The connection between interna-tional terrorism and the “movement for independence” in Chechnya is substantial and explicit, but all too often ignored in the West. The popular assumption is that Chech-nya is a distant problem that need not be addressed by anyone outside Russia. Unfortunately, the evidence sug-gests otherwise. Islamic extremists and their terror-tactics have been a central factor in the Caucasus more than a decade ago. From Iraq to Af-ghanistan, London to Moscow, Is-lamic terrorists have firmly imbed-ded Chechnya into the global web of terror networks. A sparsely reported but highly sig-nificant development in the war against Islamic extremism in the Caucasus occurred on October 13 in the Russian republic of Astemirov-Balkaria. There, approximately 100 terrorists led by Wahhabi adherent Anzor Astemirov killed at least twenty-four police officers and civil-ians, though the Russian daily Kommersant reported the actual casualty count was higher than the official count. Chechens and a sig-nificant group of Arabs took part in the assault, and news reports sug-gested that radical Chechen leader Shamil Basayev may have been di-rectly involved in the operation. Leon Aron, the director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, believes that foreign Is-lamic militants have fueled much of the violence in the Caucasus and “hijacked Chechnya’s struggle for independence.” There is much to support this claim as many Islamic fundamentalists who have a history of international terrorism have be-come involved in the Chechen con-flict. Osama bin Laden’s chief lieu-tenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, at-tempted to establish a base for Is-lamic terrorists in Chechnya in 1996. By 1999, it was estimated that at least 100 Al Qaeda members joined up with Chechens in the Caucasus. In addition, Shamil Basayev is be-lieved to have trained in Afghani-stan in 1994. Basayev has claimed responsibility for – among other horrendous acts of terror – the Beslan school hostage situation that claimed the lives of 330, including women and young children. This process of Chechen “Islamiza-tion” began in the mid 1990s as sig-nificant numbers of Arab fighters joined the fight of Muslims in Chechnya seeking to gain inde-pendence from the Russian Federa-tion. At that time, moderate Sufi Islam, long dominant in Chechnya, began to give way to Wahhabism. Money coming from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Af-ghanistan was paid to those who converted to Wahhabism and those who recruited others to join the mili-tant sect. As one Chechen convert explained: “I liked it that Arabs want to go on making war until they liberate the whole world of the [in-fidels]” and holy war should con-tinue “until all the Christians are converted to Islam.” The influx of Arabs and Islamic fundamentalists soon changed the face of the conflict in Chechnya. The Middle East Quarterly accurately noted last summer that “A close ex-amination of the evolution of the Chechen movement indicates that Islamists and followers of Al-Qaeda have increasingly sought to co-opt the Chechen movement as their own.” American and Russian intelligence services have found evidence sug-gesting that many of the same groups and individuals that fi-nanced al-Qaeda also provided support for Chechen leaders, such as the Saudi-born Ibn al-Khattab. Iran and Saudi Arabia are also be-lieved to have provided funding for Basayev and his followers. The ex-planation for this generosity is un-ambiguous: this diverse group of fanatics is united under the common goal of establishing an Islamic state in the Caucasus. The events on the ground continue to suggest that the forces attempting to establish an Islamic state from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea are relatively weak. However, as the United States and our Iraqi allies crush the hopes of the Islamists in Iraq who seek to create a new ca-liphate, their efforts will soon focus elsewhere - as is already evident with recent terror attacks in Jordan, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. An ex-tremely likely target will be Chech-nya and its neighboring republics. Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Chechnya at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, stated recently that “The Chechen conflict is spilling into neighboring republics, escalating the process of destabilization” in the Caucasus and Central Asia. This poses an enormous threat to both the territorial integrity of Russia and the long-term interests of the United States in the region. The process has already started and is likely to pick up increasing steam as Islamists be-gin to lose hope in Iraq and Af-ghanistan. The second Chechen war began in 1999 with the invasion of Chechnya’s neighboring republic of Dagestan. This was an attempt to spread the conflict in hope of gener-ating a larger Islamic rising. Al-though Russian forces quickly drove the aggressors back to Chechnya, the Islamists have far from given up hope. The Russian republic of Ingushetia has similarly experienced terror at the hands of the Chechens and their Islamist supporters. Repeated at-tempts to assassinate the pro-Moscow president of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov, have so far been unsuccessful. However, the em-ployed tactic of suicide car bomb-ings illustrates not only the same desired ends of the Chechens and their Islamist allies, but also the matching callous means. While the Islamists have failed to topple the Ingush leadership thus far, they did succeed in briefly taking the repub-lic’s capitol of Nazran in 2004. This operation was carried out by mili-tant followers of Shamil Basayev and concluded only after nearly 100 government officials and police offi-cers had been killed. The influx of radical Islam and the expansionist nature of the aspira-tions of its followers have made it evident that Chechnya has trans-formed from a republic seeking in-dependence to one of the global cen-ters of Islamic jihad. Vladimir Putin described the danger of a widening conflict in a December 2003 televi-sion appearance: “they have com-pletely different goals – not the in-dependence of Chechnya, but the territorial separation of all territories of compact Muslim residence. It fol-lows that we should resist that, if we don't want the collapse of our state. And if that happens, it will be worse here than in Yugoslavia.” Unfortunately, Putin was not exag-gerating. London’s Sunday Express reported that British intelligence sources revealed that Chechen fighters were some of the last hold-outs in the battle at Tora Bora in Af-ghanistan. Chechens have also gone to Iraq to fight Americans and our allies. The same British intelligence source told the Sunday Express: “These are not just people dreaming of a homeland, they are key global terrorist figures.” The source added: “British forces in the Gulf during the initial phase of the fighting were finding Chechen bodies among the fanatics fighting along Saddam Hussein’s troops. A number of the foreign fighters confronting our troops in Basra have turned out to be Chechens.” Thus, Chechens are clearly gaining experience in guer-rilla warfare and terrorist operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and those that survive will bring their skills back to Chechnya. However, to understand the scope of the events in Chechnya and its neighboring republics, one must also be acquainted with the global attempts to wreak havoc by the Chechens and their Islamist associ-ates not only in the Middle East and Central Asia, but in Western Europe as well. In 2002, Shamil Basayev engineered a plot to assassinate British Prime Minter Tony Blair at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Had it been successful, the attack would have killed several members of the killed several members of the Royal Family and certainly would have had just as great of a psychological impact on the people of Britain as the July 7 attacks. Terrorists from Chechnya and its neighbors have targeted Russian and Western inter-ests in Britain, France, Spain, and elsewhere. Many of these plots originated in Georgia’s Shevardnadze Trail, a passage which runs through the eastern Georgia stretch known as the Pankisi Gorge and is described by former U.S. counterterrorism of-ficial Paul J. Murphy as a “lawless area that Georgia is unable to totally control and that has served as a conduit for financial and logistical support and fighter reinforcements into Chechnya since the early 1990’s.” The Pankisi Gorge has been the staging ground of alleged at-tempts to use ricin in London and bomb the Russian embassy in Paris. Chechens and members of al-Qaeda alike seek refuge and plot future attacks in Pankisi camps. Thus, it is clear that any attempt to combat terror in Chechnya and throughout the region will also have to attribute significant attention to the Pankisi Gorge. The April 2004 expiration of the Georgia Train and Equip Program, a United States effort to assist the Georgian government in combating terrorism and to bring order to the Pankisi Gorge, signals a lack of re-solve on the part of the United States to alleviate the terrorist prob-lem in Chechnya and its surround-ing territories. This will have to change and the United States must re-dedicate itself – to a greater de-gree than previously displayed – to eliminating this problem. The up-coming November 27 Chechen presidential elections are certainly a positive step; however, without lim-iting the influence of foreign Islamists and subduing the radical-ized portions of the Chechen popu-lation, the new government is cer-tain to exert little control and may be just another artificial façade un-able to stem the tide of Islamic ex-tremism currently engulfing Chech-nya and its surrounding regions. Robert T. McLean is a research intern at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

