"Rule of Law" in Iraq as Judges, are bombed, lawyers killed and many simply flee the country.

Having heard Lord Darzi explain on Desert Island Discs about his Armenian Christian / Jewish education in prosperous middle class secular Iraq, it may appear churlish to suggest he return to the land of his birth to set about improving his country's medical services rather than further muddy the waters of NHS reform here.

Of course one of the (many, many) tragedies facing American owned post secular Saddamite Iraq is that the educated middle classes have fled in huge numbers, leaving behind the brave, patriotic, corrupt or incompetent.

Recent reports show how the judiciary and lawyers have been affected by violent attacks on themselves,their families and their homes.

The Iraqi Lawyers Association reported in April last year that at least 210 lawyers and judges have been killed since the US-led invasion, with dozens more injured. Judge Abdul Sattar Bayrkdar, speaking for the Judicial Council said in August 2007 that 31 Iraqi judges have been assassinated since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

“Cases of adultery, honour killings, claims on property, children’s custody and divorces have led to the deaths of many Iraqi lawyers as differences of sects and their [different] religious laws make up a big part of the prosecution or defence,” Safa’a Farouk, a lawyer and spokesman for the ILA, said.

“There are hundreds of lawyers who are being threatened and who have been asked to abandon their cases. The hundreds who have left the country have left a huge gap in the judicial system in Iraq,”

“It is a very serious situation. If you win the case, you will be targeted by the other side but if you lose, your client will be the one who will kill you. Nowadays, clients usually look for lawyers from their own ethnic group or sect to help win their cases.”

The Judiciary have been targeted as well and a massive and apparently co-ordinated attack was made on five Iraqi appeals court judges yesterday.

The five judges - Ali al-Alaq, Suleiman Abdullah, Ghanim Janab, Alaa al-Timimi, and Hassan Fouad - are all members of the al-Rasafa Court of Appeal in eastern Baghdad. While all five were unharmed in the separate attacks, the wife of Ali al-Alaq and the wife and son of Suleiman Abdullah were wounded by roadside IED's, and the judges' vehicles and property sustained damages in the blasts. An Iraqi judge told Voices of Iraq that the attacks involved roadside bombs targeting the judges as they commuted to work .

Judge Kamil Abdul-Majid al-Shuweili, the president of the Rasafa Court of Appeals, was assassinated by unidentified gunmen on Thursday while on his way home in eastern Baghdad.

Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, citing the data of the health and interior ministries, said that 21 judges were killed in attacks between the year 2004 and 2006.

In January, Iraqi federal court of appeal judge and Supreme Judicial Council member Amir Jawdat al- Naeib was also assassinated by gunmen in the capital. The Judicial Council said in

Many key Iraqi judges and their families now live in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad or in the so-called Rule of Law complex , a secure compound in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Rusafa where they are supposedly safe from outside threats .

Col. Mark Martins,the staff judge advocate for General Petraeus’s military command in Iraq, said 12 Iraqi judges and four police investigators were now in the complex with their families and 26 more investigators will be graduating this week.

The hope is that a network of legal complexes will be established in other parts late 2007 / spring 2008.

The Rusafa complex, across the Tigris River to the east of the government Green Zone in central Baghdad, is still in its early days (see pic mid 2007). The court began hearing cases in June 2007. (NYT)

The United States provides criminal investigators, lawyers and a paralegal staff to train the Iraqis to run the complex, which also includes accommodations for witnesses, investigators, the Baghdad Police College and an expanding number of detainees. The 55-member American team includes Justice Department and military personnel as well as contractors, and there were in mid 2007 only four Iraqi investigators.

"No one is saying the rule of law prevails across Iraq and this is only a small step," said Col. Mark Martins, which must cheer them up no end.

The Rusafa prison’s capacity, which started at 2,500, was expected to expand by more than 5,000 by the end of the summer 2007. The main detention building at Rusafa is cleaner and of a higher standard than many Iraqis jails, but with 15 detainees in each cell the conditions had reached maximum capacity under international standards.

