The Palestine Pearl!: Severed From Life

The Palestine Pearl!: Severed From Life: This little boy's arm is severed from his body like Palestine is severed from the rest of the world. The news of his death will stay in Pale...

Justice buried for fake encounter victim

Mufti Islah, CNN-IBN
Updated May 25, 2008 at 12:53am IST

 

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Srinagar: Near the Line of Control in Kashmir, security forces are everywhere, a check post is always around the corner, a barbed wire fence never too far away. In a state where people are always looking over their shoulders, it can be fatal to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In her 56 years, Jana Begum has seen tragedy over and over again. She says 10 years ago two of her sons were picked up near Kupwara by the State Task Force and the Border Security Force.
After a painful search, a policeman told Jana that her sons had been shot dead, and buried in a graveyard in Regipora.
The shock killed her husband. Another of Jana's sons went missing from Deoband in 2002. She says that he too may lie in an unmarked grave, and every visit to the Regipora cemetery stirs up old fears.
"Nobody gave me any answers. I went everywhere, but nobody would tell me anything," Jana Begum says.
A few maize orchards away from Jana's house in Lolab, Wali Mohammad still mourns the loss of his son Farooq, killed in August 2003.
Farooq was allegedly taken from a bakery in Srinagar by the Army, and then shot dead, and passed off as a militant. When Wali learnt that his son was buried in a grave in Srinagar, he went to court and won an order of exhumation. It's been five years, but the tears still come easily.
"Why was my innocent son killed? There are so many cases like this here," Wali Mohammad says.
Jana and Wali say their battle with the government isn't over yet. Once a month, they assemble at a park in Srinagar with some of the other families of those who've disappeared - to remember, to grieve, and to protest, against a government they say is not doing enough.
Like Wali, many relatives dig up bodies from unmarked graves themselves, looking for clues, hoping their loved ones are alive, or hoping for proof they're dead.
For Sudesh Kumari, though, closure came through an anonymous letter written by an Indian soldier.
When Kumari's husband Bhushan Lal was picked up with three other men by army men in Srinagar in April 2004, the family didn't know where to look. But a week later, they received a letter that confirmed their fears.
"My daughter keeps on saying when will daddy come. When I ask her what are you going to do to daddy she says everyone's daddy calls them and I too want to speak to him over phone and tell him to give me school fee and uniform," Sudesh Kumari says.
The family is pained and furious. Furious that their slain loved ones did not get decent last rites according to Hindu customs rather than cremating, they were buried somewhere in the foothills of Lolab valley.
Sudesh Kumari's neighbour Bali Ram has also seen tragedy firsthand. He says his brother Ram Lal was picked up by the Army as well, leaving him to care for his young nephews.
"I have been taking care of the children. The government should think of his children. We are starving," he says
Like Jana Begum, Wali Mohammed, Sudesh Kumari and Bali Ram, many of the families whose relatives have gone missing are desperately poor.
And the loss of a young working family member often pushes them further into poverty. But what they want more than anything else, they say, is the truth to be told - that their sons and husbands were not militants. And until then, justice for them will also lie buried.
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Evidence mounts of atrocities by Libyan “rebels”

Source=Evidence mounts of atrocities by Libyan “rebels”

29 August 2011

A series of reports from journalists on the ground in Tripoli have provided evidence of mass killings by the NATO-backed forces in the Libyan civil war. These reports, which appear in publications largely supportive of the US-NATO intervention to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, further expose the fraudulent claim that the imperialist war against Libya is driven by humanitarian motives and the desire to protect civilian lives.

The Washington Post carried a prominent report Saturday, headlined, “Revenge Killings Mount in Libya, Extrajudicial Attacks by Rebels Cast Shadow Over New Freedom.” The headline refers to the contradiction between the claims by the National Transitional Council (NTC), the new NATO-backed regime in Libya, as well as the Obama administration that what is taking place is a new birth of freedom in Libya and the reality of politically directed and in some cases racially motivated slaughter.

Post reporter Simon Denyer asserts that Gaddafi’s troops “executed scores or even hundreds of political prisoners this week, even as victorious rebel fighters appear to have carried out their own abuses.” He cites the testimony of Diana Eltahawy, Libya researcher for Amnesty International, who “described a record of abuse, torture and the extrajudicial killing of captured pro-Gaddafi fighters that has followed the rebels from east to west as they have taken over the country.”

The reporter himself saw five Gaddafi soldiers wounded and dying in a field hospital now patrolled by the “rebels,” without receiving food, water or medical attention, and 15 bodies, mainly of black Africans presumed to be Gaddafi supporters, left to rot in the sun outside the Bab al-Aziziyah compound where much of Gaddafi’s family lived. According to Denyer, “not all of them looked like ordinary battlefield deaths. Two dead men lay face down on the grass, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic cuffs.”

McClatchy News Service reported the same gruesome scene: “The dead apparently had been pro-Gaddafi fighters, but they had not gone down fighting. Some had been shot inside their tents, possibly asleep, without shoes on. One had been shot inside an ambulance and another had been shot inside a field hospital, still hooked to an intravenous drip. Others had gunshot wounds in the back of their heads, fueling speculation of executions by rebel fighters.”

Patrick Cockburn of the British Independent described the same scene Sunday, under the headline, “Rebels Wreak Revenge on Dictator’s Men.” He wrote: “The rotting bodies of 30 men, almost all black and many handcuffed, slaughtered as they lay on stretchers and even in an ambulance in central Tripoli, are an ominous foretaste of what might be Libya’s future. The incoming regime makes pious statements about taking no revenge on pro-Gaddafi forces, but this stops short of protecting those who can be labeled mercenaries. Any Libyan with a black skin accused of fighting for the old regime may have a poor chance of survival.”

Amnesty International has confirmed that many of the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa have been labeled “mercenaries” by the NTC forces, by virtue of their skin color, and subjected to imprisonment, torture and summary execution.

One account of rebel abuses comes from Alex Crawford of Sky News, a British broadcast network owned by Rupert Murdoch that has enthusiastically backed the “rebels.” The correspondent was embedded with the anti-Gaddafi forces and accompanied a unit that marched from Zawiya into Tripoli. “We report it as we see it,” she said. “We saw Gaddafi fighters who were tied up and executed. It’s war. This is what happens. Rebel retaliations here are really upsetting.”

The British news agency Reuters reported the finding of several mass graves in Tripoli, claiming they were evidence of “widespread summary killings during the battle for the Libyan capital.” While attributing the worst single killing, some 53 bodies found in a burned-out warehouse, to Gaddafi’s forces, the Reuters report continued, “Reports of cold-blooded killings by both sides have surfaced in the last few days, darkening the atmosphere in a city where many residents had greeted Gaddafi’s fall with joy.”

The Los Angeles Times on Sunday wrote of “the visceral violence of rebel forces hammering away at residential neighborhoods known to be strongholds of Kadafi supporters. Rebel fighters use artillery and antiaircraft guns in such districts, which include Abu Salim, Hadba and Salahadin. At one point this week, rebels were firing assault rifles into residential apartment blocks in Abu Salim, where they suspected a sniper was holed up.”

In other words, the NATO-backed forces are engaged in precisely the same indiscriminate firing of heavy weapons in residential neighborhoods that provided the original pretext for the NATO intervention, when Gaddafi ordered similar action by his own forces. The Times account ended by quoting a Tripoli taxi driver who told the newspaper, “I have a fear that one day we’ll be like Iraqis, wishing for the days of Muammar Gaddafi.”

The Independent, in its leading article Sunday, warned the National Transitional Council that the savagery in the streets of Tripoli would backfire politically. It was difficult enough for supporters of the intervention—like the newspaper’s own editorial page—when they could claim that Gaddafi was engaged in slaughtering civilians, but “it will become almost impossible if a shift in the balance of power unleashes mass executions.”

The British newspaper also identified Abdelhakim Belhadj, the newly appointed commander of the Tripoli Military Council, as a former mujaheddin who “had fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban and was an Islamist terror suspect interrogated by the CIA.” Belhadj was a founder of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group, which became the Libyan affiliate of Al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks.

