Holy Land 5 case reveals double standard in enforcement of US law
The Electronic Intifada, 20 July 2010
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An US federal agent at the Holy Land Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, as the contents of the office are seized on 4 December 2001. (AFP PHOTO/Scott Olson) |
“I had no intention in my mind and my heart but to help the Palestinian indigenous people who are and have been facing unusual economic distress … nothing in my life was as satisfactory and as self-fulfilling as knowing that I could sign a check. It is the only evidence you have against me, signing the check.”
At a special session on Palestinian political prisoners at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month, Noor Elashi recited that statement given by her father, Ghassan, when he was sentenced by a federal court in May 2009. Ghassan Elashi is the co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which was the largest Muslim charity in the US before it was shut down by the Bush Administration in 2001.
Sending aid not just to Palestinians living under the thumb of Israel’s military occupation, but to people in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya and Turkey, the HLF was also involved in local and national humanitarian relief. The organization set up food banks on the East Coast, helped victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and provided assistance to people after floods and tornadoes devastated parts of Iowa and Texas in the 1990s.
Three months after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US Treasury department froze the HLF’s bank accounts as the Executive branch shut down the organization under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act. Using a new provision called the Material Support Law, the US State Department accused the five HLF founders — now dubbed the Holy Land Five — of providing “assistance” to designated “terrorist groups” (namely Hamas) in Palestine. The Bush Administration immediately closed the organization and launched aggressive charges against the charity workers. There was no hearing, and the prosecution was authorized to use secret evidence.
Several other American faith-based relief organizations were also caught in the post-11 September hysteria of charity closures under the same new laws and executive orders. The legislation has been challenged by civil rights groups in the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional, but was upheld and used to sentence Ghassan Elashi, a father of six who immigrated to the US in 1978, to 65 years in prison.
On 21 June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled to continue to authorize prosecutions of charities under the Material Support provision, disappointing families and supporters of the Holy Land Five and troubling US-based organizations that directly support grassroots humanitarian programs in the Middle East.
Noor Elashi, a 24-year-old master of fine arts candidate at the New School in New York City, told The Electronic Intifada that her father’s legal team is in the middle of appealing the entire HLF case. “The attorneys are working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights,” she said. “The overall impression is that the upholding of the Material Support Law is not the best thing that could happen regarding this case. It’s not the most positive step. But that said, there are so many other grounds for appeal, such as evidentiary issues and the prosecution’s use of an anonymous witness.”
Prosecutors working for the Bush Administration accused the HLF of supporting Hamas by trying to “win hearts and minds” of the Palestinian population through humanitarian assistance, and that the charities HLF worked with were “front groups” for the political party. But after several years of wiretapping phone lines, seizing documents and following money trails, the prosecution couldn’t support its allegations of an HLF-Hamas connection. Elashi said they then resorted to calling on an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer, who called himself “Avi,” as a key witness who told the jury he was an expert who could “smell Hamas.”
“It was the only time in the history of the United States that a witness inside a courtroom was allowed to remain anonymous, so the defense couldn’t cross-examine him,” Elashi said. “That in and of itself is huge grounds for appeal.”
In fact, Israeli intelligence officers, in an unprecendented move, were allowed to testify in secret using pseudonyms and disguises and without the defense being given a full opportunity to cross-examine them during the 2006 federal trial in Chicago of American citizen Muhammad Salah and stateless Palestinian Abdelhaleem Ashqar. Accused of “racketeering” charges related to fundraising for Hamas, both men were acquitted of all the terrorism-related charges, but each was found guilty on single counts of obstruction of justice; Salah for lying on a form in a civil case and Ashqar for refusing to testify before a grand jury.
Additionally, the US government infamously led a lengthy, repressive, and racist assault against the Palestinian-American professor and political activist Dr. Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian, who remains under house arrest following a six-year prison sentence — which included spending 43 months locked in solitary confinement — was also charged, as the HLF were, under the Material Support Law.
Elashi stressed that the HLF was never convicted of giving charity to designated “terrorist” groups, but in the end they were convicted of conspiring to give charity to zakat or charitable committees in Palestine.
“I feel like at this point, anybody is at risk,” Elashi said. “This is the time to be worried. What essentially can happen is that any American can be prosecuted for giving any type of charity, or any type of aid. Even a former president is at risk of being prosecuted,” she said, referring to how Jimmy Carter has helped train election workers in Lebanon.
“The problem with the law is that it’s way too vague,” Elashi added, “and because it’s way too vague, it really singles out groups from the rest of the population, and typically singles out Muslim charities as well as Arab-American individuals. And it’s all being done in the name of national security, but what it’s really doing is shredding the constitution and causing an economic chokehold on occupied Palestine.”
Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that despite the circumstances, her father is extremely hopeful about the appeals process. “Opening the charity was a form of optimism,” she said. “He knew from the first day that when he started the charity it was going to be a challenge. Soon after, he got attacked from pro-Israeli politicians and lobbyists, who tried to link the charity to Hamas and acts of violence. He continued to do everything possible to make sure that the charity kept running, and did pretty much what every other American aid organization did — USAID, the Red Cross, and the UN all gave money to the very same zakat committees that were listed in the HLF indictment.”
