As revealed by a State Department diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last week, US forces committed a heinous war crime during a house raid in Iraq in 2006, wherein one man, four women, two children, and three infants were summarily executed.
The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, addressed to then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. American troops approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, a farmer living in central Iraq, to conduct a house raid in search of insurgents in March of 2006.
“It would appear that when the MNF [Multinational Forces] approached the house,” Alston wrote, “shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued” before the “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.
Alston’s letter reveals that a US airstrike was launched on the house presumably to destroy the evidence, but that “autopsies carried out at the Tikrit Hospital’s morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.”
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation … History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.
Oh well! Consistency is a silly thing. Hope and Change and stuff!
The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States recruited over 1,500 men from Mazar-e-Sharif for fighting against the Qaddafi forces in Libya.
Sources told The Nation: “Most of the men have been recruited from Afghanistan. They are Uzbeks, Persians and Hazaras. According to the footage, these men attired in Uzbek-style of shalwar and Hazara-Uzbek Kurta were found fighting in Libyan cities.”
Libya’s transitional National Council (TNC) suffered a setback in its pursuit of legitimacy yesterday when the African Union (AU) refused to recognise it as being the country’s legitimate government.
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The AU has instead called for an “all-inclusive transitional government” to be set up in Libya, a government that would also involve some of the officials from Gaddafi’s side. But the proposal that was made by the AU officials has been rejected by the members of the TNC.
Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa’s Deputy President, suggested that Nato should be investigated by the International Criminal Court for its role in the conflict.
President Zuma was heavily criticised by his regional neighbours for voting in favour of UN Resolution 1973 which authorised Nato to protect civilian lives by policing a no-fly zone in Libya following the uprising in February.
Appointed the AU’s chief mediator, he visited Col Gaddafi twice during the crisis and later complained that the UN resolution was being abused “for regime change, political assassinations and foreign military occupation”.
On Tuesday, he said that Nato’s use of force had undermined Africa’s peace efforts, and had the African Union been given time to pursue its “road map” for Libya, the level of bloodshed might have been avoided.
“Those who have a lot of capacity, even the capacity to bombard the countries, really undermined the AU’s initiatives and effort to deal with the matter in Libya,” he said.
[T]he mounting number of deaths of men from sub-Saharan Africa at the hands of the rebels – lynchings in many cases – raises disturbing questions about the opposition administration, the Transitional National Council (TNC) taking over as Libya’s government, and about Western backing for it.
The atrocities have apparently not been confined to Tripoli: Amnesty International has reported similar violence in the coastal town of Zawiyah, much of it against men from sub-Saharan Africa who, it has been claimed, were migrant workers.
Human rights groups have expressed concerns about beatings and detentions of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
”I really fear vigilante justice and retribution and attacks by civilians against other civilians,” said Richard Sollom, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, who completed a fact-finding mission in Misrata in June.
Dr Sollom said his Boston group knew of about 500 Darfuris ”who are desperately trying to get out of Libya. They have no money, they are basically homeless because they are from Darfur, and they very much fear for their lives because of the colour of their skin.”
A middle-aged African waited for a moment before loudly proclaiming his innocence to no one in particular. “I am a worker, not a fighter. They took me from my house and [raped] my wife,” he said, gesturing with his hands. Before he could say much more, a pair of guards told him to shut up and hustled him through the steel doors of a cell block, which quickly slammed behind them.
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I moved on to other prisoners who had also been trotted out for photographs and questions. The whole scene had an unsettling feel, as if these men had already been tried and convicted — and all that was left were their executions. In a strange twist, I learned that internal security officers of the Kadafi regime formerly used the facility to detain, torture and kill political dissidents.
A representative from Human Rights Watch looked on silently, taking notes but declining to comment on the proceedings.
All I know is that the Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits prisoners of war from being paraded and questioned before cameras of any kind. But that’s exactly what happened today. The whole incident just gave me a really bad vibe, and thank God it finally ended.
Times reporter David Zucchino, our interpreter and I skipped the bus ride back and instead got a lift from a passing motorist. In the car, our interpreter, a Libyan national, asked Zucchino: “So what do you think? Should we just go ahead and kill them?”
Just when I thought this war couldn’t get any weirder, it did.
Like the sweeping sectarian violence that erupted after we “liberated” (ha-ha) Iraq, we are now witnessing the beginning of what will probably be years of tribal feuds, senseless killings and bloodbaths — you know, the kinds of atrocities that occur in destabilized regions full of weapons and ethnic groups.
It’s difficult to imagine how the National Transitional Council will bring “democracy” to Libya, and the fairytale that NATO’s bombs are being used to protect civilians (like the black migrant workers being murdered by NATO-backed rebels!) is a complete farce.
From the U.N. Human Rights Council’s periodic review of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (January 4, 2011):
The United States of America supported the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’s increased engagement with the international community. It called on the country to comply with its human rights treaty obligations. It expressed concern about reports of the torture of prisoners and about the status of freedom of expression and association, including in its legislation, which often resulted in the arrest of people for political reasons. The United States made recommendations.
A few things …
1. Is the United States schizophrenic? It certainly seems like it, when you consider our relationship with Gaddafi — and Libya’s cooperation with the international community. The Library of Congress notes that
[d]uring the period 1999–2003, Qadhafi, ever the pragmatist, eventually fulfilled all the terms of the UN Security Council resolutions required to lift the sanctions against Libya. He accepted responsibility for the actions of his officials and agreed to provide financial compensation to the families of the victims of Pan Am 103. As a result, the UN sanctions were lifted on September 12, 2003. In December 2003, Qadhafi publicly announced that Libya was ridding itself of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile development programs, and fully cooperated with the United States, the United Kingdom, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons … Between February and September 2004, the United States lifted all trade, commercial, and travel sanctions against Libya.
It seems strange, then, that despite Libya’s “increased engagement with the international community” (according to the United States, and just two months before the NATO “intervention”), and despite the fact that Gaddafi was considered a “primary partner in combating the flow of foreign fighters,” the United States and NATO decided that a bombing campaign was preferable to dialog; that aiding al Qaeda supporters made more sense than working with a counterterrorism ally to end all hostilities in Libya. (more…)
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.
In 2010, Libya ranked 53rd on the Human Development Index (out of 170 U.N. member states), making it a “high human development” country. The U.N. Development Programme said Libya had “high human development” in every major index category, including gender inequality, empowerment, perceptions of individual well-being and happiness, civic and community well-being, enabling environment: economy and infrastructure, access to information and communication technology, and education.
Libya was also a prominent U.S. counterterrorism ally. In a leaked diplomatic cable from 2009, Libya was described as “a critical ally in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Our strategic partnership … has been highly productive and beneficial to both nations.”
