|
US accused of ‘torture flights’
By Stephen Grey
Nov. 14 — An executive jet is being used by the US intelligence
agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture
in their prisons.
The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States
defense department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained
by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights.
The US has delivered prisoners to countries with poor human rights records
including Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs
have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such
regimes to carry out “torture by proxy” a charge denied
by the American government.
Some of the information from the suspects is said to have been used
by MI5 and MI6, the British intelligence services. The admissibility
in court of evidence gained under torture is being considered in the
House of Lords in an appeal by foreign-born prisoners at Belmarsh jail,
south London, against their detention without trial on suspicion of
terrorism.
Over the past two years the unmarked Gulfstream has visited British
airports on many occasions, although it is not believed to have been
carrying suspects at the time.
The Gulfstream and a similarly anonymous-looking Boeing 737 are hired
by American agents from Premier Executive Transport Services, a private
company in Massachusetts.
The white 737, registration number N313P, has 32 seats.
It is a frequent visitor to US military bases, although its exact role
has not been revealed.
More is known about the Gulfstream, which has the registration number
N379P and can carry 14 passengers. Movements detailed in the logs can
be matched with several sightings of the Gulfstream at airports when
terrorist suspects have been bundled away by US counterterrorist agents.
Analysis of the plane’s flight plans, covering more than two years,
shows that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49
destinations outside the US, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp
in Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq,
Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.
Witnesses have claimed that the suspects are frequently bound, gagged
and sedated before being put on board the planes, which do not have
special facilities for prisoners but are outfitted with tables for meetings
and screens for presentations and in-flight films.
The US plane is not used just for carrying prisoners but also appears
to be at the disposal of defense and intelligence officials on assignments
from Washington.
Its prisoner transfer missions were first reported in May by the Swedish
television program Cold Facts. It described how US agents had arrived
in Stockholm in the Gulfstream in December 2001 to take two suspected
terrorists from Sweden to Egypt.
At the time of what was presented as an “extradition” to Egypt,
Swedish ministers made no public mention of US involvement in the detention
of Ahmed Agiza, 42, and Muhammed Zery, 35, who was later cleared.
Witnesses described seeing the prisoners handed to US agents whose faces
were masked by hoods. The clothes of the handcuffed prisoners were cut
off and they were dressed in diapers covered by orange overalls before
being forcibly given sedatives by suppository.
The Gulfstream flew them to Egypt, where both prisoners claimed they
were beaten and tortured with electric shocks to their genitals. Despite
liberal Swedish laws on freedom of information, diplomatic telegrams
on the case released to the media were edited to conceal the complaints
of torture.
Hamida Shalaby, Agiza’s mother, said: “The mattress had electricity
. . . When they connected to the electricity, his body would rise up
and then fall down and this up and down would go on until they unplugged
electricity.”
A month before the Swedish extradition, the same Gulfstream was identified
by Masood Anwar, a Pakistani newspaper reporter in Karachi. Airport
staff told Anwar they had seen Jamil Gasim, a Yemeni student who was
suspected of links to al-Qaida, being bundled aboard the jet by a group
of white men wearing masks. The jet took Gasim to Jordan, since then
he has disappeared.
“The entire operation was so mysterious that all persons involved
in the operation, including US troops, were wearing masks,” a source
at the airport told Anwar.
On another mission, in January 2002, a Gulfstream was seen at Jakarta
airport to deport Muhammad Saad Iqbal, 24, an al-Qaida suspect who was
said by US officials to be an acquaintance of Richard Reid, the British
“shoe-bomber” jailed in the US for trying to blow up a flight
from Paris to Miami.
An Indonesian official told an US newspaper that Iqbal was “hustled
aboard an unmarked, US-registered Gulfstream . . . and flown to Egypt”,
where almost nothing has been heard of him since.
The CIA Gulfstream’s flight logs show it flew from Washington to
Cairo, where it picked up Egyptian security agents, before apparently
going on to Jakarta to take Iqbal to Egypt.
Another transfer involved a British citizen. On Nov. 8, 2002, the Gulfstream
took off for Banjul in Gambia. On the same day Wahab Al-Rawi, a 38-year-old
Briton, was among four people arrested at the airport by local secret
police and handed over to interrogators who said they were “from
the US embassy”.
Wahab said he had previously been questioned by MI5 because his brother
Basher, an Iraqi national, was an acquaintance of Abu Qatada, the radical
London-based cleric.
When Wahab asked the CIA agents for access to the British consul, as
required under the Vienna convention signed by the US, the agents are
said to have laughed. “Why do you think you’re here?”
one agent said to Wahab. “It’s your government that tipped
us off in the first place.” Wahab was later released but Basher
was sent to Guantanamo and remains there and has yet to be accused of
any specific crime.
Some former CIA operatives and human rights campaigners claim the agency
and the Pentagon use a process called “rendition” to send
suspects to countries such as Egypt and Jordan. They are then tortured
largely to gain information for the US which, it is alleged, encourages
these countries to use aggressive interrogation methods banned under
US law.
Bob Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, said: “If
you want a serious interrogation you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you
want them to be tortured you send them to Syria. If you want someone
to disappear . . . you send them to Egypt.”
Among the countries where prisoners have been sent by the US is Uzbekistan,
a close ally and a dictatorship whose secret police are notorious for
their interrogation methods, including the alleged boiling of prisoners.
The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to the Uzbek capital.
The details bolster claims by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador,
that the US has sent terrorist suspects from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan
to be interrogated by torture.
In a memo, whose disclosure last month contributed to Murray’s
removal, he told Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, that the CIA station
chief in Tashkent had “readily acknowledged torture was deployed
in obtaining intelligence”.
The CIA and Premier declined to discuss the allegations over the planes.
The US government, however, denies it is in any way complicit in torture
and says it is actively working to stamp out the practice.
Source: Sunday Times (UK)
Defense ministers reject talk of multinational
intervention
By Kintto Lucas
Quito, Ecuador, Nov. 19 (IPS) — The final declaration of
the sixth conference of western hemisphere defense ministers, which
ended Nov. 19 in the Ecuadorian capital, did not include several of
the proposals set forth by the United States and seconded by Colombia.
During the meeting, the gap between the US government’s positions
and those of a number of South American countries was sometimes expressed
as sharp discrepancies, such as when José Alencar, Brazil’s
vice-president and acting defense minister, staunchly opposed any attempt
to create a multinational military force to intervene in Colombia’s
armed conflict.
But Alencar went even further. In an allusion to the United States,
he questioned countries that believe that terrorism can be fought by
intervening in other nations.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that Latin American
countries should join forces and work harder to combat “terrorism”
in the region.
“The new threats of the 21st century recognize no borders,”
said Rumsfeld. “Terrorists, drug traffickers, hostage-takers and
criminal gangs form an anti-social combination that increasingly seeks
to destabilize civil societies.”
The “enemies” find refuge in border zones and areas where
there is no government presence, he added.
According to activist Alexis Ponce with the Permanent Assembly for Human
Rights, an Ecuadorian organization, Rumsfeld’s remark about border
areas had to do with Washington’s interest in exercising greater
control over border regions in civil war-torn Colombia, and in the “tri-border
region” where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay converge.
The US position is not reflected in the most controversial of the 36
points in the final declaration, the one that talks about a new architecture
of hemispheric security to counter drug trafficking and deal with the
rise in poverty, seen as two new security threats.
The US delegation, with the support of Colombia, Peru, and the Caribbean
island nation of Grenada, insisted that the fight against “narco-terrorism”
should be given top priority.
However, the view shared by Brazil and a number of South American nations,
according to which it is absolutely essential to curb poverty in order
to strengthen security in the hemisphere, prevailed in the final document
adopted by the 34 ministers.
Nor did the initiative forwarded by Colombia and the United States to
build a multinational force to intervene in Colombia awaken an echo.
Washington already has a military presence in Colombia, which is caught
in the grip of a four-decade civil war pitting leftist insurgents against
the army and right-wing paramilitary militias.
In October, the US Congress approved a twofold increase in the number
of US troops and advisers in Colombia, to 800, and Washington has provided
3.3 billion dollars in aid, mainly military, to that country since 2002.
Another US-Colombian proposal that was rejected urged the Organization
of American States (OAS) to draw up a list of terrorist and insurgent
groups and individuals in the region, to prevent them from obtaining
visas and traveling between countries.
Each state must determine how to best exercise sovereignty over their
national territories, on the basis of their own needs, laws, circumstances,
and resources, while respecting international treaties and obligations,
says the final declaration.
The ministers also called for clear definitions of the tasks and missions
to be undertaken by their defense and security forces, and of the mechanisms
to reach these goals.
But right up until the conclusion of the discussions, the Colombian
delegation continued to demand that the final document include mention
of the situation the country faces in terms of the drug trade and guerrilla
activity.
Colombian Defence Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, visibly upset, told
the press that his country would continue to insist that these issues
be taken into account at future meetings.
The defense minister of Ecuador, retired general Nelson Herrera, said
that his country refused to get involved in the Colombian conflict.
For his part, Captain Jorge Gross, a chief Ecuadorian defense ministry
aide who spoke at numerous working sessions, maintained that “Colombia’s
problem is the Colombian people’s problem,” and that “you
cannot fight terrorism with terrorism.”
Argentine Minister José Pampuro said his country would lend all
of the political support necessary to keep Colombia’s problems
from spreading further, because “this is a conflict that will also
affect Argentina.” Nevertheless, he remained firmly opposed to
any form of foreign military intervention.
Chilean Defense Minister Jaime Ravinet noted that “there is a general
spirit of supporting and cooperating with Colombia, but not of intervening
in the country.”
Jorge Luis García Carneiro, the Venezuelan minister of defense,
was emphatic in stating that his country’s army was not prepared
“to participate in a war outside its borders.” Moreover, Venezuela
is currently occupied with “carrying out an important process,
forging unity between its armed forces and the people,” he added.
One of the points in the final declaration, proposed by Ecuador, establishes
a commitment to undertaking coordinated efforts to eliminate landmines
from countries in the region, including the so-called “smart mines”
manufactured and used by the United States.
Despite the defeat of its proposals, Washington was able to use the
Quito meeting to reach an agreement with the Central American countries
for cooperation aimed at strengthening security in that sub-region.
The idea is to create a joint security area, which the United States
has pledged to support with human, technological and logistical resources.
The defense minister of Honduras, Federico Brevé, said the agreement
will allow the countries of Central America to share intelligence and
thus more effectively protect security throughout the sub-region.
Gastón Chillier, the senior associate for security and human
rights at the non-governmental Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA),
criticized the United States’ heavy emphasis on the issue of terrorism
in Quito, and its failure to take into account the most pressing matters
in Latin America today: the weakening of democratic institutions, poverty,
and social inequality.
Indigenous genetic material sold on
Internet
By Stephen Leahy and Mario Osava
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nov. 19 — The Brazilian government
has asked Interpol, the international police, to intervene in what
it says is the illegal sale of genetic material from its indigenous
peoples by a US research center.
Living cells from individual members of Karitiana and Suruí
Indians, as well as other South and Central American indigenous groups,
are available for $85, purchased through the Internet from the Coriell
Cell Repositories, a division of Coriell Institute for Medical Research.
The cells are intended to be used for research purposes only, says
the independent, not-for-profit, biomedical research institute, based
in the northeastern US city of Camden, New Jersey.
Mercio Pereira, president of Brazil’s National Indigenous Peoples
Foundation (FUNAI), asked the federal police to investigate the matter
in October.
The Brazilian embassy in Washington is attempting to have the information
for selling the Indians’ genetic material removed from the Coriell
website, said a spokesperson from the Foreign Relations Ministry.
This is not the first time Brazil has protested such sales. In the
late 1990s Coriell made this same type of genetic material available
for sale. FUNAI threatened to suspend all biomedical research authorizations
with indigenous peoples. Native groups, meanwhile, filed a formal
complaint about the practice.
Pat Mooney, of the non-governmental ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion,
Technology and Concentration), and other civil society organizations
oppose corporations patenting plants and animals, and other practices
that they consider “biopiracy.”
In this case, “while DNA and genes from indigenous peoples are
not being patented, the information obtained from their genetic material
is being turned into patentable drugs,” Mooney said in an interview
with Tierramérica.
The Coriell Repository has the world’s largest collection of
human cell cultures, with nearly a million vials of cells. These cells
are obtained from blood or skin samples and can be kept alive indefinitely
at extremely low temperatures.
DNA obtained from the cells is used by medical researchers to investigate
potential medical treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease,
diabetes, Down syndrome, heart disease and others, according to the
Coriell website.
Since 1964, 120,000 cell samples and nearly 100,000 DNA samples have
been shipped to scientists in 55 countries. The sale of genetic material
for research is legal under US law.
For the most part researchers at Coriell did not collect the original
blood and skin samples themselves. Instead these samples have been
“deposited” in the Coriell cell bank by other research centers
and individual scientists.
The core question is whether the samples from the Karitiana and Suruí
peoples were obtained with the full and informed consent of the individuals
and of the Brazilian government.
Another matter is whether there are guarantees in place to ensure
equitable distribution of the knowledge and profits generated from
the samples.
Coriell did not respond to several attempts by Tierramérica
to seek comment.
For more than a decade FUNAI has been aware that blood samples taken
from the Karitiana and Suruí have ended up in the hands of
foreign companies or institutions, even though the agency did not
approve any sample collection efforts, said FUNAI executive Raimundo
José Lopes, who filed the investigation request with Interpol.
Brazilian doctor Hilton Pereira da Silva was accused in federal court
in 2002 of collecting blood samples from Karitiana Indians in 1996
without the proper authorization. He did so as part of a film project
and with the excuse that he took the samples to diagnose illnesses,
says Maria Cecilia Filipini, a lawyer with the Catholic Indigenist
Missionary Council in the Amazon state of Rondonia.
The lawsuit against the doctor, filed by the government, is moving
slowly because of difficulties in questioning Pereira da Silva, who
apparently now lives in the United States. Prosecutors discovered
that he had ties with the foreign pharmaceutical industry and suspect
that he illegally sold the Indians’ genetic material.
“It would be strange” for a doctor to head a team of filmmakers
and also carry equipment to collect blood samples, Filipini said in
a Tierramérica interview.
It is not known if Coriell is selling that blood, but officials have
recovered just 53 samples of a total believed to reach 160.
FUNAI has tried to impede the illegal collection of genetic material
through tight control over access to indigenous territories by researchers.
“Brazilian researchers have complained about this,” said
Lopes.
Any research — Brazilian or foreign — in indigenous territories
must be approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s
national development council and other state institutions.
FUNAI is supposed to consult with indigenous groups before any research
begins and only if they agree does the work proceed, and remains under
the agency’s supervision, says Claudio Romero, FUNAI coordinator
of studies and research.
Thanks to modern technology, 40-year-old blood samples from Brazil
and Venezuela’s Yanomami peoples are still being traded between
researchers, as are samples from the Ticuna, an indigenous group from
Brazil’s far west, collected in the mid-1970s, writes Bruce Albert,
research director of the Research Institute for Development, which
has offices in Sao Paulo and Paris.
The Ticuna Indians’ cells have been incorporated into a major
tool for immunology research, and one of the world’s largest
pharmaceutical corporations has used them to delve into the genetics
of the human immune system, Albert notes in the journal Public Anthropology:
Engaging Ideas 2001.
Indigenous peoples “should be treated as fully-respected social
partners, not as natural ‘populations’ for gene mining,”
Albert concludes.
Source: Tierramérica
US-Mideast deal gains momentum
By Emad Mekay
Washington, DC, Nov. 18 (IPS) — Already engaged in an
ambitious global plan to complete regional and bilateral free trade
deals, the United States is heating up the trade front in the Middle
East with announcements it intends to start talks with three countries
in the region.
The news comes as development groups are warning that the benefits
of bilateral trade deals have been overstated and that the agreements
do more harm than good to developing nations that partner with economically
powerful countries.
The US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick said earlier this
week that his country plans to open negotiations for free trade agreements
(FTAs) with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman.
Also this week, a new government in Egypt said it has renewed talks
with Washington over a free trade deal.
Egyptian Trade Minister Rashid Rashid, who is in Washington this week,
told Zoellick that his country, the most populous nation in the Arab
world, wants to pursue a US-Egypt FTA and also establish a qualified
industrial zone (QIZ).
A QIZ would permit products made in Egypt with a specified percentage
of inputs from Israeli firms to have tariff-free access to the US
market. Washington, a champion of Israel in the Middle East, has been
trying to bring the Jewish state together with its Arab neighbors
via various diplomatic and economic measures.
Washington negotiated the Israel-Jordan QIZ in 1998 before it signed
a free trade deal with Jordan in 2000.
With a population of 73 million people, Egypt balked at a possible
trade deal with Washington last year after protests from local industries,
drawing public censure from Zoellick.
The Egyptian about-face came after the Washington-backed regime of
President Hosni Mubarak appointed a new cabinet earlier this year,
mostly made up of young businessmen with strong ties to western corporations
and to the president’s son, Gamal.
Mubarak is grooming Gamal to become the country’s next leader
and has installed many of his friends from the business community
in positions in and around the government.
Washington’s proposed FTAs with Egypt, UAE and Oman will build
on others the United States has already signed in the Middle East
with Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain.
With Washington in full control of Iraq, the current and future deals
leave Saudi Arabia as the only major country in the area that does
not have a major preferential trade agreement with the United States.
But US officials are prodding Riyadh to join the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and remodel its economy as a first step towards inking a bilateral
trade deal.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United
States by young men who came mostly from the Mideast region, US President
George W. Bush called for the creation of a free trade area (MEFTA)
throughout the Middle East and North Africa by 2013.
The administration argues that increased trade will lead to economic
prosperity, dampening the frustration and anger of many people —
particularly the young — in much of the Arab world where unemployment
and corruption are high. In doing so, the roots of terrorism would
wither and die, according to this theory.
Part of the administration’s plan is to integrate Israel with
its reluctant Arab neighbors and, eventually, to combine all those
bilateral deals in the major MEFTA agreement.
In October, major US corporations joined forces to launch a pressure
group, the US-Middle East Free Trade Coalition, to lobby for a speedy
realization of the MEFTA.
The companies included Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, ChevronTexaco,
Dow, ExxonMobil, Intel, JR McDermott and Motorola.
The pace of negotiating trade deals in the Middle East is likely to
be faster than in other regions because of the US military occupation
of Iraq, a major economy in the area, and because of the dictatorial
nature of Mideast regimes, which do not allow for much debate about
such issues.
