Author Archives: News Sources

Israel’s efforts to obstruct U.S.-Iranian diplomacy

Reuters reports: Iran is on course to develop a nuclear bomb within six months and time has run out for further negotiations, a senior Israeli minister said.

Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said Iran still believed it had room for maneuver in dealing with world powers, and that unless it faced a credible threat of U.S. military action, it would not stop its nuclear activities.

“There is no more time to hold negotiations,” Steinitz, who is close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview with the Israel Hayom daily published on Friday. [Continue reading…]

The Jerusalem Post reports: Jerusalem urged the world on Thursday not to be fooled by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s smiles and to intensify sanctions against the regime until he takes concrete steps toward dismantling Tehran’s nuclear program.

“One should not be taken in by Rouhani’s deceptive words,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “The same Rouhani boasted in the past how he deceived the international community with nuclear talks, even as Iran was continuing with its nuclear program.”

The Prime Minister’s Office comments followed the Iranian president’s two-part interview with NBC on Wednesday and Thursday that aired just before he is to fly to the US and address the UN General Assembly.

Rouhani said Iran was not seeking war, and slammed Israel for bringing “instability” to the Middle East and for questioning his government’s intentions toward nuclear arms.

He called Israel “an occupier, a usurper government that does injustice to the people of the region,” and said it “has brought instability to the region with its war-mongering policies.” [Continue reading…]

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Israel’s spies inside Damascus

The Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman, who covers military and intelligence affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, provides an Israeli-sourced history of Israel’s decades long surveillance and sabotage of Syria’s WMD programs.

In the mid-1990s, Syria succeeded in the manufacture of the most toxic chemical agent, VX. This agent is so hazardous that it consists of two separate substances that are kept apart inside a missile warhead and combine only when the warhead hits the ground, creating an extremely lethal neurotoxic agent. Unlike other chemical warfare elements, VX does not disperse in a short time. The know-how for the manufacture of this weapon was supplied by Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s advisor on chemical weapons disarmament, Gen. Anatoly Kuntsevich.

Under the guise of a routine working visit to Syria, and as part of the good military relations that had remained between Syria and Russia (with the Russians still maintaining intelligence bases in the Golan Heights and in northern Syria), Kuntsevich began forming personal links with the heads of the Syrian regime. He received huge amounts of money from them, and in turn, he supplied them with the know-how and some of the equipment, which he acquired in Europe, for the manufacture of VX weapons.

In 1998, the Mossad learned details of some of these transactions. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried to warn the heads of the government in Moscow about the general’s doings in meetings he held with them in 1999, but to no avail. It seemed as though Yeltsin could not, or would not, intervene. When the Israelis saw that their pressure was not working, Mossad agents in Europe were assigned to pose as independent researchers working on the background for a documentary film on gas warfare. They repeatedly contacted high-ranking officials in the Kremlin and the Russian army and said that according to their information, Kuntsevich was selling chemical warfare agents to Syria. The goal was to scare Moscow into believing that the information was about to be made public. Unfortunately, this didn’t work either, and apart from a stern warning, nothing was done to curb the general.

On April 3, 2002, Kuntsevich died mysteriously while on a flight from Damascus to Moscow. Also mysterious is the inscription on his headstone in Moscow, which states his death date as March 29. Syrian intelligence is convinced that the Mossad was behind his demise. Israeli officials have not commented on such allegations.

Historically, Israel has devoted many resources to keeping a watch on the Scientific Studies and Research Center, the main Syrian agency in charge of the effort to produce chemical and biological weapons. The SSRC was identified by U.S. intelligence as the front organization for the Syrian defense establishment, and the U.S. Treasury Department consequently imposed financial sanctions.

With over 10,000 personnel, the SSRC is responsible for operating the main facilities in Syria where chemical weapons are manufactured and stored, according to Israeli military intelligence estimates. The main site is at al-Safir, in northern Syria, where the chemical weapons are assembled and stored and some of the Scud missiles and launchers are kept.

Al-Safir was one of the prime targets for the possible American attack proposed in late August. Now that such an attack has been called off, it will be a site of enormous interest to international weapons inspectors. Al-Safir is an enormous facility, covering dozens of square kilometers and comprising several sections, surrounded by patrol roads and high double fences.

On July 25, 2007, at al-Safir, a horrendous breakdown occurred in the production line of VX warhead components, a line that was constructed by the Syrians and North Koreans. One of the pipes feeding substances to the assembly line burst, and within seconds the entire line became a blazing inferno. The blast was so powerful that doors were blown off the building and the noxious gases escaped and spread across the entire al-Safir facility. The initial explosion killed 15 Syrians and, according to reports reaching the Mossad, 10 Iranian engineers at the site. An unknown number of people were seriously wounded, and some 200 are believed to have been affected. The rescue and first-aid forces permanently stationed at al-Safir were unable to handle all the casualties, and the authorities had to call in outside firefighting and rescue services, violating their goal of maintaining maximum secrecy at the site.

Investigations carried out after the incident by a special team appointed by the Syrian president reached the unequivocal conclusion that this was an intentional act of sabotage, though to this day footprints leading to the perpetrators have not been traced. A senior Israeli cabinet minister speaking with me under terms of not identifying him would not refer directly to the al-Safir explosion, but would only say with a wink and a nod that it was “a marvelous mishap.” [Continue reading…]

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The challenge of chemical weapons disarmament in Syria

Amy Smithson writes: On September 14, 2013, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the development, production, storage, and use of poison gas, welcomed its 190th member. The milestone shows just how far the world has come on chemical weapons.

To appreciate the change, it is worth remembering that, throughout the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein’s regime used poison gas repeatedly, including to slaughter thousands of civilians in an attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988. Beyond a few rhetorical complaints, the world turned a blind eye. This time around, within a month of poison-tipped rockets falling on a Damascus suburb and killing 1,400 civilians, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced a joint framework for chemical disarmament in Syria and Damascus acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention. In short, the outcry and action after the August 21 attacks indicate that 2013 is not 1988.

The U.S.-Russian agreement is an important first step, but many make-or-break moments remain. As Kerry introduced the deal, he announced that the United States and Russia had agreed that Syria’s chemical stockpile comprises roughly 1,000 metric tons of the blister agent mustard gas, the nerve agent sarin, and the precursor chemicals used to make other agents. He voiced Washington’s belief that the chemicals weapons program involves 45 sites, indicating a large array of deployment locations and to several research, development, production, and storage sites. (The Russian delegation was silent on this particular matter.) Compared with the massive 32,000-metric-ton and 40,000-metric-ton arsenals that the United States and the Soviet Union produced during the Cold War, Syria’s is rather small. Still, its dispersal across a country embroiled in conflict will make disarmament tremendously challenging.

The U.S.-Russian framework is premised on a highly compressed version of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s timelines for the declaration and destruction of weapons, as well as on an adjusted version of the treaty’s inspection procedures for declared sites. The convention’s inspectorate in The Hague, called the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), will carry out the bulk of the work. A close examination of where this effort will break with precedent shows just how challenging carrying out this plan will be.

First, when it comes to chemical weapons nonproliferation, things usually move at a snail’s pace. The convention itself took 24 years to negotiate, and decisions often languish in the convention’s governing body, the OPCW’s executive council. Destruction plans have historically taken many months to draft and approve, and destruction facilities take years to construct, given the need to build in safeguards against accidents during the process, which often mates explosives and propellants with deadly chemical warfare agents. The U.S.-Russian framework stipulates complete destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 — a tall order indeed. [Continue reading…]

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Another of Assad’s useful idiots: Cynthia McKinney praises Syria’s ‘free health care’

The Lede: Writing on Facebook from Damascus, Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia, praised Syria for its “free health care.”

Ms. McKinney, a liberal activist who traveled to the Syrian capital as part of a delegation led by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, posted the update late Wednesday, after meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. In addition to Assadcare, she noted, Syrians living under the Baathist dynasty also “enjoy free education.”

She concluded her brief report with kind words for Ogarit Dandash, a young Assad supporter who had offered herself as a human shield to defend Syrian government military installations from American air strikes. As Ms. McKinney explained, Ms. Dandash “founded ‘Over Our Dead Bodies,’ a group of young people who climbed atop Mount Qasioun and dared U.S. bombs to target them. They are still there in defiant resistance to any war against Syria. Mount Qasioun should be the site of a peace party, not bombing strikes.”

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Edward Snowden has started a global debate. So why the silence in Britain?

Simon Jenkins writes: The Brazilian president cancels a state visit to Washington. The German justice minister talks of “a Hollywood nightmare“. His chancellor, Angela Merkel, ponders offering Edward Snowden asylum. The EU may even end the “safe harbour” directive which would force US-based computer servers to relocate to European regulation. Russians and Chinese, so often accused of cyber-espionage, hop with glee.

In response, an embarrassed Barack Obama pleads for debate and a review of the Patriot Acts. Al Gore refers to the Snowden revelations as “obscenely outrageous“. The rightwing John McCain declares a review “entirely appropriate“. The Senate holds public hearings and summons security chiefs, who squirm like mafia bosses on the run. America’s once dominant internet giants, with 80% of the globe under their sway, now face “Balkanised” regulation round the world as nation states seek to repatriate digital sovereignty.

And in Britain? Nothing. From parliament, the courts, and most of the media, nothing. Snowden, the most significant whistleblower of modern times, briefly amused London when he turned scarlet pimpernel in the summer; then the capital was intrigued when David Miranda was seized by Heathrow police on bogus “terrorism” charges. But the British establishment cannot get excited. It hates whistleblowers, regarding them as not proper chaps. [Continue reading…]

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Iran’s leaders signal effort at new thaw

The New York Times reports: A series of good-will gestures and hints of new diplomatic flexibility from Iran’s ruling establishment was capped on Wednesday by the highest-level statement yet that the country’s new leaders are pushing for a compromise in negotiations over their disputed nuclear program.

In a near staccato burst of pronouncements, statements and speeches by the new president, Hassan Rouhani; his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif; and even the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leadership has sent Rosh Hashana greetings to Jews worldwide via Twitter, released political prisoners, exchanged letters with President Obama, praised “flexibility” in negotiations and transferred responsibility for nuclear negotiations from the conservatives in the military to the Foreign Ministry.

“They’re putting stuff out faster than the naysayers can keep up,” said Gary Sick, an Iran expert with Columbia University. “They dominate the airwaves.”

Mr. Rouhani, preparing for a trip to New York next week for the annual gathering of the United Nations, kept up the dizzying pace on Wednesday in an interview with NBC News in which he declared that Iran would never “seek weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons” and that he had “full power and complete authority” to make a nuclear deal with the West.

There is plenty of skepticism in the West over the new tone emanating from Tehran, and Iran veterans have seen previous thaws in the diplomatic climate disappear seemingly overnight. Mr. Obama has spoken of testing Mr. Rouhani’s seriousness.

But Iran experts, citing the apparent end to Iran’s ideological taboo against direct talks with the United States as well as the apparent concurrence of the supreme leader, say that this new moderation seems different. [Continue reading…]

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Let’s be honest about Israel’s nukes

Victor Gilinsky and Henry D. Sokolski write: The recent agreement between the United States and Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons made clear what should have been obvious long ago: President Obama’s effort to uphold international norms against weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East will entangle the United States in a diplomatic and strategic maze that is about much more than Syria’s chemical arsenal.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria insists that the purpose of his chemical arsenal was always to deter Israel’s nuclear weapons. If Syria actually disarms, what about Egypt and Israel? Egypt (about whose chemical weapons the United States has been strangely silent) points to Israel. And Israel of course has its own chemical weapons to deter Syria’s and Egypt’s, and it is not about to give them up. A headline in the Israeli daily Haaretz a few days ago stated: “Israel adamant it won’t ratify chemical arms treaty before hostile neighbors.”

These three countries have not adhered to the Biological Weapons Convention either. And Israel is not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, despite having developed a formidable nuclear arsenal of its own, which will soon become the central fact in this drama, whether the United States likes it or not.

An obstacle of America’s own making has long prevented comprehensive negotiations over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. While the world endlessly discusses Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the likelihood that it will succeed in developing an atomic arsenal, hardly anyone in the United States ever mentions Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, pretends that he doesn’t know anything about them. This taboo impedes discussions within Washington and internationally. It has kept America from pressing Egypt and Syria to ratify the chemical and biological weapons conventions. Doing so would have brought immediate objections about American acceptance of Israel’s nuclear weapons. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian jihadi groups are now kidnapping and killing one another

Hassan Hassan writes: If the United States wants to move against jihadists in Syria, there has never been a better time. Tensions between moderate rebel groups and extremist forces are coming to a head across the country.

The potential of a U.S. military strike over the past several weeks — which mainstream forces largely welcomed, and jihadists, fearing that the United States would target them, opposed — appears to have exacerbated tensions between the groups. Full-blown clashes broke out in the north and east of the country today, with Free Syrian Army (FSA)-affiliated groups in the city of Deir Ezzor battling with the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Meanwhile, ISIS also launched an offensive on the northern town of Azaz, which lies close to the Turkish border.

The clashes follow an ISIS announcement earlier this week declaring war against the FSA-affiliated Farouk Brigades in Aleppo, along with another moderate rebel brigade. Dubbing its operation “The Repudiation of Malignity,” the jihadist group said its offensive was in response to an attack by the brigades against its headquarters in the northern city of al-Bab last week.

ISIS even appears to be picking fights with more radical brigades. The jihadist group reportedly kidnapped nine commanders from the Ahrar Souria group in the northern city of Raqqa on Sept. 12. It also killed a commander from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham militia, after the man objected to ISIS’s kidnapping of Malaysian aid workers. In going after Ahrar al-Sham, ISIS is turning a former friend into an enemy: The Salafist group stood by ISIS last month when it clashed with Ahfad al-Rasoul, an FSA-affiliated rebel group, and as popular protests erupted against ISIS.

ISIS’s feuding with moderate Syrian rebels seems to be sanctioned by the very top of the al Qaeda hierarchy. In an audio statement last week, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri warned his followers in Syria to avoid cooperation with “secular groups that are allied to the West.”

That’s not to say that mainstream rebel groups can afford to shun al Qaeda affiliates entirely. In the absence of an international push to help the opposition, jihadists are still the rebels’ most lethal weapon. Jihadist suicide attacks have been responsible for some of the most important strategic gains recently: Rebel groups besieged Mennagh military airbase in Aleppo for more than a year, for example, but were unable to completely capture it — until ISIS dispatched its suicide bombers on Aug. 5. The same thing happened at the Hamidiya military complex in the northern province of Idlib last month.

But there is no doubt that rebel groups are growing increasingly uneasy with the behavior of al Qaeda affiliates, particularly in rebel-held areas in the country’s north and east. Jihadists may be an indispensable asset on the front lines, but their behavior in liberated areas — where they have kidnapped activists and aid workers, terrorized civilians, and tried to implement an alien form of Islamic law — is alienating Syrians. [Continue reading…]

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Liwa al Islam issue statement after videos attempt to implicate them in chemical weapons attacks

EA Worldview reports: In an official statement on Thursday, the Liwa al-Islam Brigade accused the Assad regime of deliberately fabricating video footage purporting to show its fighters firing chemical weapons.

The videos, disseminated on YouTube, gained a degree of prominence when blogger Brown Moses wrote about them.

Liwa Al Islam said that the videos were not published on their official channels, were “forged and completely fake”.

“Liwa al-Islam does not have the kind of artillery shown in the videos. Only the Assad regime has this capability. Furthermore, this kind of artillery cannot in any way carry warheads that might be filled with chemical weapons,” the statement read.

The statement later reads:

“In the targeted areas in Ghouta, there was a battalion affiliated with Liwa al-Islam. Ten soldiers of this battalion were killed and around 50 were injured”

Liwa Al Islam accused the Assad regime of also faking a video showing its members beheading soldiers, which it called a “cheap lie”.

“Liwa al-Islam denounces this kind of behavior, and it is not part of its policy to execute detainees,” the group said.

Vowing to continue to fight, the group said,”The world has forgotten all crimes by the Assad regime and focused only on the use of chemical weapons. When the international community makes a deal with Assad to eliminate his stockpile of chemical weapons and then hands him a certificate of good conduct, which puts him in a position to freely continue killing with other means, it becomes a partner in Assad’s murderous crimes.”

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Syria’s main arms suppliers among least generous aid donors, says Oxfam

The Guardian reports: Countries in the forefront of arming either side in Syria’s civil war have been among the least generous when it comes to dealing with the resulting humanitarian disaster, according to a new Oxfam report.

The aid agency and advocacy group found that Russia and Qatar had committed just 3% of their fair share to the United Nations humanitarian appeal, measuring their contributions as a proportion of national income and wealth.

Russia has long been the Syrian government’s main arms supplier, providing nearly half its imports in 2006-10, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

On Wednesday, Moscow launched a diplomatic assault in defence of the Syrian regime, claiming to have evidence implicating Syrian rebels in the chemical attack in Damascus on 21 August, in which hundreds were killed. Russia’s move once again pits it against the UK, France and the United States, which blamed the attack squarely on Bashar Al Assad.

Meanwhile, Qatar is widely reported to be the main source of finance for weapons for the rebels, particularly jihadist groups.

France, the most vociferous supporter of the opposition in western Europe, has given less than half its fair share, the Oxfam report found.

At the other end of the scale, Kuwait has contributed more than four times its share, while Britain has given more than one and a half times what the agency estimated a proportionate contribution to the UN fund. Saudi Arabia has given nearly twice its share.

