By William Fisher
Well, the big secret is out: Whatever it takes, Iran is determined to stamp out another season of mass demonstrations railing against the parliamentary elections set for next week.
In fact, for months Iranian authorities have been targeting everyone from students, lawyers, religious leaders and bloggers to political activists and their relatives as they unleash a wave of repression, including a new “cyber army” to block Internet and social media networks, thus cutting off access to the outside world, Amnesty International charged yesterday.
"The Iranian authorities have unleashed their ‘cyber army’ in an effort to cut off their citizens' access to information,” said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
“Meanwhile those who dare express any unapproved thoughts on the Internet can expect to be slapped with a prison sentence of more than a decade,” she said, adding, “The Iranian government is going to extraordinary lengths to impose a total information blackout on the Iranian population."
These charges are contained in the report, “We Are Ordered To Crush You: Expanding Repression of Dissent in Iran.” The report says “anything from setting up a social group on the Internet, forming or joining an NGO, or expressing opposition to the status quo can land individuals in prison.”
The report documents a wave of arrests in recent months that it said “lays bare the hollowness of Iran’s claim to support protests in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Amnesty also called on the global community “not to allow tensions over Iran’s nuclear program or events in the wider region to distract it from pressing Iran to live up to its human rights obligations.”
Amnesty says Iran’s security forces – including the new cyber police force – can now scrutinize activists as they use personal computers in their own homes. A new and shadowy “cyber army” reportedly linked to the Revolutionary Guards, has carried out attacks on websites at home and abroad, including Twitter and the Voice of America.
“In Iran today you put yourself at risk if you do anything that might fall outside the increasingly narrow confines of what the authorities deem socially or politically acceptable,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s interim deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“This dreadful record really highlights the hypocrisy of the Iranian government's attempts to show solidarity with protesters in Egypt, Bahrain and other countries in the region.”
Iran’s current actions also confirmed that there will be no change, no “softening,” in the brutal tactics the government employed in the brutal crackdown following parliamentary 2009 elections. In the 2009 demonstrations, Western media were regularly provided with photographs of the violence. Most were taken with cell phone cameras.
In the wake of protests called by opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi in February 2011, the Iranian authorities steadily cranked up repression of dissent and the situation has worsened over the last few months in the lead up to the parliamentary elections this Friday (March 2).
The report finds that in recent months a wave of arrests has targeted lawyers, students, journalists, political activists and their relatives, religious and ethnic minorities, filmmakers, and people with international connections, particularly to media.
Embarrassed and humiliated by the fierce and prolonged protests following the highly controversial 2009 Iranian presidential elections, the Iranian Government has apparently decided to adopt the same strategy should massive protests erupt across Iran next week.
The Iranian government suppressed the protests and stopped the mass demonstrations in 2009, with only very minor flare-ups in 2010. However, not many of the protesters' demands were met. Hundreds of citizens were thrown into jail. Iran’s basij – its motorcycle-borne militia – roamed Tehran and other cities, beating citizens with batons. The government also employed security forces with tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets and, finally live rounds.
For a time, the protest movement went relatively quiet. Then, the 2010–2011 Arab world protests spread across the Middle East and North Africa. After the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January 2011, millions of people began demonstrating across the region in a broad movement aimed at various issues such as their standards of living or influencing significant reforms, with varying degrees of success. With the successful ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February 2011 following that of President Ben Ali of Tunisia, renewed protests began in Iran.
On 27 January, the opposition Green Movement of Iran announced a series of protests against the Iranian government scheduled to take place prior to the "Revolution Day" march on 11 February.
On 9 February, various opposition groups in Iran sent a letter to the Ministry of Interior requesting permission to protest under the control of the Iranian police. Permission was refused by the relevant government officials. Despite these setbacks and crackdowns on activists and members of opposition parties, opposition leaders such as Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, called for protests.
On Feb.14, a man displayed a poster of one of those killed during the 2009 election protests. Feb. 15 was publicized as "The Day of Rage". But, the day before the protests were due to begin, opposition leaders Mousavi and Karroubi were placed under house arrest and denied access to telephones and the Internet. Their homes were blockaded and they were not allowed visitors. On 14 February 2011, thousands of protesters began to gather in a solidarity rally with Egypt and Tunisia. There was a large number of police on the streets to keep an eye on the protesters, but thousands were still able to gather together in Tehran's Azadi Square. The number of protesters has been given by different sources, from "thousands" to "hundreds of thousands".
The solidarity protests turned into an anti-government demonstration during which the police fired tear gas and paintballs at protesters. To protect themselves, protesters responded by setting fires in garbage bins. Video footage showed one civilian being violently beaten by a group of protesters. Two protesters were fatally wounded in Tehran. Both were university students. According to reporter Farnaz Fassihi, they were both shot by men on motorcycles who their friends identified as Basij members.
Protests were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and Shiraz, which police forcibly dispersed, as well as in Rasht, Mashhad and Kermanshah.
The protests that occurred on this day marked a setback for the government of Iran, as the regime has campaigned that Mousavi's Green Movement had lost momentum, but the revived uprisings helps prove otherwise.
According to some reports, 1,500 Hezbollah fighters assisted in the suppression of the protests in Azadi Square. Following the initial protests, Hezbollah fighters allegedly continued to participate, assisting local forces in suppressing protests.
On 18 February, thousands of pro-government supporters called for the execution of opposition leaders after Friday prayers. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said that the opposition leaders had lost their reputation and are as good as "dead and executed." He said there should be more restrictions on Mousavi and Karroubi. "Their communications with people should be completely cut. They should not be able to receive or send messages. Their phone lines and Internet should be cut. They should be prisoners in their homes”
On February 19, the Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar stated that the protests set for Sunday, February 20, will "be confronted as per the law".
Electronic media is seen as a major threat. In January a senior police officer said Google was an “espionage tool,” not a search engine. The same month, the recently established Cyber Police required owners of Internet cafés to install CCTV and to register the identity of users before allowing them to use computers.
Blogger Mehdi Khazali was this month sentenced to four and a half years in prison, followed by ten years in “internal exile,” and a fine for charges believed to include “spreading propaganda against the system,” “gathering and colluding against national security,” and “insulting officials.” It is not clear whether his “internal exile” will in fact be served in prison.
Having been originally charged in 2011 and released on bail, he was arrested again in January. He is being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where he has been on hunger strike for more than 40 days in protest at his detention, raising fears for his health.
Harassment, arrest and imprisonment of human rights defenders, including women’s rights groups, has also intensified and several NGOs have been shut down.
Abdolfattah Soltani, a founder member of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders, was arrested in September and is held in Evin Prison awaiting the outcome of his trial on charges which include his acceptance of an international human rights prize. He has been threatened with a 20-year sentence.
The pressure on independent voices has extended to those outside Iran.
Earlier this month, the BBC said family members of its Persian language service had been subjected to harassment, including one who was arrested in January and held in solitary confinement and others whose passports were confiscated.
Amnesty International said the attacks on dissenting views come against a backdrop of a worsening overall human rights situation in Iran.
There were around four times as many public executions in 2011 as in 2010, a practice that Amnesty International said was used by the authorities to strike fear into society.
Hundreds of people are believed to have been sentenced to death in the past year, mainly for alleged drugs offenses. Iran continues to execute juvenile offenders – a practice strictly prohibited under international law.
Amnesty International called on the international community not to allow tensions over Iran’s nuclear program or events in the wider region to distract it from pressing Iran to live up to its human rights obligations.
