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The Muslim groups who wouldn't attend the March Against Terror
Joel Mowbray (archive)
June 1, 2005 | printer friendly version Print | email to a friend Send
In the first of its kind for an event organized by a major national Muslim organization, Kamal Nawash and the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC) recently held the Free Muslims March Against Terrorism. Not surprisingly, the leaders of every other major Muslim organization shunned the march and declined to take a public stand against terrorism and extremism.
Noticeably missing from the list of over 80 sponsors Nawash rounded up was any of the Muslim groups that claim to be moderates, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Though these groups pay lip service to opposing terrorism, they couldn’t put their money where their mouth is and bring themselves to stand side-by-side with the Free Muslim Coalition.
The reasons for the absence of the major national Muslim groups are obvious. The empirical evidence has clearly demonstrated where the true loyalties of organizations such as CAIR and MPAC lie. In this particular case, it is anathema for many Muslim groups to identify themselves with these unambiguous message of the rally. Nawash is among the few Muslim leaders—and certainly one of the very few leaders of the overtly political Muslim groups—to explicitly confront the real threat, the real root cause of terrorism: radical Islam.
Where most prominent Muslim leaders prefer ambiguity and moral equivalence, Nawash stakes out an unmistakable position not only opposing just violent jihad, but the doctrines of Wahhabism and political Islam as well. Nawash is, without exception, against the creation of Islamic states—anywhere. The other major Islamic organizations simply can’t take this position. Their refusal to back even Nawash’s message exposes their true sympathies.
See no evil
If other Muslim groups could even go as far as condemning specific acts of Islamic terror, that would be a step in Nawash’s direction. But organizations such as CAIR, for instance, have pointedly refused to condemn Islamic terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, or even specific Islamic terrorist attacks. The best example of the latter occurred after the murder, burning, stoning, and mutilation of four American contractors in Fallujah. CAIR only condemned the mutilation as contrary to Islam, but did not condemn specifically the murder, burning, or stoning of the men—a position that was also taken by a leading Fallujah cleric.
MPAC’s apologist agenda has also become transparent. In a June 1999 publication, MPAC argued that Hezbollah’s 1983 attack killing 241 Americans in Lebanon was not a terrorist attack. From its “Position Paper on U.S. Counterterrorism Policyâ€: “Yet this attack, for all the pain it caused, was not in a strict sense, a terrorist operation. It was a military operation, producing no civilian casualties—exactly the kind of attack that Americans might have lauded had it been directed against Washington’s enemies.â€
Another of the major Islamic organizations, Muslim American Society (MAS), actively promotes the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has served as the theological inspiration for many leading terrorists. At a conference last month, a consultant to the group passed out a MAS paper called, “An American perspective on why the U.S. must engage the Muslim Brotherhood.â€
Sounds of silence
It is clear why Nawash poses such a great threat to groups like CAIR, MPAC, and MAS: he is a genuine moderate Muslim leader who emphatically condemns not just Islamic terror, but also any efforts to create Islamic states. His unflinching stances make it much more difficult for these groups to engage in verbal acrobatics by issuing vague condemnations of “terrorism,†while simultaneously refusing to admit the “Islamic†influence cited by its perpetrators.
For participation in the rally, Nawash set a very low threshold: opposing terrorism. (Almost every speaker, though, was careful to condemn Islamic terrorism, and not just terrorism in the abstract.) By his own account, and by that of others, Nawash actively tried to enlist the support of other Muslim groups—but to no avail. Nawash most likely realized that no matter how low he set the bar, none of his counter-parts would endorse an event sponsored by a Muslim who unequivocally denounces Islamic terrorism and just as enthusiastically supports free societies for Muslims everywhere.
CAIR, MPAC, MAS and other Islamic leaders shown up by the real moderate Muslims who locked arms with Nawash were both testy and defensive. CAIR forwarded all calls to Hussein Ibish, the former Communications Director at the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), an avowedly secular Muslim who nevertheless does the dirty work of Islamists and radical Muslims. MPAC did not return calls seeking comment, and did not appear to have given comment to any other media outlet regarding the rally.
Shooting the messenger
Of the two Muslim leaders who shunned the rally who were willing to give comment—Ibish and MAS Executive Director Mahdi Bray—both resorted to attacking the messenger.
In two rambling smear jobs at MuslimWakeUp.com, Ibish labeled Nawash’s FMC as “the ugly†among leading groups, and called Nawash’s invitation for other Muslim leaders to denounce radicalism a "crude ploy." Ibish went so far as to say that Nawash’s contention that other Muslim leaders don’t denounce radical Islam is an “odious lie.†While Ibish find Nawash’s message “odious,†it’s flat-out wrong to say it is a “lieâ€â€”especially when applied to Ibish himself.
Appearing on CNN in August 2002, Mr. Ibish was asked about a 1991 fund-raising letter from suspected (and now indicted) terrorist Sami al-Arian that read, in part, “Jihad is our path! Victory to Islam! Death to Israel and victory to Islam! Revolution, revolution until victory! Rolling, rolling to Jerusalem!â€
Rather than criticize those plainly radical—and violent—words, Ibish played defense. “‘Death to Israel’ does not necessarily mean violence. Jihad can mean a lot of things,†he explained. Without explanation, Mr. Ibish abruptly—and bizarrely—switched the topic. “I’ll tell you who is advocating violence. It is Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who advocated torturing people.â€
Ibish, of course, was not alone among Muslim leaders defending al-Arian—despite a substantial body of evidence that had already been in the public record since the mid-90's. MPAC, which had nothing to say regarding Nawash and the rally, said after al-Arian’s arrest, “Dr. Al-Arian is being punished for the non-crime of sparking dissent.â€
After al-Arian was suspended in 2002 from his job as a University of South Florida professor—but before his February 2003 arrest—CAIR expressed outrage because he was “a respected leader in the community and a committed civil rights advocate.†Even after the 50-count indictment laid out a comprehensive case that included as evidence documents and wiretaps, CAIR wasted no time reflexively defending the alleged Islamic terrorist, calling the arrest “a fishing expedition by federal authorities using McCarthy-like tactics in a search for evidence of wrongdoing that does not exist.â€
Perhaps the biggest defenders of al-Arian, though, were the folks at MAS. Immediately following the arrest, MAS’ Shaker Elsayed bellowed, “This is becoming a war on Muslim institutions.†Perhaps to stress that Elsayed’s comment was no isolated outburst, MAS sent out a press release that proclaimed: “The arrest of Professor Sami Al-Arian today conforms to a pattern of political intimidation by an attorney general who seems to be targeting the American Muslim community's leaders and institutions in a drive to erode Americans' civil liberties.â€
Doublespeak
When asked about Nawash and his rally, MAS leader Bray said, “It is absolutely the right message, but Kamal is just the wrong messenger.†But if it’s “absolutely the right message,†why isn't MAS congratulating the government for prosecuting the likes of al-Arian instead of castigating them?
The game of claiming to have condemned Islamic terrorism or even radical Islam without actually doing so is one that has been mastered by many Muslim leaders. Ibish mocks the idea that Nawash is the first leader of a Muslim political organization to condemn Islamic terrorism and radical Islam, but when he was given the chance to do just that on CNN regarding al-Arian’s call to jihad, Ibish actually defended the accused terrorist. To date, Ibish has devoted more ink to attacking Nawash than all radical Muslims—combined.
Nawash has clearly taken his lumps from the supposed moderate Muslim leaders, but that’s not to say he’s without a following. But think in the mode of the “silent majority,†although in Nawash’s case, sadly, it’s almost certainly the “silent pluralityâ€â€”for now.
Common are e-mails and phone calls to Nawash where Muslims tell him how important his message is, and how glad they are to finally have a Muslim leader delivering it. But most still won’t side with Nawash publicly, which partly helps explain the rally’s modest turnout of roughly 150-200. Yet the rally was attended by several respected Muslim leaders, who gained a much wider audience with the rally’s repeated airings on C-SPAN.
