Pakistan: The mysterious elimination of Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief

By B.RAMAN
See also: www.southasiaanalysis.org

The brutal murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia Times Online, is unlikely to be solved satisfactorily by the investigating agencies of Pakistan.

2. Shahzad went missing on the evening of May 29,2011, while going to the Islamabad studio of a private TV news channel and his car with his dead body was reportedly found at a place about 150 kms from Islamabad on May 31. His body reportedly had torture wounds, indicating he had been severely tortured in order to extract information from him.

3. What was that information? Who was interested in that? The widely believed suspicion in Pakistan is that the information sought to be extracted from him through torture must have had a bearing to the first part of a despatch which he had sent to Asia Times and was carried by it on May 27.

4. This related to the daring attack by some terrorists on PNS Mehran, the base of the Naval Air Arm of the Pakistan Navy, at Karachi on the night of May 22 during which the terrorists destroyed twoUS-supplied Orion maritime surveillance aircraft which were being used by the Navy to patrol the sea to prevent any Al Qaeda attack on ships bringing logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

5. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the Pakistani Taliban is known. It said that it carried out the attack to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden during a raid by US naval commandos at his hide-out at Abbottabad on May2 ,2011.
6.The investigation into the attack by the local police has not yet made much progress. However, the arrests of some suspects in Karachi and Lahore, including an ex-naval commando of the Special Services Group (SSG), who was allegedly sacked 10 years ago on disciplinary grounds, have been reported.

7.Shahzad did not appear to have believed in the claim of the TTP. His enquiries indicated that the attack was carried out by the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri, a former commando of the Special Services Group (SSG), which operates from North Waziristan as an affiliate of Al Qaeda.
8. Shahzadsaid in the first part of his investigative report: “Asia Times Online contacts confirm that the attackers were from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the operational arm of al-Qaeda.” He alleged that “Al-Qaeda carried out the brazen attack on PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval officials arrested on suspicion of al-Qaeda links.”

9. He had also indicated at the end of the first part of his despatch that the second part would cover “the recruitment and training of militants.”

10.He was the only Pakistani journalist to have visited the headquarters of the 313 Brigade in October 2009 at the invitation of Ilyas Kashmiri. One of the purposes of Ilyas’ invitation was to disprove rumours then circulating in Pakistan that Ilyas had been killed in an American Drone (pilotless plane) strike in South Waziristan in September,2009.

11. Subsequently, after the terrorist attack on the so-called German Bakery in Pune in February 2010, Shahzad was in receipt of a message purporting to be from Ilyas indirectly hinting that the 303 Brigade had a role in the Pune attack. Shahzad had written about it in Asia Times.
12. Shahzad was thus well-informed on the activities of the 303 Brigade and Ilyas Kashmiri.He was reportedly the only Pakistani journalist with good contacts in the 303 Brigade.

13. Who killed him--- the ISI as it is widely suspected in Pakistan or the 303 Brigade or the two acting in tandem? Next to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the 303 Brigade has the closest contacts with the ISI. By virtue of his former association with the SSG, Ilyas is believed to have a network of contacts in the Army, the SSG and the ISI.

14. It is apparent that Shahzad was killed either because of what he reported in his despatch of May 27 regarding the penetration of the Navy by Al Qaeda or because of what he intended reporting about the training camps of the 303 Brigade.

15. Thus both the ISI and the 303 Brigade had a common motive for having him eliminated. Was their decision to eliminate him only related to his story on the Mehran attack or was there more to it? Whoever took the decision to eliminate him was in a desperate hurry. He was kidnapped within 48 hours of the first part being published. He would have most probably despatched the second part in the week beginning May 30. His captors wanted to do away with him before that.
16. Well-informed contacts in the Pakistani Police say that his kidnapping and murder were related not only to his investigation into the Mehran attack, but also his investigation into the local support base of OBL which facilitated his undetected stay for over five years at Abbottabad. His investigations post-May 2 were dangerously moving in that direction. His discovery of the penetration of the Navy by Al Qaeda was only the first step in his investigation. According to these police sources, he was digging deeper into OBL’s support base.

17. To have waited till he found out the details would have been suicidal for the ISI. The Police sources suspect that the ISI joined hands with the 303 Brigade to eliminate him before he made any progress in the matter.

18. The “real” truth will never be known just as the “real” truth behind the murder of Murtaza Bhutto in Karachi in 1996 and behind the murder of Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi in 2007 was never known.

19. People will be arrested and prosecuted, but they will not be the real perpetrators. The history of Pakistan is full of such instances of mysterious elimination of inconvenient people. Shahzad is the latest to join the ranks of such mysteriously eliminated people. He has paid with his life for daring to look into two incidents which the ISI wanted to be covered up---the Mehran attack and the stay of OBL at Abbottabad. (1-6-11)

The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies.

Gaza: Undefeated, Freedom Flotillas Expand

Republished permission Inter Press Service (IPS )
copyright Inter Press Service (IPS)
http://www.ipsnewsasia.net/ and http://www.ipsnews.net/

Undefeated, Freedom Flotillas Expand By Eva Bartlett

A gleaming new memorial towers in the centre of Gaza City's battered port. Flanked by flags of various nations whose citizens have sailed to the Gaza Strip to highlight the all-out siege on Gaza, the memorial's inscription bears the names of the Turkish solidarity activists who died one year ago when Israeli commandoes firing machine guns air-dropped onto the Freedom Flotilla, killing nine and injuring over 50 of the civilians on board.

On the one-year anniversary of the illegal Israeli attack on and abduction of over 600 civilians on the Freedom Flotilla from international waters, Gaza's harbour bustles with people and energy: they have come to mourn the dead and to herald the coming boats of Freedom Flotilla Two. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya addresses the audience, thanking the Turkish activists and government for their continued solidarity with Palestine.

Since Free Gaza boats arrived in 2008 –the first blockade-breaking boats and first boats to dock at Gaza since Israel's 1967 occupation of the Strip – the boat movement has grown exponentially. Free Gaza successfully docked in Gaza five times, with another four voyages violently thwarted by the Israeli navy.

The December 2008 sailing ended when an Israeli warship rammed a Free Gaza vessel carrying medical supplies, non-violent activists, surgeons and journalists. The February 2009 attempt ended with Israeli soldiers forcibly boarding the ship, beating and abducting the passengers from international waters. A June 2009 sailing was likewise forcibly halted by the Israeli navy, the passengers aboard abducted and deported.