The Elashi family has not been allowed to visit Ghassan in prison, Noor Elashi said, for quite some time. In the fall of 2009, after one of the visits, a prison guard told the inmates and the families to disperse. But Noor’s younger brother Omar — who lives with Down’s Syndrome — ran to hug his father, and at that point the prison guard yelled at Ghassan, saying that he disobeyed orders. The guard filed a complaint that led to an internal investigation, and the prison ruled that there would be a six-month to one-year visitation ban.
Even after Ghassan was moved to another prison, the visitation ban moved with him. “We get two phone calls from him every month, which is significantly less than we would get from any other prison,” Elashi said. “We hope to finally see him in September or October.” Ghassan is currently being held inside a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Illinois, a block within some prisons that are nicknamed “little Guantanamos” due to the overwhelming population of Muslims and people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent.
Defense Attorney Nancy Hollander, on behalf of the Holy Land Five, told The Electronic Intifada that the legal team is optimistic about the appeal. “We are currently working on our brief to the Fifth Circuit,” Hollander remarked. “The current deadline is 3 August, but that might get extended into September. All of our clients have been moved to other prisons. We are in contact with them regularly. We remain hopeful.”
Meanwhile, private, US-based, pro-Israel groups are currently sending millions of dollars every year to support illegal settlement colonies and right-wing Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank. The New York Times reported on 5 July that at least 40 US-based organizations are actively donating more than $200 million in tax-deductible “gifts” to build and sustain illegal settlements. According to the Times, some of the donations also pay for “legally questionable” items such as bulletproof vests, guard dogs, weapon accessories and armored security vehicles (“Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank“).
Daniel C. Kurtzer, the former US ambassador to Israel, told the Times “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference” in terms of supporting the settlement industry, and if carefully focused, “helps to create a new reality on the ground.”
As of now, there is no indication that any of these faith-based, pro-settlement groups will face the kind of treatment and lengthy, expensive trials under the guise of the Material Support Law like those the Holy Land Five have faced. Noor Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that there is an obvious double standard being applied and enforced against her father and his colleagues.
However, she said that her father “feels his ordeal like he feels a fly on his shoe … He believes that it’s going to pass, and he’s still very proud of everything he’s accomplished. His work has been the most rewarding part of his life. He’s helped people rebuild homes and has given hungry people food. That’s what nourishes him. So he’s optimistic about the appeal.”
At the US Social Forum in Detroit, Elashi read the last part of her father’s statement upon his sentencing. “We helped Palestinian orphans and needy families, giving them hope and life,” he stated. “We gave them hope and life … And what was the occupation giving them? It was providing them with death and destruction. And then we are turned criminals. That is irony.”
Related:
Provocative marches in Jerusalem by Jewish groups
Palestine Information Center – 20/07/2010
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A large number of Israeli policemen were deployed all over occupied Jerusalem Monday evening to provide protection for extremist Jewish groups that went on provocative marches inside the city on the anniversary of what they called the destruction of the temple.
The marchers gathered in the courtyard of Al-Amoud Gate, one of the gates of old Jerusalem, and the Buraq square chanting slogans calling for destroying the Aqsa Mosque, building the alleged temple of Solomon in its place and expelling all Palestinians from the holy city.
The Israeli police also closed the gates of the Aqsa Mosque before the Maghrib prayer (prayed by Muslims just before sunset everyday), except for Al-Ghawanimeh Gate, and barred the Jerusalemite citizens under age 50 from entering the Mosque.
The police detained three Palestinians from the Old City of Jerusalem during the marches alleging they attempted to attack the marchers.
Earlier on Sunday, the police summoned two of the Aqsa Mosque’s employees for interrogation and warned them of any acts disrupting the marches.
In a related context, senior Fatah official Hatem Abdelqader, the director of the Jerusalem affairs, accused on Monday Salam Fayyad’s government of seriously neglecting the issue of Jerusalem and not setting enough allocation for its protection.
Abdelqader pointed out that Fayyad’s government did not include Jerusalem in its plan for the establishment of the future Palestinian state.
The Fatah official also said that this lack of concern about Jerusalem encouraged the Israeli occupation state to go farther in its violations against it.
He stressed that Fayyad is fully responsible for all consequences arising from the serious situation in Jerusalem.
Guantánamo Bay detainee says interrogation record has been redacted
Prisoner says his complaints about Bagram detention centre were blacked out by British security service officers
Rajeev Syal and Owen Bowcott | The Guardian | 18 July 2010
A former Guantánamo Bay detainee says that key exchanges from his interrogation by British security service officers have been blacked out or deliberately omitted from the notes to hide the agents’ complicity in torture. Other exchanges, he says, have been removed simply to hide evidence of spurious and potentially embarrassing lines of questioning.
Omar Deghayes, one of six UK detainees suing the government over their clandestine removal to the US base in Cuba, was able for the first time to read notes from his interrogations after they were published by the Guardian last week. He alleges that they provide an inaccurate impression of what took place, and that a true record of his meetings with British security would have shown that he made specific allegations of ill-treatment, starvation and beatings to MI6 and MI5 officers.
One of the notes he has now been able to examine, released through the high court as part of his case against the government and the security services, blacks out, or redacts, repeated questions put to him about his involvement in the Chechen freedom movement, he says. This was a false allegation that, unbeknown to Deghayes, was the key reason for his being held by the US authorities for five years.
Deghayes says that other passages, if they had not been redacted, would have revealed that he was asked repeatedly to justify scuba-diving lessons taken at a Sussex swimming club, and that he was questioned about Britain’s immigrant community.
