'US trains Jundullah members'

Press TV, July 1, 2009

A senior member of the Jundullah terrorist group says that the group has been trained and financed by "the US and Zionists".

Abdolhamid Rigi, the brother of Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi made the remarks in a court session held in the southeastern city of Zahedan on Wednesday.

Abdolhamid Rigi was among the thirteen members of the Jundullah who were accused of terrorist activities, Fars news agency reported.

Pakistani security forces arrested Abdolhamid last year and extradited him to Iran.

The defendants told the court that foreign spy agencies support Jundullah.

Citing the defendant's confessions, the court's judge said that after the extradition of Abdolhamid, foreign intelligence agencies had incited Jundullah members to step up their terrorist attacks in Iran including hostage takings to put pressure on Iran to release Abdolhamid.

MGH/SME/RE

Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists

By ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times, June 23, 2009

WASHINGTON — Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.

But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.

Only a fraction of the documents have been entered into the court record, and much of the new material is unknown even to the Saudi lawyers in the case.

The documents provide no smoking gun connecting the royal family to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. And the broader links rely at times on a circumstantial, connect-the-dots approach to tie together Saudi princes, Middle Eastern charities, suspicious transactions and terrorist groups.

Saudi lawyers and supporters say that the links are flimsy and exploit stereotypes about terrorism, and that the country is being sued because it has deep pockets and was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers.

“In looking at all the evidence the families brought together, I have not seen one iota of evidence that Saudi Arabia had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks,” Michael Kellogg, a Washington lawyer representing Prince Muhammad al-Faisal al-Saud in the lawsuit, said in an interview.

He and other defense lawyers said that rather than supporting Al Qaeda, the Saudis were sworn enemies of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was exiled from Saudi Arabia, his native country, in 1996. “It’s an absolute tragedy what happened to them, and I understand their anger,” Mr. Kellogg said of the victims’ families. “They want to find those responsible, but I think they’ve been disserved by their lawyers by bringing claims without any merit against the wrong people.”

The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Two federal judges and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have already ruled against the 7,630 people represented in the lawsuit, made up of survivors of the attacks and family members of those killed, throwing out the suit on the ground that the families cannot bring legal action in the United States against a sovereign nation and its leaders.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether to hear an appeal, but the families’ prospects dimmed last month when the Justice Department sided with the Saudis in their immunity claim and urged the court not to consider the appeal.

The Justice Department said a 1976 law on sovereign immunity protected the Saudis from liability and noted that “potentially significant foreign relations consequences” would arise if such suits were allowed to proceed.

“Cases like this put the U.S. government in an extremely difficult position when it has to make legal arguments, even when they are the better view of the law, that run counter to those of terrorist victims,” said John Bellinger, a former State Department lawyer who was involved in the Saudi litigation.

Senior Obama administration officials held a private meeting on Monday with 9/11 family members to speak about progress in cracking down on terrorist financing. Administration officials at the meeting largely sidestepped questions about the lawsuit, according to participants. But the official who helped lead the meeting, Stuart A. Levey, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, has been outspoken in his criticism of wealthy Saudis, saying they have helped to finance terrorism.

Even if the 9/11 families were to get their trial in the lawsuit, they might have difficulty getting some of their new material into evidence. Some would most likely be challenged on grounds it was irrelevant or uncorroborated hearsay, or that it related to Saudis who were clearly covered by sovereign immunity.

And if the families were to clear those hurdles, two intriguing pieces of evidence in the Saudi puzzle might still remain off limits.

One is a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The secret section is believed to discuss intelligence on Saudi financial links to two hijackers, and the Saudis themselves urged at the time that it be made public. President George W. Bush declined to do so.

Kristen Breitweiser, an advocate for Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center, said in an interview that during a White House meeting in February between President Obama and victims’ families, the president told her that he was willing to make the pages public.

But she said she had not heard from the White House since then.

The other evidence that may not be admissible consists of classified documents leaked to one of the law firms representing the families, Motley Rice of South Carolina, which is headed by Ronald Motley, a well-known trial lawyer who won lucrative lawsuits involving asbestos and tobacco.

Lawyers for the firm say someone anonymously slipped them 55 documents that contained classified government material relating to the Saudi lawsuit.

Though she declined to describe the records, Jodi Flowers, a lawyer for Motley Rice, said she was pushing to have them placed in the court file.

“We wouldn’t be fighting this hard, and we wouldn’t have turned the material over to the judge, if we didn’t think it was really important to the case,” she said.

The "pro-life" terrorists

Nicole Colson documents the history of a right-wing movement that, in any other context, would be called out for what it is: terrorist.
by Nicole Colson, SocialistWorker.org, June 9, 2009

TROY NEWMAN is worried.

Newman is president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which for years has targeted the Wichita, Kan., abortion clinic of Dr. George Tiller. Seven years ago, the group even moved its headquarters to Wichita--the better to harass Tiller, his employees and his patients, up close and personal.

But now Dr. Tiller, one of a small number of doctors anywhere in the U.S. who would perform late-term abortions, has been murdered--shot in the face (to avoid his bullet-proof vest) as he attended church on June 1, allegedly by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder.

