Bin Laden son-in-law detained overseas, brought to New York

A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden and longtime suspected member of al Qaeda has been captured by U.S. officials. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, shown here in an undated videotape broadcast in 2002 by the Dubai-based MBC, has been brought to New York to face charges. Photo: AFP/Getty Images.

The U.S. seized a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who once served as an al Qaeda spokesman and flew him to New York to face trial, an antiterrorism coup that casts light on the group's murky relationship with Iran.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who was captured in Jordan, has been talking to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents for several days in New York City, according to multiple people familiar with the case. He was captured after leaving Iran, which has sheltered remnants of the global terror group.

The Justice Department on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging him with conspiring to kill Americans, and he is set to appear in federal court in Manhattan Friday morning.

The arrest has also reanimated the debate about whether terror suspects should be tried before civilian judges or military tribunals.

Mr. Abu Ghaith's arrival in the city where al Qaeda terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001 marked what may be the final stop in an odyssey that took him from his native Kuwait to Afghanistan by the side of his father-in-law and, around 2002, to Iran. He faces a life sentence if convicted.

"He was never an operational commander in al Qaeda, but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he was the voice of al Qaeda,'' said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. His biggest intelligence value now, Mr. Hoffman said, is to provide insight into what he called the "very perplexing and enigmatic" relationship between Iranian authorities and al Qaeda.

U.S. officials have long been trying to figure what Mr. Abu Ghaith and other al Qaeda figures were doing in Iran and how much leeway the Iranian government was giving them to operate their terrorist network.

U.S. officials believe that Iran last year gave new freedoms, including the option to leave the country, to Mr. Abu Ghaith and other members of what was known as al Qaeda's management council in Iran. He was detained in Ankara, Turkey, last month on suspicion of entering that country with a false passport.

Turkey didn't turn Mr. Abu Ghaith over to U.S. authorities, as Washington had initially wanted but instead decided to deport him to Kuwait via Jordan, officials said. U.S. operatives then captured him in Jordan, which has worked closely with the U.S. in hunting terrorists, they said. Officials at the Turkish embassy in Washington didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The suspect was flown to New York by the FBI last week, and he has been talking to interrogators since, said the people familiar with the case. Officials decided to file charges against him after he stopped cooperating.

A video screengrab of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith with Osama bin Laden, his father-in-law, released by Al Jazeera in 2001.


Attorney General Eric Holder said the arrest shows "no amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to bring America's enemies to justice." George Venizelos, head of the FBI's New York office, described Mr. Abu Ghaith's position in al Qaeda as "comparable to the consigliere in a mob family or propaganda minister in a totalitarian regime."

Counterterrorism experts described Mr. Abu Ghaith as a 47-year-old former teacher and preacher. U.S. officials believe Mr. Abu Ghaith traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 and joined up with al Qaeda there. According to the indictment, on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, bin Laden summoned Mr. Abu Ghaith and requested his assistance.

The next morning, Mr. Abu Ghaith appeared with bin Laden and the al Qaeda leader's then-deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He stated that a "great army" was gathering against the U.S. In another statement, he said millions of Americans would be killed.

In one October 2001 videotaped message, Mr. Abu Ghaith warned America that "the storms of planes will not stop until you drag your defeated tails from Afghanistan, not until you raise your hands from the Jews in Palestine, not until you lift the embargo on the Iraqi people, not until you leave the Arabian Peninsula, not until you stop supporting the Hindus against the Muslims in Kashmir.''

After the videos appeared, Kuwait stripped him of citizenship.

Many al Qaeda figures captured in the Middle East shortly after the 9/11 attacks were sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the plot's self-described mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Some, including Mr. Mohammed, now face military commission trials at Guantanamo, but the process has bogged down for years because of legal and logistical hurdles.

U.S. officials have said federal courts, such as the one in Manhattan where Mr. Abu Ghaith is set to appear Friday, are often a faster and surer way to try suspected terrorists. Men such as Ahmed Ghailani, accused of the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, and "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab have been convicted in federal courts.

Some Republicans, however, said that top terror suspects like Mr. Abu Ghaith should be sent to Guantanamo. "Al Qaeda leaders captured on the battlefield should not be brought to the United States to stand trial," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "We should treat enemy combatants like the enemy."

Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) an outspoken critic of some of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies, said in this instance he didn't object to a civilian trial for Mr. Abu Ghaith, because he thought the videotapes and other public evidence would be enough to convict him without the need to disclose any sensitive intelligence.

Since 2002, Mr. Abu Ghaith's activities have been something of a mystery. U.S. officials believe he has been a member of al Qaeda's so-called management council in Iran, a group formed in 2002 to advise bin Laden and provide support to the group's leaders in Pakistan. bin Laden was living in Pakistan when U.S. forces killed him in a May 2011 raid.

White House officials became angry when Turkey didn't immediately hand over Mr. Abu Ghaith after his arrival in that country, said a former U.S. official familiar with the matter. The route to the U.S. through Jordan appears to have provided an alternative more palatable to Turkish officials.

The capture of Mr. Abu Ghaith is significant because it takes a key player out of the game and will provide "a much better firsthand understanding of the Iranian dimension to al Qaeda," said Seth Jones, an al Qaeda specialist at the nonprofit research institution Rand Corp.

Iran has provided sanctuary in effect to several senior al Qaeda leaders over the years, said Mr. Jones. Some al Qaeda operatives fled to Iran when the U.S. opened its Afghan offensive in 2001.

Since then, these operatives have used their Iranian beachhead to communicate, move money and recruit members, Mr. Jones said. Some lower-level al Qaeda operatives also are believed to be in Iran. Why Mr. Abu Ghaith went to Turkey isn't clear.

"For him to have actually left the country, he would definitely have known he was taking a big gamble," Mr. Jones said.

Write to  Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com, Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com

French mother Bouchra Bagour on trial for 9/11 T-shirt

Bouchra Bagour denies the T-shirt was intended as a provocation

Bouchra Bagour denies the T-shirt was intended as a provocation A mother has gone on trial in southern France for sending her son to nursery school wearing a T-shirt reading "I am a bomb" and "Born on 11 September".

Bouchra Bagour, 35, was reported to police by the teacher last September, and charged with "glorifying crime".

At the start of her trial in Avignon, she denied defending terrorism.

Ms Bagour's brother - who gave the T-shirt to her three-year-old son named Jihad - is a co-defendant in the case and also denies the charge.

The garment, which the boy wore to school in Sorgues near Avignon on 24 September, read "I am a bomb" on the front and "Jihad, born on 11 September" on the back.

On Wednesday Ms Bagour told the court she had put it on him "without stopping to think about it".

She insisted it was not meant as a provocation and stressed that her son had been born on 11 September.

Zeyad Bagour said he had never sought to defend any cause by buying the T-shirt.

"It's the day his birth I wanted to highlight, not the year," he told the court.

The prosecution argued that the defendants had shown no regret.

"Who can claim that this is not an direct and scandalous allusion to terrorism?" a prosecutor asked.

He called for a fine of 1,000 euros (£870; $1,300) against Ms Bagour and 3,000 euros for her brother.

The trial has been adjourned until next month.

Teen makes history in Kenya Election

Kibiwott Munge

Nineteen-year-old Kibiwott Munge made Kenyan history by winning a seat in one of the newly established county assemblies.

A candidate for the United Republican Party, led by William Ruto, in the Rift Valley's rural Baringo county, he becomes the youngest Kenyan to clinch a political seat in an election.
In his acceptance speech, he said his success was a victory for young people and also thanked his parents. "I also thank my friend Njoroge who lent me his motorbike to campaign," Kenya's Daily Nation quotes him as saying.

He told the BBC that the politicians he most admired were Mr Ruto and US President Barack Obama.

BREAKING NEWS!!: Spokesman for Osama bin Laden has been arrested and will be tried in New York City

A man identified as Suleiman Abu Ghaith is seen in this still from a video address

A man described as a spokesman for Osama bin Laden has been arrested and will be tried in New York City, the US has confirmed.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was captured within the last week in Jordan, Congressman Peter King said on Thursday.

Mr Abu Ghaith is Bin Laden's son-in-law and played a role in plotting the attacks of 9/11, US officials said.

Bin Laden was killed in a May 2011 raid on his hideout in Pakistan by a team of US commandos.

Mr Abu Ghaith is scheduled to appear in a federal court on Friday on charges of conspiracy to kill United States nationals.

"Sulaiman Abu Ghaith held a key position in al-Qaeda, comparable to the consigliere in a mob family or propaganda minister in a totalitarian regime," said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos in a statement.

