Palestinians sources say detainee tortured to death

Protest against the death of a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli jail, in Gaza February 24, 2013 Photo: Photo: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

 Jerusalem Post
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
02/24/2013 22:14

Family of Arafat Jaradat claim traces of blood found on the body; Israeli Health Ministry says results of autopsy inconclusive.

Palestinian Authority Minister for Prisoners Affairs, Issa Qaraqi, claimed Sunday that Arafat Jaradat, the Palestinian prisoner who died in Meggido Prison on Saturday, had been subjected to severe torture.

Qaraqi told reporters in Ramallah that an autopsy performed earlier on Jaradat's body "proved that he had been severely tortured" while in detention.

Qaraqi claimed that the autopsy did not provide any evidence that Jaradat had died of a heart attack, as announced by the Israeli authorities.

Qaraqi said that the Israeli version regarding Jaradat's death was a "lie" and held Israel fully responsible for "this cruel crime."

Israel, he added, "must be held fully accountable for this war crime." Qaraqi reiterated his call for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to investigate Jaradat's death.

Qaraqi called on the PA leadership to take a quick decision "to join the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention" in response to the death of the Palestinian inmate. He said that such a move would allow the Palestinians to seek protection of the international community for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Kamil Sabbagh, a lawyer for the PA Ministry for Prisoners Affairs, said he last saw Jaradat in court on February 21. "He was complaining of severe pain in the back and appeared exhausted," Sabbagh said. He claimed that Jaradat told him that he had been beaten during interrogation.

The Health Ministry on Sunday said the autopsy showed "no signs of external trauma."

In a statement, the ministry echoed the Palestinian account of the post mortum, saying that "two ribs were broken," but added that the broken bones may indicate resuscitation attempts.

"No signs of external trauma were found apart from those pertaining to resuscitation [attempts] and a small graze on the right side of his chest," the Health Ministry stated.

On Sunday, Jaradat's body was handed over to his family in the village of Sair, near Hebron, where he is expected to be buried on Monday.

Jaradat's death triggered fresh protests in the West Bank, with hundreds of Palestinians taking to the streets and clashing with IDF soldiers.

Clashes were reported in Hebron, Ramallah and Bethlehem, Palestinian sources said. At least 36 Palestinians were injured during confrontations with IDF soldiers, the sources added.

The worst clashes occurred near Ofer Prison on the outskirts of Ramallah, where 26 Palestinians were reportedly injured, two of them from live ammunition. Among the wounded was the 15-year-old son of Ziad Hab al-Reeh, commander of the PA's Preventive Security Force in the West Bank.

Ahmed Qurei, a former PA prime minister, warned that the violence could erupt into a third intifada. He accused Israel of "assassinating" Jaradat and endangering the lives of other Palestinian prisoners, especially those who have been on hunger strike for several weeks.

Qurei also warned that Israel was preparing to perpetrate a "big crime" against the Aqsa Mosque and Muslim worshipers in Jerusalem.

Jpost.com staff contributed to this report.

Lawyer: Australian-Israeli Denied Allegations

Ben Zygier

By IAN DEITCH Associated Press

JERUSALEM February 14, 2013 (AP)

An Australian-Israeli citizen who mysteriously died in prison after an apparent career in Israel's spy agency had denied the allegations against him and was considering a plea bargain just before he died, his lawyer said Thursday.

The attorney, Avigdor Feldman, told Israeli Channel 10 that he saw Ben Zygier a day before he allegedly committed suicide. Zygier was "rational," Feldman said, adding that the two discussed legal options, including a plea bargain.

Feldman said the allegations against Zygier were "serious" but would not elaborate further.
The lawyer's remarks were the latest in the saga of a man known as Prisoner X. On Wednesday, Israel acknowledged for the first time that it held a dual Israeli citizen under a false name for security reasons and that he died in prison in 2010.

The story broke earlier this week when Australian ABC reported that the prisoner, who it referred to as Ben Zygier, migrated from Australia to Israel in 2000 and worked for the Mossad spy agency. It reported that Zygier's incarceration was top secret, but did not say why he had been arrested. It said he was known by at least three different names and had visited countries hostile to Israel.

The report forced the Australian government to admit that it had known about the case all along but kept it under wraps. It also unraveled the media blackout that the Israeli government had imposed using military censorship laws.

Feldman said he met with Zygier in prison. "I met a balanced person ... He was rationally considering legal options."

"I can say that he denied the charges ... The crimes he was suspected of were serious," Feldman said but would not elaborate further. "He didn't admit to anything."

Israel, which initially refused to acknowledge the Australian report, on Wednesday night lifted a series of gag orders dating to March 2010, and said an Israeli man who held dual citizenship in an undisclosed country died in custody in 2010.

Identifying the man only as the Hebrew equivalent of John Doe, the court order said the prisoner's family was notified immediately after he was detained. It said he was jailed under a court order and that the prisoner's full rights were retained. It named three Israeli lawyers to represent him. Channel 10 did not ask Feldman, who was not among the three named attorneys, who hired him. Feldman could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press.

The court order said that after the prisoner was found dead in his cell, a judge ordered an investigation, which concluded that he committed suicide. A judge has now asked the state to check for possible negligence.

There were no details how the prisoner, under 24-hour surveillance in a maximum security facility, had committed suicide.

Channel 10 also said that in 2009, Australian intelligence officers interrogated Zygier about trips to Iran, Lebanon and Syria. The report alleged that the case was leaked to an Australian reporter who phoned Zygier and questioned him about his alleged Mossad links. Zygier denied the links, Channel 10 said, adding that sometime after that interview, Zygier was jailed in Israel and died six months later.

From Mazin Qumsiyeh's Human Rights Newsletter: Six actions

Human Rights Newsletter
Six actions

Action 1: Call for participation in Direct Action Saturday and beyond in
Palestine: We are the sons and daughters of Canaanites have established
Canaan Village on endangered Canaanitic Palestinian land.  We declare that
it is our natural right to develop, reclaim, improve, use, and live on all
our lands free and without threats from occupiers/colonizers.  Beginning
Saturday 9 February, we will have several days of direct work to help
farmers in the South West Bank to reclaim and improve agricultural lands.
 If interested to help, meet us at Bab Zqaq in Bethlehem at 7 AM Saturday
when we will move to the location/s of the work or email us later to find
out what is going on and how you can help where on site or off site. We
call on people of conscience and media to join us as we work our lands and
thus defend it against attempts by foreign colonizers to usurp it.
Committee against the wall and settlements, Southwest West Bank.

Action 2: Palestinians call for a boycott of Israeli diamonds
http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/75295

Action 3: Ask the UEFA to cancel planned finals in Apartheid Israel
http://redcardapartheid.weebly.com/

Action 4: Sign petition to protect Cremisan area in Bethlehem District from
being taken over by Israeli settlers (note also press conference and prayer
vigil this Friday)
http://www.change.org/petitions/save-the-valley-in-cremisan-support-bridges-not-walls

Action 5: Why Palestine should take Israel to The Hague by George Bisharat,
a professor at the University of California s Hastings College of the Law
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/why-palestine-should-take-israel-to-the-ha
gue/article4370897.ece

Action 6: Palestinian Academic and cultural boycott of Israel grow.  Vist
PACBI news letter
http://www.pacbi.org/newsletter/January2013.php

PS related to Action 5: In the last email I shared reports from UN and
human rights organizations about Israeli brutality and war crimes.  I
alluded to the Turkish government report on Israeli crimes against the
freedom flotilla.  Here is that full report of the Turkish National
Commission of Inquiry
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/data/Turkish%20Report%20Final%20-%20UN%20Copy.pdf

Finally, sometimes people say I use strong language.  These are usually
people who have not been here to see what we see.  Others who have been
here will say we are far too nice in our language and that we need much
stronger response to the atrocities.  The following videos are of children
watching their home being demolished by occupiers /colonizers in Beit
Hanina, East Jerusalem area happened two days ago.  It is one of thousands
of similar stories.  The home is demolished by occupiers intent on changing
a country from multireligious and multicultural to a  Jewish state .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_U83yMFVFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxCX9j230x8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-FySzDyOTI

Stay human
Sincerely
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

I see Mazin is using the Canaanite identification for Palestinians. When I received the Canaan Peace Plan name as part of the Holy Land peace plan vision I was sure that Palestinians would find the name confusing to any Palestinian state plans. But it wasn't so. "Canaan" is found in Palestinian expressions of national heritage and even in businesses and products. Mazin' book Sharing the Land of Canaan is typical. So a Canaan Peace Plan is not so far off the mark especially since it is the only authentic name for the Holy Land that wasn't placed there by either Rome or one tribe out of all the Canaanite federation city-states and inland tribal nations.

African elephants prefer Serengeti National Park

 BBC News
6 February 2013 Last updated at 03:54
 By Michelle Warwicker BBC Nature

Elephants get stressed near humans

Wild African elephants prefer to live in safer, protected areas and become stressed when they leave them.

Scientists have found African elephants living outside Serengeti National Park are more stressed than those within the protected area.

More elephants also choose to live inside the park, suggesting they "know" which areas are safer to live in, and actively avoid humans.

Details are published in the African Journal of Ecology.

Serengeti National Park helps protect animals from threats such as illegal hunting and habitat disturbance.

With no fences around protected areas in the Serengeti, animals and people may come and go, and elephants can enter into areas where they are at greater risk.

The study aimed to determine African elephants' (Loxodonta africana) welfare inside Serengeti National Park and in the partially-protected adjoining areas of Grumeti Game Reserve and Ikoma Open Area, where human disturbance is greater.

By testing elephant dung, the research team found animals outside the national park had significantly higher levels of the stress hormone, gluccorticoid.

Also, more elephants lived inside the park, while no single males were seen outside, suggesting the elephants preferred residing in potentially safer areas.

"The reason is most probably that elephants try to avoid human-elephant interactions," said research team member Dr Eivin Roskaft from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
Elephants never forget?

The elephants may have learned to associate humans and vehicles with the hunting activity that occurs outside Serengeti National Park.

"Elephants probably remember where they are, and that bad experiences stress them," Dr Roskaft told BBC Nature.

"I think elephants know where they are safe or not. However, sometimes they also are tempted by nice food outside the park which attracts them to such areas."

The study is the latest research to show that animals avoid areas with human disturbances. A previous study, for example, showed African elephants became stressed even before raiding farmers' fields for crops.

The research team hope their latest study demonstrates how protected areas such as Serengeti National Park can improve elephants' welfare.

Law enforcement within the park aims to reduce illegal meat and ivory poaching. Despite this, hunters still frequent the edges of the park and surrounding areas.

"The biggest threat to African elephants and other wildlife is the human population increase outside all such parks," said Dr Roskaft.

"Humans need food, and wildlife is cheap and easy. Therefore the pressure on such animals increases."

According to Dr Roskaft, elephant poaching is once more increasing.

"The elephant population in Africa is presently declining at an alarming rate," he said.

"The world must find interest in it, if not there will be very few or no elephants in Africa in about five to six years."

California was once home for millions of years to elephants which were wiped out by a combination of human beings and global warming. We had the biggest elephants on earth here, the imperial mammoths of the Columbian type. And we still have millions of acres of natural elephant food: California oak trees which I think are suffering sudden oak disease and probably other diseases because their natural cycles as elephant food have been disrupted for the last 12,000 years. Why don't we start some serious African elephant reserves here in California? And even contemplate our own Pleistocene Park with mammoths resurrected with dna and African surrogate mothers..

CIA operating drone base in Saudi Arabia, US media reveal

Drones reportedly carry out strikes without Yemeni government permission

BBC News
 6 February 2013 Last updated at 06:18 ET

The US Central Intelligence Agency has been operating a secret airbase for unmanned drones in Saudi Arabia for the past two years.

The facility was established to hunt for members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen.

A drone flown from there was used in September 2011 to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who was alleged to be AQAP's external operations chief.

US media have known of its existence since then, but have not reported it.

Senior government officials had said they were concerned that disclosure would undermine operations against AQAP, as well as potentially damage counter-terrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.

The US military pulled out virtually all of its troops from Saudi Arabia in 2003, having stationed between 5,000 and 10,000 troops in the Gulf kingdom after the 1991 Gulf war. Only personnel from the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) officially remain.
'High-value targets'

The location of the secret drone base was not revealed in the US reports and the Saudi government has not yet commented.

However, construction was ordered after a December 2009 cruise missile strike in Yemen, according to the New York Times.

It was the first strike ordered by the Obama administration, and ended in disaster, with dozens of civilians, including women and children, killed.

US officials told the newspaper that the first time the CIA used the secret facility was to kill Awlaki.

Since then, the CIA has been "given the mission of hunting and killing 'high-value targets' in Yemen" - the leaders of AQAP who government lawyers had determined posed a direct threat to the US - the officials added.

Three other Americans, including Awlaki's 16-year-old son, have also been killed in US strikes in Yemen, which can reportedly be carried out without the permission of the country's government.

The Washington Post reported that President Barak Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, played a key role in negotiations with the government in Riyadh over building the drone base.

Saudi Arabia is home to some of Islam's holiest sites and the deployment of US forces there was seen as a historic betrayal by many Islamists, notably the late leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden.

It was one of the main reasons given by the Saudi-born militant to justify violence against the US and its allies.

Leaked memo

The revelation of the drone base came shortly after the leaking of a US justice department memo detailing the Obama administration's case for killing Americans abroad who are accused of being a "senior, operational leader" of al-Qaeda or its allies.

Lethal force is lawful if they are deemed to pose an "imminent threat" and their capture is not feasible, the memo says. The threat does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack, since such actions are being "continually" planned by al-Qaeda, it adds.

NBC News said it was given to members of the US Senate intelligence and judiciary committees as a summary of a classified memo on the targeted killings of US citizens prepared by the justice department.

The latter memo was written before the drone strike that killed Awlaki.

Under President Obama, the US has expanded its use of drones to kill hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. It says it is acting in self-defence in accordance with international law.

Critics argue the drone strikes amount to execution without trial and cause many civilian casualties.

Senators are expected to ask Mr Brennan about drone strikes, the memo and the killing of Awlaki on Thursday when he faces a confirmation hearing on his nomination to become the new CIA director.