Reading the NYT report deosn't suggest the legal standards opertaing even at this base compare with what UK or US observers would accept as fair or honest. Which might explain why the judiciary and lawyers have increasingly been the targte of victims of the system and their families and associates.

It is also worth reading the posting Friday, June 20, 2008 -DOD expect detainees to "surge" in Baghdad by 25% soon. of the surging number of prisoners at Camp Cropper by Baghdad Airport.

Prisoners often cannot attend the trial but can watch it later on video.
At least 29 American soldiers died in Iraq in June, compared with 19 the previous month — the lowest monthly figure of the war. At least 546 Iraqis were killed or found dead in June in war-related violence, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press as of Sunday - a slight increase over the AP figure of 515 for May.

Declaring War on Children - Archbishop of Canterbury catches up with the real world

The reported remarks ***of Dr Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury today reminds us that we ran a sister blogsite in May 2005 in response to some local problems of disruptive , disaffected youth, called Big.Bro whose masthead declared ..."A forum to discuss why the response to unruly teenagers in Norden / Edenfield Road exemplifies a thoughtless attitude which amounts to declaring war on our children. A place for the public's voice to be heard and to consider alternatives to a punitive culture of the young, and the resultant reliance on technology to provide a fix to what is a social and community problem."

Alas this site lasted only some few months, in despair, after some 100 posts , but still receives a considerable of visitors and has many, many sources for people who supported the views that Government policies were damaging and now we are facing the results of them ignoring wearning voices ..eg.Sunday, June 12, 2005 Conference on adolescent binge drinking - The American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) will host a web-based conference to discuss the significant and growing public health problem of adolescent binge drinking. Adolescents and Binge Drinking: A Clinical Approach, developed under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau, will be held June 14, 2005, from 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. ET at Medscape from WebMD.(In most place in the US you have to be 21 to drink alcohol in licensed premises - get killed in Iraq, defending Afghan warlords growing poppies - but don't touch the demon drink boyah!)

The very first post brought attention to a speech on March 14th, 2004 by Brid Hehir, at the quaintly named Institute of Ideas a former health visitor and co-author of Alternative Medicine: should we swallow it? In which she said.

“The notion of medicalising or pathologising childbirth and motherhood is now quite common.”

“The private life of families is therefore no longer considered to be their business but ours too. Because of the insistence that the welfare of children must come first, its fertile ground for the involvement of and intervention by health professionals. We have lower expectations of parents. They might drink too much, take drugs, given their children inappropriate food, not parent well enough, abuse them ……The notion that they can sort out their problems for themselves now seems anathema. We use our mental checklists to assess whether or not they’re doing all right.

I think additionally that many of us (health professionals) have lost our ability and confidence to make common sense judgements. We seldom have the confidence to say ‘all’s well’ or its ‘good enough’ and to leave well alone. Instead we cover our backs by constantly referring on to eg. GPs, who then refer on to consultants….”

“There have been numerous social, political, policy and service changes since the 1980s however and the role of health professionals has changed. This was starkly reflected in the consultation document ‘Every Child Matters’ and is also portrayed in the new Children’s Bill. Ostensibly the bill is about achieving reforms to bring about better outcomes for children. In reality however it assumes that a large number of families cannot bring up children without the involvement of myriad agencies who need constantly to exchange information about the children. It seems that the government and society now fundamentally mistrusts parents to bring up their children and thinks it can do better. Health professionals are influenced by this viewpoint also.”

“Motherhood once seen as an ideal, is now promoted as an ordeal, mothers, we are told, are hyper - vulnerable. “

BBC Online report on Dr. Williams : "I think compared with the rest of Europe we are in a very punitive frame of mind."

In a BBC Newsnight "exclusive" he said: "I think it's a very bad position to be in.


"Sometimes the public rhetoric that you find about children and young people does suggest we don't really like them very much.

"... in a more quantifiable kind of way, if you look at the number of children who have custodial sentences in this country it's an alarming statistic. "

"You've got, I think, 25,000 children given custodial sentences in a three-year period quite recently. You've got 30 deaths of children in custody in an 18-year period.

The UK's four children's commissioners in a report have alerted us to the fact that crime committed by children had fallen between 2002 and 2006, but the numbers being subjected to the criminal justice system had gone up by just over a quarter.

"The system is dominated by a punitive approach and does not sufficiently distinguish between adult offenders and children who break the law," says the report.

"Compared to other European countries, England has a very low age of criminal responsibility and high numbers of children are locked up. Too many children are being criminalised and brought into the youth justice system at an increasingly young age."

Nacro - a history of being ignored

The BBC also report that today Paul Cavadino, chief executive of crime reduction charity Nacro, agreed that custody was overused.

"Every year we lock up thousands of young people with histories of physical and sexual abuse, parental neglect, family conflict, school exclusion, substance abuse and mental health problems," he said.

Which is fascinating because a post @ Big.Bro Sunday June 12th 2005 The Rise of the Yobbocracy - well hard Gubment at work reported :

International Centre for Prison Studies - Prison is never appropriate for children
said Professor Andrew Coyle, the director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, 10th August 2004 and added that prison "is never an appropriate location" for children.

He said: "There are more juveniles in prison custody in England and Wales than in any other country in Western Europe. The treatment of juveniles in detention in England and Wales has been criticised by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has expressed concern about the number of children who have sustained injuries as a result of restraints and measures of control applied in prison and about the placement of children in solitary confinement in prisons. Prison is never an appropriate location for children."


Nacro - We have an over-punitive approach to children in trouble

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of the crime reduction charity Nacro, also said (on the same day - that is 4 years ago) that the death in custody of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood (at Hassocksfield secure training centre) Guradian reportsignalled that "some of the most vulnerable children in society are currently being held in state custody."

He added: "We call on the Government to set up an urgent review of the system for dealing with children who offend. We have an over-punitive approach to children in trouble and pay too little attention to the welfare needs of serious and persistent young offenders and the root causes of their problems. 27 children have died in state custody since 1990. The Government must act now if lessons are to be learnt and further deaths prevented."

Interfering old busybodies .....what do they know ? Of course we can just ignore them......

Home Offfice in bid to bring violent crime to your mobile, laptop, radio station . If you are not scared now you soon will be..

The “Get Unhooked” NHS anti smoking campaign last year was created by Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy. It ran across television, poster, national press and magazines, and online.It cost overall more than £8Mn.

The campaign triggered a record 774 complaints from the public under the The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) CAP Code - Rules FEAR AND DISTRESS

9.1 No marketing communication should cause fear or distress without good reason. Marketers should not use shocking claims or images merely to attract attention.

Faced with this unprecedented barrage of complaint the ASA adjudicated the campaign . They banned it - the first Government ads to be banned for 5 years.

It is therefore unbelievable that the Home Office have comitted £3 MN to a "hard hitting" campaign running on radio, websites and mobile phones,featuring;

1. Fake CCTV footage - featuring actors - of an artily chairoscuro shadowed and sinister brutal street fight and stabbing on a shopping street., creepily reminsicent of the droogs in Clockwork Orange which Director Kubrick wouldn't allow to be shown because he felt is encouraged violence.

2. Vivid scenes of , a man with a Swiss army knife and a screwdriver sticking out of his chest, exposed intestines which have emerged from a knife wound, a leg which has become gangrenous after a knife attack and deep wounds to the bone. All this blood and gore accompanied by a script overseen by a trauma surgeon.

3. Mothers will be targeted with ads, encouraging them to talk about the issue with their children.

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office Minister, is pleased that they have recruited children (unpaid ?) to contribute ideas, which is like Tesco asking their customers to devise their advertising.

The result is a campaign that makes dubious claims (see pic) * which will revolt many, upset more and prove like similiar "hard hitting" campaigns for hard drugs, to have zero on the behaviour of the target audience.

It does of course conform to the persistent Government / Police campaign to generate a carapace of fear over everyone who walks the streets at night. helping to justify yet more and insistent demands for "tough" legislation and increasing Police powers.

Sir Ian Blair, whose officers ** murdered Charles de Menezes in public with 7 shots at point blank range in his head welcomes the campaign and warns ..."You are now more likely to be stopped and searched..." . Of course you are.

