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US withdraws scholarships to Gaza students

Al Akhbar | October 15, 2012

The American Consulate in Jerusalem has withdrawn scholarships awarded to students in Gaza to study in the United States after Israel announced it would deny them permission to travel outside the coastal enclave, the Associated Press reported Monday.

“Under Israeli pressure, US officials have quietly canceled a two-year-old scholarship program for students in the Gaza Strip, undercutting one of the few American outreach programs to people in the Hamas-ruled territory,” the AP reported.

It added: “The program now faces an uncertain future, just two years after being launched with great fanfare by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a visit to the region.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton, January 2007The program, launched in 2010, offered about 30 students from the West Bank and Gaza scholarships to study at US universities.

Israel, which has imposed a paralyzing land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007, allowed the students to travel when the program originally launched, but now cites security concerns over its decision to deny them travel permits.

Israel bans Palestinians of Gaza from travelling to the West Bank except in rare cases. The ban also applies to students who want to travel to the West Bank to study.

Israel’s supreme court last month upheld the ban after rights groups petitioned to allow five students from Gaza to travel to the West Bank for a master’s program.

October 15, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Montana SWAT raid leaves 12-year-old girl with second-degree burns

RT | October 13, 2012

The parents of a 12-year-old girl are asking for answers from the Billings, Montana SWAT team after a flash-bang grenade was tossed into their daughter’s bedroom, sending the preteen to a local emergency room with second-degree burns.

Armed police officers busted down the door of the Fasching family’s West End Billings home on Tuesday to execute a search warrant filed by the City-County Special Investigations Unit as part of an ongoing narcotics investigation. Before they could do as much, though, an agent with the SWAT team on the scene prematurely detonated a stun grenade that is reported to have caused not just substantial damage to the home but its occupants as well, including a 12-year-old girl only inches away from where the device was deployed.

“She has first- and second-degree burns down the left side of her body and on her arms,” mother Jackie Fasching tells The Missoulian newspaper. “She’s got severe pain. Every time I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes.”

The girl, whose name is being withheld, was in her sister’s room when the SWAT team stormed the house early Tuesday. And while she has since been treated and released twice from a local hospital, pictures from the aftermath provided to the Missoulian by her parents show that the family didn’t suffer from just a minor mishap.

“I’m going to have to take them to counseling,” Mrs. Fasching says. “They’re never going to get over that.”

The early-morning raid occurred at around 6 a.m. when the entire family was home, and while the Billings Police Department says they took all precautions to minimize injury, they’re now apologizing for the injury their misconduct has caused.

“It was totally unforeseen, totally unplanned and extremely regrettable,” Police Chief Rich St. John tells the paper. “We certainly did not want a juvenile, or anyone else for that matter, to get injured.”

According to the story the department has provided to the paper, a member of the SWAT team accidently dropped a standard “flash-bang” grenade from a metal pole placed up to a bedroom window of the house without realizing that the device operated off a slight delay. The weapons are regularly used to disorient people in the immediate vicinity with a bright flash, loud bang and concussive blast, the paper writes. When it detonated inside the Fasching home, though, it was on the floor next the child.

Jackie Fasching says all of this could have been avoided if the police would have just used their manners.

“A simple knock on the door and I would’ve let them in,” she tells the paper. “They said their intel told them there was a meth lab at our house. If they would’ve checked, they would’ve known there’s not.”

Chief St. John says that the amount and significance of intelligence made available to the department was enough to warrant a raid either way, and said that the department weighed their investigation carefully before determining that a surprise visit was the best way to search the house.

“Every bit of information and intelligence that we have comes together and we determine what kind of risk is there,” he tells the Missoulian. “The warrant was based on some hard evidence and everything we knew at the time.”

“If we’re wrong or made a mistake, then we’re going to take care of it,” he adds. “But if it determines we’re not, then we’ll go with that. When we do this, we want to ensure the safety of not only the officers, but the residents inside.”

