Rupiah Banda’s Lawyer Links Sata’s Threats to Bush Letter
Posted by: George Mwenya Posted date: July 09, 2012 In: Politics | comment : 0
Robert Amsterdam, an international lawyer acting on behalf of former President Rupiah Banda and Henry Banda, has issued a statement today arguing that President Michael Sata’s decision to threaten the former president for having written a letter apologizing to George W. Bush reveals the personal and political motivations behind the government’s alleged “campaign of defamation” against political opponents.
“It is now transparently clear that it is President Sata himself who is personally guiding the crackdown against the political opposition, along with key officials such as Wynter Kabimba and Mutembo Nchito,” said Mr. Amsterdam, who represents former President Banda and his son Henry Banda.
”For months this government has carried out a trial by headline of my clients and many other political opponents devoid of any real legal merit, and now that everyone can see the highly personal and arbitrary way this government conducts itself, it is time for us to make the most basic request: that the Sata government stop abusing the law.”
On July 4, President Sata held a press conference with George W. Bush during which he described the United States as a “colonialist” country who had come back to repay what they had stolen from Africa. Government representatives insist that Sata’s comments were meant as a lighthearted joke, but others have taken it very seriously, including the former President Rupiah Banda, who authored a letter of apology to President Bush.
According to Amsterdam, the legal team is appealing to several foreign governments to raise awareness of the Sata government’s instrumentalization of the legal system to persecute political opponents, and to set forth all the facts that prove the innocence of Rupiah Banda, Henry Banda, and other victims before the campaign of defamation spread in state propaganda outlets.
Mr. Amsterdam has made several critical statements against the current leadership in Zambia in recent months. He has particularly focused on the relationship between Fred M’membe, the editor of the Post Newspaper, and Michael Sata, both in interviews and letters. Mr. Amsterdam was also one of the signatories of an open letter to the international donor community signed by the majority of opposition leaders, which criticized the Patriotic Front government’s placement of Sata’s family members throughout the Ministry of Finance. As a result of that letter, President Sata threatened to file a lawsuit against Mr. Amsterdam.
Labels: GW BUSH, MICHAEL SATA, RUPIAH BANDA
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Rupiah hunts for Sata, Bush footage
By Ernest Chanda
Mon 09 July 2012, 13:25 CAT
RUPIAH Banda yesterday assigned people to secure a video footage of last week's meeting between President Michael Sata and US former president George Bush from ZNBC and Muvi TV, sources have revealed.
But special assistant to the President for Press and Public Relations George Chellah says his office is ready to supply as many copies of the video as needed to Banda's office.
During a meeting between the two leaders at State House on Wednesday, President Sata told Bush that his visit to Zambia was payback time for colonialists.
But Banda later apologised to Bush over President Sata's statement, a move that put him in trouble with State House.
Well-placed sources told The Post that following the warning he got from State House, the former president went on a hunt for the video footage whose intended use is not known.
"He instructed his former press aid Dickson Jere and former chief analyst for press and public relations Kennedy Limwanya to look for this video footage. They have been to ZNBC, Muvi TV and all television stations to look for this footage. Whether they have succeeded in finding this footage or not, we don't know. But the two have been going round and we don't know what the former president wants to do with this footage," said the sources.
And when contacted for comment, Jere's mobile phone constantly went unanswered while that of Limwanya was off by press time.
Further effort to contact Banda's administrative secretary Mikatazo Wakumelo failed as his mobile phone was also off.
And Chellah questioned the amount of excitement the meeting between President Sata and Bush had generated in Banda's office.
"We are ready to give Mr Rupiah Banda as many copies of the footage as he needs. The incident in question is a non issue as far as we are concerned; and it is surprising how much excitement it has generated in the former president's office," said Chellah.
"If people are bold, we can help them with the footage but as far as we are concerned they are wasting their time. Let them find more appropriate things to do with their free time; we know they are in retirement."
Labels: GEORGE CHELLAH, GW BUSH, MICHAEL SATA, RUPIAH BANDA
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Rupiah annoys Sata over Bush
By Ernest Chanda and Afeti Yulu
Sat 07 July 2012, 13:25 CAT
PRESIDENT Michael Sata has told Rupiah Banda to prepare to answer for his misdeeds instead of seeking relevance from the international community.
Former president Banda has apologised to former US president George W. Bush over President Sata's remark to the latter when they met on Wednesday, that his visit to Zambia was payback for what colonialists got from Africa. Banda described the sentiments said during a light moment at State House as incorrect and undiplomatic.
But in a statement issued yesterday by his special assistant for Press and Public Relations George Chellah, President Sata stated that Banda was not the right person to play cheap politics.
"Let Mr Banda prepare to answer for his own misdeeds. Trying to turn a light-hearted exchange between former president Bush and myself, which we normally do, will not help him to sort out his numerous problems," President Sata stated.
"Mr Banda spent his presidency doing wrong things for himself and his children. I therefore, understand his desperation and attempts to seek relevance, though in wrong places this time around. I would encourage my dear brother to come to terms with what has happened and subsequently behave as a mature adult, and leave the running of government to the duly elected officers."
He warned Banda not to take his luck too far because he had offended Zambians in many ways when he was Republican president.
President Sata reminded Banda that it was him who told off the donors when he was in office.
"Today, Mr Banda can pretend to be a friend of the international community because he wants their support to defend the wrong things that he did during his tenure. But we have not forgotten that it is during his administration that he told donors to 'pack and go' when they questioned the corruption in his government," he stated.
"Notwithstanding the many wrongs that Mr Banda committed against our people and us, we have restrained ourselves and tried to accord him full respect. Obviously, Mr Banda is mistaking this for a weakness. We warn him not to push his luck too far. In fact, he is the least person that should cross paths with this administration."
President Sata stated that Banda had turned the head of state's light-hearted conversation with Bush into an occasion for cheap political scoring.
According to a letter sent to Bush and released to the media by his office yesterday, Banda claimed that President Sata's statement did not represent the true feeling of Zambians.
Banda described the moment President Sata had with Bush as an embarrassing experience.
"These statements, which were not only factually incorrect and undiplomatic, do not represent the true feelings of the Zambian people, who strongly recognise the value of positive relations with the United States of America. It is deeply regrettable that these statements were made on the same day as the celebration of your Independence Day, marking the universally-shared hope of self-determination and freedom. As our elected head of state, the President is entitled to formulate a foreign policy of his choosing," stated Banda.
"However, disagreement need not manifest itself in disrespect, and the form and manner in which these statements were made is not representative of our culture. No matter what political views different parties may hold, the people of Zambia are peace-loving, welcoming, and focused positively on the future, not the past. We hope that this unpleasant and embarrassing experience will not dissuade you or other former heads of state from collaborating with us on development projects in the future. Hope, not resentment; hard work, not victimhood; and progress, not retrocession; are the hallmarks of the new Zambia that our people dream of building, and we hope that people of all nations will work with us in pursuing a better future for our people."
And Mbita Chitala has said those condemning President Sata over the chat he had with Bush may be extending the argument too far because what they had was a casual conversation between the two senior leaders of the world and they resolved it there and then.
"While Mr Sata in a very casual and nice way indicated that we in the Third World have been victims of unequal trade in neocolonialism which is a correct statement and Mr Bush in defence of his country says no they have never…but we as we know Mr Sata was correct; not colonialism as practiced in the olden days where they conquered land but of a newer form of which Nkrumah described as neocolonialism. So he was correct, but of course this was a casual chat between the two," he said.
Chitala said anyone commenting on the issue is just being mischievous.
"That was a casual chat and people doing that (commenting) may be extending the argument too far. If even casual chats and jokes should be construed as becoming public policy then that in my view would not be the right way of reading this situation and maybe a condemnation is misplaced…particularly when the two gentlemen resolved their chat there and then. Anyway, this is part of democracy, isn't it?" said Chitala.
Labels: GW BUSH, MBITA CHITALA, MICHAEL SATA, RUPIAH BANDA, STATE VISITS
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Rupiah annoys Sata over Bush
By Ernest Chanda and Afeti Yulu
Sat 07 July 2012, 13:25 CAT
PRESIDENT Michael Sata has told Rupiah Banda to prepare to answer for his misdeeds instead of seeking relevance from the international community.
Former president Banda has apologised to former US president George W. Bush over President Sata's remark to the latter when they met on Wednesday, that his visit to Zambia was payback for what colonialists got from Africa.
Banda described the sentiments said during a light moment at State House as incorrect and undiplomatic.
But in a statement issued yesterday by his special assistant for Press and Public Relations George Chellah, President Sata stated that Banda was not the right person to play cheap politics.
"Let Mr Banda prepare to answer for his own misdeeds. Trying to turn a light-hearted exchange between former president Bush and myself, which we normally do, will not help him to sort out his numerous problems," President Sata stated.
"Mr Banda spent his presidency doing wrong things for himself and his children. I therefore, understand his desperation and attempts to seek relevance, though in wrong places this time around. I would encourage my dear brother to come to terms with what has happened and subsequently behave as a mature adult, and leave the running of government to the duly elected officers."
He warned Banda not to take his luck too far because he had offended Zambians in many ways when he was Republican president.
President Sata reminded Banda that it was him who told off the donors when he was in office.
"Today, Mr Banda can pretend to be a friend of the international community because he wants their support to defend the wrong things that he did during his tenure. But we have not forgotten that it is during his administration that he told donors to 'pack and go' when they questioned the corruption in his government," he stated.
"Notwithstanding the many wrongs that Mr Banda committed against our people and us, we have restrained ourselves and tried to accord him full respect. Obviously, Mr Banda is mistaking this for a weakness. We warn him not to push his luck too far. In fact, he is the least person that should cross paths with this administration."
President Sata stated that Banda had turned the head of state's light-hearted conversation with Bush into an occasion for cheap political scoring.
According to a letter sent to Bush and released to the media by his office yesterday, Banda claimed that President Sata's statement did not represent the true feeling of Zambians.
Banda described the moment President Sata had with Bush as an embarrassing experience.
"These statements, which were not only factually incorrect and undiplomatic, do not represent the true feelings of the Zambian people, who strongly recognise the value of positive relations with the United States of America. It is deeply regrettable that these statements were made on the same day as the celebration of your Independence Day, marking the universally-shared hope of self-determination and freedom. As our elected head of state, the President is entitled to formulate a foreign policy of his choosing," stated Banda.
"However, disagreement need not manifest itself in disrespect, and the form and manner in which these statements were made is not representative of our culture. No matter what political views different parties may hold, the people of Zambia are peace-loving, welcoming, and focused positively on the future, not the past. We hope that this unpleasant and embarrassing experience will not dissuade you or other former heads of state from collaborating with us on development projects in the future. Hope, not resentment; hard work, not victimhood; and progress, not retrocession; are the hallmarks of the new Zambia that our people dream of building, and we hope that people of all nations will work with us in pursuing a better future for our people."
And Mbita Chitala has said those condemning President Sata over the chat he had with Bush may be extending the argument too far because what they had was a casual conversation between the two senior leaders of the world and they resolved it there and then.
"While Mr Sata in a very casual and nice way indicated that we in the Third World have been victims of unequal trade in neocolonialism which is a correct statement and Mr Bush in defence of his country says no they have never…but we as we know Mr Sata was correct; not colonialism as practiced in the olden days where they conquered land but of a newer form of which Nkrumah described as neocolonialism. So he was correct, but of course this was a casual chat between the two," he said.
Chitala said anyone commenting on the issue is just being mischievous.
"That was a casual chat and people doing that (commenting) may be extending the argument too far. If even casual chats and jokes should be construed as becoming public policy then that in my view would not be the right way of reading this situation and maybe a condemnation is misplaced…particularly when the two gentlemen resolved their chat there and then. Anyway, this is part of democracy, isn't it?" said Chitala.
Labels: GW BUSH, RUPIAH BANDA
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COMMENT - This has the fingerprints of the
MMD/UPND's new advisor Robert Amsterdam all over it. They have no clue what to do in or out of power, what their economic policies are (other than 'whatever the World Bank says')or how to market them, but all of a sudden they have an 'international media strategy' that includes letters to donors, and they embroidering on familiar 'regime change' themes, like singing the 'black racism' song like the chancers in Zimbabwe did. Time to switch to the offensive. This is not left vs right, it is the people vs the foreign mine owners.
President Michael Sata reacts to RB’s apology letter to George Bush
TIME PUBLISHED - Friday, July 6, 2012, 7:03 pm
President Michael Sata has said that he is deeply embarrassed with immediate-past President Mr. Rupiah Bwezani Banda’s hyperbole over his lighted-hearted conversation with former United States president George W. Bush. This is contained in a press statement released to the media his Special Assistant for Press and Public Relations George Chellah
“It is very unfortunate that Mr. Banda has chosen to play very cheap politics on a matter that does not concern him. Mr. Banda is remotely connected if not totally disconnected to the matter at hand, as he does not understand the nature of the personal relationship that I have cultivated with former president Bush,” President Sata said in the statement.
“Therefore, my light-hearted conversation with former president Bush should not be an occasion for cheap political scoring by Mr. Banda. As a matter of fact, this is not the first time that I was hosting former president and Mrs. Bush. And I am very grateful that they chose to pay us two visits in a space of six months, which clearly indicates the cordial relations between the two countries and former president Bush’s personal commitment to our country.”
President Sata encouraged Mr. Banda to behave in a manner befitting a former Head of State.
“Mr. Banda spent his presidency doing wrong things for himself and his children. I therefore, understand his desperation and attempts to seek relevance, though in wrong places this time around. I would encourage my dear brother to come to terms with what has happened and subsequently behave as a mature adult, and leave the running of Government to the duly elected officers,” President Sata said.
“Let Mr. Banda prepare to answer for his own misdeeds. Trying to turn a light-hearted exchange between former president Bush and myself, which we normally do, will not help him to sort out his numerous problems.”
“Let Mr. Banda prepare to answer for his own misdeeds. Trying to turn a light-hearted exchange between former president Bush and myself, which we normally do, will not help him to sort out his numerous problems.”
The President described Mr. Banda’s conduct as unbecoming and unprecedented for a self-respecting former Head of State.
“Notwithstanding the many wrongs that Mr. Banda committed against our people and us, we have restrained ourselves and tried to accord him full respect. Obviously, Mr. Banda is mistaking this for a weakness. We warn him not to push his luck too far. In fact, he is the least person that should cross paths with this administration,” President Sata said.
“Today, Mr. Banda can pretend to be a friend of the international community because he wants their support to defend the wrong things that he did during his tenure. But we have not forgotten that it is during his administration that he told donors to ‘pack and go’ when they questioned the corruption in his Government.”
The Head of State said that the Zambian Government continue to express its unreserved gratitude to former president and Mrs Bush’s works in the country.
Labels: GW BUSH, MICHAEL SATA, RUPIAH BANDA
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Former President Rupiah Banda sends an apology to George Bush over Sata’s remarks
TIME PUBLISHED - Friday, July 6, 2012, 2:02 pm
Following a controversial debacle on 4th July, 2012 in which His Excellency Michael Sata, President of the Republic of Zambia, publicly attacked former United States President George W. Bush, Zambia’s immediate-past President Rupiah Banda, has sent a letter to Mr Bush’s offices offering an apology on behalf of the Zambian people.
“It is deeply regrettable that such statements were made on the same day as the celebration of your Independence Day, marking the universally-shared hope of self-determination and freedom that continues to inspire oppressed people of the world,” President Banda wrote in the letter to President Bush.
“No matter what political views different parties may hold, the people of Zambia are peace-loving, welcoming, and focused positively on the future, not the past. We are especially grateful for your generous contribution to women’s healthcare in our country.”
During a ceremony held at State House in Lusaka, President Sata castigated President Bush in front of an audience as a “colonialist” who had returned to pay back the resources that had been stolen from Africa.
“And you have all drifted away; you have abandoned Africa after taking all our raw commodities, our raw materials and build your cities,” President Sata said to President Bush at the press conference. “I mean, as far as you are concerned, Africa doesn’t exist. And when we have a former colonialist like you coming back to pay back what you took out of this country, we are grateful.”
“And you have all drifted away; you have abandoned Africa after taking all our raw commodities, our raw materials and build your cities,” President Sata said to President Bush at the press conference. “I mean, as far as you are concerned, Africa doesn’t exist. And when we have a former colonialist like you coming back to pay back what you took out of this country, we are grateful.”
President Banda’s letter to President Bush also recognised the important work of the Pink Ribbon/Red Ribbon charity group.
According to the George W. Bush Presidential Center website, the visit by the former American head of state included the opening of the new African Center of Excellence for Women’s Cancer Control at University Teaching Hospital, the donation of a new electronic hub (e-Hub), and the announcement of aid from Airborne Lifeline, a non-profit organisation that will provide airfreight services for medical equipment and transport medical personnel and patients as well as the support of the National Breast Cancer Foundation, which has provided the funding for a health promotion manager who will be hired and based in Africa to support PRRR activities
The full text of President Banda’s letter to President Bush can be read below:
43rd President of the United States of America George W. Bush
C/O The George W. Bush Presidential Center
P.O. Box 600610
Dallas, TX 75360
U.S.A.
July 5th, 2012
Lusaka, Republic of Zambia
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to you on behalf of concerned citizens in Zambia to express our most sincere apologies for statements made by President Michael Sata during your public reception at State House in Lusaka on 4th July, 2012.
These statements, which were not only factually incorrect and undiplomatic, do not represent the true feelings of the Zambian people, who strongly recognise the value of positive relations with the United States of America.
Having recently completed an appointment as a President-in-Residence at Boston University, I had the opportunity to meet with many Zambians living in the U.S. diaspora.
Some of these Zambians were studying to become doctors and engineers, others had risen to prestigious positions in business, while some were looking forward to bringing their new skills back home, contributing to our development as a nation and forging a stronger bilateral bond between the people of the United States and the people of Zambia.
I, for one, have always viewed this as a positive development and something to be encouraged in the future.
It is deeply regrettable that these statements were made on the same day as the celebration of your Independence Day, marking the universally-shared hope of self-determination and freedom.
As our elected head of state, the President is entitled to formulate a foreign policy of his choosing. However, disagreement need not manifest itself in disrespect, and the form and manner in which these statements were made is not representative of our culture.
No matter what political views different parties may hold, the people of Zambia are peace-loving, welcoming, and focused positively on the future, not the past. We are especially grateful for your generous contribution to women’s healthcare in our country, helping us to address urgent humanitarian needs of our people.
We hope that this unpleasant and embarrassing experience will not dissuade you or other former heads of state from collaborating with us on development projects in the future.
Hope, not resentment; hard work, not victimhood; and progress, not retrocession; are the hallmarks of the new Zambia that our people dream of building, and we hope that people of all nations will work with us in pursuing a better future for our people.
Sincerely,
Rupiah Banda
Fourth President of the Republic of Zambia
Labels: GW BUSH, MICHAEL SATA, RUPIAH BANDA
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'It's payback time'
By Ernest Chanda
Thu 05 July 2012, 13:25 CAT
PRESIDENT Michael Sata yesterday said former US president George Bush's visit to Zambia was payback time for colonialists. But Bush said the United States of America was never a colonial nation and fought for freedom just like Zambia.
Meanwhile President Sata complained about Bush's late arrival at State House where the two were scheduled to meet.
Meeting Bush who has been holed up in Kabwe since the weekend doing philanthropy works involving cancer projects, President Sata told Bush that his country and three other superpowers had abandoned Africa after taking away its resources.
"The most interesting thing, previously there used to be four great countries: United States of America, United Kingdom, Russia and France. And you have all drifted away; you have abandoned Africa after taking all our raw commodities, our raw materials and build your cities. I mean, as far as you are concerned, Africa doesn't exist. And when we have a former colonialist like you coming back to pay back what you took out of this country, we are grateful," President Sata said.
But Bush quickly interjected and told President Sata that America had never been a colonialist, but that the country also freed itself from colonialism just like Zambia.
"Mr President, I don't wanna be argumentative, but America was never a colonial nation; we broke free like you broke free from those who wanted to colonise us. France might have been a colonial nation, Britain might have been a colonial nation, but not the United States of America," Bush said amidst laughter from his team and that of President Sata.
President Sata also quickly interjected: "The United States and Russia? But there is a difference between Russia and the United States; United States had money," as Bush responded with, "that's right."
President Sata continued to explain the indirect role America played in the colonisation of Africa.
"Because when they had money the big colonisers depended on the American money. The Americans did not physically colonise us, but at the same time, the Americans still have scars of slavery. And if you have the scars of slavery whether you colonised or you didn't colonise us you still have those scars," he said, as Bush responded: "no question about it."
Meanwhile, President Sata thanked Bush for his robust role in the fight against cancer.
He said cancer was the biggest killer in Africa, unlike malaria which many nations paid attention to.
"These are some of the problems which many people don't pay much attention to. They pay attention to diarrhoea, pneumonia, TB and even heart attack. But they don't pay much attention to cancer, but it's our biggest killer in Africa. And what you do now, when you are raising the funds, you are dealing with the ladies. So, you have now to move to the gentlemen because side by side you have cervical cancer for women and you have prostate cancer for the men, so you can't treat one side and leave the others," said President Sata.
"So, we will leave it to Madam Laura Bush to deal with prostate cancer, you deal with cervical cancer. We have three problems in this part of the world. Number one problem is poverty, the second problem is unemployment, and the third problem is to reach the essential. Even in Lusaka we have people who have no access to get to medical facilities, either they have no access to education. So when we have people like you who have never seen poverty in their lives to come and join people who are tasting poverty, we are very grateful."
And earlier, Bush who was supposed to meet President Sata at State House at 15:00 hours only arrived about 15 minutes late.
As President Sata stood at the main entrance to State House with his hands in his pockets and accompanied by State House staff and some Cabinet ministers, he complained to United States Embassy public affairs officer Priscilla Hernandez that he did not like being kept waiting.
"I cannot be waiting here. He Bush is former president; he is not the current president of the United States so I cannot be waiting for him. I'm not an American for me to be waiting for him, and I don't intend to be an American," President Sata told Hernandez as Bush's security kept communicating with their colleagues who were with Bush on their way to State House.
"The young man is lucky that he is the first American leader to have brought money to Africa through his Millennium Challenge Account; that's why I'm standing here. Otherwise if it was somebody else, I would have handed him over to one of my ministers to meet him."
And less than two minutes after President Sata finished complaining, Bush arrived with his entourage.
Labels: GW BUSH, MICHAEL SATA
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George Bush re-opens Kabwe's Ngungu clinic
By Manfred Musanshi
Wed 04 July 2012, 13:24 CAT
EVERY human life is precious, says former US president George W. Bush. Speaking in Kabwe yesterday during the handover of Ngungu Health Centre which was refurbished with his help, Bush said leaders should be moved to act whenever they saw people suffering.
He said he was thankful to be involved in a project that would stand the test of time.
He said he was thrilled to be back to Zambia and to know that the newly-refurbished clinic had given people a chance to live.
Bush officially re-opened the clinic which will offer cervical and breast cancer screening to the local community.
"We are putting up a cervical cancer crusade to save lives because every human life is precious," said Bush.
He said that the commitment to the fight against cervical and breast cancer was real and thanked all partners and people that volunteered to make the work possible.
And Liz Thompson, president of the Susan Komen for the Cure, one of the partners in the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon campaign and the largest breast cancer organisation in the world, said that cervical cancer could be detected and cured.
"We have to make people realise the need to be screened for cervical cancer," said Thompson.
As Bush officially opened the clinic, a woman of Mukobeko township, Ruth Sichali, gave birth to a baby boy at around 10:10 hours.
The baby was named George, and when notified about it, the former president went to see the baby that was named after him.
Bush returned to Lusaka where he is today expected to meet President Michael Sata before he proceeds to Botswana for a private visit.
Labels: GW BUSH
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Bush arrives
By Bright Mukwasa
Sun 01 July 2012, 13:24 CAT
FORMER US president George Bush and his wife Laura are in the country to launch the African Centre of Excellence for cancer prevention in women.
Bush and Laura will also provide $50,000 to upgrade a facility technologically at the University Teaching Hospital, announced US Ambassador Mark Storella yesterday. Bush, Laura and Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon executive director Doyin Oluwole arrived yesterday morning around 09:20 hours and were welcomed by Vice-President Guy Scott.
Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon is an initiative to leverage public and private investments in global health to combat cervical and breast cancer.
"…it is important to recognise that this is part of the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon alliance which includes the United States government, the Bush Institute, UNAIDS as well as several different private organisations, including different pharmaceuticals. The total money that is being put in is certainly in millions of dollars and on this particular visit, president Bush and Mrs Bush are providing $50,000 themselves to upgrade a specific facility technologically at the University Teaching Hospital," Ambassador Storella told journalists yesterday after the arrival of Bush.
"President Bush, with Zambia's First Lady Dr Christine Kaseba, would also launch an African Centre of Excellence for cancer prevention in women. This will complement efforts put during their last December visit."
Ambassador Storella said while in the country Bush would also engage in some voluntary work.
"He will be here for just about less than a week and he is gonna be doing some volunteer work which he will do with his own hands. He Bush just said to the Vice-President Guy Scott 'I wanna demonstrate that no matter what your station in life is, the goal should be to serve people' and that's what he's gonna be trying to do," Ambassador Storella said.
He said the voluntary work that the Americans would be doing in collaboration with Zambians was at a "very personal level" as the Bushs, through the previous visit, had formed friendships with local people.
"He is here to carry forward work he is already doing in Zambia, including fighting HIV and AIDS, cervical cancer and breast cancer," said Ambassador Storella.
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Bush arrives in Zambia
TIME PUBLISHED - Saturday, June 30, 2012, 4:01 pm
Former United State president George W. Bush and his wife Laura when they arrived in Lusaka at Kenneth Kaunda international airport.
Former United States of America President George Bush has arrived in the country for a one week visit to various charitable organisations supported by his foundation.
Mr. Bush arrived in the country around 09:00hrs at Kenneth Kaunda International airport on Saturday morning aboard a chattered plane.
He was received on arrival by Vice President Guy Scot and his wife Charlotte.
Others were U.S Ambassador to Zambia Mark Storella, Lusaka Province Minister Gerry Chanda and Deputy Mayor Theresa Funga.
Speaking to journalists shortly after Mr. Bush’s arrival, US Ambassador to Zambia Mark Storella says President Bush is in Zambia to support HIV/AIDS, Breast and Cervical cancer programmes.
Mr. Storella says the bush foundation is expected to spend about 15 thousand United States Dollars on providing Assistance.
This is the second time the former US president is visiting Zambia within six months.
ZNBC
Labels: GW BUSH, MARK STORELLA
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UK tribunal asks for disclosure of conversation between Blair and Bush on Iraq war
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
By Al Arabiya
The Foreign Office in the UK has lost an appeal against an order by an information commissioner demanding full disclosure of a phone conversation between the former British and U.S leaders a few days before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a newspaper reported on Monday.
“Accountability for the decision to take military action against another country is paramount,” The Guardian quoted the information commissioner, Christopher Graham, as saying in his original order.
Graham made the order in response to a freedom of information request by a private individual named Stephen Plowden who was asking for the disclosure of the entire record of the phone conversation between then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George Bush in 2003.
Judge John Angel, president of the information tribunal, showed full support for Graham’s request. Judge Angel said that the foreign office witnesses had downplayed the importance of a decision to go to war and that view was “difficult to accept.”
“Also in our view, particularly from the evidence in this case, the circumstances surrounding a decision by a UK government to go to war with another country is always likely to be of very significant public interest, even more so with the consequences of this war,” the tribunal said.
The Foreign Office has expressed its disappointment at the tribunal’s decision. It has 30 days to disclose the information or appeal.
The French connection
According to the tribunal, Blair and Bush discussed U.N. resolutions on Iraq and a television interview given by Jacques Chirac, then French president, on March 10, 2003. Blair repeatedly blamed Chirac for the failure to get a second U.N. Security Council resolution backing an invasion of Iraq.
British proponents of the war against Iraq, who have long defended U.S.-British special relations, said that Chirac’s interview killed off all hope of a diplomatic solution and that they had to pursue the war without U.N. approval.
However, Clare Short, international development secretary at the time, accused Blair in the tribunal hearing of “clearly, deliberately misleading the French position.”
The war against Iraq that saw the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime in 12 March 2003, killed at least 162,000 people, almost 80 percent of them civilians, Iraq Body Count (IBC), a British NGO, reported early this year.
Labels: GW BUSH, IRAQ, TONY BLAIR, WAR CRIMES
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COMMENT - The case for prosecution of Bush era war crimes just strengthened.
Do not read of if you are sensitive. Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest
by Ralph Lopez
Global Research, September 20, 2011
Daily KOS
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office.
The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company. The company was under contract to the Department of Defense. The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in the “mass acquisition” of American weapons. The ruling comes as Rumsfeld begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Monday, September 26, and as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet. Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere waterboarding.
Torture Room, Abu Ghraib
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters in 2004 of photos withheld by the Defense Department from Abu Ghraib, “The American public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here… We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.” And journalist Seymour Hersh says: “boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has.”
Rumsfeld resigned days before a criminal complaint was filed in Germany in which the American general who commanded the military police battalion at Abu Ghraib had promised to testify. General Janis Karpinski in an interview with Salon.com was asked: “Do you feel like Rumsfeld is at the heart of all of this and should be held completely accountable for what happened [at Abu Ghraib]?”
Karpinski answered: “Yes, absolutely.” In the criminal complaint filed in Germany against Rumsfeld, Karpinski submitted 17 pages of testimony and offered to appear before the German prosecutor as a witness. Congressman Kendrick Meek of Florida, who participated in the hearings on Abu Ghraib, said of Rumsfeld: “There was no way Rumsfeld didn’t know what was going on. He’s a guy who wants to know everything.”
And Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the official Army investigation into Abu Ghraib, said in his report:
“there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Abu Ghraib Prisoner Smeared with Feces
Amazingly, the two American contractors in the 7th Circuit decision were known by the military to be working undercover for the FBI, to whom they had reported witnessing the sale of U.S government munitions to Iraqi rebel groups. The FBI in Iraq had vouched for Vance and Ertel numerous times before they nevertheless disappeared into military custody. They were held at Camp Cropper in Iraq where the two were tortured, one for 97 days, and the other for six weeks.
In a puzzling and incriminating move, Camp Cropper base commander General John Gardner ordered Nathan Ertel released on May 17, 2006, while keeping Donald Vance in detention for another two months of torture. By ordering the release of one man but not the other, Gardner revealed awareness of the situation but prolonged it at the same time.
It is unlikely that Gardner could act alone in a situation as sensitive as the illegal detention and torture of two Americans confirmed by the FBI to be working undercover in the national interest, to prevent American weapons and munitions from reaching the hands of insurgents, for the sole purpose of using them to kill American troops. Vance and Ertel suggest he was acting on orders from the highest political level.
The forms of torture employed against the Americans included “techniques” which crop up frequently in descriptions of Iraqi and Afghan prisoner abuse at Bagram, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib. They included “walling,” where the head is slammed repeatedly into a concrete wall, sleep deprivation to the point of psychosis by use of round-the-clock bright lights and harsh music at ear-splitting volume, in total isolation, for days, weeks or months at a time, and intolerable cold.
The 7th Circuit ruling is the latest in a growing number of legal actions involving hundreds of former prisoners and torture victims filed in courts around the world. Criminal complaints have been filed against Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials in Germany, France, and Spain. Former President Bush recently curbed travel to Switzerland due to fear of arrest following criminal complaints lodged in Geneva. “He’s avoiding the handcuffs,” Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
And the Mayor of London threatened Bush with arrest for war crimes earlier this year should he ever set foot in his city, saying that were he to land in London to “flog his memoirs,” that “the real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief-of-Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson surmised on MSNBC earlier this year that soon, Saudi Arabia and Israel will be “the only two countries Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest will travel to.”
Abu Ghraib: Dog Bites
What would seem to make Rumsfeld’s situation more precarious is the number of credible former officials and military officers who seem to be eager to testify against him, such as Col. Wilkerson and General Janis Karpinsky.
In a signed declaration in support of torture plaintiffs in a civil suit naming Rumsfeld in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Col. Wilkerson, one of Rumsfeld’s most vociferous critics, stated: “I am willing to testify in person regarding the content of this declaration, should that be necessary.” That declaration, among other things, affirmed that a documentary on the chilling murder of a 22-year-old Afghan farmer and taxi driver in Afghanistan was “accurate.” Wilkerson said earlier this year that in that case, and in the case of another murder at Bagram at about the same time, “authorization for the abuse went to the very top of the United States government.”
Dilawar
The young farmer’s name was Dilawar. The New York Times reported on May 20, 2005:
“Four days before [his death,] on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks earlier to drive as a taxi.On the day that he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar’s mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. However, he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.”
Dilawar’s misfortune was to drive past the gate of an American base which had been hit by a rocket attack that morning. Dilawar and his fares were arrested at a checkpoint by a warlord, who was later suspected of mounting the rocket attack himself, and then turning over randam captures like Dilawar in order to win trust.
The UK Guardian reports:
“Guards at Bagram routinely kneed prisoners in their thighs — a blow called a ‘peroneal strike’… Whenever a guard did this to Dilawar, he would cry out, ‘Allah! Allah!’ Some guards apparently found this amusing, and would strike him repeatedly to show off the behavior to buddies. One military policeman told investigators, ‘Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny. … It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes.’”
Dilawar was shackled from the ceiling much of the time, with his feet barely able to touch the ground. On the last day of his life, after 4 days at Bagram, an interpreter who was present said his legs were bouncing uncontrollably as he sat in a plastic chair. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
The New York Times reported that on the last day of his life, four days after he was arrested:
“Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar’s face. “Come on, drink!” the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. “Drink!”
At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
“‘Leave him up,’ one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.”
The next time the prison medic saw Dilawar a few hours later, he was dead, his head lolled to one side and his body beginning to stiffen. A coroner would testify that his legs “had basically been pulpified.” The Army coroner, Maj. Elizabeth Rouse, said: “I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.” She testified that had he lived, Dilawar’s legs would have had to be amputated.
Despite the military’s false statement that Dilawar’s death was the result of “natural causes,” Maj. Rouse marked the death certificate as a “homicide” and arranged for the certificate to be delivered to the family. The military was forced to retract the statement when a reporter for the New York Times, Carlotta Gall, tracked down Dilawar’s family in Afghanistan and was given a folded piece of paper by Dilawar’s brother. It was the death certificate, which he couldn’t read, because it was in English.
The practice of forcing prisoners to stand for long periods of time, links Dilawar’s treatment to a memo which bears Rumsfeld’s own handwriting on that particular subject. Obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request, the memo may show how fairly benign-sounding authorizations for clear circumventions of the Geneva Conventions may have translated into gruesome practice on the battlefield.
The memo, which addresses keeping prisoners “standing” for up to four hours, is annotated with a note initialed by Rumfeld reading: “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?” Not mentioned in writing anywhere is anything about accomplishing this by chaining prisoners to the ceiling. There is evidence that, unable to support his weight on tiptoe for the days on end he was chained to the ceiling, Dilawars arms dislocated, and they flapped around uselessly when he was taken down for interrogation. The National Catholic Reporter writes, “They flapped like a bird’s broken wings.”
Contradicting, on the record, a February 2003 statement by Rumfeld’s top commander in Afghnanistan at the time, General Daniel McNeill, that “we are not chaining people to the ceilings,” is Spc. Willie Brand, the only soldier disciplined in the death of Dilawar, with a reduction in rank. Told of McNeill’s statement, Brand told Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes: “Well, he’s lying.” Brand said of his punishment: “I didn’t understand how they could do this after they had trained you to do this stuff and they turn around and say you’ve been bad.”
Exhibit: A sketch by Sgt. Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell
Exhibit: Dilawar Death Certificate marked “homicide”
Exhibit: Rumsfeld Memo: “I stand 8-10 hours a day. Why only 4 hours?”
Dilawar’s daughter and her grandfather
Binyam, Genital-Slicing
Binyam Mohamed was seized by the Pakistani Forces in April 2002 and turned over to the Americans for a $5,000 bounty. He was held for more than five years without charge or trial in Bagram Air Force Base, Guantánamo Bay, and third country “black” sites.
In his diary he describes being flown by a US government plane to a prison in Morocco. He writes:
“They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor’s scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they’d electrocute me. Maybe castrate me…One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. ‘I told you I was going to teach you who’s the man,’ [one] eventually said.
“They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.
“I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: ‘What’s the point of this? I’ve got nothing I can say to them. I’ve told them everything I possibly could.’
“‘As far as I know, it’s just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you’ll have these scars and you’ll never forget. So you’ll always fear doing anything but what the US wants.’
“Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was ‘to show Washington it’s healing.’”
The obvious question for any prosecutor in Binyam’s case is: Who does “Washington” refer to? Rumfeld? Cheney? Is it not in the national interest to uncover these most depraved of sadists at the highest level? US Judge Gladys Kessler, in her findings on Binyam made in relation to a Guantanamo prisoner’s petition, found Binyam exceedingly credible. She wrote:
“His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in plots to imperil Americans. The government does not dispute this evidence.”
Obama: Torturers’ Last Defense
The prospect of Rumsfeld in a courtroom cannot possibly be relished by the Obama administration, which has now cast itself as the last and staunchest defender of the embattled former officials, including John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez, Judge Jay Bybee, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and others. The administration employed an unprecedented twisting of arms in order to keep evidence in a lawsuit which Binyam had filed in the UK suppressed, threatening an end of cooperation between the British MI5 and the CIA. This even though the British judges whose hand was forced puzzled that the evidence contained “no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.” The judges suggested another reason for the secrecy requested by the Obama administration, that it might be “politically embarrassing.”
The Obama Justice Department’s active involvement in seeking the dismissal of the cases is by choice, as the statutory obligation of the US Attorney General to defend cases against public officials ends the day they leave office. Indeed, the real significance of recent court decisions, the one by the 7th Circuit and yet another against Rumsfeld in a DC federal court, may be the clarification the common misconception that high officials are forever immune for crimes committed while in office, in the name of the state. The misconception persists despite just a moment of thought telling one that if this were true, Hermann Goering, Augusto Pinochet, and Charles Taylor would never have been arrested, for they were all in office at the time they ordered atrocities, and they all invoked national security.
Judge Kessler’s findings point to yet another even more alarming aspect of the Bush-era crimes for which Rumsfeld is now being pursued for his part. And that is the emerging evidence that the tortures perpetrated were not designed to protect national security at all, but to obtain false confessions in order to score propaganda points for the War on terror.
Andy Worthington writes that:
“As it happens, one of the confessions that was tortured out of Binyam is so ludicrous that it was soon dropped…The US authorities insisted that Padilla and Binyam had dinner with various high-up members of al-Qaeda the night before Padilla was to fly off to America. According to their theory the dinner party had to have been on the evening of 3 April in Karachi … Binyam was meant to have dined with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Sheikh al-Libi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Jose Padilla. What made the scenario ‘absurd,’ as [Binyam's lawyer] pointed out, was that ‘two of the conspirators were already in U.S. custody at the time — Abu Zubaydah was seized six days before, on 28 March 2002, and al-Libi had been held since November 2001.’”
The charges against Binyam were dropped, after the prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, resigned. He told the BBC later that he had concerns at the repeated suppression of evidence that could prove prisoners’ innocence.
The litany of tortures alleged against Rumsfeld in the military prisons he ran could go on for some time. The new photographic images from Abu Ghraib make it hard to conceive of how the methods of torture and dehumanization could have possibly served a national purpose.
The approved use of attack dogs, sexual humiliation, forced masturbation, and treatments which plumb the depths of human depravity are either documented in Rumsfeld’s own memos, or credibly reported on.
The UK Guardian writes:
“The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources. The techniques devised in the system, called R2I – resistance to interrogation – match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
“One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: ‘It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn’t know what they were doing.’”
Torture Now Aimed at Americans, Programs Designed to Obtain False Confessions, Not Intelligence
The worst of the worst is that Rumsfeld’s logic strikes directly at the foundations of our democracy and the legitimacy of the War on Terror. The torture methods studied and adopted by the Bush administration were not new, but adopted from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program (SERE) which is taught to elite military units. The program was developed during the Cold War, in response to North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet Bloc torture methods. But the aim of those methods was never to obtain intelligence, but to elicit false confessions. The Bush administration asked the military to “reverse engineer” the methods, i.e. figure out how to break down resistance to false confessions.
In the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report which indicted high-level Bush administration officials, including Rumsfeld, as bearing major responsibility for the torture at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and Bagram, the Committee said:
“SERE instructors explained “Biderman’s Principles” – which were based on coercive methods used by the Chinese Communist dictatorship to elicit false confessions from U.S. POWs during the Korean War – and left with GTMO personnel a chart of those coercive techniques.”
The Biderman Principles were based on the work of Air Force Psychiatrist Albert Biderman, who wrote the landmark “Communist Attempts to Elecit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War,” on which SERE resistance was based. Biderman wrote:
“The experiences of American Air Force prisoners of war in Korea who were pressured for false confessions, enabled us to compile an outline of methods of eliciting compliance, not much different, it turned out, from those reported by persons held by Communists of other nations. I have prepared a chart showing a condensed version of this outline.”
The chart is a how-to for communist torturers interested only in false confessions for propaganda purposes, not intelligence. It was the manual for, in Biderman’s words, “brainwashing.” In the reference for Principle Number 7, “Degradation,” the chart explains:
“Makes Costs of Resistance Appear More Damaging to Self-Esteem than Capitulation; Reduces Prisoner to “Animal Level…Personal Hygiene Prevented; Filthy, Infested Surroundings; Demeaning Punishments; Insults and Taunts; Denial of Privacy”
Appallingly, this could explain that even photos such as those of feces-smeared prisoners at Abu Ghraib might not, as we would hope, be only the individual work of particularly demented guards, but part of systematic degradation authorized at the highest levels.
Exhibit: Abu Ghraib, Female POW
This could go far toward explaining why the Bush administration seemed so tone-deaf to intelligence professionals, including legendary CIA Director William Colby, who essentially told them they were doing it all wrong. A startling level of consensus existed within the intelligence community that the way to produce good intelligence was to gain the trust of prisoners and to prove everything they had been told by their recruiters, about the cruelty and degeneracy of America, to be wrong.
But why would the administration care about what worked to produce intelligence, if the goal was never intelligence in the first place? What the Ponzi scheme of either innocent men or low-level operatives incriminating each other DID accomplish, was produce a framework of rapid successes and trophies in the new War on Terror.
And now, American contractors Vance and Ertel show, unless there are prosecutions, the law has effectively changed and they can do it to Americans. Jane Mayer in the New Yorker describes a new regime for prisoners which has become coldly methodical, quoting a report issued by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, titled “Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees.” In the report on the CIA paramilitary Special Activities Division detainees were “taken to their cells by strong people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and dark visors over their eyes.”
Mayer writes that a former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout” of prisoners as:
“a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.”
A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories, likened the treatment to “sodomy.” He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability.”
Of course we have seen these images before, in the trial balloon treatment of Jose Padilla, the first American citizen arrested and declared “enemy combatant” in the first undeclared war without end. The designation placed Padilla outside of his Bill of Rights as an American citizen even though he was arrested on American soil. Padilla was kept in isolation and tortured for nearly 4 years before being released to a civilian trial, at which point according to his lawyer he was useless in his own defense, and exhibited fear and mistrust of everyone, complete docility, and a range of nervous facial tics.
Jose Padilla in Military Custody
He was convicted by a Miami jury and sentenced to 17 more years. As of this writing, and meriting it’s own outrage, on Sept. 19, an appeals court threw out Padilla’s sentence as “too lenient” and has sent it back for review.
Rumsfeld’s avuncular “golly-gee, gee-whiz” performances in public are legendary. Randall M. Schmidt, the Air Force Lieutenant General appointed by the Army to investigate abuses at Guantanamo, and who recommended holding Rumsfeld protege and close associate General Geoffrey Miller “accountable” as the commander of Guantanamo, watched Rumfeld’s performance before a House Committee with some interest. “He was going, ‘My God! Did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy’s head and telling him all his buddies knew he was a homosexual?’”
But General Taguba said of Rumsfeld: “Rummy did what we called ‘case law’ policy — verbal and not in writing. What he’s really saying is that if this decision comes back to haunt me I’ll deny it.”
Taguba went on: “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember Shit.”
Miller was the general deployed by Rumfeld to “Gitmo-ize” Abu Ghraib in 2003 after Rumfeld had determined they were being too “soft” on prisoners. He said famously in one memo “you have to treat them like dogs.” General Karpinski questioned the fall of Charles Graner and Lyndie England as the main focus of low-level “bad apple” abuse in the Abu Ghraib investigations. “Did Lyndie England deploy with a dog leash?” she asks.
Exhibit: Dog deployed at Abu Ghraib, mentally-ill prisoner
Abu Ghraib prisoner in “restraint” chair, screaming “Allah!!”
Rumfeld’s worry now is the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction, as well as ordinary common law. The veil of immunity stripped in civil cases would seem to free the hand of any prosecutor who determines there is sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed based on available evidence. A grand jury’s bar for opening a prosecution is minimal. It has been said “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.” Rumsfeld, and the evidence against him, would certainly seem to pass this test.
The name Dilawar translates to English roughly as “Braveheart.” Let us pray he had one to endure the manner of his death. But the more spiritual may believe that somehow it had a purpose, to shock the world and begin the toppling of unimaginable evil among us. Dilawar represented the poorest of the poor and most powerless, wanting only to pick up his three sisters, as his mother had told him to, for the holiday. The question now is whether Americans will finally draw a line, as the case against Rumsfeld falls into place and becomes legally bulletproof. Andy Worthington noted that the case for prosecutors became rock solid when Susan Crawford, senior Pentagon official overseeing the Military Commissions at Guantánamo — told Bob Woodward that the Bush administration had “met the legal definition of torture.”
As Rumsfeld continues his book tour and people like Dilawar are remembered, it is not beyond the pale that an ambitious prosecutor, whether local, state, or federal, might sense the advantage. It is perhaps unlikely, but not inconceivable, that upon landing at Logan International Airport on Wed., Sept. 21st, or similarly anywhere he travels thereafter, Rumsfeld could be greeted with the words such as:
“Welcome to Boston, Mr. Secretary. You are under arrest.”
Massachusetts District Attorneys Who Can Indict Rumsfeld, Please Email them this post and call them.SAMPLE INDICTMENT TEXT, BASED ON GERMAN CRIMINAL COMPLAINT
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley:
email: ago@state.ma.us
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108 -1518
Phone: (617) 727-2200
Here is the contact info for members of the Boston City Council, which could pass a resolution directing the Police Commissioner to arrest Rumsfeld on sight (google Brattleboro Resolution, George W. Bush):
http://www.cityofboston.gov/…
And Gov. Duval Patrick has an obligation to order the state police to do the same: CONTACT FORM
Local District Attorneys
Berkshire County: District Attorney David F. Capeless
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS: P.O. Box 973
888 Purchase Street
New Bedford, MA 02741
PHONE: (508) 997-0711
FAX: (508) 997-0396
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.bristolda.com
Bristol County District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter
Appointed March 2004
Elected November 2004
OFFICE ADDRESS: 7 North Street
P.O. Box 1969
Pittsfield, MA 01202-1969
PHONE: (413) 443-5951
FAX: (413) 499-6349
Internet Address: http://www.mass.gov/…
Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: P.O.Box 455
3231 Main Street
Barnstable, MA 02630
PHONE: (508) 362-8113
FAX: (508) 362-8221
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/…
Essex County: District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: Ten Federal Street
Salem, MA 01970
PHONE: (978) 745-6610
FAX: (978) 741-4971
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/…
Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni
Elected 2010
OFFICE ADDRESS: Hall of Justice
50 State Street
Springfield, MA 01103
PHONE: (413) 747-1000
FAX: (413) 781-4745
Middlesex County: District Attorney Gerard T. Leone, Jr.
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS: 15 Commonwealth Avenue
Woburn, MA 01801
PHONE: (781) 897-8300
FAX: ((781) 897-8301
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.middlesexda.com
Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey
Elected 2010
OFFICE ADDRESS: 45 Shawmut Ave.
Canton, MA 02021
PHONE: (781) 830-4800
FAX: (781) 830-4801
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/…
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan
Elected 2010
HAMPSHIRE OFFICE ADDRESS: One Gleason Plaza
Northampton, MA 01060
PHONE: (413) 586-9225
FAX: (413) 584-3635
FRANKLIN OFFICE ADDRESS: 13 Conway Street
Greenfield, MA 01301
PHONE: (413) 774-3186
FAX: (413) 773-3278
WEBSITE:
Northwestern http://www.mass.gov/…
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz
Appointed November 2001
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: 32 Belmont Street
Brockton, MA 02303
PHONE: (508) 584-8120
FAX: (508) 586-3578
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/…
Suffolk County: District Attorney Daniel F. Conley
Appointed January 2002
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: One Bulfinch Place
Boston, MA 02114
PHONE: (617) 619-4000
FAX: (617) 619-4009
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/…
Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr.
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS: Courthouse – Room 220
2 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01608
PHONE: (508) 755-8601
FAX: (508) 831-9899
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.worcesterda.com
Global Research Articles by Ralph Lopez
Labels: GW BUSH, WAR CRIMES
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COMMENT - Morgan Tsvangirai's words are the words of a traitor. At no point does h eturn to the Zimbabwean people, he is always looking for foreign intervention, so he and his goldmine owning brother Casper can steal the resources that belong to the people of Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai’s letters of shame . . . to Bush, Obama
Saturday, 27 August 2011 22:09
His Excellency Barack Obama,
President of the United States of America,
21 December 2009,
Your Excellency,
AS we approach the end of 2009, a period that has turned out to be a watershed for Zimbabwe, I write to convey my appreciation for the support we have received from you personally, the government and people of your great nation.
Kindly pass on my warm thanks also to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I was very pleased, Mr President, to note the support offered by your country and the various international non-governmental organisa-tions (NGOs) that expanded beyond the life-saving interventions which were so important.
This assistance has brought direct benefits to millions of our people and has demonstrated to the hard-pressed population that the reformists in Government are capable of delivering results.
Your support for my office has also been invaluable and I look forward to this continuing. As you are no doubt aware, Your Excellency, we are at a crucial stage in our efforts to ensure the full implementation of the GPA.
Meanwhile, our political situation remains characterised by intransigence to frustrate the process of bringing about real change.
The role played by Sadc, in general, and the mediator President Jacob Zuma, in particular, is greatly appreciated.
I know that you have personally played a crucial role in helping this to happen, and I encourage you to continue your crucial dialogue with President Zuma.
We have had discussions with Ambassador Charles Ray on restrictive measures. I well understand that movement on the part of the international community will need to be in response to tangible progress on GPA implementation. We should, however, ensure that movement when it comes is seen to be acknowledged in a tangible way, striking a careful balance between retaining leverage and rewarding progress. This will involve difficult judgments but it will be important to sustain momentum when it comes.
In light of the current negotiations of the three political parties I have now taken personal interest in the normalisation of relations between my Government and your government and my office will be following up on this very critical issue in the coming year.
We have, with your help, made real progress in 2009. Zimbabwe has been brought back from the brink. The economy has been stabilised. Essential health, education and other services have been restored.
A long and difficult road clearly lies ahead but with the continued support of key partners like the US, and also the active engagement of Sadc and South Africa, I have every hope of building on this start.
May I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year.
Please accept, Mr President, assurances of my esteem consideration. Looking forward to continue working with you,
Morgan Tsvangirai
[US president Barack Obama]
US president Barack Obama
This letter was received by hand delivery via US Defence Attache Lt-Col. Patrick Anderson at the US Embassy Harare on Tuesday, December 29, 2009.
Original will be forwarded to AF/S Desk Officer Brian Walch via diplomatic pouch, registration number 7262800.
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/12/09 HARARE1007.html
ON OCTOBER 16, 2002 Embassy was asked to convey a letter from Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai to President Bush and other current and former SIPDIS USG officials seeking a more active UN role in addressing Zimbabwe’s crises. We have pouched the letters to AF/S and convey the text of the Tsvangirai-Bush letter in paragraph 2 below.
The other letters contain identical text and were delivered in sealed envelopes addressed to former president Clinton; former president Carter; UN Ambassador Negroponte; Representatives Ed Royce and Donald Payne; Senators Daschle and Lott; Reverend Jesse Jackson; and Chester Crocker.
Mr George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
Washington DC
October 14, 2002
Dear Mr President,
Re: Call for UN Security Council Action on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
On behalf of the majority of the people of Zimbabwe, I write to you Sir, and the other five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Since February 2000, several efforts by the United States of America, the European Union, the Commonwealth, Sadc, the World Council of Churches and several local and international civic organisations appealed to Robert Mugabe to uphold the rule of law, respect human rights and put a stop to political murders, rape, torture and State-sponsored terror and violence, but the illegitimate Mugabe regime has not relented.
Instead, it has demonstrated utter contempt of international opinion and has reaffirmed its commitment to carrying out crimes against humanity as a means of subjugating the people of Zimbabwe and denying them the right to freely determine their own destiny.
There is growing evidence on the ground in Zimbabwe today Sir, that the subjugated and brutalised majority are preparing to react violently against this state of affairs. The consequent bloody civil strife will not only result in a massive loss of life but will inevitably spill into the territory of the neighbouring states of the region.
The international community must not allow Mugabe to continue charting this path towards national destruction and darkness. It is in the context of this grim and extremely dangerous situation that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which represents the legitimate aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe, calls for the intervention of the UN Security Council in the Zimbabwe crisis in accordance with Article 39 (Chapter VII Powers) of the United Nations Charter.
Crimes that rival fascism and Nazism in scale and wickedness are being committed daily, not by an occupying force, but by a supposedly sovereign government of the country.
We therefore call for the urgent institution of an international programme for Zimbabwe under the auspices of the United Nations, designed to:
1. Investigate the gross human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that are being perpetrated by the Mugabe regime.
2. Investigate State-sponsored violence and the breakdown of the rule of law.
3. Investigate the denial of food relief to suspected political opponents and the consequent mass starvation.
4. Facilitate the realisation of a free, unfettered and fair expression of the popular will of the people of Zimbabwe.
We ask and plead with you Sir, and your fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council, to place these issues on the agenda of the Security Council for serious discussion and speedy resolution.
In our humble view, there remains no other viable alternative in the quest to put a stop to the crimes against humanity that are being perpetrated daily by the Mugabe regime.
The Mugabe regime has recreated the conditions of the Rhodesian crisis in 1965, when the Ian Smith regime effected a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and established an illegitimate government in order to maintain a racial political order over the majority of the population.
UDI sought to deny the majority of the people of the then Rhodesia the right of self-determination.