His allegations will increase pressure on the government to appoint an independent judge to decide whether the notes were redacted in a legitimate manner.
All these notes emerged last week from a court case brought by Deghayes and five other UK claimants over their removal to Guantánamo Bay. The files show the intricate involvement of British agents in the questioning and detention of young Muslims with connections to Britain.
Deghayes, a Libyan-born political refugee, had lived in Britain for many years before moving to Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan after the US invasion but was was arrested in 2002 and handed over to the US authorities. He was then subjected to a sequence of interrogations in Islamabad and Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, and eventually moved to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. He was released from detention in 2007.
What has been removed from the record of interrogations, Deghayes said after reading the notes, was almost as significant as what has actually been revealed. Before each session with MI6 officers, he said, he complained about the torture he was subjected to and his conditions.
“I told them about the treatment – the shackles, being beaten, lack of sleep, how sick I was. But these [comments] don’t appear. The national interest appears to have been used as a convenient shield for them,” said Deghayes, who now lives near Brighton. “Some of [their accounts are] reasonably accurate in terms of the conversations. What’s left in is to show me in a bad light. It’s highly selective. It’s censorship.”
Much of the material still withheld, he says, relates to lines of questioning pursued by the security services that would now show them in an embarrassing light. “They claimed I went to Iran to negotiate on behalf of Osama bin Laden but it was all part of their deception. I was never in Iran. In one of the first sessions, they asked me about Chechnya, and I told them I had never been there. But this question does not appear,” he said. Years after the interrogations took place, Deghayes discovered from his lawyer that this allegation had been central to his incarceration, because he had been wrongly identified. Sometimes, lines of questioning that were repeatedly fired at Deghayes over many months turned out to be completely spurious. These have been omitted or redacted from the British agents’ notes, he says. “There was a fat man from MI5 who kept asking me about scuba diving. I had been learning in Saltdean lido [before leaving Britain]. I hadn’t even passed my test. [Nonetheless] they kept asking me questions about it and showing me pictures from military manuals about scuba divers carrying mines. But there is no reference in the records here of my scuba diving – it is just too embarrassing [for them].”
There is a brief mention in one document, which has not been redacted, of his complaints about the “head-braces and lockdown positions” used by the Americans in Bagram. “I had complained at that point about being chained to wire mesh on the wall and having a hood drawn tightly round my neck when I was in Bagram. I don’t know what else they mean by ‘head-braces’,” he said.
“I was very sick in Bagram. I had serious malaria. They took my temperature and said it was dangerously high. They didn’t know what the problem was. [In the record of the interview] they are trying to say that everything was clear and I was fit. I wasn’t alert. I had had no food for 45 days. They interpreted [my condition] as me lying about how unwell I was. Whenever I was not co-operating, they decided I must be lying. I didn’t even have my wits about me then.
“They even imply that my ‘mumbling’ [referred to on one Bagram interview session] was proof that I was not being honest. What the documents don’t say is that it was such a relief to talk to anyone.”
His responses to questioning, as recorded in the notes, he says, have often been wilfully misinterpreted. In his first session in Islamabad in 2002, he was desperate to persuade the MI5 officer that he was a British national and therefore entitled to support from the embassy.
For that purpose, he initially pretended to be his elder brother, who held British nationality. “In the interview in Islamabad, I said I was my older brother, because he’s a British national. I said Omar had gone to Libya. I told ‘Andrew’, the MI5 interrogator, that I was a British national and he should help get me out of there. Eventually I admitted to being Omar.” That plea for help appears in the documents, he said, to be used as evidence of a more sinister type, to show that it was another terrorist deception.
On several occasions Deghayes was asked, in effect, to spy on his community and friends back in Britain. “They had books of hundreds of photographs of people. They wanted me to go through them and identify the people. I didn’t recognise anyone in the book, so they said: ‘You are not helping us. You will be sent back to Libya, where they will get tortured.’ I [tried not] to show my fear.”
Notes that record his last interrogation in Bagram before being transferred to Guantánamo in July 2002 do not show the dismissive way he was treated by Andrew, he said. This moment, Deghayes said, was devastating, because he felt abandoned by his adopted country.
According to the notes made by Andrew, he knew that Deghayes had previously lied and gave him one last chance to tell the truth. Deghayes said that the note failed to record the following exchange: “I told him that I had only ever told him the truth. He just turned to someone outside the door and said: ‘This bandit doesn’t want to talk.’ I thought he was saying what he really felt. He thought that we were bandits and deserved whatever we got,” he said.
The notes remain incomplete, he said, because they show only one record of an interview with UK agents in Guantánamo. Deghayes recalls three or four.
“Where are the notes for the other meetings?” he said.
Deghayes was to spend almost six years in Guantánamo before being released.
He told the Guardian in January this year how he was so brutally attacked by a guard during his time there that he was left blind in one eye.
Egypt Decides To Deny Entry To Jordanian Aid Convoy
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – July 19, 2010
The Egyptian Authorities prevented the “Ansar 1” Jordanian aid convoy from entering Egypt while on their way to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued an official decree preventing the convoy from entering the country by all means, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported.
Hussein Al Saoub, head of the “Al Jisr Al Araby”, the Arabic Bridge Company, phoned late on Sunday at night the head of the Jordanian convoy informing him that Egypt decided to prevent the convoy from entering Egypt.
