Grieving Palestinians pledge bloody revenge
for killing of Hamas leader

By Donald Macintyre

Gaza, West Bank, Apr. 19 — Hamas moved swiftly yesterday to build a new underground leadership in the aftershock of Israel’s assassination of Abdel Azis Rantissi little more than three weeks after he took over as head of the faction in Gaza.

It secretly designated the third Gaza leader in a month to replace Rantissi, who was assassinated by a helicopter missile that destroyed his car on Apr. 17 near his home. His driver and bodyguard were killed instantly.

Khaled Mashaal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, ordered Hamas to choose a new leader in the Strip but not to name him in the hope of preventing him becoming an immediate target for a fresh assassination. Hamas used the second huge funeral procession in Gaza within a month to mount a defiant and emotional demonstration of support and continuity in the face of the loss of the hardline and utterly uncompromising figurehead Israel holds personally responsible for the deaths of scores of its own citizens in suicide attacks.

As tens of thousands of chanting supporters packed into the narrow streets of Gaza City’s Old Souk district to accompany Rantissi’s body from his home to the al-Omari mosque, Hamas activists handed out hastily printed leaflets to bystanders announcing the decision on the new leadership. The leaflets pledged “to the Palestinian and Arab nation that the resistance will continue.”

Discoloration was still visible on Rantissi’s pallid and bearded face as his body, covered with a sheet and green Hamas flag, left the mosque on an open stretcher borne through a dense, swaying crowd by armed balaclava-clad pallbearers from the faction’s Qassam military wing. There were volleys of gunfire into the air as the procession wound away from the mosque beneath a 30 ft green banner with the Muslim proclamation: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah.”

As the procession wound towards the Sheikh Bedwan cemetery, the crowd chanted: “Our blood, our souls, we sacrifice for you, Rantissi.”

On the side of Lababidi street in Gaza city Apr. 18, there were still fragments of charred debris from Rantissi’s burnt-out white Subaru where it had slowed to a halt opposite a mineral water shop some 30 yards on from where it took the missile hit.

Amal Abdul Jawad, 35, who runs the shop, said he was outside at the time. “I heard a very loud explosion. I rushed into my house because the glass had broken and I wanted to see if my family was all right. Then I came down with a fire extinguisher and helped to put the fire out. My brothers also came with water from the shop.”

He said the two men in front had been killed instantly, and that Rantissi, whom he had not immediately recognized, was in the back. “People tried to pull him out but the front seats had collapsed on his knees. He was moving but he couldn’t speak and he was bleeding from the mouth and nose.” Jawad said that the Hamas leader had finally been pulled out by his shoulders. No ambulance arrived so bystanders had stopped a passing motorist to take him to Shifa Hospital, where he died. Jawad said the process had taken longer because passers-by feared another missile attack.

The green flags of the Hamas supporters mingled in a show of unity with the yellow and black banners of Islamic Jihad, the yellow ones of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and the occasional red one of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Ahmed Jebril, secretary general of the PFLP-GC (General Command), based in Damascus, warned of an “open war against the Zionist-American enemy and Arabs ... who side with them.”

Hamas activists repeatedly pledged through loudspeakers that the faction would easily survive the assassination as it had that of Sheikh Yassin, leading incantations of “Your leader? Rantissi. Your way? Resistance. Your movement? Hamas. Your hope? To be martyrs.”

With repeated grenade explosions and gunfire, Rantissi was buried on the slopes of Sheikh Bedwan amid a huge crowd of mourners .

Earlier, in the mourning tent close to the Rantissi home, the Hamas leader’s son Mohammed, 25, said he had gone to the scene of the attack. After he was told of his father’s death he went home to join his mother and receive condolences. His father had not been living at home, he said. “He was a fugitive; he stayed in different houses at different times.” Asked whether he expected retaliation in vengeance for the assassination of his father, he said: “God willing,” adding that this was a matter for the military wing of Hamas. Before the funeral procession left the neighborhood, hundreds of the mourners pointed skywards shouting “Allah-u-akbar” (God is great). A Hamas activist said: “Our leaders are presented to death before our normal soldiers. Millions of Hamas supporters will follow you, Rantissi, until we gain the whole of Palestine.”

Most bystanders expressed strong support for Hamas and its assassinated leader. “Now every Palestinian is required to get revenge for this, not just Hamas,” said Mohammed al-Haj, 28.But one of his friends, who gave his name only as Ameen, said that for all the predictions of revenge after Sheikh Yassin’s killing, none had materialized. “Hamas has taken many losses in the West Bank,” Ameen, 26, admitted.

Rantissi said in a BBC interview not long before his death that if he had the choice between dying because of a heart attack or an Apache helicopter he would choose the latter. In exuberant homage to this preference for martyrdom over natural death an unknown graffiti artist had early yesterday covered a wall close to Rantissi’s home with his own epitaph in Arabic for the Hamas leader: “You got what you wanted, Abu Mohammed [father of Mohammed] You win.”