12/30/2005 09:47:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|From Global Jihad Watch:

Plans to 'Top' 9/11 Strikes' (AFP) - - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday (12/23). The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2,700 people, Pisanu said. The Algerians are suspected of belonging to a cell established by the al-Qaeda linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.

Spain Jails Six Accused of Aiding al-Qaeda (Reuters) - A Spanish judge has jailed six people on suspicion of recruiting Islamic radicals to send as suicide bombers or insurgents to Iraq, Chechnya or Kashmir, a court official said on Saturday (12/24). The six were among 16 people arrested in raids around Spain. Another two people surrendered after learning police were looking for them.

French Parliament OKs Anti-Terror Measures (AP) - France's parliament approved an anti-terrorism bill Thursday (12/22) that will boost the use of video surveillance and allow police more time to question terror suspects. The law will allow mosques, department stores and other potential targets to install surveillance cameras, and it will stiffen prison terms for terrorists and those providing support. It also will enable police to monitor people who travel to countries known to harbor terror training camps, and to extend the detention period for terror suspects from four days to up to six days.

|W|P|113596518456829486|W|P|Europe news on jihadism|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com1/08/2006 05:58:00 PM|W|P| Anonymous|W|P|This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.12/30/2005 09:22:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

[This] attack follows a string of nearly a dozen bombings carried out in Lebanon in the past year, beginning with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri last February. Hariri had resigned from his post after turning against Damascus, and his death sparked massive rolling street protests that ultimately led to the final withdrawal of 14,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon. Tueni, like a handful of previous victims, was a staunch critic of Syria.
At least two others also died in the Tueni attack. Dazed and bloodied workers from nearby factories crunched across broken glass at the scene hours later; the smell of burned plastic and burned pine needles hung in the air as security forces wearing plastic gloves scoured the hillside looking for clues. For some Lebanese, the clues point to one culprit. “I accuse the military regime in Syria. I accuse the remnants of the military regime in Lebanon tied to Syria,” Nayla Moawad, a prominent MP from northern Lebanon, said at the offices of An Nahar. “This is a catastrophe.”

Hussein Malla / AP Tueni, in a file photo from June, 2005

The Syrian government quickly denied any involvement in Tueni’s assassination. But it’s clear that whoever carried out today’s bombing intended to send a message to the West. United Nations’ investigator Detlev Mehlis’s report on the murder of Hariri was released today and, as expected, the report points a finger at Syrian intelligence. The report goes even further, accusing the Syrian government of obstructing the investigation and harassing witnesses. Syria—already the target of a range of economic sanctions--could face further embargoes based on the findings. But after today’s bombing, some Lebanese no longer think the U.N. can curb Syrian influence in their country. “We have the Mehlis report but so what?” says Jean Luc Bersuder, a 48-year old photo editor at An Nahar. “It’s not over. Syria still has the capacity to make problems in this country.”

Tueni is not the first person working at An Nahar to be attacked. Last June, columnist Samir Kassir was killed by a car bomb. And in September, television anchor May Chidiac survived a bomb planted underneath her car but lost an arm and a leg as a result of the attack. Tueni knew the danger he was in: colleagues say he had received several death threats over the phone in recent months. He traveled with heavy security and even spent the past month in Paris to keep a low profile. In an interview with a NEWSWEEK reporter last April, Tueni made it clear exactly who he saw as the biggest threat. “I believe [the Syrians] will try to keep a lot of spies here,” he said. “They’re trying to say to the people: We’ll be back in Beirut. They know the psychological effects are very important. I’m sure they’re preparing something else.”

And this is the result:

Lebanon mourns slain editor of top newspaper

Tens of thousands turn funeral into demonstration against Syria

	Lebanese mourners carry the coffins of slain anti-Syrian lawmaker and press magnate Gibran Tueini, his driver and bodyguard in Beirut, on Wednesday.
Joseph Barrak / AFP - Getty Images

“We want your head, Bashar,” the crowds chanted in reference to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We are here to revolt against the oppression and barbarity that is taking away our best men,” mourner Nabhan Abu Samra said.

Many thousands, most of them waving Lebanese flags, answered a call by anti-Syrian politicians for a large turnout at Tueni’s funeral, carrying his flag-draped coffin on their shoulders through the streets of central Beirut to the Greek Orthodox church where a service will be held.

“All of Lebanon bids goodbye today to the martyr of free speech Gebran Tueni,” said the frontpage headline of al-Mustaqbal newspaper, owned by the late Hariri.