And Newman is concerned about a PR disaster--since it's hard to call your movement "pro life" when it assassinates doctors.

Newman's regret, of course, isn't for Dr. Tiller. It's not for the employees of Women's Health Care Services, who still face harassment at their homes, where Operation Rescue blankets their neighborhoods with pictures of aborted fetuses.

Nor does Newman care about Tiller's patients--the women (some of them children) who were victims of rape and incest, or whose pregnancies faced medical complications and fetal abnormalities. These women and their partners were often forced to run a gauntlet of Operation Rescue protesters just to enter Women's Health Care Services and exercise their legal right to choose abortion.

No, Newman's worry is that the murder of Dr. Tiller has ripped the mask off the "pro-life" movement and exposed an ugly truth--just behind the "respectable" front that preaches "saving babies" is a group of violent fanatics who are determined to put an end to women's right to chose abortion "by any means necessary."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IN ANY other context, a movement that carried out the kind of violence the anti-abortion movement has over the past two decades would be called what it is: terrorist. But most of the media--not to mention the politicians--refuse to do so.

The double standard is striking. In May, when a group of men were accused of plotting to carry out bombings of two Bronx synagogues and to shoot down military aircraft, the media featured screaming headlines about "terrorism" on U.S. soil, and politicians promised the public would be protected. This was despite the fact that the alleged "terrorists" never had access to weapons, nor harmed a single person or engaged in a single act of violence.

The modern U.S. anti-abortion movement, on the other hand, has a long and terrible record of bombings, arsons, acid attacks and vandalism at clinics across the country--and a string of murders to answer for.

As the National Abortion Federation Web site details, "Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, there has been an organized campaign by anti-abortion extremists which has resulted in escalating levels of violence against women's health care providers."

The first reported clinic arson in 1976 has been followed by more than 200 other arsons and bombings. Beginning in the early 1990s, some anti-choice activists began injecting butyric acid--which produces a rancid, vomit-like odor--into the walls of clinics. There were approximately 100 separate acid attacks on clinics between 1991 and 1998, causing more than $1 million in damage.

Between 1998 and 2002, 654 letters purporting to contain anthrax were sent to clinics. In November 2001 (just after the September 11 attacks, and in the wake of real anthrax attacks that killed five people), anti-abortion activist Clayton Waagner sent more than 500 fake anthrax letters to various clinics. Though none of the letters turned out to contain real anthrax, clinics were shut down in some cases.

If Scott Roeder was the man who murdered Dr. Tiller, as police allege, he is far from the first to kill an abortion provider in the U.S. Including Dr. Tiller, at least four abortion providers have been assassinated by anti-choice extremists since 1993.

That year, Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Fla., clinic. The following year, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed by former minister Paul Hill outside another abortion clinic in Pensacola. In 1998, anti-choice extremist James Kopp killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home in Amherst, N.Y.

Clinic staff and others have also been killed or injured in attacks--like the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., clinic, in which nurse Emily Lyons was maimed and off-duty police officer Robert Sanderson killed by bomber Eric Rudolph.

Dr. Tiller was long targeted for death by the anti-choice movement. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by Rachelle "Shelley" Shannon, who was later also convicted of multiple clinic arsons and acid attacks.

Scott Roeder himself has a history of targeting clinics. Recently, he was caught two weekends in a row--the second being the day before Tiller's murder--allegedly attempting to put glue in the locks of another Kansas clinic, Central Family Medicine. But when clinic staff called the FBI to report the vandalism (and provide a description of the suspect, complete with car license plate number), they were reportedly told by the FBI that there was nothing that could be done until a grand jury could be convened.

These actions are designed to prevent women from exercising their legal right to an abortion--and to frighten doctors and clinic staff from providing care. If that doesn't qualify as terrorism, then what does?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SOME ANTI-choice activists, like Operation Rescue's Troy Newman, condemned Dr. Tiller's murder and publicly professed that they "abhor violence." But others couldn't hide their glee at Tiller's killing.

Randall Terry, the founder and former president of Operation Rescue, staged a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where he denied that the anti-choice movement is responsible for Tiller's death--but added that Tiller "was a mass-murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed."

Regina Dinwiddie, who protested at clinics alongside Scott Roeder, told CNN that Tiller's slaying was "absolutely" justified. "He forfeited his life by taking the lives of innocent children," she said.

Talk radio host Steve Deace had the gall to compare Scott Roeder to the 19th-century abolitionist John Brown. "Maybe the fact that we have a lawless society that has not protected these babies from infanticide created the Scott Roeders of the world, who in very John Brown-like fashion, illegally took matters into his own hands," Deace said.

Not surprisingly, there are warnings that more violence could be on the way. Speaking to the Associated Press from his jail cell on June 7, Scott Roeder warned, "I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal."

Colorado Right To Life spokesman Bob Enyart told the Los Angeles Times that abortion providers "should expect that violence begets violence." In particular, Enyart had strong words for Dr. Warren Hern--a colleague of Dr. Tiller's in Boulder, Colo., who has heroically pledged to carry on providing women with access to late-term abortion.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "the constant threats with which [Dr. Hern] has lived since 1973 have transformed his life into a series of security measures: sleeping with a rifle, scanning rooftops for snipers, wearing a protective vest."