"For Iranians facing this level of repression, it can be dispiriting that discussions about their country in diplomatic circles can seem to focus mainly on the nuclear," said Harrison.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Bahrain in Wonderland
By William Fisher
Hey, great news!
The Arab Spring revolution in Bahrain is over!
And the way I know this is how?
Well, there was this announcement this week from the Board of the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) that the 2012 Formula One Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix will be held from April 20 to 22 at BIC, ‘The Home of Motorsport in the Middle East,’ in Sakhir, a desert area just outside Manama, Bahrain’s capitol.
The directors noted that the race will mark the Kingdom’s eighth hosting of the prestigious Formula One event, and will feature plenty of top-class action being the fourth round of a record-breaking 20-race calendar that makes up the 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship.
Last year’s race was cancelled because of what sponsors called “unrest,” but which most of the rest of us described as mindless, heartless, brainless and unspeakable violence. We’re certainly happy that’s all over with now!
And how do I know it’s all over?
I know this also because Professor Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, the prominent Egyptian judge who prepared the government-ordered report on the violence in Bahrain, “expressed his full backing for the race weekend scheduled to take place this April.”
Professor Bassiouni described the Bahrain Grand Prix as “a significant national event”, one that is of “deserved national pride”. He further lauded BIC’s decision to hold the race weekend under the slogan, ‘UNIF1ED – One Nation in Celebration’.
It’s surprising that Judge Bassiouni is endorsing this sporting event with such gusto. He must really believe it presents the opportunity, as he says, “for the people of Bahrain to come together.”
Well, maybe he’s right. After spending months leading a team of investigators looking into the year-long Bahrain “unrest,” few people would seem better prepared to know the situation and how to improve it.
He and his team interviewed government officials, members of the armed forces and the security services, participants in the peaceful demonstrations seeking a larger role in speaking out for respect for human rights, a more representative form of government, and an end to arrest and torture.
King Hamad, who received the report personally, surprisingly accepted all its findings and promised to initiate an immediate dialogue to address the demonstrators’ grievances and launch the reform process.
Well, insiders tell me Judge Bassiouni has either has a major epiphany or he has been snookered big-time. The King’s office has been issuing lots of press releases describing a “national dialogue.” But this dialogue seems more like a monologue. Most of the citizen groups that spearheaded and sustained the months of peaceful demonstrations say they have not been invited to participate in anything that sounds like a meaningful discussion.
Worse yet, security services are still shooting randomly at civilian demonstrators, babies and old people are dying from inhaling tear gas, people, including women and children, are being arrested and routinely tortured by their captors. The bodies of some of the kids, bearing the unmistakable marks of torture, are being returned to their families without explanation.
Doctors are being jailed for treating demonstrators, hundreds of people were fired from state-owned companies have yet to get their jobs back. Demonstrators remember when Saudi troops rumbled down the short causeway that connects the two countries, to help the Bahraini military put down the rebellion. Students expelled from the universities for demonstrating are still expelled. Members of the Shia Muslim majority in Bahrain still feel discriminated against by the Sunni Muslim King and his royal family insiders.
Some elements in the international press are reporting, likely with the helping hands of the army of PR experts hired by the King, that the uprising has been crushed and all is peaceful once again.
Well, I wouldn’t take that to the bank if I were you.
Nonetheless, Bahrain has a very active economic development apparatus, busily promoting high-end tourism, featuring fine dining and a ton of sporting events, including Formula One racing. Its work must go on!
The Crown Prince who met with President Obama told him how important it was for Bahrain to rebuild its image in the tourist community. For the US, Bahrain is also important. – strategically important. America’s Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain.
So, yet again, sport and money have trumped justice in this tiny oil-rich island nation.
Will those who are surprised please raise their hands?
Not to worry. Because we also have the blessing of Formula One Supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who has promised, "there will be no problem with the Bahrain Grand Prix" even though petrol bombs, tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades were used in last week's clash between police and demonstrators in the Gulf kingdom.
I fervently hope Judge Bassiouni is right – that the big Formula One blowout, and all its attendant partying, may be just what’s needed to bring Bahrainis together.
Or not.
Watch this space!
END
Hey, great news!
The Arab Spring revolution in Bahrain is over!
And the way I know this is how?
Well, there was this announcement this week from the Board of the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) that the 2012 Formula One Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix will be held from April 20 to 22 at BIC, ‘The Home of Motorsport in the Middle East,’ in Sakhir, a desert area just outside Manama, Bahrain’s capitol.
The directors noted that the race will mark the Kingdom’s eighth hosting of the prestigious Formula One event, and will feature plenty of top-class action being the fourth round of a record-breaking 20-race calendar that makes up the 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship.
Last year’s race was cancelled because of what sponsors called “unrest,” but which most of the rest of us described as mindless, heartless, brainless and unspeakable violence. We’re certainly happy that’s all over with now!
And how do I know it’s all over?
I know this also because Professor Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, the prominent Egyptian judge who prepared the government-ordered report on the violence in Bahrain, “expressed his full backing for the race weekend scheduled to take place this April.”
Professor Bassiouni described the Bahrain Grand Prix as “a significant national event”, one that is of “deserved national pride”. He further lauded BIC’s decision to hold the race weekend under the slogan, ‘UNIF1ED – One Nation in Celebration’.
It’s surprising that Judge Bassiouni is endorsing this sporting event with such gusto. He must really believe it presents the opportunity, as he says, “for the people of Bahrain to come together.”
Well, maybe he’s right. After spending months leading a team of investigators looking into the year-long Bahrain “unrest,” few people would seem better prepared to know the situation and how to improve it.
He and his team interviewed government officials, members of the armed forces and the security services, participants in the peaceful demonstrations seeking a larger role in speaking out for respect for human rights, a more representative form of government, and an end to arrest and torture.
King Hamad, who received the report personally, surprisingly accepted all its findings and promised to initiate an immediate dialogue to address the demonstrators’ grievances and launch the reform process.
Well, insiders tell me Judge Bassiouni has either has a major epiphany or he has been snookered big-time. The King’s office has been issuing lots of press releases describing a “national dialogue.” But this dialogue seems more like a monologue. Most of the citizen groups that spearheaded and sustained the months of peaceful demonstrations say they have not been invited to participate in anything that sounds like a meaningful discussion.
Worse yet, security services are still shooting randomly at civilian demonstrators, babies and old people are dying from inhaling tear gas, people, including women and children, are being arrested and routinely tortured by their captors. The bodies of some of the kids, bearing the unmistakable marks of torture, are being returned to their families without explanation.
Doctors are being jailed for treating demonstrators, hundreds of people were fired from state-owned companies have yet to get their jobs back. Demonstrators remember when Saudi troops rumbled down the short causeway that connects the two countries, to help the Bahraini military put down the rebellion. Students expelled from the universities for demonstrating are still expelled. Members of the Shia Muslim majority in Bahrain still feel discriminated against by the Sunni Muslim King and his royal family insiders.
Some elements in the international press are reporting, likely with the helping hands of the army of PR experts hired by the King, that the uprising has been crushed and all is peaceful once again.
Well, I wouldn’t take that to the bank if I were you.
Nonetheless, Bahrain has a very active economic development apparatus, busily promoting high-end tourism, featuring fine dining and a ton of sporting events, including Formula One racing. Its work must go on!