The various vessels have carried non-violent activists, international television and newspaper journalists, European parliamentarians, Jews in solidarity with Palestine, including Holocaust survivors and Israeli activists and journalists, and even Palestinians unable to get out of Gaza for studies in universities abroad and those unable to enter Gaza to re-unite with family.

Israel's pretext in blocking boats' passage to and from Gaza is for security reasons, claiming weapons are being smuggled into Gaza. In each instance when a Free Gaza or Flotilla vessel has been forcibly absconded to Israel, only humanitarian supplies were found aboard. Rather than defeating the boat movement, Israel's aggressions have had the opposite effect.

Vessels from Libya, Malaysia, and a boat carrying Jewish activists have all sailed for, and been blocked by Israeli gunboats from, the Gaza Strip. Two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers fired upon a Malaysian aid ship carrying piping for a sanitation project in Gaza, forcing it to dock in Egyptian waters.

In May 2010, Free Gaza, supported by Turkish humanitarian organization IHH, again sent vessels and activists sailing to the besieged Strip, this time accompanied by the massive Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara. As the six vessels with over 600 passengers in the Freedom Flotilla approached Gaza, Israeli commandoes unleashed a barrage of machinegun fire on the boats still sailing in international waters. Equipped with satellite streaming, the Israeli assault was videoed and broadcast to disbelieving viewers in Gaza and worldwide.

Keven Niesh, 53, a Canadian activist on board the Mavi Marmara, described the killings. "There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head - clearly they were executed," Neish told Counter Punch in an interview after the Flotilla massacre last year.

Undaunted by last year's massacre, international activists have organised the Freedom Flotilla 2, due to sail in one month's time with at least 10 boats and over 1,000 activists. Canadian and U.S. boats will join those of Europe, Turkey, and other nations.

Immediately following the massacre one year ago, Egyptian authorities partially opened the Rafah crossing. In an effort to deflect criticism, Israeli authorities subsequently announced they would ease the siege on Gaza. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)'s Mathilde De Riedmatten, in a May 2011 interview, noted that "the entry of goods into Gaza is also still highly restricted, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of the particular items allowed."

More recently, Egyptian authorities announced the continued opening of the Rafah crossing. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), however, notes that this change will not impact on imports, exports or Gaza's economy. "These procedures will not ease the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population or change the economic situation caused by the strict closure imposed on the Gaza Strip," a PCHR statement reads.

It calls for "lifting the Israeli closure imposed on the Gaza Strip, opening the crossings for commercial transactions and allowing the freedom of movement of persons, including the movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, through the outlets that are controlled by the Israeli occupation forces."

The siege on Gaza impacts drinking water (95 percent of Gazan water is below the World Health Organisation standards), the sanitation system (untreated sewage is pumped into the sea daily for want of storage capabilities), and the agriculture and fishing sectors (farmers and fishermen are shot at on a daily basis by Israeli soldiers). Unemployment and malnutrition levels soar, power outages occur daily, impacting on hospital machinery, and Palestinians continue to live in what more and more outsiders are describing as an "open-air prison". Renowned classical pianist Anton Kuerti, endorsing the Canadian boat to Gaza, says the siege has rendered Gaza "indistinguishable from a concentration camp."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested nations prevent their citizens from sailing, saying governments should "use their influence to discourage such flotilla, which carry the potential to escalate into violent conflict."

Free Gaza's attorney Audrey Bomse stated "the flotilla violates no international laws or laws of the sea and so an outright ban on our sailing to Gaza is essentially a statement against the rights of the Palestinian people to control their own ports and lives."

Turkey has demanded an apology and compensation from Israel to the martyred activists' families, with Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on NTV television warning "Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas."

As was Free Gaza's goal, the expanded Flotilla aims to end the illegal siege on Gaza. The Canadian Boat to Gaza (CBG) will "challenge Canadian foreign policy and the uncritical support of Israeli war crimes by the current government."

CBG's David Heap says the Freedom Flotilla participants are not intimidated. "Where our governments have failed the Palestinians oaf Gaza, civil society must act instead."

Child soldiers: Sylvain's story: A former child soldiers on the road to a new life in Rwanda

Source: UNICEF
By Katrin Piazza

KIGALI, Rwanda – At the Lake Muhazi Centre, an hour’s drive from the Rwandan capital, 30 adolescent boys have come together for a three-month course that offers counselling, education, recreational activities and vocational training. These are not your average young men – they used to be child soldiers in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Today, with help from the UNICEF-supported Commission for Demobilization, they are on the road to living a normal life with their long-lost families.

Life among soldiers

Silvain, one of the youths at the centre, has not enjoyed the comfort of a safe, loving family environment for many years. In the turmoil of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when he was a baby, his parents fled with him and his elder brother across the border to DR Congo.

After the situation had calmed down, his parents returned with his elder brother to see if all was well. Silvain was left behind in the care of an acquaintance. Neither his parents nor his brother ever returned, and Silvain still does not know where they are.

While in DR Congo, he lived with a foster mother and went to school. One day when he was 14, some men appeared at the school and told him and a friend – who had also been separated from his parents – that they knew their parents’ whereabouts. “Come with us and we will show you where they are," the men said.

The next thing they knew, the two boys were part of an armed group. “My life among soldiers was very hard,” says Silvain. As part of the troop leader’s escort, he was in charge of ensuring that the boss’ wife had enough to eat.

“Yes, I had to use my weapon to kill people, particularly when villagers refused to hand over their food,” he says. “I could not bear the situation.”

Chance to escape

One day about three months ago, his command happened to march through an area that was near the Rwandan border. Silvain immediately saw his chance to escape.

“I remembered passing the area and hearing on the radio that the UN would help soldiers who wanted to come home. So I decided to tempt fate, got three of my mates together and fled,” he says.

Silvain and his friends were helped across the border and brought to this centre. Now, 10 boys are busily preparing to leave. It is ‘integration day’ – when parents and relatives arrive to collect their boys and take them home. Each of the boys has packed his belongings, including a ‘unification kit’ containing a woollen blanket, a malaria net, crockery, cooking utensils, a jerry can to carry water, and a bag of seeds.

“We don’t want families to feel the boys are a burden,” explains Eric Muhaza from the Demobilization Commission. “We want them to know that we help them with their re-integration.”