There are 138 persons participating in the aid convoy. Al Sa’oub said that the Egyptian Authorities decided that each person on the convoy is a “Persona non grata”.
The aid was sent by a company owned by the governments in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt; the plan was to leave on Monday morning from Aqaba in Jordan to the Egyptian city Nweibi’.
Despite the Egyptian decision, convoy organizers decided to head to Aqaba in order to try to sail to Egypt before heading to Gaza.
Head of the Jordanian “Artery Of Life” committee, Wa’el Al Saqqa, said that the “Al Jisr Al Araby” company is the only company in charge of shipments between Aqaba and Nweibi’ on the Red Sea.
The company granted the participants all needed travel tickets and documents but Egypt officially decided to prevent them from entering.
Water restrictions in the occupied West Bank
IRIN Report, The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2010
RAMALLAH: The worst place to be in the occupied West Bank in terms of water and sanitation facilities is an Israeli-controlled stretch of land known as Area C, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is technically responsible for water services, but simply unable to deliver.
Cara Flowers, an officer with the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group (EWASH), said the health and livelihoods of communities living in Area C — covering 60 percent of land in the West Bank and home to some 60,000 of the West Bank’s 2.3 million Palestinians — were hardest hit as they have a severe lack of access to water and sanitation infrastructure.
“Many vulnerable communities are 40km from the nearest filling point,” said Flowers. “This makes drinking water less accessible and more costly during summer months.”
She said EWASH was struggling to implement emergency humanitarian water projects in Area C as it lacked the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities.
The 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (also known as Oslo II) categorized land in the West Bank into areas A, B and C.
According to the agreement, Area A is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Area B under the joint control of Israel and the PA. About 95 percent of the Palestinian population live in these two areas, though they make up only 40 percent of the land area.
In Area C, Israel has retained full control over security, while responsibility for the provision of services falls to the PA, according to EWASH.
But the Palestinian Water Authority says it has very limited control over water resources in the West Bank.
Rights body Amnesty International accuses Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access sufficient water supplies in the West Bank by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and preventing the development of adequate water infrastructure there.
The Mountain Aquifer is the only source of water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but one of several for Israel, which also has sole access to water available from the Jordan river.
Limited supplies, inflated prices
“Israel uses more than 80 percent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 percent,” said Amnesty.
This is no clearer than to the more than 100 Bedouin families living in the water-stressed village of Ras al-Awja near Jericho in Area C. While they are forced to pay inflated prices for tanker water from the nearest filling point some seven kilometers away, nearby unlawful Israeli settlements have irrigated gardens and productive farmland, according to EWASH.
A water filling point that once served the Bedouin community has been welded shut by the Israeli authorities, causing a canal irrigation system to empty and stopping all piped water to Palestinians in the area. Without ample supplies of water, the existence of this livestock and subsistence farming-dependent community is under threat.
Israel says it has responded to the needs of the Palestinians and has increased the quantity of water provided to them far beyond that specified in the Interim Agreement.
Meanwhile, the West Bank’s water crisis is worsening, according to a March 2010 report by EWASH. Only 31 percent of communities in the West Bank are connected to a sewage network, it said.
Gaza imports held at port for 4 years
Israeli occupation authority still holding hundreds of cargo containers belonging to Palestinian traders
Ma’an – 18/07/2010
Gaza – Israeli authorities have yet to release Gaza-bound goods sequestered at Israeli seaports for over four years despite reportedly easing the terms of its blockade, independent lawmaker Jamal Al-Khoudary said Sunday.
Al-Khoudary, who also heads the Popular Committee Against the Siege, issued a statement saying containers imported by Palestinian merchants since Israel imposed its blockade have yet to receive their goods.
Detained at Israeli ports, merchants are forced to pay considerable fines despite legally importing the goods, the lawmaker said.
Israel continues to ban the entry of raw materials, Al-Khoudary added, leading to the continued closure of Gaza’s factories and forcing thousands into unemployment.
The legislator described Israel’s change in its siege policy as “nothing more than propaganda” and “marginal steps which do not have any positive influence on Gaza’s population.”
Al-Khoudary called for the opening of all crossings into Gaza, the free flow of goods, raw and for construction, the opening of a sea passage, and safe passage for Palestinians traveling between Gaza and the West Bank.
Following international pressure to lift its blockade of after six aid vessels were raided by navy forces on May 31, the Israeli cabinet published a list of banned goods for import and said it would be allowing previously barred items in.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who arrived in Gaza on Sunday, called on Israel for a “full and effective implementation of the new Israeli policy to improve the lives of the people of Gaza and meet their needs for humanitarian and commercial goods.”
The EU official further said improving the economic situation in Gaza “is not simply a matter of letting in aid – it is a matter of revitalizing the local economy.”
“For a fundamental change, private sector development and commercial activity, including exports, will be crucial,” Ashton said, expressing hope that the crossings’ capacity would be expanded.
Israeli Border Police Demolish Cistern in Al Beqa’a Valley
Christian Peacemaker Team – July 16, 2010
Hebron: Israeli border police demolished a rainwater cistern and removed irrigation pipes from several Palestinian fields in Al Beqa’a Valley just east of Hebron on July 14, 2010, the second day of incidents in the area this month.
