Civil liberties - new material (66)
01 August 2006
How I was kidnapped by the CIA, Mohammed Al Shafey. Cageprisoners website, 2.1.06. This article reports on a letter from Abu Omar al-Masri who is imprisoned in Egypt after being abducted from a Milan street by the CIA and handed over to the Egyptian authorities for "interrogation". His family received the letter from the Toro prison in Cairo and this article reveals new details about his abduction and the infiltration of his mosque by American intelligence agents. The article can be accessed at the excellent Cageprisoners website: http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=18144
Media Wars: News Media Performance and Media Management During the 2003 Iraq War, Piers Robinson, Peter Goddard, Robin Brown & Philip Taylor. This academic study "evaluates media performance and government media-arrangement operations during the 2003 Iraq War." It considers three main area of analysis: media performance during the conflict, coalition media-management operations and a comparative analysis of the coalition media agenda and media output. Available on the ESRC website: http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk
Supplementary Evidence Submitted by Mr. Carne Ross, Director, Independent Diplomat: Submission to the Butler Review, Carne Ross. Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence, 6.12.06. Carne Ross worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in New York as the first secretary at the UK mission to the United Nations, responsible for Iraq policy. Unfortunately, he was foolish enough to submit accurate evidence on the government's pre-war intelligence to the Butler inquiry into Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction", resulting in Foreign Office suppression of his views until its belated publication by the Select Committee. Ross' devastating insider assault on the government's position resulted in his being threatened with charges under the Official Secrets Act. In his evidence Ross makes the following points: i. Britain never believed that Iraq posed a credible threat to the UK; ii. UN Resolution 1441 did not authorise military action; iii. "inertia" led to the government failing to address the issue of sanctions busting, and iv. the UK believed that "regime change" would result in the collapse of Iraq. Available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmfaff/167/6110801.htm
Deep in Le Carre country, the remote Polish airport at heart of CIA flights row, Nicholas Watt. Guardian 4.1.07. While European governments cover up the scandal of US abductions and torture of their citizens and residents, journalists and NGO's strive to reveal the most basic details of the so-called extraordinary rendition programme. Almost inevitably, by the time the details are revealed the US (and their European collaborators) have moved on to new lands where they can override international law. This piece examines the role of the Polish airport at Szymany in the abductions, based on the evidence of Mariola Przewlocka, the director of the airport until she was sacked for "political reasons".