In 1966, in reaction to that development, the UN Security Council (SC Res.232 (1966) and subsequent resolutions), acted swiftly to confront an ominous development that threatened regional and international peace and security.
In reacting to UDI, the UN Security Council recognised the legitimacy of the Zimbabwe people’s struggle against racist minority rule, which was undemocratic. Similarly, the Security Council must legitimately consider Robert Mugabe’s forestalling of the installation of a legitimate elected government through illegitimate force, and the consequent violations of human rights, as clearly constituting a threat to international peace and security.
Through his brutal suppression of the right of the Zimbabwean people to freely elect a government of their choice and through his regime’s perpetration of crimes against humanity, Robert Mugabe has created an explosive and dangerous situation akin to Ian Smith’s UDI.
A corrupt, murderous and illegitimate regime maintains State-sponsored violence against a defenceless civilian population. This situation is rapidly degenerating into mass killings, refugee flows and mass starvation.
The prevailing internal situation therefore constitutes a threat to regional and international peace and security. Sadc Heads of State and Government came to the same conclusion at their Luanda, Angola, Summit when they denied the Mugabe regime the opportunity to host the Sadc 2003 summit.
We believe that the international community must proceed rapidly to use this Sadc position as a launching pad for determined action to clamp down on the growing spiral of violence and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Mugabe regime.
In his violent seizure of power, Robert Mugabe must not be allowed to invoke the international legal term, “national sovereignty” in a vain endeavour to reinforce his illegitimate political position internationally.
He is susceptible to a megalomania that identifies his corporeal self with symbols of nation and state. This provides the context in which Robert Mugabe inflicts crimes against humanity upon those Zimbabweans trapped within the boundaries of the territory that he confuses with himself.
In Robert Mugabe’s case, the term “national sovereignty” must not be used to allow him to shield the suppression of the real popular sovereignty from external rebuke and sanction.
The sovereignty of the people of Zimbabwe must be protected, but the object of the protection is not the power base of a tyrant who rules directly by naked and illegitimate force or through the apparatus of a totalitarian political order.
Instead, what must be protected is the capacity of the people of Zimbabwe to freely express and effect legitimate choices about the identities and policies of those who govern them. The time for the Security Council to act is now.
Delay will result in a costly catastrophe in terms of human lives. We therefore urgently appeal to you, Mr President, as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to act with your characteristic determination to put a stop to the violent abuse of human rights and the carnage that is going on and assist in the process of laying a healing hand on the country and its tortured people.
I avail myself, Mr President, this opportunity to renew the assurances of my highest consideration.
Yours sincerely,
Morgan Tsvangirai,
President, Movement for Democratic Change.
Comment: Tsvangirai’s urgent appeal to the United Nations reflects the growing pressure the opposition party is under from the GOZ, the MDC’s inability to devise effective, home-grown solutions to Zimbabwe’s intensifying cycle of crises, and a genuine concern that the situation here will soon degenerate into civil conflict. SULLIVAN
Comments
+5 # Raga 2011-08-28 00:15
We may live in denial just because we expect him to deliver us one day but the truth is Tsvangirai is not his own man. He is just too much when it comes to consulting the Westerners. He does not believe in himself. He believes the future lies in America and britain because he was exposed to them more than he was to the actual world. God help us.
Labels: GW BUSH, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM, TREASON, WIKILEAKS, WIKILEAKS CABLES
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Bush cancels Europe trip over arrest fears
By: The Guardian
Posted: Monday, February 7, 2011 10:05 am
GEORGE W Bush has had to call off a trip to Switzerland next weekend amid planned protests by human rights groups over the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and the threat of a warrant for his arrest.
David Sherzer, a spokesman for the former US president, confirmed the move in an email to the Associated Press. "We regret that the speech has been cancelled," he said.
"President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office."
The visit would have been Bush's first to Europe since he admitted in his autobiography, Decision Points, in November that he had authorised the use of waterboarding – simulated drowning – on detainees at Guantánamo accused of links with al-Qaida.
Whether out of concern over the protests or the arrest warrant, it is an extraordinary development for a former US president to have his travel plans curtailed in this way, and amounts to a victory for human rights campaigners.
Since the arrest of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998, international leaders can no longer be confident of immunity. Israeli politicians have cancelled trips to London and elsewhere for fear of arrest warrants.
Bush had been due to deliver a speech at a dinner in Geneva organised by the United Israel Appeal, a US-based organisation that helps Jews move to Israel.
Robert Equey, the organisation's lawyer, was quoted by the Swiss daily Tribune de Genève at the weekend saying that the decision to abandon the speech was because of concern that the protests might lead to violence, not fear of an arrest warrant.
"The calls to demonstrate were sliding into dangerous terrain," Equey said. "The organisers claimed to be able to maintain order, but warned they could not be held responsible for any outbursts."
The threat of an arrest warrant had not been a factor in the decision. The Centre for Constitutional Rights, the human rights group seeking an arrest warrant, said: "Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case."
Human rights campaigners said they would seek arrest warrants wherever Bush planned to travel outside the US.
Folco Galli, a spokesman for the Swiss justice ministry, told the Associated Press that the department's initial assessment was that Bush would have enjoyed immunity from prosecution for any actions taken while in office.
But Amnesty International said today that it had sent a detailed factual and legal analysis to Swiss prosecutors, claiming there was sufficient information to open a criminal investigation.
"Such an investigation would be mandatory under Switzerland's international obligations if President Bush entered the country," Amnesty said.
It added: "Anywhere in the world that he travels, President Bush could face investigation and potential prosecution for his responsibility for torture and other crimes in international law, particularly in any of the 147 countries that are party to the UN convention against torture."
Organisers of the protest had called on participants to bring a shoe, commemorating the Iraqi journalist who threw one at Bush during a 2008 press conference in Baghdad, to a rally outside the hotel where Bush was due to speak.
Human rights groups had planned to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in Geneva tomorrow over the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo. The Bush administration claims that waterboarding does not amount to torture, but human rights organisations and the Obama administration have said it does.
The document will no longer be filed in court but will be released at a media event. It focuses on two former Guantánamo Bay detainees, Majid Khan and former al-Jazeera correspondent Sami el-Hajj.
Speaking before the cancellation of the visit, lawyers for the two said the trip was the first opportunity for the former president to face the legal consequences of authorising waterboarding and other techniques.
"What we have in Switzerland is a Pinochet opportunity," said Gavin Sullivan, lawyer for the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, backing the claim together with the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights.
"Bush enjoys no immunity from prosecution. As head of state he authorised and condoned acts of torture, and the law is clear – where a person has been responsible for torture, all states have an obligation under international law to open an investigation and prosecute." He added: "Bush will be pursued wherever he goes as a war criminal and torturer."
Legal proceedings under way in Spain accuse White House legal advisers, known as the Bush Six, of criminal wrongdoing for advising that the techniques were legal.
"Nobody – from those who administered the practices to those at the top of the chain of command – is under a shield of absolute immunity for the practices of secret detention, extraordinary rendition and torture," said Martin Scheinin, UN special rapporteur on human rights and professor of public international law at the European University Institute.
"Legally this case is quite clear. Bush does not enjoy immunity as a former head of state, and he has command responsibility for the decisions that were taken."
Wanted: politicians who faced arrest
The arrest of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998 ended the immunity leaders had largely enjoyed. Britain had no choice but to act on an extradition request by Spain over the murders of Spanish citizens in Chile when he was in power.
The targeting of US politicians began in earnest during the Bush administration after the opening of Guantánamo Bay detention centre, the invasion of Iraq and revelations of secret CIA prisons overseas and rendition flights.
In 2005, the then US secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld, was threatened with arrest in Germany for war crimes relating to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Rumsfeld threatened to pull out of a prestigious defence conference in Munich until German prosecutors assured him that he would not be apprehended.
Israeli politicians have also been the subject of arrest attempts on visits to Europe. A British court issued a warrant in 2009 for Israel's then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, below, on behalf of Palestinian victims. But she postponed her trip to London, saying scheduling problems were to blame.
Another Israeli politician, deputy prime minister Dan Meridor, cancelled a trip to London last year after being told he may face an arrest warrant or some other legal action, apparently over the Israeli killing of Turkish activists on a ship bound for Gaza
Labels: GW BUSH, WAR CRIMES
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War and Terror: Bush Pens True Crime Book
Posted on Monday, November 15 @ 13:58:22 AST
Bushfire By Bill Quigley
November 11, 2010 - counterpunch.org
In his memoir (which some wise people have already moved in bookstores to the CRIME section) George W. Bush admitted that he authorized that detainees be waterboarded, tortured, a crime under US and international law.
Bush's crime confession coincides with reports that no one will face criminal charges from the US Department of Justice for the destruction of 92 CIA videotapes which contained interrogations using waterboarding. Where is the accountability for these crimes?
Bush and other criminals will be brought to justice if the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) have their way.
CCR and ECCHR jointly intervened into a criminal investigation in Spain examining the role of former civilian and military officials from the Bush administration in the commission of international law violations, including torture. The investigation is ongoing and includes the crimes that Bush admitted he authorized.
CCR and ECCHR made it clear that they are committed to pursuing criminal accountability and Bush's confessions help. In a joint statement they said:
"As Attorney General Eric Holder stated during his confirmation hearings, waterboarding is torture. Calling these acts what they are, torture, is not the result of differing legal 'opinion,' as Bush states; it is a matter of law. Harold Koh, the State Department Legal Adviser, confirmed this in Geneva last week, stating during the U.S. Universal Periodic Review that "the Obama administration defines waterboarding as torture as a matter of law" and it is not a 'policy choice.'
"There are no circumstances or excuses—including 'national security'—under domestic and international law that allow for the use of torture. And there is an obligation to investigate and prosecute torture.
"Bush's decision to authorize torture and other illegal acts against detainees held in U.S. custody led to the use of torture at Guantánamo, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in secret prisons by U.S. forces, and contractors, certain allies and the national forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. His decision led to Abu Ghraib.
"Debates as to whether or not waterboarding of detainees led to intelligence or make the nation 'safer' are not relevant questions. The only valid question is: can we torture? The answer is no.
"Without accountability it is impossible to ensure that such actions are never authorized by any future president or other U.S. official. No immunity protects Bush from prosecution for acts which violate federal and international law. The Pinochet precedent demonstrates that the law eventually catches up with former presidents—even those who flout their impunity.
"Bush states that accountability 'would set a terrible precedent for our democracy.'
"We answer that not doing so is failing our democracy—yet again. We therefore urge the Obama administration and the Department of Justice to act upon their recognition that waterboarding is torture as a matter of law, to investigate and prosecute acts of torture and other serious violations carried out by officials of the former administration, including George W. Bush.
"But we will not wait any longer for the Obama administration to act—we will continue seeking justice and accountability under the principle of universal jurisdiction and as counsel in the ongoing investigation in Spain."
Sell those books, George W, you may need the money for legal fees yet!
Click here for more information on CCR's work towards accountability.
Bill Quigley is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at quigley77@gmail.com
Labels: GW BUSH, WAR CRIMES
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Who removed Aristide?