But whether they publicly denounce violence or not, there's plenty of evidence to suggest an ideological connection--if not more--between groups like Operation Rescue and the more violent wing of the anti-abortion movement.

After he was arrested, authorities searched Scott Roeder's car and found a Post-It note with the name "Cheryl" and a phone number. That number belongs to Cheryl Sullenger--the senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue--who, after first denying ever having spoken to Roeder, acknowledged speaking with him on several occasions (though never about anything substantial, she claims).

In a statement claiming that Roeder had no affiliation with Operation Rescue, the group stated, "Operation Rescue has diligently and successfully worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see to it that abortionists around the nation are brought to justice. Without due process, there can be no justice."

Yet there was nothing peaceful or legal about the clinic firebombing that Cheryl Sullenger planned in 1988. Though it was not carried out, Sullenger spent two years in prison for her role in conspiring to bomb the Alvarado Medical Center in California.

So Operation Rescue abhors violence...but employs a convicted terrorist?

Like other anti-choice groups, Operation Rescue claims to be peaceful, but it does everything in its power to make life a living hell for abortion providers and clinic staff. As a 2004 report in Rolling Stone details, the group targeted everyone connected to Dr. Tiller, however casually--using tactics that seem to invite the potential of violence without necessarily crossing any legal lines.

For example, Sara Phares, an administrative assistant at Dr, Tiller's clinic, was sent a letter by Troy Newman suggesting she should "quit her job and repent her sins." A week later, hundreds of Phares' neighbors were sent postcards with pictures of aborted fetuses that accused Phares of "killing babies like these." The cards listed Phare's phone number and home address.

That was followed by Operation Rescue protesters appearing at Phares' home, according to Rolling Stone:

They parked a tractor-trailer across the street, plastered with 20-foot-long images of dismembered fetuses. From its speakers came the kind of sweet, tinkling music that lures children from their backyards in pursuit of Dreamsicles. One protester, a somber man in a tan windbreaker with a three-foot crucifix thrust before him, performed an exorcism on Phares' front lawn, sprinkling holy water on the grass to cast demons from the property.

Such tactics are designed to skirt the line of what's legal--whipping up anti-choice sentiment and putting providers and clinic staff in the crosshairs, but allowing groups like Operation Rescue to claim they had no responsibility.

Former evangelical anti-choice activist Frank Schaeffer was one of the few who admitted that the anti-choice movement "helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen." As Schaeffer commented on the Huffington Post following Tiller's murder:

The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today, once again, the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day, after a man was murdered in cold blood for performing abortions, that I--and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church--all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

Years ago, Troy Newman took out a full-page ad in the Catholic newspaper The Wanderer. In it, he declared: "Wichita isn't big enough for George Tiller and me." Looks like Newman finally got his wish.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IF TROY Newman and his ilk are responsible for whipping up hatred, they are aided and abetted by the mainstream media and the politicians who applaud their cause.

Few in the press (a notable exception being MSNBC's Rachel Maddow) have been willing to call out the anti-choice movement for encouraging, promoting and creating a climate where this terrorist violence is okay.

Instead, for years, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, repeatedly attacked Dr. Tiller on the air, referring to him as "Tiller the baby killer" and hurling outrageous lies--for example, that Tiller would "execute babies for $5,000 if the mother is depressed."

During a 2006 show, O'Reilly said: "[I]f I could get my hands on Tiller...well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech."

After Tiller's murder, O'Reilly joined the chorus of those trying to wash their hands of the violence. Instead, O'Reilly insisted that he was being persecuted. "When I heard about Tiller's murder, I knew that pro-abortion zealots and Fox News-haters would blame us for the crime," he said, adding that the "far left is exploiting, EXPLOITING, the death" of Dr. Tiller for political gain.

O'Reilly, true to form, then reminded viewers that Tiller was responsible for destroying "60,000 fetuses who will never become American citizens."

Naturally, there was no mention of the campaign of domestic terrorism engaged in by the anti-choice movement over a period of decades. In O'Reilly's world, you're only a terrorist if you're non-white and a Muslim.

O'Reilly's attitude is hardly unique. On the campaign trail last year, for example, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin repeatedly invoked the name of former Weather Underground figure Bill Ayers as a "domestic terrorist" to try to smear Barack Obama because of his casual association with Ayers.

But when NBC News reporter Brian Williams asked Palin, with running mate John McCain at her side, "Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition, Governor?" she refused to say yes.

"There's no question that Bill Ayers, via his own admittance, was one who sought to destroy our U.S. capitol and our Pentagon...that is a domestic terrorist," she told Williams. "Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans, or facilities that--it would be unacceptable. I don't know if you're gonna use the word 'terrorist' there."

Such rhetoric isn't surprising given that the modern Republican Party has depended on a base in the anti-choice Evangelical Right--which openly brags about setting Republican "values."

But if the Republican Party has openly embraced such anti-choice zealots, the Democratic Party has been spineless in calling them out for it. Instead, the Democrats have constantly preached that "Middle America" wants "middle ground" on the question of abortion.

