A Pentagon official overseeing the Guantanamo war crimes court dismissed all pending charges against five prisoners on Tuesday, including a British resident accused in a radioactive “dirty bomb” plot.
The Defense Department gave no reason for the action and said the charges had been dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled later.
But it came after the U.S. government declined to pursue the dirty bomb charges in a Washington court case challenging the detention of Ethiopian-born British resident Binyam Mohammed as an “enemy combatant.”
Mohammed had said repeatedly that he falsely confessed to the plot while he was tortured in a Moroccan prison.
The Pentagon appointee overseeing the Guantanamo tribunals, Susan Crawford, dropped all charges against Mohammed, Saudi Arabian captives Jabran al Qahtani and Ghassan al Sharbi, Algerian prisoner Sufyian Barhoumi, and Sudanese captive Noor Uthman Muhammed, the Defense Department said in a statement.
Qahtani, Sharbi and Barhoumi were accused of plotting to build remote-control detonators for car bombs to be used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Muhammed was alleged to have been an al Qaeda training camp instructor.
GENEVA – Yemen may move to deny entry to people from Ethiopia and Eritrea, after having recently detained 87 Ethiopians who reached the country after a perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden, the United Nations (UN) said today.
“Our office in Yemen is seeking clarification from the government following recent statements by the Interior Ministry that Eritreans and Ethiopians will be denied entry to the country,” said Ron Redmond, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The refugee agency said that over the last two weeks, 87 Ethiopians including 10 women and two children had sought asylum but were detained.
“UNHCR has not had access to them, but we have received government assurances of access,” said Redmond.
In addition, the agency “understands that some 25 Ethiopians, including six women, were removed by authorities from a vehicle transporting new arrivals to the UNHCR reception centre of Ahwar.”
Yemen’s actions came amid a rise in the number of people smuggled across the Gulf of Aden. Most are Somalis, but Ethiopians and Eritreans make up a minority.
For the year up to October 17, some 37 333 people have arrived in Yemen, while 616 have been killed or reported missing.
In October alone, 3 737 people arrived while 95 are missing or feared dead.
Donkey vs. Elephant” “Democrat vs. Republicans” “Socialism vs. Capitalism” “Free Market vs. Big Government”
Free Market? The only time that ever came close to existence is probably during the early stage of this nation’s founder’s time. I mean, the whole basis for revolution was that, taxation without representation to the King, Monarch, Big-Bank, Big-Government, and Big-Corporation who wish to control their lives. They armed themselves to reserve their right to revolt again, if they have to. The citizens then were a lot more informed and aware of things than those of us today. Do we have true free market today? … absolutely not. The term is just passed around to conceal the fact that some are privileged with more access to wealth, influence and power than others. You can call them the “invisible government”.
Over the years, businessmen and corporations have been merging in one form or another, further monopolizing the global industry and eliminating their non-cooperating competitors. They have realized that they could work together to establish and maintain collective power, and that they could work with governments (or rally enough to overthrow governments that wouldn’t cooperate with them) to establish rules which would be mutually beneficial and allow both to share power over everyone else… Read More
Ethiopians in Washington DC will hold a rally in Washington DC at the State Department on Oct. 24, 2008, to protest the atrocities and war crimes that are being committed against the people of Ethiopia by the regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front.
The protest will particularly focus on the genocide in Ogaden and the atrocities in the Oromiya region.
As reported by international human rights groups and media, the Meles regime is systematically eliminating Ogadenis by burning their villages, terrorizing the population, and starvation (read more about war crimes in Ogaden here here).
Place: U.S. Department of State
Time/Date: Friday, Oct. 24, 2008, at 9:00 AM
After spending eight years behind bars in Ethiopian jails for presumed links with the terrorist Al Qaeda network, eight Kenyans speak out about their terrible ordeal.
After being secretly detained in Ethiopia for more than one year, eight Kenyans were allowed to return home. These men were arrested in January of last year soon after the collapse of the Islamic courts in Somalia.
Accused of being members of Al Qaeda, they were detained without being officially charged of any crime, and were not allowed to contact a lawyer before being sent to Ethiopia. Thirty three year old Kassim Moussa, returns to his village of Bongwe, 30 km south of Mombasa. He lost everything and can only now help his parents to cultivate their land.
Today Kassim Moussa’s father explains to the village how he had no news about his son or his whereabouts for over a year. The meeting is organised by the Muslim forum for human rights who accuses the Kenyan government of deporting illegally its own citizens. All these ex-detainees are telling the same story. They recount how they remained handcuffed and blindfolded for months.
Bashir Hussein shows wounds he says he incurred while being detained by Ethiopian soldiers TPLF Thugs and also while he was interrogated by CIA agents. These accusations have been denied by the Ethiopian government Woyanne. Some ex-detainees had to be admitted to hospital upon their arrival here. The Muslim forum for human rights have gathered their testimonies in order to sue the Kenyan government but Kenyan authorities still consider that their innocence has not yet been proven.
An engineer working for the UN in Somalia has died in the latest of a series of assassination-style killings of aid workers.
The Somali official, employed by UN childrens’ fund, Unicef, was shot several times in the head and then the body, intelligence sources said.
Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 and is now facing an Islamist and nationalist insurgency.
It is not clear which group is behind the targeted assassinations.
The latest targeted killing took place in the southern town of Hudur.
Two days earlier, another UN aid worker was killed in a similar way in the coastal town of Merka.
Trained killers
Intelligence sources, who asked not to be named, said the cold-blooded assassination of aid workers by trained killers had become the norm in the past four months, the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle reports.
He says head shots, followed by bullets to the chest, are now the chillingly familiar method.
The UN co-ordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said that with 28 aid workers killed in the country over the past year, it had become one of the most dangerous places in the world for humanitarian staff.
In recent months, all of those killed have been Somali nationals because most foreign humanitarian workers have left the country.
The current Somali government is internationally recognised but has lost control of large parts of the country to an insurgency driven by Islamist and nationalist groups.
The government is backed by troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, TPLF, who are deeply unpopular with many Somalis.
More than three million people in Somalia – almost half the population – are in acute need of food or medical aid, according to the UN.