If there’s one thing that Nawash hopes to accomplish, it is to encourage other Muslims to speak up just as he has. Notes Nawash, “People who might want to speak out want somebody else to go first. Nobody wants to be a lone voice.†Though not exactly a lone voice, Nawash must feel like one some days—especially when he looks at his colleagues at the other national Muslim organizations.
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The truth about Guantanamo Bay
Michelle Malkin (archive)
June 1, 2005 | printer friendly version Print | email to a friend Send
The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It's the "gulag of our time," wails Amnesty International. It's the "anti-Statue of Liberty," bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.
Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story -- the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don't want you to hear.
According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread "atrocities" at Gitmo:
A significant number of detainees' complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda's explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been "beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog" could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn't seen it.
Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.
In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.
Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards' use of profanity, and bad food.
If this is unacceptable, "gulag"-style "torture," then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)
Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled "Inside the Wire," inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- the officials at the detention facility have been.
Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times a day.
Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo's library -- yes, library -- is stocked with Jihadi books. "I was surprised that we'd be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists," Saar admits. "t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists' religious devotion." Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees "as a sort of show of respect for their faith."
Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, "would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children's throats" if released.
The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration's failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation -- and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.
Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.
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The Netherlands are next to say "no".
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Rights group denounces U.S. Guantanamo detention camp
From staff and wire reports
LONDON — Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time." The rebuke was the human rights group's harshest yet of American detention policies.
Amnesty urged Washington to shut down the prison at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Some have been jailed for more than three years.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Amnesty's complaints were "ridiculous and unsupported by the facts." He said allegations of prisoner mistreatment are investigated. "We hold people accountable when there's abuse. We take steps to prevent it from happening again. And we do so in a very public way for the world to see that we lead by example," McClellan told reporters.
In its annual report, Amnesty, which campaigns for international human rights, accused governments around the world of abandoning human rights protections. But one of the biggest disappointments was the United States, Amnesty said, "after evidence came to light that the U.S. administration had sanctioned interrogation techniques that violated the U.N. convention against torture."
"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary-General Irene Khan said as the London-based group issued a 308-page annual report that accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections.
The use of the term gulag refers to the system of prison camps in the former Soviet Union designed to hold political prisoners.
The prison camp at Guantanamo holds enemy fighters captured on the battlefields of Afghanitsan and Iraq, according to the Pentagon.
It has been in the spotlight over the past year since the FBI cited cases of aggressive interrogation techniques and detainee mistreatment. No instances of torture were cited. The U.S. government also has been criticized for not charging or trying prisoners who are classified as enemy combatants, or fighters who are note uniformed combatants and thus not covered by legal protections like prisoners of war get under the Geneva Conventions.
The Defense Department said in a statement that "the detention of enemy combatants is not criminal in nature, but to prevent them from continuing to fight against the United States in the war on terrorism."
The Pentagon also said that it continued to evaluate whether detainees should be sent home and that review tribunals "provided an appropriate venue for detainees to meaningfully challenge their enemy combatant designation. This is an unprecedented level of process being provided to our enemies in a time of war."
Amnesty, which has been refused access to the prison, has criticized U.S. detention policies instituted after the 9/11 attacks, but its new report takes a harsher tone. It accuses Washington of trying to "sanitize" abuse of detainees and failing to give prisoners legal recourse to challenge detentions.
The report also takes aim at recent abuse allegations that have surfaced in FBI documents and prisoner testimonies, echoing concerns from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross said last week it had told U.S. authorities of detainee allegations that the Koran, Islam's holy book. had been desecrated.
According to FBI interrogation reports obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, detainees complained to FBI agents as early as 2002 that American soldiers were desecrating the Koran. In more than 300 pages of reports of interviews with detainees released Wednesday, FBI agents recorded numerous detainee allegations of Koran desecration that led to what one agent called an "uprising" on July 19-20, 2002.
The documents also reveal that detainees went on hunger strikes and planned mass suicides in 2002 and 2003 because they believed U.S. soldiers had mishandled the Koran and had mistreated prisoners while they exercised their religious beliefs. Such allegations are not new, but they haven't been corroborated.
On Jan. 19, 2003, the military officials at Guantanamo Bay issued a memo, instructing soldiers to "avoid handling or touching" the Koran "whenever possible." But allegations of Koran desecration continued to be raised months later.
Amnesty's report also criticized:
- •Sudan, for violating human rights last year during the conflict in its Darfur region. At least 180,000 people have died, many from hunger and disease, and about 2 million have fled their homes to escape fighting among rebels, militias and troops.
•The African Union and the international community for not taking action on Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe's party has been accused of rigging elections, repressing opponents and ruining the economy.
•Israel, for allowing its soldiers to operate outside international law by using torture, destroying property and obstructing medical assistance in the West Bank and Gaza.
It also condemned Palestinians for targeting civilians.
Contributing: Toni Locy in Washington; the Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-05-25-amnesty-report_x.htm
- •Sudan, for violating human rights last year during the conflict in its Darfur region. At least 180,000 people have died, many from hunger and disease, and about 2 million have fled their homes to escape fighting among rebels, militias and troops.
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:lol3:
Amnesty International
Americas
Regional overview 2004
Respect for human rights remained an illusion for many as governments across the Americas failed to comply with their commitments to uphold fundamental human rights. Widespread torture, unlawful killings by police and arbitrary detention persisted. The US-led “war on terror†continued to undermine human rights in the name of security, despite growing international outrage at evidence of US war crimes, including torture, against detainees.
Democratic institutions and the rule of law were at risk throughout much of Latin America. Political instability – fuelled by corruption, organized crime, economic disparities and social unrest – resulted in several attempts to bring down governments. Most were by constitutional means but some, as in Haiti, by-passed the democratic process.
Political armed groups and criminal gangs, principally those engaged in drug trafficking, had an increasing impact on people’s fundamental rights. Poverty and discrimination affected millions of people, particularly the most vulnerable groups – women, children, indigenous people and Afro-descendant communities.
Positive developments were seen in the vigorous campaigns maintained by human rights defenders, who held both governments and armed groups to account, in defiance of harassment and persecution. Courts in several countries gave rulings that brought closer the prospect of bringing to trial military and political leaders responsible for massive human rights violations in previous decades.
National security and the ‘war on terror’
The blatant disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law in the “war on terror†continued to make a mockery of President George Bush’s claims that the USA was the global champion of human rights. Images of detainees in US custody tortured in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked the world. War crimes in Iraq, and mounting evidence of the torture and ill-treatment of detainees in US custody in other countries, sent an unequivocal message to the world that human rights may be sacrificed ostensibly in the name of security.
President Bush’s refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to those captured during the international armed conflict in Afghanistan and transferred to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was challenged by a judicial decision in November. The ruling resulted in the suspension of trials by military commission in Guantánamo, and the government immediately lodged an appeal. The US administration’s treatment of detainees in the “war on terror†continued to display a marked ambivalence to the opinion of expert bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and even of its own highest judicial body. Six months after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had jurisdiction over the Guantánamo detainees, none had appeared in court. Detainees reportedly considered of high intelligence value remained in secret detention in undisclosed locations. In some cases their situation amounted to “disappearanceâ€.
The “war on terror†and the “war on drugs†increasingly merged, and dominated US relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Following the US elections in November, the Bush administration encouraged governments in the region to give a greater role to the military in public order and internal security operations. The blurring of military and police roles resulted in governments such as those in Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Paraguay deploying military forces to deal with crime and social unrest.
The US doubled the ceiling on the number of US personnel deployed in Colombia in counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics operations. The Colombian government in turn persisted in redefining the country’s 40-year internal conflict as part of the international “war on terrorâ€.
Conflict, crime and instability
Civilians continued to be the principal victims of political violence. The human rights situation in Colombia remained critical, its civilians targeted by all sides in the conflict: the security forces, army-backed paramilitaries and armed opposition groups. Despite an agreed ceasefire and demobilization of some combatants, paramilitary forces were again responsible for widespread abuses. Security policies introduced by the government drew civilians further into the conflict.
