Palestinians Dispute Israel’s Findings on a Prisoner’s Death

JERUSALEM — The Israeli Health Ministry said Sunday night that preliminary autopsy findings could not determine the cause of death of a 30-year-old Palestinian prisoner, which Israeli officials had at first attributed to a heart attack. But Palestinian officials said the lack of heart damage coupled with bruising on the man’s chest, back and neck suggested that he was tortured during interrogation.

Palestinians amid clashes with Israeli soldiers and border police officers in Hebron on Sunday.

“The signs that appeared during the autopsy show clearly that he was subjected to severe torture that led immediately to his death,” Issa Qaraka, the Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, said at an evening news conference in Ramallah, after being briefed by a Palestinian pathologist who attended the autopsy of the prisoner, Arafat Jaradat, who died Saturday.

“I hold Israel fully responsible for killing Arafat Jaradat,” added Mr. Qaraka, who earlier on Sunday called for an international investigation into the death. “The Israeli story was forged and full of lies.”

The 4,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails refused meals on Sunday to protest Mr. Jaradat’s death, and hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in several cities and villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

After days of such demonstrations, which have included violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers and settlers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, Isaac Molho, sent a message to the Palestinian leadership on Sunday that Israeli officials described as an “unequivocal demand to restore quiet.” Israel also transferred to the Palestinian Authority $100 million in tax revenue it had been withholding.

But a senior Israeli official said the government would not accede to Palestinian requests to release four prisoners who have been on a long-term hunger strike or 123 people who have been detained since before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. “Some of these people are accused of very heinous crimes,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the news media. “They’re saying that every Palestinian hunger striker should have a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can’t have a system like that. It’s not sustainable.”

After weeks of intensifying protests in solidarity with the hunger strikers, attention turned Sunday to Mr. Jaradat, who relatives said worked at a gas station, was the father of a 4-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy, and came from a family in which all the men had spent time in Israeli jails. He was arrested last Monday over throwing stones at Israeli cars near a West Bank settlement during November’s conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

 Palestinian officials said that Mr. Jaradat admitted the stone-throwing but denied heaving fire bombs. He also confessed to tossing rocks in a 2006 protest, they said. His detention was extended 12 days at a hearing on Thursday, during which his lawyer said that Mr. Jaradat complained of severe pain in his back and neck that he attributed to his interrogation.

“When he was under interrogation, the interrogator told him, ‘Say goodbye to your kids,’ ” Mr. Jaradat’s uncle, Musa, said at a news conference on Sunday morning.

French, Mali troops recover cache of explosives in northern Mali city of Gao

GAO, Mali — French soldiers on Wednesday recovered an enormous stash of explosives that authorities believe radical Islamic fighters were using to make bombs for attacks on northern Mali’s largest city, a Malian military spokesman said.

Meanwhile, officials in the capital said the army captain behind a coup last year that paved the way for radical Islamic militants to take over the north will be tasked with reforming the military.

France has said it intends to eventually hand over its mission to oust the Islamists to the Malian military and other African soldiers. The move is likely to heighten international concerns about whether Mali’s army is up to the task.

Malian military spokesman Daouda Diarra said that the French military removed some 800 kilograms (1,700 pounds) of explosive materials from a house in Gao. The find raised further fears that jihadists could be preparing to stage devastating attacks on civilian centers.

The explosives had been discovered several days earlier, and the team had returned to the site in the morning, Diarra said.
French military officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Radical Islamic fighters withdrew from Gao on Jan. 26 after imposing their harsh interpretation of Shariah law in the most populous city in northern Mali for nearly 10 months.
Since their retreat, the Islamic extremists have launched two suicide bombings in the last week and invaded the city for a five-hour-long gun battle Sunday in the center of the city. Sunday’s brazen assault marked the first time the jihadists ha
 d penetrated the city of mud-walled buildings since they fled.
Last week soldiers combing abandoned jihadist hideouts also found a stash of NITRAM 5 explosives hidden inside rice bags that were left in a communal trash area. The explosives are manufactured for use in mining, but can cause considerable damage when used as bombs.

Attack kills at least 5 at Iranian exile camp in Iraq

Baghdad (CNN) -- A camp housing Iranian dissidents in Iraq was attacked Saturday morning, leaving at least five dead and 40 wounded, Iraqi police said.

