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Pedro Gonçalves

NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel | World news | The Gu... - 0 views

  • The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
  • the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
  • The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection"
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  • a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to "destroy upon recognition" any communication "that is either to or from an official of the US government". Such communications included those of "officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)".
  • Although Israel is one of America's closest allies, it is not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the US - Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes.
  • In the top-secret 2013 intelligence community budget request, details of which were disclosed by the Washington Post, Israel is identified alongside Iran and China as a target for US cyberattacks.
  • another report, marked top secret and dated September 2007, states that the relationship, while central to US strategy, has become overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel.
  • In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US. "On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems," the official says. "A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US."
Pedro Gonçalves

IDF Civil Administration pushing for land takeover in West Bank - Haaretz Daily Newspap... - 0 views

  • the scope of land in question thwarts the possibility of exchanging areas in a peace settlement, according to the formula presented by U.S. President Barack Obama on May 19. This is because on the western side of the Green Line there is not enough open land to compensate the Palestinians for such an extensive annexation, according to examinations carried out during previous talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
  • the work procedures of the administration's team, dubbed "Blue Line," for demarcating state lands in the West Bank. He writes that the team's major task is to examine the state's declarations of ownership on lands mainly in the 80s and 90s. But the team, which has been working since 1999, is also examining the possibility of declaring lands with undefined ownership as state lands.
  • The document says the team gives priority to territories whose ownership is subject to a court debate or to dispute between settlers and Palestinians and between Palestinians and the state. The team also gives priority to advancing building public institutions, schools, parks and "other matters classified as urgent by the authorized bodies."
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  • The document says the Blue Line team is not required to examine and ascertain land ownership where the ownership has already been determined de facto by illegal construction.
  • The document also says the government's decision of 1979, saying that extending West Bank settlements and building new ones would only be carried out on state-owned land, must be adhered to.
  • Despite the document, dozens of settlements and outposts have been built, with the authorities' knowledge and assistance, on private, Palestinian-owned lands. These include Ofra, Beit El and Eli and the outposts Amona, Givat Asaf and Migron, to name just a few.
  • Dror Etkes, a left-wing activist monitoring construction in the settlements, has found that the administration's team included at least 26 outposts in territories it defines as state lands. This means the state has started a process to legitimize these outposts.
  • In an overwhelming majority of cases the team recommended classifying the examined lands as state lands, but in some cases the team accepted Palestinians' appeals, after appelants produced documents proving their ownership of the land.
Pedro Gonçalves

GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits | UK news | The Gua... - 0 views

  • Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
  • The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.
  • According to the material seen by the Guardian, GCHQ generated this product by attacking both the computers and the telephones of delegates.
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  • The documents suggest that the operation was sanctioned in principle at a senior level in the government of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and that intelligence, including briefings for visiting delegates, was passed to British ministers.
  • A detailed report records the efforts of the NSA's intercept specialists at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire to target and decode encrypted phone calls from London to Moscow which were made by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and other Russian delegates.
  • Another document records that when G20 finance ministers met in London in September, GCHQ again took advantage of the occasion to spy on delegates, identifying the Turkish finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, as a target and listing 15 other junior ministers and officials in his delegation as "possible targets". As with the other G20 spying, there is no suggestion that Simsek and his party were involved in any kind of criminal offence. The document explicitly records a political objective – "to establish Turkey's position on agreements from the April London summit" and their "willingness (or not) to co-operate with the rest of the G20 nations".
  • A second review implies that the analysts' findings were being relayed rapidly to British representatives in the G20 meetings, a negotiating advantage of which their allies and opposite numbers may not have been aware: "In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential."
yosefong

Are you're Asking Yourself, "Where Can I Find a Notary?" - 2 views

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yosefong

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Alex Jhon

Marriage Documents - 0 views

  •  
    Net lawman New Zealand offer best quality marriage and partnership documents, prenuptial agreement and family documents. Written in plain English and Easy to use
Pedro Gonçalves

Abbas: Hamas hoarding weapons in plot to assassinate PA officials - Israel News, Ynetnews - 0 views