Thus, in April, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on right-wing extremism acknowledging, in a footnote, that groups opposed to abortion might be among the extremists. That's hardly a shocking statement in light of the movement's history of repeated violent actions.

Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report at first--but after anti-choice groups protested vociferously, she said the section including anti-choice activists should not have been included.

That kind of weak-kneed response is, unfortunately, all too typical of the Democrats, who spend more time talking about finding "common ground" with anti-choice activists than fighting to defend abortion rights and abortion clinics.

Now that the anti-abortion forces have been exposed as preachers of violence and hate, in the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder, activists should seize the opportunity to push back.

Why are women's health clinics across this country forced to install video cameras and hire security guards? Why are doctors forced to wear bulletproof vests, and patients forced to struggle through a gauntlet of protesters?

If abortion remains legal, then why has the anti-choice movement been able to get away with creating a climate of terror that prevents physicians from practicing, and women from exercising, their legal rights? And why have the Democrats been so willing to accept every restriction on a woman's right to choose--from parental consent laws to mandatory waiting periods to forced ultrasounds.

This isn't "common ground." This is losing ground.

We need to build a new movement for abortion rights that fights to change the terrain of the debate--and pressures the government to hold the anti-choice terrorists accountable for their violence.

Officials investigate Argentina bomb threat as pilot claims Air France Flight 447 was blown out of the sky by terrorists

By Peter Allen, Ian Sparks and David Williams, Mail Online, June 3, 2009

Investigators are examining a bomb threat called in on a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris just days before Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic ocean, it has been revealed.

Aviation authorities are examining the possibility of a link between the threat to the Buenos Aires flight and the mysterious disappearance of Flight 447 with 228 people on board, a source has claimed.

Meanwhile an Air France pilot said it was 'highly likely' the jet was blown out of the sky by a bomb.

The long-haul captain said he believed Flight 447 was the victim of terrorist attack. No terrorist group has yet come forward to claim responsibility for such an attack, but the French government - baffled by the disappearance of the aircraft - has not ruled such an attack out.

Speaking under condition of anonymity to Le Figaro newspaper the pilot said: 'It is highly likely a bomb went off on board.

'I have flown these jets for Air France for more than ten years, and the chances of an electrical fault seem unfeasible to me.'

Ezeiza International Airport officials in Buenos Aires delayed an Air France flight from the city to Paris on the evening of May 27 after the bomb threat was called in.

Federal Police and airport safety officers inspected the plane and it was cleared for take-off, Argentine media reported. The search lasted about an hour and a half, and passengers were not evacuated from the plane.

Just four days later, Flight 447 dropped out of the sky so quickly that pilots did not even have time to make a Mayday call.

All 228 on board are believed to have perished.

‘Investigations are in process to see if the Argentina bomb threat was linked to what happened with the Brazil flight,’ said an Air France source.

‘Terrorism cannot be ruled out as we search for the reason for this tragedy.’

Investigators found debris from the wreckage of the doomed plane floating in the Atlantic yesterday - including a life jacket and a plane seat.

Now it's a race against time for the Brazilian Air Force to reach the crash site before the remaining debris sinks into the ocean - taking any chance of discovering what happened to Flight 447 with it.

They are desperate to recover the plane’s two black-box flight recorders which are now likely to be at the bottom of the ocean. They emit location signals for only 30 days.

But officials said there was virtually no chance of finding any of the 228 crew and passengers, including five Britons.

Distraught relatives who had prayed for a miracle gave up hope as experts were certain that all aboard died on the flight, which left Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night bound for Paris.

'I just want to find my son's body so that he can have a dignified burial,' said Aldair Gomes, the father of Marcelo Parente, who was the head of the Rio mayor's cabinet.

So far no bodies have been sighted on flyovers by the air force, which spotted evidence of the catastrophe yesterday, allowing the navy to mount a retrieval operation.

'The ships are equipped to arrive and pick up pieces of the Airbus,' Nogueira said.

'Each ship has two divers on board and smaller ships to throw into the ocean to try and get pieces.'

Helicopters would then be used to take wreckage of the Airbus A330 from the ships to a base on the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, 430 miles (700 km) from the crash site.

Today armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck said that the French army had no doubt that the debris belonged to the stricken plane.

Authorities are at a complete loss to explain why the four-year-old Airbus disappeared 400 miles off Brazil without issuing a Mayday.

A former Air France pilot said the aircraft might have hit a military jet or a plane used by drug smugglers.

‘Anything could have happened. Maybe a collision with another aircraft, maybe a military aircraft, maybe a drugs-smuggling aircraft which nobody reports missing,’ said Cedric Maniez.

Herve Morin, France’s defence minister, admitted last night there was ‘no evidence whatsoever’.

He added: ‘We cannot, by definition, exclude a terrorist attack, because terrorism is the main threat for all Western democracies.’

But it was significant that no terror group had claimed responsibility, he said.

The last radio message from Flight AF447 as it cruised at 522mph between Rio de Janeiro and Paris early on Monday reported heavy turbulence.

This raises the possibility of a catastrophic lightning strike – even though planes are built to withstand one.