The Crown Prince who met with President Obama told him how important it was for Bahrain to rebuild its image in the tourist community. For the US, Bahrain is also important. – strategically important. America’s Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain.
So, yet again, sport and money have trumped justice in this tiny oil-rich island nation.
Will those who are surprised please raise their hands?
Not to worry. Because we also have the blessing of Formula One Supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who has promised, "there will be no problem with the Bahrain Grand Prix" even though petrol bombs, tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades were used in last week's clash between police and demonstrators in the Gulf kingdom.
I fervently hope Judge Bassiouni is right – that the big Formula One blowout, and all its attendant partying, may be just what’s needed to bring Bahrainis together.
Or not.
Watch this space!
END
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Guns Bring Shock and Awe to My Inbox
By William Fisher
For all my professional life, I have waged as much war as I could against what I considered the Second Amendment Freaks in our midst. I don’t mean those folks who are just hunters, but those miscreants who just love the thrill of carrying a concealed weapon into church (presumably to deal with pastors who counsel compassion toward physicians who perform abortions), or to a wedding (the shotgun variety), or to a Congress Person’s Town Meeting (in the unlikely event that someone speaks up in favor of gun control).
I have written hundreds of articles about guns and why we should intelligently limit and monitor gun sales. I have signed more petitions than I can recall. I have loaned my tired bones to endless marches. And so forth. You get the idea.
So you can imagine my shock and awe when I opened my email inbox a couple of weeks ago to find a fund-raising pitch from one Dudley Brown, who introduces himself as the Executive Director of an outfit called the National Association for Gun Rights.
It was obvious right away that the sponsors of this letter bought the wrong mailing list – they certainly wasted their money with me. But I’m glad I received the missive, because it taught me a few things.
For example, I was really surprised to read that gun-owners apparently don’t have anything near the rights they think they should enjoy. I was also shocked that the National Rifle Association was highly conspicuous by its absence from Mr. Brown’s letter. I thought the NRA had secured more gun rights than any sane person could ever need, but apparently Mr. Brown disagrees. For Mr. Brown, the NRA virtually doesn’t exist. And Wikipedia tells me that Brown often criticizes the NRA for being soft on gun control.
So who is this Dudley Brown? Well, according to Wikipedia, he’s a pro-gun lobbyist whose lobbying activities have focused on influencing the Colorado Legislature, both in opposing new gun legislation such as that proposed in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, and supporting specific legislation to relax concealed carry regulations.
"We're not afraid to be called radicals on the gun issue," says Brown. "Because that's what we are."
In the wake of Columbine, Colorado voters passed Amendment 22, a voter-initiated measure requiring background checks of gun purchases at gun shows, closing the so-called “gun show loophole” Brown opposed the initiative, stating, "We're under assault right now. We feel like the Jews did in Nazi Germany.” That’s downright insulting – how the hell would he know?
Anyway, that’s Dudley Brown. But the central theme of Mr. Brown’s fund-raising polemic was the urgent need to destroy Indiana Senator Richard Lugar in the Republican primary.
“If ever there was a time for gun owners to charge up a hill together to reclaim the high ground from our anti-gun enemies, it's right now. And the man standing atop that hill is anti-gun Republican U.S. Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana,” is the gracious language Mr. Brown used.
Then he went on to explain: “For the last 25 years, the gun control lobby has counted on Dick Lugar to do their behind-the-scenes Senate dirty work on Capitol Hill. He's even been called "Barack Obama's Favorite Republican."
Then came the pitch: “The National Association for Gun Rights PAC thinks this race is so important to the rights of gun owners that we have given everything that the law allows ($5,000) to Lugar's opponent, pro-gun champion, Richard Mourdock.”
And Mr. Brown then inveighed: “If you care as passionately as I do about seeing Dick Lugar go down in flames at the polls, please chip in $15 or $20 to the Mourdock campaign -- right now.”
Warming to his subject, Brown continued: “You may remember in 2011 when he went on national television to call for a reinstatement of the so-called "Assault Weapons Ban. Brown also commented on some of the other legislation Dick Lugar has voted for: “’The Brady Instant Gun Owner’ Registration Scheme, otherwise known as the ‘Brady Bill’; the so-called ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ and called for it to be reinstated in 2011; and restrictions on private sales of firearms.”
Senator Lugar, Brown wrote, has voted with [the anti-gun movement] more than any Republican Senator in Senate history, “and that's just the tip of the iceberg.”
Senator Dick Lugar MUST be defeated in the upcoming Indiana primary, Brown cautions. “This race has national implications, which should make any concerned gun owner in America get involved in this race.”
And finally, “I'm encouraging all gun owners to get involved and ‘charge up the hill’ to take back our voice in the Senate from anti-gun Republicans like Dick Lugar.
And I’m encouraging all gun owners to ignore Mr. Brown’s sermon.
For as long as I’ve been following politics, when Democrats try to define an “intelligent Republican” they’re likely to come up with Dick Lugar. Because Lugar has been a symbol of what they mean when they talk about reaching common-sense consensus. Yes, he’s a conservative from a conservative state, which means he sometimes has to vote with his party leadership. But not on guns. And not on foreign policy either.
Dick Lugar has been one of the consistent voices of reason on US foreign policy and world affairs generally at exactly those times when all his colleagues appear to be losing their minds in lockstep.
And if you think there are no more examples in Washington of bipartisan civility, take a look at Lugar (R) and John Kerry (D). These two guys are each a Vice-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the two-headed body a creature of the time when politics in foreign policy was supposed to vanish at the water’s edge. They actually talk with one another. They respect one another. In fact, they like one another.
One would hope that Mr. Brown and his band of zealots might also vanish at the water’s edge. And that his war on Sen. Lugar fails because this is a time when the Senate needs as many common sense Republicans as it can find.
For all my professional life, I have waged as much war as I could against what I considered the Second Amendment Freaks in our midst. I don’t mean those folks who are just hunters, but those miscreants who just love the thrill of carrying a concealed weapon into church (presumably to deal with pastors who counsel compassion toward physicians who perform abortions), or to a wedding (the shotgun variety), or to a Congress Person’s Town Meeting (in the unlikely event that someone speaks up in favor of gun control).
I have written hundreds of articles about guns and why we should intelligently limit and monitor gun sales. I have signed more petitions than I can recall. I have loaned my tired bones to endless marches. And so forth. You get the idea.
So you can imagine my shock and awe when I opened my email inbox a couple of weeks ago to find a fund-raising pitch from one Dudley Brown, who introduces himself as the Executive Director of an outfit called the National Association for Gun Rights.
It was obvious right away that the sponsors of this letter bought the wrong mailing list – they certainly wasted their money with me. But I’m glad I received the missive, because it taught me a few things.
For example, I was really surprised to read that gun-owners apparently don’t have anything near the rights they think they should enjoy. I was also shocked that the National Rifle Association was highly conspicuous by its absence from Mr. Brown’s letter. I thought the NRA had secured more gun rights than any sane person could ever need, but apparently Mr. Brown disagrees. For Mr. Brown, the NRA virtually doesn’t exist. And Wikipedia tells me that Brown often criticizes the NRA for being soft on gun control.
So who is this Dudley Brown? Well, according to Wikipedia, he’s a pro-gun lobbyist whose lobbying activities have focused on influencing the Colorado Legislature, both in opposing new gun legislation such as that proposed in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, and supporting specific legislation to relax concealed carry regulations.
