LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
JUNE 16/2006
Below News From miscellaneous
sources for 16/06/06
Ban radical Sheikh invited to address young
Canadian Muslims-Release
from CCD
Syria tells Hamas to be more flexible-Ynetnews
Survey: Iraqis' exodus to Syria, Jordan is growing-Indianapolis
Star
Iran, Syria sign defence agreement-IranMania News
French court sentences 25 Islamic extremists-International
Herald Tribune
Israel conditionally offers to leave disputed territory in Lebanon-Ya
Libnan
EMERGING Syria-Alarab online
Lebanon still probing about Mossad-affiliated terrorist network-KNA
The Hariri
Mirage: Lessons Unlearned-Consortium
News.By: Robert Perry
Below News From the Daily Star for
16/06/06
Lebanese await official word from Israel on pullout
from Shebaa Farms
Security Council extends Hariri probe, expands its
mission
Murr gives army full credit for cracking terror
network
Salloukh aims to address concerns of Lebanese
expatriates
Cabinet to file complaint with UN on 'Israel's
interference in Lebanon'
FPM-Phalange clash mired in confusion
Berri resumes drive for Arab support
Qaddoumi: Weapons issue close to solution
Food-safety bill next on Lebanese Cabinet's plate
Iran and Syria sign pact against 'common threats'
The United Nations' moment of truth.By
Kofi Annan
Lebanon exposes deadly
Israeli spy ring
Times of London June 15, 2006 - From Nicholas Blanford of The Times in Beirut
Lebanese authorities have broken up an apparent Israeli spy ring whose members
have claimed responsibility for a string of killings of leading Hezbollah and
Palestinian militants since 1999.
The spies’ confessions, reported extensively in the Lebanese media, provide a
rare glimpse into the clandestine battle between the Israeli Mossad intelligence
agency and the Hezbollah organisation and its militant Palestinian allies.
In a bizarre twist, Hussein Khattab, a Palestinian member of the spy ring, who
is still at large, is the brother of Sheikh Jamal Khattab, an Islamic cleric who
has allegedly recruited Arab fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The Israeli network was discovered after the killing last month of two Islamic
Jihad officials, the brothers Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub, in a car bomb blast in
Sidon, Lebanon. Lebanese intelligence officers last week arrested Mahmoud Rafeh,
59, a retired policeman from the Lebanese town of Hasbaya, his wife and two
children, and discovered bomb-making materials, code machines and other
espionage equipment in his home.
Mr Rafeh confessed to the killings of the Majzoubs and to working for Mossad
since 1994. He also confessed that his cell was responsible for killing three
leading Hezbollah commanders since 1999, as well as Jihad Jibril, the son of
Ahmad Jibril, the head of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command, who died in a car bomb blast in 2002.
The discovery of the ring is being hailed as Lebanon’s most successful
counter-espionage operation in years. It is also opportune for Hezbollah, which
says that its military wing must keep its weapons to counter the threat of
Israeli aggression.
Some of the group’s Lebanese opponents suspect that the discovery of the Israeli
network is a Hezbollah fabrication.
Referring to the murder last year of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Walid
Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon’s Druze and an outspoken critic of Hezbollah, told
The Times: "We are expected to believe that this big spy ring was uncovered two
weeks after the killing of the Majzoub brothers, yet Rafik Hariri died in
February 2005 and we still don’t know who killed him."
The United Nations Security Council is poised to grant a year-long extension to
a UN commission investigating Mr Hariri’s murder, and to expand its inquiry into
14 other recent killings and bombings, which many Lebanese blame on neighbouring
Syria.
The Hariri Mirage: Lessons Unlearned
Consortium News
June 16, 2006
By: Robert Perry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/061506.html
In October 2005, the drumbeat had begun for a confrontation with a rogue Middle
East regime based on supposedly strong evidence about its nefarious secret
activities. The U.S. news media trumpeted the regime’s guilt and agreed on the
need for action, though there was debate whether forcible regime change was the
way to go.
A half year later, however, much of that once clear evidence has melted away and
what seemed so certain to the TV pundits and the major newspapers looks now to
be another case of a rush to judgment against an unpopular target.
The drumbeat in October 2005 was directed at the Syrian government for its
alleged role in masterminding the assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri in a bomb blast in Beirut, Lebanon, on Feb. 14, 2005. A
preliminary United Nations investigative report fingered senior Syrian officials
as the likely architects of the killing.
“There is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate former
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri could not have been taken without the approval of
top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized
without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services,”
declared the U.N.’s first interim report on Oct. 20. President George W. Bush
immediately termed the findings “very disturbing” and called for the Security
Council to take action against Syria.
The U.S. press quickly joined the stampede in assuming Syrian guilt. On Oct. 25,
a New York Times editorial said the U.N. investigation had been “tough and
meticulous” in establishing “some deeply troubling facts” about Hariri’s
murderers. The Times demanded punishment of top Syrian officials and their
Lebanese allies implicated by the investigation, although the Times cautioned
against the Bush administration’s eagerness for “regime change.”
But – as we noted at the time – the U.N. investigative report by German
prosecutor Detlev Mehlis was anything but “meticulous.” Indeed, it read more
like a compilation of circumstantial evidence and conspiracy theories than a
dispassionate pursuit of the truth. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Dangerously
Incomplete Hariri Report.”]
Mehlis’s initial report, for instance, had failed to follow up a key lead, the
Japanese identification of the Mitsubishi Canter Van that apparently carried the
explosives used in the bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others. The van was
reported stolen in Sagamihara City, Japan, on Oct. 12, 2004, four months before
the bombing, but Mehlis’s hasty report indicated no effort to investigate how
the vehicle got from the island of Japan to Beirut or who might have last
possessed it.
False Leads
The report also relied heavily on the testimony of two dubious witnesses. One of
those witnesses – Zuhair Zuhair Ibn Muhammad Said Saddik – was later identified
by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel as a swindler who boasted about becoming
“a millionaire” from his Hariri testimony.
The other, Hussam Taher Hussam, later recanted his testimony about Syrian
involvement, saying he lied to the Mehlis investigation after being kidnapped,
tortured and offered $1.3 million by Lebanese officials.
Some observers believed Mehlis had found himself under intense international
pressure to reach negative conclusions about Syria, much like the demands put on
U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix when he was searching Iraq for alleged weapons
of mass destruction in early 2003. Unable to find WMD despite U.S. insistence
that the WMD was there, Blix tried to steer a middle course to avert a head-on
confrontation with the Bush administration, which nevertheless brushed aside his
muted objections and invaded Iraq in March 2003.
Similarly, after the Hariri assassination, the Bush administration made clear
its animosity toward Syria by escalating its anti-Syrian rhetoric, also blaming
the government of Bashar Assad for the infiltration of foreign jihadists into
Iraq where they have attacked U.S. troops. So, Mehlis’s accusations against
Syria helped advance Bush’s geopolitical agenda.
But having relied on “witnesses” who now appear to have been set-ups, Mehlis
found his investigation under a cloud. In a follow-up report on Dec. 10, 2005,
he sought to salvage his position by hurling accusations of witness tampering at
Syrian authorities. But by then, as noted in a New York Times news article, the
conflicting accusations had given the Mehlis investigation the feel of “a
fictional spy thriller.” [NYT, Dec. 7, 2005]
Mehlis withdrew from the investigation and was replaced by Serge Brammertz of
Belgium in early 2006.
Revamped Probe
Over the past several months, Brammertz quietly has jettisoned many of Mehlis’s
conclusions and began entertaining other investigative leads, examining a
variety of possible motives and a number of potential perpetrators in
recognition of the animosities Hariri had engendered among business competitors,
religious extremists – and political enemies.