The region’s authoritarian regimes have seriously weakened civil
society groups and left very little room for dissent or opposition.
Northern-based NGOs have also been more hard-pressed to monitor trade
deals in the Middle East than they are in Latin America or Africa,
because of lack of access to data and as a result of intimidation
by the regimes.
Washington has embarked on a grand trade agenda throughout the world.
For example, it is negotiating FTAs with the Southern African Customs
Union (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland), and
has announced it intends to start discussions with Thailand, Colombia,
Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Panama.
Talks on a hemispheric-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
stalled after the latest meeting November 2003 in Miami, particularly
over US refusal to end support to its farmers.
Civil society groups have protested those trade deals, arguing they
put poor nations at a disadvantage.
On Thursday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a
Washington-based think tank, issued a report in response to the Bush
administration’s announcements on bilateral and regional trade
agreements it will pursue in Bush’s second term.
The center argued that the gains to developing countries from trade
liberalization are smaller than the numbers that have been widely
cited in the public debate and that have lured governments to sign
such deals.
“The gains from trade liberalization for poor people in developing
countries have been overstated,” said CEPR Economist and Co-Director
Mark Weisbrot, a co-author of the report.
“At the same time, the costs to developing countries of complying
with commercial agreements such as the WTO are often ignored. This
leads to a lot of misunderstanding regarding the potential impact
of trade liberalization and the conditions that are attached to it,”
he added.
The report said that while any reduction in poverty is desirable,
poor countries in those trade deals end up making major concessions
in exchange for access to rich countries’ markets.
Many of these concessions, such as the enforcement of rich country
patent and copyrights, impose substantial costs on developing countries,
it said.
In addition, trade agreements often curb the ability of developing
countries to follow the same sort of industrial policies that rich
countries used on the road to development.
It is entirely possible that the cost to developing countries of paying
copyright and patent-protected prices to rich countries will equal
or exceed the gains they get from rich countries liberalizing their
trade, said the report.
Time is of the essence for Darfur,
says Annan
By Joyce Mulama*
Nairobi, Kenya, Nov. 18 (IPS) — United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan has called for a speedy conclusion to peace negotiations
between the Sudanese government and southern rebels from the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement/Army. He said this was central to
resolving another conflict in the country -– that in the western
region of Darfur.
Annan’s remarks came during a meeting of the UN Security Council
Nov. 18 in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
The two-day gathering, which ended Nov. 12, marked one of the rare
instances in which the council has been convened outside of New York.
This is only the fourth time that the 15-member body is meeting away
from its headquarters since the creation of the UN in 1945.
The United States’ ambassador to the UN, John Danforth, spearheaded
efforts to bring the council to Nairobi – this in a bid to accelerate
efforts to wrap up talks between Khartoum and the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Danforth previously served as special
envoy to Sudan for American President George W. Bush.
The political and humanitarian crisis in Darfur is also receiving
attention at the Nairobi gathering.
Negotiations to end fighting in southern Sudan have been underway
in Kenya since 2002, under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental
Authority on Development – a regional organization comprising
Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and Djibouti.
Six protocols on issues such as the creation of a transitional government
and the sharing of oil wealth have been agreed on. A provision has
also been made for holding a referendum six years after the signing
of a final accord to determine whether the inhabitants of southern
Sudan would like to secede.
However, a final peace agreement has remained elusive.
Deep differences exist about where the army that will be created by
merging government and rebel troops should be deployed during the
six years before the referendum. There is also uncertainty about where
rebel troops who are not absorbed into this force should be deployed.
In addition, Khartoum and the SPLM/A disagree on the mandate of a
proposed UN peacekeeping force.
While Khartoum would like the UN troops to be present in a monitoring
capacity only, the rebels want them mandated to intervene militarily
in the event of renewed hostilities.
“The effects of the delay (in reaching a final accord) are felt
not only in the south, but elsewhere too as conflict spreads to more
parts of the country. The devastating conflict in Darfur is glaring
evidence of this,” Annan said in Nairobi.
“That is why the time for decision is now...The speedy conclusion
of the north/south talks would not only help curb the further spread
of conflict to other parts of the country. It would also serve as
a basis and a catalyst for the resolution of existing conflicts,”
he added.
Government and the SPLM/A are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding
Nov. 19 in which they will undertake to reach a final accord by Dec.
31.
However, Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Taha did not give an exact
date for the conclusion of talks, saying only: “A peaceful negotiation
is the only way forward for a comprehensive peace in Sudan and a deal
will be reached soon.”
SPLM/A leader John Garang appeared more willing to set a deadline
for negotiations.
“The two parties need to expeditiously complete agreements on
outstanding issues and sign a comprehensive peace agreement by the
end of 2004. Peace has a price, and we are prepared to pay the price,”
he told the Security Council meeting.
In an interview with IPS, Barnaba Benjamin Marial, the SPLM/A representative
in Southern Africa, echoed Garang’s words.
“We are expecting a peace agreement before the end of 2004,”
he noted, adding “Everybody (in southern Sudan) is in the mood
of peace. People are looking forward to a peace dividend. Nobody is
in the mood for fighting again.”
Since war resumed in 1983 between the Islamic government in Khartoum
and Christian and animist rebels in the south, more than two million
people – most of them civilians – have died, while over
four million have been displaced.
Progress in ending the war has been overshadowed in recent months
by the conflict in Darfur, which began early last year after rebels
from the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and Justice and Equality Movement
took up arms against government to protest against the alleged marginalization
of Darfur.
Government responded by attacking communities that are of similar
ethnicity to the rebels, and arming Arab militias known as the Janjaweed
(“men on horseback”) to serve as a proxy force against these
communities. Prior to the events of recent months, Darfur was plagued
by disputes over land and water resources between nomadic Arabs and
settled ethnic groups.
The campaign against tribes such as the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa
has reportedly included mass killings, the abduction and rape of women
– and the destruction of property.
According to UN statistics, about 70,000 people have died in the violence,
while over 1.5 million have fled their homes – some across the
border to Chad.
“The terrible situation in Darfur has been brought about mainly
by deliberate acts of violence against civilians, including widespread
killing and rape. Because of the magnitude and intensity of the human
suffering in that region, the conflict remains a burning concern,”
Annan said.
Since July, the UN has passed two resolutions on Darfur in a bid to
press Khartoum to disarm the Janjaweed, and restore security to the
region.