"We're not afraid to be called radicals on the gun issue," says Brown. "Because that's what we are."
In the wake of Columbine, Colorado voters passed Amendment 22, a voter-initiated measure requiring background checks of gun purchases at gun shows, closing the so-called “gun show loophole” Brown opposed the initiative, stating, "We're under assault right now. We feel like the Jews did in Nazi Germany.” That’s downright insulting – how the hell would he know?
Anyway, that’s Dudley Brown. But the central theme of Mr. Brown’s fund-raising polemic was the urgent need to destroy Indiana Senator Richard Lugar in the Republican primary.
“If ever there was a time for gun owners to charge up a hill together to reclaim the high ground from our anti-gun enemies, it's right now. And the man standing atop that hill is anti-gun Republican U.S. Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana,” is the gracious language Mr. Brown used.
Then he went on to explain: “For the last 25 years, the gun control lobby has counted on Dick Lugar to do their behind-the-scenes Senate dirty work on Capitol Hill. He's even been called "Barack Obama's Favorite Republican."
Then came the pitch: “The National Association for Gun Rights PAC thinks this race is so important to the rights of gun owners that we have given everything that the law allows ($5,000) to Lugar's opponent, pro-gun champion, Richard Mourdock.”
And Mr. Brown then inveighed: “If you care as passionately as I do about seeing Dick Lugar go down in flames at the polls, please chip in $15 or $20 to the Mourdock campaign -- right now.”
Warming to his subject, Brown continued: “You may remember in 2011 when he went on national television to call for a reinstatement of the so-called "Assault Weapons Ban. Brown also commented on some of the other legislation Dick Lugar has voted for: “’The Brady Instant Gun Owner’ Registration Scheme, otherwise known as the ‘Brady Bill’; the so-called ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ and called for it to be reinstated in 2011; and restrictions on private sales of firearms.”
Senator Lugar, Brown wrote, has voted with [the anti-gun movement] more than any Republican Senator in Senate history, “and that's just the tip of the iceberg.”
Senator Dick Lugar MUST be defeated in the upcoming Indiana primary, Brown cautions. “This race has national implications, which should make any concerned gun owner in America get involved in this race.”
And finally, “I'm encouraging all gun owners to get involved and ‘charge up the hill’ to take back our voice in the Senate from anti-gun Republicans like Dick Lugar.
And I’m encouraging all gun owners to ignore Mr. Brown’s sermon.
For as long as I’ve been following politics, when Democrats try to define an “intelligent Republican” they’re likely to come up with Dick Lugar. Because Lugar has been a symbol of what they mean when they talk about reaching common-sense consensus. Yes, he’s a conservative from a conservative state, which means he sometimes has to vote with his party leadership. But not on guns. And not on foreign policy either.
Dick Lugar has been one of the consistent voices of reason on US foreign policy and world affairs generally at exactly those times when all his colleagues appear to be losing their minds in lockstep.
And if you think there are no more examples in Washington of bipartisan civility, take a look at Lugar (R) and John Kerry (D). These two guys are each a Vice-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the two-headed body a creature of the time when politics in foreign policy was supposed to vanish at the water’s edge. They actually talk with one another. They respect one another. In fact, they like one another.
One would hope that Mr. Brown and his band of zealots might also vanish at the water’s edge. And that his war on Sen. Lugar fails because this is a time when the Senate needs as many common sense Republicans as it can find.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
For Prisoners in Afghanistan, Torture is the Old Normal
By William Fisher
While the debate about "nation-building" in Afghanistan shows no signs of cooling down, there's at least one thing that liberals and conservatives can agree on: Criminal justice in Afghanistan will not be improved by giving the police free rein of the prisons.
In fact, Human Rights Watch (HRW) finds that "greater police involvement in jails is likely to lead to more torture, not less."
This is the view of the organization's HRW's Asia Director, Brad Adams. He is asking that President Hamid Karzai to revoke a decree that puts detainees in Afghan-run prisons at heightened risk of torture and ill treatment."
The decree, signed by Karzai at the end of last year, would transfer control of Afghan prisons from the Justice Ministry to the Interior Ministry, which operates the Afghan National Police.
Placing all prisoners under Interior Ministry control increases the likelihood that the Afghan police, long implicated in torture and other ill treatment, would have direct authority over criminal suspects during interrogation, HRW said.
Despite Karzai's insistence on the transfer of all prisoners to Afghan control, "Criminal justice in Afghanistan will not be improved by giving the police free rein of the prisons," said Adams.
The proposed transfer reverses an August 2003 decree by Karzai that transferred prisons - which hold both pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners - from the Interior Ministry to the Justice Ministry, an act then widely regarded as a crucial reform of the justice system.
But "Greater police involvement in jails is likely to lead to more torture, not less," Adams said.
"The snail's pace of human rights improvement over the past year heightens anxieties about Afghanistan's future," Adams said. "Basic rights are still not a reality for most Afghans. The country suffers from abuses without accountability, lack of rule of law, poor governance, laws and policies that harm women, attacks on civilians, and corruption."
"Under-resourced and poorly trained Afghan Police units frequently rely on abusive law enforcement methods. Giving police greater control over prisoners -in particular pretrial detainees - increases the risk of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as they try to obtain confessions and other information from suspects," he asserted.
Karzai first proposed the transfer of authority following the escape of more than 470 prisoners from a prison in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in April 2011. International donor agencies and Afghan human rights organizations opposed the transfer on the basis that the Justice Ministry, despite its own limitations, was ultimately the more appropriate ministry to be running Afghanistan's detention facilities.
"The serious problems in Afghanistan's prisons won't be solved by turning over prisoners to another ministry with a worse record of abuse," Adams said.
An October 2011 report by the United Nations documented widespread and systematic torture and mistreatment in Afghan prisons, not only in illegal facilities operated by the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), but also in ordinary prisons, including some under Interior Ministry control. The allegations were so serious and credible that NATO immediately suspended transfer of prisoners to 16 Afghan prisons. The UN report highlighted that nearly all torture observed in Afghan jails took place during interrogations for the purpose of seeking confessions.
The Afghan government denied that torture was systematic, but acknowledged "deficiencies," including keeping prisoners in indefinite detention and not allowing them to see lawyers. The government asserted that abuses were due to a lack of training and resources. The government also pledged to uphold all national and international standards regarding protection of prisoners.
Karzai's decree further imperils the rights of prisoners, calling into question the government's stated commitment to end torture and ill treatment, HRW said.
In a related issue, another US-based organization, Human Rights First (HRF) has called on the Obama Administration "to finally begin to provide due process for the thousands of suspected insurgents the U.S. military holds without charge or trial at Bagram Air Base."
According to the organization, despite the Obama Administration's plan to withdraw troops by 2014, the U.S. government has no plans to shutter the Bagram detention facility anytime soon. In fact, after having quadrupled the number of detainees held there since President Obama took office, defense department officials recently acknowledged that they are doubling the prison's capacity. It currently holds about 2,600 detainees.
As Human Rights First explained in a May 2011 report following an on-the-ground investigation in Afghanistan earlier this year, the U.S. military is failing to provide detainees at the detention facility at Bagram a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves against charges that they supported the Taliban or otherwise participated in attacks against U.S. forces.
According to the organization, despite the Obama Administration's plan to withdraw troops by 2014, the U.S. government has no plans to shutter the Bagram detention facility anytime soon. In fact, after having quadrupled the number of detainees held there since President Obama took office, defense department officials recently acknowledged that they are doubling the prison's capacity. It currently holds about 2,600 detainees.
Prisoners are not allowed to have legal representation, and have no right to see the evidence against them. Although they receive rudimentary hearings where they are allowed to make a statement, based on our direct observation of these hearings, we believe they do not meet even the minimum international standards of due process, and do not allow the U.S. military to determine whether the detainee has actually participated in the insurgency or poses a danger to U.S. forces and therefore needs to be imprisoned.
In its report, HRF set forth specific recommendations that the U.S. military can implement immediately to remedy the situation. These include providing military lawyers for the detainees at their hearings, and de-classifying more of the evidence used against the detainees, so that they can meaningfully respond to the allegations.
Eviatar concluded that the recent 10-year anniversary of US and NATO operations in Afghanistan should have been a good time for the United States to re-assess its detention strategy there.
In an HRF report written by Eviatar, she linked the growth of the Bagram facility to the growth of the detention problems confronting both Afghan and US jailers.
She said that since President Obama took office, the number of prisoners held by the U.S. in Afghanistan has almost tripled-from 600 in 2008 to 1700 in 2011. The U.S. Prison at Bagram now holds almost ten times as many detainees as are being held at Guantanamo Bay. Prisoners at the U.S.-run Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan now have the right to appear before a
board of military officers to plead for their release and challenge the claims that they are "enemy belligerents" fighting U.S. forces. But prisoners still do not have the right to see the evidence being used against them, or the right to a lawyer to represent them.
"Failure to provide due process to Afghan detainees is angering the local population and making Afghans less willing to cooperate with or trust U.S. forces. It is ultimately a counter-productive strategy that harms U.S. national security," Eviatar noted.
She concluded: "It is unconscionable that ten years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States still does not provide the minimum level of due process to its detainees there." Eviatar, who observed the hearings given to detainees in Afghanistan earlier last year, said, "The current system does not adequately distinguish between innocent men and those who pose a real danger to U.S. forces. Unfortunately, this is more likely to fuel the insurgency than to stop it."
While the debate about "nation-building" in Afghanistan shows no signs of cooling down, there's at least one thing that liberals and conservatives can agree on: Criminal justice in Afghanistan will not be improved by giving the police free rein of the prisons.
In fact, Human Rights Watch (HRW) finds that "greater police involvement in jails is likely to lead to more torture, not less."
This is the view of the organization's HRW's Asia Director, Brad Adams. He is asking that President Hamid Karzai to revoke a decree that puts detainees in Afghan-run prisons at heightened risk of torture and ill treatment."
The decree, signed by Karzai at the end of last year, would transfer control of Afghan prisons from the Justice Ministry to the Interior Ministry, which operates the Afghan National Police.
Placing all prisoners under Interior Ministry control increases the likelihood that the Afghan police, long implicated in torture and other ill treatment, would have direct authority over criminal suspects during interrogation, HRW said.
Despite Karzai's insistence on the transfer of all prisoners to Afghan control, "Criminal justice in Afghanistan will not be improved by giving the police free rein of the prisons," said Adams.
The proposed transfer reverses an August 2003 decree by Karzai that transferred prisons - which hold both pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners - from the Interior Ministry to the Justice Ministry, an act then widely regarded as a crucial reform of the justice system.
But "Greater police involvement in jails is likely to lead to more torture, not less," Adams said.
"The snail's pace of human rights improvement over the past year heightens anxieties about Afghanistan's future," Adams said. "Basic rights are still not a reality for most Afghans. The country suffers from abuses without accountability, lack of rule of law, poor governance, laws and policies that harm women, attacks on civilians, and corruption."
"Under-resourced and poorly trained Afghan Police units frequently rely on abusive law enforcement methods. Giving police greater control over prisoners -in particular pretrial detainees - increases the risk of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as they try to obtain confessions and other information from suspects," he asserted.
Karzai first proposed the transfer of authority following the escape of more than 470 prisoners from a prison in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in April 2011. International donor agencies and Afghan human rights organizations opposed the transfer on the basis that the Justice Ministry, despite its own limitations, was ultimately the more appropriate ministry to be running Afghanistan's detention facilities.
"The serious problems in Afghanistan's prisons won't be solved by turning over prisoners to another ministry with a worse record of abuse," Adams said.
An October 2011 report by the United Nations documented widespread and systematic torture and mistreatment in Afghan prisons, not only in illegal facilities operated by the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), but also in ordinary prisons, including some under Interior Ministry control. The allegations were so serious and credible that NATO immediately suspended transfer of prisoners to 16 Afghan prisons. The UN report highlighted that nearly all torture observed in Afghan jails took place during interrogations for the purpose of seeking confessions.
The Afghan government denied that torture was systematic, but acknowledged "deficiencies," including keeping prisoners in indefinite detention and not allowing them to see lawyers. The government asserted that abuses were due to a lack of training and resources. The government also pledged to uphold all national and international standards regarding protection of prisoners.
Karzai's decree further imperils the rights of prisoners, calling into question the government's stated commitment to end torture and ill treatment, HRW said.
In a related issue, another US-based organization, Human Rights First (HRF) has called on the Obama Administration "to finally begin to provide due process for the thousands of suspected insurgents the U.S. military holds without charge or trial at Bagram Air Base."
According to the organization, despite the Obama Administration's plan to withdraw troops by 2014, the U.S. government has no plans to shutter the Bagram detention facility anytime soon. In fact, after having quadrupled the number of detainees held there since President Obama took office, defense department officials recently acknowledged that they are doubling the prison's capacity. It currently holds about 2,600 detainees.
As Human Rights First explained in a May 2011 report following an on-the-ground investigation in Afghanistan earlier this year, the U.S. military is failing to provide detainees at the detention facility at Bagram a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves against charges that they supported the Taliban or otherwise participated in attacks against U.S. forces.
According to the organization, despite the Obama Administration's plan to withdraw troops by 2014, the U.S. government has no plans to shutter the Bagram detention facility anytime soon. In fact, after having quadrupled the number of detainees held there since President Obama took office, defense department officials recently acknowledged that they are doubling the prison's capacity. It currently holds about 2,600 detainees.
Prisoners are not allowed to have legal representation, and have no right to see the evidence against them. Although they receive rudimentary hearings where they are allowed to make a statement, based on our direct observation of these hearings, we believe they do not meet even the minimum international standards of due process, and do not allow the U.S. military to determine whether the detainee has actually participated in the insurgency or poses a danger to U.S. forces and therefore needs to be imprisoned.
In its report, HRF set forth specific recommendations that the U.S. military can implement immediately to remedy the situation. These include providing military lawyers for the detainees at their hearings, and de-classifying more of the evidence used against the detainees, so that they can meaningfully respond to the allegations.
Eviatar concluded that the recent 10-year anniversary of US and NATO operations in Afghanistan should have been a good time for the United States to re-assess its detention strategy there.
In an HRF report written by Eviatar, she linked the growth of the Bagram facility to the growth of the detention problems confronting both Afghan and US jailers.
She said that since President Obama took office, the number of prisoners held by the U.S. in Afghanistan has almost tripled-from 600 in 2008 to 1700 in 2011. The U.S. Prison at Bagram now holds almost ten times as many detainees as are being held at Guantanamo Bay. Prisoners at the U.S.-run Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan now have the right to appear before a
board of military officers to plead for their release and challenge the claims that they are "enemy belligerents" fighting U.S. forces. But prisoners still do not have the right to see the evidence being used against them, or the right to a lawyer to represent them.
