Oscar-nominated Palestinian director detained at LAX
By Yumna Marwan | Al-Akhbar | February 20, 2013
Palestinian director of Oscar-nominated “5 Broken Cameras” Emad Burnat was detained at Los Angeles airport and threatened with deportation Wednesday, Burnat told Al-Akhbar in an interview.
The filmmaker traveled to Los Angeles, from Palestine via Turkey, to attend Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, where his film had been nominated for the “Best Documentary” category.
The director was interrogated, detained for an hour and a half, and had his fingerprints taken twice. Airport officers googled his name to confirm that he had indeed been nominated for an Oscar.
LAX officials at first told Burnat they intended to deny him entry to the United States. “I told them I don’t care if you send me back to Palestine, just don’t detain me for any longer,” Burnat said.
His wife and eight-year-old son, who is the documentary’s main character, were also held at the airport.
During his layover in Turkey’s Istanbul, Burnat was also questioned by airport security officials.
Asked whether he thought he was sought out because of his film, Burnat said: “I don’t know, but this is the first time this happens. I’ve been to the States six times in the last year.”
“5 Broken Cameras” documents non-violent resistance in Bil’in, a Palestinian village surrounded by Israeli settlements and Palestine’s Apartheid Wall.
The US$400,000 documentary was made with contributions from Israeli and French government film funds. Its title refers to the number of cameras that Burnat, the filmmaker and main protagonist, had broken by Israeli forces as he tried to film weekly demonstrations against the military.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was the first to break the news of Burnat’s detainment, because the Palestinian director’s detainment kept him away from a dinner party for nominees where Moore was present. Moore announced Burnat’s ordeal on his Twitter account.
“Apparently the Immigration & Customs officers couldn’t understand how a Palestinian could be an Oscar nominee. Emad texted me for help.” wrote Moore in his Twitter account this morning.
Burnat won the documentary director’s award at the Sundance Film Festival this year.
Honduras: Murdered Lawyer’s Brother Killed in Aguán
Weekly News Update on the Americas | February 17, 2013
Unidentified assailants shot Honduran campesino José Trejo Cabrera on the evening of February 16th as he was riding on his motorbike to his home in the San Isidro section of Tocoa in the northern department of Colón. Trejo was taken to a local hospital, where he died a few minutes later. The victim’s brother, Antonio Trejo Cabrera, an attorney who defended campesino activists and fiercely opposed plans for autonomous “model cities” in Honduras, was gunned down the evening of September 22, 2012, in Tegucigalpa near the Toncontín International Airport [see Update #1145]. Both brothers were members of the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA), one of several campesino collectives seeking the return of land in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras that they say big landowners bought illegally.
The conservative Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna reported that according to several neighbors the attackers were trying to steal Trejo’s motorbike, but Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesperson for the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), told the French wire service AFP that the killers had been “waiting for” Trejo. Some 85 campesinos have been killed in the Aguán since the land dispute intensified in late 2009; two were murdered just two weeks earlier, on Feb. 2 [see Update #1163]. The government of President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa has militarized Colón department, claiming that this would reduce violence both from the land disputes and from common crime, but many campesinos feel the militarization was actually directed against them. “We don’t understand how we can go on being killed in a department that’s under siege by the army and the police,” Alvarez remarked.
Another campesino, Santos Jacobo Cartagena, was gunned down a few hours before Trejo on the afternoon of February 16th. Unidentified men riding in a car shot Cartagena, a MUCA member, as he was waiting for a bus at the La Confianza community. “More murders can be expected after the persecution and threats against the campesinos who struggle for land,” the Permanent Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán, a Honduran human rights group, wrote on February 16th. (Vos el Soberano 2/16/13; La Tribuna 2/17/13; AFP 2/17/13 via Terra.com; Conexihon.info (Honduras) 2/17/13)
Israel changes law to allow re-arrest of freed prisoners
MEMO | February 18, 2013
A leading Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, revealed on Sunday that the occupation authority has amended its military law to allow the re-arrest of 14 Palestinian prisoners who were freed as part of the Shalit deal. The released prisoners are now expected to serve the remainder of their original sentences, in some cases decades.