When international peace activists from Christian Peacemaker Teams arrived in the area at 9:30am, the large bagger that had been used to break up the concrete of the cistern was just leaving the site. The driver of a large tractor lifted scoops full of rocks and dumped them into the demolished cistern. Also, workers cut and disposed of irrigation pipes laid in two fields. The fields each measured 10 dunams (approximately 40 acres). One was a field of grape vines and the other field had tomatoes planted under grape vines. In addition to dismantling the irrigation pipes, the workers also cut the twines that were holding up tomato plants. At least seven families will be affected by this destruction, in total about 50 people.
A Palestinian friend of CPT who lives in Al Beqa’a Valley explained the difficulties residents have in accessing water. A water line has been install by the Palestinian Authority from a nearby village; however, there is no water in the line. There is a large aquiver of water in the Hebron region, and Mekorot, the Israeli water company, has a well along the Israeli bypass road Route 60 in Al Beqa’a Valley which draws from this aquiver (in Area C, which is under full Israeli military control). Palestinian residents in Al Beqa’a Valley had made arrangements to purchase water from Mekorot. However, they never received as much water as they paid for. With the demolition of several rainwater cisterns in the valley in the past year, the Palestinian residents felt that they had no other option but to tap into the Mekorot water line at the well site.
Palestinians alleged that some of the Israelis that were with the border police and DCO on July 14th were from the Mekorot Company. Rather than preventing Palestinians from taping into the well at the source, the Israeli authorities destroyed the irrigation pipes in the fields of several families. Each 200m roll of irrigation drip pipe costs about 370NIS (~100$US), and the connection piping costs about 2.5NIS for each inch. For each dunam of vegetables it takes about 2-3 days to put the irrigation drip piping in place. The cost of the materials and time that goes into growing produce is high. Rather than prevent the ‘theft’ of water (which is ironically from an aquiver under Palestine) earlier in the season, the Israeli authorities instead waited until crops were almost ready for market. Therefore this destruction is not meant to stop the ‘theft’ of water but to cause the highest impact on farmers in the region.
The NYT’s nationalistic double standard
By Glenn Greenwald | July 16, 2010
Here’s a particularly illustrative example of how The New York Times‘ editorial policy — it cannot be “torture” if the United States does it — obfuscates the truth and actively bolsters government propaganda. There are countless examples like this, but this one is unusually stark, especially since these two episodes occur within one day of each other:
From today’s article on how the CIA used tactics never authorized by the DOJ:
A former Bush Justice Department official who approved brutal interrogation methods by the C.I.A. has told Congress that he never authorized several other rough tactics reportedly inflicted on terrorism suspects — including prolonged shackling to a ceiling and repeated beatings.
So in NYT World, even shackling helpless detainees to the ceiling for prolonged periods and repeatedly beating them is not “torture,” but are rather merely “rough tactics” or “brutal interrogation methods” . . . if it’s high-level U.S. government officials who have authorized them. But, from a NYT article yesterday:
[A] federal appeals court last week ordered the United States to provide a haven for a woman facing the likelihood of torture in China. . . . Others named in the same warrant and caught by the Chinese police had described beatings, suffocation, electric shocks, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture to get them to disclose details about the human rights group to which they all belonged.
Many of the same tactics used by the U.S. are magically transformed into unambiguous “torture” when used by China, notwithstanding the categorical denials by the Chinese Government that the tactics they use ever rise to the level of “torture”. Torture, by definition, is something U.S. officials do not authorize; it’s only what those Evil Other Governments do. That’s the propagandistic message delivered over and over to Americans not only by the government officials who did it, but by The New York Times as well. Meanwhile, Bill Keller — the editor responsible for these nationalistic editorial double standards, as well as for the strained, government-pleasing euphemisms he forces on his reporters (“rough tactics”) — accuses anyone who objects (rather than himself) of “tendentious political correctness.” Isn’t it classic propaganda to use one set of words for what Other Countries do, but completely different words for what your own country does?
Mother of five killed by Israeli artillery fire close to Gaza buffer zone
Three relatives also wounded in shelling on Gaza border, as family say no rockets were heard being fired before attack
Harriet Sherwood in Johar a-Deek | The Guardian | 16 July 2010
Nasser Abu Said outside the shrapnel-riddled home where his wife, Ne’ema, was killed by Israeli artillery
Photograph: Guardian
A mother of five was killed by Israeli artillery fire when she went to fetch her two-year-old son from outside her village home close to the “buffer zone” created by Israel along its border with Gaza.
Three of her relatives were wounded in the shelling earlier this week, but Red Crescent ambulances were not permitted to reach the family for several hours.
According to the woman’s husband, Nasser Abu Said, 37, the attack began without warning at about 8.30pm on Tuesday with two shells being fired as the family of 17 sat outside their house in the village of Johar a-Deek. Apart from Nasser and his 65-year-old father, the entire group was women and children.
“It was completely quiet, there were no rockets being fired or we wouldn’t have been sitting outside,” he said, referring to Qassam missiles launched by militants into Israel.
His sister and his brother’s wife were injured by shrapnel. The family moved indoors and called an ambulance. “About 10 minutes later the ambulance called back to say the Israelis had refused them permission to come to the house,” said Nasser.
His wife Ne’ema, 33, soon realised their youngest son, Jaber, was not among the children she was attempting to calm down, and was probably asleep on a mattress outside that he often shared with his grandfather.