‘It would be very unusual to have all the communications systems fail at once,’ said David Gleave, of Aviation Safety Investigations, a UK-based airport and air traffic control risk management consultancy.

‘That would tend to indicate that something catastrophic happened.’

An automatic message sent from the plane just before it disappeared said that it was losing pressure and had experienced an electrical failure.

French officials said bad weather was making the search difficult, with heavy cloud forcing planes to fly low over the water, limiting their line of vision.

A plane seat, a life jacket, metallic debris and signs of fuel were found by Brazilian military pilots yesterday about 410 miles north of the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, roughly along the jet’s flightpath.

Investigators have confirmed they were from Flight 447.

There were no signs of life in two sightings of debris about 35 miles apart, Brazilian air force spokesman Jorge Amaral said.

‘The locations where the objects were found are toward the right of the point where the last signal of the plane was emitted,’ Mr Amaral said.

‘That suggests that it might have tried to make a turn, maybe to return to Fernando de Noronha, but that is just a hypothesis.’

Mr Amaral said authorities will not be able to confirm that the debris is from the plane until they can retrieve some of it from the ocean. Ships are not expected to arrive in the area until later today.

Air France is considered to be one of the world’s safest airlines and its A330 is one of the most secure passenger jets.

Jean-Louis Borloo, the French minister overseeing transportation, said: ‘There really had to be a succession of extraordinary events to be able to explain this situation.’

The chance of finding survivors was ‘very very small, even non-existent’, Mr Borloo added.

The five Britons, including an 11-year-old boy, were among passengers who numbered 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians, 26 Germans, nine Chinese and nine Italians.

The 12-member crew included three pilots.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1190307/Pilot-claims-Air-France-Flight-447-blown-sky-terrorists-officials-investigate-Argentina-bomb-threat.html

Dr. Tiller's Murder: Fascist Terrorism and Its Pampered Apologists

By Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, June 2, 2009
Attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice
Statement on behalf of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

The rampant terrorism and violence against women and health care professionals who dare to provide women's health services took its latest victim when Dr. George Tiller was brutally gunned down in his church on Sunday in Wichita, Kansas.

The government and the corporate media coddle these anti-women terrorists.

In the last 30 years, right-wing bigots have carried out 5,800 reported acts of violence against women's health care providers, including targeted assassination, bombings, arsons, death threats, kidnappings and assaults, according to NARAL.

Hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of women have been assaulted and harassed by the right wing as they tried to see a doctor.

The Fascist Strategy

By targeting and intimidating health care providers, the fascist movement hopes to effectively ban abortion services in the United States. If they were to succeed, not only would it deprive women of their fundamental right to control their own bodies, it would be a health care catastrophe. One out of three women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45, according to Planned Parenthood.

The only question is whether women will be maimed or left to die because they cannot access quality health providers. Dr. Tiller took over his medical practice from his father, a doctor who began performing abortions himself in the 1940s after a patient whom he refused to help died in a back-alley abortion.

Dr. Tiller, like many other health care heroes, kept providing abortion services to women despite the threats. He had been shot previously in both arms; had his office bombed, shot at and frequently vandalized; and he and his patients were routinely threatened, intimidated and attacked.

Dr. Tiller kept providing health care services because, as his family said in a statement, he was “a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere.” He was past retirement age, with four children and 10 grandchildren, and he lived under a virtual military siege because of the terrorist threats. But he didn't stop.

It Wasn't Just the Gunman

This assassination is the culmination of a coordinated assault by the right wing. This included the Kansas Attorney General's efforts to prosecute Tiller, the demonization of Dr. Tiller by Bill O'Reilly, who ran dozens of hit pieces targeting him as a "murderer," and by "Operation Rescue," which prominently called him "America's Doctor of Death."

In the aftermath of the murder, amid reports that the killer had worked with them, Operation Rescue scrambled to take down their prominent "Tiller Watch" webpage, apparently sanitizing it, while their founder continued to call Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer” and held a press conference to do so.

The New York Times coverage of the murder was pathetic. On its front page it stated, "Officials offered little insight into the motive, saying that they believed it was 'the act of an isolated individual' but that they were also looking into 'his history, his family, his associates.'"

The decision to question or suggest uncertainty as to the killer’s "motive" reflects an effort to depoliticize and isolate this most violent of political acts and to disconnect the killing from right-wing groups who seek as their goal to deprive women of their rights using assassination as they see fit. Some right-wing groups and leaders have been quick to announce that the killing was not a homicide, but a justifiable act of "salvation."

The mass media has leapt to the defense of many anti-woman, right-wing groups who directly targeted Dr. Tiller by giving their spokespeople more time in the wake of Dr. Tiller's death to express their primary grievance with his murder -- that it might make them look bad.

Fake Terrorism and Real Terrorism

In recent months, Dr. Tiller reported to the FBI that the threats were increasing.

Obviously, stopping real terrorism is not a "priority" for the FBI, which has allocated limitless resources to infiltrate and sabotage lawful political organizing all over the country. The FBI and police have disrupted and spied on progressive organizations that built a powerful anti-war movement in the last years. They have paid agents provocateur to infiltrate and frame up organizations and individuals engaged in dissent.

