CIA supporting Russian anti-govt protestors through Georgia

WMR has learned from an eastern European intelligence source that the CIA. Britain's MI-6, and George Soros, who actually fronts for the Rothschild family, has been funneling money to Russian protest movements through the Republic of Georgia.

The Soros-style "themed" revolution for Russia is being called the "White Revolution" or "Snowy Revolution,| with the color white being chosen as the thematic color for the attempted Russian uprising. Perhaps not coincidentally, the White Army was also the name for the counter-Bolshevik revolutionary forces composed of czarist loyalists supported by British, French, American, Japanese, and Czech troops who, from 1917 to 1922, attempted to invade Russia and restore czarist rule. The White Army invaded Russia from Poland, Lithuania, the Caucasus, and Siberia.

The western media is mocking Russian Prime Minister for suggesting during a television interview that when he saw protesters in Moscow wearing white ribbons, he thought they were wearing condoms. Putin said, "I decided it was propaganda against AIDS, that these were, pardon me, dangling contraceptives . . . I didn't really get it . . . But on the whole, my first thought was that this is good, that people are fighting for a healthy lifestyle." Putin said he could not understand why people unrolled a condom (gandon) before pinning it to their chest.

Read More Here: http://tiny.cc/3xnn4

Hillary Clinton CONFESSION About TALIBAN- US responsible for Pakistan situation

Hillary Clinton CONFESSION About TALIBAN- US responsible for Pakistan situation

Hillary Clinton Confess - US responsible for Pakistan situation - English. US Administration created Tabliban!!! US Administration imported Wahabis into Pakistan!!! US supported Wahabiism - that...

Hillary Clinton Confess - US responsible for Pakistan situation - English. US Administration created Tabliban!!! US Administration imported Wahabis into Pakistan!!! US supported Wahabiism - that has nothing to do with Islam and does not represent majority of Muslims. Shias and Sunnis are both anti-wahabiism. Shia and Sunni are united to defend the dignity of Islam and Muslims. Shia and Sunni oppose American policies and Wahabi ideology!!!

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard helps Al-Qaeda

Report from Congressional panel says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard helps Al-Qaeda
Thursday, 05 May 2011

The Congressional report pointed out to strong links between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps force and Al-Qaeda. (File photo)

By ABEER TAYEL 
AL ARABIYA WITH AGENCIES

A US Congressional panel released a report late Wednesday alleging that Iran’s elite Al-Quds force offers support to Al-Qaeda, adding a new dimension to the militant threat to the United States. 

In its report to the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, the strategic advisory firm Kronos highlighted what it says are increasingly strong links between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps force and Al-Qaeda, according to Agence-France Presse.

The caucus released the report after US troops killed Osama Bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan that raised fresh doubts about Pakistan’s willingness or ability to track down Al-Qaeda suspects.

“Iran has quietly forged a strong working relationship with core Al-Qaeda’s leaders,” said the report’s author, Michael S. Smith II.

“This relationship has been established to counter American influence in the Middle East and South Asia,” according to his report.

“Through it, Iran will likely also help Al-Qaeda mobilize terrorists to carry out attacks against the US and our allies, providing the support required to extend Al-Qaeda’s operational reach,” the report added.

Mr. Smith argued that not enough attention has been paid to the links between the two entities because of a “pervasive” belief that Shiite and non-Arab Iran will not work with the Sunni Arab militants of Al-Qaeda.

The ties date back to the 1990s when Al-Quds members worked with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah to train and equip Bin Laden’s holy warriors. He cites the 9/11 Commission Report for operational linkages between the two.

“Since 9/11, these partnerships have become all the more pronounced. Hundreds of Al-Qaeda members, along with family members of core Al-Qaeda leaders like Osama Bin Laden, have found refuge inside Iran,” he wrote. 

In appealing for US policy makers to address the links, Smith warned that “if left unchecked, Iran’s relationship with Al-Qaeda could cost America and our allies dearly.”

The congressional caucus’s Andy Polk said in an email to AFP that: “With the death of Bin Laden, and with Iran’s Al-Quds Force being listed as part of the new sanctions against Syria, this is an interesting and timely report.”

Mr. Smith told AFP that a member of the House of Representative’s permanent select committee on intelligence indicated there is “mounting interest” in the apparent links between Al-Quds and Al-Qaeda.

The member, who he did not name, suggested that Kronos could help by presenting a report about that relationship based on open-source materials, one that could be discussed with intelligence and defense officials.

Later, he said, a caucus representative contacted him and offered to distribute such a report to the nearly 100 members of Congress affiliated with the Anti-Terrorism Caucus.

Iran had said that there was no excuse for the United States to continue deploying troops in the Middle East after the killing of Mr. Bin Laden.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said the US can no longer send troops to the region under the pretext of fighting terrorism, The Associated Press reported on Monday citing Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

Iran said it cooperated with the US in fighting terrorism but instead of being rewarded, former President George W. Bush placed Iran in his “axis of evil.”

Iran said it has cracked down on Al-Qaeda operatives, especially along its border with Afghanistan, but also criticized the US for invading Afghanistan and Iraq, according to AP.

(Abeer Tayel of Al Arabiya can be reached at: abeer.tayel@mbc.net)

CIA IN PAKISTAN

BY INAAM.CHANDIO,
ON APRIL 18TH, 2011

No, but sometimes it helps.

Pakistan’s military is demanding that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sharply cut back its activities in the country in the wake of undercover agent Raymond Davis’s arrest on murder charges and subsequent release. In addition to scaling back the number of CIA drone strikes on Pakistani targets, Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has insisted on the withdrawal of all contractors working for the CIA and all operatives like Davis, who are working in “unilateral” assignments, meaning that only one country (read: not Pakistan) is aware of their presence. But since when does the CIA need a country’s permission to conduct intelligence operations? Isn’t the whole point that the local government isn’tsupposed to know they’re there?
Continue reading CIA IN PAKISTAN

There’s A Terrorist Catholic Nun On The Airplane!

Catholic Nun Forcibly Removed From Plane for Wearing “Muslim Garb”

DAYTON, OH – Sister Cora-Ann, a Catholic nun from the Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Dayton, Ohio got the surprise of her life yesterday, when she was asked to leave the plane she had just boarded at the Omaha International Airport. “I had just sat down in my seat, and started to thank God for our blessings and recite a prayer in Latin”, she recalled, when one of the passengers sitting next to me called the flight attendant. The passenger was Elizabeth Bennet, who later stated: “It is not that we were prejudiced, but she did seem very suspicious. She was dressed in Muslim garb and just before we were about to take off, she started mumbling something in an Arabian or Talibani-sounding language. What was I supposed to do?” Damien Thorn was a passenger seated in the adjacent row and said: “I knew there was something sinister about her, the moment she stepped into the plane. She was wearing those burqa clothes that you see the Iranian women wearing, and she only had a very small carry-on bag.” The flight attendant responded to the call and asked Sister Cora-Ann for her name, boarding pass and a photo ID.

Continue reading There’s A Terrorist Catholic Nun On The Airplane!

Afghanistan: President Obama burnt and beaten up!

By DION NISSENBAUM And MARIA ABI-HABIB

Associated Press

Afghans in Jalalabad protesting the Florida Quran burning beat a burning effigy of President Obama Sunday.

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan—Officials are painting the weekend killings at the United Nations mission in northern Afghanistan's largest city—which sparked cascading violence across the nation—as the handiwork of a small band of insurgents that used a protest against a Quran-burning as cover for a murderous plot.

But a Wall Street Journal reconstruction of Friday's assault, based on unreleased videos, interviews with demonstrators and the U.N.'s own recounting of events, shows a more complex picture and indicates that ordinary Afghan demonstrators played a critical role in the attack.

Stirred to action by a Quran-burning at a Florida church, thousands of people swarmed past hapless Afghan police officers, heading toward a lightly protected U.N. compound. There, members of the tight-knit staff had been paying little attention to the angry protest unfolding at the city's central mosque.

Mazar-e-Sharif has long been considered one of the safest cities in Afghanistan. So the diverse U.N. staff—including a female Norwegian fighter pilot, a seasoned Russian diplomat and German woman who had been at the mission for only a week or so—took few precautions even when the mob converged on their compound, burned an American flag and threw stones at the blast walls.

By sunset, seven U.N. workers were dead. In the ensuing days, demonstrations cascaded across Afghanistan, claiming more lives Saturday and Sunday in Kandahar, far to the south.

Based on interviews with survivors, Staffan de Mistura, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, concluded that a handful of insurgents—including Afghans with accents suggesting they came from other parts of the country—spearheaded Friday's attack on a safe room in the compound.

The rioting, which the Taliban say erupted spontaneously, adds a disturbing new threat in a country that is fighting a mostly rural insurgency. Foreign and local military forces alike are ill-prepared for riot control.

"Every security-force leader's worst nightmare is being confronted by essentially a mob," said Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of 150,000 U.S.-led coalition forces, in an interview Sunday, "especially [a mob] that can be influenced by individuals that want to incite violence, who want to try to hijack passions, in this case, perhaps understandable passions."

The Quran-burning, held March 20 at the Dove World Outreach Center by church leader Terry Jones in Gainesville, Fla., was "hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant," Gen. Petraeus said.

