US Remains Silent As Saudi Government Prosecutes Prominent Human Rights Activists
21 March, 2013 – Janessa Schilmoeller

NAMIBIA – (MintPress) – The harsh sentencing of two prominent human rights activists in Saudi Arabia earlier this month landed between visits from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, both of whom unsurprisingly failed to advocate for the release of the activists or criticize the kingdom for its lack of tolerance for political dissent.

Dr. Abdullah bin Hamid bin Ali al Hamid, 66, and Mohammad bin Fahad bin Muflih al-Qahtani, 47, co-founders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), were sentenced to five and 10 years in prison, respectively, on charges including: founding an unlicensed human rights organization, seeking to disrupt security and inciting disorder, undermining national unity, breaking allegiance to the ruler, disobeying the ruler and questioning the integrity of officials.

No one was surprised that the activists were found guilty in a monarchy that is known for its brutal intolerance toward political dissent; however, human rights activists and international watchdog organizations were nonetheless outraged at the government’s actions and surprised by the length of the sentences.

“This is simply an outrageous case, which shows the extreme Saudi authorities are prepared to go to silence moderate advocates of reform and greater respect for human rights,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch.

Al-Hamid and Al-Qahtani received their verdict on March 9 after more than eight months of trial that began last June. The reading of the verdict by presiding judge Hammad al-Omar took more than an hour to complete. Al-Hamid interrupted the reading to accuse the judge of turning the verdict into a “political statement.”

Each activist will face a five- to 10-year travel ban after being released from prison. The judge also ordered ACPRA, the organization that supports families of detainees held without charge or trial, to be dissolved through the confiscation of its property and the removal of its websites and social media accounts.

“The sentencing of Dr Abdullah al-Hamid and Muhammad al-Qahtani puts into stark relief the Saudi Arabian authorities’ inability to deal with any opinion that contradicts their own,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International.

“We consider that the two human rights activists have been imprisoned solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association and are therefore prisoners of conscience who should be released immediately and unconditionally,” Luther added. …more

The forces used live-ammunition and birdshot pellets aiming directly at bodies and resulting in three serious injuries which need urgent medical treatment.

Bahrain: regime causes serious injuries among pro-democracy protesters
16 March, 2013 – ABNA

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – Over ten citizens have sustained different injuries after the regime forces in Bahrain opened fire on pro-democracy protesters. The forces used live-ammunition and birdshot pellets aiming directly at bodies and resulting in three serious injuries which need urgent medical treatment.

The forces have also used gas grenades as live-ammunition aiming at the upper parts of the protesters’ bodies in attempt to kill, leaving many injured, with two injuries to the face and head that also need urgent medical treatment.

The regime forces’ use of toxic gas grenade as live-ammunition has previously killed tens of citizens. Last February, Bahrain lost two young men (Mahmmod Al-Jaziri and Hussain Al-Jaziri) both fired at directly at close range by the regime forces.

The ongoing killings perpetrated by the regime forces reflect a clear systematic policy carried out under high official orders to use violence against peaceful pro-democracy protesters.

…more PHOTOS

Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab has been in jail since last summer for using Twitter to call for peaceful gatherings against human rights violations. He is currently serving a two-year sentence.

This week marks the Global Week of Action 21-28 March 2013, which aims to draw attention to Rajab’s ongoing “unjust imprisonment, as well as the plight of all prisoners of conscience in Bahrain.”

…more

Concerns grow over Bahraini activists health
19 March, 2013 – PressTV

Concerns have been growing in Bahrain over the deteriorating health of prominent human right activists who remain on hunger strike in detention.

Zainab al-Khawaja began her hunger strike after Bahraini authorities banned her from meeting with her family members, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights said.

On March 1, a Bahraini court sentenced Zainab al-Khawaja to three months in prison for “insulting and humiliating a public employee.”

She had been acquitted of all charges at an earlier ruling. But the court of appeals overturned her acquittal.

She was arrested by the Saudi-backed forces in a demonstration held in capital Manama on February 27.

Her father Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is also on hunger strike in protest to the decision which denies him his visitation rights.

The rights activist, the co-founder and former president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, has been in prison since 2011. He is among eight Bahraini opposition figures sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the ongoing revolution.

