How is it possible that in Spain they arrested, within a week of the terrible Wednesday March 11th train bombings, killing more than 200 commuters, a number of suspects tied to the terrorist act, yet in the US so far only one person, the french citizen Zacarias Moussaoui, has been brought to trial in connection with 9/11? The Spanish have even arrested one of the most significant players in the September 11 plot, al-Qaeda's point man in Spain, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, aka Abu Dahdah. This despite the hundreds of blanket arrests in the US right after 9/11. Despite the 'suspects' taken from Afganhistan and brought to Camp X-Ray in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. Despite the 'suspects' arrested in Iraque. Not that these 'suspects' are known to have anything to do with the actual 9/11 attacks.
In Mid February, 5 British citizens were released from X-Ray and returned to Britain: Shafiq Rasul, 24; Asif Iqbal, 20; and Rhuhel Ahmed, 21 -- all from the English Midlands town of Tipton and dubbed by British tabloids "the Tipton Taliban" -- as well as Tarek Dergoul, 24, of London. The fiftth man, Jamal Udeen, was backpacking through Afghanistan, where he was jailed by the Taliban as a suspected spy. Finally, he was rescued by American troops, only to be promptly packed off to a cage in Guantanamo Bay. All five were released Tuesday, March 9th. Lord Justice Johan Steyn, a senior British judge, recently called the Guantanamo detentions "a monstrous failure of justice." Four other Britons remain incarcerated in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. Speaking for the first time since his release this week, Jamal Udeen, 37, from Manchester, outlined a brutal regime of oppression including being chained to the floor during 12-hour interrogations and having an unknown drug administered by injection. In a separate statement, Tarek Dergoul, 26, from east London, said he had been interrogated at gunpoint, beaten and subjected to "botched medical treatment" thought to involve amputation.
The US is also failing to aid trial trials of 9/11 suspects in other countries. In Germany, Mounir el-Motassadeq, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in February 2003 after being found guilty of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and of playing a logistical role for the members of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg that produced three of the Sept. 11 pilots. Lawyers for Motassadeq asked the court to overturn the verdict, arguing that he was denied a fair trial because the United States had refused to allow testimony by Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Germany's highest court on Thursday overturned the verdict against the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. also citing a refusal by the United States to allow testimony from bin al-Shibh, the Hamburg court acquitted Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second suspect to be tried on charges of involvement in the attacks, of accessory to murder and membership in Al Qaeda. The court made clear that it had acquitted Mzoudi not because it was convinced of his innocence, but because the evidence was not enough to convict him (NYT March 5). Ramzi bin al-Shibh,Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who was allegedly a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks was arrested in September, 2002 in the Pakistani city of Karachi and is in American custody.
And then some people have the nerve to equate the change of power in the Spainish March 15th elections as a victory of al-qaeda, that the Spanish are wimps in fighting terrorism. This reveals tremendous ignorance and roguishness. The Spanish have a much longer and horrible history of domestic terrorism. They have also learned, by experience, that you can't deal with terrorism militarily. Even marginal military victories against terrorism, such as the French in Algeria, come at a huge domestic cost for a democracy, as it requires a state to go beyond the boundaries of a true democracy. I even find it offensive to say that Aznar and the PP lost because of a reaction to the train attacks. It implies that Spanish voters are so superificial they vote as a function of things that happen in the week before the election, whereas discontent with Aznar's domestic policy and the deep divide between his policy of support for the US/War in Iraq and the majority opinion against the war, that these factors accumulated over 4 years of Aznar's governance had little impact upon voter decision. Al-Qaeda may like to state that is a victory for them, but why should the pundits keep repeating their message
Roland Flamini, of UPI, reports on March 16, that the margin between the government and the opposition Socialist Labor Party, or PSOE, had been steadily narrowing since the beginning of 2004. A NOXA poll published in the newspaper Vanguardia on March 7, [before the train attacks] showed that the PSOE had closed the gap with Aznar's PP to 2.5 percent. Then on Monday the 9th, a different poll published in another leading paper, El Pais, showed the PP winning, but losing their absolute majority. The poll showed the PP dropping 11 seats in the Spanish Parliament and the PSOE picking up 16 seats. At the start of election week, it was anybody's race. If anything I like to think of this as a defeat for George W. Bush, for in part the Spanish vote reflected their opposition to Aznar following W's foreign policies and their conviction that they're wrong. That opinion has been strongly for more than a year (today's the anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq). The attacks may have brought this more to the surface, but to say they drove the elections is to undermine the intelligence of spanish voters. To spin the Spanish elections as a victory for Al-qaeda is to devalue democratic transitions, and more seriously to subscribe to the view that Bush's anti-terrorism strategy is the correct one. There are more effective, more civilized, more consensual, more constructive, and less violent means of combating terrorism.
In Mid February, 5 British citizens were released from X-Ray and returned to Britain: Shafiq Rasul, 24; Asif Iqbal, 20; and Rhuhel Ahmed, 21 -- all from the English Midlands town of Tipton and dubbed by British tabloids "the Tipton Taliban" -- as well as Tarek Dergoul, 24, of London. The fiftth man, Jamal Udeen, was backpacking through Afghanistan, where he was jailed by the Taliban as a suspected spy. Finally, he was rescued by American troops, only to be promptly packed off to a cage in Guantanamo Bay. All five were released Tuesday, March 9th. Lord Justice Johan Steyn, a senior British judge, recently called the Guantanamo detentions "a monstrous failure of justice." Four other Britons remain incarcerated in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. Speaking for the first time since his release this week, Jamal Udeen, 37, from Manchester, outlined a brutal regime of oppression including being chained to the floor during 12-hour interrogations and having an unknown drug administered by injection. In a separate statement, Tarek Dergoul, 26, from east London, said he had been interrogated at gunpoint, beaten and subjected to "botched medical treatment" thought to involve amputation.
The US is also failing to aid trial trials of 9/11 suspects in other countries. In Germany, Mounir el-Motassadeq, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in February 2003 after being found guilty of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and of playing a logistical role for the members of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg that produced three of the Sept. 11 pilots. Lawyers for Motassadeq asked the court to overturn the verdict, arguing that he was denied a fair trial because the United States had refused to allow testimony by Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Germany's highest court on Thursday overturned the verdict against the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. also citing a refusal by the United States to allow testimony from bin al-Shibh, the Hamburg court acquitted Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second suspect to be tried on charges of involvement in the attacks, of accessory to murder and membership in Al Qaeda. The court made clear that it had acquitted Mzoudi not because it was convinced of his innocence, but because the evidence was not enough to convict him (NYT March 5). Ramzi bin al-Shibh,Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who was allegedly a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks was arrested in September, 2002 in the Pakistani city of Karachi and is in American custody.
And then some people have the nerve to equate the change of power in the Spainish March 15th elections as a victory of al-qaeda, that the Spanish are wimps in fighting terrorism. This reveals tremendous ignorance and roguishness. The Spanish have a much longer and horrible history of domestic terrorism. They have also learned, by experience, that you can't deal with terrorism militarily. Even marginal military victories against terrorism, such as the French in Algeria, come at a huge domestic cost for a democracy, as it requires a state to go beyond the boundaries of a true democracy. I even find it offensive to say that Aznar and the PP lost because of a reaction to the train attacks. It implies that Spanish voters are so superificial they vote as a function of things that happen in the week before the election, whereas discontent with Aznar's domestic policy and the deep divide between his policy of support for the US/War in Iraq and the majority opinion against the war, that these factors accumulated over 4 years of Aznar's governance had little impact upon voter decision. Al-Qaeda may like to state that is a victory for them, but why should the pundits keep repeating their message
Roland Flamini, of UPI, reports on March 16, that the margin between the government and the opposition Socialist Labor Party, or PSOE, had been steadily narrowing since the beginning of 2004. A NOXA poll published in the newspaper Vanguardia on March 7, [before the train attacks] showed that the PSOE had closed the gap with Aznar's PP to 2.5 percent. Then on Monday the 9th, a different poll published in another leading paper, El Pais, showed the PP winning, but losing their absolute majority. The poll showed the PP dropping 11 seats in the Spanish Parliament and the PSOE picking up 16 seats. At the start of election week, it was anybody's race. If anything I like to think of this as a defeat for George W. Bush, for in part the Spanish vote reflected their opposition to Aznar following W's foreign policies and their conviction that they're wrong. That opinion has been strongly for more than a year (today's the anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq). The attacks may have brought this more to the surface, but to say they drove the elections is to undermine the intelligence of spanish voters. To spin the Spanish elections as a victory for Al-qaeda is to devalue democratic transitions, and more seriously to subscribe to the view that Bush's anti-terrorism strategy is the correct one. There are more effective, more civilized, more consensual, more constructive, and less violent means of combating terrorism.
posted by André Levy @ 7:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home