Palestinian human rights organizations view the arrest of the released prisoners as a serious breach of the agreement brokered in October 2011 by the Egyptian and German governments between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Israeli authorities.
The newspaper noted that under the new amendment the Israeli authorities are not obliged to prove the case for the re-arrest of released prisoners. It referred to a petition filed by Ahlam Haddad, the legal counsel for two prisoners, in which she pointed out that a driving offence or staying illegally in Israel were enough to return any released prisoner back to prison to spend his remaining decades; without the need to prove these charges.
Obama Regime Refuses to Investigate Alleged DEA Killing of Women and Child in Honduras
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | February 17, 2013
Democrats on Capitol Hill want the Obama administration to investigate the deaths of four civilians in Honduras last year during an anti-cocaine raid involving U.S. law enforcement agents. But administration officials have balked at the request.
On May 11, 2012, four villagers in a boat on the River Patuca, two pregnant women, a 21-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy, were killed when local police entered the town of Ahuas in northeastern Honduras to conduct a counternarcotics operation. Another four boat passengers were injured by gunfire. It was later learned that members of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) participated in the raid, which raised questions of whether Americans were responsible for the killings.
The Honduran government investigated the incident and concluded the DEA was not at fault for the deaths.
But 58 House Democrats were not satisfied with the probe, which they called “deeply flawed” in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. calling for the U.S. to conduct its own examination.
Officials with the State Department and the Department of Justice said their agencies have no intention of reopening the matter, according to The Washington Times.
More:
Government Won’t Probe of DEA Raid in Honduras (by Guy Taylor, Washington Times)
Collateral Damage of a Drug War (Center for Economic and Policy Research) (pdf)
Related articles
Stranded in Shuhada: Hebron’s Qurtuba school
By Salam Muharam – Ma’an – 15/02/2013
HEBRON — Children and teachers at Qurtuba school in Hebron say getting to class past Israeli soldiers and settlers is like navigating a minefield every day.
The school, for children aged 7 to 16, is adjacent to the illegal Jewish settlement of Beit Hadassah in the center of the West Bank city.
Israeli forces fenced off the school’s stairs with barbed wire in 2002. Now the only route to the school is a muddy path up a steep hill.
Some pupils live beside the school, but have to walk two kilometers around a circuit to reach the entrance, Najah Abu Munshar, a teacher in the school told Ma’an.
Across the street from the school, “Gas the Arabs” has been scrawled on a door. Next to the school gates, a mural of a girl holding a book, painted by a French activist, has been covered by racist graffiti. A gallery in a school corridor shows photos of Israeli soldiers and settlers assaulting students.
International volunteers escort children to and from school as a protective measure, but pupils and teachers are still frequently harassed and assaulted on their way to the school, which has been vandalized and set on fire.
“School students start their day by crossing the checkpoint of Shuhada street. I can only describe daily life at Qurtuba school as suffering and struggle,” school principal Noura Nasser told Ma’an.
Teachers must also pass an Israeli checkpoint and metal detectors to get to work, and Israeli soldiers decide whether to let them pass each day.
Pupil Yasmeen Ghareb, 12, says settlers have assaulted her and her siblings. “Sometimes they say bad words to me, and sometimes they throw fluids at me on my way to school.”
Yasmeen Ghareb stands in front of a checkpoint on her way to school
(MaanImages/Salam Muharam)
Other students told Ma’an that settlers have attacked them with stones, water and rotten vegetables.
Najah Abu Munshar has taught at Qurtaba school for 15 years. “The settlers used to let their dogs attack the students, and when settlers attack a student, I try my best to calm him or her down, and if he or she has any wounds, I provide first aid,” she told Ma’an.
The Ministry of Education hired a psychological counselor for the school, to work with children suffering psychological trauma which often manifests as bed wetting, Nasser, the school principal, told Ma’an. “The school focuses on the extracurricular activities and days of joy.”
Nasser said settler attacks were usually heightened during periods of political instability.
A grid of walls, fences and checkpoints divides Jewish settlers and Palestinians who live in close proximity to each other in Hebron, which was divided into two sections in the 1997 Hebron Agreement.
The Palestinian Authority controls the larger area, while Israeli forces control the city center, including the old market, the Ibrahimi Mosque and the historic Old City.
Qurtaba school lies on Shuhada street, a once-bustling thoroughfare and now a shuttered ghost town, with a military checkpoint restricting Palestinians’ access to this part of the city.
Israel started restricting access to Shuhada street after an Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein broke into the Ibrahimi Mosque and shot dead 29 Palestinians.
During the second intifada, Israel closed the street to traffic and many traders were not even able to collect their goods before their shops were welded shut.
Palestinian families who remained on Shuhada street must climb through side doors and across rooftops to get to their homes.
Waed Zeidan al-Sharabati, a 9-year-old pupil at Qurtuba school who lives on Shuhada street, recounted to Ma’an how settlers assaulted her and her cousin in 2011 when they were harvesting almonds nearby.
“They threw stones on us… The settler kidnapped my cousin, and I called the neighbor to come check the situation. My neighbor talked to the settlers, and after a long argument, my cousin was returned. One settler threw a stone on my leg. They tried to take me another time, but I escaped to my neighbor’s wife, and she hid my inside her home, and closed the door.”
“I got used to it, and at the beginning I used to be scared, but now I am not scared of them,” she told Ma’an.
Ward al-Sharabati, 9, lives on Shuhada street, a hub of settler violence in the West Bank
(MaanImages/Salam Muharam)
Related articles
- Local activist detained in Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Israeli occupation forces kill woman near Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Israeli army dogs attack elderly Palestinian, two-year-old child injured in the head in Jewish settlers’ attack (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Israel detains Palestinian cartoonist, family says (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Message from Samer el Issawi, day 209 hunger strike
February 16, 2013
“I turn with admiration to the masses of our heroic Palestinian people, to our Palestinian leadership, to all forces, parties and national institutions. I salute them for standing by our fight to defend our right to freedom and dignity.
I draw my strength from my people, from all the free people in the world, from friends and the families of the prisoners who continue day and night chanting for freedom and an end to the occupation.
My health has deteriorated dramatically and I’m hung between life and death. My weak body is collapsing but still able to be patient and continue the confrontation. My message is that I will continue until the end, until the last drop of water in my body, until martyrdom. Martyrdom is an honor for me in this battle. My martyrdom is my remaining bomb in the confrontation with the tyrants and the jailers, in the face of the racist policy of the occupation that humiliates our people and exercises against us all means of oppression and repression.
I say to my people: I’m stronger than the occupation army and its racist laws. I, Samer al-Issawi, son of Jerusalem, send you my last will that, in case I fell as a martyr, you will carry my soul as a cry for all the prisoners, man and women, cry for freedom, emancipation and salvation from the nightmare of prisons and their harsh darkness.
My battle is not only for individual freedom. The battle waged by me and by my heroic colleagues, Tariq, Ayman and Ja’affar, is everyone’s battle, the battle of the Palestinian people against the occupation and its prisons. Our goal is to be free and sovereign in our liberated state and in our blessed Jerusalem.
The weak and strained beats of my heart derive their steadfastness from you, the great people. My eyes, which started to lose their sight, draws light from your solidarity and your support of me. My weak voice takes its strength from your voice that is louder than the warden’s voice and higher than the walls.
I’m one of your sons, among thousands of your sons who are prisoners, still languishing steadfast in the prisons, waiting for an end to be brought to their plight, their pains and the suffering of their families.
The doctors told me I became exposed to stroke because of the disorder of my heartbeats, the shortage of sugar and the drop in blood pressure. My body is full of cold and I can’t sleep because of the continued pain. But despite the extreme fatigue and chronic headaches, as I move on my chair, I’m trying to summon all my resources to continue on the road till its end. There is no going back, only in my victory, because I’m the owner of Right and my detention is invalid and illegal.