Nor is any mosque or Muslim community center safe from FBI infiltration and disruption activities. From Southern California to upstate New York, undercover FBI agents are trying to entrap Muslim youth into "terrorist" plots that emanate from the FBI itself.

The U.S. government's use of the terrorist label is used to frame up and imprison Muslims in the United States. Just last week in Dallas, representatives of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) were sentenced to as much as 65 years in prison for the “terrorist” crime of raising money for desperately needed humanitarian relief. HLF had been the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. The charity's "crime" was that the humanitarian relief was going to those starving and dying in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine. The U.S. government has determined that it is an act of terrorism to get medicine to hospitals and food to children when U.S. foreign policy supports the strangulation of a civilian population for geostrategic reasons.

When Anthrax Threats Were No Big Deal

Yet, when it comes to the right-wing organizations that engage in violence and threats, the FBI and the corporate media are conspicuously mute.

For instance, shortly after the September 11 attacks, letters containing anthrax were sent to media and Senate offices. Hundreds of anthrax threats were also sent to reproductive health clinics, according to the website of NARAL, which states: "Between October 15 and 23, 2001, more than 250 abortion and family planning clinics in 17 states and the District of Columbia received letters purporting to contain anthrax. In each instance, a powdery substance was accompanied by a letter stating, 'You have been exposed to anthrax. We are going to kill all of you.' An additional 270 letters were sent to clinics during the first week of November."

Very few people know about this kind of extreme terrorist intimidation. Can you imagine the reaction of the FBI and the media if anti-war organizers or Arab Americans were linked to anthrax threat letters? There would be screaming headlines and nationwide police sweeps.

Coddling Right Wing Terrorists

But in 2007, in Washington, D.C., when a man showed up at an immigrant rights rally, covertly carrying a map of the demonstration area with sight lines drawn on it, with a cache of weapons including a converted fully automatic M1-Carbine and apparent plans to massacre participants, you probably never heard about it. Why? Because the man, Tyler Froatz, was a right-wing vigilante bent on attacking immigrants and their supporters.

Froatz, who organized with the Free Republic and acted as a spokesman for the Minuteman, stalked a May Day demonstration in 2007. He was arrested after he was confronted by a courageous young woman working as an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition. She was then assaulted by him when she objected to the racist signs he was posting depicting the graphic slaughter of immigrants, including pregnant women and children.

In addition to the weapons Froatz brought with him, in his apartment was found a large arsenal of rifles, handguns, ammunition, a Molotov cocktail, a hand grenade and a 100,000-volt taser gun.

So is Froatz in the special terrorist prisons in Terre Haute or Marion? No. He was released to the custody of his parents in Connecticut and thereafter allowed to plead to a minor weapons charge. The U.S. Attorney’s Office never charged him with any terrorism-related offense or hate-crimes offense. And today, members of Froatz’s group, the Free Republic, celebrated this latest cold-blooded terrorist murder of Dr. Tiller in their postings.

More than Bullet-Proof Vests and Federal Marshals: A New Strategy is Needed

The murder of Dr. Tiller is a misogynist attack against all women. It is also the foreseeable outcome of a climate of bigotry and vilification fostered by the right wing, normalized by the media and the U.S. government.

A political calculus has been made by the government as to what will be deemed terrorism: what political acts will be crushed and what political violence will be supported or tolerated. As it stands, there is no mobilized effective counter to this fascist violence and the threat that it poses. It’s time for a new strategy and a new challenge. There must be a multi-faceted mobilization of women themselves and of all those men who stand with us against anti-woman bigotry.

www.answercoalition.org

"Jihad" Girlfriends: FBI Snitch Used Gifts To Trick Our Men

By LORENA MONGELLI IN NEWBURGH, NY and LUKAS I. ALPERT IN NYC
New York Post, May 23, 2009

A slick FBI informant roped four Muslim converts into a horrific terror plot to blow up synagogues and military jets by handing them piles of cash and gifts and even bags of weed, relatives of the suspects said today.

"Brother whatever you need, I will get it for you," said the man who the four petty thieves knew as Maqsood, according to Kathleen Baynes, whose long-time boyfriend, James Cromitie is alleged to be the ringleader of the plot.

She said Cromitie, 45, met Maqsood at the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque about a year ago and promised to teach him the truth about Islam.

The man soon was coming by their apartment with increasing frequency and was always flush with cash.

"He was very persistent and every time he came for James he took him away. They said they were going out to eat dinner," she said. "Whenever we needed anything Maqsood would help -- like financially --he gave us money to pay rent.

"He was just constantly around. It was like he was stalking him."

Co-conspirator David Williams's girlfriend Cassandra McKoy insists the men were duped into the plot with the lure of a cash payday and that religious hatred had nothing to do with it.

"They aren't radicals they were just financially motivated. They aren't terrorists. If Maqsood wasn't in the picture they would've never come up with this idea," she said. "This was not their idea. They make it sound like they sought him out and said we want to do this when he's the one who approached them. He enticed them with money.

"Maqsood wasn't even allowed inside the mosque, he waited in the parking lot for them and offered them $25,000 to join."

Sources say Maqsood was really Shahed Hussain -- a Pakistani native who runs hotels upstate and has worked for the FBI since 2003 after getting into trouble in a fraud case. He played an integral role in unraveling another terror-related case in Albany in 2004.

Baynes, 42, dated Cromitie -- a career criminal who has been in jail more than 20 times -- for six years. She said he converted to Islam during his last prison stint but wasn't serious.

"James is a wannabe Muslim. He wasn't real Muslin. He never prayed," she said.

But during the course of the year, Maqsood kept trying to steer Cromitie down a path to jihad - giving him religious pamphlets, clothing and prayer rugs. In the end, it seemed that cash and gifts worked better.

She said Maqsood promised to get Cromitie jobs and once said he'd give him a black Mercedes Benz. On repeated occasions he gave Cromitie cameras, cash and even drugs.

"Maqsood gave him a lot of marijuana," she said.

An FBI spokesman did not return a call for comment on the gift giving.

Williams' mother, Elizabeth McWilliams, said her son fell under Maqsood's sway in April with promises to help with medical bills for his sick brother.

"Maqsood said 'Don't worry brother, I am going to help with your brother's hospital bills,'" she quoted him as saying. "This man did nothing but set these guys up."

Baynes said she never trusted Maqsood's intentions and that the imam at the mosque warned James to stay away from the interloper.

"James told me that the Imam said to be careful because this man is trying to recruit people to go to Pakistan," she said. "James said he was not that crazy to do something like that."

As Wednesday's attack neared, Baynes said Cromitie's mood changed.

"Lately James hasn't been the same. He was just acting different," she said. "All he would do all day is smoke weed and play video games with his friends [co-conspirators Williams, Laguerre Payen and Onta Williams]."

On the day of the attack, she said the men gathered and that Maqsood "looked real nervous."

"He was standing by the car twitching," she said.

Then, as they were about to leave, Cromitie kissed her on the cheek and promised, "Soon we are going to be all right," she said. "I guess he meant financially he meant that we were going to be okay."

She said a friend told her James had said he was going to be getting $50,000.

FBI ‘lured dimwits’ into terror plot

The arrest of petty crooks over a plan to target Jews has put the use of sting operations under fire
Tony Allen-Mills, Times Online, May 24, 2009

ON the steps of New York city hall on Friday, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor, praised the police officers and federal agents who helped disrupt an apparent terrorist plot to blow up a synagogue and shoot down military aircraft.

The mayor was flanked by more than 100 homeland security and counter-terrorist specialists, all of whom had a hand in an elaborate sting that netted four alleged Muslim extremists. Their plan, according to FBI agents, was to detonate a “fireball that would make the country gasp”.

The operation was acclaimed by New York officials for its success in averting what David Paterson, the state governor, described as “a heinous crime”.

Yet not every New Yorker was impressed by the latest in a long line of purported anti-terrorist triumphs that have supposedly averted tragedy in New York, Chicago, Toronto and several other North American cities since September 11, 2001.

“This whole operation was a foolish waste of time and money,” claimed Terence Kindlon, a defence lawyer who represented the last terror suspect to be tried in New York state. “It is almost as if the FBI cooked up the plot and found four idiots to install as defendants.”

Kindlon’s complaints were echoed by other legal experts who have repeatedly questioned the FBI’s reliance on undercover informants – known as confidential witnesses (CWs) – who lure gullible radicals into far-fetched plots that are then foiled by the agents monitoring them.

The last such plot purportedly involved an alleged attempt to blow up a fuel pipeline at John F Kennedy airport in New York in 2007; the defendants are awaiting trial in a case that depends heavily on evidence from an undercover CW.

“One question [about the synagogue case] that has to be answered is: did the informant go in and enlist people who were otherwise not considering trouble ?” said Kevin Luibrand, who represented a Muslim businessman caught up in another FBI sting three years ago. “Did the government induce someone to commit a crime?”

The other question that US security experts were debating was how much had been achieved by assigning more than 100 agents to a year-long investigation of three petty criminals and a mentally ill Haitian immigrant, none of whom had any connection with any known terrorist group. “They were all unsophisticated dimwits,” said Kindlon.

Prosecutors alleged that James Cromitie, a 44-year-old ex-convict who converted to Islam in prison, was the ringleader of a plot to bomb synagogues because, in his tape-recorded words, “I hate those f****** Jewish bastards”.

Cromitie, from Newburgh, 60 miles north of Manhattan, was said to have recruited three other Muslim converts – David Williams, 28, and Onta Williams (no relation), 32, both former Baptist American ex-convicts; and Laguerre Payen, 27, a Haitian former Catholic and paranoid schizophrenic.

This unlikely crew was said to have planned to use remotely detonated C4 explosives to bomb synagogues in the New York suburb of Riverdale; they then intended to drive north to a National Guard base near Newburgh to shoot down military aircraft with a Stinger missile supplied by a man they believed was working with Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based terrorist group.

That man is now understood to have been Shahed Hussain, a former New York state motel owner who became an FBI informant in 2002 to avoid deportation to Pakistan after being arrested on fraud charges. Hussain appears to have met Cromitie at a Newburgh mosque where the plot to bomb Jewish targets was hatched.

