.
The accusations were made by author Thomas Bell in his new book Kathmandu citing sources in the Nepalese security establishment on Britain’s involvement in the country’s decade long civil war.
Bell said British authorities funded a four-year intelligence operation in Nepal in 2002 that financed safe houses and provided training in surveillance and counter-insurgency tactics to Nepal’s army and spy agency, the National Investigation Department (NID).
The British agency “also sent a small number of British officers to Nepal, around four or five — some tied to the embassy, others operating separately,” said Bell.
According to Bell, the British officers trained Nepalese authorities on how to place bugs, penetrate rebel networks and groom informers.
The sources said “British aid greatly strengthened” NID’s performance, which led to dozens of arrests, of which a number “were tortured and disappeared.”
One of the sources, a Nepalese general with close knowledge of the operation, argued that there was no doubt that British authorities realized that some of those detained would be tortured and killed.
Furthermore, Bell said that a senior Western official told him that the operation was cleared by Britain’s Foreign Office.
Bell said the findings revealed that “while calling for an end to abuses… the British were secretly giving very significant help in arresting targets whom they knew were very likely to be tortured.”
Tejshree Thapa, senior researcher at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, commented on the book’s findings saying, “Nepal’s army was known by 2002 to be an abusive force, responsible for… summary executions, torture, custodial detentions,” adding, “To support such an army is tantamount to entrenching and encouraging abuse and impunity.”
Nepal’s civil war between the government and Maoists lasted between 1996 and 2006 and left more than 16,000 people killed.
Ghosts of Olavarría: Human Rights Trial in Argentina Seeks Justice for Victims of Military Dictatorship
By Nick MacWilliam | Upside Down World | August 26, 2014
The central quarter of the Argentine city of Olavarría, with its leafy main square, whitewashed church, and historical architecture, merits its National Heritage status. Thanks to mineral extraction of the rock on which it stands, Olavarría is a prosperous and tranquil place, and home to the social science and engineering schools of the University of Buenos Aires Province. Now, however, this seemingly pleasant city has become the latest battleground in Argentina’s ongoing struggle to bring justice to those guilty of crimes during the military dictatorship of 1976–1983.
Olavarría, a city of around 100,000 inhabitants, is the setting for the upcoming trial of several ex-army officials accused of human rights abuses during the dictatorship. A high level of public interest surrounds the proceedings, due to one of the defendants’ alleged involvement in a case which has dominated national media in recent weeks.
In early August, the human rights organization Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo announced that the long-lost grandson of its president Estela de Carlotto had been identified and was living in Olavarría under a different name. Guido Montoya Carlotto had been taken from his detained mother in 1978 when just a few hours old, one of hundreds of babies born in captivity and then raised by families linked to the military authorities. In most cases, their biological parents were murdered by the military. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have campaigned since the 1970s to reunite the stolen babies with their natural families and to expose the guilty parties.
Estela de Carlotto The recent news, a welcome dose of positivity on front pages of the country’s newspapers, has received intense media interest. Estela de Carlotto is highly-respected within Argentine society for her tireless campaigning as president of the famous headscarf-wearing Grandmothers. But, as the story has moved on from its initial feel-good element, there are now many questions over who was responsible for taking Guido from his mother, Estela’s 22-year-old daughter Laura Carlotto, who was killed soon after giving birth. The father, Walmir Montoya, abducted alongside his pregnant partner, had been murdered several months earlier.
The spotlight has shifted to Olavarría, location of the impending trial and the city in which Guido Montoya had lived until recently as Ignacio Hurbán. Although the trial date was set several months ago, it is now alleged that one of the accused participated in the transfer of Laura Carlotto’s baby to an adoptive family. Laura, who was handcuffed to a stretcher throughout the entire labor and birthing process, spent only a few hours with her newborn before being returned to her cell at the La Cacha detention center in La Plata.
On September 22, a court will begin listening to evidence against a number of ex-military officials charged with crimes against humanity, including kidnapping, torture and murder, committed at the Monte Peloni detention center in Olavarría. The officials on trial are: the local commander, Ignacio Verdura; Chief of Intelligence, Walter Grosse; Officer Horacio Leites; and Sub-Officer Omar Ferreyra. All of them are currently serving sentences for earlier convictions. While the trial is not directly connected to the removal of the Montoya Carlotto baby, it is suspected that Verdura was involved in the appropriation of babies.
For the last few years, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have claimed that an Olavarría businessman, Carlos Francisco Aguilar, acted as an intermediary between the military and adoptive families. Aguilar, who died earlier this year, owned the land on which Guido Montoya’s adoptive parents worked and was known to have strong links to the armed forces and the church. As a wealthy landowner, he moved in the same social circles as high-ranking military figures, such as Ignacio Verdura, the then-chief of the regional 2nd Tank Regiment.