Brammertz said “the probe was … developing a working hypothesis regarding those
who had commissioned the crime,” according to a U.N. statement, which was
released after Brammertz briefed the Security Council on June 14. “Given the
many different positions occupied by Mr. Hariri, and his wide range of public
and private-sector activities, the [U.N.] commission was investigating a number
of different motives, including political motivations, personal vendettas,
financial circumstances and extremist ideologies, or any combination of those
motivations,”
In other words, Brammertz had dumped Mehlis’s single-minded theory that had
pinned the blame on senior Syrian security officials and was approaching the
investigation with an open mind. As part of his “wide reach,” Brammertz said he
had made 32 requests for information to 13 different countries.
Though Syria’s freewheeling intelligence services and their Lebanese cohorts
remain on everyone’s suspect list, Brammertz has adopted a far less
confrontational and accusatory tone toward Syria than Mehlis did. Brammertz said
cooperation from Syria “has generally been satisfactory” as its government
responded to investigative requests “in a timely manner.”
Syria had kind words for Brammertz’s report, too. Fayssal Mekdad, Syria’s
Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, praised “its objectivity and professionalism”
and said the investigators “had begun to uncover the truth a few months ago,”
after Mehlis departed. Mekdad promised that Syria would continue supporting
efforts “to unveil and uncover the truth about the assassination,” according to
the June 14 U.N. statement.
Mekdad said he believed the biggest danger from the investigation was
“exploitation by certain parties, inside or outside the region, the tendency to
‘jump to conclusions or prejudgments not based on clear evidence or proof,’ and
attempts to provide false evidence to the [U.N.] commission for the main purpose
of pressuring Syria,” the U.N. statement read.
The Syrian diplomat added that the investigation should continue in its pursuit
of solid evidence about Hariri’s murder, free from “politicization and false and
erroneous hypotheses,” according to the U.N. statement.
Missed Story
Though the U.N. statement contained no direct criticism of Mehlis’s earlier
efforts, Brammertz’s investigation represented an obvious break from the
approach of his predecessor. Still, the U.S. news media, which had played the
initial Mehlis accusations against Syria as front-page news, barely mentioned
the shift in the revamped U.N. probe.
Virtually nothing has appeared in the U.S. news media that would alert the
American people to the fact that the distinct impression they got last year –
that the Syrian government had engineered a terrorist bombing in Beirut – was
now a whole lot fuzzier. Much like the failure to highlight contrary evidence
against the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass
destruction in 2002 and early 2003, the national press corps apparently doesn’t
want to be seen as questioning the evidence against Syria.
On one level, this failure to be evenhanded with an unpopular regime like Syria
goes to the career fears of journalists who can expect that balanced reporting
in such a case might earn the label “Syrian apologist.” That risk rises
dramatically if it turns out later that the Syrian security officials were
guilty after all – still a strong possibility.
Journalists faced similar worries during the run-up to the Iraq War when any
skepticism about the Bush administration's WMD claims brought down the wrath of
many readers, political leaders and even news executives caught up in the war
fever. Career-minded reporters judged that the smart strategy was to play up the
anti-Iraq WMD claims – even when they came from dubious and self-interested
sources – and to play down or ignore counter-evidence.
However, after three years of bloody war in Iraq and the failure of the U.S.
government to find any WMD stockpiles, Americans might have expected the major
U.S. news media to show a little more skepticism and exercise a little more
caution when a new round of unproven allegations are leveled at another
unpopular Middle Eastern regime, such as Iran on its nuclear program or Syria on
the Hariri assassination.
In the Syria case, however, other factors – most notably the military quagmire
that has bogged down 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq – gave cooler heads the time to
take a second look at the evidence about the Hariri assassination and examine a
wider range of possibilities. By refusing to be led in any one direction, the
Brammertz investigation might even succeed in finding the truth.
But the other more intractable question remains: Is today’s U.S. press corps
capable of learning any lasting lessons from its past mistakes?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the
Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the
Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com.
