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BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year! |
Flights from Glasgow airport were suspended after the crash |
Earlier in the day, Cobra also met to discuss the London car bomb attempts.
In the early hours of Friday, two Mercedes containing petrol, gas cylinders and nails were found left outside the Tiger Tiger club in Haymarket and a nearby street but the devices did not detonate.
Police in the capital are checking CCTV footage in their investigation into the planting of the two car bombs.
Unconfirmed reports suggest police may have an image of a suspect leaving the vehicle left outside the Tiger Tiger club.
Police increased patrols and security for events in London over the weekend, including the Gay Pride parade, the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium and the Wimbledon tennis championships.
Police have urged anyone with information to phone the confidential Anti-Terrorist hotline number on 0800789321.
On June 8, the Council of Europe’s Special Raporteur for human rights, Dick Marty, presented his second report concerning the illegal transport and secret imprisonment of prisoners (so-called “special renditions”). This report presents the facts and refutes the misleading and false statements made by government officials in the US and Europe.
The Marty report finds that several European governments systematically obstructed the search for the truth and are continuing to do so. It declares that governments, repeating the pretext of protecting “state secrets,” have impeded parliamentary investigations and the judicial process in order to prevent those responsible from facing criminal charges. The report singles out the governments in Germany and Italy.
Marty presents a detailed description of the secret programme set up by the US government in collaboration with several European governments to abduct prisoners from Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world and transfer them to secret prisons in Europe, where they are subjected to torture. The report finds proof that the CIA maintained secret prisons in Poland and Romania with the support of these countries’ governments and those of Europe as whole.
The report relies on the detailed testimony of active and former intelligence personnel in Europe and the US. In addition, Marty received the raw flight data for air travel over Europe, in order to follow the path taken by the CIA flights that transported prisoners.
The report states, “What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven.” Since the Polish and Romanian governments continue to deny the existence of these prisons, the team working with Marty had to establish proof on the basis of a painstaking review of the flight data. They assembled the records of secret CIA flights from Kabul to the Polish airport Szymany. The report also speaks of a confidential agreement between Washington and Bucharest permitting the construction of a CIA base in Romania.
According to the report, the prisons were in operation from 2003 to 2005. “Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice,” the report says. (See “Report details CIA prisons in Europe”).
“We believe we have now managed to retrace in detail Mr. al-Masri’s odyssey and shed light on his return to Europe. If we, with few powers or resources, were able to do this, why were the competent authorities unable to manage it? There is only one possible explanation: they are not interested in seeing the truth come out.”
Marty’s first report, submitted in June 2006, already described the circumstances of the kidnapping of al-Masri, a German citizen. During a bus journey to Skopje, al-Masri had been arrested by secret service agents at the Serbian-Macedonian border on the last day of 2003 and handed over to the CIA.
He was imprisoned in Macedonia for several weeks, and at the end of January 2004 taken from Skopje (in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia) via Bagdad to Kabul, where he was detained for four months in the notorious “Saltpit” secret prison. There he was repeatedly abused, kicked, humiliated and interrogated. His wife and children were told nothing about his whereabouts.
Facing endless interrogations, al-Masri carried out a hunger strike, all the while asserting his innocence. The CIA ultimately became convinced that it was detaining the wrong person, someone who was completely innocent, and released al-Masri on May 28, 2004. He was taken to Albania and returned to Germany from there. Initially, the exact circumstances of his return could not be clarified.
In the new report, Marty writes: “Today I think I am in a position to reconstruct the circumstances of Mr. al-Masri’s return from Afghanistan. He was flown out of Kabul on 28 May, 2004 on board a CIA-chartered Gulfstream aircraft with the tail number N982RK to a military airbase in Albania called Bezat-Kuçova Aerodrome. We have obtained primary data on this extraordinary homeward rendition from three separate sources, and we are able to publish the relevant flight logs from the Marty Database as an appendix to this report.”
Marty then describes how the aviation authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina made him aware of “unusual air traffic” in European air space during this period. The submission cited three “diplomatic permissions for state aircraft,” which it said had been issued in relation to “flight movements for the needs of CIA, USA.”