However, Annan said that government, militias and the rebels were
all disregarding a ceasefire signed in April.
Another resolution is expected to be passed Friday. The New York-based
Human Rights Watch believes the Security Council should use this opportunity
to place an arms embargo on Khartoum -– and impose economic and
travel sanctions against key members of government.
To date, however, certain members of the council -– notably Russia,
China, Algeria and Pakistan -– have appeared reluctant to take
the route of sanctions.
On Nov. 16, Amnesty International -– the London-based human rights
watchdog -– issued a report in which it alleged that Russia and
China were facilitating the conflict in Darfur by supplying military
aircraft, military vehicles and ammunition to Khartoum.
*With additional reporting by Moyiga Nduru in Johannesburg
Reinforce rules of war, urges Amnesty
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Nov. 17 (IPS) —Amnesty International
(AI) has urged the US government to conduct an open investigation
into the apparent killing of a wounded prisoner in Iraq by a US
soldier, and to make the probe’s findings public.
The appeal, issued by Amnesty from its London headquarters Nov.
16, followed a statement Nov. 12 from the world’s best-known
human rights organization that said AI was “deeply concerned
that the rules of war protecting civilians and combatants have been
violated in the current fighting between US and Iraqi forces and
insurgents” in and around Fallujah.
The earlier statement blamed all sides for possible war crimes,
noting that 20 Iraqi medical staff and dozens of other citizens
were killed when a missile hit a clinic in Fallujah during the opening
hours of the US-led assault on the city, which had been controlled
by insurgents since last April.
Amnesty said the origin of the missile was unknown but that all
sides were jeopardizing the lives of civilian non-combatants in
the city. It noted that US military spokespersons had provided estimates
of the number of deaths among an estimated 2,000 insurgents who
were believed to have been holed up in Fallujah as the assault began
one week ago, but not of civilian casualties.
Reports from the city, virtually all of which had been secured by
US and Iraqi government forces by Nov. 16, were divided as to whether
the estimated 1,000-1,200 insurgents US commanders claimed had been
killed in the fighting included civilians and, if so, how many.
Some sources claimed that hundreds of non-combatants were included
in the death toll, despite the fact that as many as 250,000 of the
city’s 300,000 inhabitants had fled Fallujah in advance.
US forces suffered 37 dead in the week-long assault, as well as
another 320 wounded, according to the US military.
Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the commanding officer of the First Marine
Expeditionary Force, announced he had ordered a full probe into
possible war crimes after one of his troops was filmed by an “embedded”
NBC-TV camera crew Nov. 13 shooting at close range an apparently
injured and unarmed insurgent who was being held inside a mosque
that was reportedly the site of a fierce fire fight the day before.
The scene, which has been broadcast here and around the world, depicted
Marines approaching several injured men who had apparently been
left there from the previous day.
Narrating the video, NBC correspondent Kevin Sites reported that
one of the Marines noticed that one of the injured was breathing.
“He’s fucking faking he’s dead!” the Marine
shouts, raising his rifle and firing a single shot in the man’s
direction. At that point, the video as broadcast on US TV, goes
black, but an unidentified voice is heard saying, “He’s
dead now.”
In a report that accompanied the footage, Sites said, “The
prisoner did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way.”
Under international law, military forces have an obligation to protect
and provide necessary medical attention to wounded insurgents who
are outside of combat, that is, those who no longer pose a threat.
“The deliberate shooting of unarmed and wounded fighters who
pose no immediate threat is a war crime under international law,”
said Amnesty, stressing US authorities should immediately investigate
the case and hold perpetrators responsible.
Under the circumstances, the only defense would be that the Marine
had reason to believe the insurgent was armed and posed a threat,
in which case the shooting would constitute an act of self-defense.
For his part, Sattler insisted, “We follow the law of armed
conflict and hold ourselves to a high standard of accountability.
The facts of this case will be thoroughly pursued to make an informed
decision and to protect the rights of all persons involved.”
The military command also announced that the unnamed Marine who
fired the shot had been taken off the battlefield and could face
a court martial, depending on the results of the probe.
Amnesty noted it had already called on US authorities to investigate
another Nov. 11 incident, reported on Britain’s Channel Four
News, in which a US soldier appeared to have fired one shot in the
direction of a wounded insurgent who was off-screen. The soldier
then walked away and said, “He’s gone.”
Coincidentally, the Pentagon announced Nov. 16 that an army lieutenant
has been charged with premeditated murder in a similar incident
that occurred in August in Baghdad’s Sadr City. Two other soldiers
had already been charged with murder over the same incident.
“Unequivocal orders for the proper treatment of unarmed and
wounded insurgents must be issued or reinforced to all US and Iraqi
military and civilian personnel,” Amnesty said.
An analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said his group was also concerned
about the incidents. “If there is a general sense that perhaps
these rules can be trampled, whether it is this case, whether at
Abu Ghraib [prison], or in a different context at Guantanamo, in
all of these places we see the rules being ignored,” Steve
Crawshaw of HRW’s London office told the Voice of America.
World’s human rights defenders
under attack
By Thalif Deen
United Nations, Nov. 18 (IPS) — The world’s human
rights defenders — including lawyers, journalists, judges,
women activists, and representatives of non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) — are increasingly coming under attack by repressive
governments, according to a senior UN official.
“The violation of the physical integrity of defenders takes
the form of killings, attempted killings, torture, beatings, death
threats and disappearances,” says Hina Jilani, the Geneva-based
UN special representative on human rights defenders.
In a 23-page report to the current session of the UN General Assembly
she says human rights organizations are also increasingly facing
“invasive policing.”
Jilani cites 22 cases of raids by officers of law enforcement agencies,
who seized documents, files and databases relating to rights abuses,
and also confiscated computers and cameras — all from human
rights organizations.
“Such police operations are often conducted without [search]
warrants and, in some countries, occur repeatedly,” she said.
Jilani reported that several human rights defenders who attended
the June 2004 session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva
complained that security officials had visited their homes or offices
during their absence to question colleagues and family members about
the Geneva trip.
Iain Levine, program director at the New York-based Human Rights
Watch (HRW), told IPS that the president of a gay and lesbian association
in Sierra Leone, who was at the same Geneva session, was subsequently
murdered in her office in Freetown after being raped and stabbed.
