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Sir Ian Blair to resign as Metropolitan Police chief

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

By Sean O’Neill | Sir Ian Blair is expected to announce his resignation as Metropolitan Police Commissioner this afternoon.

Sources told The Times that the pressures of recent months had forced Sir Ian, who became commissioner in February 2005, to consider his position.

He is understood to be standing down before Boris Johnson, the new Tory Mayor of London, takes control of the Metropolitan Police Authority next week.

“It is a combination of things - a new mayor in London who does not support him, the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes and the inquiry into how Scotland Yard contracts were awarded,” said a senior police source.

It was disclosed earlier today that an inquiry into Scotland Yard contracts awarded to a close friend of Sir Ian had uncovered one deal which had not involved a tendering process.

The so-called “vanity contract”, to promote the commissioner’s image when he took over from Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, was worth £15,000 to Impact Plus, a consultancy run by Andy Miller, a longtime friend of Sir Ian.

The award of £3 million of contracts to Impact Plus is under investigation by a team of officers led by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary.

Sir Ian, 55, has also been accused of racial discrimination by Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, his most senior Asian officer.

Mr Ghaffur has been ordered to take leave pending an employment tribunal.

If Sir Ian decides to resign his departure will destabilise the Met at a time when it is facing searching questions at the inquest into the death of Mr de Menezes.

He was shot dead by armed officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber in July 2005, and a parade of senior officers is currently being called as witnesses at the inquest into the death.

Sir Ian is said to feel dispirited at the lack of backing he has received from Mr Johnson as the allegations against him have mounted.

The commissioner has robustly defended himself against allegations of wrongdoing over the award of contracts to Mr Miller but is understood to have felt increasingly isolated.

Mr Johnson, who called for Sir Ian to resign before his election as mayor, chairs his first MPA meeting next Monday.

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Report: Police Erred In Activist Surveillance

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A report has concluded the Maryland State Police intruded on the ability of law-abiding residents to express themselves freely by conducting surveillance of anti-war and death-penalty opposition groups.

The review of the 14-month surveillance in 2005 and 2006 was conducted by former Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs. He spoke about the findings at a news conference with Gov. Martin O’Malley and Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. Terrence Sheridan on Tuesday.

“There was no public safety justification. Put bluntly, this was, at the Maryland State Police at the time, a systemic obliviousness,” Sachs said.

He said he found that police investigators believed they were seeking to protect the public from potential disturbances through the surveillance, but they failed to consider its impact on civil liberties.

The state police said the surveillance was launched out of concern about violent protests surrounding two planned death row executions in 2005. Internal police documents showed that undercover officers infiltrated peace meetings and anti-capital punishment groups.

“The state police improperly classified some of these groups and individuals as security threats and suspected terrorists,” Sachs said.

“It depicts an utter failure of systemic control within the Maryland State Police,” said David Rocha of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU is continuing its own probe into the domestic spying, saying groups other than the ones the state admitted to tracking were spied on as well, such as Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffee House in Mount Vernon.

“It’s a space for people to come and share information. For the police to be sending in undercover agents to activities — coming to our space to see what we are doing — is really an unacceptable thing,” said bookstore worker Kate Khatib.

The ACLU said an email dated January 2005 is from an undercover agent who contacted Red Emma’s intending to attend a political lecture sponsored by them. The state said their infiltration started in March 2005.

“What legitimate interest do they have in doing that? The answer is simple. They don’t quite have one. But they still have to explain what they were doing and what they collected,” Rocha said.

Sheridan said the state police already were moving swiftly to implement four recommendations in the review, including:

Creating new regulations prohibiting covert surveillance of “advocacy” or “protest” groups, unless police have reasonable suspicion the law will be broken and a less-intrusive method of investigation is not likely to bring results.

Creating standards for collecting and disseminating criminal intelligence information.

Revising and possibly ending the state police Case Explorer database, which was designed to share information with authorities in the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

Contacting all individuals who were described in the Case Explorer database as being suspected of involvement in “terrorism” and purge the entries from the database after review by people who were wrongly entered into it.

“We’re going to take these four recommendations and run with them,” Sheridan said. “We’ve already started on some of the recommendations, putting in place guidelines - strict guidelines - for the collection and dissemination of data, and I think that’s terribly important to us.”

Sheridan also said he would have to approve any covert surveillance.

In the review, Sachs emphasized that state police failed to assess the consequences of covert surveillance on lawful gatherings.

“Moreover, I found no evidence that anyone, at any time, questioned whether there was reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or other compelling justification for the covert surveillance,” Sachs wrote.

While state police said undercover troopers only attended open meetings and public protests, Sachs pointed out that the lead investigator used a fictitious identity and posed as a supporter of the groups that were monitored.

Sachs found the surveillance violated federal regulations by entering findings into HIDTA, a federally funded initiative. Federal regulations require sharing intelligence through the system “only if there is reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal conduct or activity and the information is relevant to that criminal conduct or activity.”

“Again, no such reasonable suspicion existed with respect to the investigation at issue here,” Sachs wrote, noting that police stopped sharing the information in HIDTA in late 2005 on their own initiative.

The ACLU said Tuesday it filed public information requests to determine if state police spied on organizations beyond the activist groups it has already admitted to tracking.

Sachs’ review, which O’Malley called for in July, was conducted by Sachs, Deputy Attorney General J.B. Howard and Assistant Attorney General Josh Auerbach.

Sachs also wrote that he requested a brief interview with former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who was governor at the time of the surveillance. But Ehrlich declined the request through Jervis Finney, who was Ehrlich’s chief legal counsel, Sachs wrote.

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Investigating ‘Africa’s Guantanamo’

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Salim Awadh is talking to me from inside a cell somewhere in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

By Robert Walker | There are seven other prisoners kept in the same small, dark room, he starts to tell me.

Then he suddenly stops speaking. I can hear frantic whispering in the background. Then he says it is safe to carry on.

“The conditions are really bad: we don’t have enough food, we don’t have enough access to medicine. The cell is wet,” he says.

“We sleep on the floor rather than the sodden mattresses. One of the other prisoners was beaten so badly he’s had his leg broken.”

Salim is able to speak to me because he has bribed a guard and got access to a mobile phone.

For weeks I have been trying to find out information about him and other detainees in what has been called “Africa’s Guantanamo”. It is a story the governments involved do not want to talk about: The first mass rendition of terrorist suspects in Africa.

In January 2007, Ethiopian troops had taken control of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), an Islamist movement which had controlled much of southern Somalia for the previous six months.

Members of the UIC, militia fighters and civilians were all fleeing towards Kenya. Among them were Salim Awadh, a Kenyan, and his Tanzanian wife, Fatma Chande. Both of them were arrested as they crossed the border.

“I was kept in a cell with other women. Then the Kenyan anti-terrorist police questioned me - they asked me why we went to Somalia,” Fatma says.

I meet Fatma in her small two-room house in Moshi, northern Tanzania. She is quietly spoken and her voice falters as she explains what happened next.

“I told them my husband got a job repairing mobile phones in Somalia. But they tried to force me to admit that my husband was a terrorist. They said I had to tell them the truth or they would strangle me.”

Border worries

Kenya’s government - and its Western allies - had long seen Somalia as a haven for terrorists linked to al-Qaeda, including those responsible for 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

With the UIC in retreat, they feared that extremists might try to slip across the border.

In the first weeks of early 2007, news began to filter out that several hundred people - including children - had been arrested trying to enter Kenya.

Al Amin Kimathi, the head of Kenya’s Muslim Human Rights Forum, sent volunteers to police stations across the capital, Nairobi, trying to collect information.

“Some very frustrated senior police officers told us point blank: it’s not our operation, go and ask the Americans, just call the American embassy. We even saw the Americans bring in detainees and take them out of certain police stations in Nairobi,” he said.

Before Kenyan lawyers’ applications for their release could be considered, the authorities took an extraordinary step.

“It was a Saturday, the police called us in the middle of the night. We were taken to the airport. My husband was made to kneel down on the tarmac,” says Fatima.

“We had our hands tied behind our backs with plastic cuffs. There were men, women, children. We were blindfolded. People were crying. The police were telling them to keep quiet.”

Two hours later, Fatma and Salim found themselves on the tarmac of Mogadishu airport.

The Kenyan government sent two other planeloads of prisoners to Somalia. According to the passenger manifests at least 85 prisoners were on board. Most of them were soon picked from Somali prison cells and taken to Ethiopia.

“A week after we arrived we were interrogated by whites - Americans, British, I was interrogated for weeks,” Salim says.

“They had a file which was said to implicate me in the Kenyan bombings. So I was taken away and was placed in isolation for two months - both my hands and legs were shackled.

“The interrogations went on for five months. Always the same questions about the Nairobi bombings.”

Threats

Former detainees have also told the BBC they were questioned by US agents. One said he was beaten by Americans.

Two others said they were threatened and told that if they did not co-operate they could face ill treatment at the hands of Ethiopian guards.

All said they believed it was the Americans and not the Ethiopians controlling their detention and interrogation.

Human rights groups in the region say this was a new form of extraordinary rendition.

The US did not play an overt role in the transportation or detention of suspects as it has in the rendition of other suspected terrorists, but it nevertheless controlled their interrogation and treatment.

Al Amin Kimathi believes Ethiopia was seen as the ideal destination.

“It was the most natural place to take anyone looking for a site to go and torture and to extract confessions. Ethiopia allows torture of detainees. And that is the modus operandi in renditions.”

In April last year, Ethiopia acknowledged that it was holding 41 people from 17 countries, describing them as “suspected terrorists”.

Most of the detainees were released after a few months, among them Fatma Chande, apparently as their interrogations were completed or under pressure from their home governments.

The Ethiopian government acknowledges up to 10 foreign suspects are still being detained.

“I’m not sure whether they have appeared before a court. The investigation continues,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Tekede Alemu told the BBC.

“These are people who were engaged in causing harm to the national interest, the security interest… These are not innocent people.”

The minister rejected claims the detainees have been mistreated. He also denied US agents had been allowed to control the interrogations of foreign prisoners.

More than a year and a half after the renditions, the US government still refuses to respond to questions on the alleged US role.

“I have no knowledge of it nor as official policy can I comment on such matters,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer told the BBC.

The Kenyan police say no Kenyans were amongs those flown by the Kenyan government to Somalia.

Meanwhile Fatma is still waiting anxiously for news of her husband.

After Salim got access to a mobile phone, he was able to speak to her from his cell for the first time in more than a year.

Now the phone has stopped working, Salim has disappeared once again.

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Blackwater Machine Gun Found in Raid on Iraqi Insurgents

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Incident Was Kept Secret and Raises More Questions About the Firm’s Iraq Operations

By Brian Ross | ABCNews.com

An M4 machine gun sent to Iraq by the Blackwater private security firm somehow disappeared from the company’s storage facility in Baghdad and was later discovered during a US military operation, apparently against suspected insurgents, people familiar with the situation have told ABC News.

The incident, in 2006, has been kept secret until now but it raised more questions about Blackwater’s operations in Iraq.

Allegations that Blackwater shipped weapons and silencers to Iraq without proper licensing are already under investigation by a federal grand jury in North Carolina, according to people familiar with the case.

Blackwater says all of its weapons “are shipped in accordance with U.S. export control regulations.”

A separate federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. is investigating a shooting incident involving Blackwater guards that led to the deaths of 17 civilians. Indictments in that case could come as soon as next week, officials say.

Blackwater says it is cooperating with the grand jury investigation and has said that its guards acted in self-defense during the incident.

The State Department renewed Blackwater’s one-billion dollar private security contract earlier this year, despite the grand jury investigations.

In the case of the missing machine gun, Army investigators said the “Bushmaster M4″ was discovered in March 2006 by US troops during an unspecified military operation.

Blackwater apparently had no idea the machine gun had gone missing and possibly ended up in the hands of insurgents fighting US troops, according to documents reviewed by ABC News.

In a statement, Blackwater said “equipment has been stolen by insurgents” in some instances, but that “every loss has been reported to the relevant U.S. authorities.”

But that was not the case with the M4, according to internal documents.

Blackwater’s inventory records showed no transfer of the weapon after it arrived in Baghdad, and it was listed as still in the weapons pool.

US soldiers reportedly found the weapon was in surprisingly good condition when it was recovered.

Criminal investigators for the US Army turned the weapon over to Blackwater. A spokesman for the Army CID said no further investigation was conducted as to whether the weapon had been stolen or sold on the black market by someone with access to the Blackwater facility.

The Bushmaster, according to the company’s website, is one of the “world’s most popular military and law enforcement carbine models.” It is outfitted with a flash suppressor and, in military models, can fire three round bursts or fully automatic.

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Domestic Satellite Surveillance Program Moves Ahead Despite Lack of privacy Safeguards

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

By Phil Leggiereon | Department of Homeland Security’s National Applications Office domestic satellite imagery surveillance program moves ahead despite documented lack of privacy safeguards and continued congressional concerns.

The Wall Street Journal reports

The Department of Homeland Security will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn’t yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws.

Congress provided partial funding for the program in a little-debated $634 billion spending measure that will fund the government until early March. For the past year, the Bush administration had been fighting Democratic lawmakers over the spy program, known as the National Applications Office.

The program is designed to provide federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping — to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.

Since the department proposed the program a year ago, several Democratic lawmakers have said that turning the spy lens on America could violate Americans’ privacy and civil liberties unless adequate safeguards were required.

A new 60-page Government Accountability Office report said the department “lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards,” according to a person familiar with the document. The report, which is unclassified but considered sensitive, hasn’t been publicly released, but was described and quoted by several people who have read it.

The report cites gaps in privacy safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence data by other agencies and provided insufficient assurance that requests for classified information will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally provided.

A senior homeland-security official took issue with the GAO’s broad conclusion, saying the department has worked hard to include many layers of privacy protection. Program activities have “an unprecedented amount of legal review,” he said, adding that the GAO is seeking a level of proof that can’t be demonstrated until the program is launched.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said department officials concluded that the program “complies with all existing laws” because the GAO report didn’t say the program doesn’t.

Addressing the gaps the agency cited, Ms. Keehner said current laws already govern the use of intelligence data and the department has an additional procedure to monitor its use. The department will also work with other intelligence agencies to “ensure that legal reviews and protection of classified information will be effective,” she said.

In response to the GAO report, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi and other Democrats asked Congress to freeze the money for the program until after the November election so the next administration could examine it.

But the bill Congress approved, which President George W. Bush signed into law Tuesday, allows the department to launch a limited version, focused only on emergency response and scientific needs. The department must meet additional requirements before it can expand operations to include homeland-security and law-enforcement surveillance.

The restrictions were “the most we could have required without a complete prohibition,” said Darek Newby, an aide to Democratic Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who heads the House homeland-security spending panel.

But California Rep. Jane Harman, who heads a homeland-security subcommittee on intelligence, said that even limited funding allows the department to launch the program, providing a platform to expand its surveillance whether or not privacy requirements are met.

“Having learned my lesson” with the National Security Agency’s warrantless-surveillance program, she said, “I don’t want to go there again unless and until the legal framework for the entire program is entirely spelled out.”

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