Throughout the 1970s, Olavarría was a site of left-wing militant activity, which brought the city to the military’s attention. State repression began with worker organizations before targeting the lawyers representing them, and later moving on to the student movement. Those who felt the heavy hand of the state included striking workers at the Loma Negra (Black Hill) cement company. The company’s response to the strike was to call in the military to end the dispute with detentions and other suppressive tactics.
Carlos Moreno was a lawyer who represented the Loma Negra workers. He was detained in Olavarría and tortured before being killed in May 1977. A trial in 2012 exposed links between the military and civilians who had allowed their property to be used for detaining prisoners. The trial also ordered an investigation into the role of Loma Negra, whose president was Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, one of the world’s wealthiest women until her death two years ago at the age of 90.
Speaking to the Página 12 newspaper, Moreno’s son Matías said companies such as Loma Negra reaped the benefits of military rule.
“Before the dictatorship, Loma Negra was suffering losses, but its profits tripled under the dictatorship. The abduction of my father was intended as a disciplinary measure, after which there was a fall in labor costs,” said Matías. This was the aim of all the abductions.”
He also revealed that Commander Verdura lived next-door to the Moreno family. Any neighborly recognition, however, was irrelevant when it came to the military eliminating its opponents.
The Monte Peloni detention centerThe Monte Peloni detention center, where the majority of those detained in the zone were held, was a farmhouse in the countryside near Olavarría. Several prisoners, many of whom remain disappeared, passed through the center, which was administrated by the 2nd Tank Regiment of Ignacio Verdura.
Among the crimes that Verdura and his cohorts stand accused of are the disappearance of a young couple, Isabel Gutiérrez and Juan Carlos Ledesma, the detention of Isabel’s father Francisco Gutiérrez, and the murders of Jorge Oscar Fernández and Alfredo Serafín Maccarini. The latter was a prison guard whose rumored empathy for political prisoners made him a target for the military. Another ex-prisoner, Lidia Araceli Gutiérrez, who was raped and tortured in Monte Peloni, is to give evidence at the trial.
The Olavarría trial is the latest step in the legal battle to hold those involved in the abuses of the dictatorship accountable. As many as 2,000 people connected to the dictatorship have been accused of complicity in abuses, as, according to Human Rights Watch, Argentina has made “significant progress in prosecuting military and police personnel for enforced disappearances, killings and torture during the country’s ‘Dirty War.’” Yet the fact remains that a great many of those who willingly participated in dictatorship abuses have yet to answer for their crimes.
The stealing of babies from people who were subsequently killed continues to be a matter of great sensitivity, as the majority of stolen babies are now unidentified adults living normal lives in Argentine society. The Guido Montoya case was the 114th positive identification of a baby forcibly removed from its biological parents. However, it is estimated that there are hundreds of other citizens now approaching middle-age with little idea of their true identities. For families of the disappeared, the discovery of lost relatives can serve as an act of closure for their longstanding grief. Having spent decades dwelling on the past, they are finally able to look ahead.
In 2012, the dictator Rafael Videla, already serving a life sentence for human rights abuses, was given a further 50 years for his part in the systematic transfer of babies from prisoners to families linked to the military regime. Several other officials, including the country’s last military leader Reynaldo Bignone, have been convicted and imprisoned for their involvement in abuses. Bignone, who like Videla had already been found guilty of torture and murder in earlier trials, was said by the court to be complicit in “the crimes of theft, retention and hiding of minors, as well as replacing their identities.”
But the campaign of forced removal was perpetrated at all levels of the military hierarchy. As Guido Montoya Carlotto said in a recent interview with the newspaper El Popular de Olavarría, in his hometown “there are people who have to thoroughly explain themselves … I hope that people learn to question that which has been covered up, so that this not only represents my restitution but also the restitution for other people experiencing doubts.”
As Argentina continues to come to terms with the traumas of military rule, stories like the Carlottos’ provide inspiration for the justice movement to keep fighting. Yet, this is a journey that is unlikely to ever be fully resolved. The entrenched political system of brutality and repression was too widespread to hold all the guilty to account. But each small step signifies progress. Many will be closely watching the Olavarría trial in the hope that Argentina continues on its path toward redemption.
Nick MacWilliam is a British freelance writer and editor based in Buenos Aires.
