Docudharma Times Saturday Dec.22

This is an Open Thread: Our Door Is Always Open

9/11 Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes: FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics: Romney backpedals on statements – again: Ruthless, shadowy – and a U.S. ally: U.S. convoys struggle to adjust to policy change

USA

9/11 Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes

WASHINGTON – A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. — The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

Romney backpedals on statements – again

Explains Martin Luther King, Jr. comment, NRA endorsement statement

BOSTON – Mitt Romney, who earlier this year had to backpedal on his hunting exploits, is explaining himself again after claiming an endorsement he did not receive and saying he witnessed his father in civil rights marches he could not have seen.

“It’s a figure of speech,” Romney said Thursday after media inquiries into the Republican presidential contender’s statement during his recent religion speech that he watched his father, the late Gov. George Romney of Michigan, march with Martin Luther King Jr.

Romney, who was in high school at the time, later said he only heard of his father marching, and some historians have questioned whether his father, in fact, did march with King. The Romney campaign provided books and news articles it said supported his statement.

Middle East

Ruthless, shadowy – and a U.S. ally

A former warrior for Saddam Hussein’s army and the insurgency now helps lead the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

BAGHDAD — “Abu Abed, you’re a hero,” the retired Shiite teacher shouted from the home she had fled last winter, when the bodies of Shiites were being dumped daily in the streets of her Amiriya neighborhood.

The fighter, wearing green camouflage and dark wraparound sunglasses, kept walking, his hand swinging a black MP-5 submachine gun.

No more than 5 feet 6, with a roll of baby fat, this Sunni Muslim gunman is an unlikely savior of Amiriya: a former intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein’s army, a suspected onetime insurgent, a man who has photos of his brothers’ mutilated corpses loaded in his cellphone.

To many Iraqis, Abu Abed is a Sunni warlord whose followers have spilled the blood of Shiite Muslim civilians and U.S. troops. But to the people in Amiriya, he is the man who has, with ruthless efficiency, restored order to a neighborhood where the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq held sway.

U.S. convoys struggle to adjust to policy change

CAMP TAJI, Iraq – In the first month that they were in Iraq, someone threatened, shot at or tried to blow up the soldiers of the Kentucky National Guard’s B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery 12 times. Last month, there were only three such incidents.

But confirmation that the roads have become safer came a few weeks ago when a flier went up in the 2-138’s office at this base 20 miles north of Baghdad.

“Effective immediately,” it read, “assume all civilian vehicles are friendly.”

The order admonished soldiers throughout Iraq to yield to civilian drivers, allow vehicles to pass and avoid firing their weapons as they escorted convoys of concrete barriers, generators, water and food to U.S. military outposts.

Europe

Belgium frees 14 terror plot suspects

BRUSSELS, Belgium – Belgian authorities on Saturday released 14 suspects detained over an alleged plot to free an al-Qaida prisoner because of lack of evidence, the Federal Prosecutor’s office said.

A court decided there was insufficient evidence to hold the suspects for more than 24 hours, said Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the office. She said tightened police anti-terrorism measures triggered by the arrests Friday would remain in place over the holidays.

“We think there is still a threat,” Pellens said in a telephone interview.

However, she acknowledged that searches of the suspects’ homes had found no explosives, weapons or other evidence to persuade the court to keep them in jail. Earlier reports had indicated police had seized arms and explosives in a series of overnight raids that led to the detentions of the 14.

Secretive oil firm denies Putin has any stake in its ownership

· Company rejects claims it benefits from Kremlin ties

· Group admits co-founder and president are friends

Luke Harding in Tashkent

Saturday December 22, 2007

The Guardian

The secretive oil company Gunvor yesterday broke its silence over its alleged links with Vladimir Putin, denying that the Russian president was the company’s “beneficiary” owner but admitting that he was a friend of its founder.

In a statement, Gunvor’s chief executive officer, Torbjorn Tornqvist, said it was “plain wrong” to suggest the company had benefited from its alleged close connections with the Kremlin.