Al-Masri, who did not know where the plane that was returning him to Europe had landed, was then driven for hours in a closed truck with his eyes blindfolded through hilly countryside, and finally abandoned in the middle of a forest. He was told to keep walking straight ahead.
Al-Masri feared at first that he would be shot from behind, but then arrived at a border post between the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Albania. From there, he was driven for about six hours to the Albanian capital Tirana, where he received a plane ticket and his passport with an Albanian departure stamp of May 29, 2004.
Back in Germany, despite his traumatic experiences, al-Masri immediately tried to shed light on the circumstances of his illegal kidnapping and brutal treatment. However, he met a wall of silence when he approached the German authorities. Although Interior Minister Otto Schily (Social Democratic Party—SPD) had been informed personally in May 2004 by the American ambassador in Germany, Daniel Coats, that al-Masri had been imprisoned erroneously, Schily kept silent.
The efforts of al-Masri’s lawyer and the public prosecutor’s office in Munich to shed light on al-Masri’s fate met with silence on the part of Schily. Likewise, all other inquiries directed to the SPD-Green Party government were rebuffed, including those from the federal chancellor’s office, then headed by the present foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Marty mentions in his report that he is still unable to identity the German-speaking agent, “Sam,” who accompanied al-Masri on his return journey from Afghanistan. It is noted that this secrecy is linked to the fact that Schily was in Kabul when “Sam” informed al-Masri that he would soon be going home.
Although the parliamentary committee of inquiry, to which al-Masri gave detailed statements, has no doubt about the truth of his testimony, there has been no admission by the German federal government and the responsible authorities that al-Masri suffered an injustice, let alone an apology or compensation for what he has suffered.
It has also proved impossible so far to clarify the exact extent of the involvement of German politicians and authorities, and precisely when they knew about his fate. All the relevant documents and files have been stamped “top secret” and will not be released, even years after the event. Even the parliamentary control commission for the monitoring of the secret services was refused access to information about the case.
In the US, the legal action that al-Masri launched against the CIA, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was rejected by an appeals court, again on the grounds of “state secrets.” At the end of May, al-Masri’s lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, announced that the case would be going before the US Supreme Court.
While the German government (both the former SPD-Green Party coalition and the current grand coalition of the SPD and the Christian Democrats) has done everything possible to hide its own involvement in the dirty activities of the CIA and its own secret services, the German authorities are very active when it comes to trying to undermine the credibility of the victims of these machinations or criminalise them.
Thus, it has become known that the telephones of al-Masri’s lawyer were tapped from January to May 2006, allegedly to find out whether al-Masri’s kidnappers would call.
Khaled al-Masri still suffers greatly from the psychological consequences of the torture to which he was subjected. Moreover, he has repeatedly been insulted and slandered by the local media and has not been able to find work for the past three years. It took a long time before the Centre for the Victims of Torture in Neu Ulm offered him a limited course of therapy, lasting just 70 hours, which both he and his therapist consider insufficient.
It is only this untenable situation and the continuing refusal to officially acknowledge that he suffered an injustice that explain why al-Masri committed an obvious act of desperation on May 17. He was arrested shortly after an arson attack on a supermarket in Neu Ulm, and was detained in a psychiatric hospital. Following a complaint about the purchase of an electrical appliance and a dispute with sales personnel, al-Masri had been banned from the store.
The tabloid Bild immediately exploited this incident, which has not yet passed through the legal system, to launch a witch-hunt against al-Masri, describing him as a “mad German-Lebanese” and asking, “why do we let ourselves be terrorised by such a person?” Thus, the victim is turned into the culprit and all questions of state responsibility in his kidnapping are swept under the table.
The US Congress will take back its full trade authority from President George Bush, the majority Democratic leadership said while dismissing White House pleas to let him keep his special power.
The expiration of the Trade Promotion Authority [TPA], which lets Bush negotiate trade agreements that cannot be amended by Congress, could deal a major blow to the nearly collapsed Doha Round of World Trade Organization [WTO] talks.
The TPA, also known as “fast-track,” was extended for two years in 2005 and expires at midnight on Saturday.
“Our legislative priorities do not include the renewal of fast-track authority,” Nancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives Speaker, and other leading Democrats said on Friday in a statement.
