Family accuses Met Police of whitewash and racism and awaits result of a third inquiry

Scotland Yard has been accused of a “cover up” after it emerged that its own review into the controversial death of a man believed to be an informant did not address key evidence which suggested officers bungled the investigation.

Kester David, 53, was found burned to death under railway arches in north London two years ago. Police concluded that he had committed suicide, but his family claim that he was murdered, possibly connected to him being a police informant, and that detectives failed to carry out a proper investigation because he was black.

In response, Inspector Brian Casson conducted an internal inquiry into the initial investigation. He found that officers had made a “catalogue of errors” that amounted to “a failing in duty”.

However, The Independent has established that the Met then ordered another review, carried out in March this year by DSI Keith Dobson, which did not address Casson’s findings.

Dobson’s report, obtained by The Independent, says: “I have not discovered anything which would have altered the ‘course and direction’ of the original investigation or alter the conclusions and findings which are documented by the investigators and experts involved…Based on all the information supplied to me I concur with that conclusion.”

Last night Mr David’s brother Roger Griffith described the Dobson report as an attempted “whitewash” by the Met and part of a sustained attempt to cover up the failings of the original detectives, whom he believes were motivated by racism.

He said: “The Dobson report was a cover up which ignored everything Casson found and concluded that the original investigation was a good job. It was a complete whitewash.”

He added: “How is it right that two police officers who failed us so tragically are still on the streets? They seemed hell bent on not investigating and putting forward that it was suicide…The two officers should be suspended now, so that no other mother has to go through what our mum has been put through.”

An inquest into Mr David’s death recorded an open verdict in January 2011 amid unanswered questions and a missing DNA report. After the critical Casson report was leaked to the press, Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe ordered a new inquiry, which is still ongoing.

Inspector Casson, who was investigating the family’s complaints, found two key witnesses who had called 999 with evidence that pointed to foul play, but were never interviewed by the detectives.

One man, who was awake feeding his baby daughter, reported hearing two screams of ‘no’ by a man who sounded panicked, frightened and in pain at 4.20am. He was first interviewed by the Inspector Casson – almost 18 months after the incident.

The second caller was a Morrisson’s supermarket night shift worker who had seen a white Mercedes van in the car park, which borders the Travis Perkin yard where Mr David was found, and two men walking towards the yard at 3.45am. He had never before seen a vehicle in the car park at that time of night. The CCTV footage was never recovered.

Mr David’s burnt body was found without shoes but there was a pair of white Reebok trainers found close-by, which his family said did not belong to him. The detectives concluded that they were his because, they told the coroner, DNA taken from the shoes “would have” belonged to a close relative. This was not true; there is no mention of a close relative in the excerpt of the DNA report quoted by Casson, the same report apparently lost by the detectives so never seen by the coroner or family.

The forensic scientist actually found two DNA profiles, one was dominant so most likely belonged to regular wearer of the shoes, but this was not run against the police DNA database. Casson’s inquiry found that it was perfect match to a white man from the travelling community.

At the inquest, Detective Kirk told the coroner that the CCTV footage showing Mr David buying a canister of petrol a few hour before he is believed to have died, pointed to a planned suicide. The inquest was not shown footage from a few minutes later which showed an RAC van attend as Mr David’s car had broken down because it was out of fuel. This footage was “not discovered” by the original investigation.

Casson also found that crucial mobile phone analysis was not done.

The Casson report recommended “a severity assessment” be conducted in light of his findings. Even the Dobson report recommends they are “considered for local management action” because of the insensitivities shown to the family and the inaccurate information they passed on. But both still remain on full duty.

They family do not understand why the IPCC, which is currently investigating five alleged cases of racism, decided not to get involved pending the outcome of the criminal investigation. The IPCC said it was reviewing this decision following the family’s request not to delay the investigation.

The Met did not comment on Mr Griffith’s view that the Dobson report was a whitewash and an attempt to cover up the actions of racist officers but said: “There is a fresh on-going investigation into the death of Kester David by the Specialist Crime and Operations Directorate (SC&O1)… detectives retain an open mind about the circumstances surrounding the incident.

“An investigation into an unexplained death of this nature is reviewed as a matter of course after 28 days, usually internally, but in this case by an external police force ensure Mr David’s family is as reassured as they can be about the effectiveness of our investigative process.”

She added: “The investigation into this complaint has not been completed… the Directorate of Professional Standards awaits the outcome of the [criminal] investigation. No action has been taken against any officer at this stage. No disciplinary action can be considered until SC&O1 have finalised their investigation.”

Timeline: Kester David Case

7 July 2010 Kester David dies around 4am. His burnt body is found under railway arches of Palmers Green station, north London, at 11am.

…

Find this story at 7 July 2012 

Nina Lakhani
Saturday, 7 July 2012

© independent.co.uk

DENVER — As Chris Lindley drove to work that morning in August 2008, a call set his heart pounding.

The Democratic National Convention was being held in Denver, and Barack Obama was to accept his party’s presidential nomination before a crowd of 80,000 people that night.

The phone call was from one of Lindley’s colleagues at Colorado’s emergency preparedness agency. The deadly bacterium that causes tularemia — long feared as a possible biological weapon — had been detected at the convention site.

Should they order an evacuation, the state officials wondered? Send inspectors in moon suits? Distribute antibiotics? Delay or move Obama’s speech?

Another question loomed: Could they trust the source of the alert, a billion-dollar government system for detecting biological attacks known as BioWatch?

Six tense hours later, Lindley and his colleagues had reached a verdict: false alarm.

BioWatch had failed — again.

President George W. Bush announced the system’s deployment in his 2003 State of the Union address, saying it would “protect our people and our homeland.” Since then, BioWatch air samplers have been installed inconspicuously at street level and atop buildings in cities across the country — ready, in theory, to detect pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases.

But the system has not lived up to its billing. It has repeatedly cried wolf, producing dozens of false alarms in Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Worse, BioWatch cannot be counted on to detect a real attack, according to confidential government test results and computer modeling.

The false alarms have threatened to disrupt not only the 2008 Democratic convention, but also the 2004 and 2008 Super Bowls and the 2006 National League baseball playoffs. In 2005, a false alarm in Washington prompted officials to consider closing the National Mall.

Federal agencies documented 56 BioWatch false alarms — most of them never disclosed to the public — through 2008. More followed.

The ultimate verdict on BioWatch is that state and local health officials have shown no confidence in it. Not once have they ordered evacuations or distributed emergency medicines in response to a positive reading.

Federal officials have not established the cause of the false alarms, but scientists familiar with BioWatch say they appear to stem from its inability to distinguish between dangerous pathogens and closely related but nonlethal germs.

BioWatch has yet to face an actual biological attack. Field tests and computer modeling, however, suggest it would have difficulty detecting one.

In an attack by terrorists or a rogue state, disease organisms could well be widely dispersed, at concentrations too low to trigger BioWatch but high enough to infect thousands of people, according to scientists with knowledge of the test data who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Even in a massive release, air currents would scatter the germs in unpredictable ways. Huge numbers of air samplers would have to be deployed to reliably detect an attack in a given area, the scientists said.

Many who have worked with BioWatch — from the Army general who oversaw its initial deployment to state and local health officials who have seen its repeated failures up close — call it ill-conceived or unworkable.

“I can’t find anyone in my peer group who believes in BioWatch,” said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment from 2002 to 2010.

“The only times it goes off, it’s wrong. I just think it’s a colossal waste of money. It’s a stupid program.”

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that would be chiefly responsible for rushing medications to the site of an attack, told White House aides at a meeting Nov. 21 that they would not do so unless a BioWatch warning was confirmed by follow-up sampling and analysis, several attendees said in interviews.

Those extra steps would undercut BioWatch’s rationale: to enable swift treatment of those exposed.

Federal officials also have shelved long-standing plans to expand the system to the nation’s airports for fear that false alarms could trigger evacuations of terminals, grounding of flights and needless panic.

BioWatch was developed by U.S. national laboratories and government contractors and is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security. Department officials insist that the system’s many alerts were not false alarms. Each time, BioWatch accurately detected some organism in the environment, even if it was not the result of an attack and posed no threat to the public, officials said.

At the same time, department officials have assured Congress that newer technology will make BioWatch more reliable and cheaper to operate.

The current samplers are vacuum-powered collection devices, about the size of an office printer, that pull air through filters that trap any airborne materials. In more than 30 cities each day, technicians collect the filters and deliver them to state or local health labs for genetic analysis. Lab personnel look for DNA matches with at least half a dozen targeted pathogens.