"Failure to provide due process to Afghan detainees is angering the local population and making Afghans less willing to cooperate with or trust U.S. forces. It is ultimately a counter-productive strategy that harms U.S. national security," Eviatar noted.
She concluded: "It is unconscionable that ten years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States still does not provide the minimum level of due process to its detainees there." Eviatar, who observed the hearings given to detainees in Afghanistan earlier last year, said, "The current system does not adequately distinguish between innocent men and those who pose a real danger to U.S. forces. Unfortunately, this is more likely to fuel the insurgency than to stop it."
Monday, February 20, 2012
AFGHANISTAN: Telling it Like it Is.
By William Fisher
“Rosy official statements” from top US military brass are misleading the American people into believing our occupation of Afghanistan is yielding solid results toward building a sustainable democracy.
Instead, says Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis – who traveled more than 9,000 miles and “talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces,” I witnessed the “absence of success on virtually every level,” Col. Davis said.
Col. Davis said that in his travels, he “saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.”
He declares that he “saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.”
He ads that, “From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.” He characterized their performance as “from bad to abysmal.”
While classification limits what he can say publicly, “I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between
conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.”
For example, he writes, on his first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. he arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier, he said.
“Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain. “What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”
“As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed. ‘No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!’ “
“According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free,” he said.
“In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.
“As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack.
“We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles. The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.
“On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.
“To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.
In August, Davis went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but
sustainable progress.
Davis arrived in country in late 2010 for the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
He says he interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division
commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.
On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., Col. Davis visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar, and “talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander.”
“Here’s how the conversation went:”
Davis: “Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?”
Adviser: “No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them. “Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.”
“Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them.
“Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe. “And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere.”
“That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.”
“In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out,” He said, adding:
“Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war. As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.”
Davis notes that Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.
“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote.
“They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”
“Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success,” he said.
“Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to
show for $18 billion spent.”
Davis concluded: “If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.”
Unlike most whistleblowers, Davis did not report up his chain of command. Instead, he sent a report to Congress, another to the Defense Department’s Inspector General, and released a third for public consumption via the civilian press.
It remains unclear how the military will treat Davis’ unusual form of whistleblowing.
“Rosy official statements” from top US military brass are misleading the American people into believing our occupation of Afghanistan is yielding solid results toward building a sustainable democracy.
Instead, says Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis – who traveled more than 9,000 miles and “talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces,” I witnessed the “absence of success on virtually every level,” Col. Davis said.
Col. Davis said that in his travels, he “saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.”
He declares that he “saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.”
He ads that, “From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.” He characterized their performance as “from bad to abysmal.”
While classification limits what he can say publicly, “I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between
conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.”
For example, he writes, on his first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. he arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier, he said.
“Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain. “What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”
“As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed. ‘No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!’ “
“According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free,” he said.
“In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.
“As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack.
“We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles. The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.
“On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.
“To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.
In August, Davis went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but
sustainable progress.
Davis arrived in country in late 2010 for the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
He says he interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division
commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.
On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., Col. Davis visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar, and “talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander.”
“Here’s how the conversation went:”
Davis: “Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?”
Adviser: “No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them. “Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.”
“Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them.
“Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe. “And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere.”
“That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.”
“In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out,” He said, adding:
“Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war. As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.”
Davis notes that Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.
“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote.
“They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”
“Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success,” he said.
“Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to
show for $18 billion spent.”
Davis concluded: “If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.”
Unlike most whistleblowers, Davis did not report up his chain of command. Instead, he sent a report to Congress, another to the Defense Department’s Inspector General, and released a third for public consumption via the civilian press.
It remains unclear how the military will treat Davis’ unusual form of whistleblowing.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Judith Miller Defends “The Hunted Men Who Brought Growth and Reform” to Egypt
Judith Miller, you may recall, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-New York Times journalist who left the paper after it was discovered that she was Bush-era Vice President Dick Cheney’s “stenographer.” A Times investigation found serious errors in many of her stories about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War. She also spent three months in jail for refusing to reveal her sources in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
.
Well, Judy’s at it again!
She is trying to gin up support for two Egyptian men who have been convicted of corruption, and who are currently in exile.
The subjects of Miller’s current defense are Youssef Boutros Ghali, the former finance minister of Egypt, who Miller says was “once the highest-ranking Coptic Christian in the country since the revolution,” and Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who became Egypt's Minister of Foreign Trade and Industry in July 2004. Two years later, the ministry was expanded to include domestic trade within Egypt and was renamed the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). He has been described as the first businessman ever to hold a cabinet position in Egypt and as a reformer.
Writing in the conservative journal, Newsmax, Miller says, Only a year ago, Ghali was among Egypt's most prominent officials. “With a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he had given up a lucrative post at the International Monetary Fund to return to Cairo 18 years ago to help transform his nation's moribund state-owned economy.”
She added, “On several key issues, the reformers had finally won, making Egypt what the IMF called an ‘emerging success story,’ one of the region's ‘fastest-growing economies’."
“But since the January 2011 uprising at Tahrir Square, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in only 18 days, the military-led civilian transitional government has been waging a judicial jihad against Ghali and others who helped free Egypt's economy,” she wrote.
Characterizing the two exiles as economic heroes, Miller said, “Once credited by U.S. officials for policies producing annual growth of some 7 percent for several years — foreign and domestic investment in industries that private investors had once shunned, and robust job creation — they have now been blamed not only for a culture of corruption that is nearly as old as Egypt's pyramids, but also for Mubarak's political failings.”
“Although the free-market policies resulted in a more equitable distribution of income than that of India, Mexico, Brazil, and several other emerging economies, the reformers are now hunted men,” she said.
Convicted by a Cairo criminal court of "squandering public resources," based on often bogus evidence in sham trials that in Ghali's case lasted only six minutes, they are either in jail, in exile, or on the run.
“Travel bans and Interpol warrants have been issued for them, passports canceled, visas revoked, and their property and other assets in Egypt have been frozen…The scapegoating of the reformers and the reversal of their policies have increased the likelihood of an economic meltdown,” she wrote.
In an interview, Rachid said that to reignite growth, Egypt must restore security, install a government that can rule for three or four years, rather than three or four months, and finally, stop attacking the free-market system for short-term political gain. "Without this, investor confidence in Egypt will not be restored," he warned.
Miller continues: “The reformers are now widely dispersed, exchanging news and political gossip through emails and by cellphone.”
Some, like Ghali and Rachid, “the first businessman ever to hold a senior Cabinet post in Egypt, have sought refuge in other countries. Others, like Ahmed Maghrabi, the former minister of housing, and Yusuf Wali, the former agriculture minister who hails from one of Egypt's most prominent land-owning clans, are in jail.”
“Once-powerful men courted by the world's financial elite, they are now largely isolated, abandoned by the country they struggled to change. Most have been assailed by Egypt's vituperative, scandal-mongering press,” she wrote.
After the six-minute trial in June, Ghali was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 30 years in prison for allegedly using a Finance Ministry printer in 2010 to produce election materials for his campaign for parliament. American officials say he was also convicted of squandering public money by using 102 cars held in customs for his personal use.