Do not be afraid for my heart if it will stop, don’t be afraid for my hands if they will be paralyzed. I am still alive now and tomorrow and after death, because Jerusalem is moving in my blood, in my devotion and my faith.”
**Via Rona Merrill, Neta Golan
Related article
- Shireen Al-Issawi: PA did not take prisoners’ issue to the UN (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Academy Awards for the Promotion of Torture?
By Dave Clennon | Dissident Voice | February 16th, 2013
I’m a member of Hollywood’s Motion Picture Academy. At the risk of being expelled, for disclosing my intentions, I will not be voting for Zero Dark Thirty — in ANY Academy Awards category.
Everyone who contributes skill and energy to a motion picture — including actors — shares responsibility for the impressions the picture makes and the ideas it expresses. If I had played the role that was offered to me on Fox’s 24 (Season 7), I would have been guilty of promoting torture, and I couldn’t have evaded my own responsibility by blaming the writers and directors.
So Jessica Chastain won’t get my vote for Best Actress. With her beauty and her tough-but-vulnerable posturing, she almost succeeds in making extreme brutality look weirdly heroic.
There’s plenty of “Oscar buzz” around Zero Dark Thirty. Several associations of film critics have awarded it their highest honors. I have watched the film (2hrs, 37min). Although torture is an appalling crime under any circumstances, Zero never acknowledges that torture is immoral and criminal. It does portray torture as getting results. The name of Osama Bin Laden’s courier is revealed (in the movie) by a “detainee,” Ammar, who has endured prolonged and horrifying torture.
The two lead interrogators, both white, are not torturing Ammar at the moment he gives up the name (Abu Ahmed), but he is still utterly depleted from at least 96 hours of sleep-deprivation, and he knows they will torture him again, if he resists. “Y’know, I can … hang you back up to the ceiling,” says chief interrogator Dan.
The “moral” of this particular screen story? Torture sometimes works. Not always. Later, the female interrogator (and Zero’s heroine Maya [Chastain]), supervises
the “enhanced interrogation” of another detainee, Faraj. These are some of the enhancements we see her employ: first, a thick brown liquid is poured into a funnel which has been pushed into Faraj’s mouth and rammed part-way down his throat; then Maya supervises his beating and near-drowning (aka waterboarding); he gasps for air, gags, shudders and chokes.
Director Kathryn Bigelow then shows Chastain in a clean, well-lighted restroom, looking pretty, but tired and frustrated; Bigelow does not give us a view of Faraj after HIS ordeal. Next we see Maya complaining to her mentor Dan that Faraj hasn’t cracked. “You want to take a run at him?” she asks, smiling hopefully.)
In minute 45 of Zero, we learn that Faraj has “gone south.” Maya’s relentless, merciless torture has finally killed her detainee. She is now a murderer. So, for the next hour and 45 minutes, we’re rooting for a gorgeous, murdering thug to track down a charismatic, murdering jihadist.
If, in fact, torture is a crime (a mortal sin, if you will) — a signal of a nation’s descent into depravity — then it doesn’t matter whether it “works” or not. Zero Dark Thirty clearly condones torture. Not a single character involved in “The Greatest Manhunt in History” expresses any regret about the CIA’s use of torture. Maya/Chastain gets her man (code named “Geronimo”!) and that’s all that counts. The end justifies the vicious means.
Individuals and groups protesting the easy tolerance of torture in Zero Dark Thirty have been dismissed by some commentators as having “a political agenda.” The grievous problem presented by torture is NOT political. It’s moral. And it’s criminal. Decent people of the left, the right, and the center would all judge the torture in Zero Dark Thirty as immoral and criminal.
If the deeply racist landmark film Birth of a Nation were released today, would we vote to honor it? Would we give an award to Leni Riefenstahl’s brilliant pro-Nazi documentary, Triumph of the Will? Hundreds of millions around the world watch the Oscars, we’re told. Are we going to show the world that we Americans STILL approve of torture?
