unfreemedia.org - Middle East & N Africa http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/ Independent, frontline journalism en Copyright 2010 Thu, 13 May 2010 15:46:58 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Foolish email offer to spy for Israel brings a death sentence in Yemen By Kawkab al-Thaibani in Sanaa
Basam al-Haidari is 26-years-old,. He has little education but dreamed of supporting his big extended family - ten siblings, five of whom are deaf.
stigmatized_children.JPG

Instead of leading his family to security al-Haidari has walked himself into a death sentence.

Last April, al-Haidari was behind the bars of the Specialized Criminal Court of Appeals when he heard the Judge confirm the death sentence, for a crime committed while messing around on the internet.

He was sentenced to death for offering to spy for Israel.


]]> http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/foolish-email-offer-to-spy-for-israel-brings-a-death-sentence-in-yemen.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/foolish-email-offer-to-spy-for-israel-brings-a-death-sentence-in-yemen.html Israel Yemen al-Qaeda Capital punishment Human rights Islamic Jihad Organization Middle East Supreme Court of the United States Terrorism Thu, 13 May 2010 15:46:58 -0500 As the Officer said to the Poet: "We Lebanese are good at two things. Fighting. And shopping"

An Array of Tombs
The mass burial site for the victims of an Israeli air strike on Qana on July 30, 2006.(FEYROUZ / CC)

By Tom Sleigh
When we drove into Qana last year," Joseph told me, scanning the gray concrete houses on either side of the road, "we heard flames roaring, the sound of the jets, people screaming, and the ringing of cell phones." He looked at me and shrugged. "The relatives of people were calling to see if they were okay." Joseph worked for the Red Cross during the 2006 war with Israel and was one of the first to enter the village after an Israeli bombardment massacred twenty-eight Lebanese civilians. Soft-spoken, slight, he was solicitous on the surface but, like many Lebanese, reserved, even wary. When I hired him as my driver and interpreter to take me south from Beirut, I knew only that he drove a taxi with his father and worked as a draftsman in an engineering firm to pay his way at Lebanese University. But then he offered to take me to Qana. He could show it to me, he said; he could tell me what he'd seen.

Tom Sleigh most recent volume of poetry is Space Walk. He teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. His essay "The Deeds," from the Summer 2008 issue of VQR, was selected forBest American Travel Writing 2009.

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]]> http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/the-deeds.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/the-deeds.html Lebanon Beirut Druze Hunter College International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Israeli airstrike Lebanese University Middle East Qana Shia Sunni Tom Sleigh Wed, 12 May 2010 00:01:56 -0500 Kurdish writer tortured and shot in the head for mocking leaders Thumbnail image for cms-image-000047244.jpg
A Kurdish journalist kidnapped in Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, was tortured and then dumped on a main road with two bullets in his head.

Zardasht Osman, 23, was killed because he had lacerated region's two Kurdish parties, including the powerful Barzani clan. A university student, Osman was a freelance journalist who used a pseudonym online

"I am in love with Barzani's daughter," read one of his scathing posts which violated the taboo of even referring to a female family member of the region's president, Massoud Barzani. Osman wondered aloud how he might marry one of Mr. Barzani's daughters.

]]> http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/kurdish-writer-tortured-and-shot-in-the-head-for-mocking-leaders.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/kurdish-writer-tortured-and-shot-in-the-head-for-mocking-leaders.html Iraq Kurdistan Kurdish Thu, 06 May 2010 22:13:20 -0500 Women Without Men - a moving Iranian picture
By Leonard Doyle
Shirin Neshat's movie "Women Without Men," reveals a chapter in Iranian -US relations that most Americans have forgotten, (if they ever knew about it).
Iranians are still living with the consequences of the American led, British backed coup d'état that brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.

Women Without Men - Trailer from IndiePix on Vimeo.


Drawing on magical realism she chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953; a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history. Unfortunately the Washington Post seems to have sent a work experience intern to review this important film.

]]> http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/women-without-men-the-memory-hold-of-iranian-history.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/05/women-without-men-the-memory-hold-of-iranian-history.html Arthur Danto; Iran Feature film History of Iran Marina Abramovic Middle East Shirin Neshat Washington Post Women Without Men Sat, 01 May 2010 21:38:28 -0500 The Sahara's new cargo: drugs and radicalism


Stephen Ellis, 
A fusion of illicit money-making and radical politics is turning the big empty spaces of the western half of the Sahara into a profound security challenge, says Stephen Ellis.
About the author
Stephen Ellis is Desmond Tutu professor in the social sciences at the Free University Amsterdam, and a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden

It is not often that the words "cocaine" and "al-Qaida" are plausibly linked. But these two forces are turning the western half of the Sahara - approximately from southern Libya to the Atlantic coast - into a locus of illicit money-making and radical politics.  The development, quite a feat for a sparsely populatedregion, presents a challenge that the rich states to the north cannot afford to ignore.