As she went to fetch the toddler, another shell landed. “I called to my wife three times,” said Nasser, who realised his father had also been badly injured in his leg and stomach. “I could hear small noises coming from her. I knew she was dying.”
Via Palestinian co-ordinators, the IDF told the family that anyone going outside the house would be shot dead. Nasser began to tend to his injured father, knowing he could not reach his dying wife.
“I was holding myself in, especially in front of the children,” he said. The children were crying hysterically and some had wet themselves, he added.
After two hours, an ambulance was allowed to reach the family. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which investigated the incident, said Ne’ema and her wounded relatives were taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, where it was confirmed she had died from shrapnel wounds.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) said it had identified a number of suspects close to the border. “An IDF force fired at the suspects and identified hitting them,” it said. The incident was being investigated, it added, but declined to say why ambulances had not been allowed to reach the family.
Since the three-week war in Gaza that began in December 2008, the IDF has continued to fire on Palestinians it suspects of launching rockets at Israeli civilians or attempting to attack Israeli forces. It created a 300m-wide buffer zone on Palestinian farmland adjacent to the border with Israel and warned it would shoot anyone seen within the forbidden area.
The Abu Saids say their land is not used by militants to fire rockets as it is open ground in full view of an Israeli watchtower at the border 400m away.
In the first five months of this year, 22 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the buffer zone, according to the PCHR. The IDF says one soldier and a Thai farmworker were killed and two soldiers lightly wounded in militant attacks in the first half of this year.
Palestinians have been unable to harvest their crops in the zone, which has swallowed about 30% of Gaza’s arable farmland. The Abu Said family have lived in the area for 40 years, but have had to abandon the part of their land inside the zone. “Everyone is afraid to come to this house,” said Nasser.
The house, isolated down a rutted track, was riddled with shrapnel damage from Tuesday’s shelling, and dried blood still lay in the sand where Ne’ema had been killed.
The PCHR condemned the shelling which, it said, “constitutes the highest degree of disregard for Palestinian civilians’ lives”. This was not an isolated incident but “part of a series of continuous crimes committed by the [Israeli military]”.
‘No comment’ on arbitrary treatment
Ma’an – 16/07/2010
Qalqiliya: A father of five from Azzun Atma village in the northern West Bank was told by Israeli soldiers manning the single civilian crossing into the area that on Tuesday, 50kgs of flour was too much and he could not bring it home.
Hassen Mahmoud Qadus was also told to leave two kilograms of meat, purchased for his family, at the checkpoint to rot. The quantity of meat, a soldier told him, was above what was permitted for personal consumption.
“There are such regulations in place,” a representative for the Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories told Ma’an on Wednesday, explaining that if residents of the Qalqiliya-area village want to bring goods into their village to sell, they must get a permit, bring them in via a crossing linking the village with Israel, and pay taxes on the goods.
Azzun Atma, with a population of 1,670, is trapped on the west side of Israel’s separation wall, but residents are prohibited from accessing Israel. Road barriers were constructed to the south of the village, and the illegal Israeli settlements to the east – Sha’are Tiqwa – and to the west – Oranit – constructed perimeter fences blocking movement from all access points except the Azzun Atma checkpoint pierced into the separation wall to the north of the village.
“You will have to ask the army,” the COGAT representative told Ma’an, when asked about the decision to prevent Qadus from bringing home the quantities of flour and meat.
When distributing aid to Palestinian refugees, who make up 4% of the residents in Azzun Atma, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East distributes 50-kilogram bags of flour, five kilograms of rice, five kilograms of sugar, two liters of cooking oil, one kilogram of powdered milk and five kilograms of lentils. The quantities are distributed to families every three months for personal consumption.
An Israeli military source explained that the decision to deny Qadus permission to bring in the food “could have been the independent decision of a soldier based on the situation,” but directed the question to the military’s Central Command.
On Thursday, a second source said the matter was “more complicated” than it appeared, and came back with “no comment” on the situation of Qadus.
Asked if the military could provide the guidelines set out for villagers delineating amounts of goods for personal consumption versus for commercial use, the military took 24-hours to return with an official statement of “no comment.”
Speaking with Ma’an’s reporter in the village, residents of Azzun Attma appealed for international intervention, asking that they be permitted to move freely in and out of their village and to transport food supplies from the city of Qalqiliya and neighboring towns back to their homes without harassment.
Israel imprisoned my father for nonviolently resisting the occupation
Saeed Amireh writing from Nilin, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 16 July 2010
On 12 January 2010 my father Ibrahim was arrested by the Israeli army and sentenced to two years in prison for organizing and participating in nonviolent protests against the Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank. The wall cuts us off from our land and our olive groves, robbing our family of its livelihood.
To date there have already been 15 court hearings. We feel the Israeli occupation bureaucracy is deliberately delaying court proceedings. This creates an additional layer of punishment for my father and for his family. At each hearing, he must wait from 6am to 2pm in a hot room without food or water. Once each hearing begins he is tired, hungry and thirsty.
My father has been charged with the following offenses:
Being present in a declared military zone. The “military zone” is actually our olive groves, which Israel declared a military zone, once they started building the wall. The continued construction of the wall is a clear violation of the July 2004 International Court of Justice ruling declaring it illegal under international law.
Organizing illegal and violent demonstrations. My father is a strong opponent to violence and in fact has discouraged others from reacting violently whenever we have been attacked by the Israeli military.
