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State Department Is Keeping Pakistani Drone Victim’s Lawyer Out of the Country So Survivors Won’t Testify in Front of Members Of Congress (with Video and Petition)

The State Dept. prevented the lawyer challenging U.S.-led drone attacks from appearing before Congress.
September 24, 2013  |
Shahzad Akbar, the lawyer challenging US-led drone warfare in Pakistan, has been blocked by the U.S. Department of State from appearing before a Congressional ad hoc hearing with his clients who have survived drone strikes in their town. Rafiq ur Rehman – a teacher in a primary school in North Waziristan – lost his mother in the same October 2012 drone attack that hospitalized his children Nabila and Zubair.
It is necessary for Mr. Akbar  to accompany  his client Mr. Rehman and his two children,  in order for them to come to D.C. Such testimony would be the first time that drone victims from Pakistan have come to Capitol Hill to present the on-the-ground reality of America’s drone policy.

Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-09) has requested that the State Department give Shahzad Akbar a visa to bring his clients to testify. He explained: “Congress would like to conduct an ad hoc hearing on drones, and it is very important for us to hear from victims of drone strikes. Rafiq ur Rehman, a school teacher in Pakistan, lost his 67-year old mother in a drone strike, and two of his children also suffered drone-strike-related injuries. The State Department has granted the visas of Rafiq and his children to  travel to the U.S. and share their stories with Congress. However, it has not yet issued a visa for the family’s lawyer and translator, Shahzad Akbar. Without Mr. Akbar, Rafiq and his children will not be able to travel to the U.S.. I encourage the State Department to approve Mr. Akbar’s visa immediately.”

Robert Greenwald, who is the director of the forthcoming documentary  Unmanned  met and interviewed  Mr. Akbar and Mr. Rehman in Pakistan and shared their stories with Congressman Grayson.

Greenwald recounts:  “While filming  Unmanned in Pakistan, I saw first-hand the critical role Mr. Akbar is playing in reaching, protecting, and encouraging those, like Rafiq and his family, affected by tragic drone attacks to use the legal system – not violence. This man should be welcomed and celebrated, not silenced.”

“I also met and interviewed Rafiq and his family and know that if Mr. Akbar were allowed into America by the State Department, Congress and the American people would be as moved as I was about the plight of these survivors in a covert war.”

Greenwald’s film,   Unmanned: America’s Drone War investigates the impact that U.S. drone strikes have across the globe—the violation of international law, the loss of life, the far-reaching implications for the communities that live under drones, and blowback the United States faces.

For the film,  Greenwald traveled to Pakistan in the fall of 2012 and interviewed more than 35 victims, witnesses, psychiatrists, and Pakistani leaders. The film will include  exclusive footage  from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, Jirgas, and  interviews with many drone policy experts.

As for Mr. Akbar – who is a  legal fellow at Reprieve, an international  justice organization  —  he explained  that before his work with drone victims, he freely traveled to the US:

“Before I began representing civilian victims in 2010, I used to travel regularly to the U.S. My visa would be processed in 3 working days. Then, in 2011, I applied for a visa to talk at a conference about my work with drone strike victims. Suddenly, I was told my visa required additional processing which took 14 months. This time, the denial is to stop me from talking to American lawmakers who have invited me to speak about what I have witnessed. I hope to tell them about the impact of drone strikes  and also to shed light on the fact that policies like drone strikes are actually a challenge to America’s national security.

Akbar represents  156 civilian drone strike victims and families, families he says   who have lost children, parents, and siblings, are now trying through legal means to achieve justice.

Watch a one-minute clip of Rafiq ur Rehman interviewed in the forthcoming documentary Unmanned.  Sign the petition urging the State Department to give a visa to Mr Akbar.

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Syria’s chemical weapons

Brian Whitaker continues to follow the strange case of a widely circulated article alleging chemical weapons were used by Syrian rebels — one of whose alleged authors has been vainly trying to remove her byline.

Mint Press named the journalists who wrote the story as Dale Gavlak (an established freelance based in Jordan who has worked regularly for the Associated Press) and Yahya Ababneh (a young Jordanian who claims to have carried out journalistic assignments “in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Libya for clients such as al-Jazeera, al-Quds al-Arabi, Amman Net, and other publications”).