A chilling picture emerges of the new regime being consolidated in Tripoli. It is being consolidated in blood, with massacres of civilians in pro-Gaddafi neighborhoods as well as pogroms of African migrant workers, under the direction of an Al Qaeda ally who now takes his orders from NATO headquarters and the White House.

The crimes being committed by the NATO-backed NTC forces demonstrate the hypocrisy of the propaganda campaign spearheaded by the Obama administration and its accomplices in Britain and France to justify the military onslaught against oil-rich Libya in the name of “human rights” and preventing a bloodbath.

Some of the journalists on the spot in Tripoli have been unable to close their eyes to the bloody settling of accounts that is taking place. That is to their credit, and it demonstrates as well the cynical and reactionary position taken by those “left” commentators in the United States and Europe who continue to justify the imperialist war against Libya and cover up its predatory character.

The events unfolding in Libya are an object lesson to the international working class. Those who held out the prospect of a “progressive” intervention by the imperialist powers to defend democracy and human rights are now politically implicated in unspeakable crimes. The only genuine and consistent opposition to imperialism is that conducted on the basis of the historic principles of the revolutionary socialist movement, as advanced by the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party.

Patrick Martin

THE ROVING EYE How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli

By:  Pepe Escobar 


His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him.

Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last week by Belhaj's men - who were at

 
the forefront of a militia of Berbers from the mountains southwest of Tripoli. The militia is the so-called Tripoli Brigade, trained in secret for two months by US Special Forces. This turned out to be the rebels' most effective militia in six months of tribal/civil war.
Already last Tuesday, Belhaj was gloating on how the battle was won, with Gaddafi forces escaping "like rats" (note that's the same metaphor used by Gaddafi himself to designate the rebels).

Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

He's the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and its de facto emir - with Khaled Chrif and Sami Saadi as his deputies. After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis.

After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices.

In Iraq, Libyans happened to be the largest foreign Sunni jihadi contingent, only losing to the Saudis. Moreover, Libyan jihadis have always been superstars in the top echelons of "historic" al-Qaeda - from Abu Faraj al-Libi (military commander until his arrest in 2005, now lingering as one of 16 high-value detainees in the US detention center at Guantanamo) to Abu al-Laith al-Libi (another military commander, killed in Pakistan in early 2008).

Time for an extraordinary rendition
The LIFG had been on the US Central Intelligence Agency's radars since 9/11. In 2003, Belhaj was finally arrested in Malaysia - and then transferred, extraordinary rendition-style, to a secret Bangkok prison, and duly tortured.

In 2004, the Americans decided to send him as a gift to Libyan intelligence - until he was freed by the Gaddafi regime in March 2010, along with other 211 "terrorists", in a public relations coup advertised with great fanfare.

The orchestrator was no less than Saif Islam al-Gaddafi - the modernizing/London School of Economics face of the regime. LIFG's leaders - Belhaj and his deputies Chrif and Saadi - issued a 417-page confession dubbed "corrective studies" in which they declared the jihad against Gaddafi over (and illegal), before they were finally set free.

A fascinating account of the whole process can be seen in a report called "Combating Terrorism in Libya through Dialogue and Reintegration". [1] Note that the authors, Singapore-based terrorism "experts" who were wined and dined by the regime, express the "deepest appreciation to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation for making this visit possible".

Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir.

In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels".

Fast forward to last February when, a free man, Belhaj decided to go back into jihad mode and align his forces with the engineered uprising in Cyrenaica.

Every intelligence agency in the US, Europe and the Arab world knows where he's coming from. He's already made sure in Libya that himself and his militia will only settle for sharia law.

There's nothing "pro-democracy" about it - by any stretch of the imagination. And yet such an asset could not be dropped from NATO's war just because he was not very fond of "infidels".

The late July killing of rebel military commander General Abdel Fattah Younis - by the rebels themselves - seems to point to Belhaj or at least people very close to him.

It's essential to know that Younis - before he defected from the regime - had been in charge of Libya's special forces fiercely fighting the LIFG in Cyrenaica from 1990 to 1995.