The new, larger units would be automated labs in a box. Samples could be analyzed far more quickly and with no need for manual collection.

Buying and operating the new technology, known as Generation 3, would cost about $3.1 billion over the next five years, on top of the roughly $1 billion that BioWatch already has cost taxpayers. The Obama administration is weighing whether to award a multiyear contract.

Generation 3 “is imperative to saving thousands of lives,” Dr. Alexander Garza, Homeland Security’s chief medical officer, told a House subcommittee on March 29.

But field and lab tests of automated units have raised doubts about their effectiveness. A prototype installed in the New York subway system in 2007 and 2008 produced multiple false readings, according to interviews with scientists. Field tests last year in Chicago found that a second prototype could not operate independently for more than a week at a time.

Most worrisome, testing at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state and at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah found that Generation 3 units could detect a biological agent only if exposed to extremely high concentrations: hundreds of thousands of organisms per cubic meter of air over a six-hour period.

Most of the pathogens targeted by BioWatch, scientists said, can cause sickness or death at much lower levels.

A confidential Homeland Security analysis prepared in January said these “failures were so significant” that the department had proposed that Northrop Grumman Corp., the leading competitor for the Generation 3 contract, make “major engineering modifications.”

A spokesman for the department, Peter Boogaard, defended the performance of BioWatch. Responding to written questions, he said the department “takes all precautions necessary to minimize the occurrence of both false positive and false negative results.”

“Rigorous testing and evaluation” will guide the department’s decisions about whether to buy the Generation 3 technology, he said.

Representatives of Northrop Grumman said in interviews that some test results had prompted efforts to improve the automated units’ sensitivity and overall performance.

“We had an issue that affected the consistency of the performance of the system,” said Dave Tilles, the company’s project director. “We resolved it. We fixed it…. We feel like we’re ready for the next phase of the program.”

In congressional testimony, officials responsible for BioWatch in both the Bush and Obama administrations have made only fleeting references to the system’s documented failures.

“BioWatch, as you know, has been an enormous success story,” Jay M. Cohen, a Homeland Security undersecretary, told a House subcommittee in 2007.

In June 2009, Homeland Security’s then-chief medical officer, Dr. Jon Krohmer, told a House panel: “Without these detectors, the nation has no ability to detect biological attacks until individuals start to show clinical symptoms.” Without BioWatch, “needless deaths” could result, he said.

Garza, the current chief medical officer, was asked during his March 29 testimony whether Generation 3 was on track. “My professional opinion is, it’s right where it needs to be,” he said.

After hearing such assurances, bipartisan majorities of Congress have unfailingly supported additional spending for BioWatch.

Olympic prototype

The problems inherent in what would become BioWatch appeared early.

In February 2002, scientists and technicians from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory deployed a prototype in and around Salt Lake City in preparation for the Winter Olympics. The scientists were aware that false alarms could “cause immense disruptions and panic” and were determined to prevent them, they later wrote in the lab’s quarterly magazine.

Sixteen air samplers were positioned at Olympic venues, as well as in downtown Salt Lake City and at the airport. About 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, a sample from the airport’s C concourse tested positive for anthrax.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was at an Olympic figure skating competition when the state’s public safety director, Bob Flowers, called with the news.

“He told me that they had a positive lead on anthrax at the airport,” Leavitt recalled. “I asked if they’d retested it. He said they had — not just once, but four times. And each time it tested positive.”

The Olympics marked the first major international gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner hijackings and the deadly anthrax mailings that fall.

“It didn’t take a lot of imagination to say, ‘This could be the real thing,'” Leavitt said.

But sealing off the airport would disrupt the Olympics. And “the federal government would have stopped transportation all over the country,” as it had after Sept. 11, Leavitt said.

Leavitt ordered hazardous-materials crews to stand by at the airport, though without lights and sirens or conspicuous protective gear.

“He was ready to close the airport and call the National Guard,” recalled Richard Meyer, then a federal scientist assisting with the detection technology at the Olympics.

After consulting Meyer and other officials, Leavitt decided to wait until a final round of testing was completed. By 9 p.m., when the results were negative, the governor decided not to order any further response.

“It was a false positive,” Leavitt said. “But it was a live-fire exercise, I’ll tell you that.”

Pressing ahead

The implication — that BioWatch could deliver a highly disruptive false alarm — went unheeded.

After the Olympics, Meyer and others who had worked with the air samplers attended meetings at the Pentagon, where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was building a case for rapidly deploying the technology nationwide.

On Jan. 28, 2003, Bush unveiled BioWatch in his State of the Union address, calling it “the nation’s first early-warning network of sensors to detect biological attack.”

The next month, a group of science and technology advisors to the Defense Department, including Sidney Drell, the noted Stanford University physicist, expressed surprise that “no formal study has been undertaken” of the Salt Lake City incident. The cause of that false alarm has never been identified.

“It is not realistic to undertake a nationwide, blanket deployment of biosensors,” the advisory panel, named the JASON group, concluded.

The warning was ignored in the rush to deploy BioWatch. Administration officials also disbanded a separate working group of prominent scientists with expertise in the pathogens.

That group, established by the Pentagon, had been working to determine how often certain germs appear in nature, members of the panel said in interviews. The answer would be key to avoiding false alarms. The idea was to establish a baseline to distinguish between the natural presence of disease organisms and an attack.

The failure to conduct that work has hobbled the system ever since, particularly in regard to tularemia, which has been involved in nearly all of BioWatch’s false alarms.

The bacterium that causes tularemia, or rabbit fever, got its formal name, Francisella tularensis, after being found in squirrels in the early 20th century in Central California’s Tulare County. About 200 naturally occurring infections in humans are reported every year in the U.S. The disease can be deadly but is readily curable when treated promptly with antibiotics.

Before BioWatch, scientists knew that the tularemia bacterium existed in soil and water. What the scientists who designed BioWatch did not know — because the fieldwork wasn’t done — was that nature is rife with close cousins to it.

The false alarms for tularemia appear to have been triggered by those nonlethal cousins, according to scientists with knowledge of the system.

That BioWatch is sensitive enough to register repeated false alarms but not sensitive enough to reliably detect an attack may seem contradictory. But the two tasks involve different challenges.

Any detection system is likely to encounter naturally occurring organisms like the tularemia bacterium and its cousins. Those encounters have the potential to trigger alerts unless the system can distinguish between benign organisms and harmful ones.

Detecting an attack requires a system that is not only discriminating but also highly sensitive — to guarantee that it won’t miss traces of deadly germs that might have been dispersed over a large area.

BioWatch is neither discriminating enough for the one task nor sensitive enough for the other.

The system’s inherent flaws and the missing scientific work did not slow its deployment. After Bush’s speech, the White House assigned Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Reeves, whose office was responsible for developing defenses against chemical and biological attacks, to get BioWatch up and running.

Over the previous year, Reeves had overseen placement of units similar to the BioWatch samplers throughout the Washington area, including the Pentagon, where several false alarms for anthrax and plague later occurred.

Based on that work and computer modeling of the technology’s capabilities, Reeves did not see how BioWatch could reliably detect attacks smaller than, for example, a mass-volume spraying from a crop duster.

Nevertheless, the priority was to carry out Bush’s directive, swiftly.

“In the senior-level discussions, the issue of efficacy really wasn’t on the table,” recalled Reeves, who has since retired from the Army. “It was get it done, tell the president we did good, tell the nation that they’re protected.… I thought at the time this was good PR, to calm the nation down. But an effective system? Not a chance.”

Why no illness?

It wasn’t long before there was a false alarm. Over a three-day period in October 2003, three BioWatch units detected the tularemia bacterium in Houston.

Public health officials were puzzled: The region’s hospitals were not reporting anyone sick with the disease.

Dr. Mary desVignes-Kendrick, the city’s health director, wanted to question hospital officials in detail to make sure early symptoms of tularemia were not being missed or masked by a flu outbreak. But to desVignes-Kendrick’s dismay, Homeland Security officials told her not to tell the doctors and nurses what she was looking for.

“We were hampered by how much we could share on this quote-unquote secret initiative,” she said.

After a week, it was clear that the BioWatch alarm was false.

In early 2004, on the eve of the Super Bowl in Houston, BioWatch once again signaled tularemia, desVignes-Kendrick said. The sample was from a location two blocks from Reliant Stadium, where the game was to be played Feb. 1.

DesVignes-Kendrick was skeptical but she and other officials again checked with hospitals before dismissing the warning as another false alarm. The football game was played without interruption.

Nonetheless, three weeks later, Charles E. McQueary, then Homeland Security’s undersecretary for science and technology, told a House subcommittee that BioWatch was performing flawlessly.

“I am very pleased with the manner in which BioWatch has worked,” he said. “We’ve had well over half a million samples that have been taken by those sensors. We have yet to have our first false alarm.”

Asked in an interview about that statement, McQueary said his denial of any false alarm was based on his belief that the tularemia bacterium had been detected in Houston, albeit not from an attack.

“You can’t tell the machine, ‘I only want you to detect the one that comes from a terrorist,'” he said.

Whether the Houston alarms involved actual tularemia has never been determined, but researchers later reported the presence of benign relatives of the pathogen in the metropolitan area.

Fear in the capital

In late September 2005, nearly two years after the first cluster of false alarms in Houston, analysis of filters from BioWatch units on and near the National Mall in Washington indicated the presence of tularemia. Tens of thousands of people had visited the Mall that weekend for a book festival and a protest against the Iraq War. Anyone who had been infected would need antibiotics promptly.

For days, officials from the White House and Homeland Security and other federal agencies privately discussed whether to assume the signal was another false alarm and do nothing, or quarantine the Mall and urge those who had been there to get checked for tularemia.

As they waited for further tests, federal officials decided not to alert local healthcare providers to be on the lookout for symptoms, for fear of creating a panic. Homeland Security officials now say findings from lab analysis of the filters did not meet BioWatch standards for declaring an alert.

Six days after the first results, however, CDC scientists broke ranks and began alerting hospitals and clinics. That was little help to visitors who already had left town, however.

“There were 100 people on one conference call — scientists from all over, public health officials — trying to sort out what it meant,” recalled Dr. Gregg Pane, director of Washington’s health department at the time.

Discussing the incident soon thereafter, Jeffrey Stiefel, then chief BioWatch administrator for Homeland Security, said agency officials were keenly aware that false alarms could damage the system’s credibility.

“If I tell a city that they’ve got a biological event, and it’s not a biological event, you no longer trust that system, and the system is useless,” Stiefel said on videotape at a biodefense seminar at the National Institutes of Health on Oct. 6, 2005. “It has to have a high reliability.”

Ultimately, no one turned up sick with tularemia.

Culture of silence

Homeland Security officials have said little publicly about the false positives. And, citing national security and the classification of information, they have insisted that their local counterparts remain mum as well.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County’s public health director, whose department has presided over several BioWatch false positives, referred questions to Homeland Security officials.

Dr. Takashi Wada, health officer for Pasadena from 2003 to 2010, was guarded in discussing the BioWatch false positive that occurred on his watch. Wada confirmed that the detection was made, in February 2007, but would not say where in the 23-square-mile city.

“We’ve been told not to discuss it,” he said in an interview.

Dr. Karen Relucio, medical director for the San Mateo County Health Department, acknowledged there was a false positive there in 2008, but declined to elaborate. “I’m not sure it’s OK for me to talk about that,” said Relucio, who referred further questions to officials in Washington.

In Arizona, officials kept quiet when BioWatch air samplers detected the anthrax pathogen at Super Bowl XLII in February 2008.

Nothing had turned up when technicians checked the enclosed University of Phoenix Stadium before kickoff. But airborne material collected during the first half of the game tested positive for anthrax, said Lt. Col. Jack W. Beasley Jr., chief of the Arizona National Guard’s weapons of mass destruction unit.

The Guard rushed some of the genetic material to the state’s central BioWatch lab in Phoenix for further testing. Federal and state officials convened a 2 a.m. conference call, only to be told that it was another false alarm.

Although it never made the news, the incident “caused quite a stir,” Beasley said.

The director of the state lab, Victor Waddell, said he had been instructed by Homeland Security officials not to discuss the test results. “That’s considered national security,” he said.

The dreaded call

In the months before the 2008 Democratic National Convention, local, state and federal officials planned for a worst-case event in Denver, including a biological attack.

Shortly before 9 a.m. on Aug. 28, the convention’s final day, that frightening scenario seemed to have come true. That’s when Chris Lindley, of the Colorado health department, got the phone call from a colleague, saying BioWatch had detected the tularemia pathogen at the convention site.

Lindley, an epidemiologist who had led a team of Army preventive-medicine specialists in Iraq, had faced crises, but nothing like a bioterrorism attack. Within minutes, chief medical officer Ned Calonge arrived.

Calonge had little faith in BioWatch. A couple of years earlier, the health department had been turned upside down responding to what turned out to be a false alarm for Brucella, a bacterium that primarily affects cattle, on Denver’s western outskirts.

“The idea behind BioWatch — that you could put out these ambient air filters and they would provide you with the information to save people exposed to a biological attack — it’s a concept that you could only put together in theory,” Calonge said in an interview. “It’s a poorly conceived strategy for doing early detection that is inherently going to pick up false positives.”

Lindley and his team arranged a conference call with scores of officials, including representatives from Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Secret Service and the White House.

None of the BioWatch samplers operated by the state had registered a positive, and no unusual cases of infection appeared to have been diagnosed at area hospitals, Lindley said.

The alert had come from a Secret Service-installed sampler on the grounds of the arena where the convention was taking place. The unit was next to an area filled with satellite trucks broadcasting live news reports on the Democratic gathering. Soon, thousands of conventioneers would be walking from Pepsi Center to nearby Invesco Field to hear Obama’s acceptance speech.

Had Lindley and Calonge been asked, they said in interviews, they wouldn’t have put the BioWatch unit at this spot, where foot and vehicle traffic could stir up dust and contaminants that might set off a false alarm. As it turned out, a shade tree 12 yards from the sampler had attracted squirrels, potential carriers of tularemia.

The location near the media trailers posed another problem: how to conduct additional tests without setting off a panic.

EPA officials “said on the phone, ‘We have a team standing by, ready to go,'” Lindley recalled. But the technicians would have to wear elaborate protective gear.

The sight of emergency responders in moon suits “would have derailed the convention,” Calonge said.

…

Find this story at 7 July 2012

By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

July 7, 2012Advertisement

david.willman@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

New report examines the composition of DG Enterprise and Industry expert groups. Among its findings, the shocking conclusion that there are 482 corporate lobbyists versus only 11 union representatives.

Industry experts and corporate lobbyists have effectively captured key areas of policy advice within the European Commission, according to new research carried out by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) launched today at a joint event with the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) and the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour [1].

The study finds that two thirds of all of DG Enterprise’s non-governmental advisory groups are dominated by big business interests [2] with some 482 corporate advisors influencing key areas of policy, such as international trade, consumer protection, food and aspects of environmental protection.

In contrast, the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises have little opportunity to influence policy decisions through advisory groups, accounting for just 5% of the total non-governmental representatives. Representatives from NGOs (non-governmental organisations) account for just 8%, and unions for 1%.

The Commission’s advisory groups provide specialist advice on policy issues and their work can form the backbone of new legislation. The European Parliament has previously criticised the Commission for engaging more with big business than with any other social group through these advisory groups.

ALTER-EU argues that allowing big companies’ interests to dominate risks that the interests of these companies are given greater priority than the public interest. It also criticises the Commission’s own rules on expert groups which stress that “Commission services shall, as far as possible, ensure a balanced representation”.

One of the report authors, Yiorgos Vassalos from ALTER-EU, said:

“DG Enterprise seems to have become the champion of big business in the Commission. Their dominance in expert groups is providing business with privileged access to influence the policy agenda, while other interests do not have a similar voice. As a result there is a very real risk that industry lobbyists may capture whole areas of policy making at the European level, to the detriment of wider society.”

Oliver Roepke from the Austrian Trade Union Federation said:

“DG Enterprise seems to have forgotten that employees and workers are at the heart of the European economy. Their expertise and experience should also lie at the heart of policy making. Far too often we see DG Enterprise working with transnational corporations which have no interest in protecting jobs and decent living standards in Europe. This one-sided policy-making must be reformed.” [suggestion only – to be amended]

ALTER-EU is calling on the Commission to make major changes in the composition of its advisory groups to ensure that the public interest is properly served. It also calls on the Commission to implement the European Parliament’s demands and introduce safeguards against corporate capture of expert groups.