The story got more attention than it might otherwise have deserved because Gavlak’s relationship with the Associated Press gave it an air of credibility. Ababneh, on the other hand, is virtually unknown and Google searches for examples of his previous journalistic work drew a blank.

Yesterday, however, Gavlak issued a statement denying that she was an “author” or “reporter” for the article. “Yahya Ababneh is the sole reporter and author,” she said. It was a carefully-worded statement which did not specifically exclude the possibility that Gavlak had been involved in some other capacity in helping to produce the story.

Meanwhile the Sunday Telegraph publishes an interview with a former chemical weapons chief in the Syrian army:

Gen Sakat says he was ordered three times to use chemical weapons against his own people, but could not go through with it and replaced chemical canisters with ones containing harmless bleach.

He also insists that all such orders had to come from the top – President Assad himself – despite insistent denials by the regime that it has never used chemical weapons.

Now he also claims to have his own intelligence that the Syrian president is evading the terms of a Russian-brokered deal to destroy his chemical weapons by transferring some of his stocks to his allies – Hizbollah, in Lebanon, and Iran.

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Adraa Women’s Prison is turning into Just another

bandannie apologizes for the poor presentation

– Press Statement

The

Violation Documentation Center in Syria (VDC) has been informed that Adraa

Women’s prison

has become similar to syrian security branches in many aspects, especially

regarding the way female detainees are treated, the poor health conditions and the lack of

nutrition.

This prison is located in Adraa City in Damascus suburbs, just next to the men’s prison in

the south-eastern side. It has recently witnessed accelerated events, the most recent of which

has been an open hunger strike carried out by women detainees few weeks ago, to demand

better conditions of detention and to accelerate their standing before courts.

Adraa Women’s Prison is divided into two sections:

– Criminal Section:

specialized in various Criminal charges

–

Political Section: divided into two lockups:

1. Commitment lockup:

includes all detainees transferred from various security

branches. At the present time, the number of detainees there is about women,

and this number is subject to changes according to the number of detainees that are

being transferred daily from other security branches, or those who are being moved

to:

2. Arrest lockup:

currently includes more than 40 detainees who have appeared before

the court. This number continues to increase as a result of the large number of

detainees that has been transferred to the judiciary from various security branches.

The

Criminal Section also includes a number of political detainees. This was confirmed by a

lawyer who encountered more than ten cases of detainees that got arrested by security

branches, either because of their participation in revolutionary activities or due to their

political backgrounds, and was consequently admitted to the criminal section, to be sent, later

on, to criminal trials facing purely criminal charges such as prostitution, theft and drug abuse.

——————————————————————————

One of the former female detainees told

VDC that after she had been detained by the Raid

Detachment Branch

215, the subsidiary of Military Intelligence Department, she was

surprisingly transferred to the ” Criminal Section” with dozens of women prisoners who had

been facing criminal charges, on top of which was prostitution, although she had been

arrested in

March 2013 for her revolutionary media and field activism.

Most of the former women detainees whom

VDC interviewed agreed that Adraa Women’s

Prison does not differ much from any other security branch. Many detainees even confirmed

that it turned into a mere security branch, especially the “Commitment Section”, after the

officer in charge of the prison, General “Faisal Oqla

” from Deir ez-Zor, banned all the

privileges that central prisons usually have. He prohibited TVs, radios, refrigerators, buying

any vegetable or meat, and handmade crafts such as

“beads and wool”. He also prohibited the

detainees from making any phone calls, and prohibited the parents from bringing books or

any kind of food for the detainees

. Moreover, prisoners from the “Prostitution Section” were

brought to inspect the other detainees’ personal items in a provocative way

without any

justifiable reasons. All of those mentioned actions began in August 2012.

In Adraa Prison, female detainees are exposed to several kinds of punishments by

the prison guards; such as leaving detainees in the individual cell for long periods,

beating them with truncheons, pull their hair, or beat them on the feet ‘Falaqah’.

