The Syrian city, Aleppo, turned to a center for wide human organs trade as the armed opposition group sponsored and protected the mafia behind these actions.
In this context, media sources revealed that human trade is done under the cover of first aid and medical help.
However, they really seek to steal human organs. Meanwhile, the sources accused the armed groups in the countryside of Aleppo of transferring the stolen bodies and organs across the Turkish border.
A mafia cell supervises these operations based on a fixed price: 10 thousand Syrian pounds per corpse and 100 thousand pounds for the wounded body.
A resident of Boustan al-Qasr neighborhood under the control of al-Nusra Front revealed that “in case of any explosion, the group members rush to the site under the pretext of an aiding the injured and removing the corpses.
In remarks to as-Safir Lebanese daily, the resident pointed out that “one of his wounded friends discovered that he has become with one kidney after returning from Turkey.”
This comes at a time when the Syrian media revealed that doctors are illegally infiltrating into Syria, particularly through the Turkish border, under the guise of treating the wounded. However, they are really involved in the crime of stealing organs.
Similarly, in Ankara, the Turkish Yurt daily reported that the armed groups are involved in the trade of human organs, revealing that the rebels cut off, and sold organs of who were killed after being kidnapped.
In the harsh Ogaden region of Ethiopia, impoverished ethnic Somali people are being murdered and tortured, raped, persecuted and displaced by government paramilitary forces. Illegal actions carried out with the knowledge and tacit support of donor countries, seemingly content to turn a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by their brutal, repressive ally in the region; and a deaf ear to the pain and suffering of the Ogaden Somali people.
Around five million traditionally nomadic pastoralists – live in what is one of the least developed corners of the world besieged by military oppression, drought and famine.
Democracy denied
When the British, with due colonial duplicity, arrogantly handed the Ogaden region over to Ethiopia in 1954, the ethnic Somali people found themselves under occupation by, what they regard as a foreign power. The centuries old struggle for self-determination, has since 1984 been taken up by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), predictably regarded as ‘terrorists’ by the Ethiopian government; which hunts them down and, with impunity, tortures, imprisons and rapes its members and suspected supporters while carrying out widespread extrajudicial killings.
In 1992 as part of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front’s (EPRDF) much trumpeted, never realized policy of Ethnic Federalism, that promised autonomy and cultural respect to the many tribal groups in the country; ethnic Somalis in the Ogaden were officially acknowledged and inaugural regional elections held. The ONLF, a secular group in a largely Muslim region, “won 60% of seats… and formed the new (regional) government” Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported. Two years later, and in response to the will of the people, the ONLF called for a referendum on self-determination. The government’s reaction to such democratic gall was to kill 81 unarmed civilians in the town of Wardheer, disband the regional parliament, arrest and imprison the vice-president and several other members of the parliament, instigate mass arrests and indiscriminate killings; this brutal act ignited the current struggle and drove the ONLF into the shadows and its current guerilla war.
Resource rich
The region, rich in oil and gas reserves, is potentially the wealthiest area of Ethiopia. Resources that the indigenous people are understandably keen to benefit from, that the EPRDF sees as another party asset to add to its burgeoning portfolio. Genocide Watch (GW) tell us that, “immediately after oil and gas were discovered in the Ogaden, Ethiopian government forces evicted large numbers of [Ogaden Somalis] from their ancestral grazing lands and herded them into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, causing a humanitarian disaster”. If the ONLF are correct and their view sounds more than plausible, the Ethiopian military intends to secure the resources for the government and exclude the local people. The Africa Faith and Justice Network confirms such suspicions, saying: “With the discovery of petroleum leading to exploration missions by foreign companies, the government’s motives are questionable.”
Upfront fees for exploration rights are reputed to have been sold to foreign corporations for between $50 – $100 million, paid by under-informed, overexcited multinationals, who subsequently pull out, having underestimated the logistical problems of working in the region. China Petroleum was one such; they were subjected to an unprecedented ill-judged attack by the ONLF in 2007 that caused the deaths of nine Chinese workmen and, according to China Daily, “65 Ethiopian employees”. The Ethiopian government, itching to intensify the conflict that had been simmering for over three decades, retaliated with excessive brutality, by HRW reports, “launching a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in the five zones of [the] Somali Region primarily affected by the conflict… [Where] the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) has deliberately and repeatedly attacked civilian populations,” killing hundreds of men women and children.
Displaced & destitute
Thousands of terrified Ogaden Somalis have since fled the affected areas. They seek refuge “in neighbouring Somalia and Kenya from widespread Ethiopian military attacks on civilians and villages that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,“(ibid). Large numbers have been made homeless and destitute, accurate numbers are difficult to collate due to restricted access, however human rights groups estimate the number, to be greater than one hundred thousand.
The Ogaden, GW states “has been transformed into a vast military occupied area, with thousands in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.” Most displaced persons, the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reports, “sought shelter with relatives or safety in the bush, rather than gathering in organized camps,” where widespread abuse is known to take place, including starvation that GW describes as “genocide by attrition”. These desperate, frightened people are not regarded as refugees and so receive no humanitarian aid support from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). And the EPRDF, consistent with their duplicitous approach to governance, fails to meet dutiful obligations under the historic Kampala Convention which “reaffirms that national authorities have the primary responsibility to provide assistance to IDPs…. (And) … to address the plight of people uprooted within their borders”. The ruling party ignores these requirements, acting not in accordance with international law, the federal constitution or indeed their moral duty.
Especially violent
In 2009, after widespread condemnation of the Ethiopian army’s conduct in the region, the regime formed the highly suspect Liyu (Special) Police. Somaliland Press (26/9/12) states, the government “deliberately recruited unemployed youths from the streets”. This shadowy paramilitary force of 10,000 – 14,000, fits, HRW says, “into the context of impunity where security forces can more or less do what they want.” Not a group, then, that the British government should be supporting. In a baffling move however, according to The Guardian (10/1/13), the Department for International Development (DFID) has submitted, a “tender to train security forces in the Somali region of Ogaden”, Amnesty International’s Claire Beston said: “It was highly concerning that the UK was planning to engage with the Special Police..…. There is no doubt that the Special Police have become a significant source of fear in the region.”(Ibid) The DFID in denying the report ambiguously states that, “reforming the Special Police is critical for achieving a safe and secure Somali Region”, failing to recognize that the Liyu force needs not reforming but disbanding and, along with all Ethiopian military personnel, marched out of the region immediately.
State-sanctioned terrorism and genocide
In addition to murder and rape, appalling levels of torture and extrajudicial execution are reported. Thousands, according to GW, “have been arrested without any charges and held in desolate desert prisons”. Mass detention “without any judicial oversight are routine. Hundreds—and possibly thousands—of individuals have been arrested and held in military barracks, sometimes multiple times, where they have been tortured, raped, and assaulted”, HRW report.
Children and women being the most vulnerable suffer acutely, the rape of Ogaden Somali women is a favored weapon of the Ethiopian paramilitary; held in military barracks women are imprisoned as sex slaves, where they are subjected to multiple gang rape and torture. African Rights Monitor (ARM) recount one woman’s story that mirrors many and shocks us all. She claims to have been, “raped by fifty soldiers for a period of twelve hours and hung upside down over a pit of fire that had chili powder in…. to suffocate her lungs”.
Statistics of abuse are impossible to state, the numbers are perhaps of less importance than the crimes and the suffering caused, survivors bear the physical scars and mental trauma of their ordeals, from which many may never recover.
A scorched-earth policy involving burning of crops and homes and killing cattle is part of the campaign of state terror, as HRW record, “Confiscation of livestock [the main asset], restrictions on access to water, food, and other essential commodities” have “been used as weapons in an economic war”. As has the destruction of villages, confirmed by evidence from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, proving, “that the Ethiopian military has attacked civilians and burned towns and villages in eight locations across the remote Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia.” Such inhumane methods are employed by the EPRDF to instill fear in the Ogaden Somali people and suppress their legitimate demands for autonomy. It is shocking criminal abuse which staggeringly, “GW considers to have already reached stage 7 [of 8], genocidal massacres against many [Ogadeni, Anuk, Oromo and Omo] of its people”. International donors however, who provide a third of Ethiopia’s total federal budget – around $4 billion a year, to their utter shame say and do nothing; neglect constituting complicity.
Village executions
With the region virtually shut off, video evidence smuggled out of Ethiopia by Abdullahi Hussein, a former Ethiopian civil servant is rare. Revealing Somaliland Press say that, “whole villages have been emptied of inhabitants through executions and mass flight from terror… you can hear members of the Liyu Police desecrate a civilian they have just killed. They stomp on his head and poke his face with a stick.” Such attacks on settlements are routine: Demanding our attention is Qurille village in the Wardeer district attacked in September 2012: Ogaden Online recounts how troops: “Shoot each resident of the town in their custody at point blank range” including women and children. Bodies are hung from trees in a public display of state terrorism, to engender lasting fear. This type of brutality is widespread. HRW records how in Raqda village in the Gashaamo district during March 2012, “the Liyu police force summarily executed at least 10 men – in their custody, killed at least nine residents… [and] abducted at least 24 men.”