If, after seeing the vulgar, grisly results of pissing away £3 Mn and you wish (along with Lord Patel) to complain to the ASA go here.

** Officers led by counter terrorism "expert" , Assistant Chief Constable "Randy" Andy Hayman who left the force abruptly after being found to have fiddled his exes and spent his time shagging his staff whose promotion he had secured.

* "The statistics on the extent of knife crime are extremely patchy – for instance the police have only started keeping figures for attempted murder, wounding and robbery involving knives since last April. " Independent todaythey add ...." Violent attacks using a knife remain statistically very rare events in Britain. The numbers of such assaults appear to have remained stable over the last decade "

Senlis Council produce yet another despairing report on poppy cultivation, heroin production and trafficking in Afghanistan

"In the past year (2007-2008), opium production in Afghanistan reached a record level, estimated at 8,200 tons of raw opium. Traffickers also refined much of the opium into heroin before exporting it. The Taliban-led insurgency supported by al-Qaida spread to new areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The level of terrorism, especially suicide bombings, set record
levels in both countries, hitting high-profile targets such as Pakistan’s most popular politician, Benazir Bhutto, and the Serena Hotel in Kabul. After six years of assistance to the Afghan government by the UN, NATO, the world’s major military powers, the world’s largest aid donors, and international specialists on all subjects, the expansion of both the illicit industry and the insurgency constitutes a powerful indictment of international policy and capacity."

"In Afghanistan, nearly a third of the economy and probably an equal percentage of the population depends economically on the opium economy. Drug production affects not just farm income. It affects the balance of payments, tax revenues (through imports), the rate of exchange, employment, retail turnover, and construction."

Counter-Narcotics to Stabilize Afghanistan: The False Promise of Crop Eradication by Barnett R. Rubin & Jake Sherman, Senlis Council April 2008

This paints a bleak picture of the program for poppy eradication and that any such program will takes many years , if not decades. This brief sentence sums up the whole desperate and futile campaign .... " .. law enforcement cannot defeat an elite consensus. And the elite consensus in Afghanistan right now is that foreigners have offered no credible alternative to the opium economy."

Child trafficking

One remarkable fact (if true) is contained within a survey by Charney Research Page 12 .."
one out of seven respondents in poppy growing provinces and one in four in Helmand said they knew of farming families who had sold their children (most likely girls) in payment of opium debts as a result of eradication.

Farmers are advanced money "salaam" as a sort of futue contract on their crop, if this is destroyed b the US / NATO forces the debt stands.

Mugabe - exactly what do you think Mbeke can do ?

"There is no crisis in Zimbabwe," President Mbeke told journalists in Harare after holding talks with President Robert Mugabe on the way to Lusaka, to the despair of the liberal elites , more effective in observing wars of colonialist overthrow than undertaking them.

In this they betray their apparent and common inability to understand that not only is Mbeke is virtually powerless, his own hold on power is remarkably tenuous.

As chronicled here endlessly, the lights are going out all over Africa - more so in the rainbow state as the rolling power cuts from struggling ESKOM fails to power what was a booming economy - now suddenly jammed into reverse.

Decades of political indecision, benign neglect, unwillingness to listen, have finally hit, coinciding with a public eruption of the swelling crime, corruption and factional ANC strife. Outside political circles the the national police chief faces trial for corruption with charges of deals with a local mafiakingpin and dealer in hard drugs.

Inside the tent, the freshly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma who waits to adopt Mbeke's mantle just escaped jail for raping an HIV-positive woman last year. This year he faces trial - unless a deal can be done - in connection with South Africa's very murky multi-billion-pound arms dealings with British, German and French arms manufacturers.

The new / old ANC leaders today are still framed by the jargon of their exiled years in the eastern bloc - yet they and their families splurge in excesses of consumerism of must have Mercedes 4x4s. Overseas hideaways fed from fraud, strutting wives and mistresses with Marc Jacobs bags bought in the shopping malls of Europe , shod by Jimmy Choo and supported by a claque of seedy Europeans hidden away in Cape mansions who watch as the bag of gold at the end of this rainbow is rapidly disappearing.

Crime soars in the neglected townships, swollen with refugees from Zimbabwe, food costs soasr and shortages mount against this desperate background of lawlessness.

Only now is the power shortfall, long predicted, throttling the returns of years of foreign investment . Result. Stocks sold off and the rand slides and the big boys start looking elsewhere, the world now being their global oyster.

In a post Westphalian world where the sovereign state - which was never very sovereign in this this region - has collapsed , the money moves and the market moves on.

Power cuts have hit the country's platinum, gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines with a hammer blow, with no production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others, exports decline, employees lose pay ...... health services - with over 6 million HIV positive patients, under the under his eccentric , alcoholic health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who recently jumped the public queue for a liver transplant, wither as cash dries up.

In December Mbeki and Zuma stood for the leadership of the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress in what must increasingly be seen as a watershed in post Mandela politics. Pithily put by one blogiste as "from rascist hellhole to 3rd world shithole in 3 Presidents"

Thabo Mbeki, gained an M.A. degree in economics in 1966 from the University of Sussex at Brighton and after working for three years until 1970 for the ANC - often seen as sitting out the war . Although he subsequently underwent military training in the Soviet Union.

Mbeki, prevented from standing again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and presidential elections, wanted to remain the power behind the throne of a new state president of his choosing.

Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year's rapecase, and the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. A former detainee on Robben Island and leader of the ANC’s military wing, Mr Zuma has long been one of the most popular leaders among the party’s militants.

Mbeki and the old warfighters assumed that the notion of corrupt Zuma , taking on Nelson Mandela's role thought the election was a formality.

It wasn't.

Mbeki was blind to his unpopularity - a wicked combination of his arrogance , his failures in solving health and crime problems, and above all his failure to deliver to the poor , made him a loser. He lost. The defeat was humiliating by 2,329 votes to 1,505 and pro-Zuma candidates took a clean sweep of the top six positions on the party’s National Executive Committee. .

Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of the country and the ANC , Ruthlessly he expects (and largely gets) MPs in parliament to take its orders from him.

An elderly and failing Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, asking MPs to toe his line.

Without authority at home he has none to wield abroad - and soon FIFA will withdraw the 2010 World Cup.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe , Mugabe ignores what he can and resists what he must. This week he secured the endorsement of his party to stand in next year's presidential elections, when he will be 84 years old.

He has't the slightest intention of leaving and will do anything to remain in power - he murdered tens of thousands of Matabele , has forcibly and happily exiled anywhere between 2-4 Mn to surrounding states and has a large corrupt and fiercely loyal clique who will cling to his power.

Surrounded by nations wallowing in the failings of the African Energy Pool, who will increasingly find it difficult to feed their people, calls for Mugabe to maintain and observe the Constitional niceties is pointless.

Mbeki says there is no crisis. 2 weeks after elections , Zimbabweans are being denied the results. Mbeki says there is no crisis, but the people are living under martial law. Mbeki says there is no crisis but Opposition MDC lawyers have been harassed, brutalised.Mbeki says there is no crisis yet South African equipment and property has been seized. Mbeki says there is no crisis and thousands of soldiers, police and members of youth militias are roaming the streets.

Mbeki says there is no crisis.

Poole Council, RIPA, Soft Cops and sleepwalking

Tim Martin, head of legal and democratic services at Poole Borough Council, said: "The council is committed to investigating the small minority of people who attempt to break the law and affect the quality of life for the majority of law-abiding residents in Poole. "On a small number of occasions, RIPA procedures have been used to investigate potentially fraudulent applications for school places.

3 points to make

1. The fears expressed about the misuse of these secretive powers by over 600 public bodies have proved to be true.

2. Maybe a co-incidence, but isn't this the area, Sandbanks, where policeman Neil Munroe was found dead after supposedlyfalling / jumping / being pushed off a cross channel ferry?

3. Isn't this the Borough where many dark claims have been made about the influence of Masons in civic affairs ? The impacability and lack of concern of the civil servant interviewed on TV gav e the lie to Mr Shakespeare's warning ...