One of the female detainees told

VDC:

“Once, a few security guards entered the prison dormitory, and

started beating

more than 20 of the detainees with truncheons. Then, they took one of them-after

taking off her ‘Hijab’ (veil) and pulling her hair-to the ‘torturing room’, where she was

brutally beaten on her feet. She couldn’t walk properly for three days after that. This

happened, specifically, last May 2013.

On another time, during an inspection, they found one of the detainees reading the

Holy Quran. She had a quarrel with them and then they hit her and stepped on the

Holy Quran. This happened, specifically, in July 2013, a few days before Holy

Ramadan.

“

Slow death” is how one of the former female detainees described the condition of some

sick women there. Despite the fact that there were pregnant women, babies, elderly women,

and women with malignant diseases, there were no specialized doctors in Adraa Prison. The

Administration of the Prison justified the lack of medical care by saying that the road to the

hospital is so dangerous due to the clashes, and that sending a detainee to the hospital

requires the ‘approval of some authority’ which they didn’t name. Many deaths have

happened in the prison, the last of which was the death of a detainee, who was very sick and

had some kind of stroke or shortness of breath and died immediately. One of the detainees

who witnessed the incident stated to VDC that

“The other detainees did not know the nature of the disease of (Huda 39 years old,

Homs), as she suffered some kind of “stroke” or “shortness of breath”. Despite the fact that

other detainees asked the guards to take her to the medical clinic, but they refused, which

caused her immediate death. This was in the first week of February 2013.

According to another former detainee testimony, one of her cellmates tried to commit

suicide by cutting her ‘artery’ because they did not provide milk for her 10

-month-old baby,

to whom she gave birth during her detention period in Homs’ Central Prison before being

transferred to Adraa prison. Also, in another incidence recorded few weeks ago, an 8-daysold

baby died in the same prison, due to the lack of nutrition and the absence of newborn

incubators.

The VDC in Syria appeals to all humanitarian and human rights international

organizations to intervene immediately in order to release all female detainees from the

prisons of the Syrian regime, and to stop the heinous practices against Adraa W

omen’s

Prison detainees.

Violation Documentation Center in Syria

September 2013

Violation Documentation Center in Syria E-mail:     editor@vdc-sy.org
Websit:    www.vdc-sy.org Facebook:  www.facebook.com/vdcsy Twitter:    twitter.com/VDC_Syria
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Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown Season 2 – Jerusalem

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DEF CON 21 Presentation By Mudge – Unexpected Stories From a Hacker Inside the Government


Having had the opportunity to see things from within the hacker community and from a senior position in the DoD, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko has some enlightening stories, and picks some of his favorites to share. He discusses Julian Assange’s story to him about US government involvement in the origins of Wikileaks, how the DoD caused Anonymous to target government systems, some of the ways in which the defense industrial base’s poor security works financially in its favor, and cases where the government missed opportunities for positive outreach and understanding with this community.

You’ll probably recognize parts of these stories from the news, but the origins and back stories are lesser known.

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Retraction and Apology to Our Readers for Mint Press Article on Syria Gas Attack

 

Eric Garris, September 20, 2013

On August 31, Antiwar.com reprinted an article from Mint Press News: “Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack.” We originally linked to it, but then reprinted on our site at the request of Mint Press because traffic on their site was crashing their server. The validity of the story was primarily based on the fact that the supposed co-author (Dale Gavlak) is a reporter for Associated Press.

Many other articles have been written which refer to the information contained in the Mint Press piece, including ones appearing on Antiwar.com.

Dale Gavlak has issued a statement saying she did not co-author the article and denies that she traveled to Syria or contributed to the article in any way. Here is his statement:

Mint Press News incorrectly used my byline for an article it published on August 29, 2013 alleging chemical weapons usage by Syrian rebels. Despite my repeated requests, made directly and through legal counsel, they have not been willing to issue a retraction stating that I was not the author. Yahya Ababneh is the sole reporter and author of the Mint Press News piece.   To date, Mint Press News has refused to act professionally or honestly in regards to disclosing the actual authorship and sources for this story.

I did not travel to Syria, have any discussions with Syrian rebels, or do any other reporting on which the article is based.  The article is not based on my personal observations and should not be given credence based on my journalistic reputation. Also, it is false and misleading to attribute comments made in the story as if they were my own statements.

The staff of Antiwar.com sincerely and deeply apologizes for being a part of spreading this article. We also apologize to Dale Gavlak.

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Israeli forces manhandle EU diplomats, seize West Bank aid

 

1 of 4. French diplomat Marion Castaing lays on the ground after Israeli soldiers carried her out of her truck containing emergency aid, in the West Bank herding community of Khirbet al-Makhul, in the Jordan Valley September 20, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini

By Noah Browning

KHIRBET AL-MAKHUL, West Bank | Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:51am EDT

KHIRBET AL-MAKHUL, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.

A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.

“They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity,” French diplomat Marion Castaing said.

“This is how international law is being respected here,” she said, covered with dust.

The Israeli army and police declined to comment.

Locals said Khirbet Al-Makhul was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel’s high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.

Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where, they say, their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.

Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.

Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the European Union’s political office, turned up on Friday with more supplies. As soon as they arrived, about a dozen Israeli army jeeps converged on them, and soldiers told them not to unload their truck.

“It’s shocking and outrageous. We will report these actions to our governments,” said one EU diplomat, who declined to be named because he did not have authorization to talk to the media.

“(Our presence here) is a clear matter of international humanitarian law. By the Geneva Convention, an occupying power needs to see to the needs of people under occupation. These people aren’t being protected,” he said.

In scuffles between soldiers and locals, several villagers were detained and an elderly Palestinian man fainted and was taken for medical treatment to a nearby ambulance.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that Makhul was the third Bedouin community to be demolished by the Israelis in the West Bank and adjacent Jerusalem municipality since August.

Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of progressively taking their historical grazing lands, either earmarking it for military use or handing it over to the Israelis whose settlements dot the West Bank.

Israelis and Palestinians resumed direct peace talks last month after a three-year hiatus. Palestinian officials have expressed serious doubts about the prospects of a breakthrough.

“What the Israelis are doing is not helpful to the negotiations. Under any circumstances, talks or not, they’re obligated to respect international law,” the unnamed EU diplomat said.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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‘It is Zionist to think that American Jews have any connection to Israel’

Sep 19, 2013 06:13 pm | M.J. Rosenberg MJ Rosenberg posted the following story on his site, under the headline, “Jewish college kid beats the crap out of me on Israel.”

I was on the bus, returning to Washington from New York where I spent Yom Kippur. I wouldn’t have talked to the kid next to me him except I could not find the outlet near my seat to charge my phone. He saw me struggling and helped me find it. (It was camouflaged under the seat in front of mine). We started to talk and, after I told him I had been in Manhattan for the Jewish holiday, he said that he had been there for the same reason.

We talked about Georgetown and why he chose to go there and then he asked me what I did. I told him “my story” which led him to say that he had no interest in the Middle East at all. His issue was income inequality in the United States. Nonetheless, he was fairly knowledgeable about the Middle East.

As the conversation went on, I discovered he was fairly knowledgeable about everything. Judging from his looks I’d have taken him for a jock or a preppy but he seemed more intellectual than either of those categories would suggest. After telling him about my odyssey from AIPAC to critic of both AIPAC and Israel, he said this (paraphrase, obviously): “I don’t get it.

I’m Jewish but Israel is not important to me. I live here and I’d like to help out people who live here. 46 million Americans live in poverty and the situation keeps getting worse and worse. In fact, this country keeps getting worse. Why should I worry about Israel?” I explained why and he said: “You may not realize it, but your premise is Zionist. You think Jews are, by definition, connected to Israel and have to care about it.

But that isn’t who I am. I’m an American kid whose religion is Jewish. Period. I have no obligation to Israel or to Palestinians because I feel no connection to either. I feel that as a privileged American I do have an obligation to Americans who aren’t privileged. I’m not saying I don’t care about people in other countries. I do.

Maybe some day I will think about Israel more than I do. But, just as likely, I’ll care about poverty in Latin America. As for your point that America is responsible for Palestinian suffering by sending aid to Israel, I agree. But how does that make the situation unique? As a taxpayer, actually a future US taxpayer, I will be contributing to all kinds of terrible things everywhere. But my being Jewish has nothing to do with it. It’s not like I would ever take a Birthright trip! I don’t consider Israel to be my birthright.”

