Author Archives: News Sources

Mengele in America

Donna Dickenson writes: It’s 1946. On one side of the Atlantic, American lawyers are prosecuting Nazi doctors at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity – so-called “research” carried out on concentration camp prisoners. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Guatemala, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) is deliberately infecting prisoners and mental patients with syphilis in another “experiment” aimed at replacing the ineffective drugs used by soldiers during the war that had just ended.

It sounds too perverse to be true. Yet a special commission appointed by President Barack Obama has just confirmed that the Guatemalan experiments really did take place. Obama has also issued an apology to the people of Guatemala. But why did it take so long to get to this point?

Sixty-three years after the Guatemalan experiments, an American historian, Susan Reverby, was rummaging through archived medical papers from the 1940s. Reverby was completing a final task in her two decades of studying the PHS’s detestable Tuskegee experiments, in which hundreds of African-American men with late-stage syphilis were observed but not treated, even after penicillin was developed. She was examining the papers of Thomas Parran, US surgeon-general from 1936-1948, when the Tuskegee research was already in full swing. So, too, she found, was the previously unknown Guatemalan experiment.

For years, Tuskegee has been a byword for ethical abuses in scientific research – to the extent that President Bill Clinton apologised to its surviving “subjects”. Hard as it may be to believe, as Reverby was to discover, the abuse in Guatemala was even more egregious.

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Israel’s diplomatic bankruptcy

An editorial in The Observer says: Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is seen as a threat for reasons partly of Israel’s own making – foremost its absolute reliance on a policy of military supremacy and deterrence to underpin security. A nuclear-armed Iran would hole that policy below the waterline, making it far more difficult, for instance, to launch the kind of war it waged against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

Israel’s recent posturing ahead of the IAEA meeting, which included testing a new long-range missile and launching a long-range air strike exercise, is a doubly dangerous game. For while some senior Israeli air force officers are understood to support Netanyahu’s desire to strike Iran sooner rather than later, other independent analysis is far more sceptical of Israel’s ability to cause lasting damage on Iran’s nuclear programme, suggesting that it might require up to a fifth of the country’s operational aircraft to inflict serious harm, which could still fall short of Israel’s desired outcome. Some experts have estimated that even a successful raid on Iran would buy Israel only four years at best while encouraging Iran to redouble its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

If that is the short-term analysis, then in the medium term the risks for Israel perhaps would be greater still. With its regional alliances with friendly states quickly unravelling in the fall-out from the Arab Spring, from Israel’s botched attack on the Turkish-flagged MV Mavi Marmara and from its war against Gaza, an attack on the scale required to halt Iran’s nuclear programme is unlikely to improve either its relations with its neighbours or Israel’s security environment.

All of which leads to the question – if the consequences carry such risk for so little benefit, why are Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, pushing the plan?

One possibility is that Netanyahu is determined to impose the terms of the debate about the issues raised by the IAEA report at a time when it is clear that both Russia and China are lukewarm on the prospect of further sanctions against Tehran. If that is Netanyahu’s aim – to use the threat of war to leverage diplomatic effect – it is the behaviour of a tinpot state, not the mature democracy Israel claims to be.

Far more worrying is the notion that Netanyahu, who has long chafed against President Obama’s strictures on settlement building and the peace process, and is said to be obsessed with the issue of Iran, is contemplating an attack having calculated he has sufficient friends in Congress to defy the White House.

Whatever Netanyahu is thinking, he is playing a high-risk game for even higher stakes, betting Israel’s security and international prestige against an uncertain outcome, even by allowing it to be suggested that Israel might strike. After Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, its failure to break Hamas in Gaza in 2009 – and with the international opprobrium that followed that operation – Israel risks talking itself into a corner where it appears weak if it doesn’t act and perhaps weaker if it does, a country increasingly bereft of any notion of how to manage relations with its neighbours except through the threat of aggression.

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Israeli doctors ‘failing to report torture of Palestinian detainees’

The Guardian reports: Medical professionals in Israel are being accused of failing to document and report injuries caused by the ill-treatment and torture of detainees by security personnel in violation of their ethical code.

A report by two Israeli human rights organisations, the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), claims that medical staff are also failing to report suspicion of torture and ill-treatment, returning detainees to their interrogators and passing medical information to interrogators.

The report, Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim, to be published later this month, is based on 100 cases of Palestinian detainees brought to PCAT since 2007. It says: “This report reveals significant evidence arousing the suspicion that many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; that they allow Israeli Security Agency interrogators to use torture; approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total immunity for the torturers.”

Alleged ill-treatment of detainees, some of whose cases are detailed in the 61-page report, includes beatings, being held for long periods in stress positions, hands being tightly tied with plastic cuffs, sleep deprivation and threats. Israel denies torturing or ill-treating prisoners.

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U.S.-Israeli military ties ‘broader, deeper and more intense than ever before’

Haaretz reports: Israel and the U.S. will embark on the “largest” and “most significant” joint exercise in the allies’ history, said Andrew Shapiro, U.S. assistant secretary for political-military affairs, on Saturday.

Speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Shapiro said the exercise will involve more than 5,000 U.S. and Israeli forces, and will simulate Israel’s ballistic missile defense.

“Joint exercises allow us to learn from Israel’s experience in urban warfare and counterterrorism,” said Shapiro.

“Israeli technology is proving critical to improving our Homeland Security and protecting our troops,” he added, explaining that Israeli armor plating technology and the specially designed “Israeli bandage”, being used on American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, are proven successes.

In addition, he said, Israel will soon gain access to an expedited Congressional Notification process, which will allow for faster trade of smaller, routine sales and purchases of arms between the allies. Countries already subject to expedited Congressional Notification processes are NATO members, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Shapiro emphasized the Obama Administration’s support for Israel, despite comments by a senior U.S. official on Friday, who expressed concern that Israel would not warn the U.S. before taking military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper and more intense than ever before,” said Shapiro, adding that Israel’s military edge was a “top priority” for himself, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. President Barack Obama.

The U.S. has a $3 billion per year commitment to Israel, which Shapiro said the Obama Administration would continue to honor over the next ten years, “even in challenging budgetary times”.

Speaking of the economic impact of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, Shapira said it was important to note that U.S. security assistance to Israel helps support American jobs, since the “vast majority of security assistance” is spent on American-made goods and services. “We don’t provide assistance out of charity. We provide assistance because it benefits our security,” he said.

“We support Israel because it is in our national interests to do so,” said Shapiro, echoing the recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, entitled, “Israel: A Strategic Asset for the United States”, which argues that Israel is a strategic asset to the U.S. “If Israel were weaker, its enemies would be bolder. This would make broader conflict more likely, which would be catastrophic to American interests in the region. It is the very strength of Israel’s military which deters potential aggressors and helps foster peace and stability.”

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Goodbye, Wells Fargo; hello, credit union

Josh Harkinson writes: Looking back on my 10 years with Wells Fargo, I’ll always remember the time that a banker gave my 18-month-old son a stuffed horse. After my son gleefully embraced it—”Horsie!”—I was told that taking it home would require signing up for a second checking account that I didn’t need. Not to worry, the friendly banker explained: He’d cancel the new account a few weeks later. I thanked him and went home feeling glad to know the guy.

The following month, my wife and I suddenly ran out of money, which seemed impossible given that I’d recently deposited a check. Wells Fargo’s hefty overdraft fees kicked in. I was freaking out, thinking somebody had gone on a shopping spree with our debit card number—until I realized that the check had somehow ended up in the still-active horsie account.

Enter Bank Transfer Day, the Occupy-associated campaign to get people to move their money from large banks into small community credit unions. According to their main trade association, credit unions have signed up 650,000 new customers since the concept was announced on September 29—double their normal rate. But if credit unions really are so much better than big banks, why haven’t even more people switched over? Did the activists know something I didn’t—or were credit unions just peddling their own version of the free horsie?

“This is probably the worst bank on the planet,” a Yelp reviewer writes about the credit union near my apartment, which averages a mediocre three stars. But after reading more, I got a sense that not all credit unions are the same. The San Francisco Fire Credit Union, which supports firefighters but is open to all San Franciscans, averages a perfect five Yelp stars. One Yelper gushes, “I am in love.”

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In Pakistan, drones kill the innocent

Clive Stafford Smith writes: Last Friday, I took part in an unusual meeting in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey.

The meeting was organized as a traditional jirga. In Pashtun culture, a jirga acts as both a parliament and a courtroom: it is the time-honored way in which Pashtuns have tried to establish rules and settle differences amicably with those who they feel have wronged them.

On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them.

When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision.

I told the elders that the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed. Three of the men, at considerable personal risk, had collected the detritus of half a dozen missiles; they had taken 100 pictures of the carnage.

In one instance, they matched missile fragments with a photograph of a dead child, killed in August 2010 during the C.I.A.’s period of supposed infallibility. This made their grievances much more tangible.

Collecting evidence is a dangerous business. The drones are not the only enemy. The Pakistani military has sealed the area off from journalists, so the truth is hard to come by. One man investigating drone strikes that killed civilians was captured by the Taliban and held for 63 days on suspicion of spying for the United States.

At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward; if he carried a camera he might attract the hostility of the extremists.

But the militants never had the chance to harm him. On Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.

My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory — as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970.

But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government.

And Tariq’s extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile — most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.

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Iran says U.S. plot suspect is anti-Tehran militant

Reuters reports: Iran has complained to the United Nations about a U.S. accusation it tried to assassinate a Saudi diplomat, saying one of the alleged plotters Washington calls an Iranian military official is really a member of an anti-Tehran rebel group.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Saturday the plot was part of a multi-pronged U.S. strategy to smear Tehran, a process he said would continue next week when the U.N. nuclear agency publishes a report western diplomats say will contain new evidence about Iran’s nuclear program.

The complaint to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon turned the U.S. accusation that Tehran supports terrorism back onto Washington, Salehi said.

“This letter contains our complaint about the plots of the United States, reliable information that we have of the U.S. involvement in those plots,” he said in a news conference broadcast live on the English language channel Press TV.

On its website, Press TV reported the letter said a suspect who U.S. prosecutors have identified as an Iranian military official is actually a member of the exiled Iranian rebel group Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO).

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Apartheid and the occupation of Palestine

John Dugard writes: This week, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will consider the question of whether Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) constitute the crime of apartheid within the meaning of the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. This Convention, which has been incorporated into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, is not confined to apartheid in South Africa. Instead it criminalises, under international law, practices that resemble apartheid.

The Russell Tribunal was initiated in the 1960s by the philosopher Bertrand Russell to examine war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. It has now been revived to consider Israel’s violations of international law. It is not a judicial tribunal, but a tribunal comprising reputable jurors from different countries, that seeks to examine whether Israel has violated international criminal law and should be held accountable.

In essence, the Russell Tribunal is a court of international public opinion. It will hear evidence in Cape Town on the scope of the 1973 Apartheid Convention, on apartheid as practiced in South Africa, on Israeli practices in the OPT, particularly the West Bank, and on the question whether these practices so closely resemble those of apartheid as to bring them within the prohibitions of the 1973 Apartheid Convention. The Israeli government has been invited to testify before the tribunal, but, at this stage, has not replied to the invitation. Most of the evidence will inevitably, therefore, be critical of Israel.

Israel cannot be held accountable for its actions by any international tribunal as it refuses to accept the jurisdiction of either the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court. The Russell Tribunal seeks to remedy this weakness in the international system of justice by providing for accountability by a court of international opinion. It does not seek to obstruct the peace process. On the contrary, it wishes to promote it. But there can be no peace without justice.

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Bill Moyers: ‘They are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street is occupying America

Bill Moyers says: The great American experience in creating a different future together — this “voluntary union for the common good” – has been flummoxed by a growing sense of political impotence — what the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has described as a mass resignation of people who believe “the dogma of democracy” on a superficial public level but who no longer believe it privately. There has been, he writes, a decline in what people think they have a political right to aspire to — a decline of individual self-respect on the part of millions of people.

You can understand why that is. We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to produce the policies favored by a majority of Americans. We speak, we write, we advocate — and those in power, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, turn deaf ears and blind eyes to our deepest aspirations. We petition, we plead, we even pray — yet the Earth that is our commons and should be passed on in good condition to coming generations, continues to be despoiled. We invoke the strain in our national DNA that attests to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the produce of political equality — yet private wealth multiplies even as public goods are beggared.

And the property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly feared as an unseemly “veneration for wealth” are now openly in force and the common denominator of public office, including for our judges, is a common deference to cash.

So if belief in the “the dogma of democracy” seems only skin deep, there are reasons for it.

During the great prairie revolt that swept the plains a century after the Constitution was ratified, the populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease explained “Wall Street owns the country. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us, and the political speakers mislead us,” because, she said, “money rules.”

That was 1890. And those agrarian populists were boiling over with anger that the corporations, banks and government were conniving to deprive everyday people of their livelihood. They should see us now.

John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup, and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they will fill it. That’s now the norm, and they get away with it.

Barack Obama criticizes bankers as fat cats, then invites them to dine at a pricy New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person. And that’s the norm. And they get away with it.

As we speak, the president has raised more money from banks, hedge funds, and private equity managers than any Republican candidate, including Mitt Romney. Let’s name it for what it is: democratic deviancy defined downward. Politics today — and there are honorable men and women in it — but politics today is little more than money laundering and the trafficking of power and policy, fewer than six degrees of separation from the spirit and tactics of Tony Soprano.

Why New York’s Zuccotti Park is occupied is no mystery — reporters keep scratching their heads and asking, “Why are you here?” But it’s as clear as the crash of 2008: they are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied America.

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Occupy demands: Let’s radicalise our analysis

Robert Jensen writes: There’s one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands?

I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands.

The demand for demands is an attempt to shoehorn the Occupy gatherings into conventional politics, to force the energy of these gatherings into a form that people in power recognise, so that they can roll out strategies to divert, co-opt, buy off, or – if those tactics fail – squash any challenge to business as usual.

Rather than listing demands, we critics of concentrated wealth and power in the US can dig in and deepen our analysis of the systems that produce that unjust distribution of wealth and power. This is a time for action, but there also is a need for analysis.

Rallying around a common concern about economic injustice is a beginning; understanding the structures and institutions of illegitimate authority is the next step.

We need to recognise that the crises we face are not simply the result of greedy corporate executives or corrupt politicians, but rather of failed systems. The problem is not the specific people who control most of the wealth of the country, or those in government who serve them, but the systems that create those roles.

Most chart the beginning of the external US empire-building phase with the 1898 Spanish-American War and the conquest of the Philippines that continued for some years after. That project went forward in the early 20th century, most notably in Central America, where regular US military incursions made countries safe for investment. If we could get rid of the current gang of thieves and thugs but left the systems in place, we will find that the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss.

My contribution to this process of sharpening analysis comes in lists of three, with lots of alliteration. Whether or not you find my analysis of the key questions compelling, at least it will be easy to remember: Empire, economics, ecology.

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Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases

The Associated Press reports: The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries – China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a “monster” increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.

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Former Mossad chief warns Israel: ‘Religious extremism is a greater threat than nuclear Iran’

The Jerusalem Post reports: Former head of the Mossad Efraim Halevy condemned religious extremism in the IDF on Thursday night, warning that “Israel’s true existential danger comes from within.”

According to Halevy, religious extremism is a growing peril to Israel’s existence and is more threatening than Iran’s nuclear program.

“When I was in Bnei Akiva, there were boys and girls [mixed]. Were we not religious? Were the rabbis then not religious? What happened to us?” he asked, speaking at a military academy meeting commemorating 130 fallen soldiers.

“Thousands of children are born to parents who immigrated to the state and were told that they are Jews, and here the religious authorities decided that they aren’t Jews. A generation grew up here without personal status,” he said.

Last month, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger said in a religious ruling that the IDF must ensure that religious soldiers are not forced to listen to performances by female singers.

The statement came after an incident in which nine officer cadets left an army event involving a performance by female soldiers, and some subsequently refused to return after their unit commander ordered them to do so. Four of the soldiers were expelled from the Officers Training School – better known as Bahd 1 – after refusing to apologize for the incident.

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Israelis seize boats carrying supplies to Gaza Strip

The Los Angeles Times reports: Israel’s navy intercepted a pro-Palestinian protest flotilla Friday as it attempted to break a sea blockade around the Gaza Strip, the third such attempt in less than two years.

Israeli officials said the takeover of two boats carrying 27 activists, journalists and crew members occurred without the kind of violent clash seen in May 2010, when nine Turkish activists, including one with dual U.S. citizenship, were shot and killed as they resisted takeover by Israeli commandos.

