U.S. House votes to ban aid to Saudi Arabia

by Richard Cowan
REUTERS

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to prohibit any aid to Saudi Arabia as lawmakers accused the close ally of religious intolerance and bankrolling terrorist organizations.

The prohibition, reflecting persistent tensions with the kingdom after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, was attached to a foreign aid funding bill for next year that has not yet been debated by the Senate.

It also faces a veto threat from the White House because of an unrelated provision.

A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington declined to comment on the legislation.

In the past three years, Congress has passed bills to stop the relatively small amount of U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia, only to see the Bush administration circumvent the prohibitions.

Now, lawmakers are trying to close loopholes so that no more U.S. aid can be sent to the world's leading petroleum exporter.

"By cutting off aid and closing the loophole we send a clear message to the Saudi Arabian government that they must be a true ally in advancing peace in the Middle East," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat.

According to supporters of the legislation, the United States provided $2.5 million to Riyadh in 2005 and 2006.

The money has been used to train Saudis in counter-terrorism and border security and to pay for Saudi military officers to attend U.S. military school.

"Saudi Arabia propagates terrorism. We all know that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat. She added that Saudi youths had entered Iraq to "wage jihad" against U.S. forces fighting there.

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of the al Qaeda group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, was expelled from the kingdom in 1991 for anti-government activities.

OIL MONEY

Lawmakers also complained that with Saudi Arabia's vast wealth from oil revenues, U.S. taxpayers do not need to subsidize training Saudis.

"With poor countries all over the globe begging us for help, why are we giving money to this oil-rich nation?" Berkley said.

The U.S. State Department has routinely criticized Saudi Arabia for religious intolerance, disenfranchisement of women and arbitrary justice.

U.N. committees and groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also have been critical of the Saudi legal system and its rights record, including punishments such as flogging and amputation.

Riyadh tends to dismiss the criticism by saying it follows the traditions of Islamic law.

Saudi Arabia is home to the two holiest sites in Islam -- Mecca and Medina -- and to a conservative Sunni Muslim ideology often called Wahhabism.

Despite the efforts by the lawmakers to cut off aid, the United States has had a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia in terms of energy and security.

But recently Saudi King Abdullah has asserted a more robust leadership role in the Middle East, putting himself at odds with Washington over Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to the Energy Information Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia are the third largest after Canada and Mexico.

Until 2003, the United States kept up to 10,000 soldiers in Saudi Arabia to help enforce a no-fly zone over southern Iraq that was put in place after the first Gulf War in 1991. Most of those forces have been withdrawn.

Hamas says it will not block Gaza natural gas deal

GAZA, June 22 (REUTERS) - The Islamist group Hamas said it will not hinder plans to drill for natural gas off the shores of the Gaza Strip after it took control of the coastal territory a week ago, a Hamas official said on Friday.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said the group would not block an agreement between British gas producer BG Group Plc and the Palestinian Authority to drill for reserves discovered off Gaza'a coast in 2000.

But Hamas would like to change some parts of the deal -- reached between BG and the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), which is controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- that Abu Zuhri said "harm Palestinian interests".

Hamas routed the Western-backed Abbas's Fatah faction during a bloody takeover of Gaza.

Under the current agreement, BG plans to sell the natural gas to Israel. Britain and other Western countries have isolated Hamas because of its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence.

"There will not be a problem to cooperate with the British company, but it is important to reconsider some things in this matter," Abu Zuhri said.

In December 2000, BG completed drilling a natural gas well offshore Gaza indicating possible reserves of around 1.4 trillion cubic feet, which the PIF said has an estimated value of $1.3 billion.

BG was unavailable for comment.

"It is premature to discuss whether Hamas wants to begin direct negotiations with the British company over drilling national gas off Gaza shores," Abu Zuhri said. But added, "We do not want to overturn exisiting situations."

Bin Laden may have arranged family's US exit: FBI docs

AFP

Osama bin Laden may have chartered a plane that carried his family members and Saudi nationals out of the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said FBI documents released Wednesday.

The papers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, were made public by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based group that investigates government corruption.

One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 airplane that departed Los Angeles International Airport on September 19, 2001, and was said to have carried Saudi nationals out of the United States.

"The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family or Osama bin Laden," according to the document, which was among 224 pages posted online.

The flight made stops in Orlando, Florida; Washington, DC; and Boston, Massachusetts and eventually left its passengers in Paris the following day.

In all, the documents detail six flights between September 14 and September 24 that evacuated Saudi nationals and bin Laden family members, Judicial Watch said in a statement.

"Incredibly, not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value," Judicial Watch said.

"These documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation of the Saudi flights.

"For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight ... on another document the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 to 22 passengers on the same flight."

Asked about the documents' assertion that either bin Laden or the Saudi royals ordered the flight, an FBI spokesman said the information was inaccurate.

"There is no new information here. Osama bin Laden did not charter a flight out of the US," FBI special agent Richard Kolko said.

