Abdel Hakim Belhaj: in Libya, old US Enemies become friends!

The man in charge of the military committee responsible for keeping order in Tripoli, and, (according to his words) a strong & grateful ally of the United States and NATO, is Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who fought in Afghanistan alongside  the Mujahideen and in the Soviet-Afghan war.

In 1992 Abdel Hakim Belhaj returned to Libya, where he formed with others the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which tried to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi from 1994 onwards. Belhadj was known during this period as Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, and was part of the LIFG that fought an insurgency campaign based from eastern Libya. But after three unsuccessful assassination attempts on Gaddafi, the LIFG was crushed in 1998. Belhadj and other leaders of the LIFG fled to Afghanistan, and joined the Taliban.

Belhaj as an enemy of the US

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, Abdel Hakim was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001, and handed over to US security officials, but unlike other captives taken in Afghanistan, he was repatriated to Libya two months later.

Tracked by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after a tip-off from MI6 gained from London-based informants, Belhadj was arrested with his pregnant wife in 2004 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia. Transferred on the same plane to Bangkok, he was then placed in the custody of the CIA, where he was retained at a secret prison at the airport. He was subjected to extraordinary rendition on behalf of the United States, and sent to Thailand. His pregnant wife, traveling with him, was taken away, and his child would be 6 before he saw him.

In Bangkok, Mr. Belhaj said, he was tortured for a few days by two people he said were C.I.A. agents, and then, worse, they repatriated him to Libya, where he was thrown into solitary confinement for six years, three of them without a shower, one without a glimpse of the sun.

In 2010 under a “de-radicalisation” drive championed by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Libyan authorities released him amongst 170 other Libyan Islamists. In March 2011, Belhadj appeared in an unreleased al-Jazeera film, in which he praised the mediation of Saif al-Islam for his release. In response, Gaddafi’s son said that the men who had been freed “were no longer a danger to society.”

Libya: Al Qaeda flag flown over Benghazi’s courthouse

The black flag of Al Qaeda has been spotted flying over a public building in Libya, raising concerns that the country could lurch towards Muslim extremism

The flag, complete with Arabic script reading “there is no God but Allah” and full moon underneath, was seen flying above the Benghazi courthouse building, considered to be the seat of the revolution, according to the news website Vice.com.

The flag was said to be flying over the building alongside the Libyan national flag but the National Transitional Council has denied that it was responsible.

Vice.com also reported that Islamists had been seen driving around the city’s streets, waving the Al Qaeda flag from their cars and shouting “Islamiya, Islamiya! No East, nor West”.

The revelation came just days after it emerged that rebels in Libya have imposed Sharia law in the some parts of country since seizing power.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, said Islamic Sharia law would be the “basic source” of legislation in free Libya.

The move towards Islamic extremism is likely to alarm many in the West who supported the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.

Source: Telegraph UK

The motives behind the attack that shook America

Today is the 10th memory of the Tragic events of 9 September 2001: The victims of World Trade Center fell on 9/11, but the victims of post 9/11 retribution and the American wars continue to fall in the Middle East to this day. Let’s remember their victims and ours, and pray for all the victims today. But we must never forget that all those victims have fell because of the prevail of Hate, Injustice and Bigotry.

Robert Fisk writes: For 10 years, we’ve lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question

By their books, ye shall know them.

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

USBS: OBL avoided CIA using USB!

With the TOP SECRET state of the art Spy technology known only as “a Flash Drive” (A.K.A USB Drive)!!!

Today, the msn front page Top buzzing article is an Associated Press news article titled: “How bin Laden emailed without being detected” which reveals how Bin Laden emails avoided CIA detection.

In the article, the Associated Press reveals the “secret” of what they called “Osama Bin Laden’s painstaking email system”, which “kept him one step ahead of the U.S. government’s best eavesdroppers”.

According to AP, Osama’s evil and extremely complicated methods, was described in detail to The Associated Press by a counterterrorism official and a second person briefed on the U.S. investigation, whom spoke to the AP “on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence analysis”. It allowed Bin Laden to stay under the radar for over 10 years and frustrated Western efforts to trace him through cyberspace.

So what is Bin Laden’s very complicated and advanced system, that illuded the CIA & FBI, and prevented his detection?

Brace yourselves for the Shocking OBL Top Secert “Emailing System”, according to AP:

As the most wanted man alive (now dead) Osama Bin Laden, was “holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.

The article then continues to give us more detailed description of how the OBL email system:

At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden’s message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.

Worthy of the book “Flash Drive for Dummies” the AP articles then describes the above revelations as:

It was a slow, toilsome process. And it was so meticulous that even veteran intelligence officials have marveled at bin Laden’s ability to maintain it for so long.