A new start

Silvain should have been packing to leave, but he will have to stay for the time being, until his family is found.

“It’s great here. I can go to school, be safe and study law,” he says. “I would love to become a lawyer.”

Under its child protection programme, UNICEF supports the Rwanda Demobilization Commission’s efforts to assist boys like Silvain. Since its opening in 2006, the Lake Muhazi Centre has helped nearly 800 children to find their families and get ready for a new start in life.

Iraq: Finally, a law protecting Iraq’s journalists

Finally, a law protecting Iraq’s journalists

by Ahmed K. Fahad
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 31 May 2011,
www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.

Nasiriyah, Iraq - Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Iraq has slowly begun transitioning from a dictatorship into a democracy. Although most of the media attention on Iraq has focused on politics as a measure of democratisation, one of the clearest signs of its growing presence is the increased freedom of the Iraqi press. While much more needs to be done to protect this freedom, a draft law that was recently introduced in parliament, which would provide journalists with increased rights and protection from arrests or intimidation, may be an important first step.

The law was drafted in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iraq ratified in January 1971. Article 19 of the Covenant stipulates that "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”

Before 2003, Iraq had only one television channel, which was run by the state. Satellite channels, internet and mobile cell phones were all banned. Since 2003, however, Iraq’s media industry has opened up and there are now hundreds of new media outlets, both traditional (newspapers, radio and television) and new (social media, etc).

Regardless of this increasing openness of the media landscape, however, the press continues to face several challenges in post-war Iraq. This law has come not a moment too soon: Iraq was classified by the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, non-profit organisation promoting press freedom worldwide, as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists to work in back in 2008. According to the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, an independent non-governmental organisation that protects journalists and helps ensure freedom of the press, more than 250 Iraqi journalists have been killed since 2003 due to violence and many others have been tortured or kidnapped by Al Qaeda-affiliates and other extremist groups.

This law – proposed by the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, a professional union of journalists, and endorsed by the government – financially aids the families of journalists who have been injured or killed in the line of duty, including those kidnapped by extremist groups.

Most of the law’s articles, however, aim to ensure that the rights of journalists are upheld – including their right to pension pay-outs and health insurance – and propose guidelines that commit the government to providing journalists with secure and trouble-free access to information. Under these rules, no one has the right to hinder journalists' access to information, helping provide a clearer picture of government action and policies to the public. Those who limit this access are held duly accountable.

At the same time, under this law, journalists and media outlets must pledge that no highly sensitive information is disclosed in a way that threatens national security or endangers the public in any way. And publishing unconfirmed information that results in hostility towards public institutions or harms the reputation of public or government figures is illegal. The hard work for media outlets will be to find a balance between freedom of expression and the reporting of information that could negatively affect the security situation in Iraq.

If passed, the draft law would provide protection only to members of the Iraqi Union of Journalists, but subsequent drafts of the law should be amended to extend these protections to all journalists and media workers in Iraq.

The law would be a step towards putting an end to the long suffering of journalists’ families and to violating journalists’ rights in a country where they have long been considered unsafe.

Ahmed Fahad is an instructor in the department of media at the University of Dhi Qar in Iraq. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Africa: Novel Uses of Mobile Phones, the Internet and Social Media

Source: ISS
Novel Uses of Mobile Phones, the Internet and Social Media

Annette Hübschle, Senior Reseacher, Organised Crime & Money Laundering,

ISS Cape Town Office

The rapid expansion of mobile telephony in Sub-Saharan Africa and the emergence and popularity of ‘social media’, are changing the ways people access and share information and how they relate, collaborate and organise themselves.

According to Jenny Aker and Isaac Mbiti writing in the Journal of Economic Affairs there are ten times as many mobile phones as landlines and 60 percent of the population has mobile phone coverage. Out of the estimated 1,01 billion people in Africa, 111 million people were using the Internet by mid- 2010. 18 million Africans were using Facebook by the end of 2010, which constitutes 16% of the total number of Facebook users worldwide. The largest social network in Africa is the South African MXit, a free instant messaging application with 27 million subscribers.

As evidenced during the recent popular revolutions in Northern Africa and the Middle East, information and communication technology (ICT) plays a key role in the mobilisation and organisation of alternative government and economic structures. Globally the interactivity of social networking and open data are regarded as the drivers of a more participatory and democratic culture. On the flipside, authoritarian governments, criminal and terrorist groupings can harness the Internet for their own purposes. This article considers examples of novel uses of mobile phones, social media platforms and interfaces in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Communication technologies researcher Michael Best and his colleagues show the uses of mobile phones in post-conflict Liberia. Besides using mobile phones to improve productivity, as a means of connecting with friends and family, or as essential business tools, respondents regard the mobile phone as a source of personal security. The high prevalence of security and emergency use reported by Liberian mobile phone users is linked to the prevailing state of lawlessness in Liberia. The mobile phone provides security allowing the user to call a family member or an authority in the event of a crime. In several instances, even law enforcement officers regard mobile phones as a form of security.

This was seen in South Africa, where four prisoners at the Grootvlei Prison in Bloemfontein used a mobile phone to secretly film prison officials engaging in various corrupt and illegal activities in 2001. The prisoners had obtained the permission of the Head of Prison to do so. The subsequent Grootvlei video footage showed scenes of warders drinking alcohol with prisoners, juveniles being sold to older inmates for sex, warders smuggling a gun, drugs and alcohol into prison, and food being sold to warders from the prison kitchen. Screened on national television, the video effectively exposed corrupt and criminal governance within the South African prison system and led to a special hearing by the Jali Commission of Inquiry into corruption, maladministration, violence, and intimidation in the Department of Correctional Services (DCS).

Recent ISS research into organised crime in Southern Africa shows that urban gangs and organised crime networks have embraced new media. MXit is especially popular among Cape gangs both in and out of prison. This and other social media are used as tools to communicate, recruit, issue threats, organise criminal operations and expand the criminal empire. Abalone poachers, drug smugglers and car thieves are warned of police road blocs or impending police operations by MXit or text messages. Smuggling of drugs, stolen motor vehicles, counterfeit goods, money, endangered species and people is arranged and executed by text messages and social media interfaces.

International drug networks recruit couriers by way of social networking websites and text messages. Pick up and delivery dates and times, size of the consignments and payment are communicated in this manner. In the case of Sheryl Cwele, the wife of the South African Minister of State Security, and Frank Nabolisa, it was reported that new media was used to recruit two women to become cocaine couriers. Tessa Beetge was arrested after 10kg of cocaine was found in her luggage in Brazil in 2008. Cwele had offered Beetge a job by SMS, followed by a trail of emails and mobile phone communication and lastly a personal encounter. The judge in passing judgment used mainly SMSes and emails between Beetge and Cwele to reach his conclusion. He overruled the objections of lawyers representing Cwele and her associate that interception of mobile phone calls violated their right to privacy.

The research also showed that the foot soldiers of loosely structured transnational networks in Southern Africa are mostly recruited, contacted and informed about the next operation by way of a social media interface or SMS. Individuals provide services on the basis of need and they are expendable. Networks shift experts, activities and methods frequently. The fluidity and anonymity of the new media provide protection from detection by law enforcement. In most instances, these foot soldiers know their employer’s identity only virtually – by way of a pseudonym, a Facebook, Twitter or social media false identity or an avatar.

As mentioned earlier, the use of new media to bolster social activism and civil disobedience campaigns was most graphically evident in the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East earlier this year. Further south, thousands of people took to the streets of Maputo after the price of bread increased by 20 % in August 2010. Ten people were killed and more than 440 injured. The violent food riots were fuelled by a mass text message campaign calling on people to carry on protesting against the price hike despite the violent police response. Thereafter the Mozambican communications authority closed down all SMS communication in the country for several days. In Kenya, post-election violence in the Rift Valley in 2008 was amplified by a mass SMS campaign inciting mob justice. At the height of the crisis the Kenyan government considered shutting down the SMS system. Mobile phone providers convinced the government otherwise by sending out messages of peace to all customers. At the same time, a group of Kenyans from the Diaspora led by Ory Okolloh launched the online campaign Ushaidi (Swahili for “testimony”)to create awareness about the violence devastating Kenya. The site collected eyewitness accounts of violence using text messages and Goggle Maps and plotted them on a map, using the locations given by users. Users could add photos, video and written content. Ushaidi collected testimonies of riots, stranded refugees, rapes and death at a faster rate than election monitors and reporters.

Social networks have become powerful tools of communication and vehicles for social change and activism. They function like watchdogs, monitoring government violence, corruption and inaction. Twitter was used to document the Arabian Spring, Youtube hosts numerous video clips of governmental violence, corruption and abuses of power, and Facebook is home to a variety of groups and networks dedicated to uncovering and sharing information about specific human rights abuses. Wikileaks has provided an explosive insight into the workings of US overseas diplomacy and foreign politics. Unfortunately, criminal networks have discovered the virtues of virtual communication too. It is therefore not surprising that several governments in the region and beyond are attempting to restrict or control Internet access and censor the free flow of information it enables. We need to keep a watchful eye on such attempts, to retain the socially beneficial, but reject the negative aspects.

Rwanda: Flawed trials have led to miscarriages of justice

Source: Human Rights Watch

Rwanda's community-based gacaca courts have helped communities confront the country's 1994 genocide but have failed to provide credible decisions and justice in a number of cases, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. As the gacaca courts wind down their work, Rwanda should set up specialized units in the national court system to review alleged miscarriages of justice, Human Rights Watch said.

The 144-page report, "Justice Compromised: The Legacy of Rwanda's Community-Based Gacaca Courts," assesses the courts' achievements and outlines a number of serious shortcomings in their work, including corruption and procedural irregularities. The report also examines the government's decision to transfer genocide-related rape cases to the gacaca courts and to exclude from their jurisdiction crimes committed by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the country's ruling party since the genocide ended in July 1994.

"Rwanda's ambitious experiment in transitional justice will leave a mixed legacy," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The courts have helped Rwandans better understand what happened in 1994, but in many cases flawed trials have led to miscarriages of justice."

The report is based on Human Rights Watch observing over 2,000 days of gacaca trials, reviewing more than 350 cases, and interviews with hundreds of participants from all sides of the gacaca process, including accused persons, genocide survivors, witnesses, other community members, judges, and local and national government officials.

Since 2005, more than12,000 community-based courts have tried 1.2 million cases relating to the 1994 genocide. The violence killed more than half a million people, mostly from the country's minority Tutsi population. The community courts are known as gacaca - "grass" in the country's Kinyarwanda language, referring to the place where communities traditionally gathered to resolve disputes. The courts were scheduled to finish trials by mid-2010, but their closure was postponed in October 2010. In May 2011, the minister of justice reportedly announced that gacaca courts would officially close by December 2011.

Gacaca courts were established in 2001 to address the overload of cases in the conventional justice system and a prison crisis. By 1998, 130,000 genocide suspects were crammed into prison space designed to accommodate 12,000, resulting in inhumane conditions and thousands of deaths. Between December 1996 and early 1998, conventional courts had tried only 1,292 genocide suspects, leading to broad agreement that a new approach was needed to speed up trials.

Rwanda's 2001 gacaca law sought to resolve the bottleneck. The new gacaca courts, with government oversight but limited due process guarantees, combined modern criminal law with more traditional informal community procedures.

The Rwandan government faced enormous challenges in creating a system that could rapidly process tens of thousands of cases in a way that would be broadly accepted by the population, Human Rights Watch said. The system's achievements include swift trials with popular participation, a reduction in the prison population, a better understanding of what happened in 1994, locating and identifying bodies of victims and a possible easing of ethnic tensions between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi ethnic groups.

Rwandans have paid a high price, though, for the compromises made when setting up the new gacaca system. Human Rights Watch found a wide range of fair trial violations. These included restrictions on the accused's ability to mount an effective defense; possible miscarriages of justice due to using largely untrained judges; trumped-up charges, some based on the Rwandan government's wish to silence critics; misuse of gacaca to settle personal scores; judges' or officials' intimidation of defense witnesses; and corruption by judges and parties to cases.

"The creation of gacaca was a good thing because it allowed the population to play a large role in the gacaca process, but I deplore you [the judges] for taking sides," one witness testified at a trial attended by Human Rights Watch.

The Rwandan government contended that traditional fair trial rights were unnecessary because community members - familiar with what happened in their area in 1994 - would expose false testimony or judicial bias. But Human Rights Watch found in many cases that potential witnesses failed to speak out in defense of genocide suspects because they feared prosecution for perjury, complicity in genocide, or "genocide ideology," a vaguely defined crime prohibiting ideas, statements, or conduct that might lead to ethnic tensions or violence. Others feared social ostracism for helping suspects defend themselves.

