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Spy watchdog: CSIS uses torture information

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Jim Bronskill

An investigation by the watchdog over the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concludes the spy agency “uses information obtained by torture” - perhaps its bluntest assessment of CSIS’s intelligence-gathering practices to date.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee, which began looking into the issue two years ago, stops short of accepting Toronto lawyer Paul Copeland’s assertion that CSIS had shown a “total lack of concern” about evidence possibly gathered through coercive means.

But it finds that CSIS’s concern has focused on the impact that torture might have on the reliability of information it uses, rather than obligations under the Charter of Rights, the Criminal Code and international treaties “that absolutely reject torture.”

Questions about Canadian reliance on information extracted from suspected terrorists through brutal methods have arisen in several high-profile cases.

Copeland’s complaint to the review committee, which reports to Parliament, stemmed from evidence CSIS entered in the case of client Mohamed Harkat who is slated for deportation to his native Algeria under a national security certificate.

CSIS contends Harkat, a former pizza delivery man, is an Islamic extremist and collaborator with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network - a charge he denies.

During bail proceedings for Harkat in 2005, Copeland questioned a senior CSIS analyst, identified only as P.G., whether he ever asked if information he handled was obtained through torture.

P.G. insisted he would usually try to corroborate such material through independent sources.

Copeland was left with the impression the spy service made no effort to determine whether information was extracted by torture.

In its report, recently delivered to Copeland, committee member Aldea Landry noted CSIS is required, before entering a foreign liaison arrangement, to address the country’s human rights record. That includes possible abuses by its security or intelligence organizations.

In addition, arrangements with countries that do not share Canada’s respect for human rights are to be considered only when contact is necessary to protect the security of Canada.

“Based on these facts, I find CSIS is concerned with human rights, but nevertheless uses information obtained by torture.”

In an interview, Copeland said Tuesday he does not take much comfort from the review committee’s finding: “It’s nice to have them say it, but what are they doing to try and prevent CSIS from (using such information)?”

Landry called on CSIS to promptly implement the recommendations of the federal inquiry into the case of Maher Arar.

Landry said the changes - and any that might flow from an ongoing inquiry into the foreign imprisonment of three other Arab-Canadians - would ensure the use of information obtained from other countries does not violate Canadian law or treaty obligations.

Justice Dennis O’Connor, who led an inquiry into Arar’s case, made a number of recommendations in September 2006 intended to guard against Canadian complicity in torture and to safeguard the rights of those confronted with evidence that may have been gathered using extreme methods.

Arar, an Ottawa engineer, was sent to Syria and imprisoned in Damascus after being detained at a U.S. airport in September 2002. O’Connor concluded false information the RCMP provided to American officials likely led to Arar’s deportation.

In committee report, Landry said CSIS had made some strides toward ensuring compliance with O’Connor’s recommendations but that “it will take some time” to fully do so.

Manon Berube, a CSIS spokeswoman, said the intelligence service would “closely evaluate” the new review committee report as part of “its ongoing efforts to improve how it deals with this difficult issue.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci is currently probing the actions of Canadian officials in the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

The trio maintain they were tortured in Syria - and in the case of El Maati in Egypt as well - due to flawed information from Canadian security agencies.

© The Canadian Press, 2008

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Former Spy: MI6 could have killed Diana

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Daily Mail

Former spy Richard Tomlinson revealed that the crash that killed Diana was bore and ‘eerie similarity’ to an MI6 assassination plot

A former spy told the Diana inquest today he believed the Princess could have been murdered by MI6 officers.

Sacked secret agent, Richard Tomlinson, said he realised there could have been a conspiracy to assassinate Diana after seeing a documentary alleging there was a flash as her car entered a Paris tunnel.

The ex-MI6 officer said that after watching the film he had remembered an MI6 training session in which he was shown how a strobe gun could be used to kill targets.

He also spoke about MI6 plans to assassinate a top Balkan leader in a way that was almost identical to Diana’s fatal crash.

Speaking via videolink, Mr Tomlinson, understood to be in Marseille, spoke about a secret agent named only as “A” who had drawn up the Balkan plan.

The court heard that Mr Tomlinson, who was recruited by MI6 in 1991 after studying at Cambridge, told a Scotland Yard team investigating Diana’s death: “MI6 do have a capacity to stage accidents whether by helicopter, aeroplane or car and also that the strobe light was shown to us by the SBS at Poole during our training.”

He explained that drunk driver Henri Paul would have been the “first choice” for MI6 to recruit and that one of the paparazzi following the princess may also have been in the pay of the service.

Mr Paul died in the Paris crash that killed the princess and her lover Dodi Fayed on 31 August 1997.

Mr Tomlinson, who was jailed for a year in 1997 for breaking the Official Secrets Act, said he became aware of a possible assassination bid in mid-1998.

Richard Tomlinson claimed that MI6 could have used a strobe light to kill Diana in a car crash

He said: “I happened to see a thing on TV about it and that made me wonder whether something that I had seen within MI6 when I was working there might have been relevant.î

He told the inquest that a colleague, referred to as “A”, had shown him a document proposing the assassination of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

Mr Tomlinson claimed in his book The Big Breach - published after his dismissal from the service - that the options outlined included staging a crash in a tunnel involving a blinding flash of light from a strobe gun while Mr Milosevic was at a peace conference in Geneva, the court heard.

But the jury was told that in an earlier draft of the book he had spoken instead of a drive-by ambush.

He admitted during his evidence today that he could have become confused about the details of what was in the document but said such specifics were a “distraction” from the central issue of whether MI6 was ever involved in assassination attempts in principle.

He told the inquest it would be difficult but “not impossible” to assassinate somebody.

He also said he had read documents alleging there was a French source at the Ritz hotel. “There is no doubt that Henri Paul would have been of interest to the intelligence services. If you wanted to recruit one person within the Ritz hotel to work for you it would be a security officer. He would be your first choice,” he said. The inquest continues.

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Quarter of police face conduct inquiries

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Almost a quarter of Dyfed- Powys Police force’s 1,200 police officers have been investigated for allegations of misconduct, corruption or failure in duty in less than a year.

Over about 11 months in 2007, 283 constables, sergeants and inspectors faced a probe by the force’s professional standards department (PSD).

The shock figures were revealed after an Evening Post reporter requested details under the Freedom of Information Act.

The revelations have sparked a strong reaction from Llanelli AM Helen Mary Jones, who said the figures were disappointing.

“I am extremely concerned about these findings,” she said.

“They not only let down the public, but they let down the many honest police officers who are doing an excellent job in very difficult conditions.”

Five of the allegations were so serious that the officers involved tendered their resignation.

The research shows that six of the officers have been under scrutiny for two separate allegations, which brings the total number of accusations handled by the PSD to 289.

Around a third of the investigations were resolved by the PSD or the force division, with a number of others discontinued or found to be unsubstantiated. Some 120 of the inquiries are ongoing.

Female officers were the subject of at least 49 of the allegations, although details on gender were withheld in 30 cases.

Force spokeswoman Eleri Morris said: “To put this figure into context, the 283 officers were either the subject of a public complaint or internal misconduct procedures.

“It needs to be explained that these 283 officers were not all the subject of formal discipline.

“It has to be acknowledged that the majority of complaints against officers or internal misconduct results in either the matter being unsubstantiated or being dealt with by means of local resolution and/or managerial advice.

“It is comparatively few cases that result in formal discipline.”

The figures come after Llanelli inspectors Dyfed Bolton and Bob Price were temporarily removed from their Llanelli patches amid an investigation into alleged misconduct in an off-duty incident at the end of last year.

Source

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Intelligence Says Bin Laden Might Be Dead

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Geostrategy-Direct

U.S. intelligence agencies are beginning to suspect that Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is dead after all, despite a recent audio tape exhorting Al Qaida terrorists in Iraq.

Undated footage from the Internet shows Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden making statements from an unknown location. Reuters

The Al Qaida leader who was the main force behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, was last heard on an audio tape released Dec. 30. The tape mentioned Iraqis who are opposing Al Qaida, but there has been no specific time referenced from his last two messages. An earlier message in October also exhorted Al Qaida to fight in Iraq.Questions about Bin Laden are being raised by intelligence officials who say that without a specific time mark with a photo of Bin Laden, his presence cannot be confirmed and the most recent statements could have been put together from older audio.

Al Qaida operates a very sophisticated propaganda operations that includes the use of audio and videotape messages to rally followers and to recruit new jihadists.

The new analysis of Bin Laden follows the death of No. 3 Al Qaida leader Abu Laith Al Libi, who was killed last week in a CIA-led operation in Pakistan that involved an armed unmanned aerial vehicle attack.

Asked about U.S. military or intelligence involving in the terrorist killing, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: “I’m not going to talk any more about the operational side of this, of how that in fact occurred.”

Mullen called al Libi a key figure in Al Qaida and said “elimination of someone like that is a very important outcome in terms of this long war.”

Mullen also said safe havens for Al Qaida in Pakistan remain a concern and to be able to conduct an operation in the area was “important.”

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How believable are government claims on ID cards?

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

By John Oates

British people are maintaining steady levels of disbelief over goverment claims about ID cards, according to official Home Office research.

Lobby group No2ID picked up on the research this week, but a spokesman for the IPS said it had been published on ips.gov.uk in November. Google has a cache from earlier this month.

The survey asked people how important proposed benefits of the ID card would be - 74 per cent chose “disrupting the activities of terrorists and organised criminals”, but 23 per cent of people thought this was “slightly believable” and 11 per cent thought it was “not at all believable”. Seven per cent of respondents did not recognise any of the eight benefits they were offered to choose between.

Researchers from Taylor Nelson Sofres summarised views as: “Across the board, full buy-in and belief in the schemes [sic] ability to deliver the proposed benefits is weak.”

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator, said: “After five years of trying to get people to like ID cards, even the Home Office’s own research says that only one in four believe they’ll do what they’re claimed to. And this is supposed to be positive spin. It’s both tragedy and farce.

“Mr Brown - if he’s in control at all - should shut down the ID empire-builders before this particular legacy of Blunkett and Blair gets any more embarrassing.”

The survey also noted that: “Interestingly prevention of illegal immigration is more “top-of-mind” than it was in wave 1 which is likely to reflect media coverage at the time interviewing was being conducted.”

The Tracking Research talked to people in October, the latest update should be published in the next month - we’ll bring you more belief-beggaring government research as we get it.

It will be interesting to see what impact the recent round of data losses by the UK government has on its believability quotient.

The survey used a sample of 2,052 people weighted to reflect the UK population.

The survey report is available from this page as a pdf.®

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The Database State Will Have Your Child For Life

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Alexandra Frean

All 14-year-old children in England will have their personal details and exam results placed on an electronic database for life under a plan to be announced tomorrow.

Colleges and prospective employers will be able to access students’ records online to check on their qualifications. Under the terms of the scheme all children will keep their individual number throughout their adult lives, The Times has learnt. The database will include details of exclusions and expulsions.

Officials said last night that the introduction of the unique learner number (ULN)was not a step towards a national identity card. But it will be seen as the latest step in the Government’s broader efforts to computerise personal records.

Last night teachers’ leaders, parents’ organisations, opposition MPs and human rights campaigners questioned whether this Big Brother approach was necessary and said that it could compromise the personal security of millions of teenagers.

The new database — which will store a “tamper-proof CV” — will be known as MIAP (managing Information Across Partners). To be registered on the new database every 14-year-old will be issued with a unique learner number. Unlike the current unique pupil number now given to children in school but destroyed when they leave, the ULN will be used by government agencies to track individuals until they retire. Ultimately, it will create a numbered database for every citizen aged 14-plus in the UK.

The MIAP is part of a push for more government departments to share information on ordinary citizens with each other. The new Education and Skills Bill to raise the education leaving age from 16 to 18, for example, contains sweeping powers for local authorities to access information from schools, health agencies and social services to track young people between the ages of 16 and 18.

Margaret Morrisey, of the National Association of Parent Teacher Associations, said that plans for MIAP, which will be compulsory for all 14-year-olds throughout the UK, would fill parents with horror.

“I suspect there will not be more than two parents in the land who would have faith in the Government that this information will be secure,” she said.

A spokeswoman for MIAP, which will come under the auspices of the Learning and Skills Council, said that the database had the support of more than 40 “stakeholder organisations” from across the education sector.

Original plans for MIAP drawn up by the Government in 2003 suggested that the database could be linked to identity cards, raising the prospect that once pupils were in the system they might be forced into accepting an ID card.

The spokeswoman said that this plan had been shelved for the time being. “At the moment there are no plans for the Unique Learner Number to be used by the ID Card system,” she said. She added that the purpose of the system was to support the education, training and careers guidance of the learner, “not security, taxation or access to government services”.

The database would enable students to build a lifelong record of their educational participation and achievements that can be accessed through the internet. The system would be password protected and would have two points of entry. Students could look up their full records and personal details by using one password. They could then give another password to employers to give them access to a restricted view of the information online.

John Dunford, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Given the track record of government IT disasters and the possibility that all these children’s records will end up in Iowa, this is a worry.” While accepting that it would be helpful to keep centralised records of pupil achievement, he questioned the need to put it online.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, said: “The government has a terrible track record in managing complex IT programmes. Recent events have shown that sensitive personal data is not safe in ministers’ hands. There must be profound worries not just in terms of civil liberties, but also in terms of the security of young people with a project like this”.

He added that it was a “classic ministerial muddle” to press head with the new database while awaiting the outcome of a security review into a separate planned database, known as ContactPoint, containing personal details of all 11 million children in England, including names, addresses, schools, GPs and, where applicable, social worker. The ContactPoint review was ordered last year after HM Revenue and Customs lost two computer discs containing the banking and personal details of 25 million people. This was followed by the disappearance in Iowa of three million UK learner driver details, and the theft of a laptop containing personal details of 600,000 people who considered a career in the forces.

However, Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, is said to be satisfied with the security arrangements made for the new database, which is expected to go online next September.

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FDA Wants Terminally Ill Patients as Guinea Pigs

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

FDA Wants Big Pharma to Use Terminally Ill Patients as Guinea Pigs for Unapproved Drugs

David Gutierrez

 The FDA has proposed allowing the testing of experimental drugs on terminally ill patients once the drugs have passed the first safety testing phase, but before they have received final approval. The plan has already sparked controversy, with physicians staking out positions both for and against the proposed rule change.

Cancer doctor Dean Gesme, of the Minnesota Oncology Hematology Professional Association, charged that the rules will engender false hope in patients, when less than 10 percent of drugs beginning phase I safety trials are eventually adopted as viable treatments. Among these, most provide only incremental benefits; few are life-savers.

Testing these drugs on terminally ill patients would be unfair to the patients, and would potentially delay approval by obscuring the drugs’ long-term effects.

“False hopes for unproved drugs can also erode the clinical trials system by substituting clinical enthusiasm and wishful thinking for evidence based medicine,” Gesme said.

But Emil Freireich, a professor of Special Medical Education Programs at the University of Texas, believes the new rule would actually speed up the process of drug development. Most cancer drugs, he says, are tested only on the healthiest patients, making more critically ill patients ineligible and making it hard to know how well the drugs would work on that demographic.

“It is tragic that regulatory bodies have created a circumstance where people have to live in an aura of hopelessness even though they have the will, the resources and the ability to expose themselves to the risk of participating in investigational studies and to enjoy the potential for benefit,” he said.

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams characterized the plan as, “…yet one more way that Big Pharma and the FDA are conspiring to exploit the terminally ill.” Adams, who is an outspoken opponent of conventional cancer drugs, said, “I find it inexcusable that the FDA would support the use of unproven, potentially deadly cancer drugs while still maintaining staunch opposition to the use of much safer and more affordable natural anti-cancer therapies based on anti-cancer phytonutrients from herbs and foods. This kind of proposal by the FDA clearly demonstrates yet again that the agency acts solely in the interests of Big Pharma while ignoring the true medical needs of cancer patients.”

In the United Kingdom, doctors can make the decision to import or prescribe unlicensed drugs on a case-by-case basis. However, investigators into a drug trial that almost led to the deaths of six young participants have recommended to the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency that certain drugs might be better tested on patients who are more, rather than less, ill.

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Blair went to war on a lie, law lords told

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

By Nigel Morris

The mothers of two teenage soldiers killed in Iraq accused Tony Blair’s government of going to war “on a lie” as they took their fight for a public inquiry into the conflict to the House of Lords.

Beverly Clarke and Rose Gentle argue that ministers breached their duty to Britain’s armed forces by failing to ensure the invasion was lawful.

Trooper David Clarke, from Littleworth, Staffordshire, was killed by “friendly fire” near Basra in 2003, while Fusilier Gordon Gentle, from Glasgow, died in a roadside bomb attack in Basra in 2004. Both were 19.

The law lords yesterday began considering the mothers’ argument that servicemen and women have the right not to have their lives jeopardised in illegal conflicts.

Rabinder Singh QC, who is representing the women, told the court: “That duty is owed to soldiers who are under the unique compulsory control of the state and have to obey orders. They have to put their lives in harm’s way if necessary because their country demands it.”

Mr Singh said the overwhelming body of legal advice received by the Government was that the invasion would not be lawful without a second UN Security Council resolution. “These mothers … have come to court with reluctance. They are proud of their sons, who died with honour serving their country,” he said.

Mrs Clarke and Mrs Gentle base their argument on the legal advice prepared by Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, in the run-up to the war. They say 13 pages of “equivocal” advice were reduced to one page of unequivocal advice that military action would be legal in just 10 days.

The women are challenging a Court of Appeal ruling that said the Government was not obliged to order an independent inquiry under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the “right to life”.

Mrs Gentle said: “I think Tony Blair sent our boys to war on a lie. He just agreed with George Bush right away.” Peter Brierley, whose son, L/Cpl Shaun Brierley, was killed in 2006, said: “This was not defending his country. The country was not under any threat of attack.”

Lord Bingham, sitting with eight other law lords, said they were mindful of “the human loss which underlies these proceedings”.

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It’s Official: Bush family wealth is linked to Holocaust

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

By thecounterpunch

As the Guardian Newspaper wrote it: “Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades”.

Of course they were alledged to be “Conspiracy Theory” though such author as Tarpley in his book “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography“ did provide some material proofs when he wrote “On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush… under the Trading with the Enemy Act”

But the Guardian revealed that with a multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, new documents formely secret have been declassified, which reveal that the firm Prescott Bush worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) [In their student years, Prescott Bush and "Bunny" Harriman were chosen for membership in the Elite Yale Society Skull and Bones], acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen’s US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

This is not so surprising after the declassification of National Archives about the role of National Chase Bank of David Rockefeller in the confiscation of Jewish Accounts in France. It is even less surprising than the participation of the Bank of England (see BBC History Channel) controlled by the Rothschild.

Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush, Knight Woolley und R. Lovett

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Nazi parallel to justify 9/11 trial

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

The US has ordered diplomats abroad to justify seeking death penalty for 6 Gitmo detainees by recalling the executions of Nazi war criminals.

The unclassified cable is written in a question-and-answer format in anticipation of inquiries that diplomats may get from foreigners about the Pentagon’s Monday announcement of the trial and charges.

In the four-page cable sent by the State Department to all US diplomatic missions worldwide late on Monday, the US state department advises American diplomats to refer to Nuremberg as a historic precedent if asked by foreign governments or media about the legality of capital punishment in the 9/11 cases.

“International Humanitarian Law contemplates the use of the death penalty for serious violations of the laws of war,” says the cable.

“The most serious war criminals sentenced at Nuremberg were executed for their actions,” it adds.

The cable makes no link between the scale of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and those allegedly committed by the Guantanamo detainees.

It also comments on the issue that that the key suspect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sep. 11 attacks was subjected to interrogation tactics that critics call torture.

The cable instructs diplomats to tell foreign governments that the tribunal will not accept evidence obtained through torture and that the decisions will be up to the judge.

Twelve of Adolf Hitler’s senior aides were sentenced to death at the International Military Tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany, although not all were executed in the end.

MHE/DT

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• Spy agency clarifies torture policy
• Spy agency went too far, watchdog says
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• TURNING A BLIND EYE TO TORTURE

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Human Rights, War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.