Uniting force
The 48-year-old Tueni was among the most fiery critics of Damascus, publishing his biting editorials on the front-page of his an-Nahar newspaper, Lebanon’s leading daily.

Many Lebanese politicians have blamed Syria for Tueni’s murder, though Damascus has been quick to deny any involvement.

“Can no one say ’no’ in this country without being killed?” asked Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who campaigned for Syria’s withdrawal, in a call to LBC television on Tuesday night.

“I am threatened now ... If what they want is to silence every opposition voice, then until when?”

Hussein Malla / AP Nayla Tueni, daughter of slain anti-Syrian journalist and legislator Gibran Tueni, mourns as she lays her hand on her father's coffin, in the Beirut district of Ashrafieh, Lebanon, on Wednesday.

A Lebanese flag was draped over Tueni’s seat in parliament, which held a special session in his honor on Wednesday. A large banner bearing Tueni’s picture was draped over the headquarters of an-Nahar in downtown Beirut.

In Martyr’s Square, the crowds also repeated the vow Tueni led them in making on the same spot at a symbolic March 14 rally: “We swear by God Almighty, Muslims and Christians, to remain united and defend great Lebanon forever and ever.”

Sanaa Mansour, dressed from head to toe in a black Islamic cloak, said: “We are here to show solidarity with all Lebanese, Muslims and Christians, and to call for an end to this series of deaths and for the complete liberation of our country.”

There is a Syrian arrested over Beirut Car Bomb.

A Syrian was arrested Tuesday (12/27) on suspicion of involvement in the assassination earlier this month of Gebran Tueini, the anti-Syrian general manager and columnist of Lebanon's leading newspaper. Abed al Kader Abed al Kader was among three Syrian nationals detained earlier for questioning in the Dec. 12 killing of Tueini.

|W|P|113596393040513151|W|P|Tueni's murder|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/30/2005 09:06:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

In Europe we have a lot of information about a lot of new commissions that are going to be opened to investigate about the renditions

According to current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials, some European governments were informed of at least some of the details of the CIA flight operations before or as they happened. Other European governments operated what one U.S. counterterror official acknowledged amounted to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding the CIA airplanes. In other words, the governments may have been aware that something was going on in their airspace with CIA aircraft, but they did not really want to know what was happening, did not ask too many (or perhaps any) questions about the agency’s activities, and the United States did not volunteer any answers. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

Because the European governments themselves either had some knowledge of the CIA activities, or, in other cases, may have ignored activities they had reason to suspect were going on, some European investigators believe that the nations that allowed CIA flights to use their airfields won’t be eager to answer any questions.

You can also read more information from a blog called "Colorado Coalition for Human Rights".

Linked to this there is the very "strange" case of Khaled El-Masri.
|W|P|113596317953556333|W|P|About the renditions|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/30/2005 08:53:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|This two articles were very interesting.

Women of Al Qaeda

Jihad used to have a gender: male. The men who dominated the movement exploited traditional attitudes about sex and the sexes to build their ranks. They still do that, but with a difference: even Al Qaeda is using female killers now, and goading the men.

Very little is known about the first woman to become a suicide bomber for Al Qaeda in Iraq, except that she dressed as a man. Two weeks after a U.S.-backed operation to clean out the town of Tall Afar near the Syrian border in September, she put on the long white robe and checkered scarf that Arab men commonly wear in Iraqi desert towns. The clothes disguised her gender long enough for her to walk into a gathering of military recruits with no one taking much notice. The clothes also concealed the explosives strapped around her womb. "May God accept our sister among the martyrs," said a Web site linked to the organization of Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. She had defended "her faith and her honor." No name was given. But the bomb that blew apart that anonymous woman killed five men, maimed or wounded 30 more, and opened a new chapter not only in the war for Iraq but in the global struggle against terror.

Never before had any branch of Al Qaeda sent a woman on a suicide mission. Since female bombers first appeared in Lebanon two decades ago, their ranks have come mainly from secular Arab nationalist groups, from Kurdish rebels in Turkey and the non-Muslim Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighting the government of Sri Lanka. Only in the past few years did the Palestinian "army of roses" carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis, and the "black widows" strike at the enemies of Chechnya's rebels. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Qaeda and its offshoots around the world held back. But as he has before, Zarqawi broke the taboos. His strategy is to create images of horror, "to look like he has more capability than he truly has," says Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the Coalition forces spokesman in Baghdad. Zarqawi recruits where he can, he exploits whom he can and he attacks the softest of targets to get the peculiar kind of publicity he craves. Women are his new weapon of choice.

In October, Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed that a second female bomber, this time accompanied by her husband, killed herself attacking an American patrol in Mosul. And last week the world learned of the third: Muriel Degauque, 38, a fair-skinned Belgian from the grim rust-belt city of Charleroi near the French border. As a girl, she often ran away from home. As a woman, she had a succession of failed relationships with Muslim men: a Turk, an Algerian and finally a Belgian of Moroccan descent who followed the teachings of radical Salafists, similar to those of Al Qaeda. They went to live for at least three years in Morocco, and when she returned home she was fully veiled: alienated, lonely, in the thrall of a husband who consumed her entire world. Muriel—now calling herself Myriam—"couldn't have children," a spokesman for the Belgian prosecutor's office said last week. Even when she was near her parents, she rarely spoke to them. The last they heard from her was during the summer. On Nov. 9, she blew herself up attacking Iraqi police near the town of Baqubah. American troops gunned down her husband shortly after Myriam was killed.
That same night, Nov. 9, bombers hit three hotels in the Jordanian capital, Amman. As scores of dead and wounded were still being counted, Al Qaeda in Iraq announced that a woman had been among the suicide attackers there, too. Zarqawi, once again, was publicizing his new approach. But what Zarqawi did not know was that the woman had failed to detonate her bomb.

The second one is called

Reform: Not Ignorant, Not Helpless

The West is focused on the extreme cases of oppression against Muslim women. But there's another world out there.

The West's exposure to Muslim women is largely based on Islam's most extreme cases of oppression: Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, Wahhabi-ruled Saudi Arabia and postrevolutionary Iran. Under those regimes, women were and are ordered to cover. Many Afghan women are forbidden to attend school, and no Saudi woman is allowed to drive. Yet despite the spread of ultraconservative versions of Islam over the past few decades, these societies are not the norm in the Muslim world. In Egypt, female cops patrol the streets. In Jordan, women account for the majority of students in medical school. And in Syria, courtrooms are filled with female lawyers. "Women are out working, in every profession, and even expect equal pay," says Leila Ahmed, Harvard Divinity School professor and author of "Women and Gender in Islam." "Though the atmosphere in Muslim countries is becoming more restrictive, no matter how conservative things get they can't put the genie back in the bottle."

Still, Muslim women are feeling like pawns in a political game: jihadists portray them as ignorant lambs who need to be protected from outside forces, while the United States considers them helpless victims of a backward society to be saved through military intervention. "Our empowerment is being exploited by men," says Palestinian Muslim Rima Barakat. "It's a policy of hiding behind the skirts of women. It's dishonorable no matter who's doing it." Scholars such as Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islamic law and author of "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists," says this is an age-old problem. "Historically the West has used the women's issue as a spear against Islam," he says. "It was raised in the time of the Crusades, used consistently in colonialism and is being used now. Muslim women have grown very, very sensitive about how they're depicted on either side."

Surely the late feminist Doria Shafik felt the scorn of men—Arab and British—while fighting for the right to vote in 1940s Egypt. Yet Shafik persevered and cast her first ballot in Cairo in 1956. "I render thanks unto God to have been born in the land of mysteries," she later wrote. "To have grown up in the shadow of the palms, to have lived within the arms of the desert, guardian of secrets ... to have seen the brilliance of the solar disk and to have drunk as a child from the Nile sacred river." Millions of Muslim Arab women still love the societies they're born into, regardless of jihadist manipulation or American intervention. If reform is to come, they will surely be the ones who push it forward.

|W|P|113596204347559881|W|P|Interesting articles about the role of women in Al-Qaeda|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/30/2005 08:47:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|This is a very interesting article about Mrs Anthrax. I just copy here some paraghraphs.

During the interview, she declared: “To end one’s career in defense of Iraq is an honor.” Ammash laughed while recounting the anonymous phone calls that were bombarding her and other Saddam aides, urging them to defect and abandon the regime for the sake of their families. She said she’d received e-mails filled with computer viruses, as many as 18 in a single day. “It doesn’t fit the image of the U.S.,” she complained, evoking the notion that gentlemen don’t mess with a lady’s e-mail.

Articulate and well-mannered, Ammash had been educated in the United States; she received a masters from Texas Woman’s University in Denton and a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Missouri. She was said to have been a key figure in Saddam’s biotech and genetic research programs and to have been trained by Nassir al-Hindawi, the alleged father of Iraq’s biological weapons efforts. However Ammash told me her scientific work focused on the what she called the carcinogenic effects of depleted uranium, which had been present in some U.S. bombs and missiles during the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

Of course, I didn’t believe everything she said (and she probably didn’t believe I was a journalist acting in good faith, either). Although we talked for nearly two and a half hours over tea, this was hardly a normal interview. It was a chat on the eve of war. Ammash and I both knew that bombs would soon be falling on Baghdad and that Saddam’s regime was, most likely, in its last days.

One thing Ammash said did stick in my memory. She stressed that Iraqis remained fiercely proud of their civilization despite decades of violence and deprivation. “This country is Mesopotamia. Ninety-nine percent of the American people don’t know the country they’ll soon be bombing is Mesopotamia,” she said. “This nation has been serving civilization for 6,000 years. We invented the first alphabet … every American who enjoys education owes that to us.”

To be sure, the “Mesopotamia card” was part of a spiel that Saddam’s aides had propagated before the war in an effort to stir up international sympathies. But pride in their history is also one reason why even Iraqis who opposed Saddam remain so resentful of what they see as foreign occupation. When I was in Iraq on assignment for a couple of months this past summer, some Baghdad friends who’d welcomed the sight of American Marines in 2003 now nurtured a festering and deep-seated ambivalence about the U.S.-led occupation. Some said they actually preferred the yoke of an Iraqi autocrat such as Saddam to the rule of an American conqueror, even a benign one.

Today it’s obvious that many aspects of the U.S. presence in Iraq have been far from benign. When Ammash’s husband, Ahmed Makki Mohammed Saeed, told me in 2004 that he’d been “tortured” while being detained by U.S. authorities, I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Revelations about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison had not yet surfaced. And his accounts sounded bizarre: being subjected to hours and hours of earsplitting American rap music laced with profanity and being doused with cold water, then forced to stand for hours in front of a freezing air-conditioner turned up full blast.

Still, the sheer weight of detail suggested to me that he wasn’t making it up. And subsequent tales of torture from other former detainees indicated that he might actually have been one of the luckier ones among them.

To read the rest you can go here.
|W|P|113596158677755433|W|P|About Mrs Anthrax release|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/30/2005 08:38:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|If you read this article appeared in Newsweek you are gooing to hink that all French are racists. But why only the inmigrants that are muslims are the ones who have rioted and burned through out more than a fortnight. Nearly 10,000 cars have been burned and more than 200 buildings.

For now, at least, the fires have died out—but an acrid bitterness still hangs in the air. Ask those on the football pitch behind the high wire fences of Montfermeil. Year after year, coach Kaddor Slimane, a son of Algerian immigrants who grew up in neighboring projects, has seen his teams win their league's sportsmanship award. Yet what does their good behavior mean in the "outside" world, where they are seen through the lens of limitations and stereotypes? "The French are racist," he says. "They just don't want to admit it." Life in the projects isn't so bad when you are a child, says Amad, a 24-year-old community activist who declined to give his last name for fear of racist attacks. "But once you reach a certain age, you're fed up. There's nothing to do except play soccer or hang out," in voiceless exile from the "other" France.

The politicians whose inaction and confusion (and seeming indifference) contributed to the violence, on the other hand, have rediscovered their voices. Almost as if the riots never happened, many are once again speaking in familiar platitudes and posturing about law and order. "All those who participated in the riots will have to pay, today or tomorrow," France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy declared on Dec. 15 at an homage to injured police and firefighters. Then he waded into the crowd, alongside his political rival, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, for handshakes and photos.

For a brief moment, in the immediate aftermath of the riots, genuine change seemed possible. As if to make up for lost decades, French officials rushed to propose new initiatives designed to address "root causes" of the unrest. The government is stepping up plans to knock down the soulless housing blocks that make life in France's banlieues so oppressive and alienating, and to replace them with smaller-scale housing surrounded by greenery. It injected an additional 100 million euros into the 2006 budget for social-support organizations in troubled communities. And it promised, yet again, to focus laserlike on unemployment, which ranges from 20 to 40 percent in many ghetto communities—two to four times the national average.

It's curious then that they have asked the police to leave them alone, that the rios began not because there were youngsters who were stealing things from cars but when the police entered Clichy-sur-Bois, and that the rioters were screaming and shouting "Allah Akbar".

I recommend reading also this post.
|W|P|113596123407096092|W|P|And we are again talking about racism in France|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/18/2005 11:32:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

THERE will not be a public inquiry into the July 7 London bombings, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke has decided.

Instead, a senior civil servant will compile a narrative on the attacks from evidence already collected by the police, the security services and two House of Commons select committees.

Mr Clarke believes an independent inquiry would also duplicate much work that has been carried out by MPs. Ministers also felt that it would divert attention and resources away from more pressing security and community issues.

A Home Office spokesman said last night: “The Government is not proposing to hold a public inquiry into the events of July 7. The Home Secretary is currently considering what materials he might be able to make available to support the parliamentary inquiries which are under way into the various aspects of the July 7 atrocities.

“We hope to announce details of this in due course.” MI5 is understood to have compiled a detailed picture of the influences thought to have been exerted on the bombers, and their motivations.

The security services have also tracked the group’s overseas travel in minute detail, particularly their trips to Pakistan between 2003 and the bombings in July this year. Mr Clarke is understood to have consulted Scotland Yard on the implications of issuing the file to the public, possibly edited.

But the public inquiry decision was not welcomed by Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, who repeated demands for a full investigation. “It has to be a fully comprehensive public inquiry that will provide us the information we need as to what actually happened, how it happened and why it happened so that we will be better prepared to prevent such tragedy happening again,” he said last night.

Saba Mozakka, whose mother Behnaz died in the Piccadilly Line blast, said that it was “unacceptable” not to hold a public inquiry.

“This is not acceptable to us and the families will be campaigning for there to be a full public inquiry,” she said. “A narrative of events will not satisfy anybody. This is not something we will go away on.”

Graham Russell, whose son, Philip, died in the wreckage of the Tavistock Square bus, said he would wait before judging the decision. “If the facts come out anyway then it’s all well and good. If they don’t then they have failed the people who died.”

Patrick Mercer, the Shadow Homeland Security Minister, said that a narrative was not enough: “We need to know what the links were with the various individuals, whether they had links abroad. And also why the Government reduced the level of warning a mere five weeks before the attack.”

Fifty-two people died and nearly 700 people were injured when four suicide bombers attacked the London transport system on the morning of July 7. Intelligence has been compiled on bombers Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Hasib Hussain. The Home Secretary today quietly dropped his controversial plans to give police the power to shut down mosques being used by extremists. The proposal was originally part of Tony Blair’s 12-point plan to combat terror after the July 7 London bombings, but a consultation produced a negative reaction from top police officers and the Muslim community. Charles Clarke said in a written statement to MPs today: "I will not seek to legislate on this issue at the present time, although we will keep the matter under review." Mr Clarke published detailed plans in October, proposing that police should have powers to temporarily close down places of worship - such as mosques - which were being used by extremists. The trustee or registered owner of a place of worship would be issued with an order - obtained from a court by the police - requiring them to take steps to stop such behaviour, the document said. Failing to do so would be a criminal offence. If the activity persisted, police could apply to the court for a "restriction of use order" which could temporarily close all or part of the premises. The consultation paper said the new powers would be a "last resort" and police would attempt to solve problems at any place of worship with members of the community. But earlier this month the Association of Chief Police Officers said the proposed measures risked alienating ordinary Muslims and driving extremism underground. And in November, a group of Islamic experts appointed by Mr Clarke in the wake of July 7 said the measures could be arbitrary and open to "possible misuse". In a report they said: "The proposal on closing certain mosques rather than simply prosecuting the criminality in those mosques could deprive a whole congregation from benefiting from a provision they may have heavily invested in because of a few fanatics misusing their facilities." A Home Office spokesman said 66 people and organisations responded to the consultation and the majority were negative. Assistant Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Rob Beckley, an Acpo spokesman on counter-terrorism, said in his response: "Acpo does not support the enactment of legislation of the type proposed. "In the opinion of Acpo, there would need to be significant changes to the intentions and wording of the legislation for it to be either desirable or enforceable." The Rev Graham Sparkes of the Baptist Union of Great Britain commented: "Over the centuries, many Baptists experienced persecution, discrimination and imprisonment at the hands of the state, in order to secure control over what was preached, where it could be preached, and who could preach. "We would be very sensitive towards any proposals that put these hard won freedoms under threat." General secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, said in his submission: "We ... feel that mosques are being misidentified and stereotyped as incubators of violent extremism, while the social reality is that they serve as centres of moderation. "The bombers were indoctrinated by a subculture outside the mosque. The notion of influential 'back-door' mosques is a figment of the imagination." He added: "Our belief is that a major factor in the rise and spread of the current tide of terrorism is rooted in our foreign policy and in the double standards of our Government in its dealings in the Middle East in partnership with the government of the US. We urge you to accept this fact." "We ask you to take urgent remedial action so that our citizens, here as well as in the rest of the world, do not become targets of criminals and murderers who parade as political activists but who surely are nothing other than terrorists."Morag Mylne, convenor of the Church and Society Council of the Church in Scotland, said: "The power suggested seems to us to amount to a desire to ‘get someone, anyone’. "We think there is no point trying to adjust or amend the proposal. We believe it should be abandoned forthwith."

|W|P|113493583268846835|W|P|News about 7/7 bombongs in London|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/24/2005 01:46:00 PM|W|P| Anonymous|W|P|I'd like to read your blog (interesting subject matter) but the color scheme and typography makes it hard to read, at least for me. The full-justified text, tightly spaced lines and blue/red highlights interfere with readability. Well, that's one person's opinion, anyway!12/30/2005 05:38:00 PM|W|P| Nora (LV)|W|P|Anonymous:

I thnk that now you can read it comfortably enough.

Thanks fot the advise.12/18/2005 07:46:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

A CHURCH HALL was set ablaze and shots were fired near a primary school in Sydney yesterday, fuelling fears of an escalation in violence between ethnic Arabs and whites. Hundreds of officers were sent to potential trouble spots after Sunday’s race riots on a beach popular with white Australians and men of Arab descent. Gangs of Lebanese men retaliated by rampaging through suburban streets and attacking cars and buildings. Morris Iemma, the premier of New South Wales, said that police would pay special attention to places of worship and schools. “We have to be on guard for this. These hooligans will not destroy the fabric of our society,” he said. Mr Iemma said that a 500-strong riot squad would be deployed to deal with racially inspired violence. He introduced new laws giving police special powers to lock down parts of Sydney and search and confiscate vehicles, a move aimed at ending “smash and bash” raids involving carloads of youths of Middle Eastern origin. Yesterday’s fire in a church hall next to an Islamic centre in the suburb of Macquarie Fields, and an incident at a primary school in Auburn where parents were abused at a carol concert and shots fired into cars, represents a dangerous escalation of this week’s unrest. Police could not confirm if the fire was linked to the violence. Peace talks were held between representatives of Middle Eastern communities and surf groups in the beachside suburb of Cronulla, where last weekend’s running battles began. They issued a joint declaration calling for an end to the clashes. Sources insisted that there were no ringleaders organising the violence and said that text messages were being sent urging an end to it. Brad Whittaker, a local surfer, apologised for the behaviour of some white Australians last Sunday. “The day began as a show of solidarity against behaviour of ethnic gangs that have been harassing the public on our beaches over a period of seven years,” he explained. “It escalated out of control under the influence of right-wing racists from outside this community and alcohol.” Representatives of the wider Arab community called for a weekend curfew to stop further racial violence. Parents were urged to keep their children at home after 9pm on Friday and Saturday and all day Sunday. Elie Nassif, of the Lebanese Community Council, said that the measures would help to ease tensions. “We have to protect Australia no matter whether you’re born here or you come from overseas.” My comment: It's curious, note that nothing is said about the state in which the Church is anow, who burned it, or was suspected of having burned it. I wonder what would have happened if the white racists would have stormed into a mosque and burned it. Ooh, and very curious what this "representant" of the Lebanes Comunity says: one should ask what Asutralia they want to protect. I do not think I would like Australia to become a place where someone could ask you, if you're a woman/girl, "are you a virgin?", just because being in bathing costume.... And that surfer has summed up very well the situation: they have been harrasing the population for ¡¡¡SEVEN YEARS!!! My goodness. And then the police said they were not detaining this people, to prevent them to begin riots.

|W|P|113492172691041147|W|P|Church fire follows beach riot|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/18/2005 02:16:00 PM|W|P| Pastorius|W|P|Good post, Blueslord. How do you find all this info about Australia over there in Spain. We never hear about it here.

I've been so obsessed with Ahmadinejad that I had forgotten to post about Australia for a few days.

Check out this one:

http://cuanas.blogspot.com/2005/12/islamofascists-who-stole-christmas.html12/18/2005 03:33:00 PM|W|P| Nora (LV)|W|P|Thanks, Pastoruis, I have forgotten you (sooooorry) I owe you a mail, I write to you right away.

I include a special about subscribing >;ODDD.

I will see your post.12/18/2005 03:36:00 PM|W|P| Nora (LV)|W|P|This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.12/18/2005 03:41:00 PM|W|P| Nora (LV)|W|P|This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.12/18/2005 07:38:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

The current discussion about drawing down American troops in Iraq--whether "immediately," "rapidly" or "as soon as possible"--would be amusing were it not so dangerously divorced from reality. There could be no greater mistake than drawing down the U.S. force now, at a moment when there is real hope for success if the United States perseveres.

But Democrats calling for these reductions are not the only ones to blame for giving the impression, however mistaken, that the United States is growing short of breath in Iraq just as the situation appears to be improving. The Bush administration has been talking about reducing forces in Iraq ever since the invasion ended in 2003. Indeed, the history of the administration's endless promises to reduce the size of the force in Iraq puts the current discussion in perspective.

On May 3, 2003, the New York Times reported administration plans to "withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months," reducing the number of troops from 130,000 to 30,000 by the fall of 2003. According to officials, the administration did "not want substantial numbers of American forces to be tied down in Iraq" and was "eager to avoid the specter of American occupation."

That didn't quite pan out. After the invasion, the U.S. force in Iraq turned out to be too small to bring order to the country. The calculation of Pentagon officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, who claimed that the force necessary to bring peace and stability to Iraq need not be larger than the force necessary to invade it, proved mistaken. And so, a year after the invasion, 135,000 troops still were in Iraq, too many to avoid "the specter of American occupation" but too few to make that occupation effective in bringing order and preventing the rise of an armed opposition.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration continued looking for reductions. Pentagon officials told Congress that the numbers would begin to decline significantly by the summer of 2004. But as summer approached, they began asking for more money to maintain troop levels, and some 20,000 troops scheduled for return home had to be kept in the field. In early 2004 administration officials again talked about drawing down forces significantly, perhaps in time for the November elections. That turned out to be wrong, too. By December 2004 troop strength was at 150,000.

Last April, when 142,000 American troops were in Iraq, senior military officials were talking about possibly reducing the force to a little over 100,000 by early 2006. But by August, according to The Post, Pentagon plans called for an increase of 10,000 troops in the fall, with a possible decrease to around 120,000 by the spring of 2006 and further reductions by the end of 2006 to around 100,000. Last month about 150,000 troops were deployed, and, according to the Pentagon, the "current thinking" was that the number could fall to 138,000 after the coming Iraqi elections and then to below 100,000 by late 2006.

President Bush himself repeatedly insisted that he had no intention of withdrawing from Iraq or even reducing the force short of victory. But apparently the president has little control over what his own officials say and do. So there has been a steady drumbeat of anticipated reductions ever since the spring of 2003, with each promise and plan inevitably broken or undone by persistent military realities in Iraq.

Is it any wonder that Democrats uncomfortable defending the war they once supported now feel comfortable talking about withdrawal? Their arguments come directly from administration talking points. Some top military and Pentagon officials have, from the beginning, asserted that the presence of large numbers of U.S. troops is a big reason for the rise of the insurgency and that a "small footprint" was the key ingredient to success. This has proved erroneous. But how much should we blame Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha and John Kerry for making the very same argument and suggesting that Iraq can be made stable and secure only by a steady reduction of forces? Has any senior military officer or top Pentagon official really explained why this is not the case?

They had better begin doing so, even though it might mean owning up to their miscalculation at the end of the war in 2003. The U.S. force was too small at the beginning and remained too small for most of the past two years. As a result, it did not play the role that an occupying force must play in bringing stability to the country, the prerequisites to producing a secure Iraq capable of standing on its own feet. Instead of worrying about an overly large American "footprint," administration and military officials should have been worrying about stopping armed opposition from spreading and about the moral and practical responsibility of providing security to the people whose country we had invaded.

Now that indigenous Iraqi forces are starting to fight more effectively and in greater numbers, we may be getting to the point where the current U.S. force of more than 150,000 troops is adequate to start providing Iraqis the necessary security and stability. We may be today where we should have been two years ago. If American force levels hold steady while Iraqi force levels increase, that gradually shifts the balance in the conflict in our favor. But we will almost certainly have to maintain something like these levels for another two years, and possibly longer.

Talk of reductions and withdrawal is as unhelpful as it almost certainly is ephemeral. For 2 1/2 years, despite the endless promise of reductions, despite election battles, scandals and shifting political fortunes, the United States has maintained a steady force of 130,000 to 150,000 troops in Iraq. You can bet that the numbers will not be dramatically smaller a year from now or even two years from now. Wouldn't we be better off, wouldn't our prospects for success be greater, if we just admitted it? Better still, the administration could explain why it is so important to keep these troops in place so that the public understands the long road ahead. It could start taking steps to increase the overall size of the U.S. military so that the sustained deployment doesn't "break" the Army. And it could stop making false promises of reductions that cannot and should not occur until Iraq is indeed secure and stable.

Robert Kagan is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund. This column originally appeared in the Washington Post.

|W|P|113492045972475648|W|P|Withdrawal Pains|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/18/2005 04:50:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|BRITAIN and America are planning a phased withdrawal of their forces from Iraq as soon as a permanent government is installed in Baghdad after this week’s elections.

In a move that has caused alarm in the outgoing Iraqi administration, American and British officials have made clear that they regard the end of Iraq’s two-and-a-half-year transitional period as the green light to begin withdrawing some of their combined force of around 170,000 troops as early as March.

A senior Western diplomat in Baghdad said yesterday: “One of the first things we will talk about (with the new Iraqi government) is the phased transfer of security, particularly in cities and provinces. It will happen progressively over the next year.”

America has more than 160,000 troops in central and northern Iraq, and Britain about 8,000 based in four southern provinces. Contingency plans are already in place for the small British contingents in the two provinces of Dhiqar and Muthana to go as early as the spring.

The third to go will be Misan province, a far more restive region. A senior British officer said that Iraqi security forces might be able to “keep a lid on the violence” by the end of this year.

The Americans have increased their troop levels to help to bolster security for the elections on Thursday. But they are planning to pull out 30,000 by the new year and may reduce their presence below 100,000 in the coming months. US forces have already handed over security in Najaf and Karbala provinces and in city centres such as Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town.

The moves appear to run contrary to statements by President Bush and John Reid, the Defence Secretary, who insist that coalition forces will not “cut and run” and will stay until the mission in Iraq is complete.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, told The Times yesterday that a hasty exit risked plunging the country into a new bout of violence.

“Those who advocate an early withdrawal do not know what is at stake. The huge investment in blood and money sacrificed by the US could be squandered.

“There would be regional interventions by neighbouring countries and others. The fate of this country and the whole region could be endangered,” he said.

The move to hand over security to the 225,000 Iraqi soldiers and police who have now been trained for active duty comes in the face of mounting public pressure in both Britain and the US to disengage from Iraq, amid the rising death toll and spiralling costs.

An opinion poll conducted for the BBC in Iraq found that only 10 per cent regarded the removal of US troops from the country as the priority for the new government. The public has doubts about the ability of the Iraqi security forces, in particular the police, which is riddled with militia, and the army, which lacks equipment, training and leadership.

|W|P|113491067081717801|W|P|Iraq troop pull-out to begin in months|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/18/2005 04:41:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

The Card. Ruini for a long time is found to being mattatore cultural unwillingly in Italy: it recalls the most general principles of behavior, it exposes universal moral norms, currency bills, marks it dangers in the application of civic norms etc. The scappa to even make the parish priest, that perhaps it is the trade that prefers. Days ago, without to join all the Muslims nearly were all lestofanti, dictators and intolleranti, have exhorted - you notice yourself: it has not commant - the Italian girls to be in guard from possible weddings with Muslims.

Not a garnishment of the Church, but nearly a council of a papà . Null that can make to think next to crashs of civilization or generic sentences of fondamentalismo. Only an warning in order to put in guard. The reasons? If they feel some of all the colors from part of who has said matrimoniale its yes to a maomettano. If then the girl moves in a country Muslim, must dress one risen of uniform, put the chador, tacere, obey and work without too much to expect the collaboration.

An example? The most recent E': a girl Bengali of twelve years - second average - discovers itself married with a also Bengali boy of fourteen years. And this without that it moves from Vicenza where lives from eight years with the family of immigrates to you muslim, and without that the boy makes a step towards Italy. They have thought next to all the parents of he and she. Now, but, the dodicenne it cannot participate to the festivities of the friends, to attend school companions, to approach boys and girls of other religions and other countries, it must sobbarcarsi the house jobs, must digiunare when glielo they impose even if not of it can more from the hunger, is forced to make the tasks to late evening in the month of ramadam the etc. In the point that, reached the esasperazione, with a forbicina in a toilette of the school tries the suicide cutting itself the veins to the wrists since more do not succeed sopportare the separation and the solitudine. One does not forget that to school - where it is between best - it cannot design, because the Islam not chip ax the figures. Ahead in the years it will be able also to discover far away of being one between the mogli of its husband quattordicenne. Thanks, Mr. Ruini parish priest. And the Italian girls lascino not to infatuare itself from the faces and the exotic customs of the Muslims. Perhaps the saying is excessive "moglie and buoi of the countries yours". But a truth spirit contains it.