Further evidence of spill-over from Colombia’s internal war was seen in neighbouring countries. Frequent border skirmishes were reported in Venezuela and Ecuador, where the number of Colombians seeking refuge grew.
Political polarization and instability continued to affect Venezuela for much of the year. Levels of violence and protests diminished briefly after a referendum failed to unseat President Hugo Chávez, but the death of a high-profile special prosecutor in a car bombing raised fears of renewed political violence.
Long-standing instability in Haiti reached crisis levels after a military uprising toppled the government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Political violence and widespread human rights violations persisted, despite the presence of a UN military and police force. The severe loss of life and structural damage caused by a hurricane in September exacerbated instability and the breakdown of the rule of law, hampering distribution of international aid.
In a report on Guatemala, the UN warned that failure to bring about effective social, economic and political reforms could promote conflict.
Public protests against violent crime, particularly kidnapping, spread throughout Latin America. Crime levels remained high in Mexican and Brazilian cities, and in parts of Central America where poverty combined with the easy availability of weapons and the legacy of civil wars. Governments responded with tougher legislation, which sometimes violated constitutional and human rights safeguards. Vigilantism and mob lynchings of suspected criminals were reported in countries including Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, where confidence in the security forces continued to evaporate.
Impunity for human rights violations
Despite setbacks, efforts across the region to combat impunity for gross human rights violations in previous decades continued to gain momentum.
A series of rulings and actions based on international jurisdiction showed that military and security chiefs whose forces were responsible for human rights violations could no longer escape trial. An Argentine court issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Paraguayan President Alfredo Stroessner for his alleged involvement in human rights violations committed under Operation Cóndor, a joint plan to eliminate opponents by military governments of the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Spain’s Supreme Court confirmed that the Spanish justice system had jurisdiction to try former Argentine navy officer Adolfo Scilingo for human rights violations under the military government of 1976-83. More than 20 years after the alleged crimes, a former Honduran intelligence chief faced a civil action in the US courts brought by relatives of Hondurans tortured and killed in the 1980s.
National courts also made significant, if slow, progress in shedding light on past human rights violations. The Chilean Supreme Court lifted former President Augusto Pinochet’s immunity from prosecution, allowing proceedings to be opened against him for human rights violations during Operation Cóndor.
In Brazil, the Supreme Court ordered the federal government to open files on the military operations against armed opposition groups in the region of Araguaia, state of Pará, during the military dictatorship. These may enable relatives finally to locate the bodies of victims of military actions.
Military and police courts continued to claim jurisdiction, despite recommendations by international human rights bodies. In Bolivia, the military initially rejected a Constitutional Court ruling that officers charged with offences against civilians should be tried in civilian courts. In Peru and Colombia, cases of human rights violations continued to be transferred to military courts in spite of rulings by the respective Constitutional Courts that they had jurisdiction only over offences committed “in the line of dutyâ€. In Ecuador, police courts still claimed jurisdiction in cases involving abuses by police agents although the authorities had given assurances that they would be heard by civilian courts.
Trial before civilian courts was no guarantee of justice, however. In Colombia, against all the evidence, charges were withdrawn against former General Rito Alejo del RÃo, indicted for forming illegal paramilitary groups responsible for human rights violations in the 1990s.
The USA continued to pressure governments throughout the region to sign unlawful immunity agreements shielding US personnel from surrender to the International Criminal Court. Of 12 countries that had refused to sign, 10 had some military aid suspended as a result. In November the US Congress threatened to cut off development aid to countries that refused to sign.
Death penalty
The USA continued to flout international human rights standards by inflicting the death penalty on child offenders, people with mental disabilities, defendants without access to effective legal representation, and foreign nationals denied their consular rights. In 2004, 59 executions were carried out by a capital justice system characterized by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. Scheduled executions of a number of child offenders were stayed pending a Supreme Court ruling on the case of a death row prisoner aged 17 at the time of the crime.
No judicial executions were carried out in the Caribbean, but the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council – the final court of appeal for most of the English-speaking Caribbean – reopened the possibility of a resumption of executions in Trinidad and Tobago by overturning a decision that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional. It ruled that mandatory death sentences for capital murder violated the Jamaican Constitution, and ordered new sentencing hearings for Jamaica’s death row inmates. It also ruled that the mandatory death penalty was constitutional
in Barbados.
Economic, social and cultural rights
Economic indicators improved in Latin America after a prolonged period of stagnation. However, growth was insufficient to significantly affect poverty levels. Extreme disparities in wealth, and in access to basic rights such as education, health, water and electricity, continued. Inequalities were persistently driven by race and ethnicity, particularly for indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, who are among the poorest in the region.
According to a UN study on the spread of HIV/AIDs, the Caribbean is the second most affected region in the world. Social attitudes such as homophobia and stigmatization are cited by the UN among factors contributing to the spread of the epidemic.
Severe political violence and instability in Haiti exacerbated the long-standing denial of basic rights, including access to health services as the breakdown in health provision reached crisis proportions.
Disputes over land and labour conditions on plantations continued to fuel protracted conflicts and human rights violations in countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala and Paraguay. Both protesters and police officers were killed as claims for access to land by landless peasant families brought them into conflict with large landowners backed by the security forces or hired gunmen.
By the end of 2004, Central American governments and the Dominican Republic had approved a free trade agreement with the USA. Civil society groups raised concerns about the lack of guarantees on labour rights, on protection of the environment and on continued access to affordable medicines. In December, 12 South American countries signed an agreement to create a political and economic regional bloc.
Violence against women
Women and girls remained at serious risk of human rights violations across the Americas. The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women – which marked its 10th anniversary – had received more ratifications than any other treaty on human rights in the region. Only Canada and the USA had failed to ratify. However, its provisions were largely ignored by governments across the region, and gender-related violence against women remained endemic in the home and the community.
A UN report on the state of the world’s cities stated that Latin America had the highest risk of all types of sexual victimization, with approximately 70 per cent of reported incidents described as rapes, attempted rapes or indecent assaults. Despite efforts by the Mexican authorities, there were further killings of women in the state of Chihuahua, and the horrific brutality that characterized killings of women in Guatemala gave cause for growing international concern.
Women were particularly vulnerable in situations of conflict. In Colombia, all parties to the conflict subjected women and girls to sexual violence, including rape and genital mutilation. They were targeted to sow terror, wreak revenge on adversaries and accumulate “trophies of warâ€.
There was a growing awareness of the impact of people trafficking in the Americas on human rights, particularly of women and girls. According to a study by the Organization of American States, over 100,000 men, women and children were “trafficked†across Latin America and the Caribbean each year, 80 per cent of them women and most for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Human rights defenders
Human rights activists across the Americas campaigned vigorously to hold governments and armed groups to their obligations to respect international and domestic human rights standards.
Women’s rights activists were acclaimed in Colombia for their work for thousands of innocent victims of conflict and for the meaningful involvement of women in peace negotiations and the political process. Indigenous activists in Ecuador championed their community’s rights to defend their livelihoods during disputes over the extraction of natural resources. Despite public hostility and prejudice, the work of Jamaican and Honduran sexual rights activists to promote equal rights and HIV/AIDS prevention was increasingly recognized and supported by human rights organizations at the international level.
The difficulties and dangers faced by activists in the Americas ranged from intimidation and restrictions on travel, to unfounded accusations of “terrorist†links or other violent activities, arbitrary detention, false criminal charges, and even death. Activists working locally on rural poverty and development, often in isolated areas, and journalists covering issues such as corruption were killed in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
On the international stage, governments gave commitments to support the work of human rights activists. However, some undermined the integrity of these pledges by tolerating slanderous statements by high-ranking government officials against those working for human rights. Appeals by women’s rights activists for the authorities to examine their concerns and proposals seriously were frequently dismissed
or ignored.