"This is just an inflammatory headline by Judicial Watch to catch people's attention. This was thoroughly investigated by the FBI."

Kolko pointed to the 9-11 Commission Report, which was the book-length result of an official probe into the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.

"No political intervention was found. And most important, the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals that left on chartered flights. This is all available in the report," Kolko said.

On the issue of flights of Saudi nationals leaving the United States, the 9-11 report said: "We found no evidence of political intervention" to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals.

The commission also said: "Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights."

Meredith Diliberto, an attorney with Judicial Watch, said that her group had seen a first version of the documents in 2005, although the FBI had heavily redacted the texts to black out names, including all references to bin Laden.

Nevertheless, unedited footnotes in the texts allowed lawyers to determine that bin Laden's name had been redacted. They pressed the issue in court and in November 2006, the FBI was ordered to re-release the documents.

Diliberto said mention that "either" bin Laden or Saudi royals had chartered the flight "really threw us for a loop."

"When you combine that with some of the family members not being interviewed, we found it very disturbing."

Bush Weighs Reaching Out To 'Brothers'

by Eli Lake
THE NEW YORK SUN

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is quietly weighing the prospect of reaching out to the party that founded modern political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Still in its early stages and below the radar, the current American deliberations and diplomacy with the organization, known in Arabic as Ikhwan, take on new significance in light of Hamas's successful coup in Gaza last week. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is widely reported to have helped create Hamas in 1982.

Today the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research will host a meeting with other representatives of the intelligence community to discuss opening more formal channels to the brothers. Earlier this year, the National Intelligence Council received a paper it had commissioned on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood by a scholar at the Nixon Center, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Department meeting today to present the case for engagement. On April 7, congressional leaders such as Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, attended a reception where some representatives of the brothers were present. The reception was hosted at the residence in Cairo of the American ambassador to Egypt, Francis Ricciardone, a decision that indicates a change in policy.

The National Security Council and State Department already meet indirectly with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood through discussions with a new Syrian opposition group created in 2006 known as the National Salvation Front. Meanwhile, Iraq's vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a leader of Iraq's chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. His party, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party, has played a role in the Iraqi government since it was invited to join the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003.

These developments, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza, suggest that President Bush — who has been careful to distinguish the war on terror from a war on Islam — has done more than any of his predecessors to accept the movement fighting for the merger of mosque and state in the Middle East.

Should Mr. Bush ask his diplomats to forge new channels to the Muslim Brotherhood it would also be a recognition of the gains their parties have made in elections in the last three years. In Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories, Islamist parties trounced their secular rivals. In part this was because these parties offered an uncorrupt alternative to the more secular parties in power, but some advocates inside the administration also say it reflects a tangible momentum for parties that seek to create Islamic republics. One State Department official yesterday said, "Our policy has to change from more democracy, fewer headscarves."

Nonetheless, administration officials this week also stressed that no decisions have been made as to a new initiative. One leading European Islamist, Tariq Ramadan, who is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is being denied a visa to assume a professorship he has been offered at Notre Dame University. The policy debate inside the administration is also contentious, with law enforcement agencies such as the FBI skeptical that the Muslim Brotherhood is not clandestinely more involved in supporting violent jihad than the organization's emissaries let on.

A State Department spokesman for the Bureau of Near East Affairs, David Foley, confirmed the meeting Wednesday to discuss a new approach to the Muslim Brotherhood. "We do these seminars, they help inform the policy making process. I am not suggesting someone would decide on a new policy on the Muslim Brotherhood as a result of this," he said. "This is the kind of consultations we often do. When there are alternative views, let's hear both sides. We are certainly willing to listen to voices from the outside."

Making the case today for outreach is Mr. Leiken, who co-authored with Steve Brooke a paper for the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs titled, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood." That paper argues that Ikhwan has drawn contempt from violent Islamists such as Al Qaeda for its general disavowal of armed struggle. Tracing its history to its founding, the paper says the group today, particularly in Egypt, is genuine in its desire to participate in democratic politics.

Mr. Leiken said yesterday that there are two reasons why America should begin to rethink its prohibition of meeting with the brothers. "A new policy begins to combat some of our isolation in the Muslim world. I see the Muslim brotherhood, particularly in Egypt, as having what the communists used to call a two-line struggle, between moderate and dogmatic factions. Our outreach would help the moderates. That would strengthen those forces who are most willing to recognize the fact of Israel's existence and more democratic."

Mr. Leiken is a Harvard graduate and longtime expert on Latin America who broke with the hard left in the 1980s to oppose the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and who became associated with Social Democrats such as Penn Kemble and Joshua Muravchick. He said he thinks diplomacy with Ikhwan could help us help them to moderate Hamas. "It is conceivable that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, aware Gaza could serve as an index, will try use its influence to get Hamas to be constructive," he said. The Egyptian government has used the Muslim Brothers for at least 10 years as a back channel to Hamas.

