Spanish court opens investigation of Guantánamo torture allegations

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

• Allegations include ’sexual abuse’ and ‘beating’
• Eric Holder urges European countries to take detainees

Giles Tremlett in Madrid and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 April 2009 18.50 BST

A court in Spain has today opened an investigation into torture allegations against US military personnel at the Guantánamo detention centre.

Meanwhile in Berlin, Barack Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder said that about 30 Guantánamo detainees have been cleared for release and urged European allies to take some of them. Holder also signalled the Obama administration might cooperate with the Spanish investigation.

Judge Baltasar Garzón, an investigating magistrate at the National Court in Madrid, said he would investigate allegations made by four detainees who were held at the centre and later released without charges, according to a court document quoted by the Spanish press.

The torture allegations include “sexual abuse”, “beating” and the throwing of fluids into prisoners’ eyes.

Torture Memos Expose Dark, Imperial Presidency

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Torture Memos Expose Dark, Imperial Presidency

By Robert S. Becker, Ph.D.‚

Abuse Pushed Hard To Justify Iraqi Invasion

April 29, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — This was not a happy week for the torture lobby, nor its defenders, derailing months of charm offensive by Bush-Cheney legacy boosters. A wary President Obama backed off attempts to defuse the torture parade – fretting over divisive investigations and hard-to-win court convictions. Public indignation likely surpassed February polling when 65% favored torture investigations, 40% criminal prosecutions.

Two releases, from the White House and Senate, disclose a premeditated Bush-Cheney torture program that postdated the original transgression, namely invading Iraq under false pretenses. This sequence dramatically reverses classic scandals, whether the Scooter Libby/CIA outing, Watergate, Iran-Contra or Clinton escapades. Earlier, the charade of cover-ups followed crimes, thus the countless perjury convictions. With Bush-Cheney interrogation, unholy torture was authorized to serve the unholy smokescreen clouding an unholy invasion.

Complicity with torture spreads like a toxic asset, impacting not just disgraced Bush lawyers or jailed Abu Ghraib soldiers (who, we learn, followed orders), but big-time officials, intell specialists, and agencies (CIA and armed forces). Consider pliant Democrats who went along and, like Senator Feinstein, condoned a string of Bush Attorneys General blind to waterboarding as torture. Political, let alone legal radioactivity won’t vanish by “moving forward.”

Palestine – History in Pictures

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

ANTIIMPERIALIST MEDIA

April 29, 2009 DOWNLOAD THE PICTURE ARCHIVE: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?34znmernjmm http://www.myupload.dk/showfile/214675372b5.zip http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZSA53UGS This Archive includes: - Historically Maps - Palestine Before the Nakba (100 Pictures about Land and People) - The Nakba (120 Pictures in High Quality) - Additional Internet Links

On celebrating ethnic cleansing

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Marcy Newman, body on the line

April 29, 2009 this week the zionist entity celebrated 61+ years of ethnic cleansing: stealing palestinian land, murdering and massacring palestinians, lebanese, syrians, egyptians, jordanians, iraqis. 61 years of the zionist entity being recognized by the international community, though its colonial regime is 122 years old this year. barack obama rushed to congratulate this murderous thieving regime as quickly as the united states did it back in 1948, a fact which obama is proud of: US President Barack Obama on Tuesday congratulated Israel on the 61st anniversary of its founding, according to Israel Radio. In a statement released by the White House, Obama vowed to advance peace talks in the region and pursue the interests of both Palestinians and Israelis. Obama reportedly noted that the US was the first country to recognize Israel in 1948. puppet zionist leader of egypt hosni mubarak quickly followed suit: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak congratulated Israel on its 61st anniversary of statehood Wednesday. In a letter of greeting sent to President Shimon Peres he wrote, “I am pleased to express my congratulations for Independence Day”. Mubarak added, “At this opportunity I would like to express anew my expectation for the return of the Middle East peace process to a path that will lead to an end to the violence and bloodshed, in a manner that will allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state that will exist alongside Israel in peace and security.”

The Holocaust Connection

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Joharah Baker

April 48, 2009 As Israel jubilantly celebrates 61 years of existence, the Palestinians continue to wonder what the future holds for them. Their dream of a two-state solution seems to wane with each passing day as Israel continues nonstop in creating more facts on the ground that serve to make this dream virtually impossible. Still, the Palestinian leadership has stuck to its guns, despite the constant obstacles and impasses, insisting that it will live side by side with Israel. As if this were not a tough enough goal to reach, new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making it even tougher. Palestinians, he says, must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, for any kind of “peace talks” to proceed. Otherwise, no deal.

The Kingdom of Lies

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Jeremy Salt

April 29, 2009 Racism is common to most and probably all societies. Laws never seem entirely to eliminate it. It was the essential tool in the creation of modern settler states. The United States could not have come into existence without the obliteration of North American Indian cultures and of large numbers of the people themselves. They had to die so the US could be born. In Australia the indigenous people of Tasmania were wiped out to the last man, woman and child, while on the mainland the tribes were massacred, confined, stripped of their ancestral land and eventually turned into fringe dwellers. Until recently Australia had a prime minister who could deny that aboriginal children of mixed ‘blood’ were taken from their parents up to the 1930s and refused to issue any expression of remorse for their mistreatment. More recent targets of racism have been Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants, while the Howard federal government’s racist treatment of Iraqi and Afghan refugees and asylum seekers remains one of the most shameful chapters of Australia’s history. In the US the election of a colored president would have been inconceivable until very recently. It was so unbelievable that people wept when Barack Obama won the elections.

Israel’s independence day is Palestinian’s Nakba

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Palestinians remember the Catastrophe with marches
Israel’s independence day is Palestinian’s Nakba

AlArabiya.net.

April 29, 2009 CAIRO (Marwa Awad) Haj Mahmud Seida, 78, dressed in traditional Palestinian garb, leaned on two young men and walked slowly through the devastated Palestinian village of Kafrain to commemorate the Nakba, or Catastrophe, mourning with thousands of others in the procession the loss of land and statehood on the day Israel celebrates its birthday. “We are the indigenous peoples of this land. We walk in solidarity with Palestine, our lost homeland. And we refuse to celebrate the establishment of Israel, built on the blood and land of Palestinians who will never forget,” Seidi told AlArabiya.net. To the Arab minority that make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, the Jewish state’s ’Independence Day’ is no cause for rejoicing. “Every year Israeli Jews celebrate and Arab Israelis mourn in unison,” Suhail Maari, organizer of the march, told AlArabiya.net. “We call this procession the ‘return march’ to express our hope and resolve of returning to our confiscated land one day.”

Palestinians in Europe to commemorate the 61 anniversary of Nakba “Catastrophe”

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

DIASPORA PALESTINIANS COMMEMORATE THE NAKBA

Palestinians in Europe to commemorate the 61 anniversary of Nakba “Catastrophe”

Transmitted from London by Sameh Habeeb
April 30, 2009 at 3:29 pm

After 61 years of the Palestinian Nakba. Palestinians still adhere to their rights and legacy which was intended to be destroyed in the past decades but never it never happened. Palestinian communities, institutions and associations all over European countries are preparing for the 7th Europe Conference in Milan, Italy by the 2nd of May 2009. A broad spectrum of leaders, Palestinian public figures and delegations will attend the conference.

Afghan Resistance Statement regarding the start of new Nasrat (Victory) operations

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

April 29, 2009 In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate 1. Since America and NATO have resolved to send extra troops to Afghanistan, therefore, the Afghans too in response feel the need to start rapid and strong operations, as part of their struggle, to defend themselves and to free the country. 2. Beginning 30 April 2009, which corresponds to 10 Sowr (Ghwayi) 1388, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will start the new Nasrat operations throughout Afghanistan. These operations will include ambushes, offensives, explosions, martyrdom-seeking attacks and surprise attacks. The targets of these operations will be the military units of the invading forces, diplomatic centers, mobile convoys, high-ranking officials of the puppet administration. 3. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again calls on all military, security and administrative officials of the Kabul puppet administration to refrain from working for this slave administration and to help the Mujahideen. If they cannot do the latter, then at least they should wait until the establishment of a true Islamic government and should no longer support the invading infidels and should not prolong the occupation of beloved Afghanistan with their service. 4. The Islamic Emirate once again warns private construction companies, transport companies, contractors, owners of vehicles and drivers, who build military centers for the infidel invaders and their internal slaves and transport military equipment, fuel and other logistical goods, that they should completely stop and end such dealings with the invading Americans and their puppet administration because providing such services to the infidels and the puppet administration harms Islam and the homeland, strengthens the enemies and prolongs the occupation of Afghanistan. However, if despite repeated warnings, the owners and workers of construction and transport companies continue such unpatriotic and un-Islamic deeds, the Mujahideen will take action against such inadmissible deeds, and if something happens to them as a result of these actions, then responsibility will lie with them. Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

:: Article nr. 53821 sent on 30-apr-2009 06:33 ECT

Link: theunjustmedia.com/Afghanistan/Statements/april09/new%20Nasrat%20(Victory)%20ope
rations.htm

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The myth of Talibanistan

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The myth of Talibanistan

By Pepe Escobar

May 1, 2009

Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media – from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.

But unlike St Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won’t fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.

US soldier confessed to rape, murder of Iraqi girl

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

AFP

April 29, 2009 PADUCAH, Kentucky (AFP) — US Army Sergeant Anthony Yribe had just returned from investigating the gruesome murder of an Iraqi family when another US soldier met him with a staggering confession, a jury was told Wednesday. “He said something to the effect of, ‘I did that,’” Yribe testified during Steven Dale Green’s trial in a federal courthouse in Kentucky. Green is accused of leading a gang of US soldiers that raped and later killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in March 2006 in the town of Mamudiyah, south of Baghdad. The soldiers also allegedly killing the girl’s father, mother and six-year-old sister. Green faces the death penalty if found guilty.

Former Soldier Accused of Brutal Rape and Murder of 14-Year Old Iraqi Girl Starts Trial

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

23-year-old Steven Green is accused of bragging ‘that was awesome’ after the premeditated killing of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi and her family.

Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 11:00 AM on April 29, 2009.

It was called one of the most horrific crimes by U.S. troops against Iraqi civilians: In March 2006, a group of whiskey-fueled soldiers, their faces concealed and wearing black long underwear, descended upon a farmhouse some 20 miles south of Baghdad, gang-raped a teenage girl and shot her in the head, killing her along with her younger sister and their parents. The soldiers then tried to burn the bodies, setting fire to the house.

The grisly crime was initially blamed on insurgents — “This is what happens when you harbor terrorists,” a military translator told a relative after the bodies were found — but three months later, the truth was revealed, when a fellow soldier from the unit told combat-stress counselors about what had happened.