Ghali's lawyer had said that some 100 cars had been impounded for customs duty violations, and that Ghali had given them not to family or friends, but to fellow ministers and his own deputies who were entitled to official cars, but whose cars were old and kept breaking down. The transaction had saved Egyptian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, Miller wrote.
She continued: “Diplomats say Ghali's efforts to reform Egypt's bureaucracy required creative maneuvering. In 2004, the Finance Ministry, with its 20,000 employees and $50 million budget, had almost no computers. The ministry's two word-processors were reserved for the minister's office, which meant that Egypt's budget, all 49,000 accounts of it, had to be calculated and consolidated by hand. No ministry knew the size of another's budget, and the military liked it that way.”
“The revolution, with its insistence on Islam as the source of Egyptian identity, coupled with the military's traditional hostility to Christians, does not bode well for secular, pro-Western activists like Ghali.”
“Until he was named finance minister, no Copt had ever risen to so high a civilian post in modern times. Even then, a few extremist Salafi sheiks issued fatwas denouncing his promotion: Islam prohibited putting Christians in charge of Muslim treasure, they opined.”
Miller wrote that many of the “most savage attacks on Ghali in the Egyptian press have directly or indirectly touched on his religion, implying that a Christian's loyalty to Egypt may be questioned.”
Miller concludes: “Many Egyptians, friends say, are gradually acknowledging that those they have banished may not be corrupt, and that even if some of them are, Egypt's poverty and income disparities cannot be mainly their fault.”
Seeking confirmation of Miller’s assertions, we asked for the opinion of one of the most widely respected of Egypt scholars, Egyptian-born Samer Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.
Here’s what he told us:
“I read the article when it came out and it is filled with inaccuracies and distortions. For example, Ms. Miller claims that, until Ghali, no Copt had ever risen to such a high position. In fact, his uncle Boutrus, was Foreign Minister under Sadat.”
Shehata concedes that “Ghali might not have been as corrupt as Ahmed Ezz (the billionaire steel tycoon who has emerged as perhaps the most hated symbol of the old system) but there is absolutely no doubt that he misused the 100 plus cars for personal use and advantage. We know this beyond doubt.”
Shehata continues: Ghali was part of a criminal regime justifying their actions, economic, political, etc. And although there were likely some bigoted reports about him in the press, the primary reason he is despised in Egypt has nothing to do with his religion (nor is it framed as such) but about his real estate tax plan, being part of the regime, and other more specific allegations.”
Shehata concludes: “Miller is hardly a serious journalist.”
Welcome back, Judy. Dick Cheney would be proud of you.
Well, Judy’s at it again!
She is trying to gin up support for two Egyptian men who have been convicted of corruption, and who are currently in exile.
The subjects of Miller’s current defense are Youssef Boutros Ghali, the former finance minister of Egypt, who Miller says was “once the highest-ranking Coptic Christian in the country since the revolution,” and Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who became Egypt's Minister of Foreign Trade and Industry in July 2004. Two years later, the ministry was expanded to include domestic trade within Egypt and was renamed the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). He has been described as the first businessman ever to hold a cabinet position in Egypt and as a reformer.
Writing in the conservative journal, Newsmax, Miller says, Only a year ago, Ghali was among Egypt's most prominent officials. “With a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he had given up a lucrative post at the International Monetary Fund to return to Cairo 18 years ago to help transform his nation's moribund state-owned economy.”
She added, “On several key issues, the reformers had finally won, making Egypt what the IMF called an ‘emerging success story,’ one of the region's ‘fastest-growing economies’."
“But since the January 2011 uprising at Tahrir Square, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in only 18 days, the military-led civilian transitional government has been waging a judicial jihad against Ghali and others who helped free Egypt's economy,” she wrote.
Characterizing the two exiles as economic heroes, Miller said, “Once credited by U.S. officials for policies producing annual growth of some 7 percent for several years — foreign and domestic investment in industries that private investors had once shunned, and robust job creation — they have now been blamed not only for a culture of corruption that is nearly as old as Egypt's pyramids, but also for Mubarak's political failings.”
“Although the free-market policies resulted in a more equitable distribution of income than that of India, Mexico, Brazil, and several other emerging economies, the reformers are now hunted men,” she said.
Convicted by a Cairo criminal court of "squandering public resources," based on often bogus evidence in sham trials that in Ghali's case lasted only six minutes, they are either in jail, in exile, or on the run.
“Travel bans and Interpol warrants have been issued for them, passports canceled, visas revoked, and their property and other assets in Egypt have been frozen…The scapegoating of the reformers and the reversal of their policies have increased the likelihood of an economic meltdown,” she wrote.
In an interview, Rachid said that to reignite growth, Egypt must restore security, install a government that can rule for three or four years, rather than three or four months, and finally, stop attacking the free-market system for short-term political gain. "Without this, investor confidence in Egypt will not be restored," he warned.
Miller continues: “The reformers are now widely dispersed, exchanging news and political gossip through emails and by cellphone.”
Some, like Ghali and Rachid, “the first businessman ever to hold a senior Cabinet post in Egypt, have sought refuge in other countries. Others, like Ahmed Maghrabi, the former minister of housing, and Yusuf Wali, the former agriculture minister who hails from one of Egypt's most prominent land-owning clans, are in jail.”
“Once-powerful men courted by the world's financial elite, they are now largely isolated, abandoned by the country they struggled to change. Most have been assailed by Egypt's vituperative, scandal-mongering press,” she wrote.
After the six-minute trial in June, Ghali was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 30 years in prison for allegedly using a Finance Ministry printer in 2010 to produce election materials for his campaign for parliament. American officials say he was also convicted of squandering public money by using 102 cars held in customs for his personal use.
Ghali's lawyer had said that some 100 cars had been impounded for customs duty violations, and that Ghali had given them not to family or friends, but to fellow ministers and his own deputies who were entitled to official cars, but whose cars were old and kept breaking down. The transaction had saved Egyptian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, Miller wrote.
She continued: “Diplomats say Ghali's efforts to reform Egypt's bureaucracy required creative maneuvering. In 2004, the Finance Ministry, with its 20,000 employees and $50 million budget, had almost no computers. The ministry's two word-processors were reserved for the minister's office, which meant that Egypt's budget, all 49,000 accounts of it, had to be calculated and consolidated by hand. No ministry knew the size of another's budget, and the military liked it that way.”
“The revolution, with its insistence on Islam as the source of Egyptian identity, coupled with the military's traditional hostility to Christians, does not bode well for secular, pro-Western activists like Ghali.”
“Until he was named finance minister, no Copt had ever risen to so high a civilian post in modern times. Even then, a few extremist Salafi sheiks issued fatwas denouncing his promotion: Islam prohibited putting Christians in charge of Muslim treasure, they opined.”
Miller wrote that many of the “most savage attacks on Ghali in the Egyptian press have directly or indirectly touched on his religion, implying that a Christian's loyalty to Egypt may be questioned.”
Miller concludes: “Many Egyptians, friends say, are gradually acknowledging that those they have banished may not be corrupt, and that even if some of them are, Egypt's poverty and income disparities cannot be mainly their fault.”
Seeking confirmation of Miller’s assertions, we asked for the opinion of one of the most widely respected of Egypt scholars, Egyptian-born Samer Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.
Here’s what he told us:
“I read the article when it came out and it is filled with inaccuracies and distortions. For example, Ms. Miller claims that, until Ghali, no Copt had ever risen to such a high position. In fact, his uncle Boutrus, was Foreign Minister under Sadat.”
Shehata concedes that “Ghali might not have been as corrupt as Ahmed Ezz (the billionaire steel tycoon who has emerged as perhaps the most hated symbol of the old system) but there is absolutely no doubt that he misused the 100 plus cars for personal use and advantage. We know this beyond doubt.”
Shehata continues: Ghali was part of a criminal regime justifying their actions, economic, political, etc. And although there were likely some bigoted reports about him in the press, the primary reason he is despised in Egypt has nothing to do with his religion (nor is it framed as such) but about his real estate tax plan, being part of the regime, and other more specific allegations.”
Shehata concludes: “Miller is hardly a serious journalist.”
Welcome back, Judy. Dick Cheney would be proud of you.
Iraq on Verge of Violent Chaos
By William Fisher
As Iraq proceeds with its grisly hangathon -- since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners – and 2007-type violence is threatening to bring the country to its knees, Iraq scholars are pointing to even deeper signs that the country is on the precipice of collapse.
Days after the last US troops departed, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved to indict Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terrorism charges and sought to remove Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq from his position.
According to Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Maliki’s move triggered “a major political crisis that fully revealed Iraq as an unstable, undemocratic country governed by raw competition for power and barely affected by institutional arrangements. Large-scale violence immediately flared up again, with a series of terrorist attacks against mostly Shi’i targets reminiscent of the worst days of 2006.”
“But there is more to the crisis than an escalation of violence. The tenuous political agreement among parties and factions reached at the end of 2010 has collapsed. The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart,” she said, adding:
“The U.S. occupation tried to superimpose on Iraq a set of political rules that did not reflect either the dominant culture or the power relations among political forces. And while cultures and power relations are not immutable, they do not change on demand to accommodate the goals of outsiders.”
Ottoway believes that Iraq “is facing a real threat of political disintegration.” She reminds us that in 2007, “the United States held the country together forcibly, but the infusion of new troops could not secure a lasting agreement among Iraqis.”
However, she said,” This time, the outcome depends on whether the political factions that dominate Iraq and tear it apart find it in their interest to forge a real compromise or conclude that they would benefit more from going in separate directions.”
Ottoway concludes: The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart.
Meantime, Iraq is evidently shooting to overtake China and Iran as the world-wide leader in executions. Human Rights groups, the United Nations, and others, are aiming dire warnings toward Iraq.
For example, Human Rights Watch is calling on Iraqi authorities to halt executions and abolish the death penalty. HRW’s Joe Stork said Iraq must overhaul its justice system. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called the numerous executions “terrifying.”
Pillay said she was shocked at reports that 34 individuals, including two women, were executed in Iraq on 19 January following their conviction for various crimes.
“Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day,” Pillay said.
She added: “Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure.”
Iraqi authorities should halt all executions and abolish the death penalty, HRW said. Since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners, 51 of them in January, and 14 more on February 8, for various offenses.“The Iraqi government seems to have given state executioners the green light to execute at will,”said Joe Stork, deputy HRW’s Deputy Middle East director. “The government needs to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions and begin an overhaul of its flawed criminal justice system.”HRW is particularly concerned that Iraqi courts admit as evidence confessions obtained under coercion. It says the government should disclose the identities, locations, and status of all prisoners on death row, the crimes for which they have been convicted, court records for their being charged, tried, and sentenced, and details of any impending executions.
A Justice Ministry official confirmed to Human Rights Watch on February 8 that authorities had executed 14 prisoners earlier in the day. “You should expect more executions in the coming days and weeks,” the official added.According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people are believed to have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004. The number of prisoners executed during that period has not been revealed publicly. Iraqi law authorizes the death penalty for close to 50 crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and murder, but also including such offenses as damage to public property.Criminal trials in Iraq often violate minimum guarantees, Human Rights Watch said. Many defendants are unable to pursue a meaningful defense or to challenge evidence against them, and lengthy pretrial detention without judicial review is common.
The total number of individuals sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004 is believed to stand at more than 1,200. “Most disturbingly,” said Pillay, “we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress.”
“I call on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty,” the High Commissioner said, noting that around 150 countries have now either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, or introduced a moratorium.
As Iraq proceeds with its grisly hangathon -- since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners – and 2007-type violence is threatening to bring the country to its knees, Iraq scholars are pointing to even deeper signs that the country is on the precipice of collapse.
Days after the last US troops departed, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved to indict Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terrorism charges and sought to remove Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq from his position.
According to Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Maliki’s move triggered “a major political crisis that fully revealed Iraq as an unstable, undemocratic country governed by raw competition for power and barely affected by institutional arrangements. Large-scale violence immediately flared up again, with a series of terrorist attacks against mostly Shi’i targets reminiscent of the worst days of 2006.”
“But there is more to the crisis than an escalation of violence. The tenuous political agreement among parties and factions reached at the end of 2010 has collapsed. The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart,” she said, adding:
“The U.S. occupation tried to superimpose on Iraq a set of political rules that did not reflect either the dominant culture or the power relations among political forces. And while cultures and power relations are not immutable, they do not change on demand to accommodate the goals of outsiders.”
Ottoway believes that Iraq “is facing a real threat of political disintegration.” She reminds us that in 2007, “the United States held the country together forcibly, but the infusion of new troops could not secure a lasting agreement among Iraqis.”
However, she said,” This time, the outcome depends on whether the political factions that dominate Iraq and tear it apart find it in their interest to forge a real compromise or conclude that they would benefit more from going in separate directions.”
Ottoway concludes: The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart.
Meantime, Iraq is evidently shooting to overtake China and Iran as the world-wide leader in executions. Human Rights groups, the United Nations, and others, are aiming dire warnings toward Iraq.
For example, Human Rights Watch is calling on Iraqi authorities to halt executions and abolish the death penalty. HRW’s Joe Stork said Iraq must overhaul its justice system. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called the numerous executions “terrifying.”
Pillay said she was shocked at reports that 34 individuals, including two women, were executed in Iraq on 19 January following their conviction for various crimes.
“Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day,” Pillay said.
She added: “Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure.”
Iraqi authorities should halt all executions and abolish the death penalty, HRW said. Since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners, 51 of them in January, and 14 more on February 8, for various offenses.“The Iraqi government seems to have given state executioners the green light to execute at will,”said Joe Stork, deputy HRW’s Deputy Middle East director. “The government needs to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions and begin an overhaul of its flawed criminal justice system.”HRW is particularly concerned that Iraqi courts admit as evidence confessions obtained under coercion. It says the government should disclose the identities, locations, and status of all prisoners on death row, the crimes for which they have been convicted, court records for their being charged, tried, and sentenced, and details of any impending executions.
A Justice Ministry official confirmed to Human Rights Watch on February 8 that authorities had executed 14 prisoners earlier in the day. “You should expect more executions in the coming days and weeks,” the official added.According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people are believed to have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004. The number of prisoners executed during that period has not been revealed publicly. Iraqi law authorizes the death penalty for close to 50 crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and murder, but also including such offenses as damage to public property.Criminal trials in Iraq often violate minimum guarantees, Human Rights Watch said. Many defendants are unable to pursue a meaningful defense or to challenge evidence against them, and lengthy pretrial detention without judicial review is common.
The total number of individuals sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004 is believed to stand at more than 1,200. “Most disturbingly,” said Pillay, “we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress.”
“I call on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty,” the High Commissioner said, noting that around 150 countries have now either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, or introduced a moratorium.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