  • The Palestinian Authority has intelligence indicating Hamas is planning to attack its officials, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday. Abbas' statement follows the announcement made earlier this week by the PA, in which it confirmed that members of a Hamas cell were arrested, and later confessed to plotting to carry out attacks against Palestinian Authority officials and institutions before Popularity Slip Poll: Hamas popularity falls among Palestinians / Reuters Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre survey says Hamas losing its hold on Palestinian people, as public support of the Islamist group drops from 27.7% to 18.8% since beginning of 2009 Full Story July 7th – the date Fatah and Hamas are expected to sign a reconciliation agreement.
  • P{margin:0;} UL{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;margin-right: 16; padding-right:0;} OL{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;margin-right: 32; padding-right:0;} H3.pHeader {margin-bottom:3px;COLOR: #192862;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;margin-top:0px;} P.pHeader {margin-bottom:3px;COLOR: #192862;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;}var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();var is_major = parseInt(navigator.appVersion);var is_ie = ((agt.indexOf("msie") != -1) && (agt.indexOf("opera") == -1));var is_ie5 = (is_ie && (is_major == 4) && (agt.indexOf("msie 5.0")!=-1) ); function txt_link(type,url,urlAtts) { switch (type){ case 'external' : if( urlAtts != '' ) {var x = window.open(unescape(url),'newWin',urlAtts)} else {document.location = unescape(url);} break; case 'article' : urlStr = '/articles/0,7340,L-to_replace,00.html';url=urlStr.replace('to_replace',url); if( urlAtts == '' || !urlAtts) {document.location = url;} else {var x = window.open(url,'newWin',urlAtts)} break; case 'yaan' : urlStr = '/yaan/0,7340,L-to_replace,00.html';url=urlStr.replace('to_replace',url); if( urlAtts == '' || !urlAtts) {document.location = url;} else {var x = window.open(url,'newWin',urlAtts)} break; case 'category' : urlStr = '/home/0,7340,L-to_replace,00.html'; url=urlStr.replace('to_replace',url); if( urlAtts == '' || !urlAtts) {document.location = url;} else {var x = window.open(url,'newWin',urlAtts)} break; } } function setDbLinkCategory(url) {eval(unescape(url));} The Palestinian Authority has intelligence indicating Hamas is planning to attack its officials, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday. Abbas' statement follows the announcement made earlier this week by the PA, in which it confirmed that members of a Hamas cell were arrested, and later confessed to plotting to carry out attacks against Palestinian Authority officials and institutions
  • In an interview with Russian television, Abbas said: "The Palestinian Authority is closely monitoring the situation, and when the time is right we will expose those involved in this affair. For now we must wait. We have verified information that Hamas is hoarding weapons and explosives. The Authority has found two tons of explosives belonging to Hamas."  
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  • The Palestinian president said that Hamas was also amassing light, medium and heavy arms, machine guns, RPG launchers, and presidential guard uniforms. "We are monitoring the situation, we know there is a cell seeking to carry out assassinations of senior PA officials."
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Americas | US in nuclear disclosure blunder - 0 views

  • A document providing confidential details of US civilian nuclear sites was accidentally posted on the internet, the government has admitted.The 266-page document included the precise location of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons, the Obama administration said.
  • The document, which lists itself as "sensitive but unclassified", contains maps and information on hundreds of US civilian nuclear sites. No military installations are included but the document does cover the nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia.
  • It said the most serious disclosure was on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, known as the Fort Knox of highly enriched uranium, the leading fuel for nuclear weapons.
Argos Media

Pelosi and CIA Clash Over Contents of Key Briefing - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • he top congressional Democrat on Thursday accused the Central Intelligence Agency of deceiving her about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.
  • The accusation pits House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against the CIA in a war of words over whether she was specifically told in September 2002 that waterboarding was being used on detainees. Republicans accuse her of being hypocritical for criticizing Bush-era interrogation techniques, and say she should have spoken out against them when she was first briefed if she opposed their use.
  • At a contentious news conference Thursday, Mrs. Pelosi said that during the 2002 briefing, "we were told that waterboarding was not being used." Mrs. Pelosi acknowledged that as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, she was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, about waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that critics, including President Barack Obama, call torture. But she said CIA officials told her and other lawmakers only that the Justice Department had concluded the procedure was legal.
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  • A CIA report released last week said that at the briefing, officials described the use of interrogation techniques on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah, who had been waterboarded 83 times the month before.
  • "It is not the policy of this Agency to mislead the United States Congress," CIA spokesman George Little said. CIA officials on Thursday stood by their description of the briefing. CIA Director Leon Panetta has said it would be up to Congress to determine whether notes made by agency personnel at the time they briefed lawmakers were accurate.
  • When Mrs. Pelosi's successor on the committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D., Calif.), learned in a February 2003 briefing that waterboarding was being used, she wrote a letter to the administration objecting. But Democrats said it had no effect.
  • while some prominent Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, favor a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush-era harsh interrogations, Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) do not.
  • Ms. Pelosi's fellow Democrats took the unusual step of lashing out at the CIA. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D., Texas) said the CIA briefing Ms. Pelosi received was "inaccurate and incomplete" because she wasn't told that waterboarding was already being employed.
  • At the same time, the CIA has denied a request by former Vice President Dick Cheney to declassify documents that he said would show the harsh interrogations were effective. The agency isn't permitted to declassify documents that are the subject of pending lawsuits, it said.
  • Human-rights groups have brought a lawsuit demanding release of the documents. Those groups said Thursday that their lawsuit shouldn't stand in the way of making the information public.
Pedro Gonçalves

Mousavi to disclose tell-all documents - 0 views

  • defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi says he will present documents that prove electoral fraud.
  • a number of Iranian scholars are set to form a committee to preserve the vote of the people. The committee aims to "make public documents proving fraud and irregularities in the election," Mousavi said in his latest statement issued on Wednesday.
  • The opposition leader added that the committee would pursue its objections to the vote result through the judiciary. "I will join this committee as well," Mousavi confirmed.
Argos Media

Europe's 'Special Interrogations': New Evidence of Torture Prison in Poland - SPIEGEL O... - 0 views

  • For more than a year now, Warsaw public prosecutor Robert Majewski has been investigating former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller's government on allegations of abuse of office. At issue is whether sovereignty over Polish territory was relinquished, and whether former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his left-leaning Social Democratic government gave the CIA free reign over sections of the Stare Kiejkuty military base for the agency's extraterritorial torture interrogations.
  • "No European country is so sincerely and vigorously investigating former members of the government as is currently the case in Poland," says Wolfgang Kaleck from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, which supports the investigations.
  • The public prosecutor's office has also launched a probe to determine whether the Polish intelligence agency made 20 of its agents available to the CIA, as was recently reported by the conservative Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita. A former CIA official confirmed this information to SPIEGEL. There was reportedly a document issued by the intelligence agency that mentioned both the 20 Polish agents and the transfer of the military base to the Americans. Two members of a parliamentary investigative committee in Warsaw had an opportunity to view this document in late 2005, but it has since disappeared.
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  • Similar conclusions were reached by the second investigative report on CIA kidnappings in Europe, which was submitted two years ago by the special investigator of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty
  • There are rumors circulating that one of the most important interrogators of Sheikh Mohammed, an American named Deuce Martinez -- the man who didn't torture him, but rather had the task of gently coaxing information out of him -- was in Poland at the time. That is the proof that's still missing.
  • Journalist Mariusz Kowalewski at Rzeczpospolita and two colleagues have been searching for months now for proof of the existence of a secret CIA base in Poland. The journalists have discovered flight record books from Szymany that had been declared lost, and based on refueling receipts and currency exchange rates, they have reconstructed flights and routes, and spoken with informants. Over the past few weeks, their newspaper and the television network TVP Info have revealed new details on an almost daily basis.
  • According to Marty's report, members of the former Polish military intelligence and counterintelligence agency, WSI, were given positions with the border police, customs and airport administration to safeguard the activities of the CIA. "The latest revelations in Poland fully corroborate my evidence, which is based on testimony by insiders and documents that have been leaked to me," says the investigator today. Now, under the "dynamic force of the truth" that Obama has unleashed, Marty says that Europeans must finally reveal "which governments tolerated and supported the illegal practices of the CIA."
  • "The order to give the CIA everything they needed came from the very top, from the president," a member of the Polish military intelligence agency told the Marty team in 2007. Kwasniewski denies this. He says that there was close intelligence corporation with the US, but no prisons on Polish soil.
  • It's very possible that the debate on torture and responsibility which is currently being conducted in the US will soon also reach Europe. After all, Germany granted the US flyover rights and dropped its bid to extradite 13 CIA operatives in the case of Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen who claims he was abducted by the Americans. The Italian intelligence agency allegedly assisted the CIA with the kidnapping in Milan of the Islamic cleric Abu Omar. Britain's intelligence agency, MI6, reportedly delivered information directly to CIA agents who were conducting interrogations in Morocco. And there are also reports of a secret prison in Romania.
Argos Media

Interrogation Memos Detail Psychologists' Involvement; Ethicists Outraged - washingtonp... - 0 views

  • When the CIA began what it called an "increased pressure phase" with captured terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida in the summer of 2002, its first step was to limit the detainee's human contact to just two people. One was the CIA interrogator, the other a psychologist.
  • During the extraordinary weeks that followed, it was the psychologist who apparently played the more critical role. According to newly released Justice Department documents, the psychologist provided ideas, practical advice and even legal justification for interrogation methods that would break Abu Zubaida, physically and mentally. Extreme sleep deprivation, waterboarding, the use of insects to provoke fear -- all were deemed acceptable, in part because the psychologist said so
  • "No severe mental pain or suffering would have been inflicted," a Justice Department lawyer said in a 2002 memo explaining why waterboarding, or simulated drowning, should not be considered torture.
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  • the documents show a steady stream of psychologists, physicians and other health officials who both kept detainees alive and actively participated in designing the interrogation program and monitoring its implementation. Their presence also enabled the government to argue that the interrogations did not include torture.
  • The role of health professionals as described in the documents has prompted a renewed outcry from ethicists who say the conduct of psychologists and supervising physicians violated basic standards of their professions.
  • "The health professionals involved in the CIA program broke the law and shame the bedrock ethical traditions of medicine and psychology," said Frank Donaghue, chief executive of Physicians for Human Rights, an international advocacy group made up of physicians opposed to torture. "All psychologists and physicians found to be involved in the torture of detainees must lose their license and never be allowed to practice again."
  • The alleged actions of medical professionals in the secret prisons are viewed as particularly troubling by an array of groups, including the American Medical Association and the International Committee of the Red Cross. AMA policies state that physicians "must not be present when torture is used or threatened." The guidelines allow doctors to treat detainees only "if doing so is in their [detainees'] best interest" and not merely to monitor their health "so that torture can begin or continue."
Argos Media

Secret police intelligence was given to E.ON before planned demo | UK news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Government officials handed confidential police intelligence about environmental activists to the energy giant E.ON before a planned peaceful demonstration, according to private emails seen by the Guardian.
  • Correspondence between civil servants and security officials at the company reveals how intelligence was shared about the peaceful direct action group Climate Camp in the run-up to the demonstration at Kingsnorth, the proposed site of a new coal-fired power station in north Kent.
  • Intelligence passed to the energy firm by officials from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) included detailed information about the movements of protesters and their meetings. E.ON was also given a secret strategy document written by environmental campaigners and information from the Police National Information and Coordination Centre (PNICC), which gathers national and international intelligence for emergency planning.
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  • BERR officials passed a strategy document belonging to the "environmental protest community" to E.ON, saying: "If you haven't seen this then you will be interested in its contents."• Government officials forwarded a Metropolitan police intelligence document to E.ON, detailing the movements and whereabouts of climate protesters in the run-up to demonstration.• E.ON passed its planning strategy for the protest to the department's civil servants, adding: "Contact numbers will follow."• BERR and E.ON tried to share information about their media strategies before the protest, and civil servants asked the energy company for press contacts for EDF, BP and Kent police.
  • Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the sharing of police intelligence between BERR and E.ON was a serious abuse of power. "The government is in danger of turning police constables into little more than bouncers and private security guards for big business. Police should be used to protect potential victims but also to facilitate people's right to protest," she said.
  • One email from E.ON to BERR on 24 July gave details of the company's security strategy. In another, sent on 28 July, BERR forwards intelligence from the PNICC, detailing activists' movements, listing times, dates and numbers involved.
Pedro Gonçalves

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news | The ... - 0 views

  • The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
  • The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.
  • The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls".
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  • The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.
  • The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such "metadata" is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.
  • The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
  • In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that "there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.""We believe," they wrote, "that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted" the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.
  • The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth" and was "using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.These recent events reflect how profoundly the NSA's mission has transformed from an agency exclusively devoted to foreign intelligence gathering, into one that focuses increasingly on domestic communications.
Alex Jhon

Separation Agreements - 0 views

Net Lawman NZ provides best quality marriage documents, prenuptial agreements and contracts in plain English. Easy to use.

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started by Alex Jhon on 23 Dec 11 no follow-up yet
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran says it has evidence U.S. behind scientist's killing | Reuters - 0 views

  • "We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported."The documents clearly show that this terrorist act was carried out with the direct involvement of CIA-linked agents."
  • State TV said a "letter of condemnation" had also been sent to the British government, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists had "started exactly after the British official John Sawers declared the beginning of intelligence operations against Iran."
  • In 2010, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service Sawers said one of the agency's roles was to investigate efforts by states to build nuclear weapons in violation of their international legal obligations and identify ways to slow down their access to vital materials and technology.
Alex Jhon

Internet service provider agreement - 0 views

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    This is a comprehensive business agreement for you to buy from an individual or a company or any other organisation. If you are buying the actual company, this agreement is not suitable. See our company sale document section.
Argos Media

Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails - 0 views

  • The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.
  • The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document. The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
  • At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.
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  • Often using the detainee's own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken "to the verge of death and back," according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers. "On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."
  • President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003. President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies.
  • Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep. At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques. Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said. "The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC. After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said. After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | UK | 'Society must help' tackle terror - 0 views

  • Jacqui Smith said Whitehall needed "to enlist the widest possible range of support" as she unveiled a new UK terror strategy. The plans include training 60,000 workers in how to stay vigilant for terrorist activity and what to do in the event of an attack.
  • The strategy also warns nuclear weapons could fall into terrorist hands. It says the al-Qaeda leadership is likely to fragment, but the threat from those it inspires will remain.
  • Ms Smith said the "extremely broad-ranging" strategy would include ways of tackling radicalisation, supporting mainstream Muslim voices, preparing for the event of an attack and reaching out for support to the wider community.
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  • Last month, sources told the BBC's Panorama programme that conservative Muslims who teach that Islam is incompatible with Western democracy will be challenged as part of a new approach. A senior Whitehall source said that Muslim leaders who urged separation would be isolated and publicly rejected, even if their comments fell within the law.
  • The strategy also puts a renewed emphasis on the extreme risks from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons if they get into the hands of terrorists.
  • The counter-terrorism document, being published by the Home Office, will go into more detail than ever before, with Ms Smith saying counter-terrorism was "no longer something you can do behind closed doors and in secret". It will reflect intelligence opinion that the biggest threat to the UK comes from al-Qaeda-linked groups and will also take into account recent attacks on hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai. The paper - called Contest Two - will update the Contest strategy developed by the Home Office in 2003, which was later detailed in the Countering International Terrorism document released in 2006. By 2011, Britain will be spending £3.5bn a year on counter-terrorism, the Home Office has said. The number of police working on counter-terrorism has risen to 3,000 from 1,700 in 2003.
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