It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras,
Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Press Release from The Canadian Coalition for
Democracies (CCD)
Ban radical Sheikh invited to address young Canadian Muslims
For Immediate Release
Ottawa, Canada, Thursday, 15 June, 2006 - The Canadian Coalition for Democracies
(CCD) is calling on Immigration Minister, Monte Solberg, to refuse entry on
security grounds to Sheikh Riyadh Ul-Haq of the United Kingdom. Ul-Haq is
scheduled to visit Canada at the end of June to speak to various Muslim groups
in Toronto and Montreal.
"Sheikh Ul-Haq has preached hatred of Hindus and Jews while glorifying martyrdom
and jihad,” said David Ouellette, director of CCD. “Canadians may have just
narrowly escaped the kind of massacre that occurred in the London transit system
last year, a massacre perpetrated by young British Muslims radicalized by such
racist, violent rhetoric.”
"If the Harper government is serious about ending the radicalization of young
Muslims in Canada and protecting the lives of Canadians, banning Ul-Haq and
like-minded preachers from entering our country is absolutely essential."
“Last week at a press conference on Parliament Hill, a spokesperson for one
Muslim group said that Islamic extremism is ‘impossible to see’ here in Canada,”
Ouellette added. “It is impossible not to see the inflammatory extremism of this
radical Sheikh, and we hope that Muslim groups will protect their youth and
fellow Canadians by joining the call to ban Ul-Haq from entering Canada.”
"Fighting radical Islam and its promoters is a key component of the war on
terror," said David Harris, CCD's Senior Fellow for National Security. "Our
government must take steps to confront Islamist incitement at every opportunity,
otherwise Canadians may experience the same horrors as the residents of London,
Madrid and New York."
-30-
If you would like to comment on this statement or other topics relating to
foreign policy or national security, please visit our public message forum and
post your comments:
http://canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/17082.shtml
CCD needs your help. Please make a contribution today.
http://canadiancoalition.com/joinus.shtml
For more information, please contact:
David Ouellette
Director, Canadian Coalition for Democracies
Mobile: 514-704-8581
David Harris
Senior Fellow for National Security, Canadian Coalition for Democracies
Tel: 613-233-1220
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Backgrounder
From the speeches of Sheikh Riyadh Ul-Haq...
On Jihad and Martyrdom: Audio
“Among the believers there are those who have proved their word and agreement
with Allah and thus they have expired their lives, meaning they are martyred in
the way of Allah. And the rest of the believers, they are waiting for martyrdom.
They are waiting for shahada [martyrdom] . We should follow in the footsteps of
the shahada. We may be under siege at the moment but have hope.”
On the Taliban: Audio
"The Prime Minister [Tony Blair] tells Muslims in this country that whatever the
Taliban says about casualties, etc., you should treat it with caution, you
shouldn’t believe what they say. Those servants of Allah are declared liars."
On Moderate Muslims: Audio
"The only Muslims who are considered moderates are those who for example,
forgive me for polluting the masjid’s [mosque’s] atmosphere by saying this, but
those Muslims who openly advocate lesbianism, those who are publicly declared
homosexuals, Muslims who don’t believe in segregation - the hijab - who feel no
shame bowing down and kissing the Pope’s hand, those Muslims who feel absolutely
no shame, or they don’t see any sense of irony in the fact that they openly
declare that Israel should be recognized as a Jewish state, not only should
Jerusalem be handed over completely to the Jews, but even the Masjid al-Aqsa."
On Hindus and Jews: Audio
"Of the peoples of the earth, the ones that hate Muslims the most, the ones who
are bitterest in their enmity towards Muslims, the most unrelenting,
unforgiving, are the Jews and the mushrikin [Hindus], idolaters in all their
forms."
On Jews: Audio
"May Allah give all Muslims, individuals and leaders, especially, and our
governments the understanding and the sense to see through their propaganda,
their, and deceit and to view them as they really are and thus treat them
accordingly."
**For further information, please visit http://judeoscope.ca/article.php3?id_article=0398