MURDERED journalist Jamal Khashoggi was about to disclose details of Saudi Arabia’s use of chemical weapons in Yemen, sources close to him said last night. The revelations come as separate intelligence sources disclosed that Britain had first been made aware of a plot a full three weeks before he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Intercepts by GCHQ of internal communications by the kingdom’s General Intelligence Directorate revealed orders by a “member of the royal circle” to abduct the troublesome journalist and take him back to Saudi Arabia.
The orders, intelligence sources say, did not emanate directly from de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and it is not known if he was aware of them.
Though they commanded that Khashoggi should be abducted and taken back to Riyadh, they “left the door open” for other actions should the journalist prove to be troublesome, sources said.
Last week Saudi Arabia’s Attorney General confirmed that the murder had been premeditated – – in contrast to initial official explanations that Khashoggi had been killed after a fight broke out.
“The suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention,” he said.
“The Public Prosecution continues its investigations with the accused in the light of what it has received and the results of its investigations to reach facts and complete the course of justice.”
Those suspects are within a 15-strong hit squad sent to Turkey, and include serving members of GID.
Speaking last night the intelligence source told the Sunday Express: “We were initially made aware that something was going in the first week of September, around three weeks before Mr Khashoggi walked into the consulate on October 2, though it took more time for other details to emerge.
“These details included primary orders to capture Mr Khashoggi and bring him back to Saudi Arabia for questioning. However, the door seemed to be left open for alternative remedies to what was seen as a big problem.
“We know the orders came from a member of the royal circle but have no direct information to link them to Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
“Whether this meant he was not the original issuer we cannot say.”
Crucially, the highly-placed source confirms that MI6 had warned his Saudi Arabian counterparts to cancel the mission – though this request as ignored.
“On October 1 we became aware of the movement of a group, which included members of Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-‘Āmah (GID) to Istanbul, and it was pretty clear what their aim was.
“Through channels we warned that this was not a good idea. Subsequent events show that our warning was ignored.”
Asked why MI6 had not alerted its Five Eye intelligence partner, the US (Khashoggi was a US citizen) the source said only: “A decision was taken that we’d done what we could.”
However analysts offered one possible explanation for this.
“The misleading image that has been created of Jamal Khashoggi covers up more than it reveals. As an insider to the Saudi regime, Khashoggi had also been close to the former head of the intelligence agency.He was an Islamist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and someone who befriended Osama Bin Laden and had been sympathetic to his Jihad in Afghanistan,” said Tom Wilson, of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank.
“All of these connections are being hidden by a simplistic narrative that Jamal Khashoggi was just a progressive freedom fighting journalist. It isn’t plausible that he was murdered simply for being a journalist critical of the regime. The truth is much more complicated.”
Last night a close friend of Mr Khashoggi revealed that he was about to obtain “documentary evidence” proving clams that Saudi Arabia had used chemical weapons in its proxy war in Yemen.
“I met him a week before his death. He was unhappy and he was worried,“ said the middle eastern academic, who did not wish to be named.
“When I asked him why he was worried, he didn’t really want to reply, but eventually he told me he was getting proof that Saudi Arabia had used chemical weapons. He said he hoped he be getting documentary evidence.
All I can tell you is that the next thing I heard, he was missing.”
While there have been recent unsubstantiated claims in Iran that Saudi Arabia has been supplying ingredients that can be used to produce the nerve agent Sarin in Yemen, it is more likely that Mr Khashoggi was referring to phospherous..
Last month it was claimed that Saudi Arabia had been using US-supplied white phosphorous munitions against troops and even civilians in Yemen,
Though regulations state the chemical may be used to provide smokescreens, if used illegally it can it burn to the bone.
Chemical warfare expert Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said: “We have already seen in Syria that nothing is as effective as chemical, weapons in clearing urban areas of troops and civilians – Assad has used phosphorous for this very reason.
“If Khashoggi did, in fact, have proof that Saudi Arabia was deliberately misusing phosphorous for this purpose, it would be highly embarrassing for the regime and provides the nearest motive yet as to why Riyadh may have acted when they did against him.”
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Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, couldn’t have imagined one of the other characters in his book was going to be at the centre of a huge political and diplomatic controversy, no less than the book’s central character, namely Osama Bin Laden.
