mail.live.com | Dec 2, 2009

by Akhtar Jamal

Islamabad—An American newsmagazine has revealed a detailed report on the secretive activities of Blackwater elements in Pakistan and claimed that they were working on a plan to kill suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Karachi.

Quoting a reliable source the magazine said that “the programme is so ‘compartmentalized’ that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.”

The Nation also claimed that “the previously unreported programme, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination programme that the agency’s director, Leon Panetta, announced he had cancelled in June 2009.”

The news report quoted a spokesman of Xe as saying that “Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government.” Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo was also quoted as saying in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has “no other operations of any kind in Pakistan.”

However, a former senior executive at Blackwater was quoted as confirming the “military intelligence source’s claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counter terrorism and covert operations force within the military.”

He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan.

He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to the report the covert JSOC programme with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan.

Blackwater’s operations in Pakistan, the source told the The Nation, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. “It’s Blackwater via JSOC, and it’s a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis.”

The report added that “the main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations centre.”

According to the military intelligence source quoted by The Nation “Blackwater’s work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagramme Air Base in neighbouring Afghanistan,. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince.

The US military intelligence source was quoted that Blackwater’s classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater executive, “The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside because what you’re doing is really one military guy to another.” Blackwater’s first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have “conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up,” he said, adding, “They have a sizable force in Pakistan—not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way—but to support a legitimate contract that’s classified for JSOC.”

The Nation quoted the source that “Blackwater’s Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT “was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it.”

It further added that “some of the Blackwater personnel work undercover as aid workers. “Nobody even gives them a second thought.”

The military intelligence source was quoted as adding that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as “Qatar cubed,” in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq.

Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. “The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets,” he said. “It’s not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people.”

The American news magazine claimed that “instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater.”

A former Blackwater executive was also quoted as saying that “Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. “

The magazine also quoted federal lobbying records as saying that “Kestral recently hired former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues “regarding [Kestral’s] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States.”

It added that “Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan.”

The New York-based news magazine said “As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defence Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations.”

The magazine quoted Washington Post as reporting that the SSB was created using “reprogrammemed” funds “without explicit congressional authority or appropriation.” The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA’s authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end “near total dependence on CIA.”

The Nation quoted Christian Science Monitor as recently reporting that Blackwater “provides security for a US-backed aid project” in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. It also quoted the Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke as saying recently that “We have no contracts in Pakistan,” and “We’ve been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there.”

The comprehensive story on “Blackwater’s secret war in Pakistan” is written by The Nation’s Special Correspondent Jeremy Scahill who is also the author of the best selling novel Blackwater.

Raw Story | Nov 23, 2009

By Stephen C. Webster

The Obama administration is using mercenaries with the firm formerly known as Blackwater to kidnap and assassinate high value targets in Pakistan, according to a published report.

The program, operated out of the US Joint Special Operations Command, “is so ‘compartmentalized’ that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence,” an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the program told The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill.

Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, is also allegedly involved in intelligence collection for a drone bombing campaign in the country.

Scahill’s report added: “A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. ‘We don’t have any contracts to do that work for us. We don’t contract that kind of work out, period,’ the official said. ‘There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services.’ The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency’s director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. ‘This is a parallel operation to the CIA,’ said the source. ‘They are two separate beasts.’”

A Blackwater spokesman told The Nation that none of its forces are operating in Pakistan. However, a “former senior executive at Blackwater” told Scahill that Xe’s mercs are indeed working in Pakistan, sometimes employed by the country’s government to operate alongside soldiers. The arrangement allows the Pakistani government to deny any U.S. military presence in the country, while allowing them to tap former U.S. special forces members for high-risk missions.
Story continues below…

Scahill added that the CIA is also employing the firm in parallel operations.

“Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that,” Scahill’s source reportedly said. “Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don’t care. If there’s one person they’re going after and there’s thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That’s the mentality. They’re not accountable to anybody and they know that. It’s an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?”

During the Bush administration, the JSOC was reportedly being commanded by the vice president’s office, effectively making them Dick Cheney’s own “executive assassination squad,” according to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.

President Obama’s top official on the occupation of Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, oversaw the JSOC from September 2003 to August 2008.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, Scahill reported.

Daily Mail | Nov 22, 2009

By Brendan Carlin

Secret geroes: Little is known about the SAS beyond their emblem

The incredible heroics of the Special Forces could be revealed for the first time under plans to lift their veil of secrecy.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that the Government may scrap the practice of never commenting on the clandestine operations of the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS).