After Jessica Chastain won Zero Dark Thirty’s only Golden Globe Award, it occurred to me that she is the new face of American torture — as Kiefer Sutherland was, for several years. If the Academy votes her an Oscar, it wouldn’t be surprising if the world community concluded that the U.S.A. still tolerates this vicious, criminal behavior.
Sometimes, it’s not just a movie. And acting in it isn’t just a job. It’s a moral choice.
Dave Clennon can be reached at djjc123@earthlink.net.
Related articles
- Oscar-nominated Palestinian director detained at LAX
- Hollywood’s Imperial Propaganda
- Abe Lincoln, Racist Fascist?
- Hollywood myths harming the whole world: Ken O’Keefe
- Academy Awards for the Promotion of Torture?
- Oscar Prints the Legend: Argo’s Upcoming Academy Award and the Failure of Truth
- Hollywood Snubs Best Film as ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Odds Fade – Bloomberg
Double Standards for Prisoners Vanished In Israel
By Yahya Dbouk | Al-Akhbar | February 15, 2013
The case of Ben Zygier, known as “Prisoner X,” has opened the door to questions about the possibility of Israel secretly detaining other prisoners and abductees.
Zygier, a Jewish-Australian citizen, died in an Israeli prison two years ago, in a case Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up, imposing media gag orders.
This is not the first time Israel has hidden information related to the whereabouts and conditions of prisoners. Consider, for example, reports of the three Iranian diplomats kidnapped by the Lebanese Forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, who were reportedly moved to prisons in occupied Palestine.
Then consider the case of Lebanese prisoner Yahya Skaf. In addition to a wealth of reporting on his case, testimonies by other detainees all aver that he is still alive and being held in an Israeli prison. It’s a claim that Tel Aviv denies, maintaining that it lost Skaf’s body.
In the same vein, reports from various sources assert that Iranian General Mohammed Reza Asgari, who was kidnapped in Turkey in 2007, is being held in Israel.
Until recently, the global norm was to accept that Israel is a state where the rule of law is paramount. Any reports that questioned Israel’s democratic credentials were considered prejudiced or even anti-Semitic.
Yet if Tel Aviv was able to conceal the truth about Zygier for so long – the fact that he had committed suicide more than two years ago – then it’s entirely fathomable that Israel is withholding the truth about other prisoners like Skaf, Asgari, and the above-mentioned Iranian diplomats.
The answer is now clear and backed up by damning evidence: Israel has both the capability and the willingness to engage in such acts.
A simple hypothetical exercise. Let’s say the kidnapping, detention, and subsequent suicide of the Australian Prisoner X had happened to another detainee of a different nationality. How would the global media reaction differ? Would it have been as fervent as with the Australian Prisoner X?
Just look to the cases of the Lebanese and Iranian detainees, specifically with the three Iranian diplomats and General Asgari. Iran repeatedly declared that it had evidence as to their whereabouts, and the Iranian press reported extensively on the matter. Yet Israeli denials were enough to refute the Iranian account. Western and Israeli reports did not stop there, and Iran was even mocked as a source of fabricated news.
The same applies to cases involving Lebanese citizens, such as Skaf. Israel cannot possibly deny it has him, and that he had entered occupied Palestine. For one thing, Tel Aviv’s claims about Skaf and his lost body make little sense. If he had been a citizen of Australia, or other nations of similar stature, Israel’s account would have differed.
Israeli assertions that Tel Aviv had kept the Australian government in the loop on Prisoner X created more – not less – ramifications. Indeed, Israel is not only able to hide the facts and detain people in secret, but also to involve Western governments in the cover-up.
Italy Imprisons Military Intelligence Chief for Helping CIA Kidnap Egyptian Cleric
By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky | AllGov | February 15, 2013
Unable to imprison the Americans behind the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, Italy has successfully jailed five Italians who took part in the 2003 controversy, including the government’s former military intelligence chief.