…

Navy SEALs hauled away roughly 100 flash memory drives after they killed bin Laden, and officials said they appear to archive the back-and-forth communication between bin Laden and his associates around the world.”

SHOCKING! isn’t it?!

So the complicated toilsome meticulous painstaking CIA proof email system, is 100 flash drives, an annual membership of a local Internet Cafe, and an errand boy?

As it turns out avoiding CIA detection and illuding the Top Spy agencies of the world is fairly simple…

It’s either that the US government B.S. have Leaked into AP news network, OR that the CIA veteran intelligence officers are as intelligent as a not-so-intelligent 12 years old teenager!!!

The completely aggravating full article is available at: MSNBC & Yahoo! & Fox News

The Age of Predators & Drones

An unarmed U.S. "Shadow" drone undated photograph, released on January 5, 2011. REUTERS

By KATHY KELLY

“Where is Your Democracy?”

On May 5, 2011, CNN World News asked whether killing Osama bin Laden was legal under international law.  Other news commentary has questioned whether it would have been both possible and advantageous to bring Osama bin Laden to trial rather than kill him.

World attention has been focused, however briefly, on questions of legality regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden.  But, with the increasing use of Predator drones to kill suspected “high value targets” in Pakistan and Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by U.S. military forces have become the new norm.

Just three days after Osama bin Laden was killed, an attack employing remote-control aerial drones killed fifteen people in Pakistan and wounded four.    Last month, a drone attack killed 44 people in Pakistan’s tribal region. CNN reports that their Islamabad bureau has counted four drone strikes over the last month and a half. Friday’s suspected drone strike was the 21st this year.  There were 111 strikes in 2010.  The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that 957 innocent civilians were killed in 2010.

Assassinating Bin Laden

By MARJORIE COHN

Why It Violated International Law

When he announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a Navy Seal team in Pakistan, President Barack Obama said, “Justice has been done.” Mr. Obama misused the word “justice” when he made that statement. He should have said, “Retaliation has been accomplished.” A former professor of constitutional law should know the difference between those two concepts. The word “justice” implies an act of applying or upholding the law.

Targeted assassinations violate well-established principles of international law. Also called political assassinations, they are extrajudicial executions. These are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework.

Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that “extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.” The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.

The Ugly Reality Behind the Killing of Bin Laden

By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

Assassination Sans Regrets

A week’s hindsight has allowed for greater confidence in assessing the recent U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden.  Damning details have been slowly trickling out regarding the military operation, undertaken in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.  First, it was quietly revealed, contrary to the claims of Obama’s inner circle, that Osama had actually been executed.  The admission that Osama was unarmed at the time of his death directly contradicted the administration’s earlier claim that bin Laden “engaged in a firefight,” and was subsequently killed as a result of his alleged attack on U.S. forces.

The open admission that the U.S. engages in assassinations no doubt jarred critics of U.S. policy in the Middle East and South/Central Asia.  Those who hoped bin Laden would live to stand trial for the charges against him were disappointed, as Obama apparently ordered that he be taken dead or alive.  It seems clear that the bin Laden assassination represents a fundamental abrogation of basic American legal principles and jurisprudence.  That unarmed prisoners can be executed at will and denied basic rights to due process, to be charged in a court of law, and allowed basic representation will no doubt fail to bother belligerent nationalists.  This contempt, however, should disturb those committed to the rule of law.  Even someone as vile as Osama bin Laden deserved his day in court.

Obama’s “self-defense”-turned-execution operation isn’t the only revelation that materialized in recent days.  Other details are now emerging that question the legitimacy of the operation altogether.  For one, the popular U.S. narrative that Pakistan’s government has either been colluding with al Qaeda or was incompetently sheltering bin Laden is questionable.  The Independent of London featured a story last week reporting, with regard to the Abbottabad residence at which bin Laden was killed, that the U.S. was “alerted [by Pakistani leaders] to [the] bin Laden compound in 2009” as a potential safe haven for al Qaeda, and that the CIA had used intelligence from the Pakistani government when tracking down bin Laden.  Similarly, the Nation of Pakistan reported that the Abbottabad compound “had been under surveillance since 2003, resulting in the highly technical operation” by Pakistani forces in 2004 “which had led to the capture of a senior al Qaeda leader.”

Why is the US still in Afghanistan?

If This is Victory, Shouldn’t US Forces Go Home?

By ROBERT FISK

So why are we in Afghanistan? Didn’t the Americans and the British go there in 2001 to fight Osama bin Laden? Wasn’t he killed on Monday? There was painful symbolism in the Nato airstrike yesterday – scarcely 24 hours after Bin Laden’s death – that killed yet more Afghan security guards. For the truth is that we long ago lost the plot in the graveyard of empires, turning a hunt for a now largely irrelevant inventor of global jihad into a war against tens of thousands of Taliban insurgents who have little interest in al-Qa’ida, but much enthusiasm to drive Western armies out of their country.

