Category Archives: News

Come clean on British links to CIA torture, MPs tell U.S. Senate

The Guardian reports: The head of the powerful Commons intelligence and security committee is demanding that the US hand over its archive of material documenting Britain’s role in the CIA’s abduction and torture programme developed in the wake of the 9/11 attack.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chair of the parliamentary inquiry into the complicity of British intelligence agencies in the US programme, has told the Observer that British MPs would seek the intelligence relating to the UK that was redacted from last week’s explosive Senate report, which concluded that the CIA repeatedly lied over its brutal but ineffective interrogation techniques.

The move comes amid escalating pressure on the government not to extend an agreement allowing the US to use the British Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia as a military base until its true role in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition has been established. [Continue reading…]

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Abbas backs Egypt crackdown on Gaza tunnels

AFP reports: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said he supported Egypt’s crackdown on tunnels linking the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula and any other action the country took to protect itself from militants, according to a media report Thursday.

“We have supported all the precautionary measures taken by the Egyptian authorities to close the tunnels and stop the trafficking of arms and the passage of people between Gaza and the Sinai,” Abbas said in an interview with Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram Al-Arabi due to be published on Saturday, extracts of which were published by MENA news agency.

“We will continue to support any measure protecting Egypt from danger,” Abbas was quoted as saying. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. concern grows over ISIS fighters training in Libya

The Los Angeles Times reports: Fighters for the Islamic State militant group have been training in remote areas of Libya, heightening the Obama administration’s concern about a country that U.S. officials have largely ignored since its 2011 revolution.

Training camps with several hundred Islamic State fighters have been spotted in parts of eastern Libya, and some U.S. intelligence reports suggest a new presence for the militant group near Tripoli, in the country’s west, U.S. officials disclosed in recent days.

Although the officials say no immediate military response is planned, the appearance of the camps is giving new impetus to a debate about whether the United States eventually will need to expand its campaign against the militants beyond Iraq and Syria.[Continue reading…]

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ISIS shoots down Iraqi helicopter

The Associated Press reports: Islamic State group militants shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, officials said Saturday, killing the two pilots onboard and raising fresh concerns about the extremists’ ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.

The attack happened late Friday in the Shiite holy city of Samarra, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad. A senior Defense Ministry official told The Associated Press the Sunni militants used a shoulder-fired rocket launcher to shoot down the EC635 helicopter on the outskirts of the city.

An army official corroborated the information. Both spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists. [Continue reading…]

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U.S.-led warplanes hit militants in Syria and Iraq 27 times this week

The Los Angeles Times reports: U.S.-led warplanes launched 27 airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria this week, officials said Friday.

The three-day attack by jets and drones was focused on militants in Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo; the embattled Syrian city of Kobani and several cities in Iraq: Ramadi and Rutba to the west; Samarra and Mosul to the north.

In Aleppo and Kobani, U.S. officials claim to have destroyed Islamic State bunkers and fortified structures. In Iraq, the airstrikes destroyed armored vehicles as well as bulldozers and an excavator, they said.

President Obama has described the airstrike campaign as an effort to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State, which rose to prominence during the summer when its fighters crossed the border from Syria into Iraq and conquered large swaths of territory, including Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities. [Continue reading…]

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Nineveh’s police: A force to fight ISIS has manpower, but little firepower

The New York Times reports: Smoking cigarettes in a tent with a dirt floor just outside an isolated village in northern Iraq, the police officers recalled the heady days working alongside American forces and launching dozens of operations to kill and capture Qaeda militants in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The Americans are long gone, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has morphed into the Islamic State and the Iraqi government has not paid their salaries in months, leaving the officers grappling with their fate in a cold tent in what is supposed to be a training camp.

“We are in a camp like refugees, without work or salaries,” said Seif Ahmed, a SWAT team member wearing a “U.S. Army” T-shirt. “ISIS is our target, but what are we supposed to fight it with?”

As the United States dispatches military advisers to help Iraq build a force to fight the Islamic State, often referred to as ISIS, the police of Nineveh Province, who have experience and self-interest in actually battling the jihadists, have been largely abandoned. In a region that the Islamic State now controls, lingering distrust by the Shiite-led central government has stymied efforts by provincial officials to turn the former police into a local force. The central government fears that the police officers, who are mostly Sunni, will sell their weapons to the jihadists — or join them.

The marginalization of Nineveh’s police force is one example of how the key to rebuilding Iraq may rest less in the airpower and bombing runs of the United States and its allies than in bridging the differences between the Shiite-led central government and Sunni communities. Shortly after the jihadists seized most of the province in June, the Iraqi government was so distrustful it cut off the officers’ salaries, rendering most of them destitute. [Continue reading…]

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CIA director: U.S. spies raised questions about 9/11 intelligence ahead of Iraq War

The Washington Post reports: CIA officials questioned in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 whether key intelligence cited by President George W. Bush’s administration as a reason for a military invasion was faulty, according to a newly declassified CIA letter released Thursday by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The letter was sent March 13 of this year from CIA Director John Brennan to Sen. Carl Levin, the outgoing committee chairman, and introduced on the Senate floor on Thursday. Brennan confirmed that CIA field operatives “expressed significant concern” whether Muhammad Atta, one of the airliner hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, could have met with a former Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, in Prague about five months earlier.

The so-called “Prague connection” was used by the Bush administration as a way of tying the 9/11 attacks to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The intelligence has been questioned for years, but the new CIA letter raises anew questions about why the Bush administration took the United States into the Iraq War despite concerns repeatedly being raised by U.S. intelligence officers about whether there was a tie between 9/11 and the Iraqi government. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. hid U.K. links in CIA torture report at request of British spy agencies

The Guardian reports: References to Britain’s intelligence agencies were deleted at their request from the damning US report on the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11, it has emerged.

A spokesman for David Cameron acknowledged the UK had been granted deletions in advance of the publication, contrasting with earlier assertions by No 10. Downing Street said any redactions were only requested on “national security” grounds and contained nothing to suggest UK agencies had participated in torture or rendition.

However, the admission will fuel suspicions that the report – while heavily critical of the CIA – was effectively sanitised to conceal the way in which close allies of the US became involved in the global kidnap and torture programme that was mounted after the al-Qaida attacks.

On Wednesday, the day the report was published, asked whether redactions had been sought, Cameron’s official spokesman told reporters there had been “none whatsoever, to my knowledge”.

However, on Thursday, the prime minister’s deputy official spokesman said: “My understanding is that no redactions were sought to remove any suggestion that there was UK involvement in any alleged torture or rendition. But I think there was a conversation with the agencies and their US counterparts on the executive summary. Any redactions sought there would have been on national security grounds in the way we might have done with any other report.” [Continue reading…]

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CIA director refuses to acknowledge agency engaged in torture

Foreign Policy reports: At an unusual news conference at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, spy chief John Brennan disavowed the agency’s former system for detaining and brutally interrogating terror suspects in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and said some of the methods used were “abhorrent,” but he refused to join President Barack Obama in admitting that they had crossed the line into “torture.”

Asked repeatedly whether waterboarding suspects or threatening them with mock executions led to actionable intelligence, Brennan insisted that the agency couldn’t conclusively say that harsh interrogations produced information that could otherwise not have been obtained.

“The cause-and-effect relationship between the application of those EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] and ultimate provision of that information” from detainees “is unknown and unknowable,” Brennan said in response to a question. “But for someone to say that there was no intelligence of value, of use, that came from those detainees once they were subjected to EITs, I think that lacks any foundation at all.” [Continue reading…]

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Palestine minister’s autopsy results disputed

Al Jazeera reports: A Palestinian official has said that the autopsy on Ziad Abu Ein’s body proves that Israel’s actions led to the death of a Palestinian minister, while Israel disagrees with the findings of the same autopsy.

Abu Ein died on Wednesday shortly after an Israeli border policeman shoved and grabbed him by the throat during a protest in the occupied West Bank.

Thousands of Palestinians attended his funeral in Ramallah on Thursday. Israel has beefed up its security forces in the West Bank as fresh protests were expected over the minister’s death.