Mr. Leiken's Foreign Affairs paper and classified study for the National Intelligence Council has gotten the attention of senior National Security Council officials and Secretary of State Rice, according to two administration officials.

"The NIC asked me to provide an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood and I was happy to oblige," Mr. Leiken said.

Arguing against a new policy on the brothers today will be a Hudson Institute expert on Islam, Hillel Fradkin. Mr. Fradkin declined to comment on his presentation ahead of the meeting. A colleague of his at the institute who has also taken a skeptical view of the brothers, Zeyno Baran, did say she was worried about a new direction by the Bush administration.

"The thinking is that to deal with terrorism, we need to deal with Muslims who will take care of their communities so there will not be people here and there doing terrorism," she said. "So we treat the brotherhood like an umbrella organization, like the Council on American Islamic Relations or the Islamic Society of North America. You make them partners. They might Islamize the Muslims, but it's okay because they can think or do what they want as long as they are not violent. That is the misunderstanding and mistake."

The issue of the Muslim Brotherhood has also come up in the presidential contest for 2008. At the May 3 debate of Republican contenders for the presidential nomination, a former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, included the Muslim Brotherhood as a component of the "worldwide jihadist threat."

"This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate," he said in response to a question about what he would do to capture Osama bin Laden.

One of the more contentious issues with the Muslim Brotherhood is whether the group was connected to the 1981 assassination of an Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. This reporter was told by leaders of the group last year that the ex-president's killers were from a breakaway faction known as the Islamic Group and that his murder was not condoned by Ikhwan. Sadat softened the government policy against the brothers in the early 1970s, allowing them to organize in universities, a decision many of the Brotherhood leaders in Cairo credit with laying the foundation for their gains in the 2005 parliamentary elections.

Judicial Watch Releases New FBI Documents: Osama bin Laden May Have Chartered Saudi Flight Out of U.S. After 9/11

JUDICIAL WATCH

WASHINGTON, June 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released new documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") related to the "expeditious departure" of Saudi nationals, including members of the bin Laden family, from the United States following the 9/11 attacks. According to one of the formerly confidential documents, dated 9/21/2001, terrorist Osama bin Laden may have chartered one of the Saudi flights.

The document states: "ON 9/19/01, A 727 PLANE LEFT LAX, RYAN FLT #441 TO ORLANDO, FL W/ETA (estimated time of arrival) OF 4-5PM. THE PLANE WAS CHARTERED EITHER BY THE SAUDI ARABIAN ROYAL FAMILY OR OSAMA BIN LADEN ... THE LA FBI SEARCHED THE PLANE [REDACTED] LUGGAGE, OF WHICH NOTHING UNUSUAL WAS FOUND." The plane was allowed to depart the United States after making four stops to pick up passengers, ultimately landing in Paris where all passengers disembarked on 9/20/01, according to the document.

Overall, the FBI's most recent document production includes details of the six flights between 9/14 and 9/24 that evacuated Saudi royals and bin Laden family members. The documents also contain brief interview summaries and occasional notes from intelligence analysts concerning the cursory screening performed prior to the departures. According to the FBI documents, incredibly not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value.

Moreover, the documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies, which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation of the Saudi flights. For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight (commonly referred to as the "Bin Laden Family Flight"). On another document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 of 22 passengers on the same flight.

"Eight days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Osama bin Laden possibly charters a flight to whisk his family out of the country, and it's not worth more than a luggage search and a few brief interviews?" asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "Clearly these documents prove the FBI conducted a slapdash investigation of these Saudi flights. We'll never know how many investigative leads were lost due to the FBI's lack of diligence."

U.S. District Court Judge Richard W. Roberts ordered the FBI to resubmit "proper disclosures" to the Court and Judicial Watch, having previously criticized the adequacy of redaction descriptions, the validity of exemption claims, and other errors in the FBI's disclosures. Incredibly, the FBI had previously redacted Osama bin Laden's name from the records in order "to protect privacy interests."

The latest version of the FBI documents, obtained under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and through ongoing litigation (Judicial Watch v. Department of Homeland Security & Federal Bureau of Investigation, No. 04- 1643 (RWR)) is available on Judicial Watch's website, http://www.judicialwatch.org.

Bandar and the $2 Billion Question

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball with Emily Flynn Vencat in London
NEWSWEEK

Hundreds of pages of confidential U.S. bank records may be the missing link in illuminating new allegations that a major British arms contractor funneled up to $2 billion in questionable payments to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The BBC and Guardian newspaper reported last week that BAE Systems made "secret" payments to a Washington, D.C., bank account controlled by Bandar, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States who is now the kingdom's national-security adviser. The payments are alleged to be part of an $80 billion military-aircraft deal between London and Riyadh. Last week British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged that his government shut down an investigation into the payments, in part because it could have led to the "complete wreckage" of Britain's "vital strategic relationship" with Saudi Arabia. Before the U.K. closed the inquiry, British investigators contacted the U.S. Justice Department seeking access to records related to the Saudi bank accounts. Many of these records were first obtained by NEWSWEEK in 2004. At the time, the magazine reported that federal regulators had been alerted to millions of dollars in "suspicious" activities in Saudi accounts at the now-defunct Riggs Bank.