Niccolò Pollari was sentenced to 10 years in prison for complicity in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) abduction of Abu Omar (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr). His former deputy, Marco Mancini, received nine years, and three Italian secret service officials were sentenced to six years each.
In November 2009, an Italian court tried 23 Americans (all but one of whom worked for the CIA) in absentia for the Abu Omar kidnapping. All of the convicted received jail sentences of seven years, except for Robert Seldon Lady, the former Milan CIA station chief, who had his sentence increased to nine years after appealing. During the original trial, Lady told an Italian newspaper he was not guilty—but also indicated he may have been involved in the abduction. “I’m only responsible for carrying out orders that I received from my superiors,” he told Il Giornale. The U.S. government has refused to turn over any of those convicted.
After being abducted, Abu Omar was transferred to U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany and eventually shipped to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. “You cannot imagine,” he told Human Rights Watch. “I was hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electric shocks…. I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too.”
The CIA later allowed him to be released after determining that he was not actually a part of a terrorist organization.
To Learn More:
Italy’s Ex-Intelligence Chief Given 10-Year Sentence For Role In CIA Kidnapping (by Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian)
Egypt floods Gaza lifeline tunnels
Al-Akhbar | February 13, 2013
Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said.
The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a deadly blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years.
Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on Sunday, sending workers rushing for safety. Locals said two other tunnels were likewise flooded, with Egyptians deliberately pumping in water.
“The Egyptians have opened the water to drown the tunnels,” said Abu Ghassan, who supervises the work of 30 men at one tunnel some 200 meters (yards) from the border fence.
An Egyptian security official in the Sinai told Reuters the campaign started five days ago.
“We are using water to close the tunnels by raising water from one of the wells,” he said, declining to be named.
While Gaza’s rulers have been reluctant to criticize Mursi in public, ordinary Gazans are slightly more vocal.
“Egyptian measures against tunnels have worsened since the election of Mursi. Our Hamas brothers thought he would open up Gaza. I guess they were wrong,” said a tunnel owner, who identified himself only as Ayed, fearing reprisal.
“Perhaps 150 or 200 tunnels have been shut since the Sinai attack. This is the Mursi era,” he added.
Dozens of tunnels had been destroyed since last August following the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in a militant attack near the Gaza fence.
Cairo said some of the gunmen had crossed into Egypt via the tunnels – a charge denied by Palestinians – and ordered an immediate crackdown.
The move surprised and angered Gaza’s rulers, the Islamist group Hamas, which had hoped for much better ties with Cairo following the election last year of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist who is ideologically close to Hamas.
A Hamas official confirmed Egypt was again targeting the tunnels. He gave no further details and declined to speculate on the timing of the move, which started while Palestinian faction leaders met in Cairo to try to overcome deep divisions.
The tunnelers fear the water being pumped underground might collapse the passage ways, with possible disastrous consequences.
“Water can cause cracks in the wall and may cause the collapse of the tunnel. It may kill people,” said Ahmed Al-Shaer, a tunnel worker whose cousin died a year ago when a tunnel caved in on him.
Six Palestinians died in January in tunnel implosions, raising the death toll amongst workers to 233 since 2007, according to Gazan human rights groups, including an estimated 20 who died in various Israeli air attacks on the border lands.
Israel imposed its vicious blockade on the coastal strip in 2007. Food imports to Gaza were cut by nearly 75 percent, from 400 trucks per day to 106 by the start of the blockade.
At one stage an estimated 2,500-3,000 tunnels snaked their way under the desert fence but the network has shrunk markedly since 2010, when Israel eased some of the limits they imposed on imports into the coastal enclave.
All goods still have to be screened before entering Gaza and Israel says some restrictions must remain on items that could be used to make or to store weapons.