The latest ships, the Canadian-owned Tahrir and Irish-owned Saoirse, were escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where crew and passengers were expected to be detained for questioning.

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‘New setback’ for Palestinian hopes on U.N. membership

BBC News reports: A UN diplomat says the UK, France and Colombia have told Security Council members they would abstain in any vote on Palestinian membership.

None of these countries have officially confirmed this yet.

But their decision is a setback for the Palestinians, who have been trying to win support from European states.

A Council committee is considering a Palestinian application to become a UN member state and is expected to present its report next week.

The UN diplomat said Britain, France and Colombia stated their positions in a private meeting of the Security Council committee dealing with the Palestinian application.

The diplomat said Germany also declared it could not support the Palestinian bid, without clarifying whether it would abstain or vote against.

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Israel Navy contacts Gaza-bound aid vessels

Haaretz reports: Two protest boats approached the Gaza coast on Friday with the intent to violate Israel’s naval blockade of the territory and were met by Israeli navy vessels, Palestinian activists said.

In Gaza, activist Amjad Shawwa said the boats were about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Gaza and had been warned over the radio by an Israeli navy ship to change course.

The Israelis told the boats, carrying supplies and 27 international pro-Palestinian activists, that they were entering a closed military zone, Shawwa said.

He said the passengers intended to continue to Gaza.

Activists in Gaza and Ramallah said they lost radio contact with the ships shortly after 1 p.m.

The Israel Defense Forces said that the Israel Navy had contacted the Gaza-bound ships and informed them that Gaza is under a maritime security blockade. The IDF told the ships they could turn around or dock in the Egypt or at the Ashdod port. The ships deed not heed that call and continued towards Gaza.

Israel’s navy has intercepted similar protest ships in the past, towing them to the Israeli port of Ashdod and detaining participants. Israel says its naval blockade of Gaza is necessary to prevent weapons from reaching militant groups like Hamas, the Iran-backed group that rules the territory. Critics call the blockade collective punishment of Gaza’s residents.

Israel’s government has said the activists can send supplies into Gaza overland.

In May 2010, nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed when they resisted an Israeli operation to halt a similar flotilla. Each side blamed the other for the violence.

The incident sparked an international outcry and forced Israel to ease its land blockade on Gaza, which was imposed in 2006 and tightened, with Egyptian cooperation, after Hamas seized control of the territory the following year.

Militants in Gaza have fired thousands of rockets into Israel in the past decade, and now have much of southern Israel in range.

Speaking after prayers at a Gaza City mosque, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, addressed the passengers aboard the boats, saying, “Your message has been delivered whether you make it or not.”

“The siege is unjust and must end,” Haniyeh said.

On Thursday, the Obama administration warned U.S.citizens on the boats that they may face legal action for violating Israeli and American law. The activists include Americans and citizens of eight other countries.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S.was renewing its warning to Americans “not to involve themselves in this activity.”

The U.S., like Israel and the European Union, considers Hamas a terrorist organization.

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On road to reconciliation, Libya meets trail of anguish

The New York Times reports: The present and future are daunting enough for the wobbly authorities here, but then there is the tormented past to consider as well: four decades of state crimes whose wounds demand attention.

With mass murders, disappearances and public executions, the victims of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s People’s Court, Internal Security Agency and State Security Court number in the tens of thousands, human rights advocates here and abroad say. How will Libyans come to terms with their past?

Already, the provisional leaders are pondering options for exposing the long catalog of killings and torture, looking to models from South Africa, Europe and Latin America. They are motivated by a conviction, they say, that a new nation cannot be built unless light is shed on the dark corners of the old.

The specifics are being worked out, like so much else in a country that appears to be shaking itself awake after a long, bad dream. But the interim minister of justice, a veteran of legal jousting with the Qaddafi government from within and without, said there was a tentative plan: investigation, public hearings and prosecution, with the inquiry reaching all the way back to the earliest days of Colonel Qaddafi’s rise to power in 1969.

“We look to Chile, Argentina, South Africa — we take part of South Africa,” said the interim justice minister, Mohammed al-Alagi, referring to the approach of that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which emphasized fact-finding and accountability rather than punishment.

Most important, Mr. Alagi suggested in an interview in the empty and echoing Justice Ministry here, was the imperative for Libyans to confront Qaddafi-era crimes in a country where there were no independent media to report them.

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