With Hussain’s help, the FBI was able to monitor every move made by Cromitie and the others. Hussain also provided the group with bogus C4 explosive and a fake Stinger missile and launcher supplied by the FBI. When the conspirators planted their dud bombs outside two Jewish targets on Wednesday night, the FBI was watching. The area was smothered with heavily armed Swat teams, the would-be bombers’ exit was blocked and agents hauled them away in handcuffs.

“Did they really need all those men in ninja suits with M16 rifles to arrest four idiots?” wondered Kindlon, a former marine sergeant whose main concern is that real terrorists may be plotting undisturbed while domestic US agencies focus on fantasists. “Somewhere, someone in Al-Qaeda must be laughing.”

Concern about the FBI’s tactics heightened after Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, imam at the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, revealed that when Hussain first came to the mosque and started talking about jihad (holy war) – apparently to identify radical elements for his FBI handlers – several members immediately concluded that he must be a government agent.

The FBI is known to have infiltrated mosques, and many anti-terrorist experts believe a mosque is the last place a serious Islamic terrorist would plot an attack. “Anyone with any smarts knew to stay away from [Hussain],” said Muhammad. Yet nobody will accuse Cromitie and his cohorts of being smart.

CAIR Applauds FBI for Preventing Attacks on NY Jewish Sites

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/21/2009) -­ The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today applauded efforts by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that apparently thwarted an alleged plot to attack Jewish institutions in New York.

Four men were arrested Wednesday for allegedly plotting to bomb a synagogue and a Jewish community center. The men also allegedly planned to shoot down military planes.

SEE: Synagogue Targeted in NY Plot, Four Charged (Reuters)

In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said:

“We applaud the FBI, the New York Police Department and the other law enforcement agencies that took part in the investigation for their efforts in helping to prevent any harm to either Jewish institutions or to our nation’s military.

"We repeat the American Muslim community’s repudiation of bias-motivated crimes and of anyone who would falsely claim religious justification for violent actions. Members of the American Muslim community should remain vigilant in reporting any activities that could harm the safety and security of our nation or its citizens.”

CAIR also requested that media outlets and public officials refrain from linking this case to mainstream Islam and to challenge those who will inevitably exploit this disturbing incident to promote anti-Muslim fear and stereotypes.

Along with innumerable condemnations of other terror incidents, CAIR has in the past launched an online anti-terror petition drive called “Not in the Name of Islam,” initiated a television public service announcement campaign of that same name and coordinated a “fatwa,” or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and religious extremism.

SEE: CAIR’s Anti-Terrorism Campaigns

[NOTE TO EDITORS: American Muslims are often accused of not speaking out forcefully against acts of terror committed in the name of Islam. This statement, along with the many other past anti-terror statements by mainstream Muslim groups, reaffirms the American Muslim community’s unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms.]

CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 35 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

U.S. Releases Wanted Terrorist

Venezuela protests militant's release

By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer

Sun Apr 22, 11:09 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Venezuela will lodge a protest with the United Nations after the U.S. released a Cuban militant on bond, accusing Washington of letting a terrorist go free.

Venezuela had asked the U.S. to extradite 79-year-old former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles on charges that he plotted the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane, in which 73 people died.

Chavez also said Posada has been plotting to assassinate him for years, and accused President Bush of complicity in failing to bring Posada to justice.

"President Bush, you are a protector of terrorists. As such, you are a terrorist," Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program "Hello, President."

"The Venezuelan government will take this case to the United Nations, because it cannot be," Chavez said. "We've been asking for his extradition for more than two years. We sent them all the evidence."

Venezuela accuses Posada, a militant opponent of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, of plotting the bombing while living in Caracas. Posada has denied involvement.

He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 and was detained in Florida in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally.

Posada was indicted on charges of lying to U.S. immigration authorities, but an appeals court ruled last week that he could post bail and return to his family in Miami while awaiting trial.

Chavez said Posada "has for many years been planning the assassination not only of Fidel Castro but also my assassination, and he has a powerful network that has been supported by the CIA for many years," Chavez said.

He said Posada's release is linked to larger "plans against Venezuela."

The Bush administration has repeatedly denied Chavez's accusations but calls the leftist president a threat to democracy and a negative force in Latin America.

Venezuela, along with other countries, plans to bring the Posada case before a U.N. Security Council committee monitoring counterterrorism efforts, said Jose Pertierra, a lawyer representing Chavez's government.

The Nonaligned Movement, which comprises 118 mainly developing countries including Venezuela, expressed concern about Posada's release in a statement issued Friday, reiterating its support for Venezuela's extradition request.

Chavez also said Sunday that he will enact a law to regulate prices at private hospitals and warned that his government would seize any hospital caught flouting the new controls.

Chavez said he will approve the law by presidential decree, using special powers granted to him by the National Assembly nearly three months ago, as he aims to steer the South American country toward socialism.

"We're going to have strict regulation. Any clinic that doesn't comply, let it be closed down," Chavez said.

Venezuela has a two-tiered health system in which wealthier, insured patients often can afford prompter, better treatment at private hospitals. Chavez has expanded the public health system, building new clinics, refurbishing hospitals and sending thousands doctors to live in poor neighborhoods and provide free care.