The book was adapted for television as a series with the same title and tells the story of Al-Qaeda’s infamous attacks on New York and Washington. In one paragraph, Wright mentions a close friend of Bin Laden’s who shared the latter’s ambition to “establish an Islamic state anywhere.” That friend was Jamal Khashoggi. Both Bin Laden and Khashoggi were at the time active members of the Muslim Brotherhood and later Bin Laden would split from the Brotherhood to form with Abdullah Azzam Al-Qaeda, the most dangerous organisation in the world. Khashoggi, Bin Laden, and Azzam, were all the merry companions of the same extremist group.
Today, the world is busy keeping up with the news of the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, journalist and Human Rights activist in Saudi Arabia, but very few know the man’s past and his affiliation with Al-Qaeda during the war in Afghanistan. He promoted Saudi Mujahedeen focusing on his friendship with Bin Laden.
On May 4, 1988, the Saudi daily Arab News published a report by Jamal Khashoggi about his tour in Afghanistan in the company of Al-Qaeda operatives. Even though Khashoggi was just a journalist doing a report, the photos published with the article show him wearing Afghani garb and shouldering a RBG rocket launcher. More here.
Category Archives: Human Rights Violations United Nations
When Will the US Begin to Sanction China?
Last week, Defense Secretary Mattis said:
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis this week voiced new U.S. opposition to China’s continued militarization of islands in the South China Sea.
“We remain highly concerned with continued militarization of features in the South China Sea,” Mattis told reporters on Monday as he traveled to Vietnam.
Mattis also said China is using predatory economics to seek control over other nations.
The Chinese are engaged in a global infrastructure development plan called the Belt and Road Initiative that U.S. officials have said is being used by Beijing to expand influence and control abroad, and expand Chinese military bases around the world.
Mattis said the predatory economic policies include loans “where massive debt is piled on countries that fiscal analysis would say they are going to have difficulty, at best, repaying in the smaller countries.”
The defense secretary, echoing the new U.S. hardline policy toward China, said the United States is not seeking to “contain” China but wants more reciprocal relations.
In part from Newsweek:
“Beijing can now deploy military assets, including combat aircraft and mobile missile launchers to the Spratly Islands at any time,” said the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) on Monday in a report that included images of the three man-made islands—Fiery Cross reef, Subi, and Mischief. Its director Greg Poling told Voice of America that new antennas had been spotted on Subi and Fiery Cross, so he expected deployments there soon.
The Spratly Islands are around 500 miles from the coast of China, and Fiery Cross Reef about 740 miles from mainland China. It is approximately 170 miles off the coast of Vietnam. Why did China build these islands and how did they manage to make land out of sea?
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But media is not paying attention.
It gets worse.
Researchers have mapped out a series of internet traffic hijacks and redirections that they say are part of large espionage and intellectual property theft effort by China.
The researchers, Chris Demchak of the United States Naval War College and Yuval Shavitt of the Tel Aviv University in Israel, say in their paper that state-owned China Telecom hijacked and diverted internet traffic going to or passing through the US and Canada to China on a regular basis.
Tel Aviv University researchers built a route tracing system that monitors BGP announcements and which picks up on patterns suggesting accidental or deliberate hijacks and discovered multiple attacks by China Telecom over the past few years.
In 2016, China Telecom diverted traffic between Canada and Korean government networks to its PoP in Toronto. From there, traffic was forwarded to the China Telecom PoP on the US West Coast and sent to China, and finally delivered to Korea.
Normally, the traffic would take a shorter route, going between Canada, the US and directly to Korea. The traffic hijack lasted for six months, suggesting it was a deliberate attack, Demchak and Shavitt said.
Demchak and Shavitt detailed other traffic hijacks, including one that saw traffic from US locations to a large Anglo-American bank’s Milan headquarters being terminated in China, and never delivered to Italy, in 2016.
During 2017, traffic between Scandinavia and Japan, transiting the United States, was also captured by China Telecom, ditto data headed to a mail server operated by a large Thai financial company.
China Telecom is able to divert the traffic by announcing bogus routes via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that governs data flows between Autonomous Systems, the large networks operated by telcos, internet providers and corporations.
After the traffic was copied by China Telecom for encyption breaking and analysis, it was delivered to the intended networks with only small delays. Demchak and Shavitt said.
Such hijacking is difficult to detect as China Telecom has multiple points of presence (PoPs) in North America and Europe that are physically close to the attacked networks, causing almost unnoticeable traffic delivery delays despite the lengthened routes.
China in comparison does not allow overseas telcos to establish PoPs in the country, and has only three gateways into the country, in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. This isolation protects the country’s domestic and transit traffic from foreign hijacking.
BGP hijacking of internet traffic is a common phenomenon, one which requires the support of large network operators to exploit at scale.