Three days after the raid, the department has yet to file any charges against members of the Fasching household and no one in the family has been taken into custody.

~~~

See also image of the indention produced by the grenade on the bedroom wall.

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October 13, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Rights groups raise alarm over settler attacks on olive trees

Ma’an – 12/10/2012

BETHLEHEM – As the West Bank olive harvest season begins, two Israeli rights groups released reports this week criticizing Israeli authorities for failing to protect Palestinians from settler violence, or investigate attacks.

Over the past week, Palestinian farmers have reported almost daily attacks on harvesters and olive groves in the West Bank.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem said on Thursday it had documented five of the attacks since Sunday.

That day, the Abu Fahaida family found 25 ancient olive trees destroyed in al-Janiya, west of Ramallah.

B’Tselem said Israeli forces had been called to the same olive grove the day before after a group of settlers confronted the family, noting that the army’s presence did not prevent the vandalism.


Jumaah Abu Fahaida examines the damage to his olive trees. (Iyad Hadad, B’Tselem)

Also Sunday, farmers from nearby Beitillu village going to harvest were attacked with stones by ten masked settlers, who are also suspected of setting fire to the field.

B’Tselem said Israeli soldiers faced difficulties controlling the settler group and removed the Palestinian harvesters while firing in the air.

On Tuesday, Palestinian farmers from Nablus villages Farata and Amatin found thieves had already harvested olives from around 220 trees on their land near the illegal Havat Gilad outpost.

In nearby Qaryut village the same day, farmers found more than 80 of their olive trees had been severely damaged.


One of the damaged trees at Qaryut. (Salma a-Debi, B’Tselem)

On Wednesday, Israeli authorities notified Ratib Naasan, from Ramallah village al-Mughayir, that his olive trees had been damaged. Naasan found around 140 olive trees stripped and vandalized.

B’Tselem noted that the farmer had olive trees vandalized in 2008, 2009 and 2010, but charges were only brought in one case, when the rights group provided video documentation.

It called on the army and police to investigate each incident and complaints that soldiers did not intervene to prevent attacks.

Meanwhile, rights group Yesh Din said on Thursday that of 162 attacks on Palestinian trees since 2005, only one case had led to charges.

The group said 124 files were closed on grounds of “perpetrator unknown,” 16 because of “insufficient evidence” and two on ground of “absence of criminal culpability.” Others are still under investigation, or information was not provided, while case files were lost for two incidents.

The failure of Israeli police to investigate the attacks is “only one aspect of its continuous and broad failure to enforce the law against ideological crimes by Israeli citizens against Palestinians in the occupied territories,” the group said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs reported that over 2,500 olive trees were destroyed in September 2011, and 7,500 throughout 2011. The attacks cost Palestinian farmers over $500,000 that year, according to an estimate by Oxfam and local agricultural organizations.

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October 12, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Federal court calls FBI to account for the unlawful imprisonment of U.S. citizen Abdullah al-Kidd

By Dror Ladin and Kate Desormeau | ACLU | October 9, 2012

Abdullah al-Kidd is a Kansas-born American citizen, a father, and a graduate of the University of Idaho where he was a star football player.  And in 2003, he became the victim of the FBI’s misuse of a little-known federal law to imprison him without charges.  He was arrested and imprisoned under harsh conditions for more than two weeks—even though the FBI had no probable cause to believe he had done anything wrong.  The ACLU represents Mr. al-Kidd in his effort to hold the government accountable for its violation of his rights.  Last week, the federal district court in Idaho issued two long-awaited decisions calling the FBI to account for Mr. al-Kidd’s unlawful arrest.

Mr. al-Kidd’s ordeal began after 9/11 when the FBI started investigating Muslims in Idaho—including Mr. al-Kidd, who converted to Islam in college.  The FBI spoke with Mr. al-Kidd on multiple occasions, and he always voluntarily cooperated with their requests for interviews. Yet in March 2003, as he was preparing to travel to Saudi Arabia to study abroad on a scholarship, the FBI arrested him without warning.  For 16 days, he was imprisoned under extremely harsh conditions.  He was held in high-security cells that were kept lit 24 hours a day.  He was stripped naked in full view of criminal inmates and guards.  He was shackled, humiliated, and subjected to multiple body-cavity inspections.  Although he was treated like a dangerous criminal, he was never charged with any wrongdoing. Finally, the court released him from jail on the condition that he relinquish his passport, live with his in-laws, and limit his travel to four states.  Mr. al-Kidd lived under these conditions for more than a year.  During this time, he lost his scholarship, had difficulty finding work and saw his marriage disintegrate.

How did this happen?  Mr. al-Kidd’s imprisonment was the result of the FBI’s misuse of a little-known federal law called the “material witness” statute.  This statute allows the government to arrest a witness who is needed to testify in the criminal case against someone else.  It is intended only to allow for the brief detention of witnesses who are truly necessary to the trial and who otherwise would not cooperate with a subpoena.  In the wake of 9/11, however, the government began abusing this limited power in an alarming new way.  As the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found, the government began using the statute to arrest, preventively detain, and interrogate scores of people—almost all Muslim men—whom the government viewed with suspicion, but against whom they had no probable cause to justify a traditional arrest.  Calling these people“witnesses” was a pretext.  In Mr. al-Kidd’s case, the government never even called him to testify at the trial for which he was supposedly needed.

What’s more, in Mr. al-Kidd’s case, the FBI agents misled the court in order to get the arrest warrant they wanted. There was simply no reason to believe Mr. al-Kidd wouldn’t voluntarily show up to testify if asked.  On the contrary, he was a U.S. citizen with a wife and child in Idaho and strong community ties, who had previously cooperated with the FBI on every occasion.  So instead, the FBI submitted a warrant application riddled with omissions and falsehoods.  The FBI did not tell the court that Mr. al-Kidd was an American citizen with family members living in the United States; instead, the application strongly implied that he was a Saudi national leaving the United States for good.  Nor did they tell the court about Mr. al-Kidd’s past cooperation with the FBI.  The FBI’s warrant application even falsely claimed that Mr. al-Kidd had purchased a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia—when in fact, he had a round-trip ticket with an unscheduled return date, exactly what you’d expect of a student going to study abroad.

Last week, the court in Idaho—the very same court that granted the FBI’s request for a warrant in 2003—took the FBI to task for this “misleading and highly suggestive” warrant application.  Judge Edward J. Lodge, adopting the recommendations of Magistrate Judge Mikel H. Williams, ruled that the FBI agent who sought Mr. al-Kidd’s arrest violated the Fourth Amendment by recklessly misleading the court.  Judge Lodge also ruled that the United States was liable for false imprisonment, and that Mr. al-Kidd’s “abuse of process” claim—his claim that the government had misused the material witness statute “for a purpose other than to secure testimony”—deserves a trial.

As national commentators have recognized, the court’s rulings are a “big deal.”  It’s the first time that a court has found on the merits that the government violated the constitutional rights of a person wrongfully arrested as a material witness after 9/11.  It’s a reaffirmation of the judiciary’s role in preventing unjustified imprisonment.  And most importantly, it’s a reminder that the FBI isn’t above the law.

Last year, the Supreme Court decided that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can’t be held liable for directing a policy of using the material witness statute to preventively detain and interrogate people after 9/11. But four out of the eight Justices considering the case (Justice Kagan was recused) agreed that there were serious questions about “whether the Government’s use of the Material Witness Statute in [Mr. al-Kidd’s] case was lawful.”  Magistrate Judge Williams and Judge Lodge have now answered this question decisively in Mr. al-Kidd’s favor.  As Justice Ginsburg wrote in her concurring opinion in last year’s case against Ashcroft, Mr. al-Kidd’s “ordeal is a grim reminder of the need to install safeguards against disrespect for human dignity, constraints that will control officialdom even in perilous times.”  Mr. al-Kidd’s victory last week is an important step towards holding the government accountable for its abuses of power, and preventing them from ever happening again.

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October 9, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Honduras: Now Open for Political Murder

By NICK ALEXANDROV | CounterPunch | October 9, 2012

Last Wednesday’s presidential debate, and the flurry of fact-checking that followed, helped sustain the illusion that Republicans and Democrats are bitter rivals.  Reporters and analysts obsessed over the accuracy of each candidate’s claims, ignoring the two parties’ broadly similar goals, which mainstream political scientists now take for granted.  “Government”—both parties are implicated—“has had a huge hand in nurturing America’s winner-take-all economy,” Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson write in Winner-Take-All Politics, their study of the massive transfer of wealth to the richest Americans since the 1970s.  George Farah’s research has shown how cross-party collaboration extends from economic issues to the debate’s structure.  The Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation both parties created, ensures independent candidates will be excluded, and more generally that the events will remain the sterile, predictable spectacles familiar to viewers.

No doubt the foreign policy debate in a few weeks will offer much of the same.  In the real world, meanwhile, Obama embraced and extended Bush’s foreign policy, as the case of Honduras illustrates especially well.  After the Honduran military staged a coup against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2009, Obama and Secretary of State Clinton backed the ensuing fraudulent elections the Organization of American States and European Union refused to observe.  Porfirio Lobo won the phony contest, and now holds power.  “The conclusion from the Honduras episode,” British scholar Julia Brixton wrote in Latin American Perspectives, “was that the Obama administration had as weak a commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as the preceding U.S. presidency.”

The coup’s plotters, it should be emphasized, knew exactly what they were doing.  Colonel Bayardo Inestroza, a military lawyer who advised them on legal issues, was very open about it, informing the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro, “We committed a crime, but we had to do it.”  U.S. officials seem to have taken slightly longer to recognize the obvious, but Wikileaks documents indicate that, by late July, they understood that what had transpired was “an illegal and unconstitutional coup.”  Obama’s legal training, cosmopolitan background and cabinet stuffed with intellectuals were all irrelevant in this situation, like so many others.  A different set of factors drives U.S. foreign policy, which is precisely why, to cite just one example, Matt Bai’s analysis of “Obama’s Enthusiasm Gap” is featured prominently on the New York Times homepage as I write, below the Ralph Lauren ads and feature about a Pennsylvanian high school’s underdog football team.  In determining what’s “fit to print,” triviality seems to be one of the crucial considerations.

A more serious analysis of Obama might start, for example, by observing that his “enthusiasm gap” failed to materialize as he drafted lists of people to murder.  It also was mysteriously absent when he stood firmly behind the Honduran coup’s leaders, two of whom graduated from the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia.  Renamed the Western Hemisphere for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001, the name-change was, predictably, just a rebranding.  Nico Udu-Gama, one of the leading activists working to close the institution, emphasized recently on Al Jazeera that the school’s graduates have continued to violate human rights over the past decade.  This is the main reason why Udu-Gama and others organize for School of the Americas Watch, and currently are gearing up for its annual demonstrations at Fort Benning the weekend of November 16-18.

Returning to Honduras, we see that conditions there are beginning to call to mind those of, say, El Salvador in the ’80s—good news, perhaps, for aspiring financial executives eager to launch the next Bain Capital.  But as the business climate improves, everyday life for Hondurans working to secure basic rights has become nightmarish.  Dina Meza’s case is just one example.  A journalist and founder of the Committee of Families of Detainees and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), Meza received two text messages from the Comando Álvarez Martinez (CAM) last February.  The group, named for an SOA graduate, threatened her: “We are going to burn your ‘pipa’ (vagina) with caustic lime until you scream and then the whole squad will have fun.”  The follow-up warning told her she would “end up dead like the Aguán people,” referring to the poor campesinos that are being slaughtered on land owned mainly by Miguel Facussé, one of the richest Hondurans.