The killing continued two days later on 17th March, when “Liyu police took another four men from their homes and summarily executed them. A woman whose brother was a veterinarian told HRW: “They caught my brother and took him outside. They shot him in the head and then slit his throat.” Defenseless villages are easy prey for the Liyu and their brutal methodology, as HRW state, “troops have forcibly displaced entire rural communities, ordering villagers to leave their homes within a few days or witness their houses being burnt down and possessions destroyed—and risk death”. Page upon page could be filled with such violent disturbing accounts.
Exclusion of foreign media and aid workers
Contrary to constitutional and human rights law, the EPRDF has imposed a widespread blockade on the Ogaden region, seeking to control the flow of information outside the country as it does within its borders, where it allows no freedom of the media; of expression, of assembly or of political dissent. Add to this the outlawing of trade unions and the partisan distribution of aid and a picture of a brutal totalitarian regime emerges from the duplicitous mist of politically correct, democratic rhetoric.
Attempts to work in the region by international media and humanitarian groups are seen as criminal acts, punishable under the widely condemned anti-terrorist proclamation. Two Swedish journalists investigating human rights abuses in the Ogaden, made headlines in July 2011 when they were attacked and arrested by the Liyu police and subjected to a terrifying ‘mock’ execution. Charged and sentenced in Ethiopia’s kangaroo court to 11 years imprisonment, they were later released having served 400 days in appalling conditions. Reporters from the New York Times, The Telegraph and Voice of America have also been imprisoned and expelled, so too United Nations (UN) workers and staff from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who were arrested and accused of being spies! Wrapped in paranoia, the EPRDF suspended 42 NGOs in 2009 for reporting government human rights abuses in the region and, in 2007 in what must be the EPRDF’s Pièce de résistance, the International Committee of the Red Cross were expelled.
In addition to the information embargo, the region is subject to what HRW describe as “severe restrictions on movement and commercial trade, minimal access to independent relief assistance,” and the “politicized manipulation of humanitarian operations, particularly food distribution”; meaning food supplied by donor countries is stolen to feed the Ethiopian army and the Liyu force. This in one of the worst areas for drought and famine in the country, where, In-Depth Africa reports, “1,539,279 people (30% of the population) in the region lack food, water and health services”.
Peace and justice for the people
The little known conflict in the Ogaden is a cause of intense tension between Ethiopia and Somalia and a destabilizing issue in an unstable region. It is a fight that has been distorted by the former Government of Somalia, which sought to misrepresent the issue and transform it into a boundary dispute; a misconception that suits the Ethiopian regime keen to avoid the substantive point of regional autonomy.
All efforts to facilitate a lasting peaceful resolution to what is an age-old struggle should be urgently made, Ethiopia’s donors and facilitators, principally America, along with the European Union and Britain must act with due responsibility. Action should be taken to: Close down IDP camps and the people allowed to return to their communities; aid provided for rebuilding villages (not to train the Liyu) destroyed by the military; regional elections organised and a referendum on self-determination held.
The appalling atrocities committed daily by the Ethiopian paramilitary constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity that should immediately be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. They are, though, just the deepest wounds within a scarred body of human rights abuses, violating federal and international law, being perpetrated by the EPRDF regime throughout the country and with utter impunity. This must end and the Ogaden Somali people, allowed to determine their own destiny and to live in peace.
A “legal intifada” appears likely for more than just the Palestinians
La Maison d’Avocats, Damascus
Even before the historic 139 to 8 vote of the UN General Assembly on November 29 of this year which opened up a plethora of legal remedies for Palestinians, a “legal intifada” — to borrow a phrase from Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law and a longtime advocate of advancing resistance to the illegal occupation of Palestine through the rule of law — has been taking form in this region.
The reasons include nearly seven decades of countless Zionist crimes against Muslims and Christians in occupied Palestine and far beyond. As Professor Boyle has suggested, the opportunities presented to the PLO by the lopsided UN vote “…can mean numerous available legal remedies ranging from the securing of a fair share of the gas deposits off the shores of Gaza, control of Palestinian airspace and telecommunications and, crucially, bringing the Zionist regime to account at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
Syria too, currently under enormous pressure from international interference into the internal affairs of the country and the subject of an intense regime change project led by the US and France, has international legal remedies immediately available to it stemming from the actions of the US, UK, France and others in imposing on Syria’s civilian population one of the most severe and clearly illegal layers of sanctions. Were Syria and others to file an Application for an Advisory Opinion with the ICJ few in the international legal community have much doubt that targeting civilians economically and attempting to destroy the Syrian economy — for no other purpose than to ignite rebellion — would be considered a violation of international law at the International Court of Justice.
Granted there are some potential jurisdictional problems given that Syria has not yet accepted the Article 36 Compulsory Jurisdiction of the World Court, as provided in the Statute of the Court, and the strong campaign at the UN that would certainly be waged by the Obama Administration to challenge ICJ jurisdiction to hear a case on behalf of Syria and its civilian population, but they can be overcome. As a general rule, an Advisory Opinion requires a simple majority affirmative vote by the UN General Assembly or an Application by one of the designated UN Specialized Agencies. This might be a tough job to secure the former but it is doable with the latter. Moreover, should Syria accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ it could likely quickly resolve the issue of sanctions by claiming a legal dispute with one or more states that also accept CJ and are supporters of sanctions. For example, the UK, France and their NATO and Gulf allies.
Aspects of a possible filing at the International Court of Justice on the legality of US-led sanctions are currently being researched by seasoned international lawyers and academics, at various Western and International law centers. Supporting efforts being worked on include drafting amicus curie briefs on the issue of the legality of the US-led sanctions to be submitted to the Court, plans for securing the widest possible political support for challenging the US-led sanctions from among Non-Aligned Movement countries, international peace groups, NGO’s, pro-peace websites, bloggers, social media and online activists as well as organizing a skilled media center to disseminate information about the case including quickly publishing, in paperback book form, one of the key Annexes to be submitted to the ICJ upon filing the Application. This volume will present Syrian government and International NGO prepared data on the inhumane effects of the US led sanctions in all their aspects, including by not limited to children, the elderly and the infirm, plus the effects of the US-led sanctions on the Syrian economy generally, i.e. consumer goods, medical delivery systems, financial institutions, currency values and related aspects of the lives of the civilian population of Syria.
Were Syria, and others, to take the illegal and immoral US-led sanctions case to the World Court and other available venues, they would shift their diplomatic position from a defensive status to taking the offense. Such a bold initiative would advance accountability under international law and, because the ICJ would likely grant a Petition for Interim Measures of Protection, the US-led sanctions could be suspended during the course of the judicial proceedings. Obviously this lifting/freezing of the sanctions would immediately and directly inure to the benefit of the Syrian civilian population, including the half million Palestinian refugees in Syria as well as thousands from Iraq.
This would work in concert with the “THREE B’s”, to borrow a phrase from Russia’s top middle east envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Boganov, referring to Mr. Brahimi, Mr. Bogdanov, and Undersecretary William Burns, a former ambassador to Moscow, who would be urged to intensify their focus on achieving a diplomatic resolution of the Syrian crisis based on modified June 2011 Geneva formulation of a transition period leading to the 2014 elections.
According to several International lawyers surveyed between October andDecember, 2012, Syria clearly has the facts of the US sanctions case in its favor and there are ample solid legal theories to argue to and convince the World Court. Under the ICJ Statute, the Court must decide cases solely in accordance with international law. Hence the ICJ must apply: (1) any international conventions and treaties; (2) international custom; (3) general principles recognized as law by civilized nations; and (4) judicial decisions and the teachings of highly qualified publicists of the various nations. From this body of international law the International Court of Justice would find ample basis to support Syria’s claims not only for the benefit of its civilian population but also to advance the rule of law in the global community.
The ICJ is made up of 15 jurists from different countries. No two judges at any given time may be from the same country. The court’s composition is static but generally includes jurists from a variety of cultures. Among the Principles, Standards and Rules of international law that Syria may well argue to the World Court, may include but not be limited to, the following:
The US led sanctions violate international humanitarian law due to the negative health effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Syria. This renders the sanctions illegal under international customary law and the UN Charter for their disproportionate damage caused to Syria’s civilian population;
The US led severe sanctions regime constitutes an illegitimate form of collective punishment of the weakest and poorest members of society, the infants, the children, the chronically ill, and the elderly;
The US, France and the UK, as well as their allies, have violated the UN Charter by their imposition of severe economic sanctions and threats of military force. The United States, Israel, and some of their allies, regularly threaten Damascus with the “option” of a military strike. The ICJ has ruled previously that “A threat or use of force is contrary to Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter and fails to meet all the requirements of Article 51, is therefore unlawful”. It has further ruled that “A threat of use of force must be compatible with the requirements of the international law applicable in armed conflict, particularly those of the principles and rules of humanitarian law, as well as with specific obligations under treaties and other undertakings which expressly deal with threats to members of the United Nations.”
Moreover, unilateral US sanctions, without the imprimatur of the United Nations are blatantly illegal under International Law because they are in fact multilateral and impose penalties on any country which opposes the sanctions or does not choose to participate in them;
The US led sanctions amount to an Act of War given their effects including hardships on the general public and that Syria therefore has a legal right to Self-Defense.
The US led sanctions, given their design and intent, constitute acts of aggression against Syria in violation of Article 2 (4) of the UN charter.