This is an automatic traslation from italian done by Bablefish (sorry, I understand Italian but really cannot translate it, although I think everyone can understand it)|W|P|113490996130839514|W|P|To marry an islamist?|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/18/2005 04:21:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|I WAS told I would be only 30ft from Saddam Hussein, the closest I have ever been to the dictator who owned my life for three decades. But in the event, all I can see across the courtroom is a skinny old man sitting in a cage. Next to me two other Iraqi translators are sweating and looking very nervous. It’s five minutes before the trial begins, and the three of us are about to start a simultaneous translation on day three of Saddam Hussein’s trial, but not one of us has yet stepped up to the microphone.

Looking into their eyes I realise my colleagues aren’t going to do it, so I go and sit at the microphone, thinking that they may have been among Saddam’s victims, and that’s why they are so nervous. But who wasn’t one of his victims? Isn’t this the man who caused all that suffering to me and my people? Isn’t it the man who banned me three years ago from travelling to see my father in his last days, when he was dying abroad? Wasn’t he the man behind the Iraq-Iran War, during which my uncle was killed? Wasn’t he the source of all the fear we lived in for decades, forcing many of my relatives, including my brother, to leave the country?

So why am I not feeling like my colleagues? After five minutes I realised that this old man sitting in the defendants’ cage in front of me was not the person I used to hate. He is another person. The man I see looks completely different from that man who used to appear on TV in his army uniform, holding a pistol and shooting in the air as if he were aiming at creatures on another planet because he had got bored of killing Iraqis. This man in the courtroom has to wait for his turn to talk, otherwise his mike will be turned off. Saddam never had to wait for his turn because it was his turn for decades, and there was no time for anyone else to say anything. It may look to outsiders as if he has taken control, shouting at the judge. But up close you can see desperation in his eyes.

At one stage the judge called for witnesses. I couldn’t understand which witnesses they were talking about. Any of us could be a key witness against Saddam.

Listening to the first witness become very emotional describing his suffering under Saddam made my colleagues in the booth start to cry. But I didn’t. I know I looked heartless; I wished I could turn off the microphone and explain why I wasn’t crying: to say that people usually cry when the sad end comes but, in this case, the end hasn’t yet come. It is too early for catharsis.

The witness was talking about people getting tortured and killed collectively, talking about losing brothers and loved ones, but that is still going on. Iraqis are still getting killed and tortured, still losing their loved ones. Nothing has changed yet. Iraq’s main problem wasn’t simple enough to be about one man called Saddam. It wasn’t just about this old man sitting in his cage. It was about an entire regime, an international community turning a blind eye to things that fit with its strategies. It was about children dying of hunger during the years of sanctions, whether because of Saddam or not. It is about innocent people losing their lives through weapons, national and multinational. It is about a very dangerous gamble on the fate of a country by the West that isn’t yet "mission accomplished", as President Bush once claimed. You can continue reading here. A little comment: with all my respect, without the intervention this man would still be torturing, killing, maiming, raping, etc, etc, your parents. The fact that now he has to wait for "for his turn to talk, otherwise his mike will be turned off", is simply a consequence of that intervention. It's true that people are dying just now, BUT the difference is that people who die now are killed by people who are not in power, who are just criminals and can be driven to court the momment they are detained by the police. Saddam IS also a criminal, but he was in power, so he could make what he wanted into law. Lastly, would the situation have changed if all public opinions in Europe, for example, would have supporting the intervention against a dictator and not the poor Saddam? I think this is quite the most important question we have to ask ourselves now.

|W|P|113490913598373986|W|P|He scared us for decades, now all I see is a skinny old man in a cage|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com12/18/2005 04:12:00 AM|W|P|Nora (LV)|W|P|

THIRTY terrorist suspects fighting deportation could be freed after Britain’s highest court yesterday outlawed the use of torture evidence. The landmark decision by seven law lords unanimously dealt a fresh blow to the Government’s fight against terrorism. After the July 7 bombings, the Prime Minister had pledged that the “rules of the game” on dealing with terrorists had changed. Last night investigators and prosecuting authorities were preparing to re-examine at least 30 pending cases before a secret immigration court to see whether evidence has been extracted by torture. Defence lawyers have seized on the ruling to question the sources of allegation against defendants facing criminal charges in a series of prosecutions. One man accused of involvement in a plan to carry out a lorry bomb attack alleges that he was tortured during ten months in custody in Pakistan. He is one of several defendants in a terrorist trial scheduled to begin in the new year. Security services must now establish that evidence used before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) is not obtained by torture, the law lords ruled. If courts think “on a balance of probabilities” that it was, they must rule it out. The law lords’ decision was hailed by human rights organisations as a landmark for justice throughout the democratic world. But Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said that it would not affect the fight against terrorism or the 25 people in jail facing deportation on grounds of national security and a further five terrorism suspects held under a form of house arrest. “The Government has always made clear that we do not condone torture in any way, nor would we carry out this completely unacceptable behaviour or encourage others to do so,” he said. “We have always made clear that we do not intend to rely on or present evidence in SIAC which we know or believe to have been obtained by torture.” Gareth Peirce, the lawyer for eight detainees affected by the ruling, said: “We lost our way morally and legally with the claim by the Home Secretary that he would use torture evidence in this country and with the Court of Appeal judgment that endorsed that.” Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which intervened in the appeal with 12 other organisations, said: “If we continue to peel away the layers of protection against torture, we will find a gaping void where our democratic values used to be.” Lords Bingham of Cornhill, Nicholls of Birkenhead, Hoffmann, Hope of Craighead, Rodger of Earlsferry, Carswell and Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood allowed the appeals of the eight detainees held without charge against a majority Court of Appeal ruling. The law lords made abundantly clear that English principles should not be sacrificed in the fight against terrorism.

The historic ruling comes almost exactly a year after the law lords delivered a similar blow to the Government’s anti-terrorist strategy, ruling that detention of suspects without charge or trial was unlawful. In unusually strong criticism of his junior judicial colleagues, Lord Bingham said: “The English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for over 500 years and that abhorrence is now shared by over 140 countries which have acceded to the torture convention". You can continue reading here.

|W|P|113490813555121088|W|P|Torture ruling could let terror suspects go free|W|P|ladyvorzheva@gmail.com