The head of the Palestinian civil affairs, Hussein Al Sheikh, told a Palestinian radio that the autopsy, which was carried out overnight, showed Abu Ein died because of a beating by Israeli soldiers and inhaling large amounts of tear gas, adding that Israelis delayed his transfer to the hospital.

He also said the Israeli forensic expert, who was present at the postmortem, agreed to the findings of the autopsy.

However, the Israeli side rejected agreeing to the findings.

“Israeli officials said that heart attack was the reason why the minister died, adding that it might have been brought on when was he grabbed in the neck by an Israeli soldier,” Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from West Jerusalem, said. [Continue reading…]

Human Rights Watch: Multiple witnesses have described how a senior Palestinian official who died on December 10, 2014 had been assaulted by at least three Israeli border police. The witnesses all stated that the official, Ziad Abu Ein, 55, had not used any force against the Israeli forces, and that the security forces were suppressing a peaceful demonstration against Israel’s unlawful West Bank settlements. The evidence of the witnesses all suggested that Abu Ein could not reasonably have been seen to pose any threat to the security forces, meaning the assaults on him were unlawful.

The border police had blocked Abu Ein, the Palestinian Authority minister responsible for dealing with Israeli settlements and the separation barrier in the West Bank, and a group of about 120 other people from reaching an area near Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town north of Ramallah, where they planned to plant olive trees. Four witnesses said that the protest was peaceful, accounts that video recordings and photographs of the confrontation by news media and protest participants corroborated.

“Israeli forces marked Human Rights Day by assaulting Palestinians peacefully attempting to plant olive trees, including a senior official who posed no physical threat and then died,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Israel’s allies should demand accountability for the assault, and for an end to the illegal settlement land-grabs that Abu Ein was protesting.”

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Syrian rebel training program months from starting

The Hill reports: A program to train and equip 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels will begin in March and will not be completed until a year later in 2016, a senior State Department official told lawmakers on Wednesday.

“The training we hope will start in March,” Brett McGurk, deputy special presidential envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed concern the program wasn’t moving fast enough to be effective against ISIS.

“There’s no telling what ISIS can do in that year, and however many months it is,” said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), a member of the committee.

“I don’t know anyone who seriously thinks that you can train effectively, even with successful vetting, 5,000 insurgents who are moderate and maybe secular, and they’re going to be reintroduced to Syria, and turn the tide,” said Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-Va.) [Continue reading…]

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Contrary to earlier claims, U.S. officials now believe French jihadist David Drugeon survived airstrikes

CNN reports: New information leads U.S. officials to believe that French jihadist David Drugeon, a bomb maker in the al-Qaeda affiliated Khorasan Group, survived U.S. strikes last month, U.S. officials tell CNN.

CNN’s reporting on Drugeon is the result of a collaboration with the French newspaper L’Express. Intelligence indicates Drugeon was seriously injured in the drone strike on his vehicle in November and immediately driven away for treatment at a location Jihadis felt was secure, L’Express is reporting Wednesday.

The new information is based in part on monitoring of al Qaeda and Khorasan communications, in additional to human intelligence, the official said. Initial information after the strikes in Idlib, Syria, led US intelligence to assess that it was possible Drugeon was killed. But recent intelligence changed that assessment. [Continue reading…]

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Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years

Ars Technica reports: Researchers have uncovered an extremely stealthy trojan for Linux systems that attackers have been using to siphon sensitive data from governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world.

The previously undiscovered malware represents a missing puzzle piece tied to “Turla,” a so-called advanced persistent threat (APT) disclosed in August by Kaspersky Lab and Symantec. For at least four years, the campaign targeted government institutions, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies in more than 45 countries. The unknown attackers—who are probably backed by a nation-state, according to Symantec—were known to have infected several hundred Windows-based computers by exploiting a variety of vulnerabilities, at least two of which were zero-day bugs. The malware was notable for its use of a rootkit that made it extremely hard to detect.

Now researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab have detected Linux-based malware used in the same campaign. Turla was already ranked as one of the top-tier APTs, in the same league as the recently disclosed Regin for instance. The discovery of the Linux component suggests it is bigger than previously thought and may presage the discovery of still more infected systems. [Continue reading…]

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Three American teens, recruited online, are caught trying to join ISIS

The Washington Post reports: Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, rose before dawn on Oct. 4 to pray with his father and 16-year-old brother at their neighborhood mosque in a Chicago suburb.

When they returned home just before 6 a.m., the father went back to bed and the Khan teens secretly launched a plan they had been hatching for months: to abandon their family and country and travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.

While his parents slept, Khan gathered three newly issued U.S. passports and $2,600 worth of airline tickets to Turkey that he had gotten for himself, his brother and their 17-year-old sister. The three teens slipped out of the house, called a taxi and rode to O’Hare International Airport. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s military will get bigger and better in 2015

Moscow Times reports: Despite a looming recession, Russia will increase military spending by 30 percent next year to a record post-Soviet high of 3.3 trillion rubles ($62 billion), cash that will be used to buy more aircraft, submarines, missiles and weapons for an ascendent armed forces.

The increase, which takes Russia’s spending on defense to 4.2 percent of gross domestic product, comes amid an ongoing crisis in Ukraine that has seen a return to Cold War-style rhetoric and the reinsertion of military posturing into international politics.

Amid the muscle-flexing, the Russian military has had a good year. The Defense Ministry showed during the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March that it had successfully reformed its armed forces since the 2008 war with Georgia, when the Russian army looked disorganized and poorly equipped. [Continue reading…]

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Aid fatigue is hurting displaced Syrians

Newsweek reports: As civil war in Syria inches toward its four-year anniversary, the nation’s humanitarian catastrophe deepens. Some 7.6 million Syrians are now internally displaced, and another 3.3 million have fled to neighboring countries to avoid the complex three-way dogfight among Assad’s forces, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and Syrian rebels.

In Lebanon the influx of one million refugees is straining the capacities of a country of only 4.4 million. Today, some 12.2 million Syrians, both inside and outside Syria, rely on emergency food aid.

It thus came as a shock when the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) announced on December 1 that a lack of funds was forcing it to suspend aid to help feed and clothe Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt. In fact, the WFP had been signaling for months that its program for Syria was in dire need of a cash injection from international donors.

Last week, the United States donated $125 million to prop up the program until the end of the year, but it clearly wasn’t enough. The WFP stated that it needed an additional $64 million for December alone to support its system of prepaid voucher cards, which can be used at local stores to buy food and supplies.

Without this lifeline, refugees will face the impending harsh winter without food, warm clothes, or heat. [Continue reading…]

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UK and Israel supported Kenyan program of extrajudicial killings

Al Jazeera reports: Kenyan police have assassinated nearly 500 terrorism suspects as part of an extrajudicial killing program supported by intelligence provided by Israel and the United Kingdom, an Al Jazeera investigation has revealed.

Officers from four units of Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) said that police assassinated terrorist suspects on government orders.

The police killings, according to an ATPU officer, were ordered by Kenya’s National Security Council and run into the hundreds every year. “Day in, day out, you hear of eliminating suspects,” the officer said.

“Since I was employed, I’ve killed over 50. Definitely, I do become proud because I’ve eliminated some problems,” added another officer.

The ATPU officers contend that Kenya’s weak judicial system had forced them to resort to assassinations, as police have failed to produce strong enough evidence to prosecute terrorism suspects. [Continue reading…]

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UN reports Israeli support for Syria rebels

Christian Science Monitor reports: The Israeli military has been in direct contact with Syrian rebels for more than 18 months, facilitating the treatment of wounded fighters and at times exchanging parcels and ushering uninjured Syrians into Israel, according to UN reports.

The quarterly reports bolster speculation over the past year that Israel’s humanitarian assistance to more than 1,000 wounded Syrians had also opened a channel of communication with Syrian rebels.

Today, the Syrian military accused Israel of carrying out two airstrikes near Damascus. The Israeli military declined to comment on that claim.

Though some in Israel appear to support the Assad regime as the lesser evil, Israel is no doubt interested in gleaning intelligence from rebel groups in order to better assess and defend itself against jihadi activity in the occupied Golan Heights.

In August this year, the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) took over the Quneitra border crossing, raising concerns of infiltration and attacks on Israeli targets. [Continue reading…]

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