The rocket and mortar attack occurred at Camp Hurriya, a onetime U.S. base formerly known as Camp Liberty, which is now the home of the Iranian exile group Mujahedin-e-Khalq.

Accounts of the number of people killed and wounded in the attack vary.

Shahriar Kia, an MEK spokesman, said the incident left six dead and more than 100 injured, some of them critically.

He blamed one of the deaths on delays in getting the injured to the hospital.

The U.S. State Department also listed six fatalities. It urged the Iraqi government to investigate the attack promptly and take all appropriate measures to enhance camp security.

"The terrorists responsible for this attack must be brought to justice," said department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Residents at the camp were vulnerable both because the attack happened when most were asleep and because many lack adequate shelter, said Kia.

The residents are "squeezed into a small area, without shelter," said Kia. Protective concrete walls have also been removed from the site, he said.

It's not yet known who is responsible for the attack.

MEK last year moved from Camp Ashraf in Diyala province to Camp Hurriya in Baghdad. Leaders of the dissident group had been reluctant to move to the new camp because of the conditions there, calling it more of a prison than a home when they first arrived.

The group's move to the base is intended as a temporary measure before members are resettled in third countries.

Residents and their representatives and lawyers have appealed to the U.N. Secretary-General and U.S. officials to let them return to Ashraf, which they say has concrete buildings and shelters that offer more protection.

The United States has been working with the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees on the resettlement project.

Martin Kobler, special representative for Iraq of the U.N. secretary-general, strongly condemned the attack on the camp, which "led to the killing and injury of several residents."

Several Iraqi police officers were also wounded, he said in a statement.

Kobler urged the Iraqi authorities to ensure that those who were injured get the medical care they need.

He also called for the government to ensure the safety and security of the camp residents, as stipulated by the 2011 resettlement agreement, and promptly to investigate the attack and bring those behind it to justice.

MEK was removed from a U.S. State Department terror list in September, following a decision by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The group was put on the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, which includes more than 50 groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah, in 1997 because of the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and an attempted attack against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992.

However, since 2004 the United States has considered the group, which spent more than 25 years at the Ashraf camp, "noncombatants" and "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions.

Iran still considers the group to be a terrorist organization.

(Chasity M.)

Syria’s food shortages worsening, U.N. says

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Syrians face ever more acute food shortages and price increases as a spreading civil war sends agricultural production tumbling and threatens to damage crops such as wheat and barley, according to the United Nations.

Output of some foodstuffs plunged by as much as half last year in a farming sector now in “tatters,” the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned Wednesday. Analysts said the growing privations could hurt the rebels as much as, or more than, the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The military conflict triggered by a government crackdown on a nearly two-year-long uprising has shattered Syria’s once-proud agricultural self-sufficiency, with bread lines growing in some areas and meat and vegetable prices soaring.

“I was very saddened by the situation,” said Dominique Burgeon, director of emergencies at the FAO, after returning from a mission to Syria that ended this week. “The mission was struck by the plight of the Syrian people.”

In the first detailed international account of the agricultural situation in wartime Syria, the FAO said annual wheat and barley output fell from normal levels of 4.4 million to 5.5 million tons to less than 2.2 million tons in 2011-12. Production of staple items such as poultry, fruit and cooking oil plunged by up to 60 percent in some conflict zones, such as the central cities of Hama and Homs, and Daraa in the south.

Jihad Yazigi, editor of the Syria Report business newsletter, said the FAO report echoed other disturbing provisional agricultural data for last year, such as a decline of almost a third in the cotton crop and a 50 percent drop in sales at the state fertilizer company. A surge in fighting in the northeast of the country threatened to cause more suffering by affecting the wheat and barley crops concentrated there, he added.
“It’s a big issue for the population,” Yazigi said. “You will have more women forced to go into prostitution — and more children forced to beg.”
Some of the heaviest fighting of the war has taken place in Syria’s agricultural belt, including around the northern cities of Aleppo and Idlib. Rebel fighters control large areas of the countryside, meaning that food supply routes into mainly government-controlled city centers have been severely squeezed.
Most of the 10 million Syrians who live in rural areas — almost half the country’s peacetime population — have livelihoods linked to agriculture. Many now face severe difficulties in getting fuel and equipment, as well as the risk to their lives of working in the fields.
Although some observers said one cause of the uprising against Assad was a severe 2008 drought that decimated rural communities and drove people to poor urban suburbs, analysts said the latest war-related food shortages would not necessarily harm the government.
“The regime probably still has the ability to secure what it needs for its own constituency from the diminished supplies,” said David Butter, a Middle East economic specialist at Chatham House, a think tank in London “The economic and physical [distribution] infrastructure is probably still more in regime hands than in rebel hands.”
The war has brought an abrupt end to Syria’s two decades of near self-sufficiency in wheat, the country’s main carbohydrate staple, even if it has in the past been forced to tap the international market during drought years.
Grain traders said Syria faces huge difficulties in buttressing its supplies with large-scale imports. Although sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union do not officially target food or agricultural commodities, restrictions imposed on Syrian banks and trading companies mean that international institutions are reluctant to finance grain imports. The grain that does make it through tends to come piecemeal directly from neighboring countries, including Turkey and Iraq.
(Chasity M.)

Israel removes new Palestinian protest camp

The Israeli army has removed a Palestinian protest encampment of four tents and a building under construction near a village in the occupied West Bank, military sources said.
In addition to demolishing the structures near Beit Iksa, on the northwestern outskirts of Jerusalem, early on Monday "20 Palestinians at the site were evicted without incident," the sources said.
On Sunday night, the army issued "invasion removal orders" to the encampment, saying three of the tents and the building were on land owned by Israel, and the fourth tent was on the route of a planned separation barrier.
Activists on Friday set up the encampment to protest against Israel's intention to confiscate at least 124 acres of land near the village, naming the camp Bab al-Karama, Arabic for Gate of Dignity.
Bab al-Karama was inspired by a separate Palestinian protest camp of 24 tents set up on a disputed piece of land on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem that was dismantled by police last week.
Activists had established that camp, which they dubbed Bab al-Shams, or Gate of the Sun in Arabic, in a bid to draw attention to Israeli plans to build in the area, known as E1.
(Chasity M.)

 

Deadly blasts rock Iraqi capital

Three blasts, including a suicide attack, have killed at least 17 people in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, officials say.

The most deadly of Tuesday's explosions took place in Taji, 20km north of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives detonated his bomb near an army base, killing at least seven people and wounding 24.

Nasseer Rahman, a teacher, said he was sitting in a minibus waiting to pass the checkpoint when the bomb exploded about 120 metres away. He said dozens of cars were waiting in lines when the blast went off.

"As soon as the blast struck, we got off the minibus and ran to the site of the explosion," he said. "We saw several cars on fire and pools of blood, and everybody was screaming for help.''

Another car bomb exploded in a crowded market in the Shia neighbourhood of Shula, in the northwest of the capital, killing five people and wounding 13, police and hospital sources said.

"We received a call for us to head to the blast site. It was a car bomb. A woman was laying dead with a sack of groceries still beside her, and the wounded were screaming," said policeman Ghalib Ameer, whose patrol was called to Shula.

In Mahmudiya, a town 30km south of Baghdad, a car bomb attack near an army checkpoint killed five people, including two soldiers, and wounded 14 more.

Violence in Iraq has eased since the widespread sectarian carnage of 2006-2007, but Sunni armed groups still launch frequent attacks to reignite confrontation among the Shia majority, Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds.

Sunni protests

The latest attacks come amid rising ethnic and sectarian tension following the arrest last month of bodyguards assigned to the Sunni finance minister Rafia al-Issawi.

Thousands of Sunni protesters are camped out in western Anbar province in what is developing into a major challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose power-sharing government, split among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, has been bogged down in infighting since the last US troops left a year ago.

The Shia prime minister is trying to ease protests that erupted a month ago after officials arrested members of the finance minister's security team on terrorism charges. Sunni leaders saw that move as a crackdown.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the US-led invasion a decade ago, many Iraq Sunnis feel they have been marginalised by the Shia leadership and say Maliki is amassing power at their community's expense.
Maliki has appointed Shia Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani to investigate the protesters' demands.
Authorities said on Tuesday they had so far released more than 800 detainees unjustly held or whose sentences had ended.
But thousands of protesters, camped out on a highway in the Sunni heartland of Anbar, say they are determined to stay until their demands are met.
Sunni leaders want the modification of anti-terrorism laws and more control over a campaign against former members of Saddam's outlawed Baath party, both measures they believe unfairly target their minority community.
(Chasity M.)