One genocide survivor interviewed by Human Rights Watch broke down in tears, saying he was ashamed he had been too frightened to testify in defense of a Hutu man who had saved his life and those of more than a dozen of his relatives.

"A number of people told us they stayed silent during gacaca trials even though they believed the suspects were innocent," Bekele said. "They felt the stakes were simply too high to come forward to defend people wrongly accused of genocide-related crimes."

Human Rights Watch also interviewed rape victims whose genocide-related cases were transferred in May 2008 from conventional courts, that have stronger privacy protection, to gacaca courts, whose proceedings are known to the whole community, even if held behind closed doors. Many rape victims felt betrayed by this loss of confidentiality.

The government's decision to exclude crimes committed by soldiers of the current ruling party, the RPF, from gacaca courts' jurisdiction has left victims of their crimes still waiting for justice, Human Rights Watch said. Soldiers of the RPF, which ended the genocide in July 1994 and went on to form the current government, killed tens of thousands of people between April and December 1994. In 2004, the gacaca law was amended to exclude such crimes, and the government worked to ensure that these crimes were not discussed in gacaca.

"One of the serious shortcomings of gacaca has been its failure to provide justice to all victims of serious crimes committed in 1994," Bekele said. "By removing RPF crimes from their jurisdiction, the government limited the potential of the gacaca courts to foster long-term reconciliation in Rwanda."

Serious miscarriages of justice should be reviewed by professional judges in specialized courts in the conventional system, rather than by gacaca courts, as proposed by the Rwandan government in late 2010, Human Rights Watch said.

"If gacaca courts review alleged miscarriages of justice, there is a risk of repeating some of the same problems," Bekele said. "Instead, the government should ensure the formal justice system reviews these cases in a professional, fair, and impartial way. This would help secure gacaca's legacy and strengthen Rwanda's justice system for generations to come."

Selected Quotes from the Report:

"I cannot understand how you ask me to present my defense witnesses when I do not even know the charges against me."
- An accused man at his trial in southern Rwanda

"Why is it that any person who tells the truth and defends a man is seen as a traitor?"
- A genocide survivor testifying as a defense witness in a gacaca trial

"Testifying for the defense risks having your statements qualified as lies."
- A local government official explaining in an interview why more witnesses do not testify

"In gacaca there were a lot of personal disputes that had nothing to do with genocide."
- A genocide survivor

"You have to give money. Gacaca judges aren't paid so they make arrangements to get money from those who are accused."
- Man accused of genocide who said he had paid a bribe to gacaca judges

"The biggest problem with gacaca is the crimes we can't discuss. We're told that certain crimes, those killings by the RPF, cannot be discussed in gacaca even though the families need to talk. We're told to be quiet on these matters. It's a big problem. It's not justice."
- Relative of a victim of crimes by soldiers of the current ruling party

"Gacaca has helped the situation because people are slowly approaching each other when they didn't before."
- Gacaca judge (and genocide survivor) who participated in gacaca trials

"This is government-enforced reconciliation. The government forced people to ask for and give forgiveness. No one does it willingly... The government pardoned the killers, not us."
- Genocide survivor who was raped during the genocide

"Gacaca has left Hutu and Tutsi even more divided than before."
- Relative of a man accused of genocide

"How to decide on a policy towards the gacaca proposal?... [It] is simultaneously extremely promising and very dangerous [...] There is no way to be sure of anything: it is a giant bet for the Rwandan authorities and population, as it would be for any donor supporting it (with that difference that for donors it is not a matter of life and death, whereas for Rwandans it is)."
- Academic author of a study on the question of potential international donor support for the gacaca process

Copyright 2010, Human Rights Watch

Human Rights: Ticket for Torture - 'State secrets' court cover-up for CIA prisons?

The US Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case of an airline accused of providing planes for the controversial "extraordinary rendition program," a refusal that some have called a cover-up for torture and secret prisons.

The appeal asked the court to examine the practice of terrorism suspects allegedly being transferred to secret CIA prisons abroad for interrogation and, some claim, torture. The terrorism suspects sued Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan in 2007 for transferring them to prisons around the world where, they claim, they were tortured. The high court has refused several other appeals based on the government's invocation of state secrets to derail lawsuits.

Israel: Activists Demand Justice Department Regulate AIPAC as Israeli Foreign Agent

SOURCE Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy

WASHINGTON, May 31, 2011 -- On May 23 activists drawn from more than 100 organizations demanded the U.S. Department of Justice regulate the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as an agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On May 18, 2011 Heather Hunt, chief of the Registration Unit of the Counterespionage Division, responded to a letter "requesting a meeting with the Attorney General to discuss matters relating to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and its possible obligation to register pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938…" Hunt solicited "additional information" asking that concerned members of the public, "please forward it to us."

The new information was presented in front of the Justice Department on a large presentation board. According to 2010 civil court filings AIPAC obtained classified annual U.S. arms transfer data, secret U.S. policy accords with Saudi Arabia, classified signals intelligence flows that were used in lobbying Congress, National Security Decision Directives, Justice Department investigation files and troves of other government classified information. Petitioners argue that AIPAC is trafficking classified U.S. government secrets for the same reason its parent organization laundered overseas funds into the U.S. during the 1960s—to serve the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs—where AIPAC's founder worked until 1951.

A 2009 petition filed with Hunt substantiated that the Justice Department ordered the American Zionist Council to register as an Israeli foreign agent in 1962 after it was discovered laundering millions of dollars of Israeli funds into U.S. public relations and lobbying campaigns. The AZC's lobbying and PR division—AIPAC—quietly incorporated six weeks later without registering. In 1965 the Justice Department—in violation of FARA transparency mandates—agreed to keep the AZC foreign agent order secret. This allowed AIPAC to obtain tax exempt status in 1968 —against recommendations of a 1963 Senate Foreign Relations Committee letter to the IRS following a separate three year investigation.

War Crimes: Mladic’s health will be continuously monitored

UN - The Serbian war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic was today transferred to the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to face charges of genocide and other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995.

Mr. Mladic, who was arrested by Serbian authorities last Thursday after almost 16 years on the run was admitted to the UN Detention Unit in The Hague, where the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is based.