While the US and China agreed in 2015 to not hack one another’s computer networks, the deal did not cover hijacking of internet backbones, Demchak and Shavitt pointed out.
The researchers suggest the allied democratic nations establish an “access reciprocity” policy for internet PoPs located in their countries, to address the traffic hijacking.
Under the access reciprocity policy US telcos and providers should be allowed to set up PoPs in China, Demchak and Shavitt said.
If access reciprocity is refused, “then an appropriate defence policy in response could state that no traffic to or from the US or ally is allowed to enter a China Telecom PoP in the US or in the ally’s networks,” the researchers suggested.
Such a policy could be inserted into BGP routing tables as required for automatic implementation.
Hey, the Mayor of Atlanta has Joined the anti-ICE Movement
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Thursday signed an executive order for transferring all remaining U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees out of the city jail and declaring that Atlanta will no longer hold anyone for the federal agency.
The Democratic mayor’s move follows a separate executive order from June that blocked the jail from taking in any new ICE detainees amid enforcement of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy on the southwest border, which split up many immigrant families. Bottoms has vigorously objected to that federal policy.
“Atlanta will no longer be complicit in a policy that intentionally inflicts misery on a vulnerable population without giving any thought to the horrific fallout,” Bottoms told reporters moments before signing her executive order. “As the birthplace of the civil rights movement we are called to be better than this.”
Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican nominee for governor, criticized the mayor’s move in a statement he released Thursday afternoon.
“The City of Atlanta should focus on cleaning up corruption and stopping crime — not creating more of it,” he said.
So….how about it Atlanta…what say you about her oath of office?
ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING; OATH OF OFFICE; MANDATORY TRAINING.(As taken from the Atlanta City Code of Ordinances)Section 2-301.-Organizational meeting; oath of office; mandatory training.(a) Organizational meeting.The council shall meet for organization in the council chamber, or anyother designated public place, on the first Monday in January following each regular election, or, if such Monday is a legal holiday, then on the next following day not a legal holiday.(b) Oath of office.At such organizational meeting, the mayor, president of the council, andcouncil members shall take and subscribe before a judge of the superior court, or any official authorized to administer oaths, the following oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the [mayor, president of the council, council member] City Council of the City of Atlanta, Georgia. I will not knowingly permit my vote to be influenced by fear, favor, affection, or reward, and in all things pertaining to my office. I will be governed by the public goodand the interests of the City. I will observe the provisions of the Charter, ordinances, and regulations of the City of Atlanta, and I will support and defend the Constitutions of the State of Georgia and the United States of America. I am not the holder of any office of trust under the government of the United States, any other state, or any foreign state which I am prohibited from holding by the laws of the State of Georgia; I am not the holder of any unaccounted-for public money due this state or anypolitical subdivision or authority thereof; I have been a resident of the City of Atlanta [and Council District] and am otherwise qualified to hold this office by the Constitution and laws of this State and the Charter and ordinances of the City of Atlanta, so help me God.” More here.
So….Atlanta, (an international city/hub) how about challenging this Mayor on this topic of which Atlanta was part of for starters?
WASHINGTON – Law enforcement officials from the United States and the United Kingdom wrapped up Friday a “week of action” during which they conducted outreach at major international airports with the goal of education about and prevention of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). This outreach, called “Operation Limelight”, was conducted at four international airports in the U.S.—John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and Los Angeles International Airport—and at Heathrow Airport and train stations throughout the UK.
On August 30, law enforcement from the two nations also gathered at the U.S. embassy in London to sign a proclamation affirming their commitment to end the practice of FGM/C in both countries and around the world. The proclamation reads, in part:
“Female genital mutilation/cutting is a global issue that transcends our borders. FGM/C is a culturally-based, gender-specific form of violence and when performed on girls under the age of 18, it is child abuse. The top priorities of the U.K. and U.S. are safeguarding girls through prevention, multi-agency partnership and education. These efforts require that we learn and share our experiences and cooperate through both our informal and formal engagements. Through existing police to police and mutual assistance agreements and arrangements, the U.S. and U.K. law enforcement intend to share intelligence to enhance our knowledge of, and response to female genital mutilation. This collaboration seeks to build our intelligence capacity to identify those involved in perpetrating or facilitating FGM/C offences whilst safeguarding potential victims.”
Signatories of the proclamation include representatives from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, London Metropolitan Police Service, UK National Police Chiefs Council, UK Border Force, UK Crown Prosecution Service, and British Transport Police.