" Man , proud man,dress'd in a little brief authority"

which continues with unerring precision to describe the self important fnctionary and apologist for the council's covert intrusiveness..

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Measure For Measure Act 2, scene 2, 114–123

Finally before imploding, Lord Patel attended a meeting of the local metropolitan Borough Council who were explaining there novel system for private rented housing of "Accredited" Landlords, Letting Agents and Tenants.

This is a self designed scheme , unique to the Borough developed under what they see as their mandated job under the Housing Act 2004 to monitor Housing.

Taking up the issue with a charming, sensible lady in sensible flat heeled brogues, with a sensible handbag, Lord Patel suggested that they were becoming ..er.."soft cops" by introducing norms and standards that were not a legislative requirement.

This was a concept with which it was evident she had to struggle. A term like "soft cop" not coming easily to this matronly lady. There was a flash of realisation ... "Yes... Yes .. I suppose we are ". A sly grin formed, which broadened.. "Well someone has to."

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
We're working our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away

PS : "This was a complicated case" he said about the school for which a 3 year old was destined whose sibling already attended...they had 2 houses. Yes, really fucking complicated.

Cyprus talks and Ledra street shuts.Again.

Monday, March 24, 2008 we said - Cyprus talks and Ledra Street opens .... again and we said "Don't hold your breath".

Ledra street was opened this morning at 9.00 local time (6.00 GMT) , amid much hoopla, release of coloured ballons etc., by tea time the Greek Cypriots because " because Turkish Cypriot police had patrolled inside the buffer zone" , closed it off. Again.



Beautiful new 2 bed flat, pool, Larnaca .To Let 550 Euros p. month z.zoetrope@gmail.com

Khaled Abdu Ahmed Saleh al-Maqtari, "ghost detainee" tortured, renditioned, released without charge

On the 14th March 2008 Amnesty International published a 45 page report "USA: A case to answer. From Abu Ghraib to secret CIA custody: the case of Khaled al-Maqtari " Khaled Abdu Ahmed Saleh al-Maqtari, is one of the men most recently released from the CIA’s secret detention program. In interviews with Anne FitzGerald, Senior Advisor at Amnesty International, he has given a full account of his truly frightening ordeal since he was taken into custody by US forces in Iraq in January 2004.

A Gulfstream V jet – nicknamed the 'torture taxi' – used in the 'rendition' of a Khaled, was refuelled at Shannon Airport the day before it was used to move him from Baghdad to Kabul.

On 6 September 2006, US President George W Bush announced the transfer of 14 men from secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) custody to military detention at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

Khaled Abdu Ahmed Saleh al-Maqtari is one of those most recently released. He was held in CIA “black sites” in Afghanistan and in an unknown country until days before President Bush’s 6 September 2006 announcement, when the CIA network of secret jails appears to have been at least temporarily cleared. Khaled al-Maqtari has been held both at the notorious hard site at Abu Ghraib4 – where he has described a regime of beatings, sleep deprivation, suspension upside down in stressful positions, intimidation by dogs, induced hypothermia and other forms of torture – and in
CIA “black sites” in Afghanistan and an unidentified third country, where he spent nearly three years in complete isolation, the victim of an enforced disappearance.

.
Khaled al-Maqtari is now 31 years old, but appears older, a stocky, solemn looking man, with short black hair and beard. He was born in Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, but has lived most of his life in Hodeidah, a small city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. He was returned to Yemen after 32 months of CIA detention in September of 2006, and held by the Yemeni authorities in Sana’a and Hodeidah until May 2007, when he was unconditionally released. At no stage during this 40-month period was his
detention ever reviewed by a judicial authority, and he was never charged with any criminal offence.

It appears he was arrested on 13th January 2004 operation in Fallujah in a US Army operation called “Operation Market Sweep” aimed at arms dealers operating out of a notorious city centre market where he worked in an internet cafe. In the course of the raid, “the soldiers confiscated more than 100 rifles, two heavy machine guns, 6,500 round of ammunition, 18 rockets, 244 grenades, 150 mortars and various explosive devices, including 17 pre-manufactured improvised explosive devices. During the operation more than 60 people were captured.”(Justin A Carmack, ‘Op Market Sweep’ captures Fallujah arms dealers, Army News Service, 13 January 2004)

Taken by helicopter to Abu Ghraib he was interrogated by unidentifiable Americans, either from US Army’s 205th Military Intelligence (MI) Brigade, which was then operating there, or by the CACI contractors working with them, rather than by CIA officials and contractors on site.

At one stage he was taken out at night by a United Kingdom Special Forces (UKSF) group to identify (but failed) a house he had stayed at in Baghdad.

Former Special Air Service (SAS) trooper Ben Griffin, who was stationed in Baghdad in early 2005, told Amnesty International that an SAS squadron had been working in a joint US-UK special forces group in Baghdad, carrying out surveillance and intelligence operations against insurgents and foreign Arab fighters, since the beginning of the occupation.17 The group shared information, he said, and it would not have been out of the ordinary for an SAS team to take a prisoner directly from US custody on the kind of search mission Khaled al-Maqtari has described.

The SAS did not have a holding facility, and if the detainee was felt to have further intelligence value, he would be turned over to US custody.

As a rule, the SAS troopers did not participate in interrogations; Griffin said that these were carried out “behind closed doors”. However, they were aware of the methods likely to be employed against those who were sent to Abu Ghraib for further questioning.

Former contract interrogator Eric Fair, who was in Abu Ghraib in January of 2004, (he was one of two civilian interrogators and is an Arab linguist , assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division ) has reviewed Khaled al-Maqtari’s account of his treatment there. Although he did not corroborate all of the details provided by Khaled al-Maqtari – he has noted, for instance, that he never saw any detainee being suspended upside down by his feet – Eric Fair told Amnesty International: “I’ve pored over this report, hoping to find major inconsistencies and gross exaggerations. It is to this nation’s shame that I cannot. My time at Abu Ghraib and Fallujah offers no concrete evidence to refute many of the things Khaled has said.”

At no time during his detention in Abu Ghraib was Khaled al- Maqtari registered, documented or charged with any crime.18 He did not see anyone from the ICRC,nor was he ever allowed to contact a lawyer or his family.

......they told me to expect the CIA. After sixor four hours, the ninjas came for me.”

In a procedure which has also been described to Amnesty International by other detainees transported by the CIA, a three- or four-person removal team, dressed completely in black, with black gloves and facemasks, came to prepare Khaled al-Maqtari for his departure. They put him in a diaper, socks, short trousers, and a shirt without buttons, then covered his eyes and stuffed his ears with cotton, taped firmly into place, before hooding him and topping it off with noise-reducing headphones. “They do not talk, said Khaled al-Maqtari, “not even a word, the same as the ninjas in the secret prisons.”19 “It is clear”, he said, “that they have a lot of experience. They know what they are doing, and each of them had a specific role. I mean if I wanted to get dressed myself, I wouldn't be able to do it so fast.”

His subsequent treatment is best read in his words and over many, many pages.. it is not for the squeamish.

At the time of Khaled al-Maqtari’s detention, US forces in Iraq were bound by the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), article 49 of which prohibits the transfer of protected persons, including insurgents who are not part of the military, from the occupied territory.Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement, as well as torture and other inhuman treatment, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, are war crimes,and prosecutable as such under US and international law.22 In addition, international human rights law applies, even in time of war.

This is a frightening tale, it is unbelievable that our fellow human being cabn behave in this way.. one that every citizen of the Coalition of the Unwilling should be made to read.

The frightening postscript is ...

On 20 July 2007, President Bush issued an executive order giving his authorization to the continuation of the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, referred to as the “High Value Terrorist Detainee Program”. In the order, the president asserted that the CIA program: “fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3” (of the four Geneva Conventions), provided that “the conditions of confinement and interrogation practices of the program” remain within the limits set out in the executive order. The US authorities, including the President, have repeatedly emphasised that the CIA program and the techniques used in it have been cleared as lawful by administration lawyers. Clearly, then, the USA is interpreting its international obligations in a way that renders them meaningless and perpetuates an absence of accountability for a program in which the international crimes of torture and enforced disappearance have been committed.