Only one government, Brazil, responded to a request by both the UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders and by AI for governments to draft, publish and make operational plans to implement the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
Regional initiatives
During the European Union/Latin America and Caribbean Summit in May, AI highlighted its concerns about the use of the judicial system to persecute human rights defenders. Delegates from AI’s International Secretariat and from AI sections in the region attended the Americas Regional Social Forum in Quito, Ecuador, in August. In the same month, AI also participated in the III Human Rights Defenders Consultation in São Paulo, Brazil.
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When you conspire with terrorists, you deserve to be punished. These two deserve what is coming.
FORT PIERCE, FL (AP) -- Terror suspects arrested in Boca Raton and New York are due in court for the first time today on a charge filed after a two-year undercover sting.Court papers say the Boca Raton doctor and a New York jazz musician who's also a martial arts expert became enthusiastic followers of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden before their arrests. FBI agents arrested Rafiq Sabir at his Boca Raton home and Tarik Shah in New York on a charge that they conspired to provide material support to al-Qaida.
The 50-year-old Sabir is set to appear at federal court in Fort Pierce. The 42-year-old Shah will be brought before a judge in Manhattan.
An 18-page complaint repeatedly describes Shah's zest to train men for urban warfare. Investigators say both men pledged their allegiance to al-Qaida at a May 20th meeting in a Bronx apartment.
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/florida/news-article.aspx?storyid=38103
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Testimony Offers Glimpse Into Secretive Prison
By PAISLEY DODDS, AP
LONDON (May 30) - One Guantanamo prisoner told a military panel that American troops beat him so badly he wets his pants now. Another detainee claimed U.S. troops stripped prisoners in Afghanistan and intimidated them with dogs so they would admit to militant activity.
Tales of alleged abuse and forced confessions are among some 1,000 pages of tribunal transcripts the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit - the second batch of documents the AP has received in 10 days.
The testimonies offer a glimpse into the secretive world of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 520 men from 40 countries remain held, accused of having links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Many have been held for three years.
Whether the stories are true may never be known. And it wasn't immediately clear how many abuse allegations had been logged from the tribunals or how many of them had been investigated. Dozens of complaints have surfaced from detention missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo, but the government couldn't offer a breakdown Monday.
One detainee, whose name and nationality were blacked out like most others in the transcripts, said his medical problems from alleged abuse have not been taken seriously.
"Americans hit me and beat me up so badly I believe I'm sexually dysfunctional. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep with my wife or not," he said. "I can't control my urination, and sometimes I put toilet paper down there so I won't wet my pants."
"I point to where the pain is. ... I think they take it as a joke and they laugh."
The tribunal president promised to take up the man's medical complaint, but in five pages of questioning, never brought up the alleged abuse.
The panel members were charged with determining whether the men were enemy combatants - not with investigating abuse allegations, said a military spokeswoman, Navy Capt. Beci Brenton. She said tribunal members are supposed to forward abuse allegations to the Joint Task Force running the detention mission, which then forwards them to U.S. Southern Command in Miami.
In a statement Sunday, the Pentagon said many of the men have been trained to lie. U.S. troops treat detainees humanely and "U.S. policy condemns and prohibits torture," the statement said, adding that authorities take claims of abuse seriously.
Since its construction three years ago after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the prison camp at Guantanamo has come under scrutiny by critics who contend it has outlived its usefulness, producing scant intelligence information and stoking anti-American hatred.
The government had refused to provide the bulk of the testimonies made during the hearings unless reporters traveled to the remote base in eastern Cuba. It was only after the AP's lawsuit and the tribunals that ended in January that the government released dozens of transcripts.
The tribunals were hastily established after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantanamo prisoners could challenge their detentions before U.S. courts, dealing a blow to the government's argument that as foreigners on foreign soil they had no legal recourse.
With only four men charged to date and military trials stalled because of appeals in U.S. courts, it may be even longer before the fate of the prisoners is sorted out.
The enemy combatant tribunals ended with 38 of 580 detainees ordered released, with more than 20 freed so far. Now the U.S. military is conducting review board hearings to determine whether the prisoners hold valuable intelligence information or if they present a threat.
About half of the detainees refused to attend the enemy combatant hearings, where they were represented by military-appointed lawyers. Although they were not allowed their own attorneys, some of their testimonies have been entered as evidence in the U.S. court cases.
The ones who attended seemed eager to tell their stories - the first chance for many aside from talking with prison guards and interrogators.
One man claimed he was working with the Americans and the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.
"I was working with you and now I am here, and I see those people here that I helped capture in Afghanistan," said the purported former commander, adding he fears if he's ever released to his country he will be killed because of information he has provided to the Americans.
Stories of false accusations abound. One prisoner said he was in Afghanistan to buy heroin so he could sell it to open a nightclub in Europe, another said he was a goat herder - while others said they offered false confessions to their captors to make alleged abuse stop.
A 24-year-old detainee said he confessed to giving a militant group the names and serial numbers of security personnel assigned to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai but "I said this under torture." He described how an American interrogator "threatened me with a gun to my mouth, to try to make me say something."
The tribunal president asked him about the alleged torture, established it was purportedly carried out at a U.S. facility in Kabul by an American, then moved on to other questions.
Another Muslim prisoner from Uzbekistan talked of abuse he had suffered and how he was given a Bible - not a Quran.
The testimonies also brought up allegations that interrogators - hastily recruited after the Sept. 11 terror attacks - may have manipulated the confessions.
"When I was in the Kandahar prison, the interrogator hit my arm and told me I received training in mortars," a man said, referring to the U.S. detention camp in western Afghanistan where the Taliban rose to power.
"As he was hitting me, I kept telling him, no I didn't receive training. I was crying and finally I told him I did receive the training. My hands were tied behind my back and my knees were on the ground and my head was bleeding. I was in a lot of pain. ... At that point, with all my suffering, if he had asked me if I was Osama bin Laden, I would have said yes.
"What is my crime? Because of the United States, my hand is handicapped. I can't work."
Another man alleged that U.S. troops stripped the prisoners of their clothes in Afghanistan and bullied them into saying things the Americans wanted to hear.
"Americans were beating us really hard, and they had dogs behind us and they said if we didn't say this, they would release the dogs," he said.
The tribunal president made no comment and moved on to the next question: Where were you born?
While most of the prisoners denied the accusations that led to their imprisonment, some freely admitted joining the Taliban but wanted to be charged and tried for their alleged crimes.
"It seems like you are keeping and detaining innocent people," said one detainee, accused of asking Afghan soldiers for guns to fight Americans.
Although detainees sought to call witnesses from abroad to vouch for them during the tribunals, many requests were rejected as irrelevant and approved witnesses didn't appear because requests to their government to track them down got no response, according to the transcripts. In more than 3,500 pages of testimonies, the only witnesses are other detainees.
"All the rules in the United States and in the world, the person is innocent until you prove he is guilty, not innocent. But here, with Americans, the detainees are guilty until proven innocent," one detainee complained.
One prisoner told the tribunal that some of his fellow detainees at Guantanamo are sick and elderly. "I found my brothers being tortured in Kandahar and here," he said.
He compared his detention at Guantanamo to the 1998 Hollywood movie "The Siege," in which Arabs are indiscriminately hunted down and detained in New York City after a terrorist attack.
"I was shocked, thinking am I in that movie or on a stage in Hollywood? Is this really happening? Sometimes I laugh at myself and say when does that movie end?" he says.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Paisley Dodds, Associated Press bureau chief in London, has covered the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since it opened in 2002. AP writers Michelle Faul, Frank Griffiths, and Alexandra Olson in Puerto Rico and Peter Prengaman in Haiti contributed to this report.
05/30/05 14:35 EDT
Do you believe prisoners are unjustly being held at Guantanamo?
Yes 52%
No 39%
Unsure 9%
Total Votes: 21,166
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050530143909990014&_ccc=2&cid=842
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Propagandish OP-EDs.Amnesty International
Americas
Regional overview 2004
Respect for human rights remained an illusion for many as governments across the Americas failed to comply with their commitments to uphold fundamental human rights. Widespread torture, unlawful killings by police and arbitrary detention persisted. The US-led “war on terror†continued to undermine human rights in the name of security, despite growing international outrage at evidence of US war crimes, including torture, against detainees.