Contacts:

Yiorgos Vassalos, ALTER-EU, phone: 32-484675162 and email: yiorgos@corporateeurope.org

Paul de Clerck, ALTER-EU, phone: 32-494380959 and email: paul@milieudefensie.nl

Notes:

[1] Who’s driving the agenda at DG Enterprise and Industry? ALTER-EU, July 2012, see: http://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/documents/DGENTR-driving.pdf

[2] The report authors defined that a group is dominated by a certain interest if that interest has more than half of the non-government seats.

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) is a coalition of over 200 civil society groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs firms concerned with the increasing influence exerted by corporate lobbyists on the political agenda in Europe, the resulting loss of democracy in EU decision-making and the postponement, weakening, or blockage even, of urgently needed progress on social, environmental and consumer-protection reforms.
DGENTR-driving.pdf
Campaign:
Balanced expert groups

Publication date:
Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Press release issued by:
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)

Find the report at

Recently, the head of the UK branch of G4S, the largest private security firm in the world, predicted that within the next few years an increasing amount police work will be allocated and outsourced to private security companies – like G4S.

The comments were made by the director of the UK led private security firm, off the back of G4S having secured lucrative contracts to carry out policing duties on behalf of West Midlands and Surrey police – and ultimately the taxpayer.

One of the immediate criticisms raised at this prospect was of the need for all individuals contracted to carry out police duties to be held equally accountable to the IPCC (Independent police complaints commission) – at present this will not the case.

G4S are also set to have a massive presence at this year’s Olympic Games, with around 13,000 staff allocated for the games which are set to begin in a couple of weeks time. Mainstream news reports have described the makeup of east London as looking increasingly more like an occupied military zone rather than the sight for one of the greatest spectacles on Earth. Coincidentally, we are talking about the same G4S that carries out duties for the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Despite concerns raised over the last couple of days regarding the ability of G4S to deliver, the Home Secretary Theresa May today maintained that the Olympic games were safe to go ahead and that london is prepared.

Indeed, the security giant looks likely to secure lucrative contracts to undergo outsourced work on behalf of the NHS, and the police, and post Olympics, and does not look likely to be struggling for work, to put it politely.

Police forces across the country, as well as suffering from acute levels of public skepticism, and diminishing resources, will be headed by a company, driven by profit margins at the behest of our government.

Although according to government this is of course done in the name of efficiency and cost effectiveness, one might say that there is a direct conflict of interest. If we were to make any predictions as to how this were to translate into reality, looking at how the police, immigration officials, and prisons which have been privatised are operating in the US, and the resulting criticisms that have been leveled at them, we ought to surely be concerned.

Incidentally, here in the UK, we have already emulated the private prison system, with several currently outsourced to private companies.

In addition to the news that the police along with our other institutions, will now be further privatised and sold off, we have also had to digest the added revelation that we are likely to see an even greater drop in police numbers in the years leading up to 2015.

If alarm bells were not already ringing as a result of the fragility of the relationship between the police and the public, then they should be now.

There is no reason to believe that this will have a beneficial effect on the level of service provided. Or put another way, there is no evidence to suggest that in the long run this will benefit society. On the contrary many are voicing concerns saying the opposite; A climate under which it becomes more profitable to imprison people than to educate them, is not something we want. We only have to look across the pond to realise that.

Equally, the likes of G4S, securing the Olympics and carrying out increasingly more and more police duties holds just as many legitimate concerns.

As was revealed in a recent report, the extent to which some of the private companies awarded contracts to kickstart the coalition governments ‘work programme’ sought to actually cut the number of claimants claiming benefits- including G4S – was shockingly high. Many are concerned that they are more focused on cutting the number of benefit claimants, rather than actually getting people back to work.

Many groups and activists concerned about G4S have been trying to raise awareness and scrutinize G4S for many years, but in recent months and especially in the aftermath of the death of Jimmy Mubenga, which for many after a long list of incidents which brought into sharp focus the prospect of criminal charges being sought for possible criminal behaviour by G4S, that scrutiny has increased – and with good reason. Whether the staff that held Mubenga in their custody will now face criminal charges remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the company itself will face criminal charges of manslaughter.

Just like the last New Labour government, which designated the contract for our census data to be gathered to Lockheed Martin, the arms manufacturer, with many other impressive titles to its name to boot, this coalition hasn’t flinched from its predictable ideological course, in shipping the important work of our already stretched institutions, over to private companies, and the reality is that we are poised to see more of the same. The fact that one of the big beneficiaries of this, has massive question marks hanging over it says much about our government’s willingness to ship out anything to the highest bidder, irrespective of the spin, which justifies such decision making in the name of cost effectiveness and efficiency. The question really, is what’s coming next.

Meanwhile the Olympics are awaited with bated breath from many and for many reasons. For sports lovers it’s the chance to enjoy the games the chance to inspire young people. For many police officers, the circumstances surrounding the Olympics, are just inviting the kind of scenes and trouble that we saw last year, possibly further rioting. Private companies, just like the big multinationals that go in to rebuild a destroyed infrastructure after a war, are poised to get rich either way.

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Richard Sudan
Notebook – A selection of Independent views -, Opinion
Friday, 13 July 2012 at 12:00 am

Army called upon to fill Games security shortfall
Fears G4S may even fail to meet reduced target
MP accuses firm – who were paid £284m – of letting the country down

The security firm G4S was reportedly paid a staggering £284million to provide up to 17,500 personnel for the 2012 Games.

But yesterday, in a major humiliation for company bosses and Olympic organisers, it admitted it would fall well short of the target, forcing ministers to pull in thousands of military personnel.

The company was contracted to provide a minimum of 15,400 security staff, with a target of 17,500.

Yesterday, as the Government confirmed the call-up of 3,500 extra troops, G4S claimed it would be able to bring in 13,800.

However, with 14 days to go to the Games, question marks remained whether it would meet even that target, as just a small fraction of that total is available for deployment. Only 4,000 are ‘boots on the ground’, working as ticket checkers and bag searchers at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London.

Another 9,000 are still in the training and vetting process – raising fears even the more reduced target might not be achievable.

The Armed Forces now make up the overwhelming majority of the security staff likely to be deployed during the Games.

The original plan for 7,500 military is bolstered by a special contingent of 5,000, plus the 3,500 announced on Tuesday, making a total of 16,000. In addition, there will be 3,000 unpaid volunteers.

The number of staff needed to guard the Olympic venues more than doubled last December after the organising committee Locog wildly underestimated the total required. Originally Locog contracted G4S to provide 2,000 security guards, but in December the firm agreed to increase that number massively.

Yesterday Downing Street insisted there would be financial penalties for the firm for failing to meet the contract. But Locog refused to comment on the nature of any fines, claiming it would breach commercial confidentiality. That is despite taxpayers coughing up at least £9billion for the cost of the Games.

Insiders said the company had repeatedly claimed until last week that it would meet its obligations.

A Whitehall source accused the firm of ‘abysmal’ failure and said it had delayed completing training and vetting processes to save money by not having too many staff on the books before the start of the Games.

The source said: ‘Until yesterday officials from G4S were turning up and assuring us that the figures were getting better and going to be OK.

‘Then we learn there’s not as many as we need. They didn’t want to be throwing money at the problem six months ago because their staff would be sitting around doing nothing.’

Home Secretary Theresa May was hauled to the House of Commons to try to explain the shortfall.

She insisted: ‘There is no question of Olympic security being compromised.’

But Labour MP Keith Vaz, who called for the emergency statement, said: ‘G4S has let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops.’

Mr Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, has written to Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, demanding he give evidence before MPs next week.

The debacle is the latest blow to the reputation of G4S which, while relatively unknown to the public, is one of the world’s biggest security companies.

In recent years its tentacles have extended into swathes of British life which used to be the preserve of the public sector, including running prisons and police custody suites.

From headquarters in Crawley, Sussex, company bosses run a sprawling multinational company with interests in more than 125 countries.

They provide security at Heathrow and other major airports, and for vans transporting cash on behalf of banks and other financial institutions.

Under its previous name Group4Security it had a contract for transporting prisoners, but in 2004 the company ‘lost’ two prisoners, sparking a major investigation.

It runs six jails in the UK including Birmingham, where an inspection report in October 2011 said drugs were regularly being thrown over the prison walls.

Three G4S guards are on police bail over the death in October 2010 of Angolan national Jimmy Mubenga, who was restrained while being deported from the country.