“Our agency is committed to pursuing those who commit or allow female genital mutilation. Through outreach and investigations, we will work to eradicate this form of abuse,” said Louis A. Rodi, III, Deputy Assistant Director, National Security Investigation Division, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. “We value our partnerships with UK law enforcement as well as with other U.S. federal agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This collaboration strengthens our resolve to carry out this important work to protect women and girls and investigate crimes against them.”
“FGM is a barbaric and violent crime enacted on girls who suffer the results for the rest of their lives. It is child abuse, and no religion, culture or tradition should be allowed to mitigate or make an excuse for such appalling crimes. It is even more traumatic because it is generally committed or facilitated by their families who they should look to for love and protection,” said United Kingdom’s National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead on Female Genital Mutilation Commander Ivan Balhatchet. “FGM is hugely complex to investigate and prosecute. Frequently, the survivor is unwilling to give evidence against those closest to them, and some cases of FGM occur prior to the arrival of the survivor in the UK.
Belhatchet continued, “the US shares the same goal but also the same challenges. This proclamation will mean both the UK and US learn more about FGM, the routes taken by perpetrators and when and where it is committed; this is particularly important because we know that perpetrators continue to adapt to evade detection. We also want this agreement and our joint operation to send a signal to those planning to commit FGM that we will do everything we can to protect girls and prosecute offenders.
“FGM is not something we can eradicate alone. We need everyone who works with children and young people to be alert to signs of FGM and tell [law enforcement] about them. We also need the public and other support groups to speak out and share information with us.”
For more information about the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting, view this video from the U.S. Department of State or visit the United Nations’ Zero Tolerance Day website.
Female genital mutilation/cutting is a federal crime in the United States, and any involvement in committing this crime is a serious human rights violation which may result in imprisonment and potential removal from the U.S. Individuals suspected of female genital mutilation/cutting, including sending girls overseas to be cut, may be investigated by the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center (HRVWCC) and prosecuted accordingly.
Established in 2009, the HRVWCC furthers ICE’s efforts to identify, locate and prosecute human rights abusers in the United States, including those who are known or suspected to have participated in persecution, war crimes, genocide, torture, extrajudicial killings, FGM/C, and the use or recruitment of child soldiers. The HRVWCC leverages the expertise of a select group of agents, lawyers, intelligence and research specialists, historians and analysts who direct the agency’s broader enforcement efforts against these offenders.
Since 2003, ICE has arrested more than 410 individuals for human rights-related violations of the law under various criminal and/or immigration statutes. During that same period, ICE obtained deportation orders against and physically removed 908 known or suspected human rights violators from the United States. Additionally, ICE has facilitated the departure of an additional 122 such individuals from the United States.
Currently, ICE has more than 135 active investigations into suspected human rights violators and is pursuing more than 1,750 leads and removals cases involving suspected human rights violators from 95 different countries. Since 2003, the HRVWCC has issued more than 75,000 lookouts for individuals from more than 110 countries and stopped over 260 human rights violators and war crimes suspects from entering the U.S.
That Deported Nazi was One of Many in the U.S.
Amid a politically-charged debate over its existence, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has removed war criminal Jakiw Palij, marking the 68th deportation of a Nazi from the United States.
On Monday, ICE arrested Palij, 95, a former labor camp guard, enforcing a 2004 court order the same day President Donald Trump praised ICE and Customs and Border Protection officials at a White House ceremony.
Specifically for ICE, created in 2003, this marks at least the fourth Nazi arrest, deporting Nazi concentration camp guards John Demjanjuk and Josias Kumpf in 2009, and soldier John (Ivan) Kalymon in 2011.
“Despite a court ordering his deportation in 2004, past administrations were unsuccessful in removing Palij,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
“To protect the promise of freedom for Holocaust survivors and their families, President Trump prioritized the removal of Palij. Through extensive negotiations, President Trump and his team secured Palij’s deportation to Germany and advanced the United States’ collaborative efforts with a key European ally,” Sanders added.
For months, some Democrats have demanded the government “abolish ICE,” which is charged with enforcing immigration law in the interior of the country. Last month, three House Democrats introduced legislation to shut down ICE. Meanwhile, other politicians and commentators have compared ICE with Nazis or the Gestapo for arresting illegal immigrants.
ICE is often associated with arresting illegal immigrants that cross the border, but the agency also regularly investigates naturalization fraud, passport fraud, illegal immigrants in possession of firearms, as well as the smuggling of drugs, money, counterfeit merchandise, and weapons into the United States. This includes confronting sexual trafficking, and in some cases, fighting child pornography.
