UN Committee Against Torture expresses ‘deep concern’ at Israel’s treatment of detained children
Defence for Children International
On 15 May 2009, the UN Committee Against Torture (the Committee) concluded its 42nd session in Geneva by issuing concluding observations and recommendations on periodic reports submitted by five states, including Israel….In its Concluding Observations and recommendations to Israel’s Fourth Periodic Report, the Committee expressed: * Concern regarding numerous, ongoing and consistent allegat ions of the use of torture and ill-treatment taking place before, during and after interrogations.* Deep concern at reports that Palestinian children are detained and interrogated in the absence of a lawyer or family member and are allegedly subjected to acts in breach of the Convention against Torture in order to obtain confessions.* Concern at reports that approximately 700 Palestinian children are detained annually and are prosecuted in Israeli military courts. * Concern at reports that in 95% of cases involving Palestinian children before the Israeli military courts, conviction is obtained using confessions extracted during interrogation…
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“My father’s condition is worsening by the day”
An urgent call to help Tariq Aziz
Ziad Aziz
In regard to your reply to our letter, it is my sad duty to inform you that you information are inaccurate or perhaps you are ill-informed on the matter.
My father, Mr. Tariq Aziz, has been held in U.S. custody in camp cropper for more than 6 years till this date and he suffers several life threatening diseases that require constant, highly sophisticated and immediate medical attention. Camp Cropper, as you may well know, is basically a holding facility, in which high-value prisoners are being held in the custody of the U.S. forces. It is highly inaccurate to say that a holding facility, i.e. a prison, of any kind can provide “state of the art medical car” for any sort of condition or disease. For example, my father fell during taking a shower 2 years ago, and fearing that he had suffered a stroke, the moved him to the air base in Balad (200 kilometers north of Baghdad) to perform a C.T. scan…
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Caught in a Lie
The U.S. is Using White Phosphorous in Afghanistan
DAVE LINDORFF
When doctors started reporting that some of the victims of the US bombing of several villages in Farah Province last week—an attack that left between 117 and 147 civilians dead, most of them women and children—were turning up with deep, sharp burns on their body that “looked like” they’d been caused by white phosphorus, the US military was quick to deny responsibility. US officials—who initially denied that the US had even bombed any civilians in Farah despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including massive craters where houses had once stood—insisted that “no white phosphorus” was used in the attacks on several villages in Farah. Official military policy on the use of white phosphorus is to only use the high-intensity, self-igniting material as a smoke screen during battles or to illuminate targets, not as a weapon against human beings—even enemy troops. Now that policy, and the military’s blanket denial that phosphorus was used in Farah, have to be questioned, thanks to a recent report filed from a remote area of Afghanistan by a New York Times reporter…
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Iraq’s once-envied health care system lost to war, corruption
By Corinne Reilly | McClatchy Newspapers
…Stories of missing drugs, of desperately ill-equipped doctors and of patients left to suffer the consequences are everywhere in Iraq’s public health care system. Some hospitals are filthy and infested with bugs. Others are practically falling down. More and more, the blame is being placed on Iraq’s U.S.-backed government, which by many accounts is infested with corruption and incompetence…Before the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best health care system in the Middle East. Nearly two decades of international sanctions and war have changed that. For nearly two years in 2006 and 2007, when Iraq’s sectarian violence was at its worst, the national health ministry was controlled almost completely by Shiite Muslim militias. In many neighborhoods, Sunnis avoided hospitals for fear of being killed in them…
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Brief & Hot News from Liberated Iraq.
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…I personally know of two cases, one which vividly comes to mind, that of a Sunni neighbor of ours, whose 14 years old son was kidnapped by Jaysh Al-Mahdi, tortured to death and dumped in Najaf. When she received a phone call to come and recuperate his body – she had to go in a coffin. Yes in a coffin. She pretended she was dead and was transported in a coffin from Baghdad to Najaf, to get to see her son and take her son’s body back to Baghdad for bu rial. When she finally arrived there, they told her they had nothing to give her. She returned emptied handed in a coffin. I bet you this 14 years old boy could be found in that mass grave…
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The Right of Return: the heart and soul of the Palestinian cause
By Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
Sixty-one years ago, one of the greatest crimes in the annals of human history occurred when European Ashkenazi Jews, aided by western powers, took over Palestine and expelled and dispersed its native inhabitants to the four corners of the world. The barbarians committed widespread massacres, replaying and reenacting in Palestine some of the genocidal episodes that had been done in Europe a few years earlier. Th e criminal thieves created Israel, a manifestly racist and bellicose entity based on murderous ethnic cleansing, usurpation, dispossession and lies…
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“Cowboys” and Other Horrors of Empire, Version Obama 1.0
Arthur Silber
…The determined refusal of liberals, progressives and sundry other defenders of the U.S.’s interventions and wars of conquest and control (but only when those interventions and wars are directed by Democrats) to see that the Bush administration represented a continuation of what had gone before and was not in any significant way a “break” with the past representing some “unique” evil, results in commentary that is hopelessly superficial and completel y useless in terms of political and historic analysis. As is true of Obama himself, all such liberals and progressives offer no serious challenge to the existing system of oppression, destruction and death; to the contrary, they are the most faithful representatives and adherents of the system that causes havoc in every area it affects, both abroad and at home. Anyone who expected otherwise hadn’t been paying attention and had understood very little about world and national events, if anything at all…
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Iraq to re-detain released prisoners