“She was a brave woman who was not only a strong gay activist
in Sierra Leone but also played an active role globally,” he
added.
Levine said gay and lesbian activists are some of the new victims
of violence worldwide.
“The protection of human rights defenders is the barometer
of a government’s tolerance and respect for human rights,”
he added.
According to Levine, some of the countries using repressive tactics
against human rights defenders include Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan,
Russia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC).
Neil Hicks, director of the Human Rights Defender Project at New
York-based Human Rights First, says defenders are also being targeted
in Colombia, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Cuba, Belarus and several
other former Soviet republics.
As Jilani notes in her report, Hicks added, many governments have
used the threat of terrorism as a pretext to clamp down on the work
of non-violent human rights defenders.
“Counter-terrorism measures taken by many governments, both
democratic and non-democratic, have resulted in violations of human
rights. These governments have objected to protests and opposition
from human rights defenders by branding them as terrorist sympathizers,”
Hicks told IPS.
This denigration and mischaracterization of the work of human rights
defenders is very widespread, he added. “We have seen it here
in the US, for example, in the comments of [outgoing Attorney-General]
John Ashcroft and others.”
Undermining and discrediting human rights defenders is always regrettable
and irresponsible, and counter to the principles of the UN Declaration
on Human Rights Defenders, said Hicks, but in some countries it
contributes directly to increasing the dangers human rights defenders
face as they carry out their work.
Jilani catalogues a series of incidents where unnamed governments
took arbitrary action against such defenders:
tA journalist who focused on human rights abuses in his work was
arrested at the airport while on his way to attend a conference
on freedom of the press.
tSeveral human rights defenders were reportedly arrested and detained
by police two days after participating in a peaceful demonstration
against human rights abuses and restrictions on democratic practices.
tA journalist who published a report on the allegedly poor working
conditions in the mines in his country — leading to the deaths
of miners — was convicted by a court of defamation and sentenced
to five years’ imprisonment.
tA human rights defender who had been investigating alleged torture
of detainees by police left his home and has not been seen since.
Levine cited more concrete cases of abuses by governments worldwide.
He said the Egyptian government has closed down the only clinic
for the rehabilitation of torture victims. In Uzbekistan, there
were “enormous assaults” on human rights activists. In
Iran, hundreds of students and activists have been imprisoned, he
added.
In early November, HRW gave its highest honor to three leading rights
activists from Afghanistan, Russia and DRC. All three, Habib Rahiab,
Natalia Zhukova and Maitre Honore Musoko, were in New York to accept
the awards. But two of them — the Afghan and the Congolese
— were living in exile outside their home countries, Levine
said.
The three honorees “illustrate the lack of safety and security
in Afghanistan, serious abuses within the Russian military, and
the conflict in eastern Congo, which has killed more civilians than
any war since the Second World War,” HRW Executive Director
Kenneth Roth said in a statement released before the award ceremony.
“They have worked courageously — often in life-threatening
environments — to expose rights abuses and turn the international
spotlight on their countries,” he added.
Levine said Human Rights Watch is “particularly troubled about
the worsening trend” in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin
is amassing and centralizing power and getting rid of directly elected
officials.
Putin has also recently launched an attack on human rights organizations.
“It was a broad attempt to discredit human rights ideals,”
he added.
In Zimbabwe, said Levine, the government is trying to prevent NGOs
from launching a voter education program, rejecting it on the grounds
that these organizations receive funding from abroad.
In her report, which should be discussed before the end of the General
Assembly session in mid-December, Jilani says the bank accounts
of several human rights NGOs have been blocked and their assets
frozen to prevent them from accessing international funding.
In one case, the ministry of the interior in an unnamed country
prohibited a human rights organization from accessing the second
half of a European Commission grant intended to fund its activities.
As a result, the NGO has been unable to pay its office rent and
is threatened with eviction.
According to Hicks, the most recent attacks on human rights activists
have been under the guise of fighting terrorism.
“Steps taken to silence the voices of human rights defenders
in a context of heightened concern about the threat of terrorism
include broad controls on freedom of expression, association and
movement, and measures to intimidate, demonize, brutalize, imprison,
exile, or murder the individuals who stand up for human rights,”
he said.
These measures affect basic freedoms for all but often have a particular
impact on human rights defenders, in some cases leading to threats
to their lives and liberty and in all cases constraining their ability
to protect the rights of others, Hicks added.
“The use by governments of restrictive laws of association,
many now couched in the language of counter-terrorism and thereby
insulated from domestic and international criticism, present severe
obstacles to the work of human rights defenders.”
Straw ordered probe weeks before
coup bid
By Antony Barnett and Martin Bright*
Nov. 21 — The British government investigated the possibility
that British firms were involved in a plot to overthrow the president
of Equatorial Guinea several weeks before last March’s attempted
coup.
British Foreign Office officials and diplomats in the region took
the coup threat so seriously that they rewrote contingency plans
to evacuate British nationals from the oil-rich central African
state. However, the government failed to alert its Equatorial Guinean
counterpart of the threat.
Last August, the Foreign Office issued a “categorical”
denial that it had any prior knowledge of the attempted coup, but
has now confirmed that officials received information at the end
of January about the threat as a result of “confidential diplomatic
exchanges.”
The admissions by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, revealed in
a parliamentary answer, will raise questions about why the Foreign
Office did not act to avert the coup, as is its duty under international
law.
On Mar. 7, a group of mercenaries allegedly linked to Sir Mark Thatcher,
the son of the former Prime Minister, was arrested in Zimbabwe on
charges of planning a coup against President Teodoro Obiang.
At the time, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe accused Britain,
the US and Spain of being behind the coup in an attempt to gain
control of the country’s oil interests.
Last week, The Observer revealed that Straw had been informed of
the alleged coup in late January. Now it has emerged that not only
did the government know about the plot, but that it also took steps
to establish whether British firms and nationals were involved.
Straw has refused to reveal who provided the information and what
that infor mation was. He said: ‘We do not provide details
of confidential diplomatic exchanges.’
Sources claim the South African intelligence service had detailed
information on those behind the coup that intended to replace Obiang
with Severo Moto. The information is alleged to include information
on one of the ringleaders, Simon Mann, an Old Etonian and former
SAS officer.
In a written parliamentary answer to shadow Foreign Secretary Michael
Ancram, Straw said the Foreign Office was aware of reports circulating
in the Spanish media in January.
“At the same time, similar allegations were contained in confidential
information received by the government,” he added. “We
were sceptical about the reports, as there had been a number of
coup rumors in the media, including October 2003.
“Insofar as we could, we attempted to establish whether there
was any more truth to this particular allegation. We took action
to try to establish whether any UK companies were involved and to
underline our opposition to involvement by any company in such activities.”
Straw added that officials could find no “definitive”
evidence of the plot and therefore did not warn the government of
Equatorial Guinea.
However, the Foreign Secretary confirmed that the Foreign Office
did review and update its civil contingency plans. Britain does
not have an embassy in Equatorial Guinea, but its interests are
represented via Cameroon.
Ancram claims that Straw’s parliamentary replies “raise
more questions than they answer.” He has demanded to know why,
if the Foreign Office did not believe the allegations of a potential
coup, it needed to change the civil contingency plans.
Ancram’s office has also questioned how thorough the Foreign
Office investigations were, given that several of the alleged plotters
were either British citizens or lived in Britain.
Mann’s company, Logo Logistics, was registered in Guernsey
and he was well known to the circle of former British military men
who run private security firms.
In addition, Mann is alleged to have had meetings in Chelsea with
millionaire oil trader Ely Calil. Both men deny involvement in the
plot. On Nov. 26, Thatcher will face trial in South Africa over
allegations that he helped to mastermind the coup, which he denies.
*With additional reporting by Patrick Smith
Source: Observer (UK)
Mass mobilization returns to El Alto;
Bolivian crisis deepens
By Luis A. Gomez
Translated by Forrest Hylton
Nov. 15 — “It looks like they’re blockading
up ahead. There are tons of police, looks like they’ll gas
‘em,” the driver of a mini-van said the morning of Nov.
15 on the highway that ascends from La Paz to the Aymara city of
El Alto. At the beginning of an elongated curve of more than a kilometer,
the neighborhood residents of Alto Lima decided to blockade the
point at which the hillside neighborhoods of La Paz become another
city, thus provoking chaos on the roads beginning at 11am. Up above,
on the principal arteries and crossroads of El Alto, beginning in
the early morning hours, neighborhood residents set up nodal points
of the blockade with stones and burning tires. Thus began the 24-hour
general strike declared by the Federation of Neighborhoods Councils
(Fejuve), which insisted on a response to the list of demands put
forth to President Carlos Mesa’s government.
Abel Mamani, General Secretary of the Fejuve, explained the motives
for applying pressure: “For almost two months we’ve waited
for a reply to the list of demands, and for a year we’ve given
Mesa an opportunity today we see they haven’t done anything.
We’re not going to tolerate government treason.” Installed
behind the banner of the Fejuve, in the Ceja, which lies on the
western border of La Paz, Mamani described the list presented last
September 27: “There are eighteen points, brother, that ask
for the nationalization of hydrocarbons, the trial of Sánchez
de Lozada and his ministers, the reversal of the privatization of
state enterprises and other things, like the creation of employment
in health and education, and a rejection of the FTAA [with the US]
of course.”
One hundred meters away, an enormous bell set up in a kiosk sounded
all morning long. And little by little, as the sun came up, various
social movement leaders joined with the alteño neighborhood
leadership. Jaime Solares, leader of the Bolivian Workers’
Central (COB), as well as Miguel Zuvieta, from the miners’
federation, were present. Jaime Alanoca joined up at the head of
the Unemployed Workers’ Movement with a megaphone, asking for
justice for the people of El Alto and a trial for ex-president Gonzalo
Sánchez de Lozada. Various members of the Association of
the Injured in October also arrived. By mid-day, hundreds of merchants
from Villa Dolores marched to show their solidarity with the strike.
In the street, the multitude unfurled its banners, which are diamond-shaped,
with the colors of the Bolivian flag, and indicate which area of
El Alto they are from and how long they have been organized. The
same for neighborhood residents of the 16 de Julio and the students
from the Public University of El Alto (UPEA), who all shouted slogans.
“In the end,” Mamani said, “the people are united,
the way it’s got to be. The transnationals should leave El
Alto and Viacha; they should leave Bolivia. Mesa has betrayed alteños
and he’s betrayed October.”
“Mafia of the Unemployed” gives Mesa
a timetable
Around noon, Mesa attended an act at the Military School to commemorate
yet another anniversary of the foundation of the armed forces. When
the event ended, journalists asked Mesa about the strike. He said
that a “mafia of the unemployed” was behind it. After
12:30pm, the first “messengers” (chaskis) from the Fejuve
began to arrive in the Ceja with reports. Except for a few small
areas, the strike was total, making it the largest one since alteños
went down to the city center to remove Sánchez de Lozada
from power in October 2003. Flights had ceased to take off and land
at the International Airport in El Alto, and passengers from the
few that had landed had to walk miles with their suitcases until
encountering transportation to La Paz.
Thus the strike in El Alto added to the series of conflicts that
have badgered the government from all sides as a result of controversy
over natural gas and the use of natural resources in the country.
Conceived as a counter-demonstration to the lockout carried out
last Thursday, Nov. 11, by the entrepreneurial association in Santa
Cruz, this Monday’s mobilization was also directed against
the Bolivian Congress, the political parties, and the US government.
At 3pm, assemblies were held throughout the nine districts that
make up El Alto in order to decide on a course of action. “We’ll
decide if we continue for 48 hours or if we continue indefinitely.
We have a meeting of neighborhood presidents tonight,” Mamani
explained to La Jornada. And in spite of the disdain Mesa had demonstrated
for the strike a few hours earlier, he sent a commission at 5pm
with a written note proposing an open dialogue to be held in the
Ministry of Labor in La Paz.
“But the presidents [of the Fejuve] don’t accept the situation.
They’ve said that this government is no longer credible and
that all negotiations will be held in El Alto,” said the head
of Fejuve after the night’s meeting. “We’re giving
the government 48 hours to resolve the situation. Otherwise we’ll
initiate a civic strike indefinitely. And in El Alto we’re
determined to take things to their ultimate consequences. They’ve
sought this out. We’re not to blame for the situation.”