I asked him if he was typical of his friends. He said that he was. “The Jewish kids who are deeply involved with Israel or Palestinians are sort of the same kids. They accept your premise that they are connected to that place. I don’t and most of my friends don’t either. I’d say we are post-national. America is our country because we live here. Period. It’s home. But then we travel, see the world, and want to help other people, at least some of us do. But Israel is not special to us and neither are Palestinians.

“You, MJ, are a Zionist. You think I have an obligation to try to stop the occupation because of my religion. To me, that is no different than telling me I have to support Netanyahu because of my religion. I see no difference. It is outmoded thinking. Tell me why Israel and Palestine is any more my problem than that of any other American my age, or why I should think about it anymore than I think about the treatment of women in India. I have the right to choose the issues I care about and work to solve, don’t I? Or does my being Jewish mean I have my choice made for me? Show me where I’m wrong? I’m sure that if you were 20, you would feel the exact same way. Am I right?” I had no response.

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Calling US Middle East “peace process” the farce that it is

September 19th, 2013 in Israel

Great piece by Bill Van Es­veld, a Mid­dle East re­searcher at Human Rights Watch based in Jerusalem, pub­lished in The Hill:

Twenty years ago, Is­raeli and Pales­tin­ian lead­ers signed the Oslo ac­cords on the White House lawn, open­ing the “peace process” that the US is try­ing to rein­vig­o­rate. Yet the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has failed to learn the les­son of the past two decades: keep­ing human rights vi­o­la­tions off the peace talks agenda is a los­ing strat­egy. In this re­spect, Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry’s re­cent shut­tle diplo­macy has ac­tu­ally reached new lows.

Kerry, ac­cord­ing to news re­ports and other sources, met with Eu­ro­pean lead­ers in Vil­nius on Sep­tem­ber 7 and urged them to post­pone new rules that would en­sure Is­rael could not use Eu­ro­pean Union funds to sup­port West Bank set­tle­ments.

But Eu­ro­pean sources say the rules are re­quired by the EU’s own law, which in­cor­po­rate its oblig­a­tions under in­ter­na­tional law not to “rec­og­nize” il­le­gal ac­tions by other coun­tries. Al­low­ing EU aid to be used to ben­e­fit Is­rael’s set­tle­ments could breach that law. Kerry con­tended that Eu­rope’s at­tempt to pre­vent it­self from vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tional law could com­pli­cate the peace process.

This isn’t the first time. The U.S., in the name of pro­mot­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, has con­sis­tently ap­plied pres­sure to block ac­count­abil­ity for rights vi­o­la­tions, from ve­to­ing Se­cu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions crit­i­cal of Is­raeli vi­o­la­tions to call­ing on Pales­tine not to join the In­ter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court – even at times when the peace process has been prac­ti­cally mori­bund.

Is­rael’s of­fi­cial po­si­tion is that the pri­mary re­spon­si­bil­ity for Pales­tini­ans’ human rights in oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries lies with the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity. Yet Is­rael al­lows Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity se­cu­rity ser­vices to op­er­ate in less than 20 per­cent of the West Bank.

In the areas of the West Bank where Is­rael has ex­clu­sive con­trol of se­cu­rity, its jus­tice sys­tems finds 99.74 per­cent of Pales­tin­ian de­fen­dants guilty of “se­cu­rity of­fenses,” but closes more than 90 per­cent of Pales­tin­ian com­plaints of set­tler vi­o­lence with­out even fil­ing an in­dict­ment. Only six Is­raeli sol­diers have been con­victed of un­law­fully killing Pales­tini­ans since 2000, and none served more than seven months in jail.

The U.S. has also failed to ad­dress abuses, in­clud­ing cred­i­ble al­le­ga­tions of tor­ture, by the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity. U.S. diplo­mats in Jerusalem told me that the U.S. would op­pose Pales­tin­ian ef­forts to sign human rights treaties. This has been an op­tion since the ma­jor­ity of UN mem­ber states rec­og­nized Pales­tin­ian state­hood in 2012 and would make it eas­ier to hold the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­ity to ac­count for abuses. But the U.S. diplo­mats I spoke to said such a move would be “un­help­ful to final sta­tus ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

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