Incitement to throw stones and use other means of violence. The Israeli authorities claim that my father paid money to demonstrators to throw stones at soldiers, their jeeps and the wall. This charge is completely absurd. After my father first got involved with the nonviolent protests in 2008, the Israeli authorities revoked his work permit. Since then he has been unemployed and struggles to put enough food on the table for my six siblings, our mother and myself. To claim that he was paying others to throw stones or cause damage to the wall mocks the terrible daily reality our life and the lives of other Palestinians living under occupation.
All of these charges are based on the forced confessions of two young men from Nilin, one of them mentally ill.
Mostly, my father is worried about us, his family. Not only because it is even harder now, without him, to cover our bare necessities, but also because our family is being intimidated regularly by the Israeli military. They have raided our house already 25 times in the middle of the night, eight times after my father was arrested. Sometimes they just come to harass, mock and threaten us. Other times they come with dogs, unleash them inside the house, rummage through the house and cause a great deal of damage. Due to the repeated abuse we have endured, both of my five-year-old twin brothers are terrified and suffer from nightmares.
My father wishes for nothing but peace and freedom and he believes that a lasting peace can only be reached with peaceful methods. In his opinion, violence will only add to the hatred and confusion and further worsen the situation of Palestinians living under occupation. This is why he taught us not to consider violence a solution in our struggle to restore our rights.
However, he does believe that it is our duty to protest a terrible wrong that destroys the very existence of the inhabitants of Nilin village. Hence, when Israel started marking the course of the wall that led straight through our olive groves in May 2008 stealing a third of the village’s land, the inhabitants came together and formed the Nilin Popular Committee Against The Wall. The Popular Committee nonviolently resists the construction of the wall.
The Popular Committee chose my father to be part of the leadership as well as its official representative, because they want the world to see the truth about us: we are peaceful people who reject violence and we do not intend to harm anybody. We believe in freedom, peace and justice for every human being on earth and we dream to spread it from Nilin throughout the entire world.
We started with our protests on 27 May 2008, walking toward the bulldozers that were uprooting our olive trees. We walked with our hands raised, so that the Israeli soldiers could see that we were unarmed. Initially, our protests were successful and we managed to delay the construction. Soon Israeli forces started to shoot sound bombs, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and even live ammunition to disperse our peaceful demonstrations.
Since the protests started, five persons have been killed by Israeli soldiers, including a 10-year-old child, Ahmed Moussa, and more than 500 individuals have been detained. We have endured curfews, destruction of our property, snipers shooting demonstrators in their legs from the roofs of houses in Nilin. All of these acts of repression are intended to to discourage villagers from participating in the nonviolent protests. My 12-year-old sister Sammer has been shot in her hand with live ammunition simply for participating in the protests. My 10-year-old sister Rajaa was hit in her leg by a sound bomb when she tried to prevent snipers from climbing on our rooftop to shoot at other villagers.
Nilin, our village, our home, is being turned into an open-air prison. The current entrance to the village will be closed, and will be replaced by a tunnel that will be built under Route 446 — a road which only Jewish settlers are allowed to use. The tunnel will not only divide Nilin into two parts. It will also give the Israeli military the power to decide when and if they will open or close the gate, and therefore cut us all off from the outside world.
On Monday 12 July, my father appeared in court again. The Ofer Military Court sentenced my father to 11 months and 15 days in prison and a fine of 9,000 shekels ($2,330) with a prohibition from joining future protests. To avoid staying in prison my father pleaded guilty, otherwise he would stay in jail longer and the authorities would continue to postpone the hearing. We have been given two months to pay the 9000 shekels, but have no means to pay this amount. If we do not pay the fine then my father’s sentence will increase to 20 months and 15 days.
Together with my father, two more members of the Popular Committee, Hassan Mousa and Zaydoon Srour, each received the same sentence as my father. Their families are undergoing the same ordeal that we are.
We always try to be strong in the face of the oppressor. However, when they read the sentences, my mother started crying. We had to watch as my father, Hassan and Zaydoon and left the court room in shackles. When my father was asked if he wanted to say something, he stated that this ruling is against humanity and that we all suffer from the occupation and can’t do anything about it.
We are all very upset and worried about my father. He is sick and he doesn’t even get the medication he needs while in jail. We are also very sad, because only my mother can visit him in jail, and only after he had been in prison for four months. Still, my father maintains that nonviolent protests are the only solution. Please show your support for Ibrahim Amireh and your objection to his illegal imprisonment; for more information join the Facebook group “Support My Father: Peace & Freedom Activist Ibrahim Amireh.”
Saeed Amireh is from the occupied West Bank village of Nilin.
Nailed, Miliband and six lies on torture
Former Foreign Secretary David Miliband lied six times during BBC interview
Daily Mail | 16th July 2010
All five candidates for the Labour Party leadership have been scuttling to distance themselves from the record of Gordon Brown in power.
But the odds-on favourite to win the leadership contest, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, is finding it very hard indeed to disentangle himself from the most sordid and shameful aspect of New Labour rule – British involvement in the torture of numerous terror suspects overseas.
Today, a special Mail investigation can reveal the depths of Miliband’s embroilment in the torture scandal – and shows that Labour’s latest golden boy is in complete denial about New Labour’s record in sanctioning and then covering up British involvement in torture over the past decade.