A confidential Ministry of Defence review is considering dropping the publicity ban and shedding more light on the vital work of these forces. That could include the MoD confirming the names and details of members killed in action on operations.

But many within the MoD and the Armed Forces believe the publicity ban is vital for the elite soldiers’ security.

‘People are very divided on this. Some feel the forces don’t get the recognition for what they do. Others say that the rules are there to protect them,’ said a source.

Even the existence of the internal review, understood to have been ordered by Defence ministers, was being regarded as a State secret. The MoD yesterday said it was not aware that the policy was being reconsidered.

But authoritative sources later confirmed that officials had been debating the merits of bringing Special Forces’ work into the open – with the strict proviso it did not endanger them.

Some senior Government figures believe revealing more information about the forces could help win support for the war in Afghanistan.

One official said: ‘At present we cannot even name personnel if they are killed on operation.’

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth is understood to be sympathetic to the idea.

But Tory defence spokesman Liam Fox warned: ‘War is not a PR exercise. If we can give our troops adequate praise without compromising them, that’s one thing, but we must never allow missions to become media-led.’

_________

Related

MI5 & the IRA

This report examines the role played by British intelligence and the BritishIRA Army in collusion with the IRA and other paramilitary terrorist organizations in supplying weapons and explosives, allowing bombings to go forward, and even committing murder in the name of “fighting terror.”

Magomed Hazbiyev, the companion-in-arms of killed opposition activist Maksharip Aushev, mourns over his body at Aushev’s father’s house in Nazran, southern Russia October 25, 2009. REUTERS/Kazbek Basayev

Opposition figure in Ingushetia is killed

Human rights activist had led protests against Russian security forces

Washington Post | Oct 26, 2009

By Philip P. Pan

MOSCOW — A popular opposition figure in Russia’s restive Ingushetia province was gunned down Sunday morning in the latest killing of a government critic in the North Caucasus, prompting outrage from human rights groups and raising fears of further violence in the region.

Maksharip Aushev, a businessman who had led mass protests against alleged abuses by the government’s security forces, was driving on a major highway in the neighboring province of Kabardino-Balkaria when a passing vehicle sprayed his car with more than 60 bullets, authorities said. The attack also seriously wounded a passenger.

Colleagues condemned the slaying as an attempt to silence voices critical of the authorities. They said it sent an especially chilling message because Aushev held a post on a human rights council established by Moscow and enjoyed the support of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the local governor appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev last year.

Yevkurov has reached out to human rights activists and the opposition, offering them a degree of protection, but Aushev’s killing suggests that he, and by extension the Kremlin, may be losing control over the overlapping law enforcement agencies fighting a growing Islamist insurgency in the region.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Aushev accused the security forces of conducting an indiscriminate campaign of abductions, torture and killings in Ingushetia that had only strengthened the rebels. He singled out the powerful Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the KGB, as well as local police controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s strongman in neighboring Chechnya.

“I don’t consider them officers. I consider them bandits,” Aushev said over dinner during the wedding of one of his sons.

Two years ago, another son and a nephew were abducted, taken to Chechnya and tortured. Aushev blamed the FSB and won their release by organizing huge street protests, emerging as one of the most outspoken leaders of the opposition to Ingushetia’s governor at the time, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and an ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

After another opposition figure, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot to death in police custody last year, Aushev agreed to take over his Web site, a news operation that infuriated the authorities with its reports on corruption and human rights violations. He later led protests that helped persuade the Kremlin to fire Zyazikov and bring in Yevkurov.

In a show of support for the new governor, Aushev said he retired from politics and no longer considered himself a member of the opposition. But he had no illusions about the new governor’s ability to rein in the security forces. “From day one, they’ve been sabotaging him, undermining his authority and continuing with the illegal executions and torture,” he said.

Aushev added that the FSB still considered him “enemy number one.”

A month ago, the security forces stopped his car and attempted to take him into custody after he left a meeting with the government. He escaped only because a crowd of motorists, including an aide to the governor, surrounded him.

“If I had been a half-meter closer, they would have tied me up and I would have disappeared without a trace,” he told Caucasian Knot, a Web site that covers the region.

In a statement Sunday, Yevkurov described Aushev’s slaying as a “heinous crime intended to destabilize the region” and vowed to do everything in his power to punish the killers.

One of the governor’s aides, Musa Pliyev, a former member of the opposition who had worked closely with Aushev, said there was little doubt “the murder was a political one” but stopped short of blaming the security services.

“If the authorities who should guarantee the freedom and safety of their citizens fail to do this, then they must be blamed for Aushev’s death and many other human rights activists and journalists who have been killed recently,” he added.

The shooting follows the execution-style killings of two charity workers in the Chechen capital of Grozny in August and of Natalya Estemirova, Chechnya’s most prominent human rights activist, whose body was found in Ingushetia in July.

U.N. experts grill Russia on Politkovskaya, other murders, ask about independence of judges, Chechnya abductions

Reuters | Oct 15, 2009

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Russia was grilled on Thursday by U.N. human rights experts over murders of journalists and activists, the independence of its judiciary and abductions during counter-terrorism campaigns in Chechnya.

Georgy Matyushkin, deputy justice minister, led a 24-member delegation sent to defend Russia’s record at the U.N. Human Rights Committee, where debate continues on Friday.

The discussion came one day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Moscow and called on Russia to prevent attacks on activists challenging the Kremlin. [ID:nLE140486]

“The physical danger to people who speak out on human rights in Russia is still striking,” said Ruth Wedgwood, an American expert on the U.N. panel. “People who are either journalists or human rights activists seem to have a very high mortality rate.”

Wedgwood cited the unsolved murder cases of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, her Novaya Gazeta newspaper colleague Anastasia Baburova, Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov and human rights activist Natalia Estemirova.

Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, was shot entering her Moscow home on Oct. 7, 2006. Her family voiced doubts last week about the guilt of two men accused of playing a role in her killing and about the Kremlin’s will to catch the main suspects. “I think that the past still hangs heavily on society. Things from the past can set the tone of lawlessness which is very hard to tamp down,” added Wedgwood, an international law professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

Committee members also voiced concerns at the effectiveness of criminal investigations in Russia, discrimination against homosexuals in the workplace, police raids on gay clubs and hate speech by some officials.

Nigel Rodley, a British committee member, cited allegations that people were mistreated in police custody in Russia, but acknowledged that the situation had improved since he visited the country as U.N. torture investigator in 1994.

A new mechanism for monitoring human rights in places of detention was encouraging and should help curb abuses, he said.

“Those responsible for questioning (detainees) and interrogations need to know that they don’t know when they might be caught in the act,” Rodley said.

The U.N. committee, composed of 18 independent experts, is examining the compliance of five states including Russia with an international treaty on civil and political rights. Its findings will be issued at the end of the three-week session on Oct. 30. (Editing by Diana Abdallah)

NY Times | Oct 17, 2009

By Scott Shane

WASHINGTON — Is the CIA covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not. But you would not know it from the agency’s behavior.

For six years, the CIA has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The agency says it is only protecting legitimate secrets.

The files in question involve the curious career of George Joannides, the case officer who oversaw and helped finance the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations but never told the committee of his earlier role.

That concealment has fueled suspicion that Joannides’ real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about CIA activities.

The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, a journalist and author who has pursued the files ever since, represented by a Washington lawyer specializing in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

“The CIA’s conduct is maddening,” said Morley, 51, a former Washington Post reporter.

After years of meticulous reporting on Joannides, who died at age 68 in 1990, he is convinced that there is more to learn. “I know there’s a story here,” Morley said. “The confirmation is that the CIA treats these documents as extremely sensitive.”

Gerald Posner, the author of an anti-conspiracy account of the Kennedy assassination, “Case Closed,” said the CIA’s withholding of such aged documents is “a perfect example of why nobody trusts the agency.”

Posner said that if there really were something explosive involving the CIA and Kennedy, it would not be in the files.

The CIA last year released material confirming Joannides’ involvement with the Cubans. But the agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s and refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others.

Lee Harvey Oswald after his arrest on Nov. 22, 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. (UPI Photo/Files)

UPI | Oct. 17, 2009

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (UPI) — A U.S. judge says the CIA probably misled the Assassination Records Review Board’s 1990s investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Federal Judge John Tunheim, who served in 1994 and 1995 as the chairman of the congressionally created board, told The New York Times evidence unearthed by a lawsuit indicates the agency wasn’t forthcoming about the role of its liaison to the board, the late CIA agent George Joannides.

“I think we were probably misled by the agency,” Tunheim said, referring to since-revealed records that dealt with Joannides’ role within the agency.

The documents showed that even as he served as the CIA liaison to the board, as it examined the activities of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Kennedy’s death, Joannides’ role as the case officer overseeing Miami dissident Cuban groups in 1963 was never revealed, the Times said Saturday.

Oswald physically clashed with the Cuban dissidents two months before the assassination and debated them on a radio program.

“If we’d known of his role in Miami in 1963, we would have pressed for all his records,” Tunheim told the newspaper.

AP | Sep 30, 2009

By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN

UNITED NATIONS — Nepal’s Maoist-dominated government promised Saturday to establish a “disappearance commission” to investigate political killings that the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says were perpetrated by communist insurgents fighting to overthrow the monarchy.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal spoke to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday, telling other nations: “We have come a long way in terms of our transition from conflict.”

“Like in every post-conflict situation, there are ups and downs and obstacles in the way. Managing the legacy of the violent past with justice and reconciliation and mainstreaming all the forces into a democratic order are major challenges before us,” he said.

The prime minister promised that his government “is determined to establish a truth and reconciliation commission and a disappearance commission as a part of ensuring transitional justice and restoring social harmony and peace.”

The pledge came a day after the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, Richard Bennett, released a letter demanding that the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) allow police to get to the bottom of several assassinations and a bus bombing.

The U.N. envoy’s letter wanted answers to the killings of businessman Ram Hari Shrestha, journalist Birendra Shah and another victim, Arjun Lama, as well as a deadly bus bombing in June 2005 in Madi at killed some 50 people.

Bennett’s letter said the three killings “are among those for which there is substantial evidence of Maoists’ responsibility,” naming Maoist Third Division Commander Kali Bahadur Kham as being allegedly involved in Shrestha’s killing.

In the case of the bus bombing, Bennett said, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has claimed responsibility and identified the perpetrators, but no one has been punished and the Nepalese police seem unable to act without cooperation from the Maoist party.

“The practice of protecting and promoting alleged human rights violators, whether they are Nepal Army officers or members of UCPN-M, must end,” Bennett wrote.

Nepal’s government is preparing a report that says 16,274 people were killed in the country during the 10-year conflict between Maoist rebels and government troops that climaxed in 2006, officials recently said.

The Maoist rebels began their armed revolt in 1996 seeking an end to the monarchy and to establish a communist state. The rebels gave up their insurgency in 2006 and joined a peace process under U.N. supervision and ultimately became part of the political mainstream.

A communist-dominated Constituent Assembly voted in May 2008 to abolish the centuries-old monarchy and declared Nepal a republic and a secular state.

The UCPN-M contested elections last year and emerged as the largest political party in Nepal. They led a coalition government between September 2008 and May 2009.

Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal resigned as prime minister over the president’s refusal to dismiss the army chief, and a new coalition government took over in May.

Russian killings and kidnaps extend dirty war in Ingushetia

Hundreds of civilians have been “disappeared”, tortured and murdered by Russian security services.

“The security services used to sell the bodies back, but the torture marks became difficult to explain, now they just destroy the bodies.”

Relatives of the security forces’ victims are joining the Caucasus rebels’ fight

Observer | Sep 20, 2009

by Clancy Chassay

Like many in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Petimat Albakavar lives in terror. “Nobody sleeps properly. We can’t because we are listening to every sound, waiting for the police to knock at the door,” she says.

On 10 July, Petimat’s 26-year-old son, Batyr, was taken away at dawn by armed men claiming to be Ingush police. They appeared at the door and demanded to see the family’s passports but refused to show any identification themselves. “As soon as they left I went to all the police stations, but I couldn’t find my son. I filed complaints with the police and government officials, but nobody knew anything,” says Petimat, her eyes weary with grief and fear.

“Ten days later we found a report on the internet that someone with my son’s name, whom they described as a rebel leader, had been killed in the forest. It was Batyr. His passport was with him.”

According to human rights investigators, hundreds of civilians such as Batyr have been “disappeared”, tortured and murdered by Russian security services as they struggle to quell a rebellion that spans across Ingushetia and the neighbouring republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. In June the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt. As suicide bombers strike with alarming frequency, the security forces are unleashing a wave of terror which critics say is only serving to fuel the rebellion.

Thousands of Russian troops have been sent into Ingushetia, a largely Islamic republic the size of Suffolk. Masked soldiers man the checkpoints at every major intersection and the population lives under the constant watch of the security forces and their informants.

The human rights organisation Mashr estimates that the number of those abducted and then killed nearly doubled last year to 212. This year the figure has already reached 210. Since 2002, when Russian forces became active in Ingushetia, Mashr reports that 1,000 people have been found dead and 175 are still missing.

Rebel attacks on soldiers have also increased. Some 200 Russian and Ingush police and soldiers have been killed in seven years. “Things are really dangerous now,” says Illias, a local sergeant at the main police station in Ingushetia’s largest town, Nazran. “We’ve all lost friends. We risk our lives every day,” he adds, “but we need to make a living.” On 17 August a suicide bomber killed 24 of Illias’s colleagues in a single attack.