Following a full medical examination by the detention unit’s medical staff, Mr. Mladic’s health will be continuously monitored and any treatment required will be provided, the tribunal said. His initial appearance will be announced in due course.

According to the indictment, forces under the command of Mr. Mladic, who headed the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) Main Staff, committed genocide, amongst other crimes, when they summarily executed more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995.

He is also charged with genocide for crimes committed in eastern and north western Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The indictment lists over 70 incidents of murder in 20 municipalities. It also alleges that Mr. Mladic’s forces tortured, mistreated and physically, psychologically and sexually abused civilians confined in 58 detention facilities in 22 municipalities. He is also facing charges for the shelling and sniping during the prolonged siege of the city of Sarajevo, in which thousands of civilians were killed and wounded.

The indictment states that Mr. Mladic committed the crimes as part of a joint criminal enterprise whose objective was to eliminate or permanently remove Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb inhabitants from large areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Somalia: Child casualties rise dramatically in latest fighting in Somalia’s capital

UN - Violence in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has driven the number of child casualties to a new high, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said today, noting that the main cause of children’s deaths were burns, chest injuries and internal haemorrhage resulting from blasts, shrapnel and bullets.

Of the 1,590 reported weapon-related injuries in May alone, 735 cases or 46 per cent were suffered by children under the age of five, compared to only 3.5 per cent in April.

“This is the highest number of injured children that has been reported since the beginning of this year,” said Marthe Everard, WHO’s representative for Somalia, in a press release. “Many children are suffering from very severe wounds, burns and other injuries due to bullets, blast injury and shrapnel.”

Fighting intensified in March, especially around the sprawling Bakara market. For many internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other civilians in Mogadishu, the market is one of the cheapest places to rent accommodation.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 3,900 patients injured in the conflict have been admitted to three main hospitals within Mogadishu. Civilians are particularly vulnerable when fighting flares up because most of the clashes occur in the streets.

“Service delivery is hampered by accessibility issues, poor infrastructure and an insufficient number of health facilities,” said Dr. Everard. “Wherever health facilities are operating, they often lack very basic and essential medicines, supplies and equipment, operational and logistical support.”

In response to the high child casualties, WHO trained 50 doctors and nurses in Mogadishu’s Banadir Hospital on how to treat burns and chest injuries in children.

The agency has also provided the hospital with a trauma treatment kit and two operating theatre kits, including an operating table, operative lights, surgical instruments, medical supplies, drums and sutures.

UN humanitarian agencies and their non-governmental organization (NGO) partners have requested $58.8 million to fund health services in Somalia this year, but only $9.4 million or 16 per cent of the appeal has been received.

Climate Change: Rising Harmful Emissions Trigger Grave Concern

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Jaya Ramachandran

Courtesy IDN-InDepth NewsReport

BONN (IDN) - The United Nations' top climate change official has expressed profound concern over a report that greenhouse gas emissions emerging from energy generation around the world have reached record levels in 2010.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), considers the latest estimates of the International Energy Agency (IEA) "a stark warning to governments to provide strong new progress this year towards global solutions to climate change."

"This is the inconvenient truth of where human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are projected to go without much stronger international action now . . . and into the future," Figueres said.

The warning came in run-up to the global gathering form June 6 to 17 in Bonn, Germany, to prepare for the next major international climate conference to be held in Durban, South Africa, at the end of the year.

"It is clear that they need to push the world further down the right track to avoid dangerous climate change," the UN's top climate change official said. "I won't hear that this is impossible. Governments must make it possible for society, business and science to get this job done," she added.

The latest IEA estimates published on May 30 – as world's major economy, Germany, announced that it would quit atomic power in 2020 -- show that energy-related CO2 emissions in 2010 were at their highest level in history, following a brief dip in 2009 due to the economic impacts of the global financial crisis.

After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt), a 5 percent jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt, the Paris-based organisation said.

In addition, the IEA has estimated that 80 percent of projected emissions from the power sector in 2020 are already locked in, as they will come from power plants that are currently in place or under construction today.

"This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2 C (two degrees centigrade)," said Dr. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA who oversees the annual World Energy Outlook, the Agency's flagship publication.

Global leaders agreed a target of limiting temperature increase to 2 C at the UN climate change talks in Cancun in 2010. For this goal to be achieved, the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere must be limited to around 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent, only a 5 percent increase compared to an estimated 430 parts per million in 2000, the IEA said.

The IEA's 2010 World Energy Outlook set out the 450 Scenario, an energy pathway consistent with achieving this goal, based on the emissions targets countries have agreed to reach by 2020. For this pathway to be achieved, global energy-related emissions in 2020 must not be greater than 32 Gt. This means that over the next ten years, emissions must rise less in total than they did between 2009 and 2010, the IEA argues.

"Our latest estimates are another wake-up call," said Dr Birol. "The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2 C target is to be attained. Given the shrinking room for manœuvre in 2020, unless bold and decisive decisions are made very soon, it will be extremely challenging to succeed in achieving this global goal agreed in Cancun."

In terms of fuels, 44 percent of the estimated CO2 emissions in 2010 came from coal, 36 percent from oil, and 20 percent from natural gas.

The IEA pointed out that the challenge of improving and maintaining quality of life for people in all countries while limiting CO2 emissions has never been greater. While the IEA estimates that 40 percent of global emissions came from OECD countries in 2010, these countries only accounted for 25 percent of emissions growth compared to 2009. Non-OECD countries -- led by China and India -- saw much stronger increases in emissions as their economic growth accelerated.

However, on a per capita basis, OECD countries, also described as "rich man's club", collectively emitted 10 tonnes, compared with 5.8 tonnes for China, and 1.5 tonnes in India.

Referring to the upcoming round of UN climate change negotiations in Bonn, UNFCCC executive secretary Figueres said: "No nation will solve climate change alone. And no nation is alone in feeling its impacts. We're only a few days away now from the mid-year climate negotiations and governments need to pick up speed."

In Cancun, governments launched the most comprehensive package ever agreed to help developing nations deal with climate change, including a set of new international institutions to deliver that support.

They also agreed a major effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but left open the question of how to raise their collective level of ambition to keep the global temperature rise at least below two degrees.

Figueres said that, in Durban, governments will have two main challenges that they have agreed to resolve:

-- To strengthen the international conditions that will allow nations to work together to make deeper global emission cuts. This includes the question of deciding the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

-- To agree on the effective designs of the new climate institutions that will provide adequate and efficient climate support to developing countries. This includes the Green Climate Fund, Technology Mechanism and establishing the Adaptation Committee.