…

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Jack Doyle

PUBLISHED: 22:39 GMT, 12 July 2012 | UPDATED: 10:30 GMT, 13 July 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

The depth of the crisis over G4S’s Olympic security preparations became increasingly clear on Thursday as recruits revealed details of a “totally chaotic” selection process and police joined the military in bracing themselves to fill the void left by the private security contractor.

Guards told how, with 14 days to go until the Olympics opening ceremony, they had received no schedules, uniforms or training on x-ray machines. Others said they had been allocated to venues hundreds of miles from where they lived, been sent rotas intended for other employees, and offered shifts after they had failed G4S’s own vetting.

The West Midlands Police Federation reported that its officers were being prepared to guard the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, which will host the football tournament, amid concerns G4S would not be able to cover the security requirements.

“We have to find officers until the army arrives and we don’t know where we are going to find them from,” said Chris Jones, secretary of the federation.

G4S has got a £284m contract to provide 13,700 guards, but only has 4,000 in place. It says a further 9,000 are in the pipeline.

G4S sent an urgent request on Thursday to retired police asking them to help. A memo to the National Association of Retired Police Officers said: “G4S Policing Solutions are currently and urgently recruiting for extra support for the Olympics. These are immediate starts with this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday available. We require ex-police officers ideally with some level of security clearance and with a Security Industry Association [accreditation], however neither is compulsory.”

Robert Brown, a former police sergeant, told the Guardian that he pulled out of the recruitment process for the Games after seeing it close at hand.

He said: “They were trying to process hundreds of people and we had to fill out endless forms. It was totally chaotic and it was obvious to me that this was being done too quickly and too late.”

Another G4S trainee, an ex-policeman, described the process as “an utter farce”.

He added: “There were people who couldn’t spell their own name. The staff were having to help them. Most people hadn’t filled in their application forms correctly. Some didn’t know what references were and others said they didn’t have anyone who could act as a referee. The G4S people were having to prompt them, saying things like “what about your uncle?”

Tim Steward, a former prison officer, said he was recruited by G4S in March as a team leader but said he would not be working at the Games because of a series of blunders.

Steward said he provided documentation for vetting but G4S had said it did not have the information on record and so closed his file. The security firm then offered him a training session at short notice, which he could not attend, but it did not offer an alternative.

A recruit who was interviewed in March and completed training last month, said: “There are people like me that are vetted and trained in security and would be happy to work, but can’t. Some of the classes were of around 200 in size with only two trainers accommodating the training for a class of this size.

“I am yet to hear from G4S regarding my screening, accreditation, uniform or even a rough start date. I know many people also who will be commencing work on 27 July who have had absolutely no scheduled on-site training. They are simply being chucked into their role on x-ray machines, public screening areas and even athlete screening areas.”

Another guard who has been trained as an x-ray operator, complained that he was unable to get through to G4S to find out when and where he was meant to be working, and was once left on hold on the phone for 38 minutes.

One student applicant said he had already spent £650 on travel and hotel bills to attend training and was now worried that, because he had not received any accreditation or rota from G4S, he might not be given the shifts that would enable him to cover those costs. He said he had expected to earn about £2,000 over the period of the Games.

G4S’s own Facebook page for new recruits is littered with similar complaints.

“They’ve placed me in Manchester and I want to work in London,” wrote Glenn Roseman. “Some idiot has changed my location, I’m never going to get any work now.”

Christian Smith complained: “I did the training course, passed, and got my own security industry association licence, only to fail G4S vetting. Two days after I got their letter, they rang me, and asked me what days I could work.”

…

Find this story at 13 July 2012 

Recruits tell of chaos over schedules, uniforms and training while ex-police officers asked to help out
Robert Booth and Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Friday 13 July 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Im Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) sind nicht nur am 11.11.2011 V-Mann Akten mit Bezug zur rechtsextremen Szene vernichtet worden, sondern auch noch einige Tage danach. Das geht nach MONITOR-Informationen aus einem aktualisierten Schreiben des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz an das Bundesministerium des Inneren hervor. Deshalb wurde das Disziplinarverfahren gegen den zuständigen Referatsleiter ausgedehnt mit dem so wörtlich „Vorwurf, eine zweite rechtswidrige Aktenvernichtung ( ohne vorherige Prüfung der Akten) vorsätzlich veranlasst zu haben (..)“ Dazu erklärt das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz gegenüber „Monitor“: Es seien 7 Operativakten in zwei zeitlich voneinander getrennten Schritten vernichtet worden.“

Dass es eine zweite Aktenvernichtung gegeben hat, hatte dem Schreiben zufolge ein BfV Mitarbeiter ausgesagt: Danach habe er „einige Tage nach dem 11.11. einen weiteren Aktenordner zufällig in der Aktenverwaltung gefunden.“ Der damit konfrontierte vorgesetzte Beamte habe „nach kurzem Durchblättern“, so der Zeuge, „sogleich dessen Vernichtung angeordnet.“

Über die anstehende Vernichtung von Akten waren offensichtlich viele Mitarbeiter im Verfassungsschutz informiert. Der zuständige Referatsleiter hatte per E-Mail nicht nur alle Mitarbeiter des Referats 2B unterrichtet, sondern auch seinen vorgesetzten Gruppenleiter, heißt es in dem Bericht. Der inzwischen zurückgetretene Verfassungsschutzpräsident Fromm hatte am 8.11. 2011 angeordnet, alle Unterlagen auf einen Zusammenhang mit den mutmaßlichen NSU–Terroristen Bönhardt, Zschäpe und Mundlos zu untersuchen.

Find this story at 12 July 2012

Find the program at 12 July 2012

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Secret documents reveal British intelligence concerns and raise damaging questions about UK’s targeting of Gaddafi opponents
Britain already faces legal action over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who is now the military commander in Tripoli. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

British intelligence believes the capture and rendition of two top Libyan rebel commanders, carried out with the involvement of MI6, strengthened al-Qaida and helped groups attacking British forces in Iraq, secret documents reveal.

The papers, discovered in the British ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli, raise new and damaging questions over Britain’s role in the seizure and torture of key opponents of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Britain is already facing legal actions over its involvement in the plot to seize Abdul Hakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who is now the military commander in Tripoli, and his deputy, Sami al-Saadi. Both men say they were tortured and jailed after being handed over to Gaddafi.

The documents reveal that British intelligence believe the pair’s rendition boosted al-Qaida by removing more moderate elements from the insurgency’s leadership. This allowed extremists to push “a relatively close-knit group” focused on overthrowing Gaddafi into joining the pan-Islamist terror network.

One document, headed “UK/Libya eyes only – Secret”, showed the security services had monitored LIFG members since their arrival in Britain following a failed attempt to kill Gaddafi in 1996, and understood their aim was the replacement of his regime with an Islamic state.

The briefing paper, prepared by the security service for a four-day MI5 visit in February 2005, said that following the seizure of its two key leaders the year before the group had been cast into a state of disarray.

“The extremists are now in the ascendancy,” the paper said, and they were “pushing the group towards a more pan-Islamic agenda inspired by AQ [al-Qaida]”.

Their “broadened” goals, it continued, were now also the destabilisation of Arab governments that were not following sharia law and the liberation of Muslim territories occupied by the west.

The 58-page document, which included names, photographs and detailed biographies of a dozen alleged LIFG members in the UK, went on to highlight “conclusions of concern” in the light of these changes.

These included the sending of money and false documents to a contact in Iran to help smuggle fighters into Iraq, where British and US forces were coming under fierce attack. “UK members have long enjoyed a reputation as the best suppliers of false documents in the worldwide extremist community,” said the report. It added that British LIFG members were becoming “increasingly ambitious” at fundraising through fast-food restaurants, fraud, property and car dealing, and raised nearly all the money for the group outside of Libya.British security also asked Gaddafi’s security forces for access to detainees and their debriefs.

Asked about the document, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “It is the government’s longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.”

The LIFG eventually merged with al-Qaida in 2007. However, a second document, a secret update on Libyan extremist networks in the UK from August 2008, says the response of British members was “subdued and mixed”.

It concluded that those already supporting the wider aims of al-Qaida continued to do so, but “those with reservations retain their focus on Libya”. It added, however, that some money raised by members in Manchester may have gone to “assist operational activity”.

The cache of confidential documents – which included private letters to Gaddafi from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and key Downing Street aides – was abandoned when the three-story residence was attacked by Gaddafi loyalists in April. .

There was also a dossier prepared by British intelligence with suggested questions for the captured men. The 39-page document, entitled Briefs for Detainees and labelled “UK Secret” on each page, was written in three sections in March, June and October 2004.

The first section is dated the month of Belhaj’s arrest, and sought answers on everything from his private life to his military training, activities in Afghanistan and links to al-Qaida. There were also personalised questions for Saadi.

The LIFG, founded by veterans of the mujahideen’s war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was for many years the most serious internal threat to Gaddafi, coming close to blowing up the dictator with a car bomb in his home town of Sirte in 1996. The government denied claims by David Shayler, the renegade British spy, that this assassination attempt was funded by British intelligence.

After Gaddafi’s clampdown on the group, dozens of dissidents were allowed to settle in Britain. London only designated the LIFG a terrorist organisation after Libya said it was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. The move is understood to have been agreed as part of the negotiations with Gaddafi’s regime that paved the way to the controversial Blair deal.

Belhaj, now a key figure in liberated Libya, is preparing to sue Britain after other documents discovered in the wake of Gaddafi’s fall indicated that MI6 assisted in his rendition to torture and brutal treatment from the CIA and Gaddafi’s regime.

MI6 informed the CIA of his whereabouts after his associates told British diplomats in Malaysia he wanted to claim asylum in Britain.

He was allowed to board a flight to London, then abducted when his aircraft landed at Bangkok.

…

Find this story at 24 October 2011 

Ian Birrell
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011 20.28 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Committee says there are questions about whether agencies should have been able to anticipate how events might unfold
Britain’s intelligence agencies were surprised by the Arab spring, and their failure to realise unrest would spread so rapidly may reveal a lack of understanding of the region, according to the parliamentary body set up to scrutinise their activities.

A particularly sharp passage of the intelligence and security committee’s (ISC) report describes as “ill-considered” an attempt by MI6 to smuggle into Libya two officers who were promptly seized by rebels.

The report says that at the time the Arab spring erupted, both MI6 and GCHQ, the government’s electronic eavesdropping centre, were cutting resources devoted to Arab countries.

The criticism of MI6’s attitude is all the more significant given the agency’s traditional close ties with the Arab world.

The ISC, chaired by the former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, said it was understandable that the intelligence agencies were taken by surprise, “as indeed were the governments in the countries affected”.

However, it said there were questions about whether the agencies “should have been able to anticipate how events might subsequently unfold, and whether the fact that they did not realise that the unrest would spread so rapidly across the Arab world demonstrates a lack of understanding about the region”.

SAS troops escorted MI6 officers to Libya in a Chinook helicopter and dropped them off at a desert location south of Benghazi in the middle of the night in March 2011. The mission was an embarrassment to the British government and the anti-Gaddafi rebels alike. MI6 “misjudged the nature and level of risk involved”, the ISC said.

It noted that the lessons had been taken seriously by MI6, and added: “We would have expected nothing less.” The incident “demonstrates a lack of operational planning that we would not have expected from [MI6]and other participants”, it said.

Cuts being made in Whitehall’s defence intelligence staff mean greater risks would have to be taken “when reacting to the next crisis than was the case with the Libya campaign”, the ISC warned. It said GCHQ’s difficulties in retaining internet and cyber specialists attracted by higher salaries in the private sector was a matter of grave concern.

The report said Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, had told the ISC there had been “very considerable erosion of al-Qaida’s senior leadership capability in Pakistan, and to some extent now in Yemen, as a result of drone strikes”.

Al-Qaida had to spend a lot of its time trying to protect itself, Evans was quoted as saying. “It is much more difficult to take action if you are permanently in fear that you are going to be attacked. I think that has had a strategic impact on al-Qaida’s senior leadership.”

The ISC said British intelligence agencies were now concerned that al-Qaida in Iraq “may gain a lasting foothold in Syria if there is a prolonged power vacuum, and also at the prospect of Syrian conventional and chemical weapons stockpiles falling into the hands of terrorist groups”.

…

Find this story at 12 july 2012

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 17.26 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Defence lawyer files motion that ‘aiding the enemy’ charge is stricter against US soldiers than it would be against terrorists
The lawyer defending Bradley Manning against charges that he “aided the enemy” by disclosing state secrets to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, is arguing that US soldiers are being treated more harshly in application of the law than terrorists.

David Coombs, the civilian lawyer who has been representing the soldier for the past two years after he was arrested in Iraq on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source, will be pressing his case in a military court next week. In a motion that he has lodged with the court as part of the lead up to a full court martial, he warns that unless the “aiding the enemy” charge is clarified it would leave Manning in a more onerous legal position than terrorists facing exactly the same count.

“It defies all logic to think that a terrorist would fare better in an American court for aiding the enemy than a US soldier would,” Coombs writes in the motion.

Aiding the enemy is the most serious of the 22 counts that Manning is facing. In the rank of military charges, it is rated very close to treason and technically carries the death penalty, though the prosecution in this case have indicated that they will not push for that.

The charge alleges that between November 2009 and 27 May 2010, when Manning was arrested at a military base outside Baghdad, he “knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy through indirect means”. In court deliberations, it has been further clarified that the charge refers to the transmitting of “classified documents to the enemy through the WikiLeaks website”.

The US government has added in later legal debate that the “enemy” to which it is referring is al-Qaida and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as a terrorist group whose identity has not been made public.

The allegations relate to the passing of hundreds of thousands of US state secrets, including embassy cables from around the world and war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, that caused a worldwide sensation when they were published by WikiLeaks via several international news organisations led by the Guardian.

Next week the soldier and his defence team will be back in military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, in the latest of a succession of pre-trial hearings to hammer out the terms of the eventual court martial. Previous engagements have led to sparky interactions between Coombs and the army prosecutors seeking to condemn Manning possibly to spending the rest of his life in military custody.

The most significant discussion at next week’s proceedings will revolve around the precise legal definition of what “aiding the enemy” means – specifically its allegation that Manning “knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy”. The judge presiding over Manning’s trial, Colonel Denise Lind, has ruled that the soldier must have had “actual knowlege” that he was giving intelligence to enemy for the charge to be proven.

Coombs will next week attempt to gain further clarification that would raise the legal bar much higher. In his motion he argues that it is a truism in the age of the internet, any posted material is potentially accessible to anybody.

To accuse Manning of having aided the enemy by transmitting intelligence to WikiLeaks that could then be accessed by al-Qaida would remove any sense of him “knowingly” doing so. He writes that this would “render the ‘actual knowledge’ element utterly toothless in all internet-intelligence
cases.”

Coombs highlights an apparent absurdity in the way the law is being applied. In cases where terrorist suspects are brought before military commissions, such as those at Guantanamo, and accused of the very same charge as Manning, the military prosecutors have to prove that the defendant “knowingly and intentionally” aided the enemy. Yet in the case of a US soldier, intentionality is not mentioned.

…

Find this story at 12 July 2012

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 17.36 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Die Ermittler gingen zunächst davon aus, dass die Zwickauer Terrorzelle im Herbst 1999 mit ihrer Serie von Raubüberfällen begann. Doch laut einem Untersuchungsbericht des sächsischen Innenministeriums steht nun fest: Bereits 1998 erbeuteten Uwe Böhnhardt und Uwe Mundlos 30.000 Mark.

Dresden – Die Überfallserie der Neonazi-Terroristen Uwe Böhnhardt und Uwe Mundlos hat noch im Jahr ihres Untertauchens 1998 begonnen. Das sächsische Innenministerium bestätigte in seinem am Mittwoch bekannt gewordenen Abschlussbericht an den Innenausschuss des Landtags erstmals, dass auch ein Raubüberfall am 18. Dezember 1998 auf einen Edeka-Markt in Chemnitz auf das Konto der Rechtsterroristen geht. Dies habe ein Spurenabgleich ergeben. Über die Vermutung, der Raub gehe auf das Konto von Böhnhardt und Mundlos, hatte der SPIEGEL bereits Ende April berichtet.

Zuvor waren die Ermittler davon ausgegangen, dass Böhnhardt und Mundlos erst im Oktober 1999 den ersten mehrerer Raubüberfälle begingen, um mit der Beute ihr Leben im Untergrund zu finanzieren. Nach Angaben von LKA-Präsident Jörg Michaelis betrug die Beute seinerzeit rund 30.000 D-Mark. Es seien zwei Schüsse abgefeuert worden, dem “Nationalsozialistischen Untergrund” (NSU) habe die Tat durch später gefundene Patronenhülsen zugeordnet werden können.

Böhnhardt und Mundlos sind inzwischen tot. Gemeinsam mit ihrer Komplizin Beate Zschäpe – alle stammen aus Jena – sollen sie die Terrorgruppe NSU gebildet haben, die für zehn Morde verantwortlich gemacht wird. Opfer waren neun Menschen mit ausländischen Wurzeln und eine Polizistin. Gut 13 Jahre lang konnten die Rechtsterroristen unerkannt in Deutschland leben – vor allem in Sachsen.

Sachsen sieht keine eigenen Versäumnisse bei NSU-Ermittlungen

Die Schuld dafür sieht der Freistaat aber nicht bei sich. Nach heutigem Wissen seien “keine Versäumnisse innerhalb des polizeilichen Handelns zu erkennen”, heißt es in dem Bericht des Innenministeriums. Dem Verfassungsschutz wird darin attestiert, dass er von den Thüringer Behörden “nur unvollständig informiert” wurde. Es sei “nicht ersichtlich”, dass er “erfolgversprechende Maßnahmen” unterlassen habe.

…

Find this story at 27. Juni 2012, 17:36 Uhr

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Der italienische Geheimdienst hat den deutschen Verfassungsschutz laut einem Zeitungsbericht schon 2003 auf ein Netzwerk rechter Terrorzellen hingewiesen. Demnach pflegten deutsche Nazis intensive Kontakte ins Ausland.

Hamburg – Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) soll laut “Berliner Zeitung” bereits vor Jahren konkrete Hinweise auf ein Netz rechter Terrorzellen in Deutschland erhalten haben. Das gehe aus einem Schreiben des italienischen Staatsschutzes AISI an das BfV vom 14. Dezember 2011 hervor.

In dem Schreiben verweise der italienische Dienst auf eine Information, die dem Kölner Bundesamt am 21. März 2003 übermittelt worden sein soll. Darin sei es um ein Treffen europäischer Neonazis im belgischen Waasmunster im November 2002 gegangen, bei dem italienische Rechtsextremisten “bei vertraulichen Gesprächen von der Existenz eines Netzwerks militanter europäischer Neonazis erfahren” hätten.

Aus dem AISI-Schreiben geht dem Bericht zufolge auch hervor, dass deutsche Neonazis insbesondere aus Bayern und Thüringen seit Jahren enge Beziehungen nach Italien pflegen. So habe etwa Ralf Wohlleben, der als mutmaßlicher Unterstützer der Zwickauer Terrorzelle in U-Haft sitzt, mehrfach an Treffen mit Gruppen wie “Skinhead Tirol – Sektion Meran” und “Veneto Fronte Skinheads” in Italien teilgenommen und Geld übergeben “für die Unterstützung von Kameraden, die sich in Schwierigkeiten befinden”.

2008 hätten zudem Südtiroler Skinhead-Gruppen dem AISI-Bericht zufolge bei einem Treffen mit deutschen Neonazis aus Bayern und Franken “über die Möglichkeit der Durchführung fremdenfeindlicher ‘exemplarischer Aktionen’ diskutiert und eine detaillierte Kartenauswertung vorgenommen, um Geschäfte ausfindig zu machen, die von außereuropäischen Staatsangehörigen geführt werden”.

…

hut/Reuters
NSU-Affäre: Verfassungsschützer manipulierten Dateien (01.07.2012)
NSU-Akten: Im Reißwolf des Verfassungsschutzes (28.06.2012)
Kampf gegen Rechts: Bundestag beschließt zentrale Neonazi-Datei (28.06.2012)
Zwickauer Zelle: Bundesanwalt übernahm – Verfassungsschutz löschte Akten (28.06.2012)
Untersuchungsbericht: NSU-Terroristen überfielen schon 1998 Supermarkt (27.06.2012)
Rechtsextremismus: Verfassungsschützer hatten zwölf Spitzel beim “Thüringer Heimatschutz” (23.06.2012)

Find this story at 2 July 2012

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Die vom Verfassungsschutz geschredderten V-Mann-Akten waren brisanter als zugeben. Einer der Spitzel war in die Suche nach dem NSU-Trio eingebunden.

BERLIN taz | Manchmal können Verfassungsschützer richtig kreativ sein. Eine groß angelegte Geheimdienstaktion tauften sie nach einem der schönsten Wanderwege Deutschlands im Thüringer Wald, dem 170 Kilometer langen Rennsteig.

Noch kreativer waren die Geheimdienstler aber bei der Wahl der Namen ihrer bezahlten Spitzel, die sie im Rahmen jener „Operation Rennsteig“ in der rechtsextremen Szene anwarben. Die Vorgabe war offenbar, dass die Decknamen all dieser V-Leute mit einem T beginnen müssen. Und deshalb bekamen sie Namen wie diese: „VM Treppe“, „VM Tonfarbe“, „VM Tinte“ oder „VM Tobago“.

Doch Kreativität bei der Namensfindung ist nicht das, was man von Behörden zuallererst erwartet, sondern vielmehr das, womit das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz in Köln selbst auf seiner Internetseite wirbt: „Mit Vertrauen, Sicherheit.“

Das Vertrauen in die Sicherheitsbehörde aber war nach einer in den vergangenen Tagen bekannt gewordenen Vernichtung brisanter Akten auf einen Tiefstand gesunken. Weshalb Verfassungsschutzchef Heinz Fromm am Montag keine andere Wahl blieb als zurückzutreten.
Verbindung zum abgetauchten Terror-Trio

Den Verdacht, dass ausgerechnet am Tag des Auffliegens des Nationalsozialistischen Untergrunds (NSU) in seinem Amt potenziell relevante Informationen zu der rechten Terrorzelle vernichtet wurden, konnte Fromm nicht entkräften.

Informationen der taz belegen vielmehr, dass mindestens in einem Fall Akten zu einem V-Mann vernichtet wurden, der in die Suche nach dem 1998 abgetauchten Trio Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt und Beate Zschäpe eingebunden war – denjenigen also, die zehn Morde auf dem Gewissen haben.

Ein Referatsleiter des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz hatte im November 2011 sieben Akten zur „Operation Rennsteig“ vernichten lassen. Deren Inhalt betraf eine am 17. Juli 1996 gestartete konzertierte Aktion des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz, des Thüringer Landesamts und des Bundeswehrgeheimdiensts MAD.

Ziel der bis 2003 andauernden Operation war es, V-Leute in der Anti-Antifa-Ostthüringen und deren braunen Nachfolgetruppe „Thüringer Heimatschutz“ anzuwerben – in jenem Kameradschaftszusammenschluss also, dem die späteren NSU-Terroristen bis zu ihrem Untertauchen angehörten.

Acht V-Leute konnte das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz anwerben, allesamt bekamen sie einen Tarnnamen, der mit einem T beginnt. Wichtige Teile dieser Akten wurden, wie nun bekannt geworden ist, am 11. November 2011 geschreddert – ausgerechnet an dem Tag, an dem der Generalbundesanwalt öffentlich bekannt gab, dass er die Ermittlungen gegen die Terrorzelle übernommen hat.
Geknickt und aufklärungsbereit

Gegenüber Verfassungsschutzchef Fromm soll der zuständige Referatsleiter die Aktenvernichtung, die er mit angeblich abgelaufenen Aufbewahrungsfristen begründete, aber erst vergangenen Mittwoch eingeräumt haben – fast acht Monate später.

Fromm wusste um die Brisanz des Vorgangs, leitete ein Disziplinarverfahren gegen den Mitarbeiter ein und versetzte ihn intern. Nach außen hin versuchte er die Wogen zu glätten, gab sich geknickt und aufklärungsbereit. „Nach meinem derzeitigen Kenntnisstand handelt es sich um einen Vorgang, wie es ihn in meiner Amtszeit bisher nicht gegeben hat“, ließ er sich am Wochenende zitieren. „Hierdurch ist ein erheblicher Vertrauensverlust und eine gravierende Beschädigung des Ansehens des Amtes eingetreten.“

Gleichzeitig versuchte Fromm aber die Bedeutung des Vorfalls hinter den Kulissen herunterzuspielen. „Keiner dieser V-Leute hatte eine Führungsfunktion im ’Thüringer Heimatschutz‘, die Quellen waren ausschließlich Randpersonen oder Mitläufer“, schrieb er dem Staatssekretär im Bundesinnenministerium, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche. Zugänge zu den drei späteren NSU-Mitgliedern seien „nicht erlangt“ worden.