The Bahraini uprising began in mid-February 2011, when the people, inspired by the popular revolutions that toppled the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, started holding massive demonstrations.

The Manama regime launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests and called in Saudi-led Arab forces from neighboring states.

Dozens of people have been killed in the crackdown, and the security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors and nurses accused of treating injured revolutionaries.

Bahrainis say they will continue holding demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically elected government is met. …source

Guantanamo inmates join growing hunger strike
20 March, 2013 – Al Akhbar

More prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have joined a growing hunger strike that their lawyers say reflects hopelessness about their prospects of ever being freed from the US detention center in Cuba.

Twenty-four captives were on a hunger strike as of Tuesday evening and eight of those had lost enough weight that doctors were force-feeding them liquid nutrients through tubes inserted into their noses and down into their stomachs, said Navy Captain Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention operation.

The detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in eastern Cuba holds 166 men captured in counter-terrorism operations. Nearly all have been held for 11 years without charge.

The number of hunger strikers has grown from 14 on Friday, Durand said. The military counts prisoners as hunger strikers if they have skipped at least nine consecutive meals.

Two hunger strikers were hospitalized with dehydration, he said.

The Obama administration has cleared more than half the Guantanamo prisoners for release or transfer, but Congress has blocked efforts to close the detention camp and made it increasingly difficult to resettle Guantanamo prisoners.

Many are Yemenis whom the United States will not repatriate at this time because of instability in that country.

More than 50 lawyers representing Guantanamo prisoners sent a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week urging him to help end the current hunger strike. They said the participants’ health had deteriorated alarmingly, and that some had lost between 9 and 14 kilograms.

The lawyers said hopes were dwindling that the Obama administration would keep its promise to close the camp. They said more than 100 detainees began a widescale hunger strike on February 6 to protest the confiscation of letters, photographs and legal mail, and the rough handling of Qurans during searches of their cells.

Durand called the allegations “outright falsehoods and gross exaggerations.”

The detention facility at Guantanamo was opened in 2002 to house prisoners rounded up in “War on Terror” waged by President George W. Bush’s administration following the 9/11 attacks. Periodic hunger strikes have occurred since shortly after the prison opened. …more

Saudi spooks’ al-Qaeda operatives launch terror mission in Iraq
19 March, 2013 – Islamic Invitation Turkey

An al-Qaeda group linked to Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services has dispatched 600 of its members to the southern Iraqi city of Basra to carry out terrorist attacks, Press TV reports.

The terrorists have been given orders to blow up oil pipelines, launch attacks on oil refineries, and incite ethnic violence in the city, according to the report.

The report also said that some of the terrorists had fake identification cards allegedly issued by Al-Salam University of Medina, Saudi Arabia.

The men reportedly received their training in the Syria-Iraq border region and are planning to attack religious sites in the Iraqi cities of Samarra, Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf.

The Iraqi government says Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey are spearheading a campaign to incite violence and ethnic strife in the country.

In January 2013, Iraqi security forces arrested 250 Saudi-backed Wahhabi terrorists who had entered the country.

The terrorists, who had been active in the Middle Euphrates region, were reportedly ordered to carry out armed operations in several cities across Iraq.

According to an Iraqi military commander, Saudi spy chief Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud had allocated $250 million for terrorist operations in the country.

He also said that Bandar bin Sultan had hired fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi to conduct terrorist attacks.

Violence has increased in Iraq since December 2011, when an arrest warrant was issued for al-Hashemi, who has been charged with running a death squad targeting Iraqi officials and Shia Muslims.

In response, the Iraqi government stepped up efforts to increase security across the country. …source

Fresh Allegations of Torture in Bahrain
21 March, 2013 – by Jim White – Empty Wheel

On a day when President Obama is at least making the admirable move of visiting the West Bank and speaking favorably for Palestinian statehood after his visit to Israel (to lend legitimacy to Netanyahu’s continued desire to attack Iran?), it is easy to overlook a report in the Wall Street Journal in which we see fresh allegations of torture continuing in Bahrain.

