US Says No to Indigenous Rights

The US, the self-proclaimed protector of human rights, has failed to vote in favor of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Speaking to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) at the UN, Kenneth Deer, the representative of US and Canada Mohawk Indians, said that Washington had refrained from recognizing the UN declaration on indigenous rights.

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Why does the IDF allow officers to live in illegal outposts?

Strangely, in all this no one has wondered how it is possible that the IDF, the body charged with imposing the law on the West Bank, never lifted a finger against its officers who settled in an illegal outpost in the first place.

Moreover, how can an officer in the career army who breaks the law and ignores a court order serve as a model for his soldiers?

Abu Ghraib a "picnic” compared with secret Baghdad prison

Rusafa: Report details torture at secret Baghdad prisonThe torture of Iraqi detainees at a new secret prison in Baghdad was far more systematic and brutal than initially reported, Human Rights Watch reported on Tuesday. The existence of the prison, which housed mostly Sunni Arab prisoners, has created a political furor in Iraq, prompted government denials and fanned sectarian tensions.

Al Qaeda in Yemen, fortified with diverted US funds, strikes British embassy

The British embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa shut down Monday, April 26, after an al Qaeda suicide attack on the ambassador's convoy and a clash with gunmen outside the embassy. According to first reports, one person was killed, but Ambassador Tim Torlot is safe. debka file 's counter-terror sources report that al Qaeda recently received an extra boost from secretly diverted US funds which Yemen president Abdullah Ali Salah used to try and bribe the Islamists to relocate in Somalia - without success .

German court drops Afghan air raid probe

Afghan raid killed 142 - many of whom were civiliansGerman prosecutors dropped a criminal case against a Bundeswehr colonel who ordered an air raid in Afghanistan that killed 142 people, many of them civilians. The prosecution office in Karlsruhe concluded Col. Georg Klein and his fellow officers didn't know civilians were at the target site.

NATO troops fire on vehicle, kill 4 unarmed Afghans

NATO troops kill 4 unarmed civilians in AfghanistanNATO troops opened fire on a vehicle in southeast Afghanistan, killing four unarmed Afghans, the alliance said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of recent incidents the United Nations has called disturbing.

The father of two of the victims said three of those killed were teenagers and the fourth was a policeman. They were returning from a volleyball match, added Rahmatullah Mansoor, a judge in Khost's provincial court.

Inquiry sought into disappearance of e-mails in interrogations case

Senior Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate the disappearance of e-mail messages written by Bush administration lawyers who drafted memos blessing harsh interrogation tactics, saying their absence cast doubt on an ethics report that cleared the lawyers of professional misconduct.

The lost e-mails cover a critical period in 2002 when Justice Department attorneys labored under heavy pressure on a memo that gave the CIA a green light to use simulated drowning, sleep deprivation and other interrogation techniques against al-Qaeda suspects.

NATO's civilian targets: 17

A Nato airstrike against suspected insurgents has killed five civilians in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan today.

A Nato statement said a joint patrol of Nato and Afghan troops saw individuals digging along a path in the Zhari district of Kandahar province today and mistakenly concluded that they were planting an improvised explosive device. Two civilians were also wounded in the strike.

The incident follows the deaths yesterday of 12 Afghan civilians, who were killed by two stray Nato rockets in neighbouring Helmand province.

US Military Barbarism

On December 27, in the eastern Kunar region of Afghanistan, ten Afghans, eight of whom were schoolchildren, were dragged from their beds and shot by US forces during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from 11 to 17 years.

This incident is but one example of countless atrocities US military personnel have carried out in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, US military personnel torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib, Iraqi civilians suffering the violence meted out by US forces, or US forces detaining schoolchildren in Baghdad, the list of atrocities is seemingly endless.

Israeli police raid Palestinian refugee camp

A Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem erupted in violence on Monday after Israeli police carried out a raid to arrest tax evaders and Palestinians responded by throwing stones.

Eleven people were arrested, some for involvement in the unrest and others for the non-payment of municipal taxes and other bills, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Palestinians battle Israeli wall

Palestinians and Israeli dissenters are getting together to fight Israel's plan to build another section of the separation wall in the occupied West Bank.
According to environmentalists, the wall will stop the flow of water to the natural springs and thus threatens to dry out much of the Palestinian land.

They also see the wall - illegal under international law - as a part of long-term Israeli policy to grab more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Afghan police kill seven civilians 'by mistake'

Afghan police have shot dead seven villagers near the Pakistani border after mistaking them for insurgents, police officials said. The seven young men were collecting firewood after dark in the southern town of Spin Boldak, a common transit route for Taliban militants.

Six officers have been detained for questioning, the local commander said. There is widespread anger over civilian deaths in Afghanistan. More than 2,400 were killed in fighting last year.

Bush and Blair did strike Iraq deal, says Welsh MP

A SENIOR Welsh MP said last night he knew “for certain” Tony Blair and George Bush struck a deal to invade Iraq at their notorious Crawford Ranch meeting in 2002 – a year before war was declared.

Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru’s parliamentary leader, said he had seen a confidential memo to that effect, although he would not divulge its exact contents.

Israel stops granting permits to NGO aid workers in W. Bank

The Interior Ministry has stopped granting work permits to foreign nationals working in most international nongovernmental organizations operating in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.

An an apparent overhaul of regulations that have been in place since 1967, the ministry is now granting the NGO employees tourist visas only, which bar them from working.
Organizations affected by the apparent policy change include Oxfam, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Terre des Hommes, Handicap International and the Religious Society of Friends.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel will never quit settlements

Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel.

"Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity", the prime minister said.

West Bank Muslim graves damaged

Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area.

Palestinians said they had seen Jewish pilgrims, escorted by Israeli soldiers, in the area, which is also a Jewish burial site.

The Israeli military said it viewed the incident very seriously and was opening a military police investigation.

It comes a month after an arson attack on a mosque in the same area.

At least two tombstones were damaged in the cemetery outside the village, and food and rubbish were left on graves.

In the village, offensive slogans about Arabs were found scrawled in Hebrew, English and Russian.

CIA bomber's wife says war must go on against US

ISTANBUL – The Turkish wife of a Jordanian doctor who killed seven CIA employees in a suicide attack in Afghanistan says her husband was outraged over the treatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defne Bayrak, the wife of bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, said in an interview with The Associated Press that his hatred of the United States had motivated her husband to sacrifice his life on Dec. 30 in what he regarded as a holy war against the U.S.

Bayrak also said Friday, "I think the war against the United States must go on."

Turkish police questioned and released Bayrak on Thursday. But she says police confiscated a book she had written called "Osama bin Laden the Che Guevera of the East."

Hamas inmates say torture ends in West Bank jails

Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have stopped torturing Hamas prisoners, ending two years of systematic abuse, Hamas inmates told The Associated Press in jailhouse interviews.

The change in practice, said to have taken effect in October, was confirmed by a West Bank Hamas leader, human rights activists and the Palestinian prime minister. It defuses a potential problem for Washington since the U.S. has been closely involved in training Palestinian troops under the control of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, a rival of the Hamas militants.

Israel rejects bill allocating equal land to Jews and Arabs

The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews. Despite the bitter attempt over the decades, not even one Arab town has been established since the state's foundation.

Iraq to support Blackwater lawsuit in U.S. courts

Iraq will help victims of the 2007 shooting of civilians in Baghdad to file a U.S. lawsuit against employees of security firm Blackwater, an incident that turned a spotlight on the United States' use of private contractors in war zones.

Last week, a U.S. judge threw out charges against five guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle, saying the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated.