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News Release Archive | terrorism | Accuracy.Org

U.S. in Yemen: Escalating War, Stifling Speech

May 16, 2012

Human Rights Information and Training Center in Yemen states: "An ongoing heavy and regular attack by the military forces is targeting and destroying Taiz city's peaceful neighborhoods."

AP is reporting: “Government troops and warplanes pounded al-Qaida positions in southern Yemen on Wednesday, killing at least 29 militants as part of a ramped up campaign against the group, military officials said.”

IZZA-DEEN EL ASBAHI, via Ryme Katkhouda, rymepmc at gmail.com or Kinda Mohamadieh, kinda.mohamadieh at annd.org
El Asbahi is founder and director of the Human Rights Information and Training Center in Yemen. He said today: “The U.S. military and the Yemeni government frequently launch these attacks and claim they are killing al-Qaida fighters. But the fact is quite often they are killing regular people, or political opponents of the regime who are not al-Qaida. This ends up having the effect of causing more resentment and gives al-Qaida more recruits. After the start of the uprising a year ago, the U.S. declared they would get rid of al-Qaida in a matter of three weeks. Today al-Qaida controls a region ten times the size of Bahrain with sea port access.”

This week El Asbahi is in Washington, D.C. with a delegation of the Arab NGO Network for Development, which also includes representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia and other Arab countries.

He added: “Military intervention and use of violence has left a negative impact and does not achieve the stated goal of eliminating terrorism. The elimination of terrorism starts with the support of local development. Airplane and drone bombings nurture terrorism as they enroll more people struggling with poverty, anger and fear with al-Qaida which gives them a salary and a Kalashnikov to empty their anger. While in city of Taiz, a stronghold of the left and revolution in Yemen, they still talk fondly of U.S. aid and the ‘Kennedy project’ of drinking water distribution.”

The Arab NGO delegation just released a paper, “Overview and Suggestions for Improving Key Areas in U.S. Foreign Policy Towards the Arab Region.” For a copy and profiles of the delegates, see here.

While most of the members of the delegation can speak English, El Asbahi would require Arabic translation, which can be provided.

The Washington Post is reporting: “President Obama issued an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who ‘obstructs’ implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen.

“The unusual order, which administration officials said also targets U.S. citizens who engage in activity deemed to threaten Yemen’s security or political stability, is the first issued for Yemen that does not directly relate to counterterrorism.”

IBRAHAM QATABI, Ibraham.Qatabi at gmail.com
Qatabi is a Yemeni American human rights activist and a legal worker with Center for Constitutional Rights specializing in Yemen. He said today: “The USG isn’t naming groups or people who it’s illegal to work with, so any sensible person would be very cautious about working with anyone they aren’t 100 percent sure the USG approves of. In fact, the USG’s officials have flat out told the press that the sanctions are a ‘deterrent’ to ‘make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition’ to think again — in other words, think again before you work with any democracy activists who we think are ‘spoiling the transition’ to the U.S. government’s favored candidate for leadership. It reminds me of something the government said in the 9th Circuit in HLP v. Holder — that the aim of these broadly-worded sanctions regimes, capable of criminalizing speech, is to make groups the U.S. government disfavors so ‘radioactive’ that American citizens won’t even want to go near them. That’s not democracy – either here or in Yemen.”

See on the White House website: “Executive Order — Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen.”

Background: Obama urged the Yemeni dictator Saheh to keep the journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in prison. This was apparently because Shaye was exposing that U.S. strikes were killing civilians. See “Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?” by Jeremy Scahill.

Marcy Wheeler today notes that the new executive order could be used to target Scahill: “The Jeremy Scahill Yemen Executive Order”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Ibraham Qatabi, Izza-Deen el Asbahi, Middle East, military, terrorism, war, yemen,

High-Ranking Officials Investigated About Iranian “Terrorist” Group

March 29, 2012
Rudy Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi

Rudy Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi

The columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday: “Jeremiah Goulka worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an oft-cited study on the group. MEK has been in the news of late because a high-powered bipartisan cast of former Washington officials have established close ties with the group and have been vocally advocating on its behalf, often in exchange for large payments, despite MEK’s having been formally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization. That close association on the part of numerous Washington officials with a Terrorist organization has led to a formal federal investigation of those officials. …

“Supporters of MEK have filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to force the State Department to decide within 30 days whether to remove MEK from the list of designated Terrorist organizations (State Department officials have previously indicated they are considering doing so). … The U.S. list of Terrorist organizations (like its list of state sponsors of Terrorism) has little or nothing to do with who are and are not actually Terrorists; it is, instead, simply an instrument used to reward those who comply with U.S. dictates (you’re no longer a Terrorist) and to punish those who refuse (you are hereby deemed Terrorists).”

JEREMIAH GOULKA, jgoulka at gmail.com
Available for a limited number of interviews, Goulka wrote two pieces featured by Greenwald. In one, “The Iran War Hawks’ Favorite Cult Group,” Goulka writes: “MEK members must report their private sexual thoughts at group meetings and endure public shaming. In a Catch-22, those who deny having sexual thoughts are accused of hiding them and shamed, too. The cult has but one purpose: to put itself in charge in Iran. …”

Goulka adds that group leader Maryam Rajavi “trumpets the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and gives the NCRI [National Council of Resistance of Iran, the propaganda arm of the MEK] credit for discovering Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. That self-serving claim is doubtful, as is the NCRI’s posture as a democratic government-in-waiting. While its propaganda arm espouses Western values to Western audiences, the MEK continues to force-feed its doctrine to members who may not criticize the Rajavis and are not free to leave the Ashraf compound.”

In the second piece, “Investigations Begin into MEK Supporters,” Goulka writes: “The U.S. Treasury Department has begun an investigation into nearly two dozen prominent former government officials who have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to promote the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident cult group that has been designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) since 1997. … These officials include several prominent George W. Bush administration anti-terror officials like Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, Homeland Security advisor Frances Fragos Townsend, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, UN ambassador John Bolton; as well as former Republican mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani; former Democratic governors Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Howard Dean of Vermont; ex-FBI director Louis Freeh; and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton. These former officials have given speeches at home and abroad urging the State Department to remove the MEK from the FTO list.”

Tagged With: Glenn Greenwald, Iran, Jeremiah Goulka, MEK, Middle East, Mujahedin-e Khalq, People's Mujahedin of Iran, terrorism,

Is U.S. “Counter-Terrorism” Pushing Pakistan to Brink?

July 14, 2011

AP reports “Gen. David Petraeus, the outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan [and incoming CIA director], and his soon-to-be successor met with top military leaders in Pakistan on Thursday.” Meanwhile, the head of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, is in Washington, D.C. meeting with top U.S. officials.

FRED BRANFMAN, fredbranfman at aol.com
Branfman just wrote “Obama’s Secret Wars: How Our Shady Counter-Terrorism Policies Are More Dangerous Than Terrorism.” Branfman is best known for having exposed the U.S. and CIA secret war in Laos.

He said today: “Although packaged as involving only ‘surgical’ strikes, the U.S. ‘counter-terrorism strategy’ already involves tens of thousands of ‘special operations’ troops and thousands of drones in six Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Seven thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq alone are engaged in round-the-clock assassinations.

“The Los Angeles Times reported on President Obama’s new ‘National Strategy for Counterterrorism’ released on June 29, writing that ‘John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, said in a speech that … [in Afghanistan and Pakistan] the U.S. has been delivering ‘precise and overwhelming force’ against militants [and] ‘there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.’

“In Pakistan, perhaps the major laboratory for U.S. ‘counter-terrorism’ strategy to date, any success in killing 56 named ‘al-Qaeda leaders’ out of a total of 1,900 victims of drone attacks, which includes many civilians unlike Mr. Brennan’s delusional claims, must be weighed against the fact that U.S. policy has contributed to a vast increase in overall militant strength. U.S. drone strikes and pressure on the Pakistani military to attack tribal areas have driven many militants east into Karachi and the Punjabi heartland, vastly increasing their numbers and creating countless new potential suicide bombers, unifying militant groups and seeing incidents of reported terrorism quadruple from an annual average in 2004-8 of 470 to 1723 in 2009-10.

“U.S. ‘counter-terrorism’ has also increased a growing nuclear threat: U.S. ‘counter-terror’ drone strikes have contributed to 59 percent of Pakistanis — over 110 million people — now regarding the U.S. as their ‘enemy.’ This virulently anti-U.S. public opinion, according to former U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, is the main reason the Pakistani government has refused to cooperate with the U.S. in safeguarding its nuclear stockpile, the world’s fastest growing and least secure; increasing danger of a pro-extremist military coup. Although critics are correct in criticizing a corrupt and duplicitous Pakistani government and military, the incontrovertible fact is that the focus on U.S. ‘counter-terrorism’ is making the situation there far, far worse and increasing the likelihood of a coup that would be devastating to U.S. interests.”

Branfman’s previous articles include “WikiLeaks Exposes the Danger of Pakistan’s Nukes.”

Tagged With: counter-terrorism, nuclear, Pakistan, terrorism,