Three ICE offices—Enforcement and Removal Operations, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center—were all involved in the removal of Palij, according to ICE.
The ICE Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, established in 2009, locates and prosecutes human rights abusers in the United States, which includes those known or suspected to have participated in persecution, war crimes, genocide, torture, extrajudicial killings, female genital mutilation, and the use or recruitment of child soldiers.
War criminals won’t find a safe haven in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement.
“The arrest and removal of Jakiw Palij to Germany is a testament to the dedication and commitment of the men and women of ICE, who faithfully enforce our immigration laws to protect the American people,” Nielsen said.
Palij, the former Nazi officer arrested Monday in the Queens borough of New York City, was born in a part of Poland that is present day Ukraine.
Palij came to the United States in 1949, and lied to immigration officials, claiming to have spent World War II working on a farm and in a factory. He gained citizenship in 1957.
He trained with the Nazis in 1943 in German-occupied Poland. Court documents show those who trained him at the SS training camp in Trawniki participated in executing “Operation Reinhard,” a code name for the Third Reich’s plan to murder Jews in Poland. Palij served as an armed guard at the adjacent Trawniki labor camp.
“By helping to prevent the escape of these prisoners during his service at Trawniki, Palij played an indispensable role in ensuring that they later met their tragic fate at the hands of the Nazis,” Sanders said.
On Nov. 3, 1943, about 6,000 Jewish people held at the Trawniki labor camp were shot to death in one of the single largest massacres of the Holocaust.
In 2001, after an investigation, Palij admitted his past with the Nazis to the Justice Department. In May 2002, the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York filed a four-count complaint in U.S. District Court to revoke his citizenship based on his wartime activities.
A judge revoked his U.S. citizenship in 2003. U.S. Immigration Judge Robert Owens ordered his deportation in 2004 to Ukraine, Poland, Germany, or any country that would admit him, and a panel denied his 2005 appeal.
The Justice Department began targeting Nazis in the United States in 1979, won cases against 108 individuals, and prevented 180 individuals with ties to the Axis powers from World War II from entering the United States, according to ICE. But 68 were deported.
Similar to Palij, previous Nazi deportation orders took years to act on.
In May 2009, ICE deported John Demjanjuk, 89, a former Nazi death camp guard and a resident of Seven Hills, Ohio, to Germany to face criminal charges for 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. He was a retired auto worker in Ohio, and was born in what is today Ukraine. He came to the United States in 1952, concealing his Nazi past. It was one of the most storied cases that worked its way through the legal process for almost three decades.
Demjanjuk was first tried on allegations of participation in Nazi persecution in a civil denaturalization (citizenship revocation) case decided in 1981, and it was unearthed that he was a gas chamber operator at the Sobibor concentration camp where Nazis killed 250,000 Jews. In 1986, the U.S. extradited him to Israel, where the country’s Supreme Court found reasonable doubt. After his release, he returned to the United States.
In 1999, the U.S. initiated a new denaturalization case against Demjanjuk, relying in large part on captured Nazi documents that came to light following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, according to ICE. This evidence found he not only served at Sobibor, but also worked as a guard at the Majdanek camp, where Nazis killed 170,000 Jews.
A U.S. District Court in Cleveland revoked his citizenship in 2002. But it wasn’t until December 2005 that Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy ordered Demjanjuk removed from the United States to Ukraine, Germany, or Poland. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Demjanjuk’s petition for review.
That same year, in March 2009, ICE removed Josias Kumpf, 83, to Austria. He was living in Racine, Wisconsin. He came to the United States after World War II.
According to ICE, Kumpf was a former Waffen SS Death’s Head Battalion guard at the Nazi-run Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany and at the Trawniki SS training camp in Poland, the same camp as Palij served, where Nazis murdered thousands of Jews on Nov. 3, 1943.
In September 2011, ICE announced that the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed an appeal by John (Ivan) Kalymon, 90, of Troy, Michigan, affirming his deportation because of his Nazi activities during World War II. Kalymon, who came to the United States in 1949, shot Jews while voluntarily serving as a member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police from 1941 to 1944 in German-occupied Lviv, Ukraine, according to ICE.
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There were upwards of a thousand Nazis who were used by U.S. intelligence after the war by the CIA, the FBI, the military and other U.S. intelligence agencies — both in Europe as well as inside the United States, in Latin America, in the Middle East, even a few in Australia. And these were seen as basically cold warriors who served as spies, informants and in other intelligence roles. More here.