"In the wider world, I see two very encouraging trends," said Figueres. "Countries, including the biggest economies, are moving forward with new policies that promote low-carbon prosperous growth, even if they don't always attach climate labels to these policies. And the private sector continues to increase its investment in low-carbon business and renewable energy and wants to do more."

"In Durban at the end of the year, governments need to take the new steps that will drive both these trends forward and much faster," she said. "The meeting in Bonn is a major opportunity to prepare these essential steps," she added.

With 195 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 193 of the UNFCCC Parties.

Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments.

The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.

Middle East: WJC Leader says Europe Must Reject Palestinian Unilateral Gambit

SOURCE World Jewish Congress

At a conference at the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome, organized by the foreign affairs think-tank SUMMIT of Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, co-sponsored by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and attended by senior Italian government officials and parliamentarians, WJC Secretary General Designate Dan Diker has urged the European countries to oppose the planned endorsement by the United Nations of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state.

Noting that Italy and Germany were the only two European states that categorically rejected the Palestinian unilateral statehood scheme, Diker said: "The European Union is a witness signatory to the Oslo Interim Accords which continue to govern relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel until a negotiated final peace deal. If the EU were to back a premature resolution at the UN to endorsing a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, it would severely undermine its integrity as an honest broker. Europe's credibility test is whether or not it will reject the Palestinian unilateral gambit."

The seminar, entitled 'New scenarios in the Middle East: the Fatah-Hamas agreement, unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood and threat of a Third Intifada', featured panelists including Senator Luigi Compagna, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Umberto Ranieri, former undersecretary for foreign affairs. Speakers agreed that Hamas constitutes the main obstacle to peace as it has no intention to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Diker also noted that the Hamas-Fatah regime was a non-starter by European and US law. "Mahmoud Abbas has thrown sand in eyes of President Obama by accepting his support for a Palestinian state and then partnering with a terror group such as Hamas," Diker said. He pointed out that Hamas was not just a more Islamic version of Fatah, but had spawned terror masterminds such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammad of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood, one of the engineers of the 9/11 terror attacks, and Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian cleric who was a mentor to Osama Bin Laden.

Bassam Eid, the founder and director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, stressed the failures of the Palestinian leadership, specifically in Gaza, where after Israel's disengagement in 2005, Hamas invested more money in missiles against the Israeli civilian population than in meeting the needs of the population in the coastal enclave. Eid also explained that Palestinian civil society had accepted the need for coexistence with Israel more than the Palestinian leadership dared to show publicly or in the negotiations. Eid said hardly any Palestinian believed that refugees would eventually return to what is today Israel. He urged the international community to take more of an interest in the nature of a future Palestinian state, in order to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship like other states in the region. "We don't need another Gaddafi," he concluded.

In her closing remarks, MP Fiamma Nirenstein reasserted the need to have Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepting Netanyahu's invitation to declare in front of his population that he recognizes the State of the Jews. "This is a necessary precondition for a real peace process between Israelis and Palestinians."

Ukraine: President - our Goal is a Functioning Democracy and European Standards

SOURCE Worldwide News Ukraine

The current government policy in Ukraine is to carry out the long overdue reforms, said Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych during the 17th Central and Eastern European Summit in Warsaw, Poland. "Ukrainian reforms are to establish a functioning democracy and introduce the European standards in all areas of life, with no exception" - stressed the Ukrainian Leader in his address to heads of Central and European countries and the press, who attended the summit.

This year's Summit was hosted by the President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski and attended by the Presidents and high officials of 19 central and Eastern European countries. The US President, Barack Obama also attended the event. The Summit agenda included the discussion of common democracy experience and promotion of democratic values.

In his summit address President Yanukovych noted, that Ukrainian government is focused on implementing reforms and pays special attention to economic transformation.

Last year the Ukrainian leadership has identified and started implementing the reforms in such key areas as tax, administration, anti-corruption and pension. The administrative reform reduced the number of public servants by reorganizing the ministries and decreasing their number by a third. Shortly afterwards, the Law on Principles of Prevention and Combating Corruption in Ukraine was adopted and Ukraine has introduced the Law on Access to Public Information.

Also, Ukraine progresses on the Association agreement and the issue of the free trade zone with the EU, and is likely to complete EC roadmap project in September. It's been reported that 90 percent of positions in the Free Trade Agreement had been agreed upon.

The idea to gather the Central European Heads of State for regular informal meetings was born in 1993 during the European Festival in the Austrian city of Salzburg, which was attended by the Presidents of Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and a number of leading European politicians.

In 1999, Ukraine and its President were hosting the Summit in Lviv, welcoming Presidents of Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In 2010, the meeting scheduled for May was cancelled due to the tragic death of President Lech Kaczynski of Poland.

President Yanukovych invited all participants for the next summit, which will take place in May 2012 in Ukraine.

Terrorism: Two Iraqi Nationals Indicted on Federal Terrorism Charges in Kentucky

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs

An Iraqi citizen who allegedly carried out numerous improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and another Iraqi national alleged to have participated in the insurgency in Iraq have been arrested and indicted on federal terrorism charges in the Western District of Kentucky.

The arrests in Bowling Green, Kentucky and the criminal complaints and indictment unsealed today were announced by Todd Hinnen, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security; David J. Hale, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky; Elizabeth A. Fries, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Louisville Division; and the members of the Louisville Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).

Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, both former residents of Iraq who currently reside in Bowling Green, were charged in a 23-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Bowling Green on May 26, 2011. Alwan is charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) against U.S. nationals abroad; distributing information on the manufacture and use of IEDs; attempting to provide material support to terrorists and to al Qaeda in Iraq; as well as conspiracy to transfer, possess, and export Stinger missiles. Hammadi is charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorists and to al Qaeda in Iraq, as well as conspiracy to transfer, possess, and export Stinger missiles.

Alwan and Hammadi were arrested on May 25, 2011, on criminal complaints and made their initial appearances today in federal court in Louisville, Ky. Each faces a potential sentence of life in prison if convicted of all the charges in the indictment. Both defendants were closely monitored by federal law enforcement authorities in the months leading up to their arrests. Neither is charged with plotting attacks within the United States.