Democratic institutions and the rule of law were at risk throughout much of Latin America. Political instability – fuelled by corruption, organized crime, economic disparities and social unrest – resulted in several attempts to bring down governments. Most were by constitutional means but some, as in Haiti, by-passed the democratic process.
Political armed groups and criminal gangs, principally those engaged in drug trafficking, had an increasing impact on people’s fundamental rights. Poverty and discrimination affected millions of people, particularly the most vulnerable groups – women, children, indigenous people and Afro-descendant communities.
Positive developments were seen in the vigorous campaigns maintained by human rights defenders, who held both governments and armed groups to account, in defiance of harassment and persecution. Courts in several countries gave rulings that brought closer the prospect of bringing to trial military and political leaders responsible for massive human rights violations in previous decades.
National security and the ‘war on terror’
The blatant disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law in the “war on terror†continued to make a mockery of President George Bush’s claims that the USA was the global champion of human rights. Images of detainees in US custody tortured in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked the world. War crimes in Iraq, and mounting evidence of the torture and ill-treatment of detainees in US custody in other countries, sent an unequivocal message to the world that human rights may be sacrificed ostensibly in the name of security.
President Bush’s refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to those captured during the international armed conflict in Afghanistan and transferred to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was challenged by a judicial decision in November. The ruling resulted in the suspension of trials by military commission in Guantánamo, and the government immediately lodged an appeal. The US administration’s treatment of detainees in the “war on terror†continued to display a marked ambivalence to the opinion of expert bodies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and even of its own highest judicial body. Six months after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had jurisdiction over the Guantánamo detainees, none had appeared in court. Detainees reportedly considered of high intelligence value remained in secret detention in undisclosed locations. In some cases their situation amounted to “disappearanceâ€.
The “war on terror†and the “war on drugs†increasingly merged, and dominated US relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Following the US elections in November, the Bush administration encouraged governments in the region to give a greater role to the military in public order and internal security operations. The blurring of military and police roles resulted in governments such as those in Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Paraguay deploying military forces to deal with crime and social unrest.
The US doubled the ceiling on the number of US personnel deployed in Colombia in counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics operations. The Colombian government in turn persisted in redefining the country’s 40-year internal conflict as part of the international “war on terrorâ€.
Conflict, crime and instability
Civilians continued to be the principal victims of political violence. The human rights situation in Colombia remained critical, its civilians targeted by all sides in the conflict: the security forces, army-backed paramilitaries and armed opposition groups. Despite an agreed ceasefire and demobilization of some combatants, paramilitary forces were again responsible for widespread abuses. Security policies introduced by the government drew civilians further into the conflict.
Further evidence of spill-over from Colombia’s internal war was seen in neighbouring countries. Frequent border skirmishes were reported in Venezuela and Ecuador, where the number of Colombians seeking refuge grew.
Political polarization and instability continued to affect Venezuela for much of the year. Levels of violence and protests diminished briefly after a referendum failed to unseat President Hugo Chávez, but the death of a high-profile special prosecutor in a car bombing raised fears of renewed political violence.
Long-standing instability in Haiti reached crisis levels after a military uprising toppled the government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Political violence and widespread human rights violations persisted, despite the presence of a UN military and police force. The severe loss of life and structural damage caused by a hurricane in September exacerbated instability and the breakdown of the rule of law, hampering distribution of international aid.
In a report on Guatemala, the UN warned that failure to bring about effective social, economic and political reforms could promote conflict.
Public protests against violent crime, particularly kidnapping, spread throughout Latin America. Crime levels remained high in Mexican and Brazilian cities, and in parts of Central America where poverty combined with the easy availability of weapons and the legacy of civil wars. Governments responded with tougher legislation, which sometimes violated constitutional and human rights safeguards. Vigilantism and mob lynchings of suspected criminals were reported in countries including Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, where confidence in the security forces continued to evaporate.
Impunity for human rights violations
Despite setbacks, efforts across the region to combat impunity for gross human rights violations in previous decades continued to gain momentum.
A series of rulings and actions based on international jurisdiction showed that military and security chiefs whose forces were responsible for human rights violations could no longer escape trial. An Argentine court issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Paraguayan President Alfredo Stroessner for his alleged involvement in human rights violations committed under Operation Cóndor, a joint plan to eliminate opponents by military governments of the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Spain’s Supreme Court confirmed that the Spanish justice system had jurisdiction to try former Argentine navy officer Adolfo Scilingo for human rights violations under the military government of 1976-83. More than 20 years after the alleged crimes, a former Honduran intelligence chief faced a civil action in the US courts brought by relatives of Hondurans tortured and killed in the 1980s.
National courts also made significant, if slow, progress in shedding light on past human rights violations. The Chilean Supreme Court lifted former President Augusto Pinochet’s immunity from prosecution, allowing proceedings to be opened against him for human rights violations during Operation Cóndor.
In Brazil, the Supreme Court ordered the federal government to open files on the military operations against armed opposition groups in the region of Araguaia, state of Pará, during the military dictatorship. These may enable relatives finally to locate the bodies of victims of military actions.
Military and police courts continued to claim jurisdiction, despite recommendations by international human rights bodies. In Bolivia, the military initially rejected a Constitutional Court ruling that officers charged with offences against civilians should be tried in civilian courts. In Peru and Colombia, cases of human rights violations continued to be transferred to military courts in spite of rulings by the respective Constitutional Courts that they had jurisdiction only over offences committed “in the line of dutyâ€. In Ecuador, police courts still claimed jurisdiction in cases involving abuses by police agents although the authorities had given assurances that they would be heard by civilian courts.
Trial before civilian courts was no guarantee of justice, however. In Colombia, against all the evidence, charges were withdrawn against former General Rito Alejo del RÃo, indicted for forming illegal paramilitary groups responsible for human rights violations in the 1990s.
The USA continued to pressure governments throughout the region to sign unlawful immunity agreements shielding US personnel from surrender to the International Criminal Court. Of 12 countries that had refused to sign, 10 had some military aid suspended as a result. In November the US Congress threatened to cut off development aid to countries that refused to sign.
Death penalty
The USA continued to flout international human rights standards by inflicting the death penalty on child offenders, people with mental disabilities, defendants without access to effective legal representation, and foreign nationals denied their consular rights. In 2004, 59 executions were carried out by a capital justice system characterized by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. Scheduled executions of a number of child offenders were stayed pending a Supreme Court ruling on the case of a death row prisoner aged 17 at the time of the crime.
No judicial executions were carried out in the Caribbean, but the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council – the final court of appeal for most of the English-speaking Caribbean – reopened the possibility of a resumption of executions in Trinidad and Tobago by overturning a decision that the mandatory death penalty was unconstitutional. It ruled that mandatory death sentences for capital murder violated the Jamaican Constitution, and ordered new sentencing hearings for Jamaica’s death row inmates. It also ruled that the mandatory death penalty was constitutional
in Barbados.
Economic, social and cultural rights
Economic indicators improved in Latin America after a prolonged period of stagnation. However, growth was insufficient to significantly affect poverty levels. Extreme disparities in wealth, and in access to basic rights such as education, health, water and electricity, continued. Inequalities were persistently driven by race and ethnicity, particularly for indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, who are among the poorest in the region.
According to a UN study on the spread of HIV/AIDs, the Caribbean is the second most affected region in the world. Social attitudes such as homophobia and stigmatization are cited by the UN among factors contributing to the spread of the epidemic.
Severe political violence and instability in Haiti exacerbated the long-standing denial of basic rights, including access to health services as the breakdown in health provision reached crisis proportions.
Disputes over land and labour conditions on plantations continued to fuel protracted conflicts and human rights violations in countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala and Paraguay. Both protesters and police officers were killed as claims for access to land by landless peasant families brought them into conflict with large landowners backed by the security forces or hired gunmen.