The House Democrats said they had a plan to improve US trade policy, while at the same time addressing increased economic insecurity felt by American families.
Among the steps considered is the introduction soon of legislation to address the growing US trade imbalance with China and strengthen overall enforcement of US trade agreements and US trade laws.
“Before that debate can even begin, we must expand the benefits of globalization to all Americans, including taking the actions outlined above. We hope that the administration will join us in these efforts,” they said.
Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee that has jurisdiction over trade policy, said his panel would turn to the TPA “at an appropriate time in the future,” after it has been reshaped in “a more powerful job-creating tool for American workers and businesses.”
Meanwhile, the Bush administration made a last-ditch pitch to save the TPA.
“It’s regrettable that Congress is letting this authority expire this weekend,” said Tony Fratto, the Bush spokesman.
“It will be damaging to our economy and our national security if Congress abandons America’s leadership role in trade and the global marketplace,” he added.
May compromise
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| Condoleezza Rice called on Congress to renew TPA “immediately” [EPA] |
Susan Schwab, the US Trade Representative, pointed to a May compromise reached between the Republican administration and Congress on several bilateral trade pacts negotiated under the TPA.
“I am hopeful this spirit of cooperation will guide our efforts to renew TPA,” she said in a statement.
Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, called on Congress to renew
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TPA “immediately.”“If Congress does not renew that authority, America will lose an important diplomatic tool that has proven essential to bringing foreign leaders to the negotiating table and advancing our nation’s broader foreign policy interests,” Rice said.
The White House appeal came as Congress headed into a week-long recess for the July 4 Independence Day holiday. The House of Representatives adjourned on Thursday and the Senate on Friday.
Agreements
Meanwhile, the Bush administration was planning to wrap up a week of bilateral free-trade agreements negotiated under TPA with the signing of a pact with South Korea on Saturday.
The United States sealed FTAs with Peru on Monday and Colombia and Panama on Thursday. However,House Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in the lower chamber said they would not support approval of the pacts with South Korea or Colombia at this time.
The US-South Korea deal lacks adequate market access for the United States, particularly in the automobile sector, she said.
“The agreement does not address in an effective manner the persistent problem of non-tariff barriers, particularly those blocking access of US manufactured products in South Korea’s market,” they said.
“That is particularly the case in the automotive sector where, last year, South Korea exported more than 700,000 cars into the US, while the United States exported fewer than 5,000.”
The lawmakers also said they were concerned about rampant violence in Colombia and weakness in its legal system, and called for “concrete evidence of sustained results” there before any trade pact would find support.
The UN Security Council has voted to end a programme charged with looking for suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, after no such weapons were found.
Fourteen members of the bloc voted to close the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic), with Russia abstaining, Johan Verbeke, council chairman, said.
“It’s a positive moment because it means the international community has now the necessary confidence to go ahead with Iraq on a new path in confidence as regards to its obligations in the field of non-proliferation,” Verbeke said.
The US-British resolution to close Unmovic terminates the mandate of the weapons monitor “immediately”.
The commission was set up in 1999 to verify that Iraq no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction and had complied with obligations not to acquire proscribed armaments.
Inspectors from Unmovic left Iraq in March 2003, just before the US-led invasion started, and have never returned.
Iraq Survey Group
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a US-led coalition organisation, was tasked with continuing the hunt for WMDs in Iraq, but none were found.
The failure to discover suspicious weapons in Iraq undermined the main US and British argument for invading Iraq.
The closure of Unmovic comes after two years of US calls for an end to all related UN inspection work there.
Demetrius Perricos, the acting executive chairman of the group, told the council that the resolution “closes a cycle of many years of verification, where the UN showed that it can implement successfully the activities demanded by the international community, despite difficulties and frequently a lack of co-operation from the inspected party.”
Shortly before the Unmovic vote, Perricos warned that fighters in Iraq may try to acquire poisonous agents for use in weapons.
“In the present security environment of Iraq, the possibility should not be discounted that non-state actors may seek to acquire toxic agents or their chemical precursors in small quantities,” he said.
Perricos cited the example of the recent reported use of toxic industrial chemicals, such as chlorine, by fighters in Iraq.
“The possibility of non-state actors [insurgents] getting their hands on other, more toxic, agents is real,” he said.
Agencies
Security services played role in similar previous attacks, massive car bomb discovered in London
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Intelligence sources are refusing to rule out an Irish connection to a massive car bomb that was discovered in the heart of London this morning. Though at this early stage the facts are sketchy, any link to the IRA or its offshoots would re-open a can of worms concerning the MI5’s role in past terror attacks, and specifically car bombings, over the last few decades in Britain and Northern Ireland.
The timing of the attempted attack coincides with new Prime Minister Gordon Brown taking over from Tony Blair just yesterday.
“The threat of terror returned to London today after a large car bomb was found in the heart of the capital,” reports the Daily Mail .”Bomb squad officers defused the ‘massive’ device after police investigated reports of a suspicious vehicle in the early hours.”
“According to an eyewitness the door staff at the nightclub Tiger, Tiger alerted police after the car, believed to be a silver Mercedes, was driven into bins last night and the driver ran off.”"The witness said the car was being driven ‘erratically’ before the minor crash. The driver was not stopped.”
In any criminal investigation and in particular terrorism inquiry, it is paramount to look at who has the motive and history to carry out such an attack.
It is important to stress that not every terror attack is necessarily part of some elaborate scheme or conspiracy - indeed it is usually small scale incidents such as this that are the work of lone extremists or Islamic fundamentalists who hate the west, of which Britain is inundated with.
But as the facts emerge we would be foolish to overlook the fact that the British security services were intimately involved in numerous terror attacks in Britain over the past few decades, namely car bombings, that were blamed on the IRA or its offshoots. This is particularly relevant considering that officials have refused to rule out an Irish connection in this case.
![]() The sliver car was left outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub on Haymarket. A gas canister can be seen in the bottom left-hand corner of this picture. |
Every major IRA bombing in England and Northern Ireland has had the fingerprints of the British government and the FRU all over it.
Starting from at least the 1980’s, SAS and British military intelligence agents were routinely ordered to embed themselves within violent branches of the IRA and aid terrorists in carrying out attacks. How do we know this happened? Because one of the individuals who was ordered to do so, Kevin Fulton, blew the whistle on the fact that he was told he had the Prime Minister’s blessing to aid terrorists in bomb making and political assassinations.
In addition, mirroring the backdrop of the infiltration of the alleged liquid bomb plot , the August 15th 1998 Omagh bombing was allowed to proceed despite the fact that MI5 had fully infiltrated the Real IRA terror cell, knew the date of the bombing, and had tracked the terrorists’ vehicle as it was driven to the bomb site. Again, in this case MI5 had one of their own agents within the bomb squad itself . In this instance, the car bombing went forward and 29 people, including two babies and nine children, were ripped apart as they shopped in a quiet market street.
Documents , lodged as part of a court action being taken against the British government by a disgruntled military intelligence agent, also revealed that an FRU (Force Research Unit) major was the officer who was the handler of the British army’s most infamous agent inside the IRA — a man code named Stakeknife.
Stakeknife is one of Belfast’s leading Provisionals. His military handlers allowed him to carry out large numbers of terrorist murders in order to protect his cover within the IRA.
The London Observer further revealed some of the methods employed by the FRU in Northern Ireland, including the “human bomb” technique, which involved “forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints”.
Former MI5 counter-terrorism officer David Shayler also saw documents indicating that the Israeli’s bombed their own embassy in London in 1994 after a car bomb exploded outside the building in Kensington.
He also presented evidence that MI5 had foreknowledge of the 1993 Bishopsgate car bombing that was blamed on the IRA, and could have apprehended the bomb squad but let the attack go ahead.
To forget the proven history of the security service’s involvement in car bombings and other terror attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland in light of this latest incident would be very naive, and as more information about the culprits behind this morning’s attempted attack is released, that history is likely to become more prescient.
MINISTERS are considering the compulsory microchipping of all dogs as part of a range of measures to crack down on dangerous breeds, The Scotsman has learned.
Plans have been drawn up by the SNP MSP Alex Neil to update and reform the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, which banned a number of breeds, including pit bull terriers.
Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, said he was willing
to back Mr Neil’s plans, either by giving support to a private member’s bill or by introducing legislation, if that proved to a better way of dealing with the problem.
Mr Neil’s proposals include:
• Changing the emphasis from the current ban on certain breeds to penalising owners of any dog not kept under control.
• Introducing the mandatory microchipping of all dogs, so owners can be traced, and penalising owners who have dogs without chips.
• Making it an offence to have a dangerous dog in any place, including in the home, an area not covered fully by the current legislation.
He has the support of leading animal welfare organisations, including the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Advocates for Animals and the Kennel Club. All of these bodies believe the current legislation on dangerous dogs is not working.
Mike Flynn, chief superintendent of the Scottish SPCA, said: “The current legislation is badly worded; it’s not understood by the law enforcers and not implemented properly by the courts.”
Mr Neil and the animal welfare campaigners want to change the emphasis, moving away from “breed to deed” - penalising the owners of any dangerous dog rather than banning and destroying pit bull terriers and other specified breeds.
Mr Flynn said what was needed was a range of hefty fines for dog owners and the introduction of banning orders, preventing unsuitable owners from owning dogs again.
Compulsory microchipping would help because it would allow the authorities to keep track of all dogs, preventing some owners from denying any knowledge of their dangerous pets.
Mr Neil said he was delighted to have the Executive’s backing, adding that he was keen to work with MPs in the Commons who are also looking at this issue, to establish if there is a way of co-ordinating legislation in both parliaments.
He said the recent tragedy in St Helens, when five-year-old Ellie Lawrenson was killed by her uncle’s dog, showed the current laws were not working.
“The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act was rushed through in an hysterical atmosphere and it was badly drafted and there are several areas where we can improve it,” he said.
THE Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 was introduced in response to a series of attacks by aggressive and uncontrolled dogs, particularly on children. MPs reacted to public concern, but there is now a general consensus among animal welfare groups that the legislation was badly drafted.
The act banned four breeds of dog: pit bull terriers , the tosa, the dogo Argentino and the fila Brasileiro. It was made illegal to own these dogs - unless courts made a special exemption - or breed, sell and exchange them.
The privacy rights of air passengers travelling from Europe to the US will be put at risk by an information- sharing deal between the two aimed at stopping terrorist attacks, the European Union’s top data protection official has said.
Peter Hustinx wrote in a letter that the agreement, to be unveiled on Friday, could violate the rights of EU citizens. It allows the US to retain information about passengers for 15 years, up from three at present, while placing “no limitation to what US authorities are allowed to do with the data”, Mr Hustinx wrote on Wednesday to Wolfgang Schäuble, the German interior minister who clinched the deal.
EU officials reject the claim, saying the agreement has more safeguards than the interim regime it will replace at the end of July. While the US maintains the exchange of letters that will seal the deal is not legally binding, Brussels regards it as an international agreement that could be revoked if not complied with.
Washington has agreed to allow a senior European official to travel to the US and scrutinise how it is using the data. It has reduced its demands for information, cutting the number of categories from 34 to 19, the Financial Times has learned. However, some diplomats said the change was “presentational” as some categories had simply been enlarged.
EU citizens will also be covered by the US Privacy Act for the first time, meaning they could enforce their rights in US courts.
Critics say the deal would allow the Department of Homeland Security as well as US customs access to the data. The US rejected an EU request that sensitive data such as dietary requirements, a clue to religion, be filtered in Europe, insisting it be done on its soil.
Sophie in t’Veld, an MEP who represents the European parliament on the issue, called it a “bad deal”.
While the US had made it clear it would ban airlines that refused to comply, the EU could have extracted more concessions, she said. “It is making legal an illegal practice,” the Dutch Liberal said. “We are trusting the Americans to stick to the rules on scout’s honour.”
The original deal was struck in the wake of the September 11 attacks and allowed for information including names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details and past flight details to be handed over. The European Court of Justice overturned it on procedural grounds last year. The EU fears summer travel chaos if it does not replace the interim agreement before the July 31 deadline, as the US could block flights.
EU ambassadors are expected to rubber-stamp the new deal today. It has to be ratified by national parliaments before taking effect and Ireland’s Dail breaks up next week.