Overall, under-payers far outnumber over-payers, especially among rich countries. The US, despite being the biggest contributor in absolute terms, has given 63% of its fair share in relation to national income, Oxfam found. Japan has paid 17% of its fair share and South Korea 2%.

As a result, the £3bn Syrian humanitarian fund launched by the UN in June this year is so far only 44% funded, with days to go before a high-level donor meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly next week. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian border town overrun by al-Qaeda group

Al Jazeera: Fighters linked to al-Qaeda have overrun a Syrian town near the border with Turkey after fighting broke out with units of the anti-government Free Syrian Army, opposition activists say.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Wednesday stormed the town of Azaz, 5km from the Syrian-Turkish border, and killed at least five FSA members, the activists said, adding 100 people were taken captive.

Reports in the late evening said that fighting was continuing and getting closer to a border crossing at Bab Al Salama, which is controlled by the FSA.

The fighting is the most severe since tensions mounted earlier this year between the rebel factions fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The fighting could pose a dilemma for the Turkish government, which has been allowing fighters to cross into Syria from its territory, but may not be keen to see al-Qaeda so close to its border.

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Sectarian violence reignites in an Iraqi town

The New York Times reports: The orange archway at the entrance to this farming community welcomes visitors in “peace.” The lush palm groves are heavy with ripe dates. For generations, Shiite and Sunni families worked the land, earning a living from their sheep and cows, their wheat fields and lemon trees.

On a recent morning, though, the only talk was of how to stop them from killing one another.

The latest strategy: new concrete walls with separate entryways for the different sects.

“So there’s a Sunni way in, and a Shiite way in,” Abu Jassim, a Sunni resident who recently fled his home after sectarian revenge killings by Shiite gunmen, explained to a local representative in Parliament.

During the worst of Iraq’s carnage over the last decade, this area of Diyala Province, a mixed region where Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds still compete for power, faced killings and displacement. But what is happening now, villagers say, is worse — what one Western diplomat described in an interview as “Balkans-style ethnic cleansing.”

Iraqi leaders worry that the violence here may be a sign of what awaits the rest of the country if the government cannot quell the growing mayhem that many trace to the civil war in Syria, which has inflamed sectarian divisions, with Sunnis supporting the rebels and Shiites backing the Assad government. Attacks have become more frequent this year, with major bombings becoming almost a daily occurrence. The violence countrywide has increased to a level not seen in five years, according to the United Nations, reinforcing fears that the type of sectarian warfare that gripped the country in 2006 and 2007 will reignite. [Continue reading…]

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Wave of car bombs, other attacks kill 33 in Iraq

The Associated Press reports: A new wave of car bombs rocked commercial streets in the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, part of a series of attacks across the country that left 33 dead.

Meanwhile, Sunni leaders in Basra said unknown gunmen had shot dead 17 Sunnis in the Shiite-dominated southern city over the past two weeks, following threats to retaliate against them for attacks on Shiites in other parts of Iraq.

Car bomb attacks blamed on hard-line Sunnis aiming to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government, coming alongside revenge killings by Shiites, are reminiscent of the cycle of violence that brought the country to the brink of civil war some years ago. A surge of bloodshed is now in its fifth month, although overall death tolls are still lower than at the height of the conflict in 2004-2008. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq’s latest surge: state executions

Samir Goswami writes: In the bloody shadow of Iraq’s recent surge in violence lurks another troubling statistic: this year, Iraq has executed nearly 70 people accused of terrorist-related activities, including 17 men and women last month alone. Let me be clear, the death penalty should be abolished everywhere, including in the United States. Tragically in Iraq, though, it seems the death penalty has become a key component in Baghdad’s counterterrorism strategy.

And the trend is headed in the wrong direction. A recent Amnesty International report showed that in 2012, Iraqi executioners killed at least 129 people, almost twice as many as the previous year, putting Iraq in third place among countries using the death penalty (the United States was fifth, with 43).

With reports showing that more than 1,000 people were killed in sectarian and terrorist attacks in July alone, it is easy to understand why Iraqi authorities might seek desperate measures. But violence thrives where justice, due process, and human rights are denied. Continuing that cycle of violence by executing people only serves to further erode confidence in the government’s ability to protect its citizens, especially when its own institutions do not live up to their own standards.

Simply put, adherence to the rule of law grounded in human rights principles can help prevent violence. This is especially true for fragile governments that are trying to instil confidence in their core governance responsibilities. [Continue reading…]

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Time for Americans to stop defending their right to kill each other

Rosa Brooks writes: Here we go again. With 12 dead bodies at Washington’s Navy Yard, not including that of the shooter, Americans are back to the usual handwringing: Why, oh why can’t we stem the tide of gun violence?

People, this is not rocket science. (Yes, I’m mad).

For a start, we have too many guns sloshing around. A recent Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) backgrounder notes that “The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about 35-50 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns.” Reading the news, you might imagine that Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or some other conflict-ravaged nation would be leading the most guns-per-capita race, but nope: That’s us. We’re number one.

Yes, you say, but guns don’t kill people, people do. Well, bless your shrunken little NRA heart, that’s true! Last I checked, guns just lying around all by themselves don’t spontaneously start shooting at elementary-school children or random passersby. With rare exceptions (“I dropped it on the floor and it just went off…”), it takes a finger on the trigger to get them going.

But while guns don’t kill people on their own, they sure make it easier for people to kill people. This, incidentally, is why our troops carry guns, instead of slingshots or brass knuckles: If you need to be able to kill quickly and surely, guns will do the trick. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s crackdown on Morsi supporters called worse than Mubarak era

McClatchy reports: In the two months since Egyptian authorities started rounding up supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a repressive regime has emerged here that appears to be far worse than the one political activists thought they’d ended when they pushed Hosni Mubarak from office two and a half years ago.

Egyptians caught in the roundup have told McClatchy they were tortured while awaiting charges. Islamist leaders claim that the government is rounding up family members in the night as leverage against them. Lawyers tasked with representing arrested Morsi supporters often are arrested when they go to be with their clients during prison interrogations. Once again, civilians are facing their charges in military courts.

“I saw torture chambers that made me wish they would shoot my husband dead,” said one woman who was arrested the same day her husband also was seized. “I would rather see him, the father of three children, dead than tortured,” she recounted in a phone interview, her voice still shaking 10 days after her two-week detention.

The woman, who asked not to be identified for fear she’d be arrested again, said she was mistreated while in custody but hadn’t been tortured. Her account matches that of other prisoners, who say they’ve gone on hunger strikes to protest the crowded conditions and refusals to let them see their lawyers.

Not just Morsi supporters have been arrested. A growing number of journalists and human rights advocates also have been detained, leaving fewer eyes to document what’s happening.

Ahmed Helmi, a human rights lawyer who represents many of those arrested, estimated that as many as 10,000 people have been arrested since the military deposed Morsi on July 3. That’s far more than human right groups’ estimates of 3,000. Diplomatic officials told McClatchy the number could be 5,000. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt troops storm Islamist stronghold near Cairo

The Associated Press reports: Egyptian security forces backed by armored fighting vehicles and helicopters stormed a tourist town near the Great Pyramids that became an Islamist stronghold on Thursday, the latest in a stepped up campaign by the military-backed government to put down armed supporters of the ousted president.

As they moved into Kerdasa at around 6 a.m., the troops and policemen came under barrages of fire from gunmen on rooftops. Militants took control of the town just outside Cairo more than a month ago amid a nationwide backlash of violence by Islamists enraged by the military coup that removed President Mohammed Morsi and by a crackdown against his supporters that followed.

A police general fell in the first moments of the battle. Gen. Nabil Farrag had just given a pep talk to his men on the street, preparing them to roll into the town, when they came under a hail of gunfire, according to an Associated Press video journalist and a photographer working with AP. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: Gaza rulers Hamas and residents of the Palestinian territory fear Egypt’s destruction of tunnels used to smuggle goods across the border is part of a plan to tighten a blockade of the Strip.

“The Egyptian army has destroyed 95 percent of the tunnels with the aim of setting up a security buffer zone,” Sobhi Ridwan, head of the Palestinian municipality in the border town of Rafah, told AFP.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum echoed the concern.

“We have big fears of a buffer zone being set up and the tunnels all being shut down,” Barhum said.

Egypt’s army has destroyed many of the tunnels on the Egyptian side of Rafah which are used to smuggle goods, including building material and fuel, into the blockaded Palestinian territory. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Security forces on Tuesday arrested Gehad el-Haddad, a senior official of the Muslim Brotherhood who handled the group’s communication with the foreign news media, security officials said. His arrest was part of a continuing roundup of thousands of Brotherhood members in the two months since the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the group.

Mr. Haddad is an aide to Khairat el-Shater, a Brotherhood leader who was arrested last month, and the son of Mr. Morsi’s top foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, who was detained with Mr. Morsi at the time of the takeover. The arrests have already swept up much of the group’s leadership, effectively crippling its organizational ability.

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