Indeed, I can reveal that David Miliband uttered no fewer than six massive lies when grilled in an interview with BBC inquisitor Andrew Neil on the subject of torture for the first time since stepping down from office.
The six lies came in the course of a nine-minute interview – that’s a phenomenal strike rate of one lie every 90 seconds.
Though outwardly confident and relaxed, Miliband told a series of falsehoods that cast a giant shadow over his personal integrity, and even his fitness to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour leader.
Lie number 1: The first lie was quickly produced when Neil asked whether Miliband believed there was ‘any evidence’ that British intelligence officials had been complicit in the use of torture on terror suspects when New Labour was in power.
Back came the insouciant reply: an emphatic ‘no’.
Yet Miliband’s response is bewildering. It suggests that he is completely unaware of the mountain of very troubling testimony which has emerged in recent years suggesting that Britain was ‘complicit’ in torture (i.e. that we received information from foreign intelligence services, even though we had grounds for suspecting it was supplied under duress: nobody suggests that British agents themselves took part in torture).
The grim truth is that there have been at least 15 cases of British nationals or residents who have claimed over the past two years to have been tortured with the complicity, knowledge and sometimes even in the presence of British intelligence officers.
The combined circumstantial evidence of our complicity with torture is nothing short of overwhelming. It is also a matter of national shame.
Some of the evidence has been provided by groups such as the humanitarian organisation Human Rights watch. Some has emerged in court testimony.
Two parliamentary watchdogs, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, regard it as troubling and serious.
But not, apparently, our former Foreign Secretary.
Lie number 2: This came when Andrew Neil asked whether Britain has, at any stage, provided questions to be put by foreign intelligence agents to those who were being tortured. Miliband replied: ‘we don’t have evidence of that.’
Unfortunately for Miliband, there is once again abundant evidence.
Indeed, he himself as Foreign Secretary was obliged to submit documents to court which showed beyond doubt that British intelligence was involved in questioning terror suspects.
This was during the hearing concerning the terror suspect Binyam Mohamed, since cleared on all charges. Miliband was obliged to confess that we were submitting questions for Binyam to answer even when he was being held (and cruelly abused) by the U.S. in a Pakistani prison.
Lie number 3: Miliband’s third lie also concerns the Binyam Mohamed case. He told Andrew Neil that not one of the allegations of torture which have so far been taken to court in Britain involved torture carried out by the Americans.
In fact, the courts have indeed found that the U.S. authorities subjected Binyam to ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment’.
By this stage of the TV interview, the lies and mis-statements were coming thick and fast.
Lie number 4: The fourth lie came when David Miliband absurdly told Neil that he had not tried to prevent public disclosure of court evidence in the Binyam Mohamed case.
In fact, as Binyam’s lawyer Clive Stafford Smith told me last night, Miliband ‘fought us tooth and nail’ to prevent vital documents being brought into the public domain.
Miliband used every legal ruse – and spent some £213,000 in legal fees – in a battle to keep vital evidence secret from the public.
Lie number 5: This concerns David Miliband’s troubled dealings with one of Britain’s most senior judges, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger.
Last year, in an utterly devastating judgment, Lord Neuberger stated that there were grounds for ‘distrusting’ legal statements made by Miliband based on advice from MI5 personnel about British involvement in torture.
And yet when this was put to him by Andrew Neil, Miliband offered a bland and unruffled denial that such a thing had ever occurred. It is inconceivable that Miliband could have forgotten such a shattering verdict.
Lie number 6: Miliband’s final lie came when Neil asked him why, as Foreign Secretary, he did not institute an inquiry to get to the bottom of the mass of evidence that Britain has been complicit in torture.
In response, Miliband claimed that he took ‘extensive measures inside the system’ to get at the truth.
Yet he once again denied that he had ‘fought against an inquiry’ – notwithstanding the fact that he faced down a barrage of pressure from newspapers like the Mail, human rights organisations and political parties (such as the Conservatives) for one to be held.
There can be only two explanations for Miliband’s set of wildly inaccurate, partial and misleading answers. One is that he is exceptionally stupid and genuinely does not know what he is talking about.
But this does not stand up. David Miliband is a well- trained and competent man who has held high office and aspires to be Prime Minister.
As Foreign Secretary, he was obliged to deal almost daily with allegations about British complicity with torture. He knew the subject matter backwards.
So the only realistic conclusion is that Miliband was knowingly deceiving TV viewers. In other words, he was lying.
How he expected to get away with such a monumental deceit, however, is another matter. The best guess is that Miliband is in denial.
He simply cannot accept that a New Labour government was responsible for what looks like a retreat into barbarism.
To be fair to Miliband, the worst of the abuses would appear to have ended by the time he became Foreign Secretary in the summer of 2007. He was not personally responsible for the abuses – only the subsequent lying and cover-up.
So why didn’t Miliband do the decent and sensible thing and order his officials to come clean?
One answer may be a well-meaning, though morally damnable, desire to stick up for the intelligence agencies who mistakenly believed they were serving their country while tolerating the physical abuse of terror suspects.
Another possible answer is that Miliband was simply being loyal to Tony Blair, his political mentor and friend.
For almost every day we are learning new facts about how, under Blair, Britain turned her back on human decency when it came to torture and human rights.
Is Miliband about to throw away his reputation and perhaps his entire career in defence of Tony Blair?