By the end of 2004, Central American governments and the Dominican Republic had approved a free trade agreement with the USA. Civil society groups raised concerns about the lack of guarantees on labour rights, on protection of the environment and on continued access to affordable medicines. In December, 12 South American countries signed an agreement to create a political and economic regional bloc.
Violence against women
Women and girls remained at serious risk of human rights violations across the Americas. The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women – which marked its 10th anniversary – had received more ratifications than any other treaty on human rights in the region. Only Canada and the USA had failed to ratify. However, its provisions were largely ignored by governments across the region, and gender-related violence against women remained endemic in the home and the community.
A UN report on the state of the world’s cities stated that Latin America had the highest risk of all types of sexual victimization, with approximately 70 per cent of reported incidents described as rapes, attempted rapes or indecent assaults. Despite efforts by the Mexican authorities, there were further killings of women in the state of Chihuahua, and the horrific brutality that characterized killings of women in Guatemala gave cause for growing international concern.
Women were particularly vulnerable in situations of conflict. In Colombia, all parties to the conflict subjected women and girls to sexual violence, including rape and genital mutilation. They were targeted to sow terror, wreak revenge on adversaries and accumulate “trophies of warâ€.
There was a growing awareness of the impact of people trafficking in the Americas on human rights, particularly of women and girls. According to a study by the Organization of American States, over 100,000 men, women and children were “trafficked†across Latin America and the Caribbean each year, 80 per cent of them women and most for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Human rights defenders
Human rights activists across the Americas campaigned vigorously to hold governments and armed groups to their obligations to respect international and domestic human rights standards.
Women’s rights activists were acclaimed in Colombia for their work for thousands of innocent victims of conflict and for the meaningful involvement of women in peace negotiations and the political process. Indigenous activists in Ecuador championed their community’s rights to defend their livelihoods during disputes over the extraction of natural resources. Despite public hostility and prejudice, the work of Jamaican and Honduran sexual rights activists to promote equal rights and HIV/AIDS prevention was increasingly recognized and supported by human rights organizations at the international level.
The difficulties and dangers faced by activists in the Americas ranged from intimidation and restrictions on travel, to unfounded accusations of “terrorist†links or other violent activities, arbitrary detention, false criminal charges, and even death. Activists working locally on rural poverty and development, often in isolated areas, and journalists covering issues such as corruption were killed in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
On the international stage, governments gave commitments to support the work of human rights activists. However, some undermined the integrity of these pledges by tolerating slanderous statements by high-ranking government officials against those working for human rights. Appeals by women’s rights activists for the authorities to examine their concerns and proposals seriously were frequently dismissed
or ignored.
Only one government, Brazil, responded to a request by both the UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders and by AI for governments to draft, publish and make operational plans to implement the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
Regional initiatives
During the European Union/Latin America and Caribbean Summit in May, AI highlighted its concerns about the use of the judicial system to persecute human rights defenders. Delegates from AI’s International Secretariat and from AI sections in the region attended the Americas Regional Social Forum in Quito, Ecuador, in August. In the same month, AI also participated in the III Human Rights Defenders Consultation in São Paulo, Brazil.
http://web.amnesty.org/web/web.nsf/print/36F832815378BDCCC1256FDB003713A4
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U.S. charges two with conspiring to aid al Qaeda
Mon May 30, 2005 02:17 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=8638294
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A self-described martial arts experts and a physician, both U.S. citizens, have been arrested on a charge of conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda and are expected to be arraigned on Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department said on Sunday.
A complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday alleges Tarik Ibn Osman Shah and Rafiq Sabir offered to provide assistance to al Qaeda during multiple meetings with a confidential source and an undercover FBI agent posing as an al Qaeda operative and recruiter, the Justice Department said in a statement.
During the course of the investigation, Shah and Sabir allegedly pledged their support and loyalty to al Qaeda and its leader, Osama Bin Laden, in conversations that were recorded with their consent, the statement said.
Shah allegedly agreed to provide training in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat to al Qaeda members and associates while Sabir allegedly agreed to provide medical assistance to wounded jihadists in Saudi Arabia, the statement said.
Travel records indicate that Sabir was scheduled to leave for Saudi Arabia on June 2, the statement said.
Shah was arrested by FBI agents in the Bronx area of New York this weekend while Sabir was arrested in the area of Boca Raton, Florida. Both were expected to be arraigned on Tuesday. If convicted, each could face a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail and a fine of $250,000, the Justice Department said.
The complaint further charges that "Shah repeatedly indicated his desire to train Muslim brothers in the martial arts in order to wage jihad and also regularly discussed his desire to find people who were willing to press the fight."
Shah allegedly presented himself and his "partner" Sabir, whom he referred to as a skilled medical doctor living in Florida, as a "package" deal, the Justice Department said.
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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- The euro dropped against the U.S. dollar Monday after French voters rejected the European Union by a clear margin.
In early European trading, the 12-nation euro stood at $1.2526 -- off a low of $1.2511 in Asia earlier Monday but below the $1.2575 it bought in New York late Friday.
Ahead of the vote Sunday, analysts had said that fears of a "No" largely were factored into trading last week, when the euro fell to seven-month lows against the dollar. Still, the constitution faces another tough test when the Netherlands votes Wednesday.
The British pound was unchanged Monday at $1.8228. The dollar rose slightly against the Japanese yen, climbing to 107.92 yen from 107.84 yen.
France's decision to reject the EU constitution helped lift the dollar, but because the results were widely expected, it didn't cause the euro to plunge.
"The French 'no' did not come as a surprise for market participants," said Joerg Kraemer, chief economist at HVB Group, adding that the currencies likely to be most affected were those of the bloc's 10 new eastern members, as well as aspirant Turkey.
"While many commentators suggest that recent euro weakness is primarily a function of uncertainty surrounding the French referendum on the proposed EU Constitution, we find the euro weakness entirely consistent with cyclical developments," said Robert Sinche of the Bank of America.
Weakness in Germany and Italy, in particular, has kept euro zone growth weak.
About 55 percent of voters in France opposed the EU constitution -- the first rejection in Europe. Polls in the Netherlands show even more resistance to the constitution, and EU leaders were scrambling to control the damage.
Nine other countries, including Germany, have approved the document -- mostly in parliamentary votes.
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DUde.....poor choice of words......let it go son....
Actually DUde.....I think it's the right choice of words......let it go son....
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Do you seriously believe this belongs in the current events forum or on any forum on this board??
NO ADVERTISING PLEASE!!! The use of spam on the forums is of course bannable.
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do you work for the DNC?
No.
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May 27th, 2005 4:18 pm
DeLay Upset Over 'Law & Order' Line
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is upset that a popular NBC crime drama used his name as part of its show.
DeLay wrote NBC to complain that one of the characters on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" invoked his name in a story line about the shooting death of a federal judge. "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt," the fictional police officer said.
DeLay, in a letter to NBC Universal Television chief Jeff Zucker, called that reference a "slur."
"This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse," he said.
DeLay, R-Texas, criticized the federal judiciary after the courts refused to stop the death of Terri Schiavo. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," he said in a statement on March 31, hours after Schiavo died.
DeLay apologized the next week, saying he had spoken in an "inartful" way and meant that Congress should increase its oversight of the courts.
"This isolated piece of gritty 'cop talk' was neither a political comment nor an accusation," NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said. "It's not unusual for L & O to mention real names in its fictional stories. We're confident in our viewers' ability to distinguish between the two."
Creator/executive producer Dick Wolf added: "But I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a television show."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050527/D8ABL0P80.html
*plays a violin* Awwwwwwww Poor Tom........
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That explains why the far right can't see anything!
Good call. 
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Look no further than Trent Lott with his "nuclear option" (absolute power). A one party system is not a democracy.
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But you have to admit that Michael Moore is right about Bolton.
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i'm usually the last one to side with the US' foreign policies these days...but how the fuck is the US worse than Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, China, Myanmar, or Iran?
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And THIS is who Bush appoints as US Ambassador to the UN? Unfuckingbelievable.