The indisputable facts of the US led sanctions case warrant the imposition by the ICJ of Restraining Orders designed to prevent any type of blockade or no-fly zones in Syria and the immediate cessation of the imposition of further economic sanctions against Syria, and also their efforts of securing more sanctions against Syria at the United Nations Security Council. The Restraining Orders, under the umbrella of Interim Measures of Protection, would presumably also seek to prohibit the US and its allies from the Persian Gulf region and elsewhere, from advocating aggressive military actions against Syria, including supplying funding, weapons, and jihadists, as well as Western “Special Forces” currently pouring into Syria from its northern border with Turkey and to negotiate with the Syrian government in good faith to end the current crisis.
Syria can legitimately claim, and would presumably argue at the ICJ and other international forums that the bi-lateral or multilateral economic sanctions, led by the US and its Gulf allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are illegal, indeed criminal due to their assault on international humanitarian law and required state practice.
Syria could successfully argue, according to a recent survey of international lawyers conducted in Brussels and The Hague, as well as within Syria’s Maison d’Avocats, that the US led sanctions violate the international law principle of Non-intervention in the internal affairs of UN member states and that the stewards of these sanctions could themselves be subject to international sanctions plus compensatory and punitive damages for the benefit of their victims.
In summary, as Germany’s Green Party, and increasingly, legal scholars and human rights organizations generally are insisting, sanctions against Syria’s civilian population fundamentally violate international law.
Should NATO sets up a no-fly zone and were to launch airstrikes against Damascus, it can and should immediately be sued at The Hague and if the situation deteriorates NATO can and should be held to account for targeting Alawites and Christians on the basis of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. All participating countries, 142 to date, are obliged to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, elements of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group including killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Despite Syria’s strong case on both the facts and the law, and the diversity in structure and composition of the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal has a few times over the years been criticized for favoring established powers. Under articles 3 and 9 of the ICJ Statute, the judges on the ICJ should represent “the main forms of civilization and principal legal systems of the world.” This definition suggests that the ICJ does not represent the interests of developing countries. Nevertheless, the World Courts record has been by and large exemplary in applying principles, standards and rules of international law both in contested cases and advisory opinions and Syria has an excellent opportunity to protect its citizens, thwart US and Israeli designs on the region, and advance international accountability — all to the inestimable benefit of all people and nations.
Syria, which the US and Israel and their allies are today working to keep off balance and on the defensive diplomatically, should consider immediately filing an application with the International Court of Justice, and use all other available international legal, political and humanitarian tribunals, to directly challenge and boldly confront the US led sanctions campaign against its people. The Syrian Arab Republic, by taking the offensive at the World Court and elsewhere, will help relieve the enormous pressures on its civilians and advance the principles, standards and rules of international law—for the benefit of all mankind.
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Damascus and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com
Whenever financial swindlers prosper at the expense of investors or a bank jiggers interest rates to bugger their competitors or tax evaders flee fiscal crises or rent gouging petrol monarchies recycle profits or oligarchs pillage economies and drive millions to drink, drugs and destitution they find a suitable secure sanctuary in London. They are wooed and pursued by big British realtors eager to sell them multi-million dollar estates, trophy properties and landmark mansions. Pompous and pretentious British academics convince them to send their progeny to six digit private schools, promising them that when they graduate they will be speaking English through their nasal cavities, rolling their r’s and mastering the art of eloquent but vacuous elocution. British governments, Labor, Liberal, and Conservative, in the best and most hypocritical legal traditions, fashion the legal loopholes to attract the biggest and wealthiest parasites of the world.
Crime Wave Sweeps City of London
A veritable crime wave1 has invaded the City of London, where millionaire investment bankers cook the books for billionaire clients and bilk the Treasury to pay their fines and flout the Law. Courses in business ethics are obligatory at Oxford and Cambridge since it has become standard operating procedure for mega-swindlers to plead guilty, to pay a fine and avoid jail and to solemnly promise to never, ever, flout the law… until the next mega-deal.
London has become the center of global financial capital by engaging in long term large scale active collaboration with multi-billion pound drug, arms, people smuggling and sex-slave cartels. The “Brits” specialize in laundering funds from the Mexican, Colombian, Peruvian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Nigerian narco-kings. Albanian white slavers have their ‘private bankers’ at prestigious City banks with a preference for graduates of the London School of Economics. Bi-lingual Greek kleptocrats, lifelong billion dollar tax evaders, fleeing from their pillaged homeland have their favorite real estate brokers, who never engage in any sort of naughty ‘due diligence’ which might uncover improper tax returns. The City Boys with verve and positive initiative, aided and abetted by the hyper-kinetic “Tony” Blair’s open door policy to swindlers and saints of all colors and creeds, welcomed each and every Russian gangster-oligarch-democrat, especially those who paid cash for multi-pound ‘Olde English’ landmark estates’.
The London Sanctuary for the world’s richest plunderers and parasites offers unprecedented services, especially protection from extradition and criminal prosecution at the site of their crimes. Impartial British legal and judicial officials are experts in citing constitutional precedents that, in strict regard for the established legal order, uphold the denial of extradition, denying the legal and justice systems of every pillaged country and the cries of justice of the impoverished Irish, Russians, Greeks and Spaniards.
Real and feigned indignation among the highly moralistic City Boys and cynical grins among the experienced senior partners, greet the unruly victims of their guest billionaires. The impoverished masses demand that the British creditor banks should collect their debt payments from the accounts of the swindlers who received the loans, passed their debt to the public treasury and recycled their ill-gotten gains into their British accounts.
When the Saville dressed, swashbuckling swindlers cross swords with their counterparts, as when the venerable and respectable, Barclays Bank fixed the Libor to profit on the interest rate differentials, at the expense of other banks, the bankers all agreed the solution was to pay a 290 million pound fine, admit the crime and try to save a system which should “only” bilk the public treasury, retail investors and ‘market takers’. Barclay’s “crime” was, of course, poisoning the trough from which their peers and partners prosper.
The Barclay Boys of both sexes, outraged by the indecent finger pointing by the other City Boys, raised an issue which nobody could deny: they were not alone. HSBC, Standard Charter, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds of London and many other bankers of equal or lesser assets across the Atlantic were engaged in similar unethical, (daresay criminal) or at least questionable undertakings. They also paid fines and were duly chastised. The older and more experienced senior officers of the City sent internal memos to their brash PR underlings to stop this unseemly washing of soiled silk shirts in public; mutual denunciations created the false image that there was a crime wave running through the suites of the City of London.
Unfortunately, the British legal system is not merely protective of overseas billionaire swindlers, it is also accommodative, supremely vindictive and bending over frontward when it comes to requests for extradition from its “Special Partner” in Washington. Let it be an Islamic religious figure or an Australian whistleblower (Assange) and, in due haste, with the extradition papers in hand, “the bobbies” are ready to break embassy doors to facilitate compliance.
London: Pimping for Parasites
The global economic crisis is a boon for London’s high end real estate corporations, as overseas millionaires and billionaires, tax evaders, political raiders of the public treasury, abandon pillaged economies and pour billions into mansions and penthouses. Super-rich rentier monarchists from the despotic Gulf States join Russian commodity speculators and new rich Chinese sweatshop owners in bidding up London properties in prestigious postal codes in Belgravia (Ebury Street, Eton Place, and Eton Square) Knightbridge, Mayfair (Park Street). Corpulent Russian oligarchs and pious Saudi royalty loll in country estates in, Hertfordshire, Herefordshire and Cheshire overlooking their elegant English gardens and enjoy the purring and caresses of their very upscale British courtesans, in one or another of the two dozen bedrooms. The British government’s tolerance and open minded attitude to Russian and Albanian gangster oligarchs, whose bloody ascent to wealth can match any Sicilian godfathers, greases the wheels for the rise of what the Financial Times chooses to call, the real estate ‘industry’, bankrolled by the financial ‘community’ and aligned with the insurance ‘investors’.
The predators international, take their afternoon tea at 4 p.m., sherry at 6:30 p.m. They are entertained by the gossip of Her Majesty’s Court and the Queen’s Anniversary Celebration and indulge in the sporting life (soccer teams over polo horses). They cultivate a taste for culture. Accompanied by Oxbridge experts they shop for “collectibles” – paintings at Ordovas on Saville Row, Richard Nagy on Old Bond Street, Frank Auerbach at the Malborough, sculpture in Jean & Luc Baroni at St. James and jewelry shops for a Vacheron Constatin.
The Gulf oil oligarchs, who gouge exorbitant rents from energy poor African and Asian countries and Chinese and Indian billionaires who exploit hundreds of millions of Asian female factory workers and deny migrant workers residence, rest and health insurance, spent $9 billion pounds ($14.4 billion dollars) on central London houses in 2010-2011.2 Between 2011 and mid-2012, 60 percent of the buyers in the prime central London market were foreign millionaires and billionaires.2
The Cameron-Clegg regime demands sacrifice, austerity and belt tightening in Greece, condemning millions to destitution, suicide and desolation, even as it encourages the top 1% of Greek kleptocrats to “invest” and reside in central London’s exclusive neighborhoods. According to the IMF 56,000 Greek plutocrats are tax evaders.3 According to a US study of their annual income, $28 billion Euros ($36 billion USD) is unreported.3 Most of which is deposited in London banks or ‘invested’ in luxury property in Mayfair, Belgravia or thereabouts. If the illegal accounts were taxed or better still used to pay for the foreign debt, it would conform to Greek law, reduce the deficit and social cuts and perhaps revive the economy. But respecting Greek tax laws would mean fewer commissions for the real estate moguls at Savells, Marsh and Parsons, Knight Frank; less private accounts for HSBC and Barclay’s; less sales at the upscale art galleries; fewer patrons for the high end ‘escort’ agencies of both sexes.
Crime pays. FIRE4 plays. Public hospitals close. Tuition rises. Private clinics and schools catering to the overseas oligarchs and their British partners flourish. Where’s “the crises”? Not to be found in central London, nor in the City; nor in the legal system; nor in the Special Forces. Bank swindlers flourish. Judicial litigation among oligarchs pays. Dirty mercenary wars in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria and elsewhere provide lucrative contracts for retired Colonel Blimps– in the best traditions of empire.
The crises? That’s for the other England outside of the City, with the wrong postal codes. Where workers crowd emergency rooms, where the poor await evictions in what were once council houses and where those who study and work can look forward to debt and dead end jobs.
God bless God d*** London, the Parasites Paradise!
Notes:
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism (October-November 2012) p. 1, 3. Financial Times, “Global Prosperity Insight”, Oct. 3, 2012, p. 5. Financial Times, Oct. 6, 7, 2012, p. 4. FIRE, shorthand for the parasitic troika Finance, Insurance and Real Estate.
The liberal use of US-manufactured tear gas on protesters in recent days has raised questions about its public health effects – and who is actually ordering its use.
Egyptian security forces are digging deeper into their budget with each volley of increasingly fatal US-made tear gas they launch at demonstrators.
The human cost of the violent crackdown in central Cairo is increasingly clear — among the 39 fatalities reported to date, several are said to have died of asphyxiation caused by tear gas.
But the financial background to the use of crowd control weapons raises questions about the extent of Washington’s financial assistance to Egypt’s military and how this might filter down to the ministry of interior.
The USA is the biggest arms supplier to Egypt, providing an average of US$1.3 billion in military and law equipment every year since 2000.
Records from the US Department of State show the US supplied $1.7 million of “toxicological agents” — “including tear gases and riot control agents” — to Egypt in 2010.
This was the largest dispatch of such agents in at least 10 years.
In 2009, the US supplied 33,000 units of ‘tear gas and riot control agents’ worth $460,000. It did not supply in 2007 nor 2008, but gave 17,000 units worth $240,000 in 2006, documents show.
This assistance, however, was granted to the military, and it is not clear whether it was then channelled to the ministry of interior.
The Central Security Forces (CSF), Egypt’s riot control machine, is a division within the Ministry of Interior, but is closely tied to the armed forces, as its troops are conscripted through the military then transferred to CSF.
“The military’s arming includes tear gas and riot control weapons. The ministry of interior supposedly buys its own weaponry through other channels,” Mahmoud Kotri, a retired brigadier general who wrote a book suggesting radical police reforms, told Ahram Online.
Kotri confirmed that when the current minister of interior, Mansour El-Essawy, was appointed in March he issued explicit instructions to CSF not to carry live ammunition when confronting protesters.
This directive apparently included a ban on shotguns. Kotra explained these weapons were formerly used to fire tear gas canisters via an ad-hoc launcher. El-Essawy’s instructions probably forced CSF to acquire new types of gas bombs and new ways of launching them, says Kotri.
Nevertheless, doctors on Tahrir Square treating the injured say they have seen many protesters hit by live ammunition, including shotgun wounds.
Kotri believes that a third party might be involved in the shootings
“No MOI official in his right mind would order the use of live ammunition. Not after what happened in January and the former security leadership currently on trial for killing protesters — it just doesn’t add up,” he says.
Protesters and medical staff in Cairo have also expressed concern about the kind of gas being deployed by security forces.
Speaking to Ahram Online at the field hospital in Qasr El-Dobara church behind Tahrir Square on Monday night, volunteer doctor Lilian Sobhy said their improvised clinic had seen 290 patients in 24 hours, the majority with breathing problems.
“Some in contact with the gas are suffering from a severe burning sensation in the lungs,” Sobhy said. “This is not normal gas and these are not normal symptoms.”
Others, however, claim the symptoms — serious though they are — are no different from those caused by extreme exposure to CS gas in the past.
A former police officer told Ahram Online a colleague of his in the CSF was exposed to tear gas used by Egyptian border guards on Palestinians who broke through Rafah crossing in 2008.
He said the army’s gas was “unbearable and different from that used by CSF”.
Given the impressions above, many questions arise.
Is this a new kind of gas? If so, what is its nature? Is it designed use on civilians or is it a much more powerful assault tool used for military purposes? Who provided such weapons to the CSF? Was it the army, or did it get them through other channels?
For its part, the Armed Forced issued Communiqué’ no. 83 on their official Facebook page denying that it had used “gases” on protesters.
The 2010 supply of “Toxicological Agents, Including Chemical Agents, Biological Agents, and Associated Equipment”, which includes tear gas from the United States, which came under the auspices of ‘foreign defence assistance’, comprised 94,000 unspecified units.
Figures suggest the vast majority of these ‘units’ were tear gas canisters.
A crude calculation, made by dividing the aid sum by the number of units, shows the cost of a single tear gas canister may be around $18. Other, much-higher, figures have also been touted.
On Wednesday night, Amr El-Leithy, a prominent TV anchor, estimated the price of a single canister at $48, but did not give a source for this figure.
Eyewitnesses on the frontline in Cairo have reported hundreds of volleys of tear gas in the six days since the crackdown began.
Canisters found on the battle-scarred streets around Tahrir Square bear the manufacturing stamp of Combined Systems Inc (CSI), a US-based firm that provides equipment to military forces and law enforcement agencies around the world.
Among CSI’s investors is the Carlyle Group — an asset management firm which once counted former US President George Bush Snr among its advisors.
CSI produces its ‘riot control devices’ under its law enforcement brand name, Combined Tactical Systems (CTS), a firm headquartered in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.
CTS’s website — http://www.less-lethal.com — displays what it calls the company’s “full line of chemical irritant and smoke munitions”.
Demonstrators have gathered three common types of gas canister with the following serial numbers and catalogue descriptions:
#4230 – CS Smoke
#6230 – CS Smoke – marketed as an ‘outdoor grenade’
#3321 – Long-range CS Smoke – effective for 137 metres
A catalogue on the company’s website displays the latest devices, but the dates of manufacture and design of some of the canisters show Egypt’s Central Security Forces are using older, often-expired versions.
Instructions on gas canisters say they should not be used after expiry, which is five years after the manufacturing date. Some cans found near Tahrir have a manufacture date of 2001. The Minister of Interior has admitted using expired canisters but said this only means that they would be “less effective.”
All the canisters above unleash CS gas — a standard riot control agent — but CTS also makes canisters that use CN gas, a more toxic formulation that takes longer to disperse and can cause disorientation and fainting.
Other media have reported finding CR gas canisters around Tahrir — an agent that medical experts say can cause pulmonary, heart and lung problems among those subjected to intense exposure.
CR gas is banned for military use under the Paris Convention on Chemical Warfare of 1993 but several governments still use it against their own people and, allegedly, those under their military occupation. These governments include the United States, Sri Lanka and Israel, as well as Egypt.
Gas manufacturer CTS has been linked with the ‘non-lethal’ weapons used by Israeli forces that have been unleashed on Palestinian protesters, reportedly causing several deaths due to asphyxiation.
Its supply to the Israeli market might suggest why several canisters found in Cairo with CTS numbers and designs also have Hebrew markings.
Iraqi Lawyers’ Syndicate says more than 3,000 civilians in Iraq have lodged an official complaint against the US government and its military troops in the Middle Eastern country, Press TV reports.
The lawsuit has been filed against US forces for crimes they have committed against Iraqi civilians and the destruction of their private properties during the US-led occupation of the country that began in March 2003, the Iraqi Lawyers’ Syndicate said.
The Iraqis have the right to call for the prosecution of those US soldiers that have committed crimes against the civilians during their military missions, said the director of the Iraqi legal body, Razzaq al-Abadi.
“According to the international conventions and as the US and the UK are members of the Geneva Conventions, they know that have to compensate Iraq for the invasion and the violence and destruction [that] followed the invasion,” al-Abadi added.
Meanwhile, members of Iraq’s State of Law Coalition say the cases against the US government are in process in Iraqi courts and people are receiving legal assistance to proceed with their complaints.
“It is part of the rights of the Iraqi people to raise those claims, legal claims, and the government and the embassy is providing all necessary assistance and help in this matter and I believe that the foreign office should be more active,” member of Iraq’s State of Law Coalition Saad al-Muttalibi said.
He added that the Iraqi parliament is now studying the cases and is about to introduce a legislation to send the complaints to the international courts.
“If the parliament succeeds in passing a legislation forcing the Iraqi government into steps, into demanding compensation for the individuals, then the government will be in a position to enter a legal claim against the United States,” al-Muttalibi went on to say.
Nearly 47,000 US troops have remained in Iraq, but they must all leave the country by the end of 2011 under the terms of a 2008 bilateral security agreement between Washington and Baghdad.
A US army staff sergeant slaughtered Afghan victims with grenades and powerful machine guns during patrols in Kandahar province, then dropped weapons near their bodies to make them appear to have been combatants, an act that annul every human dignity and rights conventions.
Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, of Billings, Montana described by a comrade as “evil incarnate” cut fingers off the corpses of three Afghan civilians.
His lawyer alleged that he had nothing to do with any plot to slaughter those unarmed men for sport. A court martial opened for the soldier who has pleaded not guilty to 16 criminal charges ranging from murder to taking the fingers as bloody mementos.
Of the five soldiers charged as part of the “kill team” within the platoon, three have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Gibbs, who faces up to life in prison without parole if convicted.
Gibbs, 26, is the highest-ranking of those charged. Others in the unit, including some of his co-defendants, portrayed him as an imposing sociopath with little respect for life – a man who gunned down dogs without provocation, threatened fellow soldiers and who tallied his kills with skull tattoos on his calves.
Another lead figure in the plot, Pvt. Jeremy Morlock, testified Monday that Gibbs played with the corpse of the first victim, a teenager, as if it was a puppet. The jurors were shown graphic photographs, including one in which Morlock stood over the victim’s body and held up his head as though he had just bagged a deer.
Gibbs, who had more combat experience than most of the others, did talk frequently of previous shootings he’d been involved in – including one in Iraq, when Gibbs fired on a car that refused to stop at a checkpoint, only to later learn that the vehicle was carrying an innocent Iraqi family.
Known Israeli organized crime bosses are able to travel freely to the United States, unlike counterparts from Italy, China and Central America, because the State Department has failed to apply US law to them.
It appears that at least one prominent Israeli crime family member was able to reach the United States with a specific intent to commit murder, as a result of this exemption.
The cable, which was released by Wikileaks on 26 August, details the growing alarm of American officials that “Organized crime in Israel now has global reach, with direct impact inside the United States.”
Israel, according to the cable, is a world center of money laundering, drug trafficking, and trafficking in women for prostitution; and Israeli crime families operate international criminal syndicates involved in gambling, credit card and technology fraud spanning the globe.
Israel mobsters use IDF training to kill
The cable points out that Israeli organized crime families have grown increasingly murderous and that:
the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC [organized crime] business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale.
Efforts to fight Israeli crime in US hampered by legal exemption
Under a heading titled “Israeli OC Operating Freely in United States,” the cable states:
it is fair to assume that many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely.
It notes that the US Embassy in Tel Aviv
is currently utilizing all available tools to deny Israeli OC [organized crime] figures access to the United States in order to prevent them from furthering their criminal activities on US soil.
But the American officials are hampered in a key respect – the special exemption apparently granted to known Israeli mob bosses:
Unlike OC [organized crime] groups from the former Soviet Union, Italy, China, and Central America, application of INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] 212(a)(3)(A)(ii) against Israeli OC is not specifically authorized per Foreign Affairs Manual 40.31 N5.3. As such, Israelis who are known to work for or belong to OC families are not automatically ineligible for travel to the United States.
the Chinese Triads; the Mafia; the Yakuza; any of the various groups constituting the organized crime families of the Former Soviet Union; any of the organized Salvadoran street gangs in North America, including, but not limited to, the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS 13) and 18th Street (18th Street) gangs; and the biker gangs the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, Bandidos, and the Mongols.
Yet the many known Israeli crime organizations detailed in the US Embassy cable are absent. This version of the FAM is dated 19 July 2011, which means that more than two years after the plea from US Embassy officials in Tel Aviv, no action had been taken to stop the free access for Israeli mob bosses to the US.
Exemption allowed Israeli hitman to reach US soil
The cable details at least one case where treating Israel the same as other countries with a major organized crime problem might have prevented a criminal reaching US soil.
It concerns Adam Abitbul [also spelled in the cable “Abutbul”], the son of, as the cable puts it, “crime-family head Charlie Abutbul.” Charlie Abutbul was gunned down in a September 2008 mob hit. The cable states:
In June 2008, Post [the embassy] issued Adam Abitbul a valid tourist visa. Abitbul had no prior criminal convictions, and carried no visa ineligibilities. Several months later, Post received information from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that he had traveled to the United States to carry out a hit. Abitbul returned to Israel prematurely for his father’s funeral, at which time Post revoked his visa.
Would Abitbul have gotten a visa if the State Department applied the same law to Israel as it does to other countries?
Once again, it appears that special treatment for Israel means that Israeli citizens with known criminal ties are able to come to the United States to commit crimes against Americans including, potentially, murder.
On May 5, 2011, CNN World News asked whether killing Osama bin Laden was legal under international law. Other news commentary has questioned whether it would have been both possible and advantageous to bring Osama bin Laden to trial rather than kill him.
World attention has been focused, however briefly, on questions of legality regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden. But, with the increasing use of Predator drones to kill suspected “high value targets” in Pakistan and Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by U.S. military forces have become the new norm.
Just three days after Osama bin Laden was killed, an attack employing remote-control aerial drones killed fifteen people in Pakistan and wounded four. Last month, a drone attack killed 44 people in Pakistan’s tribal region. CNN reports that their Islamabad bureau has counted four drone strikes over the last month and a half. Friday’s suspected drone strike was the 21st this year. There were 111 strikes in 2010. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that 957 innocent civilians were killed in 2010.
I’m reminded of an encounter I had, in May, 2010 ,when a journalist and a social worker from North Waziristan met with a small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation in Pakistan and described, in gory and graphic detail, the scenes of drone attacks which they had personally witnessed: the carbonized bodies, burned so fully they could be identified by legs and hands alone, the bystanders sent flying like dolls through the air to break, with shattered bones and sometimes-fatal brain injuries, upon walls and stone.
“Do Americans know about the drones?” the journalist asked me.
I said I thought that awareness was growing on University campuses and among peace groups.
“This isn’t what I’m asking,” he politely insisted. “What I want to know is if average Americans know that their country is attacking Pakistan with drones that carry bombs. Do they know this?”
“Truthfully,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Where is your democracy?” he asked me. “Where is your democracy?”
Ideally, in a democracy, people are educated about important matters, and they can influence decisions about these issues by voting for people who represent their point of view.
Only a handful of U.S. officials have broached the issue of whether or not it is right for the U.S. to use unmanned aerial vehicles to function as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in the decision to assassinate anyone designated as a “high value target” in faraway Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Would we want unmanned aerial vehicles piloted by another country to fly over the U.S., targeting individuals deemed to be a threat to the safety of their people, firing Hellfire missiles or dropping 500 pound bombs over suspected “high value targets” on the hunch of a soldier or general without evidence and without any consideration of which innocent civilians will also be killed?
Fully informed citizens might be invited to consider the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but they would certainly be involved in the debate over how we will be treated in future years and decades when these weapons have proliferated. In 1945, only one country possessed the atomic bomb, but within decades, the “nuclear club” had expanded to five declared and four non-declared nuclear-armed states in a much less certain world. Besides the risk of nuclear war, this weapon proliferation has consumed resources that could have been directed toward feeding a hungry world or eradicating disease or easing the effects of impoverishment.
As of now, worldwide, 49 companies make over 150 different drone aircraft. Drone merchants expect that drone sales will earn $20.2 billion over the next 10 years for aerospace war manufacturers, with 20.6 billion spent on Research and Development. Who knows? One day drone missiles may be aimed at us.
Also worth noting is the observation that drones will make it politically convenient for any country to order military actions without risking their soldiers’ lives, thereby making it easier, and more tempting, to start wars which may eventually escalate to result in massive loss of life, both military and civilian.
Voices for Creative Nonviolence believes that standing alongside people who bear the brunt of our wars helps us gain needed insights. Where you stand determines what you see.
In October and again in December of 2010, while in Afghanistan, I met with a large family living in a wretched refugee camp. They had fled their homes in the San Gin district of the Helmand Province after a drone attack killed a mother there and her five children. The woman’s husband showed us photos of his children’s bloodied corpses. His niece, Juma Gul, age 9, had survived the attack. She and I huddled next to each other inside a hut made of mud on a chilly December morning. Juma Gul’s father stooped in front of us and gently unzipped her jacket, showing me that his daughter’s arm had been amputated by shrapnel when the U.S. missile hit their home in San Gin.
Next to Juma Gul was her brother, whose leg had been mangled in the attack. He apparently has no access to adequate medical care and experiences constant pain.
It’s impossible to conjecture what would have happened had Osama bin Laden been apprehended and brought to appear before a court of law, charged with crimes against humanity because of his alleged role in masterminding the 9/11 attacks. But, I feel certain beyond doubt that Juma Gul posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S., and if she were brought before a court of law and witnesses were helped to understand that she was attacked by a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle for no reason other than that she happened to live in proximity to a potential high value target, she would be vindicated of any suspicion that she committed a crime. The same might not be true for those who attacked her.
Beyond the sensational news headlines of America’s ‘humanitarian’ interventions and democracy-spreading escapades lies a grim reality; one of a brutal military occupation, systematic torture practices and horrendous abuses of basic human rights.
The entire world got to witness first hand what an imperial power, drunk on its military supremacy and callous sense of self righteousness, had in store for the indigenous populations whom were unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of the U.S.’s vigilantism in Afghanistan and Iraq; both countries have become disastrous cautionary tales for the kind of democracy that is served with F-16s, indiscriminate high altitude bombings and Tomahawks.
The heartbreaking consequences of the extensive use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium in the bombing of fallujah city in Iraq seven years ago are still evident till this very day in the city’s deformed newborn babies, the leaked photos of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib reeks with the gore and terror that took place behind its walls and the sweeping attacks of unmanned fighter jets have –so far- claimed the lives of innocent civilians by the hundreds in Afghanistan and Pakistan where entire villages have virtually become burial grounds to its inhabitants; and while it’s been almost three years since that woebegone George W. Bush-era, let’s just say that things haven’t changed a bit, on the contrary; predatory drone strikes have only increased in frequency and intensity; trigger-happy private military contractors still roam the streets of Afghani towns using local residents as dartboards for their automatic machine guns and “sport killing” has become the preferred pastime for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
The latest (graphic) evidence of this sinister and dark reality came from the German publication “Der Spiegel” which, in its most recent issue, published photos of several U.S. Army officers, high on their “unmatched” military might, posing “victoriously” with the bloody corpses of Afghan civilians.
One picture showed a soldier kneeling down on an Afghani victim; holding the dead body’s head towards the camera with one hand and a cigarette in the other; invoking the image of a hunter celebrating his “kill”; another picture showed a different soldier assuming the very same position with the same victim; albeit with a smirk on his face; one would assume that the entire unit took turns taking “trophy pictures” with the mutilated corpse.
In a proactive move to soften the sting of criticism; the United States Army offered a meek apology; stressing that “rogue” elements within the ranks of its military bore the brunt of the blame and that the actions depicted in these photos were “contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army” according to a statement released by Col. Thomas Collins.
Like a sleight of hand magician; Col. Collins wants us to believe that these were isolated incidents carried out by a handful of “bad apples” –so to speak- within the U.S. military; but in light of the notorious Abu Graib scandal, the pictures of Guantanamo Bay detainees and last year’s video footage of an American apache helicopter gunning down nine Iraqi civilians at close range in Baghdad; one has to wonder; how many individual “rogue elements” will it take Col. Collins to realize (or admit) that there is in fact an endemic pathological pattern at play here?
Incidentally; these “trophy” pictures remind us of the infamous “facebook” photos of one Israeli female soldier; of which one snapshot showed her posing in front of handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners and smiling sneeringly for the camera while another showed her cozying up to a young Palestinian detainee and using him in that posture as a punchline for sleazy jokes and comments among her friends on the social networking website; and of course who can forget that tasteless Youtube video of yet another Israeli soldier dancing hysterically around a blindfolded Palestinian woman prisoner; cornering her into a wall and preying on her public humiliation, the parallels between these two “incidents” and the “Der Spiegel” story are both so eerie and horrid that it leaves little room for doubt that the Israeli Army cooks in the same kitchen with the same toxic ingredients as its American patron.
Under the farcical guise of democracy, protecting civilians and ridding the region of dictatorial backward regimes; the United States has laid complete waste to entire nations all the while desperately attempting to cloak its hegemonic ambitions in a “moral authority” it can’t even afford; the “Der Speigel” images are too powerful to be ignored; it revealed one more time; the true ugly face of an imperial super power inching closer towards complete moral breakdown.
Ironically; the revelation of these scandalous photos itself has taken a backseat to the ongoing escalation of yet another western military intervention; this time in Libya; one more oil rich country where the American empire and its European cronies can really sink their sharpened teeth into; but as the sea of innocent blood overflows in Libya and the western coalition hands the whole operation over to the ill-famed NATO forces; we need to temper our exuberance and expectations for what the Odyssey Dawn might eventually bring us and pray that in a year’s time we won’t be confronted with “trophy” photographs of Libyan civilian victims.
- Ahmad Barqawi, a Jordanian freelance columnist & writer based in Amman, he has done several studies, statistical analysis and researches on economic and social development in Jordan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke out for the first time Wednesday about the “heart-rending” media accounts of a rogue US army unit accused of deliberately killing civilians for sport.
In his first public reaction to the scandal, Hamid Karzai said he wanted to ensure ordinary Americans knew about a rogue army unit “kill team” accused of murdering Afghan civilians and mutilating their corpses.
Karzai said in a speech to a group of newly-qualified teachers in Kabul he was disturbed by the accounts in US media of American soldiers deliberately killing children and elderly Afghans who posed no threat to them.
“I want the ordinary American people to hear my voice and to know that Afghans old and young are being oppressed in their name.”
Rolling Stone magazine this week published a series of graphic images and a long story including extensive detail of the actions of the American soldiers. The story related how a teenage farm worker was picked out in January last year as the first victim of a drug-addled rogue unit that slaughtered Afghan civilians in the explosive Kandahar region early last year.
Two soldiers initially threw a grenade at the teenager before gunning him down, and pretending the youth had attacked them with the grenade.
With his body on the floor events took an even more sinister turn as one soldiers started ‘messing around with the kid’, moving his arms and mouth and ‘acting like the kid was talking’.
He then took a pair of medic’s scissors and snipped off the boy’s pinky finger and handed it to another soldier as a trophy for his first kill in Afghanistan.
In the following months they and others staged a number of such killings, according to the Rolling Stone account, citing witnesses questioned by military investigators after the killings were revealed by a fellow soldier.
The investigation by Rolling Stone also revealed how:
• Troops shot dead civilians and tried to cover their tracks;
• U.S. soldiers hacked off part of a dead man’s skull;
• Soldiers cheered as they filmed a U.S. airstrike blowing up two Afghan civilians;
• A video showed two Afghans on a motorcycle being gunned down.
“I read all nine pages last night. It was a heart-rending story,” said Karzai. “May God punish them.”
The US military has apologised for the distress caused by the pictures, which recall the notorious Abu Ghraib prison abuse images from Iraq.
In the meantime, the US-led NATO occupation force in Afghanistan said Wednesday an airstrike “accidentally” killed two children and two women in the south of the country.
Afghan authorities at the weekend said that seven civilians, three of them children were killed in a NATO air strike in Helmand province.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which conducted the attack said it had launched a probe after the allegations of civilian deaths in a raid aimed at two vehicles in the province’s Sangin district.
On Thursday the force said its joint assessment with Afghan authorities of the incident found that four civilians, two children and as many women were “mistakenly” killed in the attack.
Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor indicted for the murder of two young Pakistani motorcyclists, whom he gunned down in the back in broad daylight through his car windshield in a busy section of Lahore, Pakistan, has been freed, after the payment of $2.34 million in “blood money,” called diyya, to relatives of the two slain men.
The surprise “deal,” which Pakistani news reports are saying appears to have been forced on the relatives of the two men, who up to March 15 had insisted they wanted no blood money, but only justice, was announced in a court session March 16 in Lahore, at which the prosecution’s case of murder was to have been presented.
Both the US Ambassador, who expressed regret for the killings and gratitude to the victims’ families for their “generosity” in asking for the pardon, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied that they had paid any blood money for a deal, but that did not mean the CIA didn’t put up the cash. The New York Times (which withheld for two weeks at the behest of the White House information it had that Davis was a CIA contractor, even as it reported the official US lie that he was a “diplomat”) is reporting that a “new” counsel” representing the families of Davis’s victims, Raja Irshad, is saying the blood money was paid by the Pakistani government, but it, and the Wall Street Journal, are both also reporting that the US is reimbursing Pakistan. A more likely ultimate source of the funds is the CIA, which operates with a “black budget,” free of outside scrutiny.
The integrity of this “deal” is in question, though, with Pakistani media reporting that the two families suspiciously “went missing” several days before the hearing, with some having been seen taken away by unidentified men. They were delivered, also by unidentified men, to the court the day of the hearing, where each was asked by the judge if they pardoned Davis, and if they had received the blood money required under the country’s Sharia Law. Each reportedly applied affirmatively to both questions.
The 19 have subsequently vanished, leading to charges in Pakistan that they were compelled to accept a deal, and have subsequently left the country, fearing retaliation from groups that were demanding that Davis face trial for murder.
Lawyers for the families, who disclosed the size of the payment, say they too were held captive before the trial. “I and my associate were kept in forced detention for hours,” said the attorney for the family of one of the slain men, Faizan Haider.
A cousin of Haider, Aijaz Ahmed, was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor as saying eight members of his immediate family had gone missing since news of the deal.
The Express Tribune, an English-language daily in Pakistan partly owned by the International Herald Tribune, reports that lawyers for the two families claim both families’ members were “forcibly taken to Kot Lahkpat Jail by unidentified men and made to sign papers pardoning Davis.”
It appears that the “deal” with the families was brokered by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s intelligence service. The Associated Press reports that an unidentified ISI official says CIA Director Leon Panetta met in a long session with ISI Chief Gen. Schuja Pasha, and that Pasha told the Panetta the ISI would agree to a deal freeing Davis and would help broker a blood money payment if the Agency agreed to “identify all the Raymond Davises working in Pakistan behind our backs.” Panetta is said to have agreed to the deal “in principal,” though the New York Times on March 17 reports that “US officials insisted Wednesday the CIA made no pledges to scale back operations in Pakistan or to give the Pakistani intelligence agency a roster of US spies operating in the country — assertions that Pakistani officials disputed.”
There had been tremendous pressure brought on President Asif Ali Zardari by the US, with visits by Senate Foreign Relations Chair John Kerry, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, all of whom threatened the struggling Pakistani government with a cut-off of US aid if Davis was not released and was tried for murder. At the same time, public sentiment across Pakistan in this case has been running high, with one poll suggesting 99 percent of the public wanted Davis tried for murder and if found guilty, executed.
Most US reports on Davis being sprung claimed he had been acquitted. This is incorrect. He was pardoned by the victims’ families (blood money was also paid to the family of the18-year-old wife of one of the two men, who had later committed suicide, saying she did not believe her husband would ever receive justice), which led the Punjab district judge to lift the murder charges. But Davis was still fined on a charge of carrying an illegal handgun, and was sentenced to time served on that conviction.
There were angry protests in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad following the court’s ruling lifting the indictment against Davis. Police clashed with demonstrators outside the US Consulate in Lahore.
Left unanswered is what “all the Raymond Davises” in Pakistan, and Raymond Davis himself, were actually doing. Davis reportedly left the country immediately.
What is not in doubt is that Raymond Davis was not “our diplomat” in Pakistan, as President Obama falsely proclaimed at a press conference on Feb. 15, when he demanded that Pakistan grant him immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Immunity of 1961. Nor is there any doubt about what was found in his car at the time of the shooting incident: masks, makeup, night-vision equipment, several semi-automatic pistols with large-capacity clips, over a hundred killer bullets for both a Glock and Beretta pistol and also an M-16, multiple cell phones, a cell-phone locator, a special GPS with removable chips, wire cutters, batteries and a camera, on the memory card of which police investigators found photos of Pakistani military installations, as well as mosques, madrassas and even a Montessori School. Police say they found over 27 calls on his cell phones to key people in both the Pakistani Taliban and a terror organization called Laskhar-e-Taiba, which has been linked to both the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and to the kidnap/murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Pakistani papers, including the Express Tribune, have suggested that Davis, a 10-year Army Special Forces veteran, and a former employee of Blackwater/Xe, appears to have been involved in orchestrating terrorism, not just monitoring it.
As I initially reported in Counterpunch on Feb. 7, Davis, when arrested, was found to be carrying a photo ID describing him as a Department of Defense contractor. He also had cards on him identifying him as an employee of a US company called Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC, which I discovered had as its address a vacant storefront in Orlando which had not been occupied for several years.
Without any trial, what the CIA has been up to in Pakistan, a country that has been suffering a rash of terror bombings in the last few years, can only be a subject for speculation. But one thing is clear–whatever it was, it is not going to be doing it going forward.
Press reports say that at least 30 “Raymond Davis”-type US contractors have fled the country since his arrest, and the arrest of a second contractor associated with a murky private mercenary service called Catalyst Services, LLC, an American named Aaron DeHaven (he was picked up and charged with overstaying a visa).
DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper.
Saudi forces have stormed a Manama’s hospital where hundreds of people were receiving treatment for injuries suffered in clashes with government forces a day earlier.
Saudi troops forced their way into Salmaniya hospital on Wednesday and did not allow doctors, nurses and relatives of the victims either to leave or to enter the building.
The report comes as Bahraini police killed at least five protesters and wounded dozens more on Wednesday as they assaulted a peaceful protest camp in the capital’s Pearl Square.
The attack occurred two days after Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar dispatched their armed forces to crisis-hit Bahrain to quash anti-government protests in the tiny Persian Gulf state.
Foreign military intervention in Bahrain has concerned UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has called for a meaningful and broad-based national dialogue.
The UN chief also urged Bahrain’s regional neighbors and the international community to support a dialogue process and an environment conducive for credible reform in Bahrain.
Bahraini opposition groups, including the main bloc al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, denounced the move as an invasion of the kingdom.
The United States, which has its Fifth Fleet based there, has declined to term the troops’ move into Bahrain as invasion.
Several people have lost their lives and hundreds of others have sustained injuries following the Bahraini government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators.
On Tuesday, six people died and more than 1,000 others were wounded in clashes between anti-regime protesters and Bahrain’s security forces.
Thousands of Bahraini anti-government protesters are still camping out in Manama’s Pearl Square, which has become the symbol of the popular drive for change.
Demonstrators maintain that they will hold their ground until their demands for freedom, constitutional monarchy in the Persian Gulf sheikhdom and a say in the government are met.
Five top Bahraini Shia clerics have urged the international community to intervene as the violence escalates further following the deployment of foreign troops in the Persian Gulf state.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Sheikh Issa Qassem, Seyyed Abdullah al-Ghoraifi, Sheikh Abdul Hussain al-Setri and Sheikh Mohammad Saleh al-Rabiei warned that a “horrible massacre” is expected at Manama’s Pearl Square, where people are only peacefully demanding their rights, IRIB reported.
The report comes as six people died and more than 1,000 others were injured on Tuesday in clashes between anti-regime protesters and Bahrain’s security forces.
On Wednesday morning, the Bahraini police, who arrived in tanks and armored vehicles, launched an assault on a group of protesters who had camped out the night before in Manama’s Pearl Square.
The forces, who were backed by army helicopters, managed to take over the square only moments later.
A group of armed men had earlier set fire to the protesters’ tents. Electricity and mobile phone services have been reportedly cut off in large parts of Manama as the political situation in Bahrain escalates further…
At least six Bahrainis have been killed and more than 1,000 others injured by government security forces and Saudi troops, and thousands of Bahrainis have marched to the Saudi Embassy.
At least five villages came under attack by soldiers and helicopters using live ammunition against the protesters.
A medical source told AFP on Tuesday that the victims were shot with buckshot.
On the streets of the capital Manama, people have put up makeshift barricades to block the path of foreign forces. The Bahraini people say they do not want any foreign intervention in their country’s affairs.
Also on Tuesday, thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched to the Saudi Embassy to protest against the military intervention, a day after military convoys crossed the border from Saudi Arabia into Bahrain to help the government suppress the protesters.
“Down, down with Hamad!” the crowds chanted at the Saudi Embassy, expressing their view that Bahrain’s ruler, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, had gone too far in the crackdown on the opposition.
Testimony By Dr. Aallaa: Bahraini Security Forces Preventing Doctors From Treating Wounded Protesters
Doctor Aallaa: We started the day this morning hearing about the attacks. The disaster call was called for, and when we went down we realised that the whole hospital was surrounded by tanks. We had three helicopters hovering over us. They stopped our ambulances from going to help the injured in the Pearl Roundabout — or the Pearl Square, as you call it.
And they wouldn’t allow doctors that were supposed to be on-call today, to come in. We did not see any of the injured because they have not been allowed to be brought into the hospital. They are forbidding us from treating the injured people. As simple as that.
After a couple of hours to their attack on the Pearl Square, they actually came within the perimeters of the hospital. They are sitting like about 3 metres away from the Accident and Emergency doorways, and around the carpark. And they are not allowing us to go out. (pictures of Salmaniya hospital attacks)
They’ve got sniper shots, commandos, anti-riot police and it’s like we’re being held hostages at the hospital. We’re not allowed to go out, and the patients are not allowed to be brought in.
News anchor: So movement is being restricted. I also gather that doctors who are treating some of the injured protesters over the recent days have been intimidated including yourself. Tell me about that.
Dr. Aallaa: Yes, yes. On Sunday there were riots in the University of Bahrain, and there was this problem between the pro-democracy protesters and between the thugs, and the pro-government students. So we were called for to go and see the wounded and the injured in the university.
When we reached there, it was a state of chaos. Absolute chaos. And we stayed back after the anti-riot police came in, just in case there were any injuries within the thugs and other students, and all of a sudden, one of the thugs comes and there’s a video on Facebook that show this, and he hit the doctor with us, with a stick on his head.
And when we ran off, he came and then threatened my friend – another doctor – that he was going to stab her with his knife because acording to him, we treat the protesters and that we don’t treat them. I tried explaining to them, that no; we are here to treat you all. They (the protesters) have left and we have stayed back to treat you.
However, he ran after us and he threatened to kill me. Another threatened to rape, and to deface my face. I mean we’ve been getting all sorts of threats. All sorts of threats. We’ve been getting humiliated by them; they’re humiliating us. They are telling us that we’re not even worth their spit and such things.
The Bahraini regime has used foreign security forces to crackdown on its peaceful protesters since the beginning of the uprising, making itself one of the most brutal regimes throughout the region.
These are comments made by political analyst Sarah Marusek during an interview with Press TV. The following is the transcription of the interview:
Press TV: The situation seems to be deteriorating rapidly in Bahrain with reports of several people being killed. Hundreds of thousands at least have turned out protesting in front of the embassy of the Saudi Arabia. I am going to take a look at your perspective for the involvement of troops from Saudi Arabia.
Marusek: I think these recent events are incredibly disturbing. I was struck by the parallel that you mentioned in regards to the first [Persian] Gulf war when Iraq invaded Kuwait and of course America’s very violent response to that invasion and then yet today another invasion and nothing from Washington. Perhaps even Washington was helpful in orchestrating the invasion with the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visiting Bahrain on Saturday and foreign troops to enter shortly after.
So this is incredibly disturbing. It seems completely out of the remit of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) which is mostly concerned with economic organizations as well as some level of defense. But defense from outside threats, not [launching] internal attacks against your own people. This is unheard of and certainly illegal by international law and is very troubling.
One should also remember that before the Saudi invasion, the Bahraini regime was using foreign security to oppress people; they were apparently press releases in Pakistan last week about how Bahrain was recruiting about 800 new soldiers, because they were having internal problems. So whether they are coming from Pakistan, Yemen or other neighbor Arab countries, they have been oppressing the Bahraini demonstrations since the very beginning. You must also remark that how protests in Bahrain, the very peaceful demonstrations, had been by far the most specific among other Arab revolutions that we have seen. The people did not carry arms and they were very peaceful.
They were just demanding the rights but not [engaging] in a violent matter and yet consistently the Bahraini regime’s disproportional responses is almost worse than what is happening in Libya. Because in Libya, rebels are fighting and yes they are just as broad as Bahrainis, but are taking arms to defend themselves. However, in Bahrain people were unarmed and peaceful so this is just heinous act imaginable.
Press TV: [There are] Very gruesome pictures coming out of Bahrain today that we had to actually block out some parts of it. It was extremely graphic and the violence has completely gone out of control. I want to look at the possibility of the United States’ role in this. As you mentioned, on Saturday the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was in Bahrain and we had on Monday Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman in Bahrain and then of course today a martial law is declared, the violence has increased. I want to know if there is a connection, because we know the relationship between Washington and Manama. If Manama was doing something that Washington did not like or want them to do then do you think they would be able to order them to stop? How do you see this relationship right now with what is going on in the relationship between Manama and Washington?
Marusek: Yes, the relationship has been quite strong in the past. In fact Washington was priding itself on the fact that when the protests initially turned violent when Security system in Bahrain fired on protesters [during their] sleep, Obama apparently pressured the king to withdraw forces and the military did withdraw for some time in capital city of Manama. So this was very much seen as Washington’s power over the Bahraini regime. And now that those ties have turned in that, violence has become much more aggressive and foreign troops are involved. Indeed, this is an occupation of Bahrain and of course this has to be done with complicity of Washington if it is not again orchestrating. So this has to be as they call it ‘in their own interest’ but I cannot see that perspective at all now. The peaceful protesters were not even necessarily demanding a complete radical change to the government but demanding the regime to become more democratic or potentially even become a republic. But with the invasion of Saudi troops, people are definitely going to be completely against the King, the Khalifa family, as well as the Americans, Saudi Arabians and I think this would actually radicalize the populations. But right now, they do not have any other choice. They are really on their own and this shows that the international community does not care about the struggle and may even sanction violence against them. It is absolutely despicable.
RB note: Watch Al Manar TV, Al Alam TV or Press TV for updates on Bahrain because the rest of the TV stations are hiding or lying about the situation.
A group of doctors, who journeyed to Libya recently, has portrayed a gruesome picture of the massacre unfolding in Libya under the country’s ruler, Muammar Gaddafi.
“The casualties we’ve seen –you cannot imagine it. There were faces there but no head. These were civilians who were asking for rights,” Abdalla Shamasi, a neurosurgeon on the four-member team of physicians, was quoted as saying on Sunday by Canada’s Toronto Star newspaper.
“We’re talking about 14- and 16-year-olds with their head completely exploded. You cannot imagine the brutality of this regime,” he added.
Dr. Mahmoud Darrat, an anesthesiologist with the group, also reflected his colleagues comments and said, “Once we got to the hotel, that’s when we started crying and supporting each other. We are supposed to help the people who are living there. We can’t say this in front of them.”
“This trip was draining emotionally and mentally. It was exhausting for everybody because we did not expect this much damage,” he noted.
It is been nearly a month since Libyans rose up against the 42-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi.
Poorly-equipped civilians are up against Gaddafi’s navy, army and air force.
Dr. Shamasi described how Gaddafi’s forces were even using ambulances to attack wounded civilians.
“You have somebody who is wounded, and the ambulance comes, and out of the ambulance comes a person with a gun and finishes that,” Shamasi said.
He made a reference to the Libyans’ calls for social justice and liberty during their protest rallies which took on new dimensions as the team stood aghast only a day after performing medical rounds in Libya.
Despite the daily deaths and crippling injuries, the doctors said Libyans maintained high hopes the dictator would soon be overthrown.
Fathi Abuzgaya, an orthopedic surgeon who was on the two-week toured, recalled an exchange with a 16-year-old boy, whose leg had to be amputated.
“We were trying to comfort him, saying how brave he was facing bullets at 16 and losing his leg, and he said, ‘For freedom I’ll lose the other one,’” Abuzgaya said.
“He was bleeding from his abdomen. He told me, ‘Doctor, please suture me quickly. I want to go back to fight again for freedom,’” said Omar Bengezi, the team’s plastic surgeon.
“We’ve been described as brave doctors, but the real brave people are really the people of Libya,” Abuzgaya added. “Most of all, I’ve seen hope of the people. They say, ‘We will not stop. We will either win or die.’”
The doctors said there is a shortage of medical staff, supplies and space at hospitals across the country, and called on the international community for support.
“They’re not used to this kind of trauma. They’re not used to this kind of volume in these small hospitals. I don’t think they can handle this,” Darrat said.
The four doctors also joined the Arab League in asking the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone in Libya…
Revolutionary forces have vowed to defend Ajdabiya as troops loyal to Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi continue to bombard the strategically important town.
Gaddafi forces launched heavy airstrikes on revolutionary forces in the northeastern town on Monday.
The situation on the ground is becoming increasingly difficult for the poorly-equipped revolutionary forces.
However, military commanders who defected from Gaddafi’s regime soon after the uprising began in mid-February say they will define the opposition-held strongholds.
“It’s on the route to the east, to Benghazi and to Tobruk and also to the south. Ajdabiya’s defense is very important … We will defend it,” General Abdel Fatah Yunis, a defector told AFP.
Forces loyal to Gaddafi are now pushing closer to the main opposition-held city of Benghazi.
Benghazi is home to the Libyan National Council, headed by Libya’s former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, plans to lead the country to elections.
Jalil was among the first high-profile Libyan figures to join protesters following the Gaddafi regime’s brutal crackdown on the opposition.
Meanwhile, Gaddafi troops have reportedly attacked the eastern entrance to the town of Zuwarah in western Libya.
However, revolutionary forces say they have retaken control of the eastern oil-rich town of Brega from Gaddafi troops. Anti-Gaddafi forces also claim they have captured a number of elite government troops and killed many others.
The report comes just hours after forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi drove opposition forces out of the town by air and ground attacks.
Pro-and anti-regime forces are locked in intense fighting for control of several other eastern cities.
Gaddafi’s air offensives have led to mounting calls from the international community to impose a no-fly zone over the country.
But the UN Security Council and the European Union are divided on the issue.
Latest reports from Libya indicate thousands may have been killed or injured as the government crackdown escalates…
Libyan revolutionaries have reportedly regained the control of the strategic oil town of Brega after heavy fighting with forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
“We have captured 20 of Gaddafi’s forces and we killed 25. We have forced them to retreat 20 km from the town,” Reuters quoted Colonel Hamed al-Hasi, a spokesman for opposition forces, as saying on Sunday.
This is while the opposition forces had earlier pulled out of the town when they came under heavy shelling.
Fresh attacks by Gaddafi forces come after a spokesman for the Libyan military, Colonel Milad Hussein, said on Sunday they would continue the fight to regain control of cities from what he called “terrorists.”
The revolutionary forces were forced to retreat from the oil-rich city of Ras Lanuf on Saturday following a week of deadly clashes.
The international community has so far failed to take any concrete steps to stop the bloodshed in Libya.
The Arab League has asked the UN to impose a no-fly zone on Libya to protect civilians. However, the European Union has said the initiative needs diplomatic support from international organizations…
Surah: 9, Ayat: 48-51
لَقَدِ ابْتَغَوُاْ الْفِتْنَةَ مِن قَبْلُ وَقَلَّبُواْ لَكَ الأُمُورَ حَتَّى جَاء الْحَقُّ وَظَهَرَ أَمْرُ اللّهِ وَهُمْ كَارِهُونَ
9:48 (Y. Ali) Indeed they had plotted sedition before, and upset matters for thee, until,- the Truth arrived, and the Decree of Allah became manifest much to their disgust.
وَمِنْهُم مَّن يَقُولُ ائْذَن لِّي وَلاَ تَفْتِنِّي أَلاَ فِي الْفِتْنَةِ سَقَطُواْ وَإِنَّ جَهَنَّمَ لَمُحِيطَةٌ بِالْكَافِرِينَ
9:49 (Y. Ali) Among them is (many) a man who says: "Grant me exemption and draw me not into trial." Have they not fallen into trial already? and indeed Hell surrounds the Unbelievers (on all sides).
إِن تُصِبْكَ حَسَنَةٌ تَسُؤْهُمْ وَإِن تُصِبْكَ مُصِيبَةٌ يَقُولُواْ قَدْ أَخَذْنَا أَمْرَنَا مِن قَبْلُ وَيَتَوَلَّواْ وَّهُمْ فَرِحُونَ
9:50 (Y. Ali) If good befalls thee, it grieves them; but if a misfortune befalls thee, they say, "We took indeed our precautions beforehand," and they turn away rejoicing.
قُل لَّن يُصِيبَنَا إِلاَّ مَا كَتَبَ اللّهُ لَنَا هُوَ مَوْلاَنَا وَعَلَى اللّهِ فَلْيَتَوَكَّلِ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ
9:51 (Y. Ali) Say: "Nothing will happen to us except what Allah has decreed for us: He is our protector": and on Allah let the Believers put their trust.
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