Recall that in the aftermath of Bahrain’s brutal crackdown on its citizens trying to join in the Arab Spring movement in early 2011, one of Bahrain’s “reforms” was to hire notorious police thug John Timoney to run its police force and to “implement” the findings of an independent commission that had been brought in to investigate torture and other abuses by the government. Just a few months after taking charge, Timoney took the repressive step of banning all protests while jailing a number of prominent protest figures. A couple of days later, there were mysterious bomb blasts that might well have been the work of Timoney’s known practice of infiltration since they were not directed at government targets as one might expect if they were the work of a developing resistance movement. US actions in response to abuses on the part of Bahrain’s government has been especially lame since the US is so attached to its base for the Fifth Flleet in Bahrain and “security’ for the flow of oil from the region.

The new allegations of torture include torture of suspects arrested for those November 2012 bombings:

Five detainees arrested in Bahrain last year said they were tortured in custody, according to family members, lawyers and an ex-prisoner, accusations that a member of an official inquiry panel said should be formally investigated.

Bahrain security forces used methods including beatings, electrocution and suspension on ropes to force confessions from the detainees, who were accused of involvement in bombings in the capital, Manama, the people alleged to The Wall Street Journal. The Bahrain government said the torture allegations were false.

The claims suggest the Bahrain government has failed to implement some of the changes recommended by the 2011 Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, according to Sir Nigel Rodley, a human-rights lawyer who took part in the commission.

One detainee, Talib Ali Mohammed, 37 years old, was arrested in November on suspicion of involvement in coordinated bombings in Manama that month that killed two expatriate workers.

Over 16 days of interrogation in the Central Intelligence Department building in the Adliya district of Manama, Mr. Talib was beaten repeatedly and tortured, according to his wife, Fatima Ebrahim, and his lawyer, Sayed Hashin Saleh, who have seen Mr. Talib in prison and spoken with him by phone. Mr. Talib eventually confessed to charges including possessing explosive material and forming a group with the intention of harming others.

/snip/

Ahmed Abdullah, a 24-year-old gymnasium worker, was arrested in November and accused by authorities of involvement in the bombings. According to his brother Ibrahim, who has visited him in prison and spoken to him by phone, Mr. Abdullah was blindfolded for nearly 20 days in the CID building in Adliya, where he was beaten repeatedly, and forced to stand for long periods until he signed a confession.

There is now new leadership at the Department of State. Will we see a stronger condemnation of torture by the Bahrain government and support for Rodley’s call for a new commission of inquiry over the new torture accusations, or will we get the same weak platitudes we saw from Foggy Bottom last year?

Bahrain continues to profess its innocence. In one of the most craven, idiotic defenses by a government ever, the Journal carried this denial:

Minister of State for Information Affairs Samira Ibrahim Bin Rajab dismissed the allegations. “This is not our culture, not our attitude or our behavior,” she said. “We are very civilized, educated people.”

Civilized, educated people never torture. They rely on enhance interrogation techniques that are perfectly legal. Just ask John Yoo. He’ll confirm that in an instant and have a follow-up memo for you tomorrow that retroactively authorizes any actions you need approved. …more

West delaying UN probe into Syria chemical attack: Russia
Shia Post – 21 March, 2013

Russia has accused Western powers of attempting to delay a United Nations probe into the recent use of chemical weapons by foreign-backed militants in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

During a Wednesday session at the UN Security Council, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin voiced Moscow’s support for the Syrian government’s call for an independent inquiry into the chemical attack by foreign-backed militants in Aleppo.

However, France and Britain reportedly cited new claims by the Syrian opposition that there had been two chemical weapons attacks, one in Aleppo and another in the capital Damascus, demanding that both be investigated.

The Russian envoy strongly disagreed with the idea of focusing the urgently needed UN probe on the recent claims, which he described as “propaganda balloons.”

“As far as I know, there is only one allegation of the use of chemical weapons…. There have been no other allegations,” said Churkin, who holds the rotating presidency of the Council for March.

“To me, a concern which I expressed in the Council, was that this was really a way to delay the need for immediate, urgent investigation of allegations pertaining to March 19 [chemical attack] by raising all sorts of issues,” he added.

The Russian diplomat further questioned the credibility of the allegation about the second chemical attack in Syria, saying, “Instead of launching those propaganda balloons I think it’s much better to get our focus right.”

Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja’afari also said he was not aware of an alleged second chemical attack in the country.

“This (second) allegation was set up on purpose to torpedo the investigation on the real use of chemical weapons which took place in Aleppo,” Ja’afari said.

On March 19, at least 25 people were killed and many others injured when militants fired missiles “containing a chemical substance” into Khan al-Assal village near Syria’s northwestern city of Aleppo, according to a report by the official Syrian news agency SANA. …more

Travesty of Saudi dirty tricks against Iran
21 March, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham

Recall the “sensational plot” that the Saudis and the Americans made media song and dance of when they accused Iran of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington at the end of 2011.

Whatever happened to the follow-up substance to that risible ruse? Or the two hapless Iranians who allegedly were planning an all-out bombing blitz on Israeli properties in Kenya in May 2012?

Saudi claims of “busting a spy ring” involving Iranian and Lebanese nationals this week smell of yet more dirty tricks by the creaky House of Saud.

But the repeated formula for attempting to smear Iran used by the Saudis and their Western and Israeli partners is in danger of becoming a parody.

Saudi authorities detained 18 individuals across the kingdom this week, who, it is claimed, were working for a “foreign state” in a plot to target vital installations.

“Sixteen Saudis, an Iranian and a Lebanese were arrested in coordinated and simultaneous operations in four regions of the kingdom,” including the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca, the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement.

Wow. Do you feel the bombast in those words “coordinated and simultaneous operations”?

The suspects “gathered information on vital installations which they provided to the country” they had been working for, added the Saudi intelligence experts.

Iran was not mentioned specifically, but the inclusion of an as-yet unnamed Iranian national is something of a finger of accusation that tries to be subtle, but is in fact a clumsy attempt to fabricate. The Lebanon connection can also be seen as a Saudi bid to implicate Hezbollah. That combination is a gauche effort to appear neat, from the Saudi point of view, to resonate with the hoary Western stereotype of Iran and its alleged sponsorship of international terrorism.

The purported busting of an alleged Iranian-led spy ring in Saudi Arabia makes for good headlines in the supine Western media. But between the headlines is the unmistakable stench of another dirty tricks operation, aimed at smearing Iran and covering up the reality of Saudi repression and state-sponsored terrorism across the Middle East.

Scarcely mentioned in the Western media coverage is that the arrests also involved Saudi nationals from among its Shia population in the country’s Eastern Province. This hard-pressed minority within Saudi Arabia has been holding peaceful protests for political freedoms for the best part of two years, closely aligned with their confessional brothers and sisters in nearby Bahrain. In both Bahrain and Saudi’s oil-rich Eastern Province, the House of Saud has sent its shock troops in to try to crush the movement for democracy with brutal, unremitting repression.

Since Saudi forces entered Bahrain in March 2011, up to 100 unarmed civilians have been killed and thousands more mutilated or imprisoned for daring to demand the right to democratic government. Likewise in Saudi Arabia, hundreds have been arrested and thrown into unknown dungeons by the same system of monarchial tyranny that the Western governments have backed to the hilt.

What better way to distract from this reality of crushing democracy than to cook up a tall story about a foreign spy ring – and an Iranian spy ring at that.

That relocates the problem from one of long-overdue political rights among the population of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to one of foreign subversion. Irony upon irony, it also diverts from the fact that Saudi Arabia has over the same period been backing terrorists in Syria causing murder and mayhem for the criminal Western objective of regime change.

The latest claims by the Saudi authorities bear the usual hallmarks of a psyops smear. Details are all-too vacant and the allegations rely on innuendo and sensationalism. Observers familiar with Bahrain will recognize the tired old pattern of “foreign subversion”. Arrests, accusations, momentary headlines, bombastic claims of probes to “reveal the foreign plotters”… followed, always, by scant substance of anything. Political theatrics that have become ridiculous parody. …more

FBI’s penchant for “manufacturing terrorists” probed in new book
Charlotte Silver – The Electronic Intifada – 20 March, 2013

Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations since one week before the 11 September 2001 attacks, recently wrote a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee bemoaning the “across-the-board cuts” imposed on the agency while outlining the areas of law enforcement that will suffer as a result. Among the areas in which the FBI and Department of Justice would be forced to downsize their activities would be the financial sector. “Left unchecked, fraud and malfeasance in the financial, securities and related industries could hurt the integrity of US markets,” Mueller warned.

In light of the reality of US economic woes, Mueller’s admonition is disingenuous, if not downright pernicious. In fact, the FBI’s 12-year absence from monitoring financial fraud saw the nation’s biggest economic meltdown — itself a direct result of the financial sector running roughshod over what few regulations remained. And now, more than four years after that manmade collapse, the Department of Justice has yet to investigate, let alone prosecute, the criminals responsible for the devastation.

What the FBI was doing before, during and after the financial crisis is the subject under examination in Trevor Aaronson’s new book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.

The book unveils the FBI’s domestic counterterrorism program that began after the 11 September attacks and has continued well into Barack Obama’s second term in office. The program, vividly portrayed by Aaronson, is defined by a wanton use of informants and sting operations in order to produce a high rate of convictions — thus ensuring that Congress continues to write out checks to the FBI’s counterterrorism program to the tune of $3 billion annually.

Since the 11 September attacks, the FBI has employed more than 15,000 confidential informants nationwide. And, according to Aaronson, for each official informant there are as many as three unofficial informants — known within the FBI as “hip pockets.” By 2011, the Justice Department had prosecuted more than 500 individuals on terrorist charges, a handful of whom Aaronson categorizes as “actual terrorists.” The rest were hatched within the context of FBI sting operations, informants and agents provocateur.

Until 2009, the specifics of the Department of Justice’s terrorist cases were classified. But when Attorney General Eric Holder decided to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a Manhattan courtroom, he was called upon to prove how capable US courts were of convicting terrorists. In order to do so Holder made public the document containing the track record of the DOJ’s prosecution of terrorists. With that information divulged, Aaronson — already watching “terrorist” convictions with a fair amount of skepticism — grabbed the opportunity to investigate who these alleged terrorists really were.
Sordid practice

What Aaronson discovered was that, far from preventing terrorism, the FBI uses its funds to “manufacture” terrorists out of marginalized, desperate, mentally ill or immature men (many of the convicted individuals profiled are in their early twenties). In Aaronson’s words, “The FBI has been effective at creating the very enemy it is hunting.”

Taking his readers through several FBI sting operations, Aaronson reveals a sordid practice in which the FBI often employs criminals to infiltrate Muslim communities to turn otherwise powerless malcontents into “terrorists.” According to Aaronson’s accounts, these so-called terrorists would have no more than the capability to mouth off in a chat room if it weren’t for the inert weapons and cash that informants would literally place in their hapless hands, thus creating “bogeymen from buffoons.”

The Terror Factory adroitly covers the context in which the informant program emerged, including interviews with several current and former members of the FBI. Aaronson portrays a feeble pre-11 September FBI, comprised of Luddite lawyers and technocrats whose negligence appears in no small part responsible for the 2001 attacks, transformed by an influx of cash and a new set of instructions.
Coercion

In addition to providing intimate and harrowing portraits of individuals framed as terrorists by the FBI, Aaronson also elucidates precisely how the agency similarly creates informants. Whether by leveraging an individual’s criminal history, exploiting a precarious immigration status or manipulating the expansive no-fly list, the FBI frightens and coerces vulnerable people into acting as spies for the agency.

Aaronson confines his critique of the “war on terror” to the FBI’s use of informants and sting operations. The narrow parameters of his book allow Aaronson to effectively drive home the important point that the proliferation of informants among Muslim-Americans has not only fragmented communities and devastated lives, but is entirely ineffectual at preventing terrorism.

However, this limited scope proves perilous when Aaronson attempts to navigate around the distinction he makes between a “real terrorist” and a manufactured one, hampering his ability to fully critique the FBI’s counterterrorism program and the war on terror. This problematic tension is felt at various points throughout the book, but is starkly revealed when Aaronson describes the list Holder declassified in 2009: “While the list did include one dangerous terrorist, Najibullah Zazi, as well as people who were raising money for or sending money to terrorist groups such as Hamas, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, others who made the list were terrorists only because the Justice Department had labeled them as such.” …more