Conflicts over land, to be sure, are nothing new in Central America.  The most recent government-led assault on Honduran farmworker rights can be traced back to the 1992 Law of Agricultural Modernization.  International finance lobbied aggressively for that decision, which reversed the limited land reform implemented in the preceding decades, and drove the desperately poor into city slums or out of the country, inspiring those who remained to form self-defense organizations.  The Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán (MUCA) is one of these groups.  With the help of Antonio Trejo Cabrera, a human rights lawyer, the campesinos recently won back legal rights to several plantations.  On September 23, Trejo took some time off to celebrate a friend’s wedding at a church in Tegucigalpa.  During the event he received a call, and stepped outside to take it.  The gunmen were waiting for him.  They shot him several times, and he died soon after arriving at the hospital.  “Since they couldn’t beat him in the courts,” Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguán’s peasants, explained, “they killed him.”  They killed Eduardo Diaz Madariaga, a human rights lawyer, the following day, presumably for similar reasons.

It is in these conditions that Honduras has been opened for business.  The American economist Paul Romer proposed recently that several neoliberal “charter cities”—complete with their own police, laws, and government—be built there, and an NPR reporter recently reviewed this idea enthusiastically in a piece for the New York Times.  But despite much misleading discussion of what is considered Romer’s bold entrepreneurial vision, his plan is directly in line with longstanding US goals for the region, as the constitutional chamber of Honduras’ Supreme Court explained recently.  Voting 4-to-1 that the charter cities are unconstitutional, the judges concluded that Romer’s plan “implies transferring national territory, which is expressly prohibited in the constitution;” worth recalling is that Zelaya was thrown out for allegedly violating the same document.  But this fact and others are considered beyond debate this election season, an indication of how much change we can expect, regardless of November’s winner.

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October 9, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Indigenous Guatemalans want justice for 6 dead

Press TV – October 6, 2012

Clashes between Guatemalan security forces and thousands of indigenous people holding a demonstration against rising electricity prices in a poor rural area west of the capital have left six people dead.

On Friday, thousands of people attended the funeral processions of the six peasants who died on Thursday. The mourners shouted “Justice! Justice!”

“We’ve determined that the number of people who died rose to six,” said Ana Julia Solis, a spokesperson for the national human rights prosecutor’s office.

The government said demonstrators were blockading a highway near the town of Totonicapan, about 170 kilometers west of Guatemala City, when unidentified gunmen opened fire, killing six people and injuring 34. However, local activists said soldiers and police killed the protesters.

At a press conference on Friday, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said the military was not involved in the killings, adding that he had information that attackers in a civilian truck opened fire on the demonstrators.

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October 6, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli police smash boy’s head to the ground in Aqsa incursion

Al Akhbar | October 6, 2012

A video has surfaced showing Israeli police smashing a teenage boy’s head to the ground during an incursion into the revered Aqsa compound in Jerusalem Friday. Police had fired tear gas and stun grenades at a group of worshipers Friday protesting the entry of illegal Jewish settlers into Islam’s third holiest site earlier this week.

The video exposes further the brutality of Friday’s attack where witnesses reported several arrests and some injuries. It shows a boy being dragged across the ground, and pinned down as he screams “Khalas”, or enough. Police then punch his head against the stone floor in a swift and forceful swing of the arm.

Many youth and injured sought refuge in the Haram el-Sharif mosque, or Dome of the Rock, as police clad in black stood stationed around it during the incursion.

Reuters reported that protesters hurled stones at police during their protest, and Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld claims that one of the demonstrators tried to stab a police officer and that only one Palestinian was arrested.

Israelis have made repeated threats to demolish the Aqsa mosque, considered the third holiest site in Islam, in order to build a Jewish temple in its stead. The move would accelerate redemption, according to some Jewish religious authorities.

Some thirty illegal Jewish settlers toured the compound this week under heavy police protection, a move that has been interpreted by Palestinians as an attempt to assert Israeli claims to the site, named Temple Mount in Jewish tradition.

October 6, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli army turns Palestinian homes in Hebron into military barracks

MEMO | October 4, 2012

The Israeli occupation forces have turned the roofs of Palestinian homes in the ancient city of Hebron, south of the West Bank, into military barracks and control points under the pretext of providing security for Jewish settlers during the Hebrew celebrations of the Sukkot Feast.

Human rights sources in the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee reported that a large number of Israeli forces took over the roofs of several Palestinian homes along the lanes of the old town. These houses, including the family home of the Islam Al-Fakhouri in Al-Sahla area, have been turned into military barracks and control towers while the families have been forced to leave.

Israeli soldiers also commandeered the roofs of the Abdulmutallab Abu Sunaina, Imran Abu Rumaila, Daoud Jaber, Nader Salaymeh and AliAl-Rajabi households turning them into control points.

Sources also point out that the regions extending between the settlement of Kiryat Arba, the Cave of the Patriarchs, Tel Rumeida, Al-Shuhada, Al-Ras, and Wadi El-H’aseen streets; and the areas of Al-Masharqa Al-Fawqa and Tahta, are subjected to a blanket Israeli police and army presence.

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October 5, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

10 Shocking U.S. Police Brutality Videos Caught on Surveillance Cameras

By Clint Henderson – This Can’t Be Happening – 10/04/2012

This top 10 list is controversial, and not for the faint of heart. These unnerving videos include police officers and their unwarranted BEAT-DOWNS of the following: a special-ed kid, a grandmother trying to pay her bills at a Hooters, a homeless man with schizophrenia, and a woman already handcuffed and at the police station who had just gotten in a car wreck (no alcohol involved)… to name a few. Do these cops truly believe they are above the law? You decide:

10) Greenville County Police taser and punch 18-year-old in the face 13 times (Sep 26, 2009)

Greenville, SC – An 18-year old beaten over and over by an undercover police officer. As you watch and count the punches, you feel like “Wow, is he ever going to stop…?” Yes, the kid was at a known drug house and was possibly buying drugs or maybe had some sort of connection with drugs, but damn! As a user he’s actually more a victim than a perp.

9) LAPD Officers Slam Defenseless Cuffed Woman to Ground (August 29, 2012)

A security camera from Del Taco captured this footage of a nurse, Michelle Jordan, being pulled over on a routine traffic stop (she was texting on her cell-phone while driving) and handled quite excessively by two officers. Fast-forward to view the bruises on her face and body brought on by the police officers use of excessive force. Note the officers, who included a 20-veteran with the rank of commander, fist-bumping after each man had tackled her.

8) Police Officer Attacks Grandmother at Hooters (Nov 18, 2010)

Fast forward to about 1:00 in the clip to see where the off-duty police officer starts getting rough with this grandmother and Hooters patron in Oak Lawn, Illinois. It all started over an issue with the bill, which got completely out of hand.

7) Denver Police Brutality Caught on Tape, Camera Pans Away… (August 17, 2010)

The video surveillance you see here was actually recorded by the police officer’s own equipment. Knowing that, it’s very interesting how the camera pans away, just as the officer begins pummeling the innocent bystander talking on his cell phone.

6) Officer Beats Special Ed Student Over an Un-tucked Shirt (Oct 27, 2010)

A special needs kid, 15-year old Marshawn Pitts, was at the wrong place at the wrong time in Dolton, Illinois. What began as verbal abuse over something as silly as his shirt not being tucked in, led to strong physical abuse and a broken nose at the hands of an “unidentified police officer”.

5) Houston Police Beat Handcuffed 15-Year-Old Boy (Feb 7, 2011)

The end of a pursuit is caught on a security camera, where 15-year old Chad Holley falls on the ground and surrenders. I don’t think the cops want it to be that easy on him… Watch while he lays there with his hands on top of his head only to get kicked about a hundred times and have his head stomped in.

4) Rhode Island Police Officer Kicks Woman in Handcuffs (Sep 2, 2012)

Here we have a 2009 case where a Rhode Island police officer (Edward Krawetz) kicked a woman in the face, while she sat handcuffed on the ground. The video surveillance only recently went public. Officer Krawetz was convicted of “felony battery with a dangerous weapon” and sentenced to a 10-year suspension — an unusually stiff response to police brutality, which is probably only because the incident was recorded. Significantly, this was actually not his first assault charge (the other’s weren’t recorded).

3) Police Turn Off Security Camera and Beat Woman to Bloody Pulp (Sep 23, 2009)

This woman was taken into the police station under “suspicion of DWI.” She had just gotten in a wreck and the police assumed that alcohol was involved. Fast forward and you’ll see the Shreveport, Louisiana officer turn off the surveillance camera and when it comes back on, you’ll notice the woman lying in a pool of her own blood.

2) Kelly Thomas – Fatal Police Brutality of Homeless Man with Schizophrenia (May 8, 2012)

Kelly Thomas is a schizophrenic drifter who was tased and brutally beaten to death by officers Manuel Ramos and Corporal Jay Cicinelli. It was recorded using surveillance video taken from the Fullerton, California, Transportation Center.

1) Eugene Gruber – Police Brutality and Killing: Jail Security Footage – Chicago (Apr 18, 2012)

Talk about scary. This Chicago Tribune article says it best:

“Eugene Gruber was drunk, hostile and uncooperative when he walked into the Lake County Jail, but a day later, he was paralyzed, had a broken neck and barely registered a pulse after an encounter with guards, records show”

October 5, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , | Leave a comment

Honduras: A Second Human Rights Attorney Is Murdered

Weekly News Update on the Americas | September 30, 2012

Unidentified assailants gunned down Eduardo Manuel Díaz Mazariegos, a prosecutor with the Honduran Public Ministry, shortly before noon on Sept. 24 near his office in Choluteca, the capital of the southern department of Choluteca. Díaz Mazariegos had worked on human rights cases as well as criminal cases for the ministry. He was the seventh Honduran prosecutor murdered since 1994, and his killing came less than two full days after the similar murder of Antonio Trejo Cabrera, an activist private attorney who represented a campesino collective in a dispute over land in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras [see Update #1145]. (La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 9/24/12; EFE 9/25/12 via Univision)

The Associated Press wire service reported on Sept. 24 that Trejo had written a request in June 2011 for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) in Washington, DC, to order emergency precautionary measures for his protection. “If anything happens to me, to my goods or to my family,” Trejo wrote, “I hold responsible Mr. Miguel Facussé [and two others that AP declined to name], who can attack my life through hit men, since they know that the lawsuits against them are going well and that the campesinos are going to recover the lands that [Facussé and the others] stole from them illegally.”

Cooking oil magnate Facussé is the main owner of disputed land in the Aguán; presumably Trejo also named the two other major landowners in the dispute, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales. After Trejo’s murder Facussé issued a written denial of any “direct participation of my person or of the personnel of my companies in so abominable an act,” although he added that Trejo had committed “fraudulent acts against [Facussé’s] company.” Marlene Cruz, an attorney who represents another Aguán collective, told AP that she and Trejo were scheduled to attend a hearing at the CIDH in Washington on Oct. 19. Cruz is now thought to be in danger.

Trejo, who came from a campesino family and was born in the San Isidro collective in northern Honduras, was also involved in another high-profie case: he had filed a complaint against a neoliberal project, the Special Development Regions (RED, also known as “Model Cities”), for creating privatized autonomous regions in the country. Trejo denounced the project in a television debate less than 24 hours before his assassination, saying it was backed by “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves of the government.” Michael Strong, the director of the US-based MGK Group, a leading “model cities” sponsor [see Update #1144], said he was “horrified” by the murder and that “if Trejo had lived long enough to be acquainted with us, he would have concluded that our approach is beneficial for Honduras.” (AP 9/24/12 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami))

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October 2, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Bahraini medics lose court appeal

Al Akhbar | October 1, 2012

Bahrain’s highest court on Monday upheld jail terms issued against nine medics convicted for their role in last year’s pro-democracy uprising, state news agency BNA reported, a decision that could further fuel unrest in the Gulf Arab state.