Simpletons in charge at the Treasury

The (Scottish - by the sound of his accent - Morningside ) Chancellor (AKA The Smuggler's Friend) hit the law of Diminishing Returns with a bang yesterday.

14 p on a bottle of jolly old Vin/Vino will raise £300 Mn in extra Tax Revenues

4 p on pint of beer and 3p on cider will raise £100Mn.

55p on a bottle of Scots falling down juice (now nearly 75% of label price) - tax revenues remain unchanged at £2.3 Bn.

£400 million gain , that will be pissed away on carousel fraud in a month (see previous posts ad fucking nauseam). Or put another way will buy you 0.01% of Northern Rock costs to the taxpayer todate (see previous posts ad fucking nauseam).

Out of Interest Hansard 18th May 1999 Col 366

Ms Lawrence: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his latest estimate of the revenue lost to the Exchequer through smuggling of tobacco. [76050]

Dawn Primarolo: In his Budget speech of 9 March, the Chancellor explained that in terms of the turnover of criminals' tobacco smuggling is now a £1½ billion business. That was an assessment by HM Customs and Excise based on their work in progress to monitor the scale of such smuggling (chiefly of cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco). The provisional results of this work indicate that the total amount of revenue (excise duty and VAT) evaded in 1998 was perhaps around £1.7 billion.

Forms of tobacco duty evasion covered by this assessment include cross-Channel smuggling of cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco, smuggling by air passengers, diversion frauds and smuggling over very large consignments in freight.

HM Customs and Excise will continue to examine ways of measuring such smuggling, and are discussing with representatives of the tobacco industry ways of improving the methodologies used.

" Customs lost about £2.9bn in excise duty in 2003-2004 and the figure is expected to increase in 2004-2005." BBC

"The government is losing £3.75bn a year in excise duty because of tobacco and alcohol smuggling, an all-party committee of MPs reports today.

Despite a government campaign to crack down on fraud, the Treasury select committee said 10% of excise duty receipts were going unpaid, equivalent to the revenue from 1p in income tax." Guradian March 2005

"Commenting on the Chancellor's decision to increase tobacco taxes in today's Budget, (11p on a pack of 20) Christopher Ogden, Chief Executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association (TMA), said: "The increase in tobacco tax announced today will do little to reduce the level of tobacco smuggling and crossborder shopping which lost the Treasury GBP4.5 billion in revenue last year. The decision helps to maintain the UK's position as one of the world's most profitable destinations for tobacco smugglers and this is of great concern to the TMA and its member companies."

"The TMA estimates that in 2007 around GBP4.5 billion in revenue was lost through smuggling and crossborder shopping in tobacco products and over the last ten years these losses exceed GBP40 billion. "PR Newswire yesterday

Israelis rain bombs and rockets on Gaza - 20 dead, 5 of them children

Late Thursday, an Israel Air Force missile strike hit an electric company vehicle in Khan Yunis, killing two workmen, medics said. The Israeli military said they hit a car carrying militants.

After nightfall Thursday, two Palestinians were killed in an IAF missile strike on a truck in Gaza City, near Shifa Hospital.

Early Thursday evening, an IAF helicopter attacked a police roadblock near the Gaza City home of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, in which Palestinian .

Four children - all under the age of 16 and three from the same family - were killed in an IAF strike in Jabalya, a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said. Witnesses said the children were playing soccer when the missile struck. Another boy wounded in that strike, a 12-year-old neighbor, died later, hospital officials said.

Another IAF attack in northern Gaza a short while later killed a Hamas militant.

Earlier, IAF aircraft struck northern Gaza, killing another Hamas member and one other person. There were no details on the target, and the IDF had no immediate comment.

On Thursday morning, the IAF struck targets in carried out an air strike in Gaza City, killing two militants from the Popular Resistance Committees and another from Hamas.

Overnight, IAF jets blasted a government building in Gaza. Palestinian health officials said a 6-month-old baby was killed in the attack, and 30 people were wounded.
Haaretz