The company said Putin “was not a beneficiary” of its activities. “None of the shares of this organisation are held by President Putin or anyone allied by him,” Tornqvist wrote in a letter published in today’s Guardian.

Latin America

Chavez: Receiving hostages ‘delicate’

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he has plans in place to receive hostages released by Colombian rebels, but predicted that groups within and close to Colombia’s government will try to interfere.

Chavez, a fiery critic of the White House who was in Cuba attending a regional oil summit, suggested Friday that security was of the utmost importance in receiving the three hostages the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has pledged to free.

“As soon as I arrive back in Caracas, I have some plans worked out to receive them,” Chavez told reporters. “It will be a delicate operation.”

He also said some groups in Colombia – both close to and within Colombia’s U.S.-allied government – “are going to try to keep the liberation from being successful, but we will achieve it.”

Venezuelan in cash seizure seen at Argentine palace

BUENOS AIRES — A Venezuelan businessman caught with a cash-stuffed suitcase reportedly was seen two days later in Argentina’s presidential palace, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Argentine and Venezuelan officials have denounced U.S. court allegations that Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson was bringing Venezuelan contributions to presidential candidate Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who won Argentina’s Oct. 28 election.

Officials in both countries say the U.S. is using its courts to undermine them by falsely claiming that they are linked to the $800,000 seized Aug. 4 from Antonini upon his arrival in Argentina on a charter with state energy company officials from both countries.

But speaking on independent Radio Del Plata, Argentine prosecutor Luz Rivas Diez said a witness named Victoria Beresiuk testified that she saw Antonini in the palace Aug. 6 during a ceremony celebrating an energy agreement with Venezuela. Argentina’s president at the time was Fernandez’s husband, Nestor Kirchner.

Africa

Egypt policeman dies in shootout with people traffickers

RAFAH, Egypt (AFP) – An Egyptian policeman was killed overnight in a shootout with Bedouin tribesmen smuggling African immigrants into Israel, security services said on Saturday.

Mohammed Abdel Mohsen al-Guindi, 21, was killed when gunfire broke out after he ordered the group not to cross the border. The illegal immigrants fled across the border, while the Bedouins escaped.

Charity workers’ trial for kidnap overshadowed by ‘secret deal’

Six French aid workers went on trial in Chad yesterday charged with attempting to kidnap 103 African children on a humanitarian mission which ended in fiasco.

The members of the French charity Zoe’s Ark who appeared in court in N’Djamena along with their alleged accomplices, three Chadians and a Sudanese man, face a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if found guilty.

They were arrested in October as they prepared to fly out of eastern Chad with children whom they depicted as orphans from Darfur, the war-torn region of neighbouring Sudan. Investigators say that the children are, in fact, Chadian and most have at least one parent.

Asia

French president makes 1st trip to Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan – Making the first-ever trip to Afghanistan by a French president, Nicolas Sarkozy met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to discuss political and military progress in the war-torn country.

Sarkozy also planned to meet with some of the 1,300 French troops who are mostly stationed in the Kabul region as part of NATO’s military force here. The French president’s office said the surprise visit would last a day. Other French officials, including the defense minister, also came.

Sarkozy told Karzai that France has a long-term political and military interest in Afghanistan, Karzai’s office said in a statement – an apparent signal that French troops would not pull out of the country anytime soon.

Japan abandons plans to kill humpback whales

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Saturday December 22, 2007

The Guardian

Japan agreed yesterday to avoid slaughtering humpback whales for up to two years, amid calls from Australia to spare the endangered species during its current research hunt in the Antarctic.

Nobutaka Machimura, Japan’s chief government spokesman, said the fleet, on its way to the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, would avoid killing the protected species. “Japan has decided not to catch humpback whales for one year or two, but there will be no change in our stance on research whaling,” he said. “Japan’s relations with Australia could improve, but it depends on how it will see our decision.”