“Over the course of roughly eight years, Waad Ramadan Alwan allegedly supported efforts to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, first by participating in the construction and placement of improvised explosive devices in Iraq and, more recently, by attempting to ship money and weapons from the United States to insurgents in Iraq. His co-defendant, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, is accused of many of the same activities. With these arrests, which are the culmination of extraordinary investigative work by law enforcement and intelligence officials, the support provided by these individuals comes to an end and they will face justice,” said Todd Hinnen, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

“The filing of these charges in Bowling Green, Kentucky underscores the readiness of federal law enforcement authorities and our partners in the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to effectively pursue and prosecute terrorists wherever in the United States they may be found,” said David J. Hale, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky. “Whether they seek shelter in a major metropolitan area or in a smaller city in Kentucky, those who would attempt to harm or kill Americans abroad will face a determined and prepared law enforcement effort dedicated to the investigations and prosecutions necessary to bring them to justice. The dismantling of terrorist networks is the first priority of this office and the Department of Justice.”

“These arrests were the culmination of extremely well-coordinated, diligent, and tireless efforts by the FBI and our law enforcement partners working on the JTTFs. My thanks to all those who assisted in this case,” said Elizabeth A. Fries, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Louisville Division. “I want to remind the public that the FBI is responsible for protecting the civil rights of all persons in our communities. Just as we vigorously investigate terrorism cases, the FBI will vigorously pursue anyone who targets Muslims or their places of worship for backlash-related threats or violence in the wake of these arrests.”

According to the charging documents, Alwan entered the United States in April 2009 and has lived in Bowling Green since his arrival. Hammadi entered the United States in July 2009 and, after first residing in Las Vegas, moved to Bowling Green.

Prior Activities in Iraq

In September 2009, the FBI launched an investigation into Alwan. Later, the FBI began using a confidential human source (CHS) who met with and engaged in recorded conversations with Alwan beginning in August 2010, and with Hammadi beginning in January 2011. In a number of meetings with the CHS, Alwan allegedly discussed his prior activities as an insurgent in Iraq from 2003 until his capture by Iraqi authorities in May 2006, including his use of IEDs and sniper rifles to target U.S. forces and details about various attacks in which he participated.

For example, in recorded conversations with the CHS, Alwan allegedly stated that he used to procure explosives and missiles while an insurgent in Iraq; that his insurgent group conducted strikes daily; and that he used IEDs in Iraq hundreds of times. At one point, Alwan allegedly drew diagrams of four types of IEDs for the CHS and provided verbal instructions on how to build these devices. He also discussed occasions in which he had used these types of IEDs against U.S. troops. Asked whether he had achieved results from these devices in Iraq, Alwan allegedly replied, “Oh yes,” mentioning that his attacks had “f--ked up” Hummers and also targeted Bradley fighting vehicles.

According to the charging documents, the FBI has been able to identify two latent fingerprints belonging to Alwan on a component of an unexploded IED that was recovered by U.S. forces near Bayji, Iraq. Alwan had allegedly advised the CHS that he lived in that area of Iraq and worked at the power plant in Bayji. Alwan had also allegedly told the CHS how he had used a particular brand of cordless telephone base station in IEDs. Alwan’s fingerprints were allegedly found on this particular brand of cordless base station in the IED that was recovered in Iraq.

In additional conversations with the CHS, Alwan also described IED attacks on U.S. troops that he participated in with others, including an associate whom Alwan said had lost an eye when an IED exploded prematurely. According to the charging documents, U.S. forces recovered an unexploded IED near Bayji from which a latent fingerprint belonging to this associate was later recovered. The charging documents allege that this associate was detained by U.S. troops in June 2006 and had a false eye.

The charging documents also allege that Hammadi has discussed his prior experience as an insurgent in Iraq and has told the CHS about prior IED attacks in Iraq in which he participated. In one conversation with the CHS, Hammadi allegedly described how he had been arrested in Iraq, explaining that authorities captured him after the car he was driving in got a flat tire shortly after he and others had placed IEDs in the ground.

Activities in the United States

According to the charging documents, beginning in September 2010, Alwan expressed interest in helping the CHS provide support to terrorists in Iraq. The CHS explained that he shipped money and weapons to the mujahidin in Iraq by secreting them in vehicles sent from the United States. Thereafter, Alwan allegedly participated in operations with the CHS to provide money, weapons—including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Stinger missiles, and C4 plastic explosives—as well as IED diagrams and advice on the construction of IEDs to what he believed were the mujahidin attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.

For instance, in November 2010, Alwan allegedly picked up machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers from a storage facility in Kentucky and delivered them to a designated location believing they would be shipped to al Qaeda in Iraq. In January 2011, the charging documents allege, Alwan recruited Hammadi to assist in the material support activities. Alwan allegedly described Hammadi to the CHS as a relative of his whose work as an insurgent in Iraq was well known.

Later that month, Alwan and Hammadi allegedly delivered money to a tractor-trailer, believing the money would ultimately be shipped to al Qaeda in Iraq. In February 2011, the pair allegedly assisted in the delivery of additional weapons, including sniper rifles and inert C4 plastic explosives, to a tractor-trailer, believing that these items would be shipped to al Qaeda in Iraq. Finally, in March 2011, Alwan and Hammadi allegedly picked up two inert Stinger missiles from the storage facility and delivered them to a tractor-trailer believing these items would be shipped to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Neither the Stinger missiles nor any of the other weapons or money delivered by Alwan or Hammadi in connection with the CHS in the United States were provided to al Qaeda in Iraq, but instead were carefully controlled by law enforcement as part of the undercover operation.

In closing, Mr. Hale noted, “Let me be clear that this is not an indictment against a particular religious community or religion. Instead, this indictment charges two individuals with federal terrorism offenses.”

Mr. Hale commended the investigative efforts of the Louisville Division of the FBI and the Louisville JTTF, which is comprised of the following full-time member agencies: Louisville Metro Police, Kentucky State Police, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. Marshals Service. Also assisting were full-time members of the Lexington JTTF, which includes the University of Kentucky Police and Lexington-Fayette County Police. The U.S. Department of Defense also provided assistance in this investigation, as well as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Bowling Green Police Department.

The prosecution is being handled by Trial Attorney Larry Schneider from the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Bryan Calhoun and Mike Bennett from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky.

The public is reminded that charges contained in an indictment or criminal complaint are merely allegations, and that defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.