Source: La Jornada
Prosecutor investigating coup-backers
killed by car bomb
By Humberto Márquez
Caracas, Venezuela, Nov. 19 (IPS) — A Venezuelan prosecutor
well-known for his ongoing investigation of hundreds of members
of the opposition accused of backing the short-lived coup that ousted
President Hugo Chávez for two days in April 2002 was killed
by a car bomb.
Interior Minister Jesse Chacón confirmed Friday that the
charred body in the SUV that was rocked by two bombs late Thursday
night was prosecutor Danilo Anderson.
Anderson, 38, had subpoenaed nearly 400 opposition politicians,
business leaders, lawyers and former military officers to testify
in the case involving the coup d’etat, and recently stated
that he was close to filing formal indictments.
The government of President Hugo Chávez “will deal with
this terrorist act with extreme responsibility and serenity,”
Vice-President José Vicente Rangel said Nov. 19. “We
will carry out an in-depth investigation, and will bring to bear
the full force of the law.”
President Chávez suspended a trip to Costa Rica, where he
was to attend this weekend’s Ibero-American summit.
The heads of the executive, legislative and judicial branches, parliamentarians
of all stripes, the media, representatives of the Catholic Church
and the armed forces, and opinion leaders joined the government
in condemning the attack, while calling for serenity and calm.
Hundreds of government supporters gathered outside the attorney-general’s
office chanting “Justice! Justice!” Groups of Chávez
supporters also marched through downtown Caracas, demanding justice
and paying homage to Anderson.
The prosecutor was heading the criminal investigation of hundreds
of civilians who accompanied or met with business tycoon Pedro Carmona
when he was named, with the support of anti-Chávez military
commanders, head of the de facto government that briefly replaced
the president for two days following the Apr. 11, 2002 coup.
During that time, Chávez was held under arrest on an island
near Caracas. But with the backing of loyal army troops and mass
demonstrations in his support, he was restored to power.
Anderson also brought prosecutions against police officers in an
opposition-controlled Caracas municipality and government supporters
who exchanged gunfire on April 11, 2002, at the end of a massive
anti-Chávez opposition march, in which 19 people were killed.
In addition, the prosecutor brought charges against Mayor Henrique
Carriles, who governed a district on the southeast side of Caracas,
for allegedly inciting attacks by violent protesters on the Cuban
Embassy on Apr. 12, 2002. However, Carriles was acquitted by the
courts.
When news of the bombing of Anderson’s SUV (sports utility
vehicle) came out on Nov. 19, dozens of visibly shaken leaders of
the political forces that support Chávez flocked to the site
of the explosion and called for tranquility, as well as an in-depth
investigation.
“Some extremist is interested in creating a climate of violence,”
said José Albornoz, with the Fatherland For All party, which
supports Chávez. “We’re worried that someone will
pull out a pistol and shoot a member of the opposition. If an opponent
dies like Anderson did, we’ll know how the escalation began
-- but not how it will end,” he warned.
“This attack was aimed at intimidating the judiciary, to keep
it from advancing in the investigations that Anderson was conducting,”
said Information Minister Andrés Izarra.
“This is a blow to dialogue and reconciliation among Venezuelans,”
said Rangel, who urged the opposition “to reject all manifestations
of violence.”
Venezuelan society has been divided by an acute political polarization
between the pro- and anti-Chávez camps for several years.
After the failed coup, the opposition attempted to remove the left-leaning
Chávez by means of a December 2002-January 2003 business
shutdown.
But on Aug. 15, 59 percent of voters supported Chávez in
a presidential recall referendum. And in the Oct. 31 regional elections,
his grip on power was further strengthened, while prominent leaders
of the badly weakened opposition coalition acknowledged the need
to reformulate their strategies.
Political analyst José Vicente Carrasquero told IPS that
“the opposition should not be broadly identified with the attack,
because the spaces for dialogue that have opened up” since
the August referendum and the October regional elections could be
lost.
“In the streets, I observed a lot of rage among government
supporters,” said Carrasquero, a political science professor
at the Simón Bolívar University. “The government
has to handle this with great serenity, and deal with this case
as what it is: a political killing carried out by very specific
perpetrators.”
According to information provided by Chacón and comments
by police detectives, Anderson was killed by two bombs placed under
his SUV, which he had parked Thursday night next to the Institute
of Criminology Studies of Caracas, where he was taking a graduate
course.
As he was driving away after class, his SUV was shaken by a double
explosion. It took forensic experts hours to identify the burnt
remains of his body, and to establish his identity beyond a doubt.
Press and radio commentators recalled the bombs that exploded late
at night outside of the Spanish and Colombian embassies in Caracas
in early 2003. No one was hurt in those incidents.
During that time of political confrontation marked by huge pro-
and anti-Chávez street demonstrations, explosive devices
were also lobbed at buildings where government and opposition leaders
were meeting to search for a solution (the recall referendum) to
the crisis.
Rangel also cited the case of Orlando Urdaneta, who told a Miami
TV station that Venezuela’s problems could be resolved by means
of a rifle with a telescopic sight.
“When the interviewer asked Urdaneta who would give the order,
he said it had already been given,” he added.
Urdaneta is a popular Venezuelan actor and TV host and a staunch
Chávez opponent who was among those who accompanied Carmona
in April 2002.
“I am calling the attention of the US government, which despite
the seriousness of that public statement made in the media has not
said or done anything. The US government and embassy owe us an explanation,”
said Rangel.
Information Minister Izarra showed the footage of Urdaneta making
those statements, as well as a report in a Caracas newspaper with
photos of a group named “Commando F4,” purportedly made
up of anti-Castro Cuban exiles and a retired captain of the Venezuelan
national guard, Luis García, undergoing military training
in the US state of Florida.
“The US government should explain to us how these men, under
its gaze, can issue these calls for attacks on Venezuela,”
said the minister.
US Ambassador in Venezuela William Brownfield described Anderson’s
killing as a brutal and barbaric act, expressed his condolences
for the prosecutor’s family, and added that “in the name
of the government of President George W. Bush, we condemn this attack.
In a climate of terrorism we are all victims.”
The Carter Center for Peace, headed by former US president and Nobel
Peace laureate Jimmy Carter, also condemned the killing, and urged
caution on all sides to keep violence from breaking out and undermining
“the democratic system, the state of law, peace and justice.”
The Carter Center played a key role in brokering the talks between
the government and opposition last year in search of a solution
to Venezuela’s political standoff.
|