Paul Farmer reports from Haiti
On the night of 28 February, the Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced from power. He claimed he’d been kidnapped and didn’t know where he was being taken until, at the end of a 20-hour flight, he was told that he and his wife would be landing ‘in a French military base in the middle of Africa’. He found himself in the Central African Republic.
An understanding of the current crisis requires a sense of Haiti’s history. In the 18th century it became France’s most valuable colonial possession, and one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies there has ever been. Santo Domingo, as it was then called, was the leading port of call for slave ships: on the eve of the French Revolution, it was supplying two-thirds of all of Europe’s tropical produce. A third of new arrivals died within a few years.
Haitians are still living with the legacy of the slave trade and of the revolt that finally removed the French. The revolt began in 1791, and more than a decade of war followed; France’s largest expeditionary force, led by General Leclerc, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, was sent to put down the rebellion. As the French operation flagged, the slave general, Toussaint l’Ouverture, was invited to a parley. He was kidnapped and taken away to a prison in the Jura. In Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution,[*] Laurent Dubois tells Toussaint’s story in a manner that reminds us of its similarities to the current situation:
‘Toussaint must not be free,’ Leclerc wrote to the colonial minister in Paris at the time, ‘and should be imprisoned in the interior of the Republic. May he never see Saint-Domingue again.’ ‘You cannot hold Toussaint far enough from the ocean or put him in a prison that is too strong,’ Leclerc reiterated a month later. He seemed to fear that the deported man might suddenly reappear. His very presence in the colony, he warned, would once again set it alight.
Toussaint died of exposure and tuberculosis in 1803. Every Haitian schoolchild knows his last words by heart: ‘In overthrowing me, you have cut down in San Domingo only the trunk of the tree of black liberty. It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep.’
In November 1803 the former slaves won what proved to be the war’s final battle, and on 1 January 1804 declared the independent republic of Haiti. It was Latin America’s first independent country and the only nation ever born of a slave revolt. The Haitian Revolution, Dubois writes, was ‘a dramatic challenge to the world as it then was. Slavery was at the heart of the thriving system of merchant capitalism that was profiting Europe, devastating Africa, and propelling the rapid expansion of the Americas.’ Independent Haiti had few friends. Virtually all the world’s powers sided with France against the self-proclaimed Black Republic, which declared itself a haven not only for runaway slaves but also for indigenous people from the rest of the Americas (the true natives of Haiti had succumbed to infectious disease and Spanish slavery well before the arrival of the French). Hemmed in by slave colonies, Haiti had only one non-colonised neighbour, the slaveholding United States, which refused to recognise its independence.
Haiti’s leaders were desperate for recognition, since the island’s only source of revenue was the sugar, coffee, cotton and other tropical produce it had to sell. In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognise Haiti’s independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The ‘debt’ that Haiti recognised was incurred by the slaves when they deprived the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their human ‘property’.
The impact of the debt repayments – which continued until after World War Two – was devastating. In the words of the Haitian anthropologist Jean Price-Mars, ‘the incompetence and frivolity of its leaders’ had ‘turned a country whose revenues and outflows had been balanced up to then into a nation burdened with debt and trapped in financial obligations that could never be satisfied.’ ‘Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood,’ the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher argued.
By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country ‘in its hands’, was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy. It had plenty of internal enemies, however. Military-backed governments, dictatorships, chronic instability, repression, the heavy hand of Washington over all: this state of affairs continued throughout the 20th century.
I learned about Haiti’s history while working on medical projects on the country’s central plateau. When I first travelled there in 1983, the Duvalier family dictatorship had been in place for a quarter of a century. There was no dissent. The Duvaliers and their military dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, while the judiciary and the rest of the world looked the other way. Haiti was already known as the poorest country in the Western world, and those who ran it argued that force was required to police deep poverty.
By the mid-1980s, the hunger, despair and disease were beyond management. Baby Doc Duvalier, named ‘president for life’ at 19, fled in 1986. A first attempt at democratic elections, in 1987, led to massacres at polling stations. An army general declared himself in charge. In September 1988, the mayor of Port-au-Prince – a former military officer – paid a gang to set fire to a Catholic church as mass was being said. It was packed with people, 12 of whom died. At the altar was Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the nemesis of the dictatorship and the army. Aristide was a proponent of liberation theology, with its injunction that the Church proclaim ‘a preferential option for the poor’, but liberation theology had its adversaries: members of Reagan’s brains trust, meeting in 1980, declared it less Christian than Communist. ‘US policy,’ they said, ‘must begin to counter (not react against) . . . the "liberation theology” clergy.’
Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’ Haitians knew, however, that Aristide would win any democratic election, and on 16 December 1990, he got 67 per cent of the vote in a field of 12 candidates. No run-off was required.
The United States might not have been able to prevent Aristide’s landslide victory, but there was plenty they could do to undermine him. The most effective method, adopted by the first Bush administration, was to fund both the opposition – their poor showing at the polls was no reason, it appears, to cut off aid to them – and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic. For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers.
In October 1994, under Clinton, the US military intervened and restored Aristide to power, with a little over a year of his term left to run. Although authorised by the UN, the restoration was basically a US operation. Then, seven weeks after Aristide’s return, Republicans took control of the Congress, and influential Republicans have worked ever since to block aid to Haiti or burden it with preconditions.
The aid coming through official channels was never very substantial: the US gave Haiti, per capita, one tenth of what it distributed in Kosovo. It is true that, as former US ambassadors and the Bush administration have recently claimed, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti – but not to the elected government. A great deal of it went to the anti-Aristide opposition. A lot also went to pay for the UN occupation, and Halliburton support services. There was little effort to rebuild schools, the healthcare infrastructure, roads, ports, telecommunications or airports.
During his few months in office, Aristide, in part because of the abolition of the Haitian army, became in 1996 the first elected civilian to see another elected civilian – René Préval – succeed him as president of Latin America’s oldest republic. Préval in turn became Haiti’s first president ever to serve out his term, not a day more or less. In November 2000, Aristide was again elected by a landslide. But problems had already arisen. In the local and parliamentary elections in May, eight parliamentary seats were disputed and when the political opposition cried foul, the US froze international aid. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), for example, had approved four loans, for health, education, drinking water and road improvement. Haitian and American sources have confirmed to me that the US asked the bank to block the loans until the electoral disputes had been worked out. Since seven of the senators in question resigned in 2001, and the other’s term expired shortly thereafter, that should have been the end of the aid freeze, yet it continued throughout Aristide’s tenure.
The State Department later claimed that the freeze was decided on by a consensus of the members of the Organisation of American States in something called the Declaration of Quebec City. The declaration is dated 22 April 2001, and the letter from the US representative asking that the loans not be disbursed was dated 8 April. To quote the conclusion of one of the few journalists to find this scandal worthy of inquiry, ‘it would seem that the effort became concerted after it was made.’
International financial institutions engaged in discriminatory and probably illegal practices towards Haiti. According to the London-based Haiti Support Group,
Haiti’s debt to international financial institutions and foreign governments has grown from $302 million in 1980 to $1.134 billion today. About 40 per cent of this debt stems from loans to the brutal Duvalier dictators, who invested precious little of it in the country. This is known as ‘odious debt’ because it was used to oppress the people, and, according to international law, this debt need not be repaid.
Yet in order to meet the renewed demands of the IDB, the cash-strapped Haitian government was required to pay ever-expanding arrears on its debts, many of them linked to loans paid out to the Duvalier dictatorship and to the military regimes that ruled Haiti with great brutality from 1986 to 1990. In July 2003, Haiti sent more than 90 per cent of all its foreign reserves to Washington to pay off these arrears. As of today, less than $4 million of the four blocked loans – which totalled $146 million – has reached Haiti in spite of many assurances from the IDB.
Even so it was not until last month that one could read in a US daily newspaper that the aid freeze might have contributed to the overthrow of the penniless Haitian government. On 7 March, the Boston Globe wrote:
Today, Haiti’s government, which serves eight million people, has an annual budget of about $300 million – less than that of Cambridge, a city of just over 100,000. And as Haitians attempt to form a new government, many say its success will largely depend on how much and how soon aid will flow to the country . . . Many of Aristide’s supporters, in Haiti and abroad, angrily contend that the international community, particularly the United States, abandoned the fledgling democracy when it needed aid the most. Many believe that Aristide himself was the target of the de facto economic sanctions, just as Haiti was beginning to put its finances back in order.
That the US and France undermined Aristide is not a fringe opinion. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Union have called for a formal investigation into his removal. ‘Most people around the world believe that Aristide’s departure was at best facilitated, at worst coerced by the US and France,’ Gayle Smith, a member of the National Security Council staff under Clinton, recently said.
Why such animus towards Haiti’s leader? Taking up the question of the historic French debt, Aristide declared that France ‘extorted this money from Haiti by force and . . . should give it back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare, water systems and roads.’ He did the maths, adding in interest and adjusting for inflation, to calculate that France owes Haiti $21,685,135,571.48 and counting. This figure was scoffed at by some of the French, who saw the whole affair as a farce mounted by their disgruntled former subjects; others, it’s increasingly clear, were insulted or angered when the point was pressed in diplomatic and legal circles.
Still, Aristide kept up the pressure. The figure of $21 billion was repeated again and again. The number 21 appeared all over the place in Haiti, along with the word ‘restitution’. On 1 January this year, during the bicentennial celebrations, Aristide announced he would replace a 21-gun salute with a list of the 21 things that had been done in spite of the embargo and that would be done when restitution was made. The crowd went wild. The French press by and large dismissed his comments as silly, despite the legal merits of his case. Many Haitians saw Aristide as a modern Toussaint l’Ouverture, a comparison that Aristide did not discourage. ‘Toussaint was undone by foreign powers,’ Madison Smartt Bell wrote in Harper’s in January, ‘and Aristide also had suffered plenty of vexation from outside interference.’
It’s usually easy to tell, in even the briefest conversation about Aristide, how your interlocutor feels about him. Opinion in Haiti is almost always referred to as ‘polarised’ in the US press, but this isn’t true in every sense. Elections and polls, even recent ones, show that the poor majority still support Aristide. It’s the middle classes and the traditional political elites who disagree about him, as well as people like me: non-Haitians who, for whatever reasons, concern themselves with that country’s affairs.
Between the coup that followed Aristide’s inauguration and his return to Haiti, the coverage in the US was of the same character as today’s. On 22 September 1994, the New York Times ran a front-page piece called ‘The Mouse that Roared’. From it, we get a keen sense of Aristide as irritant:
The Clinton crowd has had to work hard to justify him to lawmakers who were unnerved by the October 1993 closed-door CIA briefing to Congress, in which the intelligence agency offered information – later proven false – that Father Aristide had received psychiatric treatment at a Montreal hospital in 1980. Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, left the briefing and branded him a ‘psychopath’ – a slur it has been hard for Father Aristide to get over.
It would be convenient for the traditional Haitian elites and their allies abroad if Aristide, who has been forced to preside over unimaginable penury, had been abandoned by his own people. But Gallup polls in 2002, the results of which were never disseminated, showed that, despite his faults, he is far and away Haiti’s most popular and trusted politician. So what is to be done about the people who, to the horror of the Republican right, keep voting for him?
The protégés of Jesse Helms have had more say in Aristide’s fate than the Haitian electorate have. Although US officials stated initially that he had been ‘taken to the country of his choice’ at the end of February, Aristide’s claim that he had no idea where he was going seems more plausible. He had never been to the Central African Republic before. About the size of Texas and with a population of only three million, it is subject to French military and economic interests. A BBC story in March 2003 reported that the capital, Bangui, was the world’s most dangerous city, while the US advises its citizens not to travel to the country; the US embassy was closed two years ago.
On the tarmac, Aristide thanked the Africans for their hospitality, and then said: ‘I declare in overthrowing me they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace, but it will grow back because the roots are l’Ouverturian.’
The Bush administration appears to have put two men in charge of Latin American diplomacy, and they’ve been at it for a long time. As the ‘special presidential envoy to the western hemisphere’, Otto Reich is the top US diplomat in the region, even though he has never survived a House or Senate hearing; he was given the post by Bush during a Congressional recess. In the 1990s, Reich was a lobbyist for industry (one beneficiary of his work: Lockheed Martin, who have been selling fighter planes to Chile); before that he had a long record of government service.
During the civil war in Nicaragua, according to William Finnegan in a New Yorker profile, Reich
headed a Contra-support programme that operated out of an outfit called the Office of Public Diplomacy. The office arranged speeches and recommended books to school libraries, but also leaked false stories to the press – that, for instance, the Sandinista government was receiving Soviet MiG fighters, or was involved in drug trafficking . . . The office employed army psychological-warfare specialists, and worked closely with Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, at the National Security Council.
During the course of the Iran-Contra investigation, the US comptroller general concluded that Reich’s office had ‘engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities’. But by then Reich had been named US ambassador to Venezuela, where he laid the groundwork for future efforts to destabilise President Chávez. Not all this activity is covert: less than a year ago, Reich was on record welcoming a coup against Chávez, and urging the State Department and opinion makers to support the ‘new government’. The only problem was that the Venezuelan majority failed to fall into step, and Chávez remained.
Last month, the Bush administration sent Roger Noriega to Haiti to ‘work out’ the crisis. Not everyone knew who he was: Noriega’s career has been spent in the shadows of Congressional committees. For the better part of a decade, he worked for Helms and his allies, and it’s no secret he has had Aristide in his sights for years. US Haiti policy is determined by a small number of people who were prominent in either Reagan’s or George H.W. Bush’s cabinets. Most are back in government today after an eight-year vacation in conservative think tanks or lobbying firms. Elliot Abrams, convicted of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra hearings, serves on the National Security Council; Reagan’s national security adviser John Poindexter until recently headed the Pentagon’s new counterterrorism unit; John Negroponte, former ambassador to Honduras, is now ambassador to the UN. Jeanne Kirkpatrick is on the board of the International Republican Institute, a body which has been actively supporting the opposition in Haiti (my sources suggest that it backed the demobilised army personnel who provided the opposition’s muscle at the beginning of the year, though it denies this).
The players on the Haitian side fall into one of two categories: first, Haiti’s business elite, including those who own the media, and then the former military and paramilitaries – the people who were involved in the 1991-94 coup. Some have been in jail since then for murder, drug trafficking and crimes against humanity. Today, every single one of them is out.
Among those released by the rebels is the former general Prosper Avril, a leader of the notorious Presidential Guard under both Duvaliers. Avril seized power in September 1988, and was deposed in March 1990. A US District Court found that his regime engaged in a ‘systematic pattern of egregious human rights abuses’. It also found him personally responsible for enough ‘torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ to award six of his victims a total of $41 million in compensation. The victims included opposition politicians, union leaders, scholars, even a doctor trying to practise community medicine. Avril’s repression was not subtle: three torture victims were paraded on national television with their faces grotesquely swollen, their limbs bruised and their clothing covered with blood. He suspended 37 articles of the constitution, and declared a state of siege.
The US started protecting Avril shortly after the 1994 restitution of Aristide. In November that year, the then secretary of state, Warren Christopher, relayed to the US ambassador intelligence reports that the Red Star Organisation, under Avril’s leadership, was planning a ‘harassment and assassination campaign directed at . . . Aristide supporters’. This information was not passed on to the Haitian authorities. In December, the Haitian police, acting on their own information, sought to arrest Avril at his home. Immediately after the police arrived, US soldiers turned up and tried to dissuade them from making the arrest. By the time they got in, Avril had fled to the neighbouring residence of the Colombian ambassador. Police searching Avril’s house found military uniforms, illegal police radios and a cache of weapons.
He escaped to Israel but later returned to Haiti, where his international and potential military support deterred further attempts to arrest him. He founded a political party, which has never fielded candidates in an election but was invited by the IRI to participate in developing an opposition to Aristide. In May 2001, after US troops had withdrawn from Haiti, the police finally seized the opportunity to execute Avril’s arrest warrant. The successful arrest was greeted with applause by the vast majority of Haitians and by human rights and justice groups in Haiti, the US and Europe. Amnesty International asserted that the arrest ‘could mark a step forward by the Haitian justice system in its struggle against impunity’: ‘the gravity of the human rights violations committed during General Avril’s period in power, from his 1988 coup d’état to his departure in March 1990, cannot,’ Amnesty said, ‘be ignored.’ France’s Committee to Prosecute Duvalier concluded that ‘the general must be tried.’ On 9 December 2003, the magistrate investigating the Piatre Massacre in 1990, when several peasants lost their lives, formally charged Avril with responsibility. He was in prison awaiting the end of the pre-trial proceedings when he was freed on 2 March – a few days after Aristide was deposed.
The rebel leader Guy Philippe received training, during the last coup, at a US military facility in Ecuador. When the army was demobilised, Philippe was incorporated into the new police force, serving as police chief in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas and in the second city, Cap-Haïtien. During his tenure, the UN International Civilian Mission learned, dozens of suspected gang members were summarily ex ecuted, most of them by police under the command of Philippe’s deputy. The US embassy has also implicated Philippe in drug smuggling during his police career. Crimes committed in large part by ex-military policemen, are often pinned on Aristide, even though he sought to prevent coup-happy human rights abusers from ending up in these posts.
Philippe fled Haiti in October 2000, when the authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a clique of fellow police chiefs. Since then, the Haitian government has accused him of masterminding terrorist attacks in July and December 2001, as well as lethal hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti’s central plateau. (Over the last two years, four of our ambulances have been stolen, and members of our medical staff have been held hostage.) Last month, Philippe’s men bragged to the US press that they had executed Aristide supporters in Cap-Haïtien and Port-au-Prince, and many have indeed been reported missing. ‘I am the chief, the military chief. The country is in my hands,’ Philippe boasted on 2 March, which triggered the following response from Oscar Arias, the Nobel Peace laureate and former president of Costa Rica: ‘Nothing could more clearly prove why Haiti does not need an army than the boasting of rebel leader Guy Philippe last week in Port-au-Prince. The Haitian army was abolished nine years ago during a period of democratic transition, precisely to prevent the country from falling back into the hands of military men.’ Philippe told the Associated Press that he would use his new powers to arrest Haiti’s prime minister, Yvon Neptune, and proceeded to lead a mob in an attack on Neptune’s house. Philippe has been quoted as saying that the man he most admires is Pinochet.
The list goes on. Louis-Jodel Chamblain was a sergeant in the Haitian army until 1989 or 1990. He reappeared on the scene in 1993 as the second in command of the FRAPH. (Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant, its leader, is now living as a free man in Queens, New York.) Among the FRAPH’s victims was Guy Malary, the justice minister, ambushed and machine-gunned with his bodyguard and a driver. In September 1995, Chamblain was one of seven senior military and FRAPH leaders convicted in absentia and sentenced to forced labour for life for their involvement in the September 1993 execution of Antoine Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist. In late 1994 or early 1995, he went into voluntary exile in the Dominican Republic.
As for the traditional political elite, some have wanted to live in the National Palace ever since the time it was occupied by Papa Doc. Others may appear more marginal but they have done their share of harm. When, the other day, Vladimir Jeanty was shown destroying artwork on public display in Port-au-Prince, he was described as a ‘pastor from the Party of God’. In fact he is another perennial presidential candidate, delighted to have the chance to burn precious artefacts linked with voodoo and other aspects of Haitian culture – and to do so in full view of the international press.
US-born André Apaid, known in the US press as ‘the leader of the civil society movement to oust Aristide’, is the founder of a TV station and owner of a garment manufacturing firm (a subsidiary of Alpha Industries) that was prominently featured in news reports about Disney’s sweatshop suppliers. Aristide’s relentless push to raise the minimum wage above 72 gourdes a day – about £1 – cut into the massive profits of the offshore assembly industry. The US Congress has proposed building new garment factories in Haiti and encouraging American companies to contract out more sweatshop labour – good news for Apaid.
At the other end of the social spectrum from Apaid are the chimères, the groups described in the foreign press as armed thugs working for the Aristide government. But who are the chimères? Residents of Haiti’s slums, long excluded from civil society, they ‘were indeed chimeras’, Madison Smartt Bell wrote. ‘Ill fortune left them as unrealised shadows . . . These were the people Aristide had originally been out to salvage.’
The salvage operation came to an end last month as ‘rebels’ continued to ‘take cities’. I work in these ‘cities’ and I saw the rebels’ modus operandi. They came in, shot the police – who usually numbered no more than two or three – and left. Only a similarly equipped counterforce could have stopped them. The beleaguered government appealed for help in the Security Council, but this was delayed by the Bush administration – delayed long enough for the government to fall, or be pushed out.
Did the US and France have a hand in Aristide’s removal? Were he and his wife being held against their will? Most of Aristide’s claims, initially disputed by US officials from Noriega to Donald Rumsfeld, are now acknowledged to be true. His enemies’ claims that Aristide met with officials in Antigua – Aristide said they were not allowed to move from their seats – were undermined by reports from Antigua itself. Noriega acknowledged during a House hearing that Aristide did not know of his destination until less than an hour before landing in the Central African Republic. Even CAR officials acknowledge that no Haitian authorities were involved in the choice of destination.
Many more questions remain unanswered. We know that US funds overtly financed the opposition, but did they also fund, even indirectly, the rebellion, which featured high-powered US weapons only a year after twenty thousand such weapons were promised to the Dominican Republic? Senator Christopher Dodd is urging an investigation of US training sessions for six hundred ‘rebels’ in the Dominican Republic, and wants to find out ‘how the IRI spent $1.2 million of taxpayers’ money’ in Haiti. Answering these and related questions would take an intrepid investigative reporter, rather than a physician like myself, working, with some trepidation, in central Haiti. It would need a reporter willing to take on hard questions about US policies in Latin America. But about the return of the military, there can be little doubt. In his first public statement the man sworn in as Haiti’s new prime minister announced that Aristide’s order to replace the military with a civilian police force violated Haiti’s constitution; he promised to name a commission to examine the issues surrounding its restoration.
Labels: GW BUSH, HAITI, JEAN BERTRAND ARISTIDE, NEOCOLONIALISM
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