Tom Rose, a British lawyer for Bandar, denied the Saudi prince had received "improper secret" commissions. He said the BAE funds were actually being paid into a Saudi Defense Ministry account over which Bandar had signature authority, but any payouts from those accounts "were exclusively for purposes approved" by the ministry. The accounts were known both to the British and Saudi governments. (A BAE spokesman said, "We deny all allegations of wrongdoing.")

The Riggs Bank records show the use of those funds raised concerns among bank officials and U.S. regulators. In November 2003, Riggs filed a "suspicious activity report" with the Treasury Department disclosing that over a four-month period, $17.4 million from the Saudi Defense account had been disbursed to a single individual in Saudi Arabia. When Riggs officials asked the Saudis who the person was and why he was receiving the funds, they were told the individual "coordinates home improvement/construction projects for Prince Bandar in Saudi Arabia," and the payments were for a "new Saudi palace," one document shows.

In another instance, Bandar wired $400,000 from a Riggs account to a luxury-car dealer overseas. "It was impossible to distinguish between government funds and what would normally be considered personal purposes," said David Caruso, who served as Riggs's compliance officer at the time. Caruso also confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the Saudi Defense account was regularly replenished with $30 million each quarter from an account in London. But the bank never knew the source of the funds. The bank was so concerned about the withdrawals that it cut off all business with the Saudis. In May 2005, the U.S. Treasury fined Riggs $25 million for failing to monitor "extensive and frequent suspicious" activity in Saudi and other accounts. (Asked about the Riggs records, Bandar's lawyer said the palace in question was "Prince Bandar's official residence" in Saudi Arabia and that audits by the Saudi Finance Ministry found "no irregularities" in the Saudi accounts while Bandar was ambassador.)

The controversy also raises questions about what role Bandar—a close friend of the Bush family's—will play in Washington's future Mideast initiatives. Earlier this year, after consulting extensively with Bandar, U.S. officials pushed for a new Mideast peace summit—only to learn later that Saudi King Abdullah was not onboard with the plan. Since then, Bandar—apparently out of pique at being overruled—has largely dropped out of sight, according to three U.S. officials who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive diplomatic matters. One source close to the Saudis, who also asked not to be identified, said that Bandar spent much of the spring at his $135 million mansion in Aspen, Colo., and that he is now back in Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials say they can't confirm this. "It's all something of a mystery to us," said one official.

The Hamas, MI6, BBC axis

by Melanie Phillips

In the past few days, the BBC appears to have turned itself into a mouthpiece for Hamas. From a steady procession of talking heads has issued a stream of Arab propaganda, along the lines that what has happened in Gaza is an inevitable outcome of the Israeli/western collective punishment of Palestinian voters for democratically choosing a party of which the west disapproves, along with the Israeli/western refusal to ‘engage’ with Hamas, a situation which must now be remedied forthwith. If we look a little more closely at these interviewees, however, it seems that such a consistent line may not be altogether coincidental. The casual listener and viewer has been led to assume that all these ‘experts’ are random, if well-informed, observers of the Middle East scene. But a rather different picture emerges if one joins up some of the dots.

Guided by a couple of eagle-eyed blog-posters, I have been doing just that. Discussing events in Gaza on successive evenings last week, BBC TV Newsnight had on William Sieghart, Azzam Tamimi and Alastair Crooke.

Azzam Tamimi is a self-proclaimed Hamas sympathiser — who, incidentally, once screamed at me on BBC Radio Four’s Moral Maze that he was personally rewriting the Hamas Charter to remove its endorsement of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (it’s still there), because even some Hamas types can see that this isn’t exactly great PR.

Alastair Crooke is a former MI6 agent who controversially acted between Israel and Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a go-between until MI6 recalled him, and who ever since has argued publicly for ‘engagement’ with Hamas. In 2004, he wrote about Islamists and the west in the Guardian:

We do diverge on a few values, but the overwhelming bulk of Islamists and Muslims support elections, good governance and freedom (more so than in some European states, the polls show).

Explaining the thinking behind the group he had just founded, Conflicts Forum, he wrote:

We need to recognise the ‘other’ and acknowledge that Muslim values do not pose a threat to the strategic values of western society. Muslims do not hate our values. They hate our policies. We need dialogue at all levels.

William Sieghart, the founder of various arts events, a homelessness charity and a governor of the British Institute of Human Rights, was instrumental in inviting Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad to the Guardian Hay on Wye Book Festival. Those who might wonder quite how the Chairman of the Arts Foundation happens to have the phone number of the Hamas official spokesman in his Roladex might be enlightened to learn that Mr Sieghart also turns out to be chairman of Forward Thinking.