Israeli prosecutors yesterday indicted a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber whose globally televised surrender last month brought condemnation of Palestinian militants. Hussam Abdu had a bomb strapped to his body when soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint near Nablus.

Source: Independent (UK)

US military accused of ‘pressuring’ journalists

By Patrick Barrett

Apr. 14 — The US military has been accused of threatening the media covering the conflict in Iraq and pressuring journalists into presenting a one-sided picture of events.

Al-Jazeera, the Arab TV channel, made the accusations after a US army spokesman, Brigadier General Kimmitt, accused the station and the Dubai-based al-Arabiya news channel, of taking an “anti-coalition” stance in their reporting.

The already fractious relationship between the US military in Iraq and Arab media has been made more difficult by pictures of wounded civilians within the besieged town of Fallujah. The American administration in Iraq accused al-Jazeera of exaggerating the number of civilian casualties and helping to boost anti-coalition sentiment.

The US marine commander in charge of Fallujah has said the majority of the estimated 600 people killed in the four-day conflict were legitimate targets, saying, “95 percent of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting.” However al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya have repeatedly shown pictures of women and children among the dead and injured.

In a statement the TV channel said the US military was putting “unjustified pressure on the media.”

“Al-Jazeera rejects these accusations and considers them a threat to the right of the media to cover the reality in Iraq amid a difficult and complex situation on the ground.”

Al-Jazeera’s accusations follow suggestions that US soldiers fired on a reporting team from the station based in Fallujah and had made the removal of al-Jazeera’s crew from the town one of its terms for a ceasefire with the rebels.

A spokesman added that the station felt compelled to make it clear to viewers that it was broadcasting an unbiased account of events in Iraq.

“We felt it was a grave accusation and wanted to set the record straight. Al-Jazeera is determined to maintain its professional integrity and reporting in a balanced way,” he said.

Al-Jazeera’s claims come amid increasing concern that the mounting dangers facing western journalists in Iraq could mean the end of independent reporting from the country.

‘We will not operate outside Baghdad’

James Hider, a Times reporter who is embedded with US Marines near the front line outside Falluja, said the threat of kidnapping had become so acute that the majority of western journalists were no longer venturing beyond Baghdad.

“It was very serious even before the current situation, but for the past month it has got much worse. The kidnappings and shooting are coming thick and fast.

“We’ve more or less decided not to operate outside Baghdad. A lot of pretty seasoned war correspondents have decided it’s not worth the risk,” Hider said.

Hider, whose colleague Stephen Farrell was kidnapped and eventually released last week, said the only way he and a group of other western media personnel had made it to Fallujah was on heavily armed US helicopter gun ships.

Francis Harris, the deputy foreign news editor at the Daily Telegraph, said the situation in Iraq could get to the stage where the paper would consider withdrawing its reporters.

“It could come to that. What would trigger an exodus is something bad happening to a British journalist.

“If that happens you’d get to a situation like Beirut in the 1980s, when everybody left except a hardened few.”

‘If bandits are after cash you are in real trouble’

Hider said the journalists who were most at risk of kidnapping were those with little experience of the country or those who were on short-term visits.

“A lot of people come in on short-term visits and pick up drivers and translators not knowing who they are. There have been a few kidnappings that have had the look of inside jobs. So we work with a trusted pool of drivers and translators.”

In spite of the increasingly serious situation in Iraq, Hider said he believed the western press would stay even if journalists were restricted to Baghdad and the Palestine Hotel, which is being used as a base by most foreign journalists in the country.

“The Palestine Hotel is pretty much unassailable. It’s unlikely journalists would be driven out, it’s just that then the danger is that you couldn’t get the story.”

He said the real threat to journalists came from bands of Iraqi insurgents unconnected with the main resistance group.

“The level of danger depends on who you get kidnapped by. If it’s the hard core resistance, they are fairly disciplined and want journalists to come in and see what the US is doing. If you get taken by some dodgy group that’s little more than a group of bandits that have decided to join up with the resistance movement or are after cash, then you are in real trouble.”

Movement of British journalists restricted

The Daily Telegraph currently has its staff reporter, David Blair, and freelance stringer, Jack Fairweather, on the ground in Baghdad, but Harris said their movements were being hampered by the growing danger from kidnappers and resistance fighters outside the capital.

“It has greatly limited their ability to travel outside Baghdad.

“They are being considerably more cautious than they were before this trouble began. But inevitably in order to do the job, they need to talk to people. It’s never been the policy of this paper or any other British paper to have reporters go around in forests of guns to guarantee their security,” he said.

“If it becomes too dangerous you end up with journalists locked up in secure zones interviewing each other and relying on the authorities for information,” he said.

Over the past week, as well as Farrell, a French journalist, two Japanese and two Czech journalists have been kidnapped along with a growing number of foreign contract workers.

Hider said most experienced journalists had been using ordinary Iraqi cars and were accompanied by a trusted driver and translator when venturing around Baghdad or to other towns.

But even with extra precautions such as tinted windows and disguises, Hider said traveling on the roads to key areas such as Najaf and Kut was now deemed too dangerous by most journalists.