Israel tells Palestinian prisoners: We bombed your homes and killed your families
By Ibtisam Mahdi | Al-Akhbar | August 26, 2014
“We killed your brother and destroyed your family home.” The words hit the prisoner, Said Abu Shaluf, like a slap to the face. A few hours after bombing his home, Said was summoned by the Israeli prison administrators. They informed him that they killed his 31-year-old brother Abdel Rahman and destroyed their family home. This is Israel’s latest attempt to break the spirit of Palestinian prisoners, who dared to challenge the Israeli authorities through hunger strikes in more than one struggle, in a long line of struggles, for dignity. But who can hear the prisoners’ added pain now in light of the ongoing war on Gaza?
Abu Shaluf’s family tried to avoid informing their imprisoned son about the death of his brother Abdel Rahman or the destruction of their home by Israeli bombs, especially out of concern for his psychological state inside prison. But the Israelis beat the family and the media, where news is usually muddled yet moves quickly, delivering the devastating news in an insensitive manner. Since that day, the family learned that Said is in a very difficult psychological state, and he is refusing to eat even though his prison mates are trying to comfort and console him. This has naturally compounded his mother’s pain.
Abu Shaluf’s story is not unique. Before him, a 31-year-old prisoner called Basel Arif, who was serving two life sentences, was informed that Israeli forces killed four of his cousins in the massacre in al-Shujayeh neighborhood, east of Gaza City.
Other [Israeli] prison administrations have used a similar tactic. And so the story was repeated with a 24-year-old prisoner called Ahmed al-Soufi, who lost his brother Abdel Hadi and the homes of his family and relatives suffered major damage after an Israeli strike. The families of the two prisoners, Alaa Sheikh al-Eid (detained since December 2002) and Raafat Abu Snaimeh (detained since April 2009) said the Israelis also told their sons that their homes were destroyed. The same thing happened with prisoner Saleh Abu Shusheh (sentenced for 14 years) and all of them are residents of Rafah in southern Gaza.
The Fatah representative of the prisoners’ committee in Gaza, Nashaat al-Wahidi, stressed that the prisoners’ living and health conditions are deteriorating in light of Israel’s vengeful policies that are escalating as the assault on Gaza rages on. “The prisons’ administrations exploited the fact that people are preoccupied with the war and distracted from the plight of the prisoners to impose on them extra punishment, such as reducing the time they can be outside from four to two hours daily and allowing only 15 prisoners out at one time,” he added.
Some of the other penalties, according to Wahidi, include reducing each prisoner’s stipend from 1,200 shekel to 400 ($300 to $110), reducing family visits to half an hour every month, and disconnecting seven satellite channels out of 10. Two channels of the three that are left are in Hebrew.
Despite these penalties, Wahidi told Al-Akhbar that what weighs down on the prisoners the most is the psychological state that accompanies the war.
“Those whose homes are not destroyed or whose families are not hurt spend their time consoling their colleagues, worrying for their families and following the news,” he said.
Wahidi pointed out that prisoners have been deprived of the ability to follow the news of what their families are subjected to in Gaza after the prison administration decided to cancel Palestine TV and “prevented them from communicating with their families to check on them, not to mention the provocative searches and messing with their personal belongings as they look for cell phones.”
According to sources close to the prisoners, the Israeli Prison Service imposed strict penalties at the Megiddo Prison in north of occupied Palestine after the administration heard cries of “God is Great” emanating from prison cells when prisoners heard that the Resistance captured an Israeli soldier. The administration closed certain prison sections, prevented the prisoners from going out and buying stuff from the prison shop and suspended the broadcast of TV stations.
But the war did not only affect prisoners inside Israeli jails, it also affected those who have been liberated, especially those who were released during the 2011 Loyalty to the Free prisoner exchange deal. They are living through the second war since their release, compounded by the fact some of them had their homes bombed by the Israeli forces. One of the liberated prisoners exiled to Gaza is Hilal Jaradat, his apartment in one of the towers in al-Zahraa City in central Gaza which was recently bombed and badly damaged.
The house of another liberated prisoner, 54-year-old Mohammed Nashbat, in al-Nusairat refugee camp in central Gaza was hit and Nashbat is being treated overseas, especially since he came out of prison suffering from a heart disease. Another prisoner, liberated with the first group of prisoners prior to Oslo, 41-year-old Ayman Abu Sitta, lives in the al-Zawayda area in central Gaza. His home was completely destroyed.
According to an unofficial count, the Israeli occupation targeted seven other homes belonging to liberated prisoners during the course of this recent war. The Ministry of Prisoner Affairs said there are extensive and comprehensive punitive measures exercised against the prisoners linked to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad since before the war began, specifically after the Israeli authorities announced the disappearance of three settlers in Hebron. These measures intensified during the current war.
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Why Saudi Ties to 9/11 Mean U.S. Ties to 9/11
By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | September 27, 2015
Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples. … continue
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