Forward Thinking is a charity founded in April 2004

to address the growing social isolation of Muslim communities in Britain and to promote a more inclusive peace process in the Middle East.

This is its team.

Oliver McTernan is co-founder and director of Forward Thinking. He was responsible for initiating the first post-conflict talks between NATO and the former Yugoslav government. He was a Visiting Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and is a Senior Associate Fellow of the UK Defence Academy.

McTernan’s fellow trustee is Chris Donnelly. Formerly the senior political adviser to four successive Secretary Generals of NATO, he is director of the Institute for Statecraft & Governance and the Senior Fellow at the Defence Academy. He worked for 20 years at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, initially as an instructor in Russian and Soviet studies, and from 1973 as a member of the Soviet Studies Research Centre, which body he headed from 1979 until 1989.

The third trustee is Lord Hylton, described on the website as having a ‘distinguished parliamentary career on matters relating to conflict and civil rights’. Lord Hylton is also a member of the Arab lobby, having been a member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding since 1993.

This is how Forward Thinking describes its Middle East initiative:

The objective of the Initiative is to focus on bringing leaders who have hitherto been excluded from the ‘dialogue community’ into a process of internal examination of contentious issues outstanding between the sides, and to provide them with the tools and knowledge to engage in a constructive bilateral process… Alongside its many achievements, a main shortcoming of the Oslo agreements was a steadfast failure to recognise the necessity of including religious and ideological conservatives on both sides in the peace process… Forward Thinking’s Middle East Initiative is based on our belief that as long as the voices of non-convinced constituencies are not included in the dialogue process between the sides, no long-term and sustainable solution can be reached. The current situation, in which parties previously excluded from dialogue processes – and specifically religiously motivated political leaders – are gaining power, represents a unique opportunity to engage with them and bring them into constructive dialogue channels.

‘Religious and ideological conservatives on both sides’ who have been excluded? But Israel’s government is a coalition including the religious parties. They have not been excluded from anything. The only excluded ‘religious and ideological conservatives’ Forward Thinking are trying to include would appear to be… Hamas.

So to discuss Hamas, the BBC put on in quick succession a) a Hamas sympathiser b) a former intelligence officer promoting the view of the Foreign Office and intelligence world that Israel and the west must talk to Hamas; and c) the chairman of a charity which promotes talking to Hamas and whose director and fellow trustee are associated with the military and intelligence complex.

Now scroll forward to the BBC Radio Four Sunday Programme yesterday morning. This featured an interview with Beverley Milton Edwards, described merely as a professor of Islamic studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. Prof Milton Edwards described Hamas in glowing terms as a ‘Muslim national movement’ which was trying to bring law and order in Gaza by cracking down on antisocial and unIslamic menaces like drug or alcohol abuse, and which promoted the rights of Muslim women, including talking about the dangers posed to them by the ‘Israeli occupation’ (which is of course finished in Gaza, but let that pass). The programme did not challenge this account, nor did it have on anyone to point out that Hamas is not only committed to the destruction of Israel but imposes such tyranny upon the hapless population under its control that Palestinians are fleeing into Israel to escape it.

What the programme also failed to tell us was that Prof Milton Edwards was a co-founder and (former) director of Conflicts Forum — the organisation set up by none other than the ubiquitous Alastair Crooke, and which boasts on its board of advisers none other than the equally ubiquitous Azzam Tamimi (whose most memorable public apercu was that he would consider becoming a ‘suicide bomber’). Its website reveals that it stands for rather more than merely ‘engaging’ with Islamists such as Hamas. It actually promotes them as fine and upstanding people:

The overwhelming majority of Islamists are striving to create just societies and bring about political reform in a region entrenched with inequity, that has long suffered the overbearing influence of foreign powers… Conflicts Forum’s aim is to engage and listen to Islamists, while challenging Western misconceptions and misrepresentations of the region’s leading agents of change.

The Islam scholar Daniel Pipes has this devastating account of Crooke’s attitudes and the activities of Conflicts Forum on his website:

Conflicts Forum has several advantages, starting with the fact that what it terms the ‘prevailing Western orthodoxy’ is – as noted above – quite soft. The group’s founder and leader, Alastair Crooke, 55, was a ranking figure in both British intelligence and European Union diplomacy, someone who hobnobs with insiders, gives upbeat speeches at premier venues (‘It is Essential to Negotiate with Terrorists’ at the London School of Economics,’ ‘Can Hamas Be A Political Partner?’ at the Council on Foreign Relations), and enjoys a fawning press. But Crooke’s true identity came out in a clandestine meeting he held with the Hamas leadership in June 2002, at a time when he still represented the European Union. We have an account of the meeting prepared by Hamas (which Crooke claims is inaccurate). It deserves reading in full for an insight into Crooke’s amoral, craven, appeasing, and dhimmi-like mentality.

•He recounts to Hamas having insisted to two high-ranking European politicians that ‘the status of Europe in the eyes of the Palestinians has started to deteriorate’ because Europe did not adequately support the Palestinians.
•’The main problem [in the Middle East] is the Israeli occupation,’ which is music to Hamas ears.
•‘As for terrorism, I hate that word,’ he tells leaders of a leading terrorist organization, going on to imply that he instead sees Hamas operatives as ‘freedom fighters.’

This last fits Crooke’s routine public dismissal of terrorism as a threat. The West, he says, faces not ‘terrorism’ (his quote marks) but a distinctly less nasty ‘sophisticated, asymmetrical, broad-based and irregular insurgency.’ And his Conflicts Forum, dubbed by journalist Patrick Seale ‘a club of disaffected diplomats and intelligence officers,’ engages in a pleasant form of personal diplomacy that diminishes the horror of Islamist terrorism.

Thus, at a Conflicts Forum meeting last month in Beirut with the leadership of four Islamist terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hizbullah, the mood and the food were too good to allow this inconvenient subject to intrude. Stephen Grey, a journalist covering the event, later reflected on it: ‘Invited to dinner with the participants in the Beirut talks, and sharing jokes with the Hamas men over tiger prawns, avocado, pasta and cherry tomatoes, I wondered privately how one would explain all this intimacy to the mother of a child killed by a suicide bomber.’

I gather that Prof Milton Edwards is no longer associated with Conflicts Forum. The fact remains that she helped found it, that various articles she wrote with Alastair Crooke remain on its website, and that she believes there is a ‘common platform’ between the west and Islamists bent on its destruction. In 2005, this website noted:

An Al Jazeera news segment Tuesday reported on reported on an ‘unprecedented meeting’ in Beirut between leaders of the two terrorist groups and a new U.K.-based consulting firm, Conflicts Forum. Participants were said to include ‘American persons close to American decision-makers.’ The Forum’s co-founder and director, Beverley Milton-Edwards, speaking in English, had this to say to Al Jazeera:

I think the importance of this meeting, as the speaker from Hezbollah pointed out this afternoon, is that this isn’t actually about enmity between the people from Islam and Muslims and those in the West. In fact, the idea here is to end this disconnection–for people to understand that there is a common platform between the peoples of Islam and the West. So this is a unique opportunity for opinion formers in North America and Europe to hear that enmity is not on the table.

At the very least, the Sunday Programme should have told its listeners that Prof Milton Edwards had a history of promoting the interests of Islamist terrorists. The fact that it did not does not suggest a BBC conspiracy, any more than the disgraceful procession of Hamas apologists being interviewed on TV without any kind of challenge or health warning suggests such a thing either. The much more likely explanation is scarcely less disturbing. It is that a group of people representing both Hamas and its western apologists in the British military and intelligence world have been pushing themselves forward to the BBC as informed and dispassionate commentators on events in Gaza — and the BBC editors and producers have not seen ft to check them out because of a combination of ignorance, sloppiness and — most lethal of all — the fact that they mainly agree with the appeasement of genocidal terror that these propagandists are promoting.

Just to remind you: this is (in part) what the Hamas Charter says:

For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails. …The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

The enemies have been scheming for a long time, and they have consolidated their schemes, in order to achieve what they have achieved. They took advantage of key elements in unfolding events, and accumulated a huge and influential material wealth which they put to the service of implementing their dream. This wealth [permitted them to] take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there.

They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith and the like. All of them are destructive spying organizations. They also used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein. As regards local and world wars, it has come to pass and no one objects, that they stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They collected material gains and took control of many sources of wealth. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state. They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary. There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it…

Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there… Within the circle of the conflict with world Zionism, the Hamas regards itself the spearhead and the avant-garde. It joins its efforts to all those who are active on the Palestinian scene, but more steps need to be taken by the Arab and Islamic peoples and Islamic associations throughout the Arab and Islamic world in order to make possible the next round with the Jews, the merchants of war.

This is the demented and genocidal creed of the people with whom our military/intelligence establishment is now telling us we must ‘engage’ and whose interests it is ruthlessly pushing, courtesy of an intellectually and professionally bankrupt BBC. If the British Parliament still counts for anything at all, it should call time on this monstrous appeasement of evil.

Five acquitted over Calvi death

BBC NEWS

A court in Rome has acquitted all five defendants of murder charges in the 1982 death of Roberto Calvi, known as "God's Banker" for his Vatican ties.

Mr Calvi, the chairman of a private Italian bank, Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from scaffolding under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.

A British inquest ruled the death suicide, but the case was reopened at the insistence of Mr Calvi's family.

Mr Calvi died as his bank collapsed in one of Italy's largest fraud scandals.

City of London Police, who initially investigated Mr Calvi's death, said it was "disappointing for Roberto Calvi's family in particular that those responsible for his murder have still not faced justice".

In a statement, the City of London Police said they had "worked closely with the Italian authorities since 2003 to bring this case to a successful conclusion."

Cleared of murder charges are Giuseppe Calo, alleged to be a cashier for the Sicilian Mafia; Mr Calvi's close associate, businessman Flavio Carboni; businessman Ernesto Diotallevi; Mr Calvi's bodyguard and driver Silvano Vittor; and Mr Carboni's ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig.

Calo has been in prison since the 1980s on Mafia charges unrelated to Mr Calvi's death.

Prosecutors had said Ms Kleinszig should be acquitted due lack of evidence but had asked for life sentences for the other four.

The prosecution alleged that they lured Mr Calvi to London and into the hands of his murderers.

Unanswered questions

Mr Calvi was linked to the Vatican bank, and prosecutors also said he was laundering money for the Mafia.

Mob bosses feared he knew where their money was going and where it was hidden and was preparing to tell all, prosecutors said.

In June 1982, his private bank collapsed with debts of $1.5bn (£750m).

An investigation began in Italy but, a few days later, Calvi's body was hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.

Cash and stones were stuffed into his pockets.

The first inquest ruled it was suicide but years later his body was exhumed, revealing clues suggesting he had been murdered.

Forensic tests conducted in 2003 concluded there was no evidence on Mr Calvi's shoes and clothing that he had climbed the scaffolding, indicating he had been killed elsewhere.

The two-year trial leaves more questions than answers, says the BBC's Christian Fraser in Rome.

The defence suggested more than once that there were plenty of others who had a motive for murder - some of them within the Vatican - and they said any number of these parties could have collaborated and silenced Roberto Calvi.

CALVI KEY DATES
1971 : Becomes chairman of Banco Ambrosiano
1981 : Convicted of corruption, but bailed pending appeal
11 June 1982 : Leaves Italy with a suitcase of documents
18 June 1982 : Body found
July 1982 : Suicide verdict
July 1983 : Open verdict at second inquest
1998 : Calvi's body exhumed
Oct 2002 : Forensic report says Calvi murdered
July 2003 : Italian prosecutors name four suspects
Sept 2003 : City of London Police re-open investigation
Mar 2004 : Four appear at pre-trial hearing in Rome
April 2005 : Four people charged with murder in Italy
October 2005 : Murder trial opens in Italy
June 2007 : Rome jury acquits five defendants

The many secrets of 'God's Banker'
by Christian Fraser
BBC NEWS

After 25 years, two inquests and a very lengthy trial - the mystery remains.

The verdict of the court was that Roberto Calvi was murdered - but the evidence against the five accused, said the judge, was insufficient and at times contradictory.

Despite the various motives put forward it seems the jury was not convinced with what, in the end, was a very complicated plot.

The proceedings in court lasted less than five minutes. Among the defendants, there was of course quiet celebration.

But this will come as a huge disappointment to the Calvi family, particularly his son Carlo, who had campaigned for the case to be re-opened.

As chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi was involved in some very sensitive financial transactions.

'Mafia money'

In his time he had worked for the Vatican bank, the Mafia, and the Freemasons. But in June 1982 when his bank collapsed - with debts of $1.5bn (£750m) - he suddenly found himself with very powerful enemies.

One of the key defendants in this case was Giuseppe Calo, a convicted mobster who in the 1980s had been the chief cashier of the Sicilian Mafia, the Cosa Nostra.

If I had wanted him dead do you not think I would have picked my own people to do the job?
Giuseppe Calo

The prosecution argued that Calo had ordered the killing, angry that Calvi had lost the Mafia's money and worried he might reveal all the secrets.

But defence lawyer Renato Borzone, who defended another of the accused, Flavio Carboni, said there was no evidence to suggest the Mafia were ever involved.

"I still maintain it was suicide," he said. "But if it was murder, there was never any evidence to suspect my client's involvement - or indeed that of the Mafia."

For a large part of the two years this case has run for, it has played out in front of an empty courtroom.

The truth is, here in Italy, the death of "God's banker" is no longer the sensation it once was.

For a lot of people this trial was an uncomfortable reminder of a dark and violent period many would prefer to forget.

The prosecution said that together with the other four other defendants - three businessman and a woman - Calo had lured Calvi to London into the hands of the Mafia.

Calo, who gave evidence from his high security prison, denied this charge on Tuesday in his final submissions.

"I had no interest in killing Calvi," he said.

"I didn't have the time, nor the inclination. Besides, if I had wanted him dead do you not think I would have picked my own people to do the job?"

In fact, Calo's defence argued there were others who had wanted Calvi silenced.

Catholic history

Philip Willan, author of a book on the trial, The Last Supper, says the suspicions still fall on some within the Vatican.

"The church does not come out of this well," he said. "And it's lucky for them that people lost interest in this trial a long time ago.

"The defence lawyer for Giuseppe Calo argued that evidence from the Calvi family suggested the banker was frightened of the Vatican, was in conflict with the Vatican, and was almost certainly trying to blackmail people in the Vatican," Mr Willan says.

"The lawyer for Calo said the Vatican had an entirely plausible motive for killing him."