Kremlin hawks argue that a necessary battle is taking place against extremists bent on establishing an Islamic caliphate across the Caucasus. But many analysts believe that, while a small vanguard of Islamists with links to international jihadi movements does exist, aggrieved relatives who have joined the rebellion to avenge the brutal tactics of the security forces are doing most of the fighting.

Magomed Mutsolgov works for Mashr. Stored in his computer are countless images of the mutilated bodies of the abducted. Many of his colleagues have been driven out of Ingushetia by threats. Some have been murdered.

The grisly computer gallery includes photographs of Petimat’s dead son. Batyr’s body is covered in lacerations, large blackened patches consistent with electrocution, and his right shoulder is almost entirely severed from his torso.Each week, according to Mutsolgov, young men are taken by the security services: “They can be taken on suspicion of being a rebel, knowing a rebel or just having been seen with a suspected rebel.” He adds that men are also taken in for appearing too overtly Muslim.

“The security services used to sell the bodies back, but the torture marks became difficult to explain, now they just destroy the bodies,” he says.

No one has been convicted for the killings. Human rights groups say the number of active security forces, comprising different Chechen, Ingush and Russian organisations, make appeals and investigations by family members almost impossible.

Mashr claims that the repression relies heavily on the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov, and his notoriously brutal forces but is orchestrated by the Russian secret service, the FSB. The allegations of systematic torture and killing were put to the FSB as part of a special investigation by Channel 4, which will broadcast a documentary on the conflict on Friday, but no response was given.

Osama Basairov works for Russia’s leading human rights organisation, Memorial, which has monitored the escalation of violence in Ingushetia since 2000. “In our investigations we question everybody we possibly can who is connected to the murdered or disappeared, and in just about all the cases we find they are innocent people in no way connected to the rebels. It is this killing of innocents that is driving more and more men into the woods to join the war,” he says.

Digging around anxiously in her cupboard, Petimat Albakavar produces her son’s licence to work as an aircraft engineer. “He had special security clearance. He had just been promoted to head of his department; he worked very hard. He had no time to be a rebel, he was always studying for his exams.”

Tehran Times | Sep 14, 2009

TEHRAN – Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Blackwater later changed its name and is now known as Xe.

General Beg recently told the Saudi Arabian daily Al Watan that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green light to carry out terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Quetta.

General Beg, who was chief of army staff during Benazir Bhutto’s first administration, said U.S. officials always kept the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan secret because they were afraid of possible attacks on the U.S. Embassy and its consulates in Pakistan.

During an interview with a Pakistani TV network last Sunday, Beg claimed that the United States killed Benazir Bhutto.

Beg stated that the former Pakistani prime minister was killed in an international conspiracy because she had decided to back out of the deal through which she had returned to the country after nine years in exile.

Beg also said he believes that the former director general of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence was not an accomplice in the conspiracy against Benazir Bhutto, although she did not trust him.

The retired Pakistani general also stated that Benazir Bhutto was a sharp politician but was not as prudent as her father.

On September 2, the U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, Anne W. Patterson, intervened with one of the largest newspaper groups in Pakistan, The News International, to force it to block a decade-old weekly column by Dr. Shireen Mazari scheduled for publication on September 3 in which Mazari, the former director of the Islamabad Institute of Strategic Studies, broke the story of Blackwater/Xe’s presence in Pakistan.

The management of The News International dismissed one of the country’s most prominent academics and journalists due to U.S. pressure. She joined the more independent daily The Nation last week as an editor.

On September 9, in her first column in The Nation, Dr. Mazari wrote:

“Now, even if one were to ignore the massive purchases of land by the U.S., the questionable manner in which the expansion of the U.S. Embassy is taking place and the threatening covert activities of the U.S. and its ‘partner in crime’ Blackwater; the unregistered comings and goings of U.S. personnel on chartered flights; we would still find it difficult to see the whole aid disbursement issue as anything other than a sign of U.S. gradual occupation. It is no wonder we have the term Af-Pak: Afghanistan they control through direct occupation loosely premised on a UN resolution; Pakistan they are occupying as a result of willingly ceded sovereignty by the past and present leadership.”

According to Al Watan, Washington even used Blackwater forces to protect its consulate in the city of Peshawar.

In addition, U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh has accused former U.S vice president Dick Cheney of being involved in the Hariri assassination.

He said Cheney was in charge of a secret team that was tasked with assassinating prominent political figures.

After the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, the U.S. and a number of other countries pointed the finger at Syria, although conclusive evidence has never been presented proving Syrian involvement in the murder.