The gentle hopes of Hamid Karzai and Hillary Clinton – that the Taliban will be so cowed by the killing of Bin Laden that they will want to become pleasant democrats and humbly join the Western-supported and utterly corrupt leadership of Afghanistan – shows just how out of touch they are with the blood-soaked reality of the country. Some of the Taliban admired Bin Laden, but they did not love him and he had been no part of their campaign against Nato. Mullah Omar is more dangerous to the West in Afghanistan than Bin Laden. And we haven’t killed Omar.

Iran, for once, spoke for millions of Arabs in its response to Bin Laden’s death. “An excuse for alien countries to deploy troops in this region under the pretext of fighting terrorism has been eliminated,” its foreign ministry spokesman has said. “We hope this development will end war, conflict, unrest and the death of innocent people, and help to establish peace and tranquility in the region.”

Newspapers across the Arab world said the same thing. If this is such a great victory for the United States, it’s time to go home; which, of course, the US has no intention of doing just now.

Osama bin Laden obituary

“Leader of al-Qaida and the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he became the world’s most wanted man...”

Jason Burke and Lawrence Joffe wrote:

To his enemies, whatever colour or creed, he was a religious fanatic, a terrorist with the blood of thousands on his hands, a man who had brought war and suffering to a broad swath of the Islamic world and come close to provoking a global conflagration on a scale not seen for decades. To his supporters, whose numbers peaked in the few years after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in America that he masterminded, he was a visionary leader fighting both western aggression against Muslims and his co-religionists’ lack of faith and rigour. For both, Osama bin Laden, who has been killed at the age of 54 by US special forces at a compound near Abbottabad, a town about 40 miles north-east of Pakistan‘s capital Islamabad, was one of those rare figures whose actions changed the course of history.

His life was one of extremes and of contradictions. Born to great wealth, he lived in relative poverty. A graduate of civil engineering, he assumed the mantle of a religious scholar. A gifted propagandist who had little real experience of battle, he projected himself as a mujahid, a holy warrior. A man who called for a return to the values and social systems of the seventh century as a means of restoring a just order in today’s world, he justified the use of advanced modern technology to kill thousands through a rigorous and anachronistic interpretation of Islamic law. One of the most notorious people on the planet, Bin Laden lived for years in obscurity, his public presence limited to intermittent appearances in videos on the internet. A man who professed to have sacrificed all for others and to care nothing for himself, he was fiercely conscious of posterity.

Bin Laden’s story started in the remote, poor, deeply conservative Hadramawt region of south-east Yemen, from where his father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, set out for the Saudi city of Jeddah to seek his fortune around 1930. By the time Osama was born there, the 17th of 52 children, his father was a rich construction magnate. His connections to Saudi Arabia‘s ruling family, the al-Sauds, won him lucrative contracts to build palaces in Riyadh and the highway from Medina to Jeddah. The crowning achievement of the family firm, the Saudi Binladen Group, was reconstructing Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca. Osama’s father was an austere patriarch; his mother, a beautiful, educated young woman from Syria who shunned the veil in favour of Chanel suits. Because of her foreign origin and as the 10th wife, her prestige in the household was low. Raised in a palace in Jeddah, Osama grew up polite, courteous, diligent and, from an early age, pious. His father died in a helicopter crash when he was 11.

Osama Bin Laden Dead: INSIDE THE KILL SITE

 A Look At The Abbottabad Mansion Where The Al Qaeda Leader Was Killed (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Cara Parks  First Posted: 05/ 2/11 09:00 AM ET Updated: 05/ 2/11 09:03 AM E

Osama bin Laden was killed in his “mansion,” according to the New York Times. Where did America’s most wanted terrorist call home?

The compound was located in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan, about two hours outside of Islamabad. According to the Times, while comfortable in some respects, the residents did take security seriously:

It was hardly the spartan cave in the mountains where many had envisioned Bin Laden to be hiding. Rather, it was a mansion on the outskirts of the town’s center, set on an imposing hilltop and ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire.The property was valued at $1 million, but it had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. Its residents were so concerned about security that they burned their trash rather putting it on the street for collection like their neighbors.

The Times reports that the mansion was constructed in 2005. As Ogle Earth reports, there is construction noticeable in 2005 on Google Earth shots of a site that fits with descriptions of the area in 2005:

2001

2005

Construction in 2005

This would seem to be the location of the compound.

Source: The Huffington Post