Mr. Jones called Gen. Petraeus' remarks "unconstitutional" and disputed that his actions complicate U.S. efforts to fight the Taliban. "I do not necessarily think that our actions make his job more difficult," he said in an interview Sunday. "The Taliban or radical Islam will use any excuse to incite more violence. If they don't have one, they will make up an excuse."

Friday, thousands of people gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif's revered Blue Mosque. Speaker after speaker denounced the Quran-burning, which for Muslims is abhorrent because Islam teaches that the physical book is holy.

"Stand up against the enemies of the Quran with your pen," one of the men shouted from the podium, videos show. "Stand up against them with your voices. Stand up against them with weapons. It is everyone's right to stand up against them and make a jihad."

The protesters then surprised police by pouring into the street and marching toward the U.N. office, more than a mile away. At one point, according to videos reviewed by the Journal, the badly outnumbered police tried to use a six-foot wood beam to hold back the crowd. The protesters easily surged past.

Only about 60 police were deployed, and they appeared uncertain how to respond. Initial attempts to disperse the crowd by firing warning shots appeared only to inflame the demonstrators. The besieged U.N. staffers headed to two safe rooms intended to shield against intruders and bombs.

They phoned for help from the nearby military bases of German and Swedish forces, according to a person briefed on the situation. The U.S.-led military said the situation "escalated rapidly" and that a swift-reaction team didn't arrive until after rioters were gone.

Once demonstrators flooded the compound, a dozen Afghan police guards—the first line of defense—dropped their weapons, said Brig. Gen. Esmatullah Alizai, the provincial police chief. "They were surrounded and confused," he said.

Inside the compound, a small contingent of Nepalese Gurkha guards working for the U.N. faced a conundrum: They were under U.N. orders not to open fire on demonstrators. The videos show one guard feebly trying to wave an elderly demonstrator out of the compound.

Nearby, videos show, demonstrators used bent metal rods to smash a row of white U.N. SUVs.

Among those attacking the U.N. vehicles was a young religious student from a small village not far from the city. The student said in an interview that he and one of his friends found a propane tank that they shoved under one vehicle and set off an explosion.

Nearby, the student said, two Afghan policemen were hiding with a foreigner behind a tanker. When one of the officers shot and injured a young demonstrator, the student said he saw a chance to disarm him.

"Grab his weapon," the student said he shouted to his friend, who wrestled a Kalashnikov assault rifle and used it to shoot the unarmed foreigner.

Inside the building, other attackers targeted one of the safe rooms. The door proved little protection against the mob. As intruders penetrated the safe room, Pavel Ershov, a Russian diplomat who speaks fluent Dari sought to protect three staff members by distracting the assailants, the U.N.'s Mr. de Mistura said.

"Are you Muslim?" the assailants asked Mr. Ershov, according to one diplomat briefed on the attack. Mr. Ershov lied and said he was, the U.N. said. The assailants tested him by asking him to recite the traditional profession of belief in Islam, which begins, "There is no God but Allah."

When he successfully completed the test, his life was spared. Still, he was dragged into the street and beaten badly, according to a local shopkeeper who said he participated in the assault.

The attackers searched the darkened bunker with a lamp and discovered Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a 53-year-old Norwegian military attaché—the former fighter pilot—seconded to the U.N., along with Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede who had been working in the human-rights office for less than two months, and Filaret Motco, a 43-year-old Romanian who headed the mission's political section.

As Lt. Col. Skare attempted to flee the bunker, she was intercepted by the Afghan demonstrators who had set the car on fire. She was shot with the rifle commandeered from the police officer, one of the men said. Lt. Col. Skare died of her wounds. Messrs. Dungel and Motco were killed elsewhere.

Four Afghans—men also described as "insurgents" by Gen. Alizai, the police official—were also killed. Video footage of demonstrators leaving the U.N. compound shows two men carrying Kalashnikovs and one showing off a large, blood-spattered knife.

As the attackers focused on the four U.N. workers who had been hiding in the first safe room, diplomats said, three or four others, including the German newcomer, were sheltered in a safe room in another building. They survived.

—Yaroslav Trofimov, Zamir Saar, Michael Allen and Betsy McKay contributed to this article.

Petraeus Says Quran Burning Endangers War Effort

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV AND MARIA ABI-HABIB KABUL—The Quran burning by a Florida church, which sparked three days of deadly rioting in Afghanistan, poses new dangers for the U.S.-led war effort against the Taliban, coalition commander U.S. Gen. David Petraeus warned in an interview.

General David Petraeus and Mark Sedwill, NATO's Senior Civilian Representative, have released a statement on the burning of the Holy Quran which has sparked protests across Afghanistan. Video courtesy of NewsCore.

Gen. Petraeus, who commands some 150,000 U.S. and allied troops here, spoke after Afghan rioters angered by reports of the sacrilege sacked the United Nations compound in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, killing seven foreigners, and went on a lethal rampage in the southern city of Kandahar, waving Taliban flags.

The deadly rioting, which the Taliban say erupted spontaneously, has shocked the international community and highlighted the vulnerability of the embattled Afghan government. Urban mob violence against Western targets adds a disturbing new threat in a country that is fighting a mostly rural insurgency, and where foreign and local security forces are ill-prepared for riot control.

"Every security force leader's worst nightmare is being confronted by essentially a mob, if you will, especially one that can be influenced by individuals that want to incite violence, who want to try to hijack passions, in this case, perhaps understandable passions," Gen. Petraeus said in the Sunday interview. "Obviously it's an additional serious security challenge in a country that faces considerable security challenges."

Back in September, when Terry Jones of the World Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., first announced his intention to burn Islam's holy book, Gen. Petraeus publicly urged the preacher to abandon the plan, saying it would be exploited by the Taliban and endanger the lives of American soldiers. Rev. Jones's church shelved the idea at the time. But then he reversed course and his church held a "trial" of the Quran and incinerated the book in a videotaped ceremony March 20.

"This was a surprise," Gen. Petraeus said. The Quran burning in Florida, he added, was "hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant."

Protesters shout anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration in Jalalabad province Sunday. Around 1,000 people blocked the main highway from Kabul to Jalalabad and burned U.S. flags, driven by anger at the actions of militant Christian preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the burning of a copy of the Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20, according to his website.

 

Gen. Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and other Western envoys Sunday met President Hamid Karzai to discuss the security crisis caused by the Florida incident. While Gen. Petraeus said he had no doubt that Mr. Karzai is taking the situation seriously, some Western officials have complained that the Afghan president himself has exacerbated the tensions with his pronouncements on the issue.

Most Afghans learned about the Quran burning in Florida only when Mr. Karzai on March 24 condemned the act as "a crime against the religion and the entire Muslim nation," called on the U.S. and the U.N. to bring the perpetrators to justice and demanded "a satisfactory response to the resentment and anger of over 1.5 billion Muslims around the world."

Following Sunday's meeting with Gen. Petraeus and the ambassadors, Mr. Karzai requested in a new statement that "the U.S. government, Senate and Congress clearly condemn [Rev. Jones'] dire action and avoid such incidents in the future." Mr. Karzai issued this demand even though President Barack Obama has already described the Quran burning as "an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry"—adding that "to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity."

Friday's protest march on the U.N. compound in Mazar-e-Sharif followed a fiery sermon by government-paid clerics in that city's main mosque. By Saturday, however, demonstrators in Kandahar chanted "Death to Karzai" in addition to "Death to America." Nine Afghans were killed and more than 80 injured in Kandahar on Saturday, as protesters attempted to march on the U.N. officers there; shootouts erupted as they were stopped by Afghan security forces.

In fresh Kandahar protests on Sunday, two Afghans, including a child, were killed and 40 were wounded, according to provincial officials. A crowd of about 600 pelted with rocks the headquarters of the provincial governor, shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the slaves of the infidels."

"We cannot see the difference between that man in Florida and the American soldiers here," said Karimullah, a 25-year-old religious student who, like many Afghans, goes by one name and took part in Sunday's Kandahar protests. "They are killing our people here while in the U.S. they burn the Holy Quran. America just wants to humiliate the Muslim world."

—Muhib Habibi and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.  

Losing Battle of Hearts & Minds

Imagine the following account: A Pakistani man shoots dead two Americans on a busy strip using an unlicensed weapon, and then another Pakistani colleague radioed by the shooter runs over a third American. Then all three try to feel the scene but are overpowered by the police and turned in. The Pakistani man is found to have entered America on a business visa, claims to police that he was a “consultant” to the Pakistani Consulate, but the Pakistani government swiftly changes documentation at the Embassy to include him as an employee, to provide him legal immunity.

The Pakistani government then brings great pressure on America to “follow the Vienna Conventions” and to release the man, including statements from the Prime Minister & President.

--

Scene from la-la land? Precisely. It’s hard to imagine that any citizen from any part of the world, let alone from Pakistan, could wreak havoc on a shopping strip in America and get away without consequence.

Such is the hypocrisy of American pressure on Pakistan (threats about  aid, by Obama & to Ambassador) to release the now notorious, Raymond Allen Davis, the businessman-turned-consultant-turned-consular staffer-turned-embassy staffer. The American government wants Pakistan to comply with its own convenient interpretations of the Vienna Conventions for diplomatic immunity.

What Happened? For those unaware of the situation, it is exactly as described at the top, except with roles reversed. On Jan 27, 2011, Raymond Davis shot dead two Pakistanis on a motorcycle in broad daylight on a busy shopping strip. The egregious incident led to three direct deaths and one indirect one when the widow of one of the shooting victims committed suicide due to her sense of hopelessness in a just trial.

Instead of letting Pakistani courts evaluate the legal ramifications of the situation and the extension of Vienna Conventions to Raymond, the entire US government apparatus including President Obama is bearing great pressure on their feeble stooges in the Pakistani government to release Davis without any consequence for his killing spree. By prejudicing a legal case with political expediency, Mr. Obama is further damaging his reputation in the Muslim world, and pretty much hammering the final nail in the coffin of the great optimism in his Egypt address to the Muslim world.

Window into the Vienna Conventions As for the Vienna Conventions, the emphasis on the distinction between consular and embassy staff is not trivial. There is also little doubt that Davis was only placed in the Embassy rolls AFTER the incident.

Davis was not one of the embassy employees listed on January 25, 2010, two days before the incident However, a revised list submitted a day after the incident on Jan 28 carried his name.

So, there are two Conventions in play here. One is the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations (1961, adopted 1964) and the other being Vienna Conventions on Consular Relations (1963, adopted 1967).

Article 29 of the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations states that

the person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.

The USA would like to see him being treated as a diplomat (linked to the Embassy), with extremely expansive and broad immunity, and not liable to any form of arrest.

On the other hand, consular staffers have much more limited immunity, as under Article 41 (1) of the Vienna Conventions on Consular Relations which states:

Consular officers shall not be liable to arrest or detention pending trial, except in the case of a grave crime and pursuant to a decision by the competent judicial authority

There is little doubt that the case is extremely grave and Davis would face a competent judicial authority as applied under this scenario, which is why it is understandable why records are being modified (sloppily) to apply Article 29 rather than Article 41.

Which Convention is appropriate? Let’s see what a couple of experts have been saying. In order to be treated as a diplomat, it is more than just being a staffer at the Embassy. Najmuddin Shaikh, a former Pakistan diplomat and Ambassador, concludes that David would have immunity under Article 29 “only if it was established that his presence in Mozang Chowrangi on that day was in ‘execution of his duties’ and that was something that had to be determined by a court of law.”

Similarly, former British Ambassador and Human Rights Activist Craig Murray concludes that the circumstances surrounding Davis do not allow for diplomatic immunity.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Agent Twist Which Vienna Conventions might apply is likely to be only an academic exercise. More than two weeks ago, the Guardian reported that Raymond is in fact a CIA agent. Once that fact is realized, all the pieces of the puzzle fall nicely into place. There was a reason for the sudden rush to classify Raymond as a Consulate staffer, and then realizing the Vienna issue, there was another mad rush to classify Raymond as an Embassy staffer. All done to protect Raymond’s real identity as a CIA Agent, which of course makes the entire issue of diplomatic protection a moot point, as the Guardian hints:

Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official.

Also, from the same article, we find that unsurprisingly, the US stooges in the Pakistani government were fully aware of Raymond’s CIA status but were complying with “immense pressure” of USA directives to circumvent the entire justice system of Pakistan via the Vienna Conventions.

“Immense pressure” is probably being kind to Pakistani government. What is even more unfortunate is the acquiescence of the US media (such as NY Times) to yield to government requests and hide the information from the US public. By continuing to flout it as a case of Pakistan not complying with international conventions, Pakistan again became the whipping boy in the US media, with continuing negative implications for its public image.

A number of US media outlets learned about Davis’s CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration. A Colorado television station, 9NEWS, made a connection… [but] removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government. [Guardian]

Aftermath

Writing for CounterPunch, the journalist Dave Lindorff has written

“in other words, the prosecutorial, police and judicial authorities in Lahore and the state of Punjab are doing exactly what they are supposed to do in holding Davis on murder charges, pending a judicial determination concerning whether or not he can properly claim diplomatic immunity. The US claim that Pakistan is violating the convention is simply nonsense.”

In a strange twist, the US government has also been actively seeking an Islamic shariah-based approach of offering blood-money (diya) to seek Davis’s release! This is especially ironic in light of the laughable and Islamophobic attempts by several states to ban “shariah law”.   Under the principles of Qisas, blood money would be an option, only if the relatives of those murdered accept to forgive the murderer, not FORCED to forgive. The ruling emanates from the Qur’anic verse [2.178] that is a clear evidence of Islam’s emphasis of mercy and life over punishment and death.

In conclusion, Davis needs to be tried by the Pakistani courts. If he escapes prosecution, then there would be no bigger travesty of justice, comparable only to the travesty of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s prosecution (persecution) and conviction.  I daresay Davis has a better chance of getting a fair trial in Pakistan than did Aafia in a New York court. While Aafia was sentenced to 86 years in prison for the ATTEMPTED murder of US interrogators in Afghanistan (in the complete absence of any forensic evidence), we have here an unarguable killer who America wants freed under the pretext of conventions it itself routinely flouts as Glenn Greenwald cites. From the same linked article, I’ll leave you with more food for thought from Greenwald, one of the few defenders of truth in the American media:

Those crazy, primitive Pakistanis and their inscrutable Muslim customs.  Scandals over diplomatic immunity are usually one-time, aberrational occurrences…  But what happened in Lahore is part of an ongoing, continuous assault by American forces in that region.  They [Pakistanis] (but not we) hear routinely about the killing of their innocent civilians by Americans in their country.  Why don’t we hear much about such things?  The Guardian article provides some insight: A number of US media outlets learned about Davis’s CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration.

That’s our intrepid, independent Watchdog press.  The cost of this conduct is so predictable — intense anti-American sentiment and the threats of Terrorism it produces — that a rational person would have to inquire whether that outcome is not a bug but a feature of our policy in that region.

In other words, American hypocrisy in its foreign affairs only leads to anti-Americanism, which ultimately feeds radicalism that will continue to haunt our nation.

Davis Arrest Throws US Undercover Campaign in Pakistan into Disarray

This Can’t Be Happening
Davis Arrest Throws US Undercover Campaign in Pakistan into Disarray
By Dave Lindorff | March 1, 2011
The ongoing case of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor facing murder charges in Lahore for the execution-style slaying of two apparent agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, is apparently leading to a roll-back of America’s espionage and Special Operations activities in Pakistan.

A few days ago, Pakistan’s Interior Department, which is reportedly conducting a careful review of the hundreds of private contractors who flooded into Pakistan over the last two years, many with “diplomatic passports,” and many others, like Davis, linked to shady “security” firms, arrested an American security contractor named Aaron DeHaven, a Virginia native who claims to work for a company called Catalyst Services LLC.

The Catalyst Services LLC website describes the company, with offices in Afghanistan, Dubai, the US and Pakistan, as having experience in “logistics, operations, security and finance,” and as having a staff led by “individuals who have been involved in some of the most significant events of the last 20 years,” including “the break-up of the Soviet Union, the US effort in Somalia, and the Global War on Terror.”

DeHaven is being held on a 14-day remand, charged with overstaying his visa and with living in an unauthorized area.

Meanwhile, the English-language Express Tribune in Pakistan reports that according to ISI sources, 30 “suspected US operatives” in Pakistan have “suspended” their operations in the country, while 12 have fled the country.

The paper quotes the Pakistan Foreign Office as saying that 851 Americans claiming diplomatic immunity are currently in Pakistan, 297 of whom are “not working in any diplomatic capacity.” The paper says that the country’s Interior Department claims that 414 of the total are “non-diplomats.” The majority of these American operatives, the paper says, are located in Islamabad (where the US is building a huge fortress-like embassy reminiscent of the one in Baghdad), with the others in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. Most are suspected of being involved in covert missions that report to the US Joint Special Operations Command, with many suspected of being active-duty Special Forces personnel from the Army’s Delta Force. (The website of the JSOC says its responsibility is “synchronizing Department of Defense plans against global terrorist networks and, as directed, conducting global operations.”)

As I reported earlier, both Pakistani and Indian news organizations are claiming, based upon intelligence sources, that Davis was involved in not just intelligence work, but in orchestrating terrorist activity by both the Pakistani Taliban and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been linked to both the assassination of Benezir Bhutto and the capture and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Multiple calls to members of both groups were found by police on some of the cell phones found on Davis and in his car when he was arrested in Lahore.

It is unclear how far the blow-up in Pakistan over the exposure of America’s role in stirring up unrest in that country will go. Clearly, the ISI and the Pakistani military have long had their own complicated relationship with the Pakistani Taliban, and much of the current anger in both the ISI and the military has to do with the US being found to be working behind their backs, including in its contact with those groups.

But things have been complicated too by mounting public outrage over Davis’s brazen slaughter of the two Pakistanis, who reportedly were tailing him because of concerns about the nature of his activities, and who reportedly were both shot in the back. This public outrage has been further stoked by both a subsequent suicide by the 18-year-old bride of one of the victims, and by the death of an innocent bystander mowed down by a second vehicle carrying several more US contractors which sped to Davis in response to his call for assistance following the shooting. That vehicle, after running down the bystander, raced to sanctuary at the US Consulate. The men in the car, never identified by the consulate, were spirited out of the country by the US so they could avoid arrest.

Further complicating matters for the US, the province of Punjab, of which Lahore is the capital, is run by the opposition party, headed by former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif, who still has presidential aspirations, has no incentive at all to make things easy for the country’s ruling party by letting Davis go. Indeed, with public opinion running almost 100% in favor of trying Davis for murder, Sharif can only gain by insisting that the court system have the final say.

Pakistan’s central government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, clearly wants to put the Davis incident behind it by having him declared to have diplomatic immunity. Foreign Officials allege that Zardari pressured the Foreign Office in early February to backdate a letter identifying Davis as being a “member of staff” of the US Embassy in Islamabad, which would have afforded him such immunity from prosecution. But the country’s foreign minister at that time, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, reportedly refused, saying, “On the basis of the official record and the advice given to me by the technocrats and experts of the Foreign Office, I could not certify him (Raymond Davis) as a diplomat. The kind of by blanket immunity Washington is pressing for Davis, is not endorsed by the official record of the Foreign Ministry.”

He has subsequently been ousted and replaced by Zardari.

The reality is that the US, which as required, on Jan. 25 submitted to the Foreign Office its annual list of those employees of the US Embassy whom it classified as “diplomats” warranting diplomatic immunity. The list had 48 names on it, and did not include Davis. Only after Davis’s Jan. 27 shooting of the two Pakistani motorcyclists, on Jan. 28, did the US submit a “revised” list, to which Davis’s name had been appended.

The US initially said Davis was an employee of the Lahore Consulate, and Davis himself told arresting police officers that he was a contractor working out of the Lahore Consulate, a role that would not afford him any diplomatic immunity, as consular workers, under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations only receive immunity for their “official duties,” and in any case lose even that limited immunity in the case of “grave crimes.”

His current legal problems, and the public demand that he be tried (and then hanged) for the killings, has definitely led to a reduction in US undercover operations in Pakistan, and to a pullback of at least some of the Special Forces personnel operating there. It will take considerable finesse for the US and the Zardari government to put the the relationship back together–if the Pakistani military and the ISI even want to restore it–finesse that the US has not been very good at displaying.

So far, in fact, the US response to Davis’s arrest has been to bluntly and publicly threaten Pakistan with a loss of foreign and military aid–a threat that seems empty given the American need for Pakistani assistance in supplying its military in Afghanistan, and its need for at lease covert permission to continue sending Predator and Reaper drones across the border to attack Taliban suspects in the tribal border areas. US bluster, and some clumsy efforts to forge records that would purport to show Davis had diplomatic immunity–all widely exposed in the Pakistani media–have only served to further stoke public outrage.

Meanwhile, local authorities in Lahore at the prison where Davis is being held, are so worried that the US may try to have him killed to prevent him from spilling the beans about his activities–for example explaining why the camera he was carrying held photographs of Pakistani military installations as well as of mosques, madrassas and other schools–that they have reportedly posted special guards (unarmed as an added precaution) around his cell, and have been monitoring his food. Davis was reportedly even denied a box of chocolates sent by the US Consulate in Lahore, for fear it might have been laced with poison.

'US unable to hijack Middle East uprising'

'US unable to hijack Middle East uprising' Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:30PM Interview with International Lawyer, Franklin Lamb.

People cheer during a celebration of the liberation of eastern Libya On Friday, massive Arab Revolutionary demonstrations were held throughout the Middle East, amid Gaddafi's brutal mercenary militia killing more protesters in Libya.

Press TV interviewed International Lawyer, Franklin Lamb from Beirut regarding the uprisings in the Middle East.

Press TV: I would like to welcome Dr. Franklin Lamb from Beirut now. Thank you so much for being with us. Now yesterday was an interesting day Mr. Lamb. We saw more protests of course in Yemen, in Libya, in Bahrain and in Jordan. We also saw a revisiting of the previous two revolutionary countries meaning Tunisia and Egypt. What do you say about the state of affairs in the region? Do you think what we are looking at is something that is going to evolve into permanent change, or is there concern that right now as the Tunisians and Egyptians seem to be expressing that there is just figureheads changing, and not enough significant changes? What direction do you see the region going? Are we seeing total change?

Lamb: Thank you. This regional revolution, this standing up or uprisings, I think it has got legs and it's broadening and deepening and unlike what Condoleezza Rice said here about in 2006 regarding a new Middle East, it's a new Middle East and probably the opposite of what she had in mind. That is where we are and yes, I think it will sustain. I think the danger is lessening of hijacking this revolution.

I site as evidence of that the committees of the different countries particularly in Egypt. They are calling it a coalition to protect the games they achieve. That means when they meet the military that they hold them to their words. They cite the demands for progress and verification of real change. Of course, it's in the hands of the people. We cannot help them other than to encourage this historic movement. I have confidence from your footage, and other reports that these people are serious. It is fundamental. It is a deep endemic revolt after years of oppression. I disagree with my colleague Robert Fisk who says there is no religious aspect. I think the justice and equality that is inherent in Islam and its practitioners is a factor not the Wahabbie -Salafee sort of extremist versions, but the quest for justice is a factor in here. I don't think these people are going to allow this to be hijacked. It may take more time.

Press TV: You said Islam is very much a part of these movements. Why do you think this is the case with much of the mainstream media? It is more human rights or equal rights that the protesters are demanding. Why is it that the international media present it as if Islam would be exclusive of that?

Lamb: Well I think it's just fundamentally ignorance. We are a long way away, and we have so many of our own problems in the West for the last hundred years with our own culture. We just do not understand Islam. I can tell you here in Beirut when Westerns come here and see Islam in practice. The beauty of Islam is that it's a way of life and it's not some sort of jihadist that are media likes to identify with. Part of the problem is we have been a little lazy in the West. We have not had respect of others enough to study Islam. Of course, there will be no revolution without Islam because the essence of Islam is of course the quest for justice. Therefore, I think that is our problem. We have to catch up. We are going to catch up in the sense that we are not in control.

I believe the beliefs of these people and these images are going to be sustained. It's not going to be easy and we are worried about certain aspects of that. However, I think the leadership will come and the way of life and the culture of resistance are too strong. The idea is too powerful to be turned to the side. There will be efforts to hijack it. The paradigm of the West has been three things: Put in a despot or someone who represents stability, make sure that they are compliant in terms of military means and as you know, we have those 800 bases in 130 countries, and then finally support our foreign policy with respect to Israel. The despots were happy to do that. Are these people going to be satisfied with the occupation of Palestine? Of course not. Is it at the forefront right now? No, but is it fundamental? Yes, so I am optimistic.

I don't see that the West has the power to turn this thing aside. I think the region is changing dramatically. It's a fundamental change and the most the West can do is to respect these new governments on the basis of equality, and apply the tenets in the United Nations charter such as principals of equality and I think there can then be peace and good relations. I know that sounds a little idealistic, but I have confidence that these people are going to demand that. I hope that the American people will also demand that.

Press TV: They are saying, “Down, down Hamad!” in reference to the Bahraini King. Mr. Lamb, how significant is this chant, as it seems they are not only asking for a change in the government but total regime change in Bahrain.

Lamb: Yes, and these images are enormously powerful. Who is going to hijack [this uprising]? We are all worried about hijacking the revolution. I don't think these people will easily be hijacked. Hamed was considered a special case. You know the little reforms he did. He is a favorite of the Americans because not only [his country is home to the US] fifth fleet but [because] of his connection with Saudi Arabia etc…

As a King, he will likely start to blame the problems on the government, make some changes and survive. The presidents will fall in the Middle East ... The monarchs are in a better position some say but they may not be the case with Hamad. I mean the family has been I think you said 300 years or something. He is in danger now with his kind of persistence in resisting. That is the key to success and all of this is simply persistence and persistence. Thus, I think it's very significant. It has to be of enormous concern to Saudi Arabia and Washington. The big question is can he survive? The images suggest that he may not survive.

Press TV: On that note I would like to thank you International Lawyer, and Middle East Analysis, Dr. Franklin Lamb from Beirut.

NM/PKH

Raymond Davis, an American “Tweetie Bird”

About a year ago Gordon Duff and Jeff Gates, both associated with the Veterans Today website, and both well-connected with the Pentagon and the Pakistani military, visited the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the company of top Pakistani army officers. They heard the complaints and saw the evidence that the US, Israel and India had secretly created and were arming and nurturing the so-called Pakistani Taliban (TTP — Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) insurgency.

Duff and Gates noticed that a great many of the supposed aid projects that were claimed to be German were actually manned by Western and Israeli Jews. The Pakistanis couldn’t tell the difference, but these Americans obviously could. The private armies run by contractors such as Xe (the new name for Blackwater), it turns out, are under Zionist control. The effort to break up nuclear-armed Muslim Pakistan is most of all a Zionist project.

As Christopher Bollyn has pointed out, the main aim of the American war effort in Afghanistan, brought about by the Zionist-engineered 9/11 event, is for the benefit of ostensibly Israeli-owned (and ultimately Rothschild-et -al-controlled and -owned) gas, mineral and heroin interests in Central Asia.

The late Richard “Holbrooke” (hiding behind an olde Englishe name his father was not born to) turns out to have been a relative of the Rothschilds. And his replacement is one Mr Grossman, who will no doubt prove to link to the same networks. The Raymond Davis incident points to the unhinging of American, really Zionist, empire, in this zone as much as in the Arab world.

Since Obama and Hilary are, like 99% of American politicians, totally the creatures of Zionists, it comes as no surprise that they are going all out to try to keep a lid on this incident. Both have put their prestige on the line in support of the absurd claim that Davis must be given diplomatic immunity under the Vienna conventions. The State Department conveyed through an American TV channel a threat to expel the Pakistani ambassador. Now they are threatening to cut off US aid.

It’s not working.

America does have the support of Pakistani president Zardari — no wonder: they probably helped him murder his wife to make a claim for the presidency, and they helped get all the cases against him dropped so that the Swiss would release his massive accounts. Zardari has sacked — thus making a hero of — the foreign minister for opposing the release of Davis.

But there is not that much more within his power to do. If he did get close to getting Davis freed, the army would once more take over the country. Meanwhile, with or without the help of the latest American / Israeli torture technology, Davis is reported to be singing like Tweetie.


By Dr. Zaidi for Veterans Today

Everybody loves Raymond, the double slayer

The Pakistani Government ‘loves’ him to the extent that they are willing to bend the rules to grant him diplomatic immunity from prosecution for the twin killings that he committed in Lahore. They ‘love’ him for the large one-time dose of Manna, over and above the routine dosage, that is likely to fly into their coffers from the Grand Masters for the deal.

The US of A ‘loves’ him to the extent that no less than the President of United States wants him released, and pronto too. The lesser minions of America, of course, blow hot and cold threatening to cut off all aid and bring to an abrupt halt the so called ‘strategic alliance’ that the two countries have. They ‘love’ him so much in fact that all drone attacks in FATA have been ceased lest a single hair on Raymond’s well-fed body is harmed in retaliation.

The Punjab Government, in whose domain the crimes took place and who now hold Raymond, ‘loves’ him because he gives them a handle with which to embarrass deeply, and irreparably if it so chooses, the central government –their political opponent. They want the country’s ‘law’ to take its course and the criminal duly prosecuted.

The religious parties ‘love’ him because they have at last found a cause with which to rally the naive masses around. They will now beat their chests in sympathy with the heirs of the victims, organize mass protests, foam at their mouths at the spinelessness that the Pakistani Government shows in every confrontation with the ‘Great Satan’, invoke Islam at every mass gathering and remind people that their version of Islam is the only solution to all evils plaguing the country.

The sacked Foreign Minister of Pakistan, a Makhdoom whose principle vocation is to sell charms and amulets to simple villagers, ‘loves’ Raymond because it was due to him that the Makhdoom has overnight turned into a hero. He has supposedly withstood the pressure of the great US of A by not agreeing to a diplomatic immunity for Raymond, getting fired from his job instead.

All the opposition political parties ‘love’ him because Raymond gives a lease of life to their flagging existence. They can now create further chaos in a nation already deeply splintered along ethnic, sectarian and political fault lines. They see a chance of quietly slipping into corridors of power in the ensuing bedlam. They ‘love’ him for giving them a case that has the rare potential of solidifying the Pakistani nation into a single, unified front against ‘brazen American recklessness’.

The gullible Pakistanis ‘love’ Raymond not only because they have been told to do so but also because his issue all of a sudden reminds them of their ‘love’ for the rule of law. They ‘love’ him to the extent that they are willing to forget and rally around the same leaders who have historically held the rule of law in Pakistan in utmost contempt. It makes them conveniently overlook that the very Pakistani leaders calling Americans to respect Pakistan’s laws are the same people who organized mob attacks on the Supreme Court and even had the Chief Justice of Pakistan manhandled by lowly police constables.

And that bunch of lovelies, the Pakistani Taliban, ‘love’ him for a very simple and straightforward reason. They want him released into their custody so that they could do another Daniel Pearl on him. Call it love for love’s sake.

While all this love wingding goes on, let us have a quick look at the controversy itself.

America’s stand point is simple: one of its diplomats in one of the ‘most dangerous’ countries in the world was threatened by two men with guns, and the diplomat shot and killed them in self-defense. He sits in jail, “illegally detained,” because he enjoys diplomatic immunity.

Their Pakistani counterparts, however, tell an entirely different story.

They say that not only Raymond Davis does not enjoy diplomatic immunity, the matter is far murkier than what meets the eye. Talking with ABC News on the condition of anonymity, four Pakistani officials have claimed that the two men who Raymond Davis killed in Lahore last month were working for Pakistan’s premiere intelligence service, the ISI. They were following Davis because he was spying. According to these officials, the ISI believed he had crossed “a red line” and needed to be followed.

Between these two diametrically opposing views, journalists, bloggers, media pundits and Charlie’s aunt continue to paint theories with varying shades. While some saner elements want to wait for the smoke to clear away before taking a stance on the issue, most have already announced America’s grand alliance with the Pakistani Taliban/Al-Qaeda with the sole aim of destabilizing the country. They don’t, of course, explain why the US would continue to pump billions of dollars into the country’s treasury on the one hand while conspiring to sink her on the other.

Be that as it may, while everyone else’s sudden rush of love for Raymond is understandable, America’s feverish urgency in their demands for the release of their new found love, a low level operative really, is not.

It is not understandable why seasoned American diplomats would suddenly drop all decorum of hushed and enduring diplomacy. Why would normally dignified US officials suddenly become bulls in a china shop, all muscles, horns and hind quarters, threatening to bring down the whole painstakingly erected edifice if their man is not released. Pray, what sensitivities are involved that have forced the weathered US envoys to replace tact and discretion with threat and bombast? And even if Raymond had diplomatic immunity, why can’t it be waived for the sake of 60 years old partnership? The Americans are, after all, convinced that their man is innocent. No one knows at this point.

So yes, everybody loves Raymond. But the mother of everybody in Pakistan, the Pakistan Army, watches the fracas quietly from the sidelines. For now at least.

'Davis' is the missing link of US support for 'TTP' terror in Pakistan

Undoubtedly this is the biggest scandal in US Foreign relations since the US U-2 was shot down by the Soviets in the sixties. Then, as now, both sides played out the drama in an iterative manner--neither side letting the other know how much they know.

There are clear indications that there is much more to the "Raymond Davis" affair than the Pakistanis are letting on. THis isn't about murder and diplomatic immunity. This is much bigger. Something is very wrong with this picture, and Islamabad is tight lipped because it now has concrete evidence that Mr "Raymond Davis" is linked with the Tehrik e Taliban e Pakistan (TTP) and some of the terror activities that have been happening in Pakistan. The Pakistanis are not stupid. Americans stick out like sore thumbs in Pakistan. When they go running around in their black SUVs laced with Satellite equipment they are tracked, traced and followed. In a cat and mouse game, the contractors can sometimes shake their "tails". On other occasions they cannot. In fact the ISI gives them enough rope to hang themselves with. In this case, it seems Mr. Davis fell into a trap and his situation is now fully compromised. In panic Mr. "Davis" used the ‘Nuclear’ option and killed the two Pakistanis who were trailing him--knowing full well that killing Pakistani spies or those who knew his identity would blow up in his face. He doesn't have to say much--the equipment he carried tells a long and bloody story. All this is irrefutable evidence in a Pakistani court of law. The Pakistanis have already released the pictures of the equipment and the evidence that they have gathered. Of course they are still holding on to the juiciest details.

The US has postponed the Afghan-Pakistan-US Trilateral meeting, dropped hints about postponing the date of Mr. Zardari's visit to the US, and floated all sorts of other threats. Normally Islamabad would have been cognizant of the problems of spoiling its relationship with the sole Superpower. However the smirking Pakistanis are so confident in the validity of their cause, that they are letting the US escalate the issue.

Pakistan has ignored some of the US pressure and has not buckled under intense US pressure. Both General Kayani and Former Foreign Minister Mahmood Qureshi were not very impressed by US posturing. In fact right after their threatening phone calls and messages Islamabad formally charged Davis with pre-meditated murder in the Lahore High Court. The Court promptly remanded Mr. "Davis" to prison for another 14 days of interrogation. There were stories that if Mr. "Davis" does not cooperate, the interrogation would have been upgraded to level 3 (a euphemism for torture). There are reports that despite admonitions from the US Embassy, Mr. Davis is singing like a bird, and has already given enough information to the Pakistanis to get him convicted in any court of law.

The Former Foreign Minister Qureshi publicly confirmed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressured him to "publicly confirm diplomatic immunity of Davis. However, I refused to do so because it was against the factual position in the case." FM Qureshi's confirmation that Mr "Davis" is not a diplomat was repeatedly discussed on all 80 TV channels with copies of his passports and visas prominently displayed for the audience. Mr.Quresh said that "The kind of blanket immunity Washington is pressing for Davis is not endorsed by the official record of the Foreign Ministry," adding that Washington even "threatened that Hillary Clinton would not meet me at the Munich conference on February 6 if the request was not granted."

The situation is so polarized that even traditional US allies in Pakistan have condemned the intrusive murders. Mr. Pervez Hoodbhoy who almost never criticizes the US has condemned the "Davis" affair. The PMLN has of course threatened the PPP with a vote of no-confidence.

It is clear that Mr. "Davis" shot the Pakistani operatives knowing full well who they were. The Pakistani authorities have informed the the media that they are very well aware that Mr. Davis was in touch with the "Pakistani Taliban" (TTP). There is conjecture that Mr. "Davis" walked into a trap laid out by the ISI. In fact his contacts were actually ISI agents. All that he said and did is in the hands of the Pakistanis. Mr. "Davis" thought that by shooting the two operatives, he would eliminate the evidence against him. In fact, it made matters worse. Other operatives who were in the vicinity had already taken the necessary precautions. The ISI has leaked information to the media that Mr. "Davis" had crossed a "red line".
 

Clearly, the Americans have panicked because they know that the Pakistani side knows much more than it is prepared to admit in public. This is typical behavior when spies are caught with their thumbs up their noses. There are clear indications that Mr. "Davis" has broken down after sustained interrogation in police custody, and has spilled his guts--making the Pakistanis aware of explosive stuff. Its not that this stuff that has surprised the Pakistanis. When you have 3000 of these guys running around the country--something gives. The ISI is one of the world's most powerful spy organizations in the world. It has deep roots in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nothing that crawls or walks in Pakistan is hidden from the ISI and other agencies. On top of this there is a million man Pakistani army. 180 million Pakistanis are also watching the Americans and reporting on them. The panicked Americans have continually given highly contradictory versions about Mr. "Davis's" identity and the nature of his assignment in Pakistan.

It is very clear that Mr. "Davis's" discovery and detention has sent alarm bells ringing all the way to President Obama's White House. In a way the Pakistanis are amused. They know they have the Americans where they want them--right up against the wall. The Americans are fully aware that the "Davis" case is shaking the very foundations of the transactional relationship with Pakistan. While the CIA, the State Department and the White House think that this is a new discovery--the Pakistanis point to a long trail of evidence that directly points to the US consultants and their hirelings in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ISI and the Army believe that at the right time, the details of what the Pakistanis know will be revealed to President Obama and the world.

Pakistan and Pakistanis have known for a long time who is behind the TTP (Tehrik e Taliban e Pakistani). Its not that hard to guess. What surprised the Pakistanis was their ability to inflict bloody attacks on the Pakistani military in order to destabilize Pakistani. Mr. Davis is not an isolated incident--there is a history behind much of what is happening in Pakistan--most of which can be correlated to the rise of the US "consultants" and "contractors" in Pakistan. It is pedagogical to note that last year when the ISI put in requests for deep security checks on those coming into Pakistan--the US threw a fit and forced about 500 of these "Davis types" through without any background checks. Is is noted that the ISI became very suspicious of the insistence of the US in getting these guys into Pakistan at short notice. These guys got very special attention--and that has paid off in the arrest and detention of Mr. Davis. This points to the fact that this incident was not just an accident--it was an incident waiting to happen. The ISI was ready to pounce on the situation once it happened.

Pakistan has been very suspicious of these "contractors" especially when Pakistani state institutions were attacked. The attacks on the the Army HQ, and the ISI sent alarm bells among the rank and file of the Pakistani government. The vibrant Pakistani press has also been on the trail and has repeatedly pointed out the facts about the former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh (who was eventually fired by Mr. Karzai). However the US security establishment was in cahoots with him.

The Pakistani military and its highly efficient intelligence set-up had concluded a very long time ago that the TTP was being aided by the very sort of free-wheeling "contractors" that Mr. Davis represents. It was just a matter of time when things came to a boil. It is amazing that the Americans are surprised they have finally been caught red-handed. This has happened in the past, but during the reign of President Musharraf, the Americans got away with it and escaped. This time Mr. "Davis" was caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Not too long ago US personnel were stopped at a check post and the entire drama of their refusal to lower their windows or come out of the vehicle was shown on TV—live.

Over 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan facing the new Taliban "Spring Offensive" are totally dependent on supplies running through Pakistan. The last time Pakistan shut off the spigot, the Americans ran out of toilet paper and had to cut down on food rations. It must have been hard eating food with dirty hands! If the tiff between the US and Pakistan is not resolved the US may face the consequences in Afghanistan. Failure in the Hindu Kush will certainly impact the presidential elections in 2012.

Dr Aafia Siddiqui Case: New Audio Tape Evidence

A New Turn as Lawyers Release Explosive, Secretly Recorded Tape
The Siddiqui Case

By VICTORIA BRITTAIN

In 2003 an MIT-educated expert in children’s learning patterns, Dr Aafia Siddiqui, disappeared with her three children in Pakistan. Was she, as the Americans said, an Al Qaeda operative who in 2008 emerged after five years undercover, carrying a handbag full of chemicals and plans for major terror attacks in the US, and then attempted to shoot US soldiers? Or was she, as her family, and most people in Pakistan have always maintained, seized by Pakistani agents for reasons unknown?

Now new evidence of the kidnapping of Dr Siddiqui prises open part of one of the most shocking of the myriad individual stories of injustice in the war on terror. It also underlines the recklessness and perfidy of a key United States’ partner in the war on terror, which carries its own threat of explosion.

Dr Siddiqui was sentenced in a New York court last year to 86 years for attempted murder of US soldiers in Afghanistan. Her mysterious five-year disappearance before that, her reappearance in Afghanistan in 2008, her subsequent trial in the US, and the confusion surrounding all these events, have made Dr Siddiqui’s a symbolic case in much of the Muslim world. Now a senior law enforcement officer has claimed to have been involved personally on the day she was seized, with her three children, by Pakistani police agents in Karachi in March 2003 and handed over to the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.

The FBI put out a “wanted for questioning” alert for Dr Siddiqui just before she disappeared. She was later high on the US wanted list, with the US claiming that she was living undercover as an Al Qaeda agent. She was a "clear and present danger to the US", the then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in 2004. For all these years the Pakistani government repeatedly denied holding her, and after her arrest in Afghanistan in 2008 spent $2 million on US lawyers for her trial. After her conviction, the Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, committed himself to work for her return from a US prison. Dr Siddiqui had become, “the daughter of the nation” and the centre of a popular cause he could not afford to ignore.

The new evidence, on a secretly recorded audio tape, is a potential earthquake in the chronically unstable political situation in Pakistan, where rage against the US runs deep and wide, especially as civilian casualties mount with the use of drone aircraft. Already the case of Aafia Siddiqui has periodically brought tens of thousands of people out on the streets in the last two and a half years in protest at what has been done to her by the United States’ military and legal systems since she reemerged, in US custody and seriously wounded, in 2008.  The Pakistani media have always claimed that the ISI was responsible for her disappearance and that the Americans were involved too. The tape reopens the whole question, not just of Dr Siddiqui, but of the corroding effect of the US alliance with Pakistan’s military and intelligence elite in a war on terror which has had so many Pakistani victims. The ISI has run its own agendas, hand in glove with various US officials at various periods, ever since the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then becoming godfathers of various Afghan factions tearing that country apart. There are plenty of astute Pakistani journalists with the language skills to use this tape to the utmost to embarrass their own security services and the government.

For the US too there are questions to answer about the extensive cover-up of what happened to Dr Siddiqui and her three children  - two of whom are US citizens, and appear to have spent five traumatized years separated from their mother and from each other, in various prisons. It is scarcely credible that high officials in the Bush and Obama administrations over the years were unaware of what their troublesome allies in Pakistan had done with her and her children.

On April 21 2003, a “senior U.S. law enforcement official” told Lisa Myers of NBC Nightly News that Siddiqui was in Pakistani custody. The same source retracted the statement the next day without explanation. “At the time,” Myers told Harpers Magazine, “we thought there was a possibility perhaps he’d spoken out of turn.”

According to the Associated Press, “[t]wo federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, initially said 31-year-old Aafia Siddiqui recently was taken into custody by Pakistani authorities.” But later, “the U.S. officials amended their earlier statements, saying new information from the Pakistani government made it ‘doubtful’ she was in custody.”

An FBI spokesperson also formally denied that the agency had any knowledge of Dr. Siddiqui’s whereabouts, stating that the FBI was not aware that she was in any nation’s custody.

Dr Siddiqui’s mother was visited by an unknown man a few hours after her disappearance and warned to keep her mouth shut if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again. In 2003, in a closed hearing when the FBI had subpoenaed some documents from Dr Siddiqui’s sister, an FBI official confirmed to her family that she was alive and well, but would answer no questions on her whereabouts.

The new audio evidence was secretly taped in a social situation last year; children can be heard in the background. It was given, unsolicited, to one of the many lawyers involved in Dr Siddiqui’s case in the US. The source, whose identity has been protected, told lawyers at the International Justice Network that he had made the tape after a social evening when he had heard shocking things about Pakistani counter terrorism, about the fabrication of evidence, and about Dr Siddiqui’s disappearance, discussed casually by a senior official. He felt outraged and returned for a second evening with a recorder and got some of the previous discussion repeated. “If it can help anyone I had to do it,” he said to the IJN Executive Director Tina Foster who has represented Dr Siddiqui’s family since January 2010. IJN are experienced hands in war on terror cases. They represent a number of prisoners in Bagram air base prison in Afghanistan, some of them rendered from Abu Ghraib, Dubai and Thailand by the CIA, as well as several disappeared people in Pakistan.)

The witness is a Pakistani/American and he has been extensively interviewed by IJN’s lawyers who tell me they are entirely  confident of the tape’s authenticity, the source’s account and thus the identity of the prime subject.

IJN’s source says he was introduced by a mutual friend whose home he was visiting, to a man he identified to lawyers at International Justice Network as  Imran Shaukat, the Superintendent of Police for Sindh province.

A full report, and the four hour tape, in Urdu, Punjabi and English, is being released by the International Justice Network in the United States at 6am EDT Monday, and can be  accessed here and,  here with the permission of the witness. Portions of the tape concerning Dr Siddiqui were made available to this reporter  and were independently translated for this article. As of midnight Sunday, EDT, this excerpt can be listened to here.

Mr Shaukat (who is voice 2 on the tape) says, “I am stationed in Karachi. I head the counter terrorism department for Sindh province.”

In the key passage in the tape for the Siddiqui case he is asked by:

    Voice 1 (who is the witness) ”Did you arrest her?”

    V 2. “Yes, I arrested her. She wore glasses and a veil….. When she was caught she was travelling to Islamabad….She was hobnobbing with clerics. …..

    V 1 “ So what happened after the arrest. Did ISI ask for her custody?”

    V 2 “Yes, we gave her to ISI”

    V 1 “ISI or something else?”

    V 2  “ISI, so we gave her to them.”

Mr Shaukat also describes her as “stick thin” and “a psycho”, and, elsewhere as “not a handler, a minor facilitator” – presumably for Al Qaeda - and he mentions a connection to Osama Bin Laden. Asked then why couldn’t she help them get Bin Laden, he replies, “Well, they are not fools. They wouldn’t inform her of their forwarding address.” And he says too about the children, “we took them with us. They were American nationals, children are American nationals, they were all born there.”

There is some discussion on the tape about the return of her daughter, Maryam. (Two unidentified voices are also heard.)

    V1:              Oh, another thing.  They found her   daughter yesterday.

    V2:              She’s home already.

    V1:       Yes, she’s home.  She speaks English only.  She was in the prison.  She is seven or eight years old. And she only speaks English.

    UM1:         Eight years old?

    V1:       Yeah.   Children were in prison and they spoke to them in American English.

    UM1:              Is she home?

    V1:              Yeah.  They got her home.

    V2:              They were actually, I.

    V1:              Really?

    V2:              It’s five or six months.

    UM2:              Is she in Karachi?

    V1:              She got home today, yesterday.

    V2:              Well, it goes back to before I came here.

    V1:              I read the news just yesterday, today.  Maybe, in the night.

    V2:              It’s two or three-months old.            

All that has been reported in the public domain to date is that Maryam was returned a day or two before the recording. But, according to the childrens’ lawyer, Tina Foster, Mr Shaukat’s description is consistent with how Maryam was repatriated to Pakistan.

Elsewhere in the tape Imran Shaukat talks about how the Pakistani police and ISI work to “disappear” or to use people they have taken into custody. According to Amina Masood Janjua at Defence for Human Rights, there are currently about 500 people who have disappeared in Pakistan as part of the “war on terror” –  this does not include Sindhi and Balochi separatists. Part of the audio describes the doctoring or manufacturing of documents, creating false identities, using body doubles, with reference to various terrorist attacks, including Mumbai. “This is a game of double dealing, direct them right and exit left,” Mr Shaukat says at one point.

Such details are an explanation of the extraordinary litany of contradictory stories about Dr Siddiqui, including curious reported sightings by family members, that were launched into the public domain over the five years after her disappearance. In this John Le Carre world of ruthless manipulation of the vulnerable it is impossible to know how, or whether, she could have been used in counter terrorism’s goal at the time of finding Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.

From other sources it has been established that Dr Siddiqui was separated from her children for the five years of her ordeal, and that the two older children, born in 1996 and 1998, were not together, but in separate prisons, and that the third child, Suleman who was six months old on the day of the disappearance, probably died then.

For nearly eight years now, manufactured confusion has surrounded the disappearance and the subsequent whereabouts of Dr Siddiqui and her three children.

The confusion only deepened with the second section of the story, which was her mysterious reappearance in 2008 in Afghanistan, and the bizarre circumstances of her being seriously wounded by two shots to the stomach by a US soldier.  John Kiriakou, a retired CIA officer with extensive background in Al Qaeda- related work told ABC News, “I don’t think we’ve captured anybody as important and as well connected as she since 2003. We knew that she had been planning, or at least involved in the planning of, a wide variety of different operations.” Such statements set the tone for the Western media on her return under arrest to the US.

Her subsequent trial in New York, ending with the 86 year sentence, is the third section, when, extraordinarily, Al Qaeda and terrorism were not made part of the case against her which was narrowly focussed on the alleged attempted murder incident.

Dr Siddiqui’s background was an unexceptional one of a highly educated young woman from a privileged, professional family, some of them settled in the US and most of them educated in the West. She spent a decade studying at universities in Texas, and at MIT  - where she graduated in biology summa cum laude - and at Brandeis, where she took a PHD in cognitive neuroscience. She specialized in the science of how children learn, and in addition had a class teaching dyslexic children. Besides her academic work she lived a busy life in the Muslim community in Boston, attending cake sales and auctions to raise money for Muslim refugees in the Bosnian war. She was married to a doctor from Pakistan in a classic arranged ceremony conducted by phone. The couple had two children.

Life in Boston soured when her marriage began to break down. There are reports from her professors in Boston that they saw her with bruises on her face. And her husband, Dr Amjad Khan, told Harpers Magazine reporter Petra Bartosiewicz in 2008 that his wife had once had to go to hospital after he threw a bottle at her. There are photographs of her with a deep cut across her face. She returned home to Pakistan in late 2001. In a brief reconciliation back in the US a few months later she became pregnant with her third child. On August 15, 2002, after an incident in which witnesses claim that Dr Khan pushed him, Dr. Siddiqui’s father collapsed and died of a heart attack. A few days later, while Dr. Siddiqui was still pregnant with their youngest child, Suleman, Amjad Khan separated from her and immediately married again. Dr Khan gave custody of the children to Dr Siddiqui on condition they received an exclusively Islamic education

Dr Khan came under FBI suspicion in May 2002 for various items purchased by him on the internet when the couple were living in Boston. He said they were for big game hunting, and he was not arrested, but both he and his wife had come under suspicion.

In March, 2003, a global alert went out with both of them wanted for questioning by the FBI. A few weeks after Aafia Siddiqui disappeared, her husband had a four-hour interview with US and Pakistani agents, and US suspicions of  Dr Khan were dropped. About two months later Dr Khan travelled to Saudi Arabia for some time.

Dr Khan told Harpers Magazine – “The Intelligence factory – how America makes its enemies disappear”, by CounterPunch contributor Petra Bartosiewicz - that his “contacts in the agencies” informed him then that Siddiqui had gone underground. He went on to say that he had no idea where his children were —a claim he would later contradict. He also told Harpers that he and his driver saw Siddiqui in a taxi in Karachi in 2005. But they did not follow her. After her arrest in 2008 Mr Khan told a reporter from the Pakistani daily News that he thought his former wife was an “extremist” and that of course she had been on the run. After Ms Bartosiewicz left Pakistan, she had an email from Dr Khan saying that he had received “confidential good news” from the ISI that Mariam and Suleman were “alive and well” with their aunt Fowzia. (In fact at that point one was in prison and the other was dead.)

Dr Siddiqui’s disappearance in March 2003 came amid a feverish whirl of arrests and disappearances in Pakistan, including Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, who has claimed to have been the master mind of 9/11, and many other Al Qaeda related attacks, and  has been named as the killer of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Khaled Sheikh Mohammad was important enough to the Americans to be water-boarded 183 times. Shortly after Dr Siddiqui’s disappearance, Khaled Sheikh Mohammad’s nephew, Ammar Baluchi, was arrested in connection with 9/11. The two men were taken to Guantanamo Bay, then to various CIA-run secret prisons known as “black sites” for torture, before being returned to Guantanamo Bay.

US officials then had Dr Siddiqui on an Al Qaeda “wanted” list and linked her to Baluchi, claiming he was her second husband. Her family, and other sources in Pakistan have denied the marriage, but it remains probably the most repeated detail about her and the one that has given her an indelible image as a terrorist. This was not the only lurid story about her – she was also alleged in a UN report to have been a courier of blood diamonds from Liberia for Al Qaeda with a sighting reported there in June, 2001. Her lawyer, Elaine Sharp stated that Dr Siddiqui had been in Boston at that time and she could prove it. That story died away, but the further damage to her reputation was done.
For five years nothing sure was in the public domain about what happened to her and the children, though the rumours grew, turning her into a tragic martyr for many, or a poster for Al Qaeda ruthlessness for others . Several former detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan claimed to have seen her there, while US officials quoted in Wilileaks denied she had been.

A senior Pakistani journalist, Najeed Ahmed, followed the story for five years and reported witness testimony of someone who claimed to have been part of the arresting team, which he said was a joint operation with the FBI. (Mr Ahmed made a public statement about his research in 2009, but died the next day, reportedly of a heart attack.)

In mid-July 2008 Pakistanti lawyers filed a habeas corpus for Dr Siddiqui in Islamabad. And within days, in Act 2 of the drama, Aafia Siddiqui  reappeared, in Ghazni, in Afghanistan, allegedly carrying in her handbag chemicals, instructions for making biological weapons, and plans for terrorist strikes with mass casualties in the US. She was then involved in a shooting incident in a police station in Ghazni in which she was badly wounded by a US soldier. It is uncontested that she was seated behind a curtain in a small room, where, according to the US soldiers, one of them put down his gun and she came from behind the curtain, seized it and attempted to shoot. She says she merely looked round the curtain. None of the soldiers or FBI personnel present were hurt, but she was hospitalized with two shots in her abdomen and brought under arrest to the US.

Act 3 was her trial in New York for attempted murder of soldiers and FBI agents with an M4 rifle, picked up from the floor near a US soldier. There were no charges of terrorism or Al Qaeda links.

Dr Siddiqui had a tangle of high-flying legal teams, several of whom were not on good terms. Her first court appointed lawyer, Liz Fink, a famous New York political lawyer, withdrew, and the second team appointed by the court, was headed by Dawn Cardi, an expert in matrimonial and family law. The lawyers funded by the Pakistani government were led by Linda Moreno, an attorney with successful experiences in two high profile war on terror related cases, those of Professor Sami Al-Arian and Ghassan Elashi, and who is a Guantanamo Bay defence lawyer with security clearance. Ms Moreno is also known for earlier political work as one of the lawyers for the American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier. Her team included Charles Swift, formerly a military defender of Guantanamo detainees who made a reputation as a critic of the Military Commission system, and Elaine Sharp.

Even the narrow grounds of the case on the shooting was full of curiosities and contradictions: there was no physical evidence on the gun of Dr Siddiqui having held it, no bullet casings from it or holes in the walls of the small room where it took place, except from the other gun which wounded her. Defence counsel made two visits to Afghanistan to get the forensic evidence, which could, and should, have got the whole case dismissed. Linda Moreno described the defence forensic case as “very compelling, with no physical evidence whatsoever that she ever touched the gun….no DNA, no fingerprints, no bullets recovered, no bullet holes.” The military and FBI witnesses, Ms Moreno said, contradicted each other, and under cross-examination even contradicted their own earlier stories. She went on to say that “the government wanted to scare the jury with stories of her alleged terrorist past, and steered away from the actual case.”

One key piece of evidence was not in the trial and only emerged from Wikileaks, which revealed a Defense Department report that was not released by the military, so was unavailable as evidence in Dr Siddiqui’s defence. The incident report does not say Dr Siddiqui fired the gun she is alleged to have snatched and fired, merely that she "pointed" it. “Six American soldiers took the stand – powerful testimony for a jury. I argued, what happened at the front, stays at the front. The Wikileaks document would have added to my argument about the dubious credibility of the soldiers,” Ms Moreno told me.

Dr Siddiqui’s relations with her lawyers were impossibly difficult and she tried repeatedly to fire them. Most never saw her except in court. Linda Moreno told me,  “She was clearly damaged – extraordinarily frail, very tiny. It broke my heart when Aafia did not trust anyone, me, the other lawyers……although I could understand it. She reminded me of American/Indian resisters I worked with way back……. her resistance was clearly to the legal process and she saw all the attorneys as part of that process.”

Against the lawyers’ strongest advice, Dr Siddiqui spoke in court herself. She said that she had been tortured, and rendered to the US, and that her children were also tortured in “the secret prison”. The government never rebutted these allegations. But she lost the jury, who looked openly sceptical. “Sadly, she came over as sometimes arrogant and capricious, and sometimes rambling” according to Ms Moreno. Another observer said, “she was very articulate, intelligent, well-spoken, and people mistook that for well functioning.”

With so much confected fear and prejudice against her going back years, a media that did not hold back in its characterization of her as Al Qaeda Mommy, and the impact of six soldiers testifying against her, a New York jury’s guilty verdict was probably a foregone conclusion. But Judge Berman’s sentence that would put her away for life, was not. Ms Moreno described the event, “in my 30 years of trials I have never seen anything like what happened on sentencing day – the judge walked into court and handed out pre-printed power point presentations on how he had come to decide on 86 years…….”

Two veteran lawyers not connected with this case, but with extensive experience in other cases related to the war on terror, described the sentence, respectively, as “extraordinary”, “ridiculous….. outrageous”, and one described the case as “absolutely full of holes.” An appeal is planned.

Meanwhile part of the story of the missing five years is in the heads of two of her three children  - the two older ones who are US citizens. When they emerged – separately - in Pakistan, they were reunited with Dr Siddiqui’s mother, and her sister , Fowzia, who is a Harvard-trained child psychiatrist and neurologist, in Karachi. They have never told their stories, but even the little that is known hints at the horror this family has lived through.

The older one, Ahmed, then aged 12, told his aunt that he only met his mother the day after she was picked up in Ghazni, and that he did not recognize her after five years apart.  Fuzzy film footage of them together being questioned in a press conference the day after his mother was found, has long circulated on the internet. This was the morning before the shooting incident.

Ahmed remembers nothing about what happened to him next, only that he was visited by a US consular official in Afghanistan who told him that he was a US citizen. The official also told him that his brother, Suleman, was dead.

Ahmed remembers being taken out of the taxi where he was with his mother and siblings five years before, and remembers, before he lost consciousness, seeing the baby, six month old Suleman, lying in the road and bleeding. Ahmed, told his aunt that he had been called Ali, and several other different names, while he was in custody, and that when he was told his name now was Ahmed, he knew that meant he was going to be moved again. She initially reported that he was suffering from PTSD and that he needed extensive psychological help.

His sister Maryam, reappeared nearly two years later, in April 2010. She spoke perfect English with an American accent and no Urdu. She was simply dropped off outside the family home in Karachi with a note on a string around her neck. At some stage the Afghan prime minister Hamid Karzai was contacted by the family for help in getting both children back.

There are very powerful vested interests that have worked to prevent Dr Siddiqui from ever giving an account that would be believed of what happened to her. The same interests are still at work trying to prevent the two children from ever becoming witnesses in this backstory of the war on terror. Late last year a kidnap attempt was made on the children, despite the family home being guarded by armed Pakistani police 24 hours a day. Two men, carrying firearms and holding big sacks, were found behind the door of the children’s bedroom by their grandmother. The men ran off when she screamed, and were driven away by a waiting car nearby, before the police guards to the house could catch them.

The release of the tape gives a lever to Pakistani public opinion and Pakistani opposition politicians such as Imran Khan, who have long supported the family, towards forcing an end to this sinister ordeal, with the return home of Dr Siddiqui.

And there is another lever just now. Tina Foster of IJN has written to the Interior Minister Mr Rehman Malik, reminding him that in over a year of meetings he has been promising to help in Dr Siddiqui’s repatriation. The letter says that now, when the US is demanding the return of the US government employee Raymond Davis, held after a shooting incident in Pakistan in which he is alleged to have killed two men, is the government’s best ever chance to negotiate an exchange. The new threat by some congressmen to withhold aid from Pakistan if he is not returned, Hilary Clinton cancelling a meeting with Pakistan’s foreign minister, and the report of possible espionage charges against Davis, ratchet up a pressure that could change the prospects for Dr Siddiqui.

Whether Dr Siddiqui will ever be able to tell the full story of what happened to her over five years is another question. It is hard to imagine making anything close a recovery from such multiple personal and family trauma, in which she was isolated from every solid link with her past identity. Did the ISI use her, or her identity, on errands to Al Qaeda? “A minor facilitator”, as the tape calls her? The contradictions in her own reported words, such as allegedly telling FBI agents while she was in a military hospital shot through the stomach and in restraints, that she was indeed married to the notorious Khaled Sheikh Mohammad’s nephew Baluchi, are manifold, but not any guide to the truth.

In her initial weeks in a US prison in Brooklyn she exhibited deeply disturbed behaviour such as saying she was saving her food for her children. Her mental state has since deteriorated and is very unpredictable, according to lawyer Elaine Sharp who has visited her several times. She is now incarcerated in solitary confinement in the Carswell Federal Medical Centre at Fort Worth, Texas, the only US prison medical facility for women. She has no contact with the outside world. Three of the four prison psychiatrists who interviewed her for the court said they believed she was “malingering” and that her mental illness was faked. But, given the record of some doctors’ contribution to government work in the war on terror, it is hard to find this persuasive in the face of the known facts of her separation from her children in traumatic circumstances, her long isolation, and the documented brutal procedures of the ISI in many other cases.

In the US none of the lawyers, doctors, politicians and intelligence agents who devised and participated in the horrors done to so many individuals as part of the war on terror, have paid any price in public for it. But in this case there is the force of  public opinion in Pakistan which will demand nothing less than public trials of those responsible for ordering Dr Siddiqui’s kidnapping, as well as those who carried it out, and were part of the vast charade that has been played with her over those years.

Victoria Brittain is a former associate foreign editor of the Guardian. Her books include Hidden Lives, Hidden Deaths and Death of Dignity. She has spent much of her working life in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She can be reached at victoriacatherine@yahoo.com