"He used his position to threaten the United States and incite its enemies."

'One by one'

A teacher and mosque preacher in Kuwait, Mr Abu Ghaith was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship after 9/11.

Justice department officials say Mr Abu Ghaith served alongside Bin Laden from May 2001 to 2002, speaking on behalf of al-Qaeda and warning that attacks similar to 9/11 would continue.

Specifically, on the morning of 12 September 2001, Abu Ghaith appeared with Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to warn the US that a "great army is gathering against you" and called upon "the nation of Islam" to do battle against "the Jews, the Christians and the Americans," according to court records.

He was reportedly smuggled to Iran sometime in 2002.

A Jordanian security official told the Associated Press that Mr Abu Ghaith was handed over last week to US officials under both countries' extradition treaties.

Mr King called the arrest a "very significant victory" in the fight against al-Qaeda.

"One by one, we are getting the top echelons of al-Qaida," the Republican congressman said. "I give the administration credit for this: it's steady and it's unrelenting and it's very successful."

Mr Abu Ghaith's trial will mark one of the first prosecutions of senior al-Qaeda leaders on US soil.

Since 9/11, 67 foreign terror suspects have been convicted in US federal courts, according to data obtained by the group Human Rights First.

Some US lawmakers disagreed with the decision to try Mr Abu Ghaith in New York.

"When we find somebody like this, this close to Bin Laden and the senior al-Qaeda leadership, the last thing in the world we want to do, in my opinion, is put them in a civilian court," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Thursday.

"This man should be in Guantanamo Bay," he said.

Source: BBC

Kenya election: Computer bug blamed for vote error

Kenya's electoral commission has said that a computer bug is to blame for a large number of rejected votes in the tallying of the presidential election.

Issack Hassan said the computer was multiplying each rejected vote by a factor of eight.

This led to huge disputes and allegations of fraud.

Vote-tallying has been restarted by hand following this and other glitches but Uhuru Kenyatta still has a large lead over Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

"There was an error in the way the program was written," said Mr Hassan.

"For any rejected vote for any candidate, they were being multiplied by eight," said the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman.

The number of rejected votes has fallen dramatically from more than 330,000 - 6% - during an initial count, to 58,644.

With about six million votes tallied at 1515 GMT (1815 Nairobi time), Mr Kenyatta had some 3.1 million votes (53%) compared to Mr Odinga's 2.6 million (43%).

But, as turnout was estimated at more than 70% of the country's 14.3 million voters, there is still some way to go.

TWO NEW ARMY GENERALS APPOINTED TO LEAD US REGIONAL COMBATANT COMMANDS OF CENTCOM & AFRICOM

By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2013 – The Senate yesterday confirmed two Army generals as the new commanders of regional combatant commands.

Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin II

Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, currently the vice chief of staff of the Army, will succeed Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis as the next commander of U.S. Central Command.

Army Gen. David M. Rodriguez

Army Gen. David M. Rodriguez, who now commands U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., will succeed Army Gen. Carter F. Ham as the commander of U.S. Africa Command.

Centcom’s area of responsibility covers 20 countries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Yemen. Africom, formally established in 2008 with headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, is the nation’s newest geographical combatant command, responsible for operations, exercises and security cooperation on the African continent.

Austin and Rodriguez testified together during their confirmation hearing Feb. 14. Austin told Senate Armed Services Committee members the war in Afghanistan remains Centcom’s top priority.

“I will do everything within my power to help set the broader conditions for our success in this most important endeavor,” he said.

Rodriguez told committee members that as Africom’s commander he would “[work] closely with this committee, as well as all our joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational partners to address the challenges we face, and the opportunities to increase stability on this strategically important continent.”

Both Mattis and Ham will retire this year.

source: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=119454

Declassified Intel files prove US-Israel relations to be ongoing tragedy

by Jim Dean

The history of America's involvement with Israel has been an ongoing tragedy. The Palestinians have of course suffered the most, having been invaded by legions of atheist and communist Jews, primarily from Eastern Europe. And yes, they claim 'God gave us the land'.

They teamed up with the 5th column Zionists already there who had been carefully and methodically laying plans for taking over the land and doing to the Palestinians what they claimed the Nazis had done to them--killing and kicking the Palestinians out to make more lebensraum (growing space) for more Jews.

Generations of Israeli Lobby fellow travelers have worn the sordid mantle of 'Palestinian holocaust Deniers', to coin a phrase, with no shame whatsoever. Golda Meir was their Hebrew Klan Grand Dragon. She produced a low cost and instant holocaust hat trick. “There are no Palestinian people,” she said.

One of the main tasks of Israeli espionage has always been to protect Israel from judgment day for their crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people. To them this is a war, and they take no prisoners. When are we going to figure this out, when it comes to dealing with them?

Today I begin a series of articles to pin the holocaust tails on their correct donkey. I am going to use sources with which the general public is unfamiliar, the declassified American Intel files on Israel. And yes, these have been open since the early 1980's, but might as well have been in a library on the moon.

Israeli penetration into not only our media and publishing, but also our political arena has virtually banished these documents from the historical narrative. The fear is that they could be used to deprogram pro-Israeli zombies and expose all the treasonous Americans who have aided and abetted the Israelis in hiding their crimes.

Let us start at the beginning. A crime against an entire people, to holocaust them from their own land, has to have a plan. Here it is.

In March, 1948, a Joints Chiefs of Staff paper on Force Requirements for Palestine, anticipating the termination of the British Mandate, predicted that the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives...

a)Initial sovereignty over a portion of Palestine,
b) Acceptance by the great powers of the right to unlimited immigration
c) The extension of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine
d) The expansion of Eretz Israel into Transjordan and into portions of Lebanon and Syria, and
e) The establishment of Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.

The JCS paper added ominously: All stages of this program are equally sacred to the fanatical concepts of Jewish leaders. The program is opening admitted by same leaders, and has been privately admitted to United States officials by responsible leaders of the presently dominant
Jewish group...the Jewish Agency....(Taking Sides, 1983...Stephen Green)

This Intel report is the Rosetta Stone for everything that Israel has done since before its so called birth, but which was more like letting a Frankenstein monster loose on the land. We had loyal Americans who saw the trap back then, yet we walked right into it. Why have we done it, and for whom?

In ten years of sharing this declassified Intel with Americans, including active duty officers and veterans, I have never met a one who was aware of it. Welcome to the free country of the United States, where people are not very free to know a lot of things the Israeli Lobby people don't want them to know.

We also have early reports of the Zionist pre 1948 war 5th columns in Europe shopping all over the continent for chemical and poison gas munitions they could use for their Neo-Exodus. This was the one to drive out the Palestinians, and not the Hollywood Soviet style propaganda film version where 5,000 Zionists held off the Arab hoards.

These American Intel declassified files are filled with report after report of Zionist treachery on a scale that gives truth to a long list of negative stereotypes. Hence, corporate media will not touch this material with a ten foot pole. Now you know why. Much of that has been to steer attention away from their own record of horrors so they could continue to play the perennial victim.

In late 1949, when I was born, US Army Attaché in Tel Aviv Colonel Andrus filed a report citing 'wanton killing of Arabs....denying access to their own land'. The same thing continues today through American support of our almost blank-check support of arms and ammo to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

This makes both the Palestinians and American children and grandchildren co-victims of Israeli aggression, at the hands of our own government. The last Gaza attack was a perfect example, with the Pentagon now pushing through an almost USD 700 million restocking of munitions for the next Palestinian November turkey shoot.

Earlier in 1948 the Zios began making their mark on terrorism history by blowing up the Semiramis Hotel on January 5th. A bomb, 175 pounds of dynamite, caused it to disappear with 23 civilians killed, including the Spanish consul. This act is still celebrated in Israel. Can you feel the love?

US consul General Robert Macatee sent a delegation to the Jewish Agency official Golda Meir, asking her to take special care to protect our own consular people. He did not know then that the Haganah terrorist group had blown up the hotel, and that Golda was a member. Israel has a long history of elevating their terrorists to top political positions.

Later, the new American consul Thomas Wasson began reporting things like the Zionists using Red Cross convoys as screens for moving weapons and ammunition around and that Israeli soldiers were firing on Arab positions from the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Nasty, nasty.

American media like the New York Times censored out the weapons and ammunition part of the story, spinning it like a wanton murder of doctors and nurses. This particular attack had actually been in retribution for the Irgun's Deir Yassin massacre in which 20 of Golda Meir's Haganah people participated.

The Jewish Agency had refused the pleas of the Red Cross to remove their troops from the Hadassah Hospital, despite the Arab League's agreeing to allow unarmed soldiers to remain. The unfortunate Consul Wasson was assassinated by a sniper soon after, the first of many Israeli killings of American personnel while enjoying American aide.

Any Jewish Agency friendship toward America at the time was just a pretext to get desperately needed financial and military aid if they could. The Zios played the Americans off against the Soviets, a game they became even more adept at as the decades went by with the Jonathan Pollard spy case being their peak until they had our Congress performing like trained seals.

The American public never knew that the Zionist main military logistics bases for training and resupply for the 1948 war were in Czechoslovakia with the Soviets supporting them. This included weapons and motor pool maintenance, medical staff, and refurbishing their fast growing air force with all foreign pilots.

At one point American pilots and mechanics were flying all the Czech-made arms shipments down to Lebanon for the Israelis. Many of these were personally observed by our Military Attaché there.

Besides paying in gold and hard currencies which the post WWII Czechs needed, the Zionists also traded espionage goods through them back to the Soviets. Their biggest coup at the time against America was delivering by a new US Army jeep mounted radar system which the Soviets were just thrilled to get. Disloyal American Jews handled the stateside theft.

As for violations of illegal arms imports, these were huge and all tracked by American intelligence. In June of 1948, the US Military Attaché reported a Belgian firm's preparing to export 10 tanks, 26 US armored cars,and 64 halftracks.

The FBI collected tens of thousands of pages of field reports on these shipments. Some of them were organized by American state governors aiding the Zios for their own personal financial and political benefit, despite their being in violation of American law. This corruption continues today with our own Congress effectively being an occupied territorial cow for the Israeli Lobby to milk at will, and they do, they do.

As the Cold War was heating up, the Zionists got very good political advice on how they could scare the Americans into thinking the Soviets might take over Palestine using the Zios if the US did not get their own aid program in action.

We have seen the same treachery play out over and over, in Iraq with the bogus WMD tales, an invention of Israeli Intel and their Neocon partners. We now have the bogus threat of Iranian nuclear weapons programs, which has kept oil prices way above recession level rates, making us all
'Petro-Palestinians'. Think about that for a moment. Who would do such a horrible thing?

All this continues on with Israel sitting smugly back enjoying US military funding of nuclear bomb proof facilities for their nukes and air force command staff. You can add to that our Patriot missile batteries, each shot costing the American taxpayers USD 3 million while their kids are on food stamps.

This is a national disgrace, with treason being committed against the country right out in the open, behind the scenes in the halls of Congress and sometimes even in the White House.

Veterans Today has verified through multiple sources that Israel had at least one top spy on the Bush National Security Council. That particular investigation was stopped, which would indicate that Bush had approved the Israelis being given top secret information, but why?

More to come on all this.

About the Author:
Jim Dean comes from an old military family dating back to the American Revolution. His father was a WWII P-40 and later P-51 Mustang fighter pilot. Jim's mother was a WWII widow at 16, her first husband killed with all 580 aboard when the SS Paul Hamilton, an ammunition ship with 7000 tons of explosives aboard, was torpedoed off the coast of Algiers. He has appeared on PBS most recently on the Looking for Lincoln documentary with Prof. Henry Lewis Gates and lectured at the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Gordon. His current writing focus is on national security, intelligence, black and psyops, military/Intel history including personal video archives, and the current wars. Jim Dean is the managing editor of Veterans Today. More articles by Jim W. Dean

AFRICOM and the re-colonization of Africa

“It won’t surprise you that Mali is at the top of the list right now and has been certainly for the past few weeks.”

General Carter Ham, commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM)

In what appears to be a rerun of events prior to the AFRICOM-led NATO invasion of Libya, the United States has admitted its involvement with France’s neocolonial foray to reclaim its former North African colony of Mali.

“We continue to be engaged in activities in Libya, Somalia, Gulf of Guinea, which is very important to Nigeria... but I would say, at least for today, Mali is probably at the top of the list,” disclosed AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham during a press conference with Nigerian journalists in Stuttgart, Germany on February 8, 2013.

“A unique mix of uniformed personnel and interagency civilians,” said former commander General William “Kip” Ward, adding that AFRICOM’s task is helping Africans with their own security and not, of course, militarizing US foreign policy.

Like the European Command from which it evolved in 2008, AFRICOM is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and has attaché offices in 38 African nations as well as numerous subordinate commands located in Germany, Italy and the Horn of Africa. When asked why his unit is headquartered in Stuttgart instead of in Africa, General Ham responded, “There was some resistance in some countries in Africa to the existence of Africa Command and certainly resistance to the presence of the headquarters in Africa.” He deftly avoided disclosing the embarrassing fact that AFRICOM has been unable to secure a suitable location for its headquarters from one of its 43 African “partners.”

General Ham next enumerated the differences between US military involvement in Mali and Afghanistan. Incredulously ignoring the 2001 US invasion that toppled the Taliban, the general insisted that “there was no government in Afghanistan. ... So there wasn’t a government to deal with.”

He also pointed to “U.S. laws that prevent us from having a direct military-to-military relationship with the Malians.” Further clarifying US involvement in Mali, Ambassador Christopher Dell explained, “The Malians did not ask the United States to intervene directly... The Malians turned to the French for help. The French have asked us for support.”

Mali was once part of a vast French colonial empire that covered much of northern, central and western Africa, including the current countries of Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, and many others.

France, which rejoined NATO in 2009 and was also on the point of the AFRICOM-led NATO Libya conquest, invaded Mali on January 11, 2013 allegedly at the request of its government. According to the Western spin, Islamic extremists linked to “al-Qaida” took over the northern part of the former French colony using arms from Libya, while renegade Malian soldiers deposed the “legitimate” government in Bamako. Hence, the French reoccupation is simply a necessary mission to restore Mali’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Of course, no mention is made about the West exploiting Mali’s vast natural resources, which include gold, uranium, diamonds, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, lithium and petroleum.

The ethnic Tuareg insurgency against the corrupt, Western-backed Mali political elite is decades old, but after weapons flowed in from Libya, the Tuaregs were able to take control of the north, briefly declaring an independent state of Azawad. Quickly realizing that the flood of Libyan arms had lured them into a plot to justify French military intervention, the Tuaregs of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) backed away from the Ansar Din in demanding an independent state, so the West had to import al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from Algeria and spinoff group the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) for the requisite Islamic terrorist pretext to justify intervention. And of course one of AFRICOM’s primary military tasks is to “Deter or defeat al-Qaida and other violent extremist organizations operating in Africa and deny them safe haven.”

While the AFRICOM/NATO/CIA/al-Qaida nexus remains shrouded in secrecy, clues to its nature can be gleaned from the sequence of events.

On February 10, 2012, AFRICOM, in anticipation of a March 22 “coup” by rebel soldiers of the government in Bamako, cancelled a joint military exercise that was to be hosted by Mali from February 27 to March 18. Participants were to include Mali, the US, and chief NATO allies Germany, Canada, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

To help justify Western interference, the US propaganda outlet Voice of America began reporting on Tuareg rebel “atrocities,” while French Development Minister Henri de Raincourt accused “al-Qaida” of involvement.

As scheduled, on March 22, 2012, Mali Army Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, who received officer training in the US, overthrew President Amadou Toumani Toure supposedly because of his weakness in confronting rebels in the north. The coup, about which AFRICOM denied foreknowledge, prompted a cutoff of US military aid on March 26, and economic sanctions by members of the US-French dominated Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on April 2.

As a result of these rapidly occurring yet remarkably well coordinated events, the poverty-stricken nation was plunged further into turmoil. Approval by the Security Council’s colonial powers was slower, but was finally achieved on December 20, 2012 with the unanimous passage of UN Resolution 2085 that “authorized the deployment of an African-led mission to support efforts by national authorities to recover the north.”

So, when “al-Qaida” extremists (undoubtedly backed by the CIA) launched an ill-timed attack on January 7, 2013, capturing the city of Kona, which lies on Mali’s north-south border, all the necessary pretexts and approvals were in place to rationalize the French invasion, which promptly began on January 11. By January 21, the US Air Force was airlifting French troops into Mali, and not surprisingly, French President Francois Hollande said his forces would be there for some time to come.

The NATO conquest of Libya was a crucial step in expanding AFRICOM’s footprint on the continent, since Qaddafi was the only significant opponent to US re-colonization plans. Also important is the key role played by the CIA in recruiting and dispatching “al-Qaida” extremists from its base in Benghazi. For example, the US troop surge into Iraq in 2007 was paralleled by a surge of “al-Qaida” recruits from the Benghazi and Darnah regions of Libya. Judging by comments reportedly in his diary, former Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens knew of the CIA-sponsored flow of arms and terrorists into Syria and Mali.

Reports also indicate that he had contacts with the main al-Qaida connected Libyan arms broker (and CIA operative) Abdelhakim Belhaj, who arranged arms shipments to US-backed Syrian rebels. So most likely, Stevens’ assassination on September 11, 2012 by “al-Qaida” was tied to this activity.

Also part of AFRICOM’s nefarious conquest strategy is infecting the “hearts and minds” of Africa’s youth. To indoctrinate African youth in the deadly American warrior culture, AFRICOM sponsors events in which they can meet with US military representatives who demonstrate examples of the latest lethal weaponry in the US arsenal.

In one such event , the young African students who inspected an M1126 Stryker, an eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicle, were part of a program “which works with children to help develop life skills, and future opportunities.” According to the AFRICOM representative, “A lot of video games are based on the Stryker's technology, so most of the kids already knew how to use the control stick.”

Another of AFRICOM’s psyops projects is the Defence Reference Laboratory (DRL) located in Abuja, Nigeria. “The DRL is a critical piece for healthcare, enabling world-class diagnostic and laboratory monitoring services for military personnel and the civilian population living in the surrounding communities,” according to US Ambassador to Nigeria, Terrence McCulle. While humanitarian aid facades play well on the American home front, in truth, and contrary to the words of its previous commander General Kip Ward, AFRICOM is all about oil, containing China, global domination and related US self-interested policy goals.

One might ask why so much US attention is being focused on Africa. AFRICOM commander General Ham explained that Africa has “six or seven of the fastest growing economies in the world.” Vice Admiral Robert Moeller bluntly stated that AFRICOM was about preserving “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.” In other words, AFRICOM is tasked with the mission of maximizing profit opportunities for US multi-national corporations. And exploiting the fear of terrorism to further justify AFRICOM’s ever-tightening grip on Africa, Major General Charles Hooper, Director of Strategy, Plans and Programs says that he worries about “an American with a U.S. passport receiving indoctrination, training, and support in East Africa and returning to an American city to conduct a terrorist attack.”

Later on in the same AFRICOM press conference, Ambassador Dell let slip a secret of the US plan for the re-colonization of Africa. Couching his words in the diplomatic rhetoric of partnership when referring to AFRICOM-sponsored joint military training, the ambassador said, “An American captain, a Nigerian captain going through a course together, they develop lifelong relationships and friendships.” After lauding the values of the “culture of the American military,” he disclosed the intent of the plan: cultivating an African colonial officer corps loyal to the US and American values, which “these educational experiences can impart to officers who join us from other countries and that they bring back to their own military culture.”

This is precisely what happened in the case of Mali coup leader Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, who was selected for training by the US State Department. And by pitting AFRICOM-trained military officers against CIA-supplied “al-Qaida” terrorists, the US achieves domination over African countries by maintaining predetermined levels of internal violence.

Marine Colonel Philip Lark, the deputy director for a recent US Department of Defense seminar in Garmisch, Germany, on the subject of violent extremism said, “Extremists of all determinations pose a dangerous threat to global security... fighting extremism must be done with both determination and insight.” One can only hope that a few of the participants at that seminar will have the determination and insight to fight the world’s most violent extremists: the US Imperial High Command and its various branches and agencies like AFRICOM.

YW/HJL

Samantar Petitions for Cert after Fourth Circuit Denial of Foreign Official Immunity for Alleged Jus Cogens Violations

“officials from other countries are not entitled to foreign official immunity for jus cogens violations, even if the acts were performed in the defendant’s official capacity.”...... US Fourth Circuit Surprising Victory Decision denying War Criminal General Mohamed Ali Samantar immunity 

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 at 11:24 PM

In the latest twist in the long-running ATS and TVPA suit against him, former Somali Defense Minister Mohamed Ali Samantar filed on Monday for certiorari after the Fourth Circuit’s surprising decision last October denying him immunity on the basis that “officials from other countries are not entitled to foreign official immunity for jus cogens violations, even if the acts were performed in the defendant’s official capacity.”

As I noted at the time, the Fourth Circuit’s recognition of a jus cogens exception to traditional immunities for foreign official acts is likely to be  worrisome to Executive branch lawyers (especially at the Defense Department and intelligence agencies) because it may provide a precedent for foreign courts to deny immunity to U.S. military or intelligence personnel who may be charged or sued for jus cogens crimes or civil violations (such as targeted killings) in foreign countries.  Moreover, as Samantar argues persuasively in his brief, the Fourth Circuit decision is likely to make the Circuit “a magnet for suits against foreign officials, who may be sued whenever they pass through Northern Virginia to reach Washington, D.C.”  For these reasons, despite the horrific facts in the Samantar case, the Justice Department may want to support Samantar’s cert petition, especially if the Supreme Court requests the views of the Solicitor General.  I provide more details below the break.

Samantar’s brief argues that the Fourth Circuit’s decision creates a circuit split about whether the common law recognizes a jus cogens exception to foreign official immunity in civil suits.   The Second, Seventh, and DC Circuits have concluded, directly or indirectly, that there is no jus cogens exception to foreign official immunity.  For example, in Matar v. Dichter, the Second Circuit concluded that former Israeli intelligence chief Avi Dichter enjoyed immunity in an ATS/TVPA lawsuit, after the State Department determined (in a letter I signed as Legal Adviser) that he enjoyed immunity for his official acts; the Second Circuit concluded that jus cogens claims do not withstand foreign sovereign immunity.

As Samantar also points out in his brief, recognition of a jus cogens exception will swallow the immunity rule in most ATS/TVPA cases.  Samantar notes that 31 of 34 ATS/TVPA cases decided between 2010 and 2013 involved alleged jus cogens violations.  District courts in the Fourth Circuit will apparently be unable to dismiss ATS/TVPA suits alleging jus cogens violations by foreign government officials, even if the Executive branch files a suggestion of immunity.

Accordingly, it does seem likely that human rights litigators will start bringing more ATS and TVPA suits against current and former Israeli, Chinese, and other foreign government officials in the Eastern District of Virginia, even though previous suits had been dismissed in New York and Washington on the basis of official immunities.

As Lawfare readers know, the Supreme Court has already considered the Samantar case previously.  In 2010, the Supreme Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit’s holding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act applies only to foreign governments and their agencies and instrumentalities, and not to the immunities of individual foreign government officials.   The position of the Executive branch (both before and after the Supreme Court’s decision) has been that the immunities of foreign government officials are governed by common law (not statutory law), based on suggestions of immunity provided to the courts by the Executive branch.

After the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Samantar, the case was remanded to the Eastern District of Virginia.   The Justice Department then filed a statement of interest concluding that Samantar did not enjoy immunity, because the U.S. Government did not recognize any government any Somalia that could request immunity for him, and also because Samantar had settled in the United States.   The district court concluded that the Justice Department’s determination was binding and that Samantar was not entitled to immunity.

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the determination of non-immunity, but declined to accept the Executive branch’s determination as binding.   Instead, the Fourth Circuit held that there can be no foreign official immunity for jus cogens violations.

As noted above, the Executive branch is likely to be deeply troubled by the implications both for U.S. Government officials and for foreign government officials of the Fourth Circuit’s recognition of a jus cogens exception to official immunity.   But the Executive branch is likely to be equally troubled by the Fourth Circuit’s rejection of Executive branch immunity (or non-immunity) determinations as binding.  The Justice and State Departments are unlikely to want to allow Executive branch determinations to be binding in some circuits but not others.

This latest chapter of the Samantar saga is further complicated by the fact that the Obama Administration recently recognized the Government of Somalia, and the Prime Minister of Somalia has now formally requested immunity for former defense minister Samantar (in a letter to Secretary Kerry on February 26).   This development eliminates one of the two grounds for the State Department’s previous determination of non-immunity for Samantar.   The Executive branch may still persist in concluding that Samantar does not enjoy immunity on the novel grounds that he has become a U.S. resident.   But the Executive branch may be reluctant to make the unprecedented legal argument that an official foreign government request for immunity for its officials may be rejected, given the reciprocal implications for U.S. Government officials who may be sued in other countries (even if former U.S. officials are unlikely to take up residence in foreign countries).

For background, I have described the practice of the Office of the Legal Adviser with respect to official acts immunity, and a potential jus cogens exception, in this article in the Vanderbilt Journal of

John B. Bellinger III 

About the Author:

John B. Bellinger III is a partner in the international and national security law practices at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, DC. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as The Legal Adviser for the Department of State from 2005–2009, as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House from 2001–2005, and as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice from 1997–2001.