The Transitional National Council (TNC), according to one of its members, Ali Tarhouni, has been spinning Younis was killed by a shady brigade known as Obaida ibn Jarrah (one of the Prophet Mohammed's companions). Yet the brigade now seems to have dissolved into thin air.

Shut up or I'll cut your head off
Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset, Ali Salabi, sitting at the core of the TNC. It was Salabi who negotiated with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the "end" of LIFG's jihad, thus assuring the bright future of these born-again "freedom fighters".

It doesn't require a crystal ball to picture the consequences of LIFG/AQIM - having conquered military power and being among the war "winners" - not remotely interested in relinquishing control just to please NATO's whims.

Meanwhile, amid the fog of war, it's unclear whether Gaddafi is planning to trap the Tripoli brigade in urban warfare; or to force the bulk of rebel militias to enter the huge Warfallah tribal areas.

Gaddafi's wife belongs to the Warfallah, Libya's largest tribe, with up to 1 million people and 54 sub-tribes. The inside word in Brussels is that NATO expects Gaddafi to fight for months if not years; thus the Texas George W Bush-style bounty on his head and the desperate return to NATO's plan A, which was always to take him out.

Libya may now be facing the specter of a twin-headed guerrilla Hydra; Gaddafi forces against a weak TNC central government and NATO boots on the ground; and the LIFG/AQIM nebula in a jihad against NATO (if they are sidelined from power).

Gaddafi may be a dictatorial relic of the past, but you don't monopolize power for four decades for nothing, and without your intelligence services learning a thing or two.

From the beginning, Gaddafi said this was a foreign-backed/al-Qaeda operation; he was right (although he forgot to say this was above all neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy's war, but that's another story).

He also said this was a prelude for a foreign occupation whose target was to privatize and take over Libya's natural resources. He may - again – turn out to be right.

The Singapore "experts" who praised the Gaddafi regime's decision to free the LIFG's jihadis qualified it as "a necessary strategy to mitigate the threat posed to Libya".

Now, LIFG/AQIM is finally poised to exercise its options as an "indigenous political force".

Ten years after 9/11, it's hard not to imagine a certain decomposed skull in the bottom of the Arabian Sea boldly grinning to kingdom come.

Note
1. Click here

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).




Source: Asia Times Online

Israeli War Crimes...