Banco Ambrosiano had a Catholic history.

In fact it was suggested by the defence, during this trial, that through offshore accounts Mr Calvi had been sending money to Poland to help fund the pro-democracy Solidarity movement - a cause supported by Pope John Paul II.

But Mr Calvi was also working for the mafia and a rather shadowy group of Freemasons, called P2, which had existed here in Italy as a counterbalance to the many communist interests which prevailed.

In short Mr Calvi was involved with some very sensitive operations.

One thing we know is that he had many secrets.

Philip Willan says: "This was a man who was supposed to keep his silence. And with an investigation pending - he was threatening not too. There were plenty who wanted him dead."

Man tries to jump into popemobile

The Pope did not seem to notice the incident

Popemobile incident

BBC NEWS

A German man has tried to jump into Benedict XVI's popemobile during his weekly general audience held in St Peter's Square at the Vatican.

The 27-year-old man was wrestled to the ground by security officers.

The Pope, himself German, was not injured and did not seem to notice the incident. He proceeded with the audience as normal.

In 1981, Benedict's predecessor John Paul II was shot by Turkish gunman Ali Agca as he drove around the square.

The man who tried to jump into the popemobile on Wednesday had been standing among some 35,000 people who were attending the audience.

He leaped over the metal barriers separating the crowd from the pontiff and landed behind the moving vehicle.

Several security guards grabbed the man, who was wearing a pink T-shirt, black shorts and a baseball cap.

He seemed to be trying to climb onto the Pope's vehicle, an open jeep, as the pontiff was driven around the square greeting pilgrims, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

The man was later questioned by Vatican police before being taken to hospital to be assessed in a psychiatric ward.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi described the man as a "mentally unstable".

"His aim was not an attempt on the Pope's life, but to attract attention to himself," Mr Lombardi said.

Profile of Defreitas: Suspect's roots never took hold here

by Alfonso A. Castillo
NEWSDAY

Since being laid off from his job as a cargo worker several years ago, Russell Defreitas has lived a meek existence - at times sleeping in trains and trying to eke out a living running two-bit scams, selling incense on street corners and collecting welfare, acquaintances said.

For the past several years, Defreitas, 63, who once wowed jazz connoisseurs with his saxophone prowess, had been unable to scrape together enough money to put down any real roots, or even track down his estranged daughter, those who knew him said yesterday.

He wasn't the type of person, they said, who could have pulled off a terror plot to blow up a fuel pipeline at Kennedy Airport.

"This is a guy - his car wouldn't start, and I'd have to start his car," said Trevor Watts, a former neighbor in Brooklyn.

"He was a trickster," said Watts. "But he out-tricked himself this time."

Defreitas' relatives could not be reached yesterday. His court-appointed attorney, Andrew Carter, did not return a call for comment.

Friends said Defreitas came to New York from his native Georgetown, Guyana, more than 25 years ago. He once lived in Rockaway with his wife and at least one daughter, but has been estranged from them for several years, they said.

Defreitas was hired by a cargo transportation company at Kennedy Airport, Watts said. Documents show he was employed as a "trainee supervisor" in 2001 with Evergreen Eagle, a subsidiary of Oregon-based Evergreen International Aviation. Officials there declined to comment.

Defreitas' father was a well-known big band leader in Guyana, said one former acquaintance living in Queens, who knew Defreitas from when both lived in Georgetown. Defreitas sometimes moonlighted playing sax at jazz clubs.

"People who visited nightclubs heard him play, they said he was damn good," said the man, 73 - a retired truck driver who asked that he not be named.

At his core, however, Defreitas was a hapless hustler, always looking for an angle, said Watts, who first met the terror suspect more than 10 years ago when they lived across the street from each other on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn. He later moved to a place on North Conduit Boulevard in Jamaica that was "falling apart."

After injuring his back in a car accident with a gypsy cab, Defreitas wore a back brace and collected welfare benefits, Watts said. Before long, he was unemployed and homeless, and came to Watts looking for some help about six years ago.

"He had no place to go. He had just come back from Guyana and was sleeping on the train," said Watts, who agreed to let Defreitas store a trunk full of clothes and receive his mail at Watts' home.

Defreitas had alienated one of his brothers in a dispute over a refrigerator that Defreitas gave him, and later asked for it back, Watts said. That brother has since died. Defreitas also told Watts he wanted to use the Internet to track down his estranged daughter, but couldn't afford to do so.

Acquaintances said that in recent years Defreitas made much of his money shipping junk appliances, car parts and anything else he could get his hands on to Guyana, where he would sell them. He also sometimes sold books and incense on Jamaica street corners, his retired truck-driver countryman said.

Three years ago, Watts said he got a phone call from Defreitas asking whether any mail had come for him.

"That was the last I heard of him - until yesterday," said Watts, who learned Saturday that his former friend had been arrested at a Brooklyn diner.

"When I heard ... I thought, 'Who was he trying to hustle a dinner out of?'" Watts said.