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?
Judge Rules CIA Can Suppress Information About Torture Tapes and Memos
Ruling Allows CIA to Conceal Evidence of Its Own Illegal Conduct, Says ACLU
ACLU | July 15, 2010
NEW YORK: A federal judge today ruled that the government can withhold information from the public about intelligence sources and methods, even if those sources and methods were illegal. The ruling came in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union for Justice Department memos that authorized torture, and for records relating to the contents of destroyed videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of detainees at CIA black sites.
The government continues to withhold key information, such as the names of detainees who were subjected to the abusive interrogation methods as well as information about the application of the interrogation techniques. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York today ruled that the government can continue to suppress evidence of its illegal program.
The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU:
“We are very dismayed by today’s ruling, which invests the CIA with sweeping authority to conceal evidence of its own illegal conduct. There is no question that the CIA has authority under the law to withhold information relating to ‘intelligence sources and methods.’ But while this authority is broad, it is not unlimited, and it certainly should not be converted into a license to suppress evidence of criminal activity. Unfortunately, that is precisely what today’s ruling threatens to do. The CIA should not be permitted to unilaterally determine whether evidence of its own criminal conduct can be hidden from the public.”
CONTACT: ACLU
Rachel Myers (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
UK Sought Rendition of British Nationals to Guantánamo; Tony Blair Directly Involved
Andy Worthington – 15.7.10
With what the Guardian described yesterday as the “almost unprecedented” release of “security service reports of interviews with detainees in Guantánamo Bay and other overseas detention centres,” the coalition government failed in its attempt to persuade the High Court to bring a temporary halt to a civil claim for damages filed by six former Guantánamo prisoners, unleashing, instead, a torrent of previously classified and deeply disturbing documents.
These reveal, shockingly, how the Labour government was happy for British nationals and residents seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan to be rendered to Guantánamo by the Bush administration, and how, in one case — that of Martin Mubanga, seized in Zambia — Tony Blair’s office intervened to prevent attempts by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to have him returned to the UK, leading to his imprisonment in Guantánamo for two years and nine months.
In paving the way for its announced inquiry into British complicity in torture, the coalition government attempted, without success, to persuade the High Court that, as the Guardian put it, “proceedings should be delayed while attempts at mediation are made” before the inquiry begins. Critics had already expressed their fears that the calls for “mediation” were a smokescreen for compensation deals that would attempt to buy the former prisoners’ silence, so that the inquiry could proceed in secret without too many embarrassments.
Instead, however, the government’s intervention has precipitously kick-started the inquiry in a very public manner, after Tim Otty QC, counsel for five of the men, said that proceedings “should be allowed to continue because the documents that the government is beginning to disclose shed new light upon the role that the UK authorities played in the men’s mistreatment,” and the judge, Mr. Justice Silber, agreed.
One of the most shocking documents disclosed in the High Court proceedings was issued by the FCO on January 10, 2002, the day before Guantánamo opened. Entitled, “Afghanistan UK Detainees,” it described the government’s “preferred options” in dealing with British prisoners. “Transfer of United Kingdom nationals held to a United States base in Guantánamo is the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objectives, to ensure they are securely held,” the document explained, adding that the “only alternative” was to either hold these men in British custody in Afghanistan, or to return them to the UK.
In another shocking revelation, it was revealed that, in the case of Martin Mubanga, released documents “raise a number of troubling questions as to the role of the former Prime Minister’s office in frustrating the release of one of the claimants,” as Tim Otty described it, adding, “In the period of March and April 2002, the Prime Minister’s office apparently countermanded a desire on the part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to intervene on behalf on Mr. Mubanga.”
Mubanga, a joint British-Zambian national, had traveled from Pakistan to Zambia, where his sister lived, in February 2002, but had then been seized by the Zambian security services, and according to the documents released in court, the Prime Minister’s Office had intervened to ensure that he was not brought back to the UK. As a result, the FCO was put in a difficult position: if officials sought consular access, thereby acknowledging British responsibility for him, he would have been released to the UK authorities, directly contradicting the Prime Minister’s orders, which, as Reprieve noted yesterday, involved the Prime Minister “order[ing] the FCO to violate its international law obligations under the Vienna Convention, which requires the UK to provide consular assistance to British nationals around the world.”
At the time, an FCO document complained about “the schizophrenic way in which policy on this whole case was handled in London,” which had led to the British High Commission in Lusaka being placed “in an impossible position,” and in an email dated August 22, 2002, an FCO official, recognizing that “we broke our policy” because of direct interference from Tony Blair’s office, stated, “we are going to be open to charges of concealed extradition.”
According to Mubanga, after the British finished with him — apparently having tried and failed to recruit him as a spy — the US agent who had been dealing with him told him, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, as I think you’re a decent guy, but in ten or 15 minutes we’re going to the airport and they’re taking you to Guantánamo Bay.”
In court, Tim Otty highlighted Tony Blair’s complicity in torture by pointing out that, by the spring of 2002, it was abundantly clear that there was a considerable risk that terror suspects in US control would be subjected to rendition and torture. “Despite that,” he told the court, “someone at Number 10 saw fit to counter what the Foreign Office wished to do.”
As the Guardian also explained yesterday, this was “not the only time the Prime Minister’s Office intervened to thwart attempts by Foreign Office officials to obtain a degree of protection for British citizens.” Minutes prepared for the Home Office Terrorism and Protection Unit after a meeting in April 2002 state that the US authorities “had been informed that the British government might begin making public requests for legal access to British men held at Guantánamo.” According to the minutes, “FCO had wanted to do this (and wanted to be seen to be doing it) but had been overruled by No. 10.”
The released documents also highlight the leading role played by Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, in shaping the policies that led to the interrogations of British prisoners in US custody in Afghanistan, prior to their transfer to Guantánamo. As the Guardian explained, in mid-January 2002, Straw sent a telegram to several British diplomatic missions around the world in which he “signaled his agreement” with the Guantánamo policy, “but made clear that he did not wish to see the British nationals moved from Afghanistan before they could be interrogated.” In the telegram, he wrote:
A specialist team is currently in Afghanistan seeking to interview any detainees with a UK connection to obtain information on their terrorist activities and connections. We therefore hope that all those detainees they wish to interview will remain in Afghanistan and will not be among the first groups to be transferred to Guantánamo. A week’s delay should suffice. UK nationals should be transferred as soon as possible thereafter.
One of these “detainees” was Shaker Aamer, the last British resident still held in Guantánamo, and as a court heard in December last year, leading to the launch of a Metropolitan Police investigation, Mr. Aamer has claimed that British agents were present in the room, in the US prison at Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan, when he was subjected to abusive treatment by Americans.
Other interrogations revealed in the documents include those involving Omar Deghayes, seized from a house in Lahore in May 2002, who was treated disdainfully by the British agents who visited him, and an unidentified prisoner held in Kabul, under the heading, “Warriors 14/1,” about whom the agents involved noted only, “Interview conditions: cold beaten up.”
Extraordinarily, these documents are only the tip of a very murky iceberg, and it is unclear at present how many more will be publicly revealed. As has been previously reported, the government has identified up to 500,000 documents that may be relevant to the former prisoners’ claim for damages, and, according to the Guardian, “says it has deployed 60 lawyers to scrutinize them, a process that it suggests could take until the end of the decade.” In this first batch, “just 900 papers have been disclosed, and these have included batches of press cuttings and copies of government reports that were published several years ago,” but as they also include these damning insights into the activities of Tony Blair, Jack Straw and the agents who interrogated British prisoners in appalling conditions, it is surely inconceivable that the government will now be able to conduct a secret inquiry into British complicity in torture, and must, instead, order a full and open inquiry.
This could take place under the Inquiries Act of 2005, like the Baha Mousa inquiry (into the murder, in British custody, of a hotel clerk in Iraq), which, as Reprieve noted when David Cameron announced the torture inquiry two weeks ago, was held under the Act and has been “a model of an inquiry functioning efficiently, including the hearing of secret evidence,” and has also allowed for document classification review proceedings that “are sophisticated and rightly allow the judge to balance the need for national security against the need for transparency.”
The time for silence, and the time for secrecy are over. To clear the air, and to draw a line under this most lamentable period in our recent history, we need an inquiry presided over by someone who is able to “balance the need for national security against the need for transparency.” For too long now — and with baleful results — the need for national security has been allowed to override everything else, inflicting grave damage on our claims to be a civilized country, and leading to devastating effects for those caught up in a “War on Terror” with few checks and balances.
“They want us to be loyal to the occupation”
Muhammad Totah interviewed
Max Blumenthal, The Electronic Intifada, 15 July 2010
On 9 July, as Israeli Border Police officers brutalized demonstrators at the weekly protest in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, forcing them away from a street where several homes had been seized by radical right-wing Jewish settlers, I visited the Jerusalem International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters just a few hundred meters away.
Though the din of protest chants and police megaphones could not be heard from the ICRC center, the three Palestinian legislators who had staged a sit-in there for more than a week to protest their forced expulsion from Jerusalem insisted that their plight was the same as the families forced from their homes down the street.
“All the Israeli steps in East Jerusalem are designed to evacuate Jerusalem of its Palestinian heritage,” remarked Muhammad Totah, an elected Palestinian Legislative Council member who has been ordered to permanently leave Jerusalem by the Israeli government. “Whether it’s through home demolition, taking homes or deporting us, the goal is the same.”
According to Israel’s Ministry of the Interior, the three legislators are guilty of a vaguely defined “breach of trust,” ostensibly for their membership in a foreign government. The charge leveled against them recalls nothing more than the campaign platform of the far-right Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, which demanded the mass expulsion of “disloyal” Palestinian citizens of Israel.
For this reason, the Israel-based legal advocacy group Adalah described the Israeli government’s actions as “characteristic of dark and totalitarian regimes” (“Motion for Injunction filed to Israeli Supreme Court to Stop Imminent Deportation Process of Palestinian Legislative Council Members from Jerusalem,” 15 June 2010).
The lawmakers’ problems began in 2006 when they ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank as members of the Change and Reform list, an offshoot of Hamas. Though the Israeli government allowed the men to campaign for office and vote for the Chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council, as soon as they were elected, Israel warned them to resign from office or face the cancellation of their status as residents of Jerusalem.
When they failed to heed the Israeli government’s demand, in June 2006, the men were arrested and sentenced to two to four years in prison. Two days after they were released, the Israeli police confiscated their identification cards and ordered them to leave Jerusalem for another part of the West Bank.
As a result of the expulsion orders, the first of their kind since 1967, the three lawmakers are virtual hostages in the city their families have lived in for generations — if they leave the Red Cross center they will be immediately arrested. Their colleague, Muhammad Abu Tir, is already in an Israeli jail cell. Despite having been separated from their families for years, they remain steadfast in their rejection of the government’s orders, fearing that their expulsion will open the door for mass deportations of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, along with the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula, which was returned to Egypt in a peace deal a decade later. No country recognizes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, and the UN Security Council has declared repeatedly that Israel’s occupation of all the territories it seized in 1967 is governed by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, a treaty Israel was compelled to sign which specifically forbids an occupying power from expelling civilians from the territory it occupies. Thus the legislators’ expulsion has been issued in explicit violation of binding international law.
Totah told me that the Israeli interior ministry has a list of 315 members of Palestinian civil society in East Jerusalem — academics, lawmakers, activists — whom it plans to expel in the near future on charges of disloyalty to the Jewish state. “They are trying to legalize the Nakba,” Totah remarked, using the Arabic word Palestinians use to describe their mass expulsion from their homeland in 1948.
I talked with the 42-year-old Totah for a half hour in the leafy courtyard of the ICRC headquarters. He was visibly tired, having spent the past two days in meetings with British parliamentarians, the head of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Church and left-wing Israeli groups ranging from Anarchists Against The Wall to Gush Shalom. While a wiry young boy rushed around the yard, serving us a seemingly endless stream of Turkish coffee shots, Totah described to me his experience as a prisoner in his hometown.
Max Blumenthal: The Israeli government says you are guilty of a “breach of trust.” Does this mean they are accusing you of disloyalty to the state?
Muhammad Totah: The main reason they are expelling us is that we are accused of disloyalty. And every one on the list [of 315 Palestinian civil society members Israel seeks to expel] is accused of disloyalty. They want us to be loyal to the occupation. This is insane! So they are seeking any excuse to get rid of us. They want us to leave at any price. Basically, they want to finish the project that they began in 1948 because it has taken too long.
MB: Why did you decide to conduct a sit-in inside the Red Cross headquarters?
MT: We are determined to prevent the occupation from coming and taking us away. Beyond that, we are using our time here to make sure the international community hears our case. The occupation is against all international laws and we believe if the door of deportation is open in Jerusalem, it means that hundreds or even thousands will be deported. Right now, we are in danger of being arrested at any time. In fact, our colleague Abu Tir was arrested last month. So they could come at any time for us.
MB: Do you believe the Israelis would go as far as raiding a Red Cross center in Jerusalem to carry out your expulsion?
MT: The occupation will do anything. They are killing people constantly, demolishing buildings and doing what they have done for years. Ten thousand Palestinians are currently in prison. So yes, we would not be surprised by such an action.
MB: Has the international community responded to your protest?
MT: We sent a letter to [US] President [Barack] Obama and asked him to interfere and to put pressure on the Israeli side to cancel this illegal decision. So far, we have not heard a response. We have sat with [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas two times and he said that he had sent my letters to all the human rights organization and USAID [the US Agency for International Development] and sent letters to the occupation authorities and he said they’re making communications all the time time. But until now nothing on the ground. We have put out a call for international human rights organizations as well. And we have sent letters to all the leaders of Islamic and Arab states.
Our letters stress that our protest is not about our case in particular, but that it is about all the Palestinians living in Jerusalem. We believe that this decision is designed to begin a process that will empty Jerusalem of Palestinian people. The UN and international community admits that East Jerusalem is occupied by Israel, so clearly this is an illegal decision under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
MB: How much of Israel’s decision is motivated by your affiliation with Hamas and how does the tension between Hamas and Fatah effect the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in the case?
MT: This is an international case. It has nothing to do with Fatah and Hamas. There is a list of over 300 people who will be deported after us — the heart of Palestinian civil society in East Jerusalem — and for this reason all the parties in Jerusalem are united against this decision. They feel that we are the first and they will be the second. We know that the occupation doesn’t discriminate between political parties.
MB: How has your predicament affected your family?
MT: My son who is six years old does not want to leave the house anymore. He said, “I will not leave the house until my father comes back!” As soon as I was released from prison I was sent to so many meetings right away and couldn’t see my family, who I had hardly seen for four years. Now he’s having his own protest at home. “I will not leave home!” he says. This is a very big problem for me because I don’t want to break his heart. One of my children who is even younger wakes up every night screaming and crying with terrible nightmares. “Why are you crying?” my wife says. He says, “The soldiers are coming to throw me in jail!” My wife is suffering because of course we have been split for a very long time. The occupation wants to scare my family and if any information gets to my wife or children about what is happening to me they become extremely upset. This is not just my problem, though. All my colleagues are suffering this same way.
MB: How much of a burden has been placed on you by the Palestinian community in Jerusalem to resist your expulsion?
MT: The fact is that if we accept the deportation it means we accept deportation for thousand of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Even as hard as it is to be here without our families for so long we think that is the only means we have to declare that [our expulsion] is illegal and is against all international laws. We have nowhere else to go. This is our original country and our original city. My father was born here; my grandfather was born here so we have been here hundreds of years. All we are demanding is to stay in our homes and we are sure that we will get it because it’s our right and the deportation is against all international laws.
MB: If deporting you is the first step in a plan for mass deportations, what do you think Israel’s end game is?
MT: We think that there is a plan from the Israeli side to make East Jerusalem Jewish and they have many practices to do so. One of them that is the most dangerous is our deportation. If they demolish your house, you can always build another building. But deporting people — how can you talk about a city without people? What they want is to legalize the Nakba.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author working in Israel-Palestine. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al-Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