Kashmir war crimes.wmv

The West Wants to take Control of Libya's Oil Wealth

Source: www.globalresearch.ca Interview by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, August 27, 2011
Press TV
Interview with Michel Chossudovsky, Director of Centre for Research on Globalization. While Libyan revolutionaries have not yet won the war in the oil-rich country, Western powers are already discussing the post-Gaddafi period on such issues as how the interim government there needs to honor its oil contracts. In case of internal fighting in Libyan crisis, will the US and its coalition NATO allies deploy boots on the ground to protect their oil interests? In a Press TV interview, Michel Chossudovsky, Director of Center for Research on Globalization, shed more light into the development. The following is a rush transcription of the interview: Press TV: Western powers have said the international  community will support the political transition to a free and democratic Libya: In what form will this "support" come? A "Western" democracy imposed on Libyans? What is that going to means for the Libyans? They used the same language when they attacked Afghanistan 10 years ago and Iraq 8 years ago. The US still insists it soldiers should have immunity in these countries. How will it be in Libya? Chossudovsky: Well I think we have to understand both the nature of this military operation, the covert intelligence behind the rebels, as well as the extensive bombings of civilians infrastructure, residential areas, as well as schools, universities, hospitals which has taken place in the course of the last few months. And particularly virtually continuous bombings, at night in Tripoli in the course of last few days. We are talking about 20,000 sorties, 8,000 strike sorties, In another words what has happened in the course of these last months, particularly in a last few weeks, is the destruction of an entire country, its infrastructure, institutions, very targeted, involving a lot of civilian casualties. In other words, the Western "pro democracy" NATO supported rebels, as well as the NATO supported heads of states and heads of governments, they have blood on their hands, they have a lot  of blood on their hands, because they have killed a lot of women and children. Our correspondent has been reporting form the Rixos Hotel, just a few hours ago, he and several other Journalists, were extracted from the hotel, they were liberated from the Hotel, which they were held for several days, and they are safe now. Chossudovsky. But I can tell you, my understanding is, first of all this is not a revolution. These are NATO trained gunman, and they are Al Qaeda related paramilitaries, mercenaries. They have very little support within civil society in Libya. Whether we like the Gaddafi regime or not, I do not think that this is the issue. The large majority of the population are against the rebellion, and the only thing that sustains the rebellion, are the NATO bombings. And these are criminal bombings; let's say what they are. They are in derogation of international law, actions that are criminal in terms of their consequences: the killings of children, the killing of people in their own homes, and this has been well documented. And what is criminal in this process, is the fact that this war is presented to the media as a humanitarian operation, Realities are turned upside down.  We are told, that war is peace, The lie becomes the truth, essentially that is what has happened. Press TV: But the way this operation is going on Professor, many Western countries including France, they talked about the success of this operation and its knock off effect in the region. Doesn't that pose the threat of abuse of what is called RTP, the Right to Protect under humanitarian motives for their own gains, and in terms of RTP of other countries, such as Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia? If that is the way to go about it why don't they mention those countries? Why mentions only Syria, as French President Sarkozy said in his meeting with NTC? Chossudovsky: Well you know, I have been studying dictatorship for more than 30 years, I've lived in Latin America. The US has never been concerned with the actions of dictators. In fact it was the US which installed the dictators. As long as the dictators follow their orders, and establish a proxy state and serve US interests, they will continue their support.. That was the situation with the Pinochet regime in Chile, and that was the case in Argentina and Brazil, and in Central America. Now we must understand the nature of this military operation in Libya. The rebellion does not exist without NATO. Militarily and politically, it does not exist without NATO. We must understand that NATO Special Forces are already operating within the rebellion, off course covertly, on the ground. They are experienced armed forces. There are also mercenaries and paramilitaries and gunman. Were NATO to withdraw, the rebellion would not last very long. I think any military analyst would confirm that. But now the more fundamental question which is being raised, and it has been raised in the US, and it is already on the drawing board of Pentagon and NATO is... are they going to have boots on the ground? The boots on the ground are already there, the question is whether it is going to be official? The Apache helicopters are there, The Special Forces are there. We have massive deployment of Naval Marines in the Mediterranean, particularly the USS George Bush Sr. aircraft carrier, which is sort of high tech, and it just been released, it has positioned itself in the Mediterranean. And in case of ground war, then we would see allied forces landing on the beaches in Libya. If you look at the scenarios, I don't think that the rebellions would last very long on its own. It does not have military capabilities; it does not even have the institutional capabilities to create a real government. So what is going to happen is... NATO Special Forces are going to remain, others are going to come in, perhaps not officially, boots on the ground, and eventually they are going to establish, as they did in Iraq in 2003, some kind of proxy Libyan government, with people whom they can trust, they might contemplate, modeling Libya, on the sheikhdoms, as in Saudi Arabia, or in the Persian Gulf states. In any even, neo-colonial, re-conquest of not only Libya, but the whole continent of Africa is contemplated. This implies the militarization of the African Continent with AFRICOM [United States Africa Command]. This is an integral part of the agenda. Press TV: Go ahead Professor. Chossudovsky: Several years ago, I was asked the said... this was in regards to Iraq... they said Professor I was in public lecture, they said Professor we need that oil. Okay that is the Western positions, “We need that oil.” My answer to them is trade, don't steal it. That is what the Western oil companies are there for, they have already position themselves. The Libyan Oil Company was a very important state entity, which was there to serve the Libyan people. It was used to finance economic development. It is slated to be taken over and privatised, handed it over to Total, which is the French Oil company and other Western oil companies. What I said, when I was asked that question: "if you need oil, well, you should buy it on the market. And accept the fact that the large share of oil resources [reserves] are in Muslim countries, it is more that 60 percent, and it belong the people of those countries. They can buy it from them; they do not need to invade countries and then steal the oil from them. And that is what is happening, it happened in Iraq, and now it is happening in Libya. [Minor editing by Global Research] click here for Video version http://www.presstv.ir/detail/195674.html
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky