zBerlin – Der frühere Bundesinnenminister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) war als Zeuge vor den NSU-Untersuchungsausschuss des Bundestages geladen worden – und wies eine Mitverantwortung für Ermittlungspannen bei der Aufdeckung der Zwickauer Terrorzelle von sich.

„Ich kann nichts erkennen, was mich in irgendeiner Weise belasten würde“, sagte der heutige Bundesfinanzminister.

Ein Minister greife in der Regel nicht in Einzelentscheidungen seiner Behörde ein – er übernehme stattdessen Führungsaufgaben. Er selbst habe sich nicht als „oberster Polizist im Land“ gesehen. „Deswegen bin ich mit diesen schrecklichen Morden amtlich nur sehr marginal befasst gewesen“, sagte der Minister.

Schäuble wies in der Anhörung auch Vorwürfe zurück, er habe die Ermittlungen erschwert, indem er 2006 dem Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) die Ermittlungen nicht übertragen habe. „Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, dass mir ein solcher Vorschlag gemacht worden ist”, sagte der Bundesfinanzminister.

Der Ausschuss argumentierte, dass die Ermittlungen des BKA einen zweiten Blick gebracht hätten und dadurch unter Umständen hilfreich gewesen wären.
NSU-Akten-Affäre

Ungeheuerliche Ermittlungspannen bei der Zwickauer Terrorzelle. BKA-Chef Zierke sagte vor dem Untersuchungsausschuss: „Wir haben versagt”.
mehr…

Schäuble verteidigte vor dem Ausschuss auch die Zusammenlegung der Abteilungen für die Bekämpfung von Links- und Rechtsextremismus beim Verfassungsschutz. Die Gefahr durch den islamistischen Terrorismus sei vor der Fußball-WM 2006 hoch eingeschätzt worden – eine zentrale Terrorbekämpfungsabteilung in Berlin sei für notwendig erachtet worden. Die Gefahr des rechtsextremen Terrors sei dadurch nicht minder berücksichtig worden.

Schäuble war von 2005 bis 2009 Chef des Innenressorts. In dieser Zeit tappten die Ermittler mit ihren Untersuchungen zur rechtsextremen Terrorzelle NSU noch völlig im Dunkeln.

Der Ausschuss befasst sich seit Beginn des Jahres mit den Verbrechen des Nationalsozialistischen Untergrunds (NSU) und den Ermittlungspannen bei deren Aufdeckung. Der Terrorzelle werden zehn Morde zwischen 2000 und 2007 an türkisch- und griechischstämmigen Kleinunternehmern und einer Polizistin zur Last gelegt. Die Gruppierung flog aber erst im November 2011 auf. Die Sicherheitsbehörden kamen ihr jahrelang nicht auf die Spur.

Unterdessen lehnte Beate Zschäpe (37) eine Untersuchung durch einen psychiatrischen Gutachter ab. Das ließ die mutmaßliche Rechtsterroristin dem Oberlandesgericht München über ihre Anwälte mitteilen, ergaben Recherchen der „Panorama”-Redaktion des NDR.

Gerichtspsychiater Henning Saß vom Uniklinikum Aachen sollte herausfinden, ob die Voraussetzungen für eine Sicherungsverwahrung von Zschäpe bestehen. Die Nazi-Braut, die bisher noch keine Aussage gemacht hat, soll ein Gespräch mit dem renommierten Psychiater abgelehnt haben.

Der emeritierte Professor Saß ist einer der bekanntesten Psychiater in deutschen Gerichtssälen. Nun soll Saß auf Grundlage der Ermittlungsakten ein erstes Gutachten erstellen. Dazu wollte das Oberlandesgericht München (OLG) keine Stellung nehmen.

…

14.12.2012 – 17:42 Uhr

Find this story at 14 December 2012

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Just days after a man was sentenced for spying for Syria, German federal prosecutors said Friday they had brought charges against a German-Moroccan national on suspicion of observing opposition members.

The federal prosecutor’s office said the 59-year-old suspect identified only as Bagdad A. was believed to have worked as an agent for the Moroccan secret services in Germany from May 2007 to February this year.

“The accused has a broad network of contacts among Moroccans living in Germany,” it said in a statement.

“In 2007, he told the Moroccan foreign intelligence service he was willing to use his contacts to provide information about Moroccan opposition members living in Germany.”

It said he remained in “constant” contact with his employers until February this year and informed them in particular about demonstrations held by opposition groups.

A spokesman for the prosecutors said the man was not currently in custody but that the authorities had determined there was little risk of flight as his family lived in Germany.

On Wednesday, a German court gave a two-year suspended jail sentence to a 48-year-old man of dual German-Lebanese nationality for spying on opponents of the Syrian regime in Germany.

…

Published: 7 Dec 12 16:34 CET

Find this story at 7 December 2012

AFP/The Local/mry

Row over unexplained Surrey death of Alexander Perepilichnyy, a key witness in fraud case of £140m in tax stolen from Russia

A security vehicle at the entrance to St George’s Hill private estate near Weybridge, Surrey in November, where Alexander Perepilichnyy died in mysterious circumstances. Photograph: Olivia Harris/Reuters

Police and anti-fraud agencies have been criticised by the alleged victim of a multimillion-pound international fraud for ignoring dossiers of evidence – including death threats and intimidation – linking the crime with the UK, months before a witness connected to the case was found dead in unexplained circumstances.

The body of Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, was found outside his Surrey home on 10 November. His cause of death is described as “unexplained” following two postmortems, with further toxicology tests to come.

He was a key witness in a fraud case involving the theft of £140m in tax revenue from the Russian government. The alleged fraudsters are said to have stolen three companies from a UK-based investment firm, Hermitage Capital, and used them to perpetrate the fraud – leaving Hermitage in the frame for the criminal acts.

The case is known as the “Magnitsky case”, after one of Hermitage’s Russian lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, who was found dead in a Russian prison in 2009 with his body showing signs of torture.

A motion from the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe said Magnitsky had been “killed … while in pre-trial detention in Moscow after he refused to change his testimony”.

Bill Browder, the founder of Hermitage Capital, has been trying to secure convictions for the death of Magnitsky, as well as those implicated in the alleged fraud against his company, for four years.

Documents seen by the Guardian show that in January and February Browder’s lawyers passed a criminal complaint to the City of London police, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

The complaint alleged Britain had ties to the alleged criminal conspiracy from its earliest stages: a UK citizen, Stephen John Kelly, served as a nominee, or “sham” director, for British Virgin Islands-based offshore companies involved in liquidating the companies used to claim the allegedly fraudulent tax refunds. Separately, a crucial couriered package of evidence, used as a pretext to raid offices in Russia, was sent from UK soil.

And, significantly, the complaint alleged lawyers working in the UK for Hermitage on the case had been subject to death threats made by phone, and intimidation via surveillance of their offices.

Hermitage claim the alleged theft of the companies was carried out using documents taken from their offices during a police raid, then “representatives” of the companies engaged in an elaborate series of steps to secure a tax rebate of about £140m. The three firms, now with no assets and more than £600m of debts, were then sold on and liquidated via the British Virgin Islands.

The Conservative MP Dominic Raab wrote to the same police and anti-fraud agencies again in August also encouraging an investigation, after being contacted by Hermitage with respect to their complaints.

Raab had previously urged action in the House of Commons against individuals allegedly implicated in Magnitsky’s death, mirroring a US bill that was formally passed by the Senate on Thursday evening.

Raab also informed the Home Office last month that one of the alleged leaders of the Russian criminal gang had apparently travelled to the UK on two occasions in 2008, despite having previous convictions in relation to a multimillion-pound fraud, and asked them to investigate. He also passed details of 60 individuals allegedly involved in the plot to UK authorities to assist in monitoring of their movements.

Raab said the lack of information from any UK authorities was troubling.

“The first thing is, we don’t know about Perepilichnyy and his cause of death,” he said. “But we do know there was some sort of hit-list in Russia with his name on it and he’s obviously given evidence in these money-laundering proceedings.

“I think the key thing is the Home Office give the police all the support they can. At the moment, there’s a lack of transparency, it’s very difficult to know. We’ve got no idea if anything’s been actioned, or even how many people linked to the case have been travelling in and out of Britain. We just don’t know.”

City of London police said they had met Hermitage but had found no evidence of UK involvement in the alleged offences.

“Detectives met with the company’s solicitors and having reviewed the complaint concluded there was no evidence of criminality in the UK and would be taking no further action,” said a spokesman”.

The SFO, FSA and SOCA declined to comment, citing policies barring them from confirming or denying the existence of any specific investigations.

A spokesman for the Home Office confirmed they had been contacted by Raab and were looking into his queries, but said they did not comment on individual visa cases.

Surrey police have still been unable to establish a cause of death for Perepilichnyy, who collapsed and died outside his luxury home in Weybridge, Surrey. He had been out jogging, his wife Tatyana said, and was found in the street wearing shorts and trainers.

Perepilichnyy appears to have been part of the alleged criminal group but to have fallen out with other members of the syndicate. He fled to Britain three years ago, taking with him bank documents, details of Credit Suisse accounts and other evidence.

In the UK Perepilichnyy kept a low profile, with few Russians in the capital having heard of him. He passed a bundle of evidence to Hermitage Capital; Hermitage then handed the documents over to the Swiss police. As a result Swiss investigators closed down several accounts allegedly belonging to figures in the criminal gang.

Andrei Pavlov, a Russian lawyer, told Kommersant, Russia’s leading daily, that Perepilichnyy appeared exhausted and frightened during two meetings the men had last year. “He wanted to make peace with [ex-partner Vladlen] Stepanov,” the lawyer said. Pavlov did not respond to repeated requests for comment by the Guardian’s deadline.

Stepanov, and his ex-wife Olga Stepanova, are among those accused by Hermitage of taking part in a complex scheme to illegally funnel Russian taxes from companies once owned by Hermitage. Information released by Hermitage, and uncovered by Magnitsky, shows how Stepanova, the former head of a Moscow tax office, and her husband bought wildly expensive properties in Moscow, Montenegro and Dubai.

In a video interview with Vedomosti, a respected financial daily, in May 2011, Stepanov attempted to explain his personal wealth, which he claims was gained through investing the money he made in the 1990s from tunnel construction and optics. He called Browder’s investigations “fabricated facts”. “With these fabricated facts, they have blamed me for everything – that there is blood on my hands.”

He also said he had fallen out with Perepilichnyy, calling him a man with “many problems”.

“He ran away. He’s not here. He doesn’t answer the phone. He’s hiding. It’s like he doesn’t exist.” Perepilichnyy is believed to have fled to the UK after becoming unable to pay back debts amid the global financial crisis.

…

James Ball, Luke Harding and Miriam Elder
The Guardian, Sunday 9 December 2012 18.35 GMT

Find this story at 9 December 2012

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

A Russian whistleblower who had been helping authorities in Western Europe investigate a gigantic money-laundering scheme involving Russian government officials, has been found dead in the United Kingdom. Alexander Perepilichnyy, who had been named by Swiss authorities as an indispensible informant in the so-called Hermitage Capital scandal, was found dead outside his home in Weybridge, Surrey, on November 10. The 44-year-old former businessman, who sought refuge in England in 2009, and had been living there ever since, is the fourth person linked to the money-laundering scandal to have died in suspicious circumstances. The company, Hermitage Capital Management, is a UK-based investment fund and asset-management company, which Western prosecutors believe fell victim to a massive $250 million fraud conspiracy perpetrated by Russian Interior Ministry officials who were aided by organized crime gangs. In 2006, the company’s British founders were denied entry to Russia, in what was seen by some as an attempt by the administration of Vladimir Putin to protect its officials involved in the money-laundering scheme. The scandal widened in late 2009, when Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had been arrested in connection with the case, died while in police custody. According to the coroner’s report, Magnitsky, who was 37 and in good physical health, died suddenly from acute heart failure at a Moscow detention facility. Some observers speculate that the lawyer was killed before he could turn into a whistleblower against some of the perpetrators of the fraud scheme. Following Magnitsky’s death, Alexander Perepilichnyy was elevated as a key witness in the case, after providing Swiss prosecutors with detailed intelligence naming several Russian government officials involved in the money-laundering scheme, as well as their criminal contacts outside Russia. This led to the freezing of numerous assets and bank accounts in several European countries. There is no word yet as to the cause of Perepilichnyy’s death. British investigators said yesterday that the first post-mortem examination had proved inconclusive and that a toxicological examination had been ordered for next week.

November 30, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis 3 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 30 November 2012

Hearing ahead of full inquest also hears Litvinenko was working for MI6 when he was poisoned with polonium-210

Alexander Litvinenki died in a London hospital in November 2006, three weeks after drinking poisoned tea. Photograph: Natasja Weitsz/Getty Images

The government’s evidence relating to the death of Alexander Litvinenko amounts to a “prima facie case” that he was murdered by the Russian government, the coroner investigating his death has been told.

The former KGB officer was a paid MI6 agent at the time of his death in 2006, a pre-inquest hearing also heard, and was also working for the Spanish secret services supplying intelligence on Russian state involvement in organised crime.

Litvinenko died in a London hospital in November 2006, three weeks after drinking tea which had been poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210.

The director of public prosecutions announced in May 2007 that it would seek to charge Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer, with murder, prompting a diplomatic crisis between the UK and Russia, which refused a request for Lugovoi’s extradition. Britain expelled four Russian diplomats, which was met by a tit-for-tat expulsion of four British embassy staff from Moscow. Lugovoi denies murder.

At a preliminary hearing on Thursday in advance of the full inquest into Litvinenko’s death, Hugh Davies, counsel to the inquest, said an assessment of government documents “does establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko”.

Separately, a lawyer representing the dead man’s widow, Marina, told the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, that Litvinenko had been “a paid agent and employee of MI6” at the time of his death, who was also, at the instigation of British intelligence, working for the Spanish secret service.

“The information that he was involved [in] providing to the Spanish … involved organised crime, that’s the Russian mafia activities in Spain and more widely,” Ben Emmerson QC told the hearing.

Emmerson said the inquest would hear evidence that the murdered man had a dedicated MI6 handler who used the pseudonym Martin.

While he was dying in hospital, Emmerson said, Litvinenko had given Martin’s number to a Metropolitan police officer and, without disclosing his MI6 connection, suggested the police follow up the connection. He said Litvinenko had also had a dedicated phone that he used only for phoning Martin.

“Martin will no doubt be a witness in this inquiry, once his identity has been made known to you,” Emmerson told the coroner.

The inquest would also hear evidence that Lugovoi had been working with Litvinenko in supplying intelligence to Spain, the lawyer said, adding that the murdered man had also had a separate phone used only for his contact with the other Russian.

While he was dying in hospital, Litvinenko had phoned Lugovoi on this phone to tell him he was unwell and would be unable to join him on a planned trip to Spain, Emmerson said. The purpose of the trip was for both men to deliver intelligence about Russian mafia links to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.

So advanced were the arrangements for the trip that the conversation “descended to the level of discussing hotels”, Emmerson said.

The case against Lugovoi centres on a meeting he and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, had with Litvinenko at the Palm bar at the Millennium hotel in Mayfair on 1 November 2006. It is alleged that Litvinenko’s tea was poisoned with the polonium-210 at that meeting. Kovtun also denies involvement.

At the instigation of MI6, Emmerson said, Litvinenko had been supplying information to a Spanish prosecutor, José Grinda González, under the supervision of a separate Spanish handler who used the pseudonym Uri.

Emmerson cited a US embassy cable published in the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures that detailed a briefing given by Grinda González on 13 January 2010 to US officials in Madrid. At that meeting, the lawyer said, the prosecutor had quoted intelligence from Litvinenko that Russian security and intelligence services “control organised crime in Russia”.

“Grinda stated that he believes this thesis is accurate,” the lawyer quoted.

He said that payments from both the British and Spanish secret services had been deposited directly into the joint account Litvinenko shared with his wife.

Contrary to Davies’s submission, Emmerson said the inquest should consider whether the British government had been culpable in failing to protect Litvinenko, arguing that “the very fact of a relationship between Mr Litvinenko and his employers MI6” placed a duty on the government to ensure his safety when asking him to undertake “dangerous operations”.

“It’s an inevitable inference from all of the evidence that prior to his death MI6 had carried out a detailed risk assessment and that risk assessment must in due course be disclosed.”

Neil Garnham QC, counsel for the Home Office, representing MI6, said the government would not comment on claims that Litvinenko was a British agent. “It is central to Mrs Litvinenko’s case that her husband was an employee of the British intelligence services. That is something about which I cannot or will not comment. I can neither confirm or deny it.”

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has indicated that it would like to be formally designated an “interested party” in the inquest, which would give it the right to make submissions to the coroner and appoint lawyers to cross examine witnesses.

…

Esther Addley
The Guardian, Thursday 13 December 2012 19.00 GMT

Find this story at 13 December 2012

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

Inquiry told Alexander Litvinenko was spying for Britain and Spain – and Russia killed him

Secret details of Alexander Litvinenko’s life as a British intelligence agent were revealed yesterday at a preparatory hearing into the poisoned former KGB officer’s death.

The inquiry was told that the 43-year-old not only worked for MI6, but was helping the Spanish intelligence services investigating organised crime in Russia.

Mr Litvinenko died in hospital three weeks after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 after meeting fellow former KGB contacts for tea at a Mayfair hotel in 2006. The night before, the High Court judge Sir Robert Owen was told, he met with his MI6 handler “Martin”.

The inquest next May is likely to increase tensions between the UK and Russia, with the British government providing evidence that the foreign state was involved in the murder of its former agent.

Ben Emmerson QC, representing Mr Litvinenko’s widow Marina, claimed the British had failed to protect the former KGB officer: “At the time of his death Mr Litvinenko had been for a number of years a registered and paid agent in the employ of MI6.

“That relationship between Mr Litvinenko and his employers MI6 is sufficient to trigger an enhanced duty by the British government to ensure his safety when tasking him on dangerous operations.”

Paid through a bank account or in cash, Mr Litvinenko had a dedicated telephone to MI6, which tasked him with helping Jose Grinda Gonzalez, the Spanish prosecutor for corruption and organised crime.

A US embassy cable described how Mr Gonzalez had met the Americans and told them he was working on a thesis by Mr Litvinenko that “the Russian intelligence and security services – Grinda cited the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and military intelligence (GRU) – control organised crime in Russia. Grinda stated that he believes the thesis is accurate”.

As an agent to the Spanish intelligence services through a handler called “Uri”, Mr Litvinenko had been planning a trip to Madrid with Mr Lugovoi – a member of the FSB, and the man suspected of the murder – until he became ill from poisoning.

Mr Emmerson continued: “He made a phone call to Mr Lugovoi in hospital to discuss their planned trip together to Spain to provide intelligence to the Spanish prosecutor investigating Russian mafia links with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. He explained he was ill and could no longer go on their planned trip.”

Both Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun – who also met him for tea at the Mayfair hotel – have denied any involvement in the killing but have refused to surrender to the British authorities.

Neil Garnham QC, representing the Government, responded that he could not comment on assertions that Mr Litvinenko was in the pay of MI6: “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

Hugh Davies, the barrister to the inquest, revealed that almost a year after it was invited to participate in the inquest, the Russian government had applied to be represented. On Wednesday, Mr Davies explained a letter was received requesting that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation – sometimes compared with the American FBI – be granted “interested-person status” at the inquest in May.

He added that, having examined documents supplied by the British government, the inquiry team had failed to find evidence that supported a wide variety of theories including claims Mr Litvinenko had been murdered by the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, the Spanish mafia, Italian academic Mario Scaramella or Chechen organisations.

However, he added: “Taken in isolation, our assessment is that the government material does establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.”

Sir Robert, sitting as Assistant Deputy Coroner, is expected to rule early next year on what will be admissible at the inquest as well as whether there is a case under the European Convention of Human Rights that the British state was culpable in the death “either in itself carrying out, or by its agents, the poisoning or by failing to take reasonable steps to protect Mr Litvinenko from a real risk to his life”.

A tangled web: Litvinenko’s network

*Alexander Litvinenko served in the KGB and its successor the Federal Security Service (FSB) but left in 2000, having been arrested for exceeding the authority of his position, charges which were dismissed.

*In 1998, Mr Litvinenko and other FSB officers accused their superiors of ordering the assassination of the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky. He later worked on the oligarch’s security team and the men became friends.

*Having fled to Britain seeking asylum, he began working as an agent of MI6.

…

Terri Judd
Friday, 14 December 2012

Find this story at 14 December 2012

© independent.co.uk

Allegations of involvement in Libyan rendition and the death of the Russian spy raise questions about MI6’s handling of sources

The MI6 headquarters in Vauxhall, London. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Spying is a dangerous game, in reality as in fiction. It is also exotic. Sometimes the sheer adrenaline and excitement can make the spy drop his – or her – guard and judgment can be affected. Spies – both spymasters and their agents – can be seduced by the prospect of praise heaped on them by their political masters.

MI6 may have succumbed to these pressures and temptations in their handling of the former KGB spy, Alexander Litvinenko – and also of two prominent Libyan dissidents it helped to abduct and render to Muammar Gaddafi. The two cases are separate but they will both bring unwelcome publicity to Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service for months to come.

Litvinenko was killed in November 2006, poisoned by the radioactive isotope polonium-210. Yesterday, at a pre-inquest hearing into her husband’s death, Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, articulated her belief that MI6 failed to protect him. Her counsel, Ben Emmerson, said: “Mr Litvinenko had been for a number of years a regular and paid agent and employee of MI6 with a dedicated handler whose pseudonym was Martin.”

He added that at the behest of MI6, Litvinenko was also working for the Spanish security services, where his handler was called Uri (the Russian was supplying the Spanish with information on organised crime and Russian mafia activity in Spain, the hearing heard). Emmerson said the inquest should consider whether MI6 failed in its duty to protect Litvinenko against a “real and immediate risk to life”.

He suggested there was “an enhanced duty resting on the British government to ensure his safety when tasking him with dangerous operations involving engagement with foreign agents”. Emmerson continued: “It is Marina Litvinenko’s belief that the evidence will show that her husband’s death was a murder and that Andrey Lugovoy [also a former KGB officer] was the main perpetrator”.

It is easy for victims of espionage to blame the spymaster. MI6 should know that. What risks the MI6 handlers took with Litvinenko, what advice and warnings they gave him, whether or not he heeded them, may – or may not – emerge during the inquest.

MI6 did not emerge well from another inquest earlier this year. The coroner at the inquest into the death of Gareth Williams a GCHQ employee seconded to MI6 and found dead in a zipped-up bag in his London flat, sharply attacked MI6 officers for hampering the police investigation into the case. For more than a week after Williams’s disappearance, MI6 did not alert the police or get in touch with any member of his family. A senior MI6 officer identified as F blamed G, Williams’s close colleague, referring to a “breakdown in communications”.

Ironically, perhaps, in light of Emmerson’s comments at Thursday’s pre-inquest hearing, G said Williams was frustrated by the bureaucracy – what he called “the amount of process risk mitigation” – inside MI6. Williams’s family solicitor said their grief was exacerbated by MI6’s failings.

Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 apologised “unreservedly”, saying lessons in the Williams case had been learned, “in particular the responsibility of all staff to report unaccounted staff absences”.

Lessons may have been learned over Litvinenko’s death. We can be sure they are also being learned over the abduction in 2004 of two prominent Libyan dissidents – Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhaj – and their families. Al-Saadi settled on Thursday, accepting an offer of £2.2m in compensation. Belhaj intends to keep fighting and pursue his court case against ministers and officials.

…

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 December 2012 16.45 GMT

Find this story at 14 December 2012

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

Louise Thomas gives evidence ahead of judicial review into government’s refusal to hold public inquiry into troop abuse claims

Iraqi prisoners stand behind razor wire. Lawyers say they have received complaints of abuse from more than 1,100 Iraqis. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/AFP/Getty Images

A former investigator into allegations that British troops abused Iraqi prisoners resigned because she did not want to be implicated in “a cover-up”, the high court has heard.

Louise Thomas, 45, left the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) in July because she thought it was not a genuine investigation but a “face-saving inquiry”, she told the court on Tuesday.

Her evidence came at a preliminary hearing in advance of a judicial review, expected next month, into the government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into allegations of mistreatment of Iraqis between 2003 and 2008.

Lawyers say they have now received complaints of abuse from more than 1,100 Iraqis and that IHAT’s investigations are insufficiently independent because they have been conducted by Royal Military Police (RMP) officers and other members of the armed forces.

Thomas, whose claims were highlighted by the Guardian in October, is a former police constable who worked for six months with IHAT at its British headquarters in Pewsey, Wiltshire.

She admitted in court she did have second thoughts at one stage and asked for her job back.

“After speaking to a few colleagues and realising we could make a difference I asked if I could stay,” she said. “[They] said they would try to change things. It was very frustrating working at IHAT.”

Thomas denied she was angry when she was refused permission to withdraw her resignation.

Her job at IHAT had been to review evidence taken from video sessions of recordings of interrogations of Iraqi suspects. One of the exercises was to see how they matched up to standards set by the Istanbul Protocols, which assess methods of torture.

Thomas alleged that many of the sessions had been misrecorded by earlier forensic investigators.

But Philip Havers QC, for the Ministry of Defence, accused her of exaggerating the number of misrecordings and said that notebooks showed only seven such alleged occurrences out of 181 videos she had assessed – a rate of 4%.

Thomas denied she was exaggerating and said other records would show there were more occasions.

If the high court agrees in January that there should be a full inquiry into the latest allegations of military abuse during the occupation of Iraq, it will be the third such investigation following the Baha Mousa and al-Sweady inquiries.

Asked by Havers whether she was still saying that “IHAT is not a genuine investigation but merely a face-saving inquiry”, Thomas replied: “Yes, I am.”

She said she believed IHAT was a “cover-up” and that she had resigned because she no longer wanted to be implicated in it.

The court was told that the hearing would not identify any of the soldiers who worked for the Joint Forces Interrogation Team (Jfit) in Iraq, any of the military operations involved or any of the Iraqi detainees.

“The reasons for the redactions is so as not to prejudice the ongoing (IHAT) criminal investigations,” Havers said.

John Birch, a former RMP officer who has been working with IHAT, said there were seven main strands of investigations being pursued, including a “murder review team” that was looking at Iraqi deaths.

He acknowledged that tapes from the early years of the occupation before 2005 were still missing. A shortage of digital video tapes meant that some of the later sessions had been recorded over.

…

Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 11 December 2012 19.44 GMT

Find this story at 11 December 2012

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

David Cameron deeply sorry for ‘shocking’ state collusion

They went to London in hope more than expectation. The family of Pat Finucane never supported this review of evidence by a “lawyer with strong links to the Conservative Party”, demanding instead the public inquiry they were initially promised by Tony Blair.

They leave with the personal apology of a Prime Minister for the “collusion” of British agents in Pat’s murder. But not, they say, the truth.

Mr Finucane’s wife Geraldine was in the House of Commons chamber to hear David Cameron say he was “deeply sorry” after the findings of the Da Silva report were made public today. But, ultimately, she was there to hear him refuse the public inquiry she believes her family needs and deserves.

“This report is a sham. This report is a whitewash. This report is a confidence trick dressed up as independent scrutiny and given invisible clothes of reliability. Most of all, most hurtful and insulting of all, this report is not the truth,” she told reporters afterwards.

She said the family wanted to be in the Commons to hear the words from Mr Cameron’s own lips. “We could have watched it on a television screen at home but we felt that was important. We felt that, after all this time, we needed to be there,” she told the Independent.

The sombre mood in the chamber this afternoon matched the occasion: a British government denied any “over-arching state conspiracy” but admitted to the collusion of agents of the state in the murder. “It was measured, rather than being raucous. [The Commons] can often come across very rowdy on television but this was not the occasion for that,” said Mrs Finucane.

Appearing before reporters dressed all in red, she said this latest report into her husband’s murder at the hands of Loyalist paramilitaries in 1989 was the result of a “process in which we have had no input; we have seen no documents nor heard any witnesses”. In short, she said, the family has had no opportunity to see the evidence for themselves.

“We are expected to take the word of the man appointed by the British government,” she said.

Flanked by her sons Michael and John and her brother-in-law Martin Finucane, she added: “Despite all these misgivings, we have tried our best to keep an open mind until we have read and considered the final report. We came to London with the faint hope that, for once, we would be proved wrong. I regret to say that, once again, we have been proved right.

“At every turn, it is clear that this report has done exactly what was required: to give the benefit of the doubt to the state, its cabinet and ministers, to the Army, to the intelligence services, to itself.

“At every turn, dead witnesses have been blamed and defunct agencies found wanting. Serving personnel and active state departments appear to have been excused. The dirt has been swept under the carpet without any serious attempt to lift the lid on what really happened to Pat and so many others.

Michael Finucane, dressed – like his brother and his uncle – in a dark suit and tie, said that the public inquiry the family seeks has been promised to them by Ed Miliband, if he becomes Prime Minister. The refusal to grant one by successive governments, he said, was because the British state “has the most to hide”.

He said he accepted the use of the word ‘collusion’ in the report, as opposed to the stronger accusation of conspiracy because the former more accurately encapsulated “not just the deliberate acts of people who decide to do something, but also a culture that encourages and fosters them”.

…

Kevin Rawlinson
Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Find this story at 12 December 2012

© independent.co.uk

Prime minister apologises to Finucane’s family after report reveals special branch repeatedly failed to warn lawyer of threat

The prime minister’s frankest admission yet that the state colluded in the 1989 murder of the Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane has failed to quell demands from his family, human rights organisations and the Irish government for a full public inquiry.

Fresh revelations on Wednesday – about special branch’s repeated failure to warn Finucane that his life was under threat, the RUC’s “obstruction” of justice, and MI5’s “propaganda initiatives” that identified the lawyer with republican paramilitaries who were his clients – only reinforced calls for a more thorough investigation.

David Cameron’s apology to Finucane’s family in the Commons followed publication of a scathing report by the former war crimes lawyer Sir Desmond de Silva QC that cleared ministers but blamed “agents of the state” for the killing. The prime minister acknowledged there had been “shocking levels of collusion” in what was one of the most controversial killings of the Troubles.

The extent of the co-operation between the security forces and Finucane’s loyalist killers was unacceptable, Cameron added. “On the balance of probability,” he admitted, an officer or officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary did propose Finucane as a target to loyalist terrorists.

The report made for extremely difficult reading, Cameron said. “I am deeply sorry,” he told the Finucane family, who were in the Commons gallery to hear his statement. He said he “respectfully disagreed” with the demand for a full, independent public inquiry, citing the cost of the Bloody Sunday tribunal as one reason.

Cameron, however, tried to divert blame away from the Tory former cabinet minister Douglas Hogg over comments he made before the murder in which Hogg said some solicitors in Northern Ireland were unduly sympathetic to the IRA.

The Ulster Defence Association was responsible for shooting Finucane dead in front of his family at their north Belfast home in February 1989, but de Silva said state employees “furthered and facilitated” the murder of the 38-year-old father-of-three.

The family and human rights campaigners have insisted over the past 23 years that there was collaboration between the UDA in west and north Belfast and members of the security forces.

In his report, de Silva concluded: “My review of the evidence relating to Patrick Finucane’s case has left me in no doubt that agents of the state were involved in carrying out serious violations of human rights up to and including murder.

“However, despite the different strands of involvement by elements of the state, I am satisfied that they were not linked to an overarching state conspiracy to murder Patrick Finucane.”

Dismissing the report and Cameron’s statement as a “confidence trick” and a sham, Finucane’s widow Geraldine said: “At every turn, dead witnesses have been blamed and defunct agencies found wanting. Serving personnel and active state departments appear to have been excused. The dirt has been swept under the carpet without any serious attempt to lift the lid on what really happened to Pat and so many others.”

She demanded that the government order a public inquiry so witnesses can be cross-examined and account for their actions. Her calls were echoed by the Irish government and human rights groups. The Irish premier, Enda Kenny, said he supported the Finucanes’ campaign. He said: “I spoke with prime minister Cameron … before his statement to the House of Commons, and repeated these points to him once again. I have also spoken today with Geraldine Finucane and I know that the family are not satisfied with [the] outcome.”

Micheal Martin, the current Fianna Fáil leader, who was Ireland’s foreign minister during a critical time of the peace process, said the UK government was still obliged under an international agreement to set up a public inquiry into the murder.

He said the UK government under Tony Blair had committed itself to such an inquiry.

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s director in Northern Ireland, said: “The Finucanes, and indeed the public, have been fobbed off with a ‘review of the paper work’ – which reneges on repeated commitments by the British government and falls short of the UK’s obligations under international law.”

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin president and Irish deputy, said: “The information provided by Desmond de Silva is a damning indictment of British state collusion in the murder of citizens. It reveals some of the extent to which this existed. It does not diminish the need for a public inquiry. On the contrary, it makes such an inquiry more necessary than ever.”

The SDLP MP Mark Durkan questioned the idea in the report that there was no overall, structured policy of collusion. He said: “Between special branch, FRU and secret services we had a culture of anything goes but nobody knows. And as far as Desmond de Silva is concerned now we still have to accept that nobody knows!”

…

Henry McDonald and Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, Wednesday 12 December 2012 21.17 GMT

Find this story at 12 December 2012

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

The Senate has moved to block a Pentagon plan to send hundreds of additional spies overseas, citing cost concerns and management failures that have hampered the Defense Department’s existing espionage efforts.

A military spending bill approved by the Senate last week contains language barring the Pentagon from using funds to expand its espionage ranks until it has provided more details on what the program will cost and how the extra spies would be used.

The measure offers a harsh critique of the Pentagon’s espionage record, saying that the Defense Department “needs to demonstrate that it can improve the management of clandestine [human intelligence] before undertaking any further expansion.”

The action is a setback for the Pentagon’s main spy service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has embarked on a five-year plan to assemble an espionage network overseas that is more closely modeled on the CIA and would rival that agency in size.

The plan is part of a broader effort to focus the DIA on broader threats — such as emerging al-Qaeda offshoots in Africa and Chinese military advances — after it spent the past decade concentrating on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The DIA has about 500 undercover operatives engaged in spying work overseas, but the plan calls for that total to climb to between 800 and 1,000 by 2018, officials said in an article published in The Washington Post on Dec. 2. The new operatives would be trained by the CIA and coordinate their assignments with CIA station chiefs overseas, but their main assignments would be determined by the Department of Defense.

Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of DIA, has touted the plan in a series of recent speeches, saying it represents “a major adjustment for national security.”

Pentagon officials stressed that DIA has not been given additional authorities or permission to expand its total payroll. Instead, officials said, the extra spy slots would come by cutting or converting other positions.

The Senate measure, which was included in the fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, signals deep skepticism on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon can execute the plan.

The provision blocks the DIA from going beyond the number of human intelligence officers the agency had in place last April. It requires the Pentagon to produce “an independent estimate of the costs” of the new clandestine service, as well as a blueprint for where and when the newly hired spies would be deployed.

…

By Greg Miller, Published: December 10

Find this story at 10 December 2012

© The Washington Post Company

After a contentious closed-door vote, the Senate intelligence committee approved a long-awaited report Thursday concluding that harsh interrogation measures used by the CIA did not produce significant intelligence breakthroughs, officials said.

The 6,000-page document, which was not released to the public, was adopted by Democrats over the objections of most of the committee’s Republicans. The outcome reflects the level of partisan friction that continues to surround the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other severe interrogation techniques four years after they were banned.

The report is the most detailed independent examination to date of the agency’s efforts to “break” dozens of detainees through physical and psychological duress, a period of CIA history that has become a source of renewed controversy because of torture scenes in a forthcoming Hollywood film, “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Officials familiar with the report said it makes a detailed case that subjecting prisoners to “enhanced” interrogation techniques did not help the CIA find Osama bin Laden and often were counterproductive in the broader campaign against al-Qaeda.

The committee chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), declined to discuss specific findings but released a written statement describing decisions to allow the CIA to build a network of secret prisons and employ harsh interrogation measures as “terrible mistakes.”

“I also believe this report will settle the debate once and for all over whether our nation should ever employ coercive interrogation techniques,” Feinstein said.

That conclusion has been disputed by high-ranking officials from the George W. Bush administration, including former vice president Richard B. Cheney and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden. Both of them argued that the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other measures provided critical clues that helped track down bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in May 2011.

Largely because of those political battle lines, Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee refused to participate in the panel’s three-year investigation of the CIA interrogation program, and most opposed Thursday’s decision.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the committee’s ranking Republican, said in a statement that the report “contains a number of significant errors and omissions about the history and utility of CIA’s detention program.” He also noted that the review was done “without interviewing any of the people involved.”

The 9 to 6 vote indicates that at least one Republican backed the report, although committee officials declined to provide a breakdown.

Other GOP lawmakers voiced support for the report’s conclusions. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, issued a statement saying that the committee’s work shows that “cruel” treatment of prisoners “is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence.”

It could be months, if not years, before the public gets even a partial glimpse of the report or its 20 findings and conclusions. Feinstein said the committee will turn the voluminous document over to the Obama administration and the CIA to provide a chance for them to comment.

When that is completed, the committee will need to vote again on whether to release even a portion of the report, a move likely to face opposition from the CIA, which has fought to keep details of the interrogation program classified.

…

By Greg Miller, Published: December 14

Find this story at 14 December 2012

© The Washington Post Company

Landmark European court of human rights judgment says CIA tortured wrongly detained German citizen

The European court of human rights has ruled German citizen Khaled el-Masri was tortured by CIA agents, the first time the court has described treatment meted out by the CIA as torture. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/AP

CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday.

In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations.

Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA “rendition team” at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan.

It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture.

“The grand chamber of the European court of human rights unanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process, and inhuman and degrading treatment,” said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

He described the judgment as “an authoritative condemnation of some of the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror”. It should be a wake-up call for the Obama administration and US courts, he told the Guardian. For them to continue to avoid serious scrutiny of CIA activities was “simply unacceptable”, he said.

Jamil Dakwar, of the American Civil Liberties Union, described the ruling as “a huge victory for justice and the rule of law”.

The use of CIA interrogation methods widely denounced as torture during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” also came under scrutiny in Congress on Thursday. The US Senate’s select committee on intelligence was expected to vote on whether to approve a mammoth review it has undertaken into the controversial practices that included waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity, beatings and sleep and sensory deprivation.

The report, that runs to almost 6,000 pages based on a three-year review of more than 6m pieces of information, is believed to conclude that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” adopted by the CIA during the Bush years did not produce any major breakthroughs in intelligence, contrary to previous claims. The committee, which is dominated by the Democrats, is likely to vote to approve the report, though opposition from the Republican members may prevent the report ever seeing the light of day.

The Strasbourg court said it found Masri’s account of what happened to him “to be established beyond reasonable doubt” and that Macedonia had been “responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the context of an extra-judicial ‘rendition'”.

In January 2004, Macedonian police took him to a hotel in Skopje, where he was kept locked in a room for 23 days and questioned in English, despite his limited proficiency in that language, about his alleged ties with terrorist organisations, the court said in its judgment. His requests to contact the German embassy were refused. At one point, when he said he intended to leave, he was threatened with being shot.

“Masri’s treatment at Skopje airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team – being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation – had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction,” the court ruled.

It added: “Its government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials. It had failed to submit any arguments explaining or justifying the degree of force used or the necessity of the invasive and potentially debasing measures. Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information. In the court’s view, such treatment had amounted to torture, in violation of Article 3 [of the European human rights convention].”

In Afghanistan, Masri was incarcerated for more than four months in a small, dirty, dark concrete cell in a brick factory near the capital, Kabul, where he was repeatedly interrogated and was beaten, kicked and threatened. His repeated requests to meet with a representative of the German government were ignored, said the court.

…

Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Thursday 13 December 2012 18.54 GMT

Find this story at 13 December 2012

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

Sudan says he’s an Israeli operative – but his handlers say he’s too easily distracted for that. Matthew Kalman reports on a spy thriller

Shortly before the mysterious bombing of a weapons factory in Khartoum in October, an Israeli operative code name PP0277 left a remote site near Sde Boker in Israel’s Negev desert.

Carrying a sophisticated tracking device concealed in a box on his leg, he made his way south across the Sinai desert, over the Red Sea, and into Sudan. On 1 December, however, his mission came to an abrupt halt. Having covered up to 350 miles a day, PP0277 had stopped moving at a village near the Sudanese town of Krinkh.

It was on Thursday that his fate finally became clear when the mayor of Krinkh, Hussein al-A’ali, announced that PP0277 had been captured – declaring him to be an Israeli spy “capable of taking photos and sending them back to Israel”.

It was then that Ohad Hatzofe, the Israeli who sent PP0277 on his fateful flight, did not know whether to laugh or cry. For PP0277 is not a top Mossad agent, but a young griffon vulture who, Mr Hatzofe insists, was simply making its semi-annual winter migration to Africa.

Far from sporting a history of directing spying missions inside enemy territory, Mr Hatzofe is an avian ecologist for Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority. He has tagged more than 1,000 migrating birds in the past 20 years, all as part of a major international project to track and preserve rare species among the billion-plus birds that fly north, then south, over Israel each year.

Like all such creatures, PP0277 wore tags clearly marking him in English as part of the academic research, asking anyone who found him to contact Mr Hatzofe. And as Mr Hatzofe told The Independent: “It’s not very secret, marking a supposed spy with the words ‘Tel Aviv University’ and my email address.”

Nor is their reconnaissance information confidential. The birds are fitted with tiny boxes containing GPS and GSM transmitters with a solar energy panel and three small antennae. The data from the tagged birds is uploaded to Movebank, an accessible international database linked to Google Earth.

Spying missions between the two countries are not unlikely. Sudan is thought by the West to be helping Iran ship arms through Egypt to Gaza to supply Hamas. For its part, Israel is believed to have launched air strikes on Sudanese targets in 2009, 2011 and earlier this year.

But even if the Israeli authorities were to conceive such an outlandish espionage mission, Mr Hatzofe said it would proved somewhat bird-brained as the feathered recruits would make terrible spies.

“If I wanted to send a spy to Sudan I’d send one less interested in dead camels and goats. That tends to distract them,” he said. “We have more operatives in Sudan right now and one piece of intelligence we’ve gathered is that there seems to be a concentration of slaughterhouses not far from Port Sudan.”

Nor can Israeli vultures boast an illustrious history when it comes to making it through the airspace of hostile nations undetected. Saudi Arabia detained one of PP0277’s fellow vultures last year. Despite similar tags labelling it as a specimen tracked in a similar fashion by the same university, it prompted fears of an airborne “Zionist plot” against the kingdom.

Mr Hatzofe cautioned against Mossad getting any genuine spying ideas from the accusations, however. “I’d condemn anyone who tried using wild animals for military or espionage purposes. These creatures are already becoming rare and that would only put them in greater danger,” he said.

Animals at war

Sudan’s Vulturegate may sound like a laugh, but the use of living creatures for military purposes is by no means far-fetched: for half a century, for example, the US Navy has had a marine mammals programme which trains dolphins and sea lions for wartime tasks.

Although a 1973 Mike Nichols movie called The Day of The Dolphin would have us believe that the animals are being trained for aggressive missions such as killing enemy frogmen and laying mines or even nuclear weapons, the US Navy insists they are being trained merely for defensive purposes such as mine-detection, sentry duty and the recovery of objects lost on the seabed. Yet the California-based programme has been surprisingly extensive and has involved the use of at least ten species of whales and dolphins – and also investigated, yes, the potential role of birds.

…

Matthew Kalman
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Michael McCarthy

Find this story at 8 December 2012

© independent.co.uk

Western officials believe Israel may have leaked information from IAEA investigation in bid to raise global pressure on Tehran

A satellite image of Iran’s military complex at Parchin. The IAEA is investigating Tehran’s past nuclear activities and current aspirations. Photograph: DigitalGlobe – Institute for Science and International Security

Israel is suspected of carrying out a series of leaks implicating Iran in nuclear weapons experiments in an attempt to raise international pressure on Tehran and halt its programme.

Western diplomats believe the leaks may have backfired, compromising a UN-sanctioned investigation into Iran’s past nuclear activities and current aspirations.

The latest leak, published by the Associated Press (AP), purported to be an Iranian diagram showing the physics of a nuclear blast, but scientists quickly pointed out an elementary mistake that cast doubt on its significance and authenticity. An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists declared: “This diagram does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax.”

The leaked diagram raised questions about an investigation being carried out by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors after it emerged that it formed part of a file of intelligence on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work held by the agency.

The IAEA’s publication of a summary of the file in November 2011 helped trigger a new round of punitive EU and US sanctions.

Western officials say they have reasons to suspect Israel of being behind the most recent leak and a series of previous disclosures from the IAEA investigation, pointing to Israel’s impatience at what it sees as international complacency over Iranian nuclear activity.

The leaks are part of an intensifying shadow war over Iran’s atomic programme being played out in Vienna, home to the IAEA’s headquarters.

The Israeli spy agency, the Mossad, is highly active in the Austrian capital, as is Iran and most of the world’s major intelligence agencies, leading to frequent comparisons with its earlier incarnation as a battleground for spies in the early years of the cold war.

The Israeli government did not reply to a request for comment and AP described the source of the latest leak only as “officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic programme”.

An “intelligence summary” provided to AP with the graph appeared to go out of its way to implicate two men in nuclear weapons testing who had been targeted for assassination two years ago. One of them, Majid Shahriari, was killed on his way to work in Tehran in November 2010 after a motorcyclist fixed a bomb to the door of his car. The other, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, was wounded in a near identical attack the same day.

A book published earlier this year by veteran Israeli and American writers on intelligence, called Spies Against Armageddon, said the attacks were carried out by an assassination unit known as Kidon, or Bayonet – part of the Mossad.

One western source said the “intelligence summary” supplied with the leaked diagram “reads like an attempt to justify the assassinations”.

According to one European diplomat, however, the principal impact of the leak would be to compromise the ongoing IAEA investigation into whether Iran has tried to develop a nuclear weapon at any point. “This is just one small snapshot of what the IAEA is working on, and part of a much broader collection of data from multiple sources,” the diplomat said.

“The particular document turns out to have a huge error but the IAEA was aware of it and saw it in the context of everything it has. It paints a convincing case.”

Sources who have seen the documents said the graph was based on a spreadsheet of data in the IAEA’s possession which appears to analyse the energy released by a nuclear blast. The mistake was made when that data was transposed on to a graph, on which the wrong units were used on one of the axes.

There is widespread belief among western governments, Russia, China and most independent experts that evidence is substantial for an Iranian nuclear weapons programme until 2003. There is far less consensus on what activities, if any, have been carried out since. The IAEA inquiry has so far not found a “smoking gun”.

Analysts say that the recent leaks may have shown the IAEA’s hand, revealing what it knows and does not know, and therefore undermined the position of its inspectors in tense and so far fruitless talks with Iranian officials about the country’s past nuclear activities.

Iran rejects the evidence against it as forged and has not granted access to its nuclear scientists or to a site known as Parchin where IAEA inspectors believe the high-explosive components for a nuclear warhead may have been tested.

The IAEA says it has evidence that the site is being sanitised to remove any incriminating traces of past experiments.

David Albright, a nuclear expert at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said he had no knowledge of who was behind the leak but added: “Whoever did this has undermined the IAEA’s credibility and made it harder for it to do its work.”

…

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
The Guardian, Monday 10 December 2012 20.47 GMT

Find this story at 10 December 2012

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