The controversial case has drawn international criticism of the US-backed Gulf Arab kingdom, which has been in turmoil since the protests erupted in February last year.

BNA quoted Attorney General Abdul-Rahman al-Sayed as saying that Bahrain’s Court of Cassation rejected all appeals presented by the defendants and confirmed the previous rulings of prison terms ranging between one month to five years.

In June, the appeals court sentenced Ali al-Ekry, former senior surgeon at the Salmaniya hospital in Manama, to five years in jail.

Al-Ekri was found guilty of “possession and concealment of white weaponry (non-firearms) to serve a terrorist purpose, and for illegal assembly,” the statement said.

“We did not get a fair trial…We think we are a card being used by the regime to negotiate with the opposition,” he told Reuters by telephone from Manama.

Ibrahim Damastani, who received a three-year jail term, was found guilty of “possession of a white weapon and illegal assembly.”

The remaining seven medics, who were convicted of lesser crimes, including illegal assembly and inciting hatred, were given sentences of between one month and one year.

This was the final verdict and no other appeals will be heard. All nine medics have been free on bail since September last year.

The medics were first charged and convicted by a quasi military court specially formed in the aftermath of the government’s brutal crackdown of the anti-government protests in March 2011.

Many initially received much harsher sentences of up to 15 years.

Only the two medics who remain at large, Ali Hassan al-Sadadi and Qassim Imran, still face 15-year prison terms since neither appealed the original verdicts. They are believed to be in hiding or to have left the country.

The doctors were released last year after an outcry over allegations of torture during detention.

Mohammed al-Maskati, head of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said Monday’s verdict was final with no recourse for further appeal but there might be still a chance for a pardon by the king.

International criticism

The medics’ case highlights the schism in Bahraini society over the protest movement and political reform.

The doctors and nurses say they were victimized for treating protesters and helping bring world attention to deaths caused by security forces.

Washington and rights groups have criticized the June ruling, with Amnesty International saying it was a “dark day for justice.”

The verdicts follow an earlier trial at a military court in September, 2011 which sentenced 20 medics to prison terms of between five and 15 years on charges including theft of medical equipment, occupying a hospital and incitement to topple the state.

The ruling Al Khalifa family used martial law and help of Saudi-led Gulf troops, to put down last year’s uprising. Thousands were arrested and military trials were instituted during the martial law period.

Washington has called on its ally to talk to the opposition, but unrest continues. Protesters and police clash almost daily.

Seventeen-year-old Ali Hussein Nemat was killed during clashes with police on Friday.

At least 80 people have been killed and thousands detained since the uprising began, according to media sources and human rights organizations.

(Reuters, AFP, Al-Akhbar)

October 1, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation forces arrest Palestinian Football player in West Bank, deport him to Gaza

Palestine Information Center – 30/09/2012

BETHLEHEM — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested at dawn on Saturday, a Palestinian football player from the Gaza Strip, who plays with Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus.

The occupation arrested the football player Ibrahim Wadi at Container checkpoint near Bethlehem in the southern West Bank while returning from a Football match in the city of Jenin northern West Bank, Amjad Jaffal, an official in the Mount Scopus club told Quds Press.

Jaffal stated that the Israeli soldiers detained a number of Football players and administrators, early Saturday morning, before being released and arrested the player Wadi, informing him that he will be deported to the Gaza Strip, noting that it was not known yet if he is already deported or still detained.

It is noted that the occupation prevents Palestinian players from the Gaza Strip from joining sports teams in the West Bank, where many of them were arrested and deported to Gaza, such as Mahmoud Sarsak, who tried to travel to the West Bank to join the national football team, and was detained administratively without charge or trial, and fought a hunger strike which lasted more than three months to be released to the Gaza Strip.

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September 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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