Man wolle nun versuchen, aus anderen Akten den Inhalt der geschredderten Dokumente nachzuvollziehen, hieß es. Gleichwohl musste Fromm aber in seinem Schreiben eingestehen: „Die vernichteten Akten können voraussichtlich nicht mehr in vollem Umfang rekonstruiert werden.“
Mehr Brisanz als zunächst angenommen

Zunächst schien es noch, als wolle Verfassungsschutzchef Fromm im Amt bleiben. Doch am Wochenende wurde die Kritik immer lauter. Von einem „unglaublichen Vorgang“ sprach die FDP, von einem „Skandal“ redeten SPD und Linke. Die CSU forderte indirekt Fromms Rücktritt, und Grünen-Chef Cem Özdemir sagte: „Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her.“ Die Affäre einfach auf den Referatsleiter abzuwälzen war nicht mehr möglich. Am Montag schmiss der bald 64-jährige Heinz Fromm, der nächstes Jahr ohnehin in den Ruhestand gehen sollte, vorzeitig hin.

Sein Rücktritt erfolgte womöglich auch, weil in der Affäre noch viel mehr Brisanz steckt. Nach Informationen der taz spielte mindestens einer der V-Leute, dessen Akten nun geschreddert wurden, entgegen den Behauptungen Fromms durchaus eine Rolle bei der Suche nach dem mordenden Neonazi-Trio Mundlos, Böhnhardt und Zschäpe: Es handelt sich um den V-Mann, den das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz unter dem Namen „Tarif“ führte.

Wer sich hinter dem Decknamen verbirgt, ist unbekannt. Doch wie aus streng geheimen Verfassungsschutzakten hervorgeht, war V-Mann „Tarif“ im Jahr 1999 in die Suche nach der NSU-Truppe eingebunden. Damals war den Diensten das Gerücht zu Ohren gekommen, dass die drei Gesuchten bei einem Neonazi in Niedersachsen unterkommen könnten oder dass dieser Mann den dreien die Flucht ins Ausland ermöglichen könnte.

…

 Find this story at 2 July 2012

von Wolf Schmidt

Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Für Fragen zu Rechten oder Genehmigungen wenden Sie sich bitte an lizenzen@taz.de

In pre-dawn darkness, a Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

At the same time, the crash in Mali has revealed some details of the commandos’ clandestine activities that apparently had little to do with counterterrorism. The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which is conducting a probe of the fatal plunge off the Martyrs Bridge in Bamako, the capital of Mali, said it does not suspect foul play but has “not completely ruled it out.” Other Army officials cited poor road conditions and excessive speed as the likely cause of the 5 a.m. crash.

U.S. officials have revealed few details about the soldiers’ mission or their backgrounds, beyond a brief news release announcing their deaths hours after the accident.

In many countries, including most in Africa, Special Operations forces work openly to distribute humanitarian aid and train local militaries. At times, the civil-affairs assignments can provide credible cover for clandestine counterterrorism units.

But in Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.

The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”

Megan Larson-Kone, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in Mali, said the soldiers had stayed in Bamako because they were “winding down” civil-
affairs programs in the aftermath of the coup while holding out hope “that things would turn around quickly” so they could resume their work.

Two of the soldiers, Capt. Daniel H. Utley, 33, and Sgt. 1st Class Marciano E. Myrthil, 39, were members of the 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

For two months after the crash, the U.S. military withheld the identity of the third soldier killed. In response to inquiries from The Washington Post, the Army named him as Master Sgt. Trevor J. Bast, 39, a communications technician with the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir.

The Intelligence and Security Command is a little-known and secretive branch of the Army that specializes in communications intercepts. Its personnel often work closely with the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees missions to capture or kill terrorism suspects overseas.

During his two decades of service, Bast revealed little about the nature of his work to his family. “He did not tell us a lot about his life, and we respected that for security purposes,” his mother, Thelma Bast of Gaylord, Mich., said in a brief interview. “We never asked questions, and that’s the honest truth.”

Haven for Islamist militants

U.S. counterterrorism officials have long worried about Mali, a weakly governed country of 14.5 million people that has served as a refuge for Islamist militants allied with al-Qaeda.

With only 6,000 poorly equipped troops, the Malian armed forces have always struggled to maintain control of their territory, about twice the size of Texas. Repeated famines and rebellions by Tuareg nomads only exacerbated the instability.

About six years ago, the Pentagon began bolstering its overt aid and training programs in Mali, as well as its clandestine operations.

Under a classified program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors were deployed to West Africa to conduct surveillance missions over the country with single-
engine aircraft designed to look like civilian passenger planes.

In addition, the military flew spy flights over Mali and other countries in the region with longer-range P-3 Orion aircraft based in the Mediterranean, according to classified U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In what would have represented a significant escalation of U.S. military involvement in Mali, the Pentagon also considered a secret plan in 2009 to embed American commandos with Malian ground troops, diplomatic cables show.

Under that program, code-named Oasis Enabler, U.S. military advisers would conduct anti-terrorism operations alongside elite, American-trained Malian units. But the idea was rejected by Gillian A. Milovanovic, the ambassador to Mali at the time.

In an October 2009 meeting in Bamako with Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, deputy chief of the Africa Command, the ambassador called the plan “extremely problematic,” adding that it could create a popular backlash and “risk infuriating” neighbors such as Algeria.

Furthermore, Milovanovic warned that the U.S. advisers “would likely serve as lightning rods, exposing themselves and the Malian contingents to specific risk,” according to a State Department cable summarizing the meeting.

Moeller replied that he “regretted” that the ambassador had not been kept better informed and said Oasis Enabler was “a work in progress.” It is unclear whether the plan was carried out.

Since then, however, security in Mali has deteriorated sharply. After the coup in March, extremist Muslim guerrillas in northern Mali declared an independent Islamist state. They have imposed sharia law and have begun enforcing strict social codes that include compulsory beards for men and a ban on television.

In the fabled desert city of Timbuktu, al-Qaeda sympathizers have destroyed ancient mausoleums and attacked other shrines as part of a religious cleansing campaign. Western aid workers have abandoned the northern half of the country after a string of kidnappings.

Thousands of Malians have fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries.

A fatal plunge

The three soldiers riding through Bamako in April had rented their 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser from a local agency, according to written statements provided to The Post by the Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

Bast was in the driver’s seat and was headed south across the Martyrs Bridge. Preliminary investigative results determined that he lost control of the Land Cruiser, which broke through the bridge’s guard rail and landed in the river below.

Also in the vehicle were three Moroccan women, according to the Army’s statement. Contributing factors in the accident, the Army said, were limited visibility and “a probable evasive maneuver on the part of the vehicle’s driver to avoid impacting with slower moving traffic.”

The soldiers died of “blunt force trauma” when the vehicle landed upside down in the shallow river, crushing the roof, the Army said.

The Special Operations Command said it could not answer questions about where the soldiers were going, nor why they were traveling with the unidentified Moroccan women, saying the matter is under investigation.

Larson-Kone, the embassy spokeswoman, said the soldiers were on “personal, not business-related travel” at the time, but she declined to provide details. Officials from the Africa Command also said that they did not know who the women were, but they added in a statement: “From what we know now, we have no reason to believe these women were engaged in acts of prostitution.”

Coincidentally, the incident occurred less than a week after President Obama’s visit to a summit in Cartagena, Colombia, where U.S. military personnel and Secret Service agents became embroiled in a scandal involving prostitutes.

Little details not adding up

At least two of the soldiers in Mali had been trained as communications or intelligence specialists.

Bast, the master sergeant, was a ham radio hobbyist who originally joined the Navy before switching to the Army several years ago. An Army spokesman described him as a “communications expert” and said he was posthumously given the Meritorious Service Medal but declined to say why.

Myrthil was a native of Haiti who joined the Army two decades ago. Military officials released virtually no details about his service record.

Utley, the captain, was a Kentucky native who joined the Army in 2002 to work as a signals and communications officer but later transferred to the Special Forces.

Friends said he had expected to deploy to Afghanistan last summer but received last-minute orders to go to Africa instead. His Mali assignment was scheduled to end this spring but was extended, they said.

Three weeks after the coup, on April 11, Utley sent a brief e-mail to a friend from college, Chris Atzinger, to report that he was all right and that he would write more later.

…

Find this story at 9 July 2012

By Craig Whitlock, Monday, July 9, 3:04 AM

Dana Priest and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© The Washington Post Company