This ensures the tunnels are still active, particularly to bring in building materials. Hamas also prefers using the tunnels to smuggle in fuel, thereby avoiding custom dues that are payable on oil crossing via Israel.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
Colombia: Drummond Contractor Convicted in Unionists’ Deaths
Weekly News Update on the Americas | February 11, 2013
On Jan. 25 Colombian judge William Andrés Castiblanco sentenced Jaime Blanco, a former contractor for the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company, to 37 years and 11 months in prison for masterminding the March 2001 murders of two union leaders in the northern department of Cesar. The court found that Blanco, who supplied food services for Drummond’s La Loma mine, had arranged with rightwing paramilitaries, including one known as “Tolemaida,” for the killing of Valmore Locarno and Víctor Hugo Orcasita, leaders of the mine’s union. Blanco’s assistant, Jairo Charris, was convicted in 2009 in the same murder plot and was sentenced to 30 years.
Judge Castiblanco also sent trial records to Colombian prosecutors so that they could investigate other people possibly connected to the crimes: Drummond’s president, Garry Drummond; two company directors, Augusto Valencia and Jean Adkins; Alfredo Araújo Castro, Drummond’s public relations director for Cesar; and former Colombian legislator Jorge Castro Pacheco, who was convicted in 2010 of maintaining ties to paramilitary organizations. In addition, the judge supported a request by the victims’ relatives to ask the Supreme Court to investigate former assistant prosecutor Edgardo Maya for allegedly failing to act to protect unionists in Cesar; Maya is Jaime Blanco’s half-brother.
Drummond management has long been suspected of involvement of the murders of Locarno and Orcasita and of another La Loma unionist, Gustavo Soler, who was killed later in 2001. The US-based International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steelworkers (USW) union filed a civil suit against Drummond in March 2002 under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute in federal court in Birmingham, Alabama, where the company is based. The Birmingham jury found the company not liable in 2007, but ILRF executive director Terry Collingsworth announced plans to appeal [see Update #911]. In an April 2011 interview Blanco told the Associated Press wire service that Drummond senior managers ordered the murders of Locarno and Orcasita and that if he was convicted, they would be able to “wash their hands” of the case. (El Tiempo (Bogotá) 2/5/13; Miami Herald 2/6/13 from AP)
Related article
- Mine contractor jailed for trade unionists’ murders (morningstaronline.co.uk)
Featured Video
Iran is (probably) collecting tolls, and why Asia stopped buying oil from the US
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
The Great Recycling Scam
By Dr. Vernon Coleman – 21st Century Wire – September 2, 2022
Recycling was introduced, worldwide, as a tool to teach citizens to become compliant.
Forcing citizens to sort their rubbish into up to nine separate bags or boxes every week had absolutely nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’ and everything to do with teaching citizens (through a mixture of fines and shame) to behave ‘responsibly’ i.e. to do as they were told without looking too closely at the rationale of what they were being told to do.
The recycling never had anything to do with protecting the planet, of course. Most of the rubbish sorted, washed and collected in the UK was taken abroad, by lorry or ship or train, and burnt or dumped. It was, quite simply, impractical and not cost effective to recycle the material that had been collected. And, of course, collecting the sorted rubbish involved massive costs in terms of cash and pollution.
Today, the recycling business has reached an apogee of lunacy. Councils introduce ever more complex rules and fees. They refuse to take away much of the waste that is collected. And those wanting to take their rubbish to a ‘recycling’ centre will probably have to make an appointment and answer a host of questions.
It is no surprise that fly-tipping has become a major problem. The biggest causes of plastic in the sea are dumped fishing gear and plastic waste (much of it officially designated as recycled) which has been dumped by ships.
The good news, however, is that in Britain, recycling rates are falling. More and more people have become aware that the whole recycling movement was just another piece of manipulative trickery.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
- Lithuania plans universal conscription
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- Financial Times rejects Nordic demands to correct Putin call story – media
- The Case for Less Unity in Europe
- Ukraine expands minority rights under EU pressure – but Russians remain excluded
- Albania takes anti-riot crackdown cue from France
- The interest of the House of Rothschild in Ukraine
- Pentagon fires top military planner
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