On his last drive outside of Baghdad - to Najaf - Hider said he and his colleagues had had to run the gauntlet of burning vehicles and shooting on either side of the road.

“The danger has been being mistaken for a contractor. The number one rule is, don’t be driven around in a big white 4x4 like the ones used by contractors, because they are basically bullet magnets.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

Death row inmates await review
ordered by world court

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico D.F., Mexico, Apr. 16 (IPS) — Osvaldo Torres holds out hope that he will not be executed in the United States on May 18. The International Court of Justice ordered the review of his case, and of the cases of 50 other Mexicans in US prisons sentenced to death.

But the states holding the prisoners say the punishment will be carried out. The Mexicans were tried and sentenced in state, not federal courts.

“He’s very optimistic now. He gives us strength. He tells us they will not kill him,” Roberto Torres, Osvaldo’s father, said in a telephone interview with IPS from the US state of Oklahoma, where his son sits on death row.

The International Court of Justice(ICJ) in The Hague issued a ruling in late March that the United States violated the rights of 51 Mexicans sentenced to death. The United States failed to guarantee their right to assistance from the Mexican government from the time they were arrested, according to the decision.

“By not informing, without delay upon their detention, the 51 Mexican nationals... of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of Apr. 24 1963, the United States of America breached the obligations incumbent upon it.”

“The appropriate reparation in this case consists in the obligation of the United States of America to provide, by means of its own choosing, review and reconsideration of the convictions and sentences of the Mexican nationals,” said the ICJ.

But the Oklahoma state prosecutor’s office said it would not abide by the resolution and that Torres will be executed on May 18 as scheduled. Meanwhile, in Texas, just south of Oklahoma, where 16 Mexicans sit on death row, officials issued a communiqué asserting that the ICJ “does not have jurisdiction” in that state.

On the list of the 51 Mexicans sentenced to death in the United States, Torres is the first scheduled for execution.

“The lawyers and my son himself tell us to have faith, that it is very possible that the execution order will be annulled. But we no longer know what to believe. We are putting our hope in God,” said Roberto Torres, a Mexican who 23 years ago migrated to the United States, where he works in construction.

“The life of my family has been in crisis for the past 11 years, ever since they unjustly arrested my son and put him behind bars,” he said.

Osvaldo Torres, now 28, was sentenced to death in 1993 for the murders of María Yáñez, 35, and her husband Francisco Morales, 38, during a robbery at their home.

The Mexican government was not notified of his arrest and trial, nor was Torres informed that he had the right to receive legal assistance from his country.

Now the Mexican government of President Vicente Fox is rushing to defend its nationals on death row in the United States, sending envoys earlier this month to demand that Washington comply with the ICJ resolution.

The Fox administration also redoubled its legal consulting efforts for each of the Mexicans sentenced to death by US courts in a bid to stay the executions.

If the United States does not heed the ruling of the ICJ, the highest justice authority of the United Nations, Mexico will take the case to the UN Security Council, says Fox.

But observers maintain that even so, most of the cases of the Mexican nationals will never be reviewed.

“The truth is that the Mexican government has done a great deal for us. It has advised us during this stage, and I hope it is successful in preventing them from killing my son,” said Torres.

“I spoke with Osvaldo not long ago, and he seemed fine. He is strong, now more than ever, and has hope that he will not die,” said the inmate’s father.

But his optimism is not shared by the family of Tomás Verano, another Mexican citizen facing the death penalty — sitting on death row in prison in the state of California.

“We saw the news on the TV [about the ICJ resolution], but I don’t think anything will change... We are more optimistic about a miracle from God than a ruling to overturn the death penalty for our son,” said Constancia, Verano’s mother, from her home in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosí.

Verano, who entered the United States without the proper migration documents, was detained in 1991 and tried for the murder of a police officer who had previously arrested him for disturbing the peace. No execution date has been set, but his mother believes it could happen soon.

“We Mexicans experience many injustices in the United States, but the worst is that they put your son in prison and as punishment want to kill him,” said Osvaldo Torres’s father.

Poverty and ignorance are common amongst the Mexicans on death row in the United States, says Sandra Babcock, one of the lawyers that the Mexican government has hired to handle the cases.

These are people who did not speak English when they were arrested, who did not receive appropriate legal assistance, and who would not be condemned to die if they had received consular support, said the attorney.

The International Criminal Court agreed with those arguments and said the United States had the obligation to review and reconsider the convictions and sentences — in its own courts — of the Mexican nationals sentenced to death.

The ICJ ruling also states that in future cases the United States must ensure respect for the right to consular assistance. The court did recognise the US “commitment undertaken” in this regard currently.

The most recent execution of a Mexican national in the United States was in August 2002 in Texas. Javier Suárez, confessed killer of a government anti-narcotics agent, was the fifth Mexican to be put to death since the United States reinstated the maximum penalty in 1976.

“All we have left is to pray to God and to trust in the lawyers so that Osvaldo doesn’t become another dead man. We know he is innocent and does not deserve to die so young,” said Roberto Torres.