Kareem Zair, Azzaman
Iraq wants to put detainees freed mainly by U.S. troops behind bars once again, a senior Interior Ministry official said. “Efforts are being exerted to re-detain jailed Iraqis who have been set free by U.S. troops and according to the government amnesty,” the official Adnan al-Asdi said. A government amnesty saw the release of thousands of Iraqis imprisoned without trial…
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Detainee Said He Was Brought To Gitmo To Give Info On Iraqi Army
Zachary Roth
More possible evidence that the Bush administration used torture to get information about Iraq? Back in 2004, the Associated Press reported on the plight of a several Guantanamo detainees who had previously been held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Among them was one Iraqi: The Iraqi, Arkan Mohammed Ghafil al Karim, says he deserted from Saddam Hussein’s army and was later imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban for two years. He says he was b rought to Guantanamo in 2002 so that the American military could learn about Iraq’s army ahead of the invasion of that country…
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“War on Terror” Causes Mass Exodus in Swat
by Farooq Sulehria
The mass exodus from Swat is making headlines globally. Over a million have been displaced. This is the worst humanitarian crisis since the Rwanda tragedy in 1990s. The explanation offered is that this is necessary to flush the Taliban out of Swat’s lush-green valley in Pakistan’s north. This military operation, launched in order to stabilize the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and its so-called “war on terror,” is hardly mentioned in the corporate media. On the contrary, major U.S. newspapers have been invoking the fear that Pakistani nukes might fall into the hands of Taliban. Is this a story planted by the CIA? This is the fourth time in less than three years that the Swat area has been subjected to a military operation. However the latest offensive is of a different character…
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Palestinian refugee family demands to return home
Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip
“Only if we return to our homeland, can there be peace. But as long as [Israel] keeps us refugees, we have no choice to resist them now and for generations to come, until we are back in Beir al-Saba,” said 75-year-old Suleiman Abu Jazzar in his home in the Brazil refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Along with more than 700,000 other Palestinians, Abu Jazzar was forced from historic Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948, a period referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba (catastrophe) and commemorated in mid-May while Israel celebrates its “Independence Day.” During 1947-48, Zionist paramilitary groups — which later formed the Israeli army — attacked and destroyed more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages. Abu Jazzar’s town of Beir al-Saba was given the Hebrew name of Beersheva by its conquerers…
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Video: Destruction of Shofa, Gaza
International Solidarity Movement (ISM)
This is the village of Shofa, east from the town of Rafah, Gaza Strip. About 60 houses demolished by the Israeli occupation forces, during the recent war. People living in tents. Part of their agricultural land also destroyed. Palestinian farmers told us that after 5 pm they need to leave their fields because the Israeli troops along the Green Line, start to shoot…
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Hisham Zreiq’s film Sons of Eilaboun: introduction by Gilad Atzmon
GILAD ATZMON
The truth of the Nakba has been hidden for many decades. Not many except the Palestinians are aware of the scale of 1948 ethnic expulsions and even fewer are aware of the atrocities occasionally performed by the newly born IDF. As a young Israeli pupil I was taught to believe that the ‘Arabs’ (this is how we called them) just run for their lives. No one forced ‘them’ to do so, they were just a bunch of cowards, we were told. Similarly, we were preached that they were not as attached to the land as we, the Israelis, are. While they fled for their lives without fighting back, we, the chosens, schlepped all the way back to Zion after 2000 years to reclaim ‘our’ historic land. The truth of hundreds of massacres of Palestinian villagers committed by a young and well-trained enthusiastic IDF was absolutely hidden. There wasn’t even a hint that such a thing took place. We knew of one massacre only, the one in Deir Yassin..
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Beholden to the BIG POWERS: Israel, Gaza and the UN
Media Lens
On December 27, 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a massive assault on Gaza. 22 days later, around 1,400 Palestinians, including over 300 children, and 13 Israelis were dead; about 5,000 Palestinians were wounded. Israeli forces bombed and shelled schools, medical centres, hospitals, ambulances, United Nations buildings (including UN schools), power plants, sewage plants, roads, bridges and civilian homes. This was described in much of the press as hi tting “Hamas targets” (e.g. David Gardner, ‘U.S. accused of white phosphorus against Taliban’, Daily Mail, May 11, 2009). Earlier this month, the UN announced the results of an inquiry into attacks on its buildings and personnel in Gaza. It concluded that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were:“involved in varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property”…
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Prisoners and Detainees in Israeli Prisons
Abeer Baker
Data is presented below regarding detainees and prisoners in Israeli prisons, as collected from various sources. As of January 2009, approximately 22,500 individuals were imprisoned or detained in Israeli prisons; around 70% of those individuals are Arabs…
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The Siege on Gaza is Not Over
Palestine Monitor
Since the end of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the humanitarian situation there has been constantly worsening. And although Israel unilaterally declared an end to the war, the violence has not stopped in Gaza. From mysterious explosions (most likely from explosives that did not detonate during the conflict); to continued Israeli shelling from sea, land, and air; to the death toll that keeps rising due to the discovery of bodies in the rubble or people succumbing to their woun ds—the situation in Gaza is now worse than ever. The Israeli blockade that has been imposed on Gaza since 2007 has severely limited the Gazan people’s basic food supply. In addition to this, the blockade is causing a water and sanitation crisis by not allowing enough electricity, fuel and replacement parts into the territory so they can keep the infrastructure in working-condition…
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