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Inquiry Finds Five Cases of Koran 'Mishandling' at Gitmo
Thursday, May 26, 2005
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,157809,00.html
WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have substantiated five cases in which military guards or interrogators mishandled the Koran of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (search) but found "no credible evidence" to confirm a prisoner's report that a holy book was flushed in a toilet, the prison's commander said Thursday.
Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood (search), who commands the detention center in Cuba, told a Pentagon news conference that a prisoner who was reported to have complained to an FBI agent in 2002 that a military guard threw a Koran in the toilet has told Hood's investigators that he never witnessed any form of Koran (search) desecration.
The unidentified prisoner, re-interviewed at Guantanamo on May 14, said he had heard talk of guards mishandling religious articles but did not witness any such acts, Hood said. The prisoner also stated that he personally had not been mistreated but that he heard fellow inmates talk of being beaten or otherwise mistreated.
The general said he could not speculate on why the prisoner did not repeat his earlier statement about a guard flushing a Koran in a toilet. The statement was contained in an Aug. 1, 2002, FBI summary of an FBI agent's July 22, 2002, interrogation of the prisoner. A partly redacted version of the summary was made public this week.
The prisoner did not specifically recant his earlier allegation, since Hood said the prisoner was not asked in the May 14 interview whether he had made the specific statement in 2002 as reported by the FBI. Instead he was asked more broadly whether he had seen the Koran "defiled, desecrated or mishandled."
"He allowed as how he hadn't, but he heard that guards at some other point in time had done this," Hood said, adding that this allegation from the 2002 FBI report was the only one Hood found that involved a toilet.
"I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Koran down a toilet," Hood said. "We did identify 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Koran by Joint Task Force personnel. Ten of those were by a guard and three by interrogators."
Of the 13 alleged incidents, five were substantiated, he said. Four were by guards and one was by an interrogator. Hood said the five cases "could be broadly defined as mishandling" of the holy book, but he refused to discuss details.
In three of the five cases, the mishandling appears to have been deliberate. In the other two, it apparently was accidental.
"None of these five incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures in place at the time the incident occurred," Hood said. Later, he said there was no written version of a standard operating procedure during the first year prisoners were held at Guantanamo.
Allegations of Koran abuse have stirred worldwide controversy. After Newsweek magazine reported earlier this month that U.S. officials had confirmed a Koran was flushed in a toilet, deadly demonstrations were held in Afghanistan, although it is not clear what role that story played in sparking the violence. Newsweek later retracted its report.
Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said at the news conference with Hood that at this point it should be clear that any mishandling of the Koran was largely inadvertent.
"I think it's safe to say that the policies and procedures down there are extraordinarily careful, and they're — as I said — policies that we've released, and people can judge for themselves. But I think people will see that the atmosphere down there is one of great respect for the practice of faith by detainees," he said.
In an indication of the Pentagon's eagerness to discredit the allegation, Hood briefed reporters on the interim findings of his investigation even though the Pentagon's standard practice is to withhold comment on the progress of any official investigation until it has been completed. Hood did not say how much longer his inquiry would last. Earlier Thursday, he was Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress on this.
Eight of the 13 alleged incidents of Koran mishandling that Hood has looked into were not substantiated. Six involved guards who either accidentally touched a Koran or "touched it within the scope of his duties" or did not touch it at all. "We consider each of these incidents resolved," Hood said.
The other two cases in which the allegation was not substantiated involved interrogators who either touched or "stood over" a Koran during an interrogation, Hood said. In one case not deemed to be mishandling, an interrogator placed two Korans on a television. In the other case, which Hood did not describe fully, a Koran was not touched and Hood said the interrogator's unspecified "action" was accidental.
"We've also identified 15 incidents where detainees mishandled or inappropriately treated the Koran, one of which was, of course, the specific example of a detainee who ripped pages out of their own Koran," he said.
*Newsweek wasn't bullshitting after all. Now we have proof the Koran was being abused at Gitmo.*
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Improper Handling of Koran Confirmed
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer
May 27, 2005
WASHINGTON — A military investigation has found that U.S. troops mishandled Korans of Muslim prisoners five times at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but found "no credible evidence" to support a detainee's claim that a holy book was flushed down a toilet, the prison's commander said Thursday.
The investigation looked into 13 allegations that the book had been treated improperly, and it determined that five incidents "could be broadly defined as mishandling" of a Koran, Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the Guantanamo prison commander, told reporters at the Pentagon. Two people have been punished in connection with two incidents, said Hood, who was in charge of the inquiry.
Hood's comments were the most detailed account to date of allegations that military guards and interrogators at the prison had mishandled Islam's holy book. The investigation is continuing.
Pentagon officials said international furor over an allegation published in Newsweek that a guard had flushed a Koran down a toilet prompted them to brief reporters about the interim findings. The magazine report about the treatment of the Koran was widely blamed for touching off deadly riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Newsweek retracted the report one week after publishing it.
An FBI report released Wednesday summarized one detainee's account of the incident in two interviews conducted in July 2002. (The report was released because of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that sought to shed light on U.S. treatment of prisoners in Cuba.)
The guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," the detainee alleged, according to the FBI report. "The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things."
That account differed from what the detainee told military investigators, Hood said.
Although the prisoner was never asked about the incident cited in the FBI document, Hood said, he was asked whether "he had seen the Koran defiled, desecrated or mishandled, and he allowed as how he hadn't. But he had heard guards — that guards at some other point in time had done this.
"I do not believe [the military investigators] used that word, 'toilet,'" Hood said.
He said he could not explain why the detainee had told different stories to investigators from the military and the FBI, but he indicated that the wording might have been inexact.
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said investigative accounts often amount to "second- and third-hand reports of hearsay."
Hood declined to discuss specific incidents of alleged Koran desecration before completing the investigation. He also refused to detail how the two people were punished except to say that one had been reassigned.
Over the last 12 days, investigators reviewed 31,000 documents dating back three years, Hood said. They found 13 allegations that the Koran had been mishandled by U.S. troops.
In addition to finding the five incidents in which the Koran was mishandled, he said, the investigation found in six incidents that guards touched the holy book by accident or within the scope of their duties — instances that were not considered abuse — or did not touch it at all. In a 12th incident, an interrogator placed two Korans on a television set, which the Pentagon considered acceptable, and in a 13th, an interrogator stood over a Koran while questioning a detainee, which the investigators said was an accident.
Investigators found no pattern in the mishandling of the Korans, Hood said.
Of the five substantiated incidents of mishandling the book, four occurred before the military established guidelines for handling the Koran. Those rules were set out by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller in January 2003 after the Red Cross alleged that soldiers were abusing the Koran. Miller was then commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
In essence, those written guidelines say the books are generally to be handled only by Muslim chaplains working for the military, and guards are instructed not to touch the Koran unless absolutely necessary.
Muslims have rules for handling the Koran, which is revered as the word of God. Some Muslims hold that nonbelievers must not touch the holy book.
Hood's report also found 15 cases in which detainees — as opposed to military personnel — mishandled the Koran, in one case ripping out pages.
"This is not a benign group of people," Hood said. "These are enemy combatants that are detained because they represent a clear threat and danger to the United States and our allies."
The Pentagon is conducting a separate internal investigation of reported abuses at the Guantanamo detention facility, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt. The administration has refused to say what that inquiry has found so far.
Whether accurate or not, the published allegation that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet has taken on a life of its own.
Gen. John P. Abizaid, who, as head of the U.S. Central Command, directs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in a recent interview with several reporters at the Pentagon that the Newsweek item had come at a critical time.
"I think it was a story that was exploited by many of the political groupings and insurgent actors on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for their own political aims," Abizaid said. "And so it came at a time when, I thought, probably the political constellations were about ripe to start something."
One lawyer who has interviewed detainees at Guantanamo said a detainee told him that allegations of Koran mishandling had led to two hunger strikes there.
According to the lawyer, one detainee said he was taking part in a hunger strike because a Koran had fallen into a toilet while a detainee was being shackled.
The lawyer said it was not clear whether the Koran was deliberately put in the toilet or accidentally knocked in.
The attorney, who said the detainees told one another about the incident, said his confidence in the detainee's story was "very high." The attorney spoke on condition of anonymity because of lawyer-client privilege and because he said he was concerned that the volatile issue could affect his position or access to clients.
A second hunger strike began after a detainee found a profane phrase written on his Koran when he returned to his cell, the detainee said, according to the lawyer.
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"America, love it or leave it " has been a line that jingoists have used to bash dissenters for decades, but here is a series of posters that throw that tag line back in their faces.
If you want Clerics to pick judges, then move to Iran:
http://agitprops.org/loliran.html
If you want a country where nobody questions the governemt, then head for North Korea:
http://agitprops.org/loldpk.html
If you think One-Party Rule is a good idea, then go to Communist China:
http://agitprops.org/lolchicomm2.html
This is a good way to shove their jingoistic rhetoric back up their asses.
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Amnesty slams U.S. on human rights
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 Posted: 6:42 AM EDT (1042 GMT)
LONDON, May 25 (Reuters) -- Four years after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, human rights are in retreat worldwide and the United States bears most responsibility, rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe the picture is bleak. Governments are increasingly rolling back the rule of law, taking their cue from the U.S.-led war on terror, it said.
"The USA as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behavior worldwide," Secretary General Irene Khan said in the foreword to Amnesty International's 2005 annual report.
"When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity," she said.
London-based Amnesty cited the pictures last year of abuse of detainees at Iraq's U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, which it said were never adequately investigated, and the detention without trial of "enemy combatants" at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
"The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law," Khan said.
She also noted Washington's attempts to circumvent its own ban on the use of torture.
"The U.S. government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Convention and to 're-define' torture," she said, citing the secret detention of suspects and the practice of handing some over to countries where torture was not outlawed.
U.S. President George W. Bush often said his country was founded on and dedicated to the cause of human dignity -- but there was a gulf between rhetoric and reality, Amnesty found.
"During his first term in office, the USA proved to be far from the global human rights champion it proclaimed itself to be," the report said, citing Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
'Blurred distinction'
But the United States was by no means the sole or even the worst offender as murder, mayhem and abuse of women and children spread to the four corners of the globe, Amnesty said.
"The human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan were far from being the only negative repercussions of the response to the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Since that day, the framework of international human rights standards has been attacked and undermined by both governments and armed groups," Amnesty said.
The increasingly blurred distinction between the war on terror and the war on drugs prompted governments across Latin America to use troops to tackle crimes traditionally handled by police, the report said.
In Asia too, the war on terror was blamed for increasing state repression, adding to the woes of societies already worn down by poverty, discrimination against minorities, a string of low-intensity conflicts and politicization of aid, it added.
Africa too remained riven by regional wars and political repression, and the abject failure of the international community to take concerted action to end the slaughter in Sudan's vast Darfur region was a cause of shame.
Khan also condemned the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for failing to stand up for those supposedly in its care.
"The U.N. Commission of Human Rights has become a forum for horse-trading on human rights," she said. "Last year the Commission dropped Iraq from scrutiny, could not agree on action on Chechnya, Nepal or Zimbabwe and was silent on Guantanamo Bay."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/05/25/amnesty.report.reut/index.html
Good call. 
Where's Osama??
in Useless Blabber
Posted
WHERE'S OSAMA?
Bush Doesn't Care. Do We?
NEW YORK--It has been one thousand three hundred fifty-two days since George W. Bush promised to find Osama bin Laden, "dead or alive." So where is he?
"Not around Afghanistan," U.S.-installed president Hamid Karzai said on May 25. "We'll catch him if he ever comes in here." If not Afghanistan, where? "Well, that we don't know." Pakistani foreign minister Kursheed Kasuri says: "[He] is alive and moving around from place to place, but not with a large group of people." Thank you, great oracle. Such helpful allies we have.
"It (the search for bin Laden) has not gone into cold storage," swears British envoy to Pakistan Mark Lyall Grant, but it's hard to avoid drawing one of two conclusions at this late date: Either the Bushies are too stupid to catch bin Laden or they're not really trying. Capturing him alive, after all, could lead to discomfiting revelations--from interesting info re Reagan's Stinger missile giveaways to reports that a CIA agent hung out with the suspect of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings weeks before 9/11.
If the United States government were to devote its full attention and resources to the hunt, it would capture Osama. Low manpower and financing equals low priority. But the 3,000 people who died that day cry out for justice. The American people deserve answers--answers that, guilty or innocent, bin Laden should provide under oath. We know Bush doesn't want to catch Osama. "I don't know where he is," Bush said in 2002. "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." The question is: are we?
Bin Laden moved into Tarnak Farm, a compound of 80 mud-brick buildings four miles south of the Kandahar airport in Afghanistan, after arriving under U.S. supervision from Sudan in 1996. Video from a U.S. Predator drone plane places him there as of the fall of 2000. "Bin Laden is 6 foot 5," reported NBC. "The man in the video clearly towers over those around him and seems to be treated with great deference."
Most Americans believe that our first military response to the attacks in New York and Washington--invading Afghanistan--was part of an attempt to capture Osama "dead or alive." Actually the war had nothing to do with bin Laden, who wasn't even in Afghanistan on 9/11. On January 28, 2002, CBS reported: "The night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment...Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment."
White House officials have never denied this report.
If 150,000 American troops haven't been enough to subdue Iraq, the 800 sent to Afghanistan--a mountainous country of similar size and population--were a sad joke of a posse hunting for someone who wasn't there to be found. And Bush knew that. Then-secretary of state Colin Powell's initial request for extradition was issued to Pakistan on 9/12. Only later, when neoconservative cabinet members like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld won a high-level internal debate over what to do about 9/11, was the hunt for Osama back-burnered in favor of the Afghan war of distraction.
Pakistan closed its border with Afghanistan on September 17. It's unlikely that bin Laden would have tried to return to Afghanistan, which everyone knew was about to be bombed and probably invaded, during that five-day window of opportunity. The main border crossing via the Khyber Pass would have been indiscreet and distant from the Taliban's safe haven around Kandahar. It's even more of a stretch to believe that Osama, still afflicted with a bum kidney, would have trekked by horseback over the rugged mountains of the Northwest Frontier Province after that date. Odds are that, at least for the time being, bin Laden remained in Pakistan.
U.S. state-controlled media put bin Laden in a redoubt in the mountains of Tora Bora, a stone's throw west of the Khyber Pass, in mid-November 2001. According to this official account, corrupt Eastern Shura militia let bin Laden and hundreds of other Al Qaeda fighters escape. "There were only 21 bedraggled Al Qaeda fighters who were taken prisoners," writes the Christian Science Monitor.
Neither the Talibs nor Northern Alliance sources I spoke with while covering the war in Afghanistan in November 2001 put much credence in the Tora Bora story. "Everyone knows Osama went to Kashmir," an Al Qaeda POW told me. "He took the road north from Rawalpindi. That's where they always go."
Indeed, Pakistani-controlled Kashmir is topographically and politically more hospitable to bin Laden than the Pakistani-Afghan frontier regions targeted by joint U.S.-Pakistani military operations since 2002. Massive, craggy mountains separate bandit-ridden canyons where road signs mark routine ambush points. Tribal authorities allied with exiled Talibs fighting a proxy border war against India operate with so much impunity that recruiting centers for Al Qaeda and other "banned" Islamist parties operate openly out of storefronts. Pakistani troops rarely venture into the "Northern Areas"--not that their pro-Taliban officer corps would order them to do so. For these reasons Islamist militants fleeing eastern Afghanistan traditionally leave via Kashmir.
Of course bin Laden may have chartered a plane from Kashmir Âto Yemen or elsewhere. But if I were hunting for Osama, I'd start there. If I were serious.
(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back From the Right" and "Generalissimo El Busho: Essays and Cartoons on the Bush Years.")
COPYRIGHT 2005 TED RALL
RALL 5/31/05
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/