A number of incidents in recent months suggest that this new reality has begun to take root. In December 2009, three alleged al-Qaida operatives of Malian origin were arrested in Ghana on "narco-terrorism" charges and sent to the United States under the auspices of the Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA), following a four-month tracking operation (see James M Dorsey, "Drugs Money Fills al Qaeda Coffers in West Africa", Deutsche Welle, 22 January 2010). In March 2010, a number of al-Qaida affiliates were charged in Mauritania with drug-trafficking offences involving the transportation of cocaine and marijuana.


]]> http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/the-saharas-new-cargo-drugs-and-radicalism.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/the-saharas-new-cargo-drugs-and-radicalism.html Morocco africa Conflict Democracy and government conflicts democracy & power africa & democracy globalisation government institutions International politics Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:26:30 -0500 'Hafez knew he would be forced to lie face down on the ground inside the prison, and then guards would shoot him through the heart.'

Hafez Ibrahim was sentenced to death in Yemen in 2005 at the age of 17. He was pardoned two years later but only after a nailbiting campaign by Amnesty International to save him. 


Hafez Ibrahim was 16 when he attended a wedding in his home town of Ta'izz. Everyone was in high spirits and most of the men were armed. At some point, the celebrations boiled over, a struggle broke out, a gun went off and someone was killed.
 

]]> http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/hafez-knew-he-would-be-forced-to-lie-face-down-on-the-ground-inside-the-prison-and-then-guards-would.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/hafez-knew-he-would-be-forced-to-lie-face-down-on-the-ground-inside-the-prison-and-then-guards-would.html Yemen Amnesty International Capital punishment Pardon Stay of execution Sun, 11 Apr 2010 18:59:25 -0500 Citizen bloggers 'white-anting' the Mubarak regime
  • Update: Egyptian police beat protesters demanding constitutional reforms
  • Police confiscate media cameras
  • Ayman Noor calls it "an insulting image" that soldiers deny freedom of expression
    • Wasla1.jpgIn Cairo yesterday armed police cracked down on a few dozen protesters demanding reforms to Egypt's arcane constitution. In Washington meanwhile, well-heeled Egyptian diplomats  turn up with worrying regularity at events to discuss internet censorship and citizen journalists. 
    The land of the Pharoh's is a chaotic shambles, tens of millions live in squalor and civil society kept firmly in check. But whether in downtown Cairo or more than 3,000 miles away in Washington, the representatives of Mubarak's police state are hard at work.

    At a forum on Internet freedom, a speaker described how Egyptian bloggers routinely get arrested and tortured. A few minutes later an Egyptian diplomat piped up with a question. 
    He had to be asked to identify himself and didn't bother to deny that bloggers are tortured and thrown in the cells with common criminals. He just asked about plans to defend Google and others in repressive regimes.

    As brazen as they are smooth, Egyptian officials know that because their country is an official "friend of the US", Cairo's undemocratic behavior always gets a pass in Washington. Contrast this with the sharp focus on Iran in the US media for its blatant abuse of the democratic movement. Why is whats wrong in Iran somehow OK in Egypt?

    On Monday this week, the same Egyptian diplomat lurked at the back of yet another panel discussion about citizen blogging across the Middle East. This time it was at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
    The diplomat wasn't there to lend a supportive word to the great heave for pluralism in Mubarak's sham democracy, but rather to take notes on the event to be sent back to Cairo overnight in a diplomatic cable.

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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/egypts-citizen-bloggers-white-anting-the-mubarak-regime.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/egypts-citizen-bloggers-white-anting-the-mubarak-regime.html Egypt Iran Arab World Arabic Network for Human Rights Information Ayman Nour Cairo Democracy Egypt International Atomic Energy Agency Middle East Mohamed ElBaradei Mubarak Publishing Social network service Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:12:03 -0500     How German sniper scopes secretly sold to Iran, were given to the Taliban and brought down a major Italian arms smuggling ring

    by Sebastian Rotella, from ProPublica: Articles and InvestigationsItalian anti-terrorist prosecutor Armando Spataro, pictured right, arrives for a Mar. 3, 2010, press conference announcing the arrests of Italians and Iranians suspected to have trafficked arms to Iran. (Giuseppe Cacace/Getty Images/AFP)

    MILAN - The Italian businessman sounded worried on the wiretap.

    Alessandro Bon was a politically connected entrepreneur and former sales representative for Beretta, the Italian gun manufacturer. But behind that facade, he was leading a ring of Italian arms dealers and Iranian spies who were illegally selling ammunition, helicopters and other military hardware to Iran, according to Italian court documents obtained by ProPublica.

    As investigators listened in October, Bon gave one of his associates bad news: Some German sniper scopes they had sold to Iran had surfaced among Taliban militants fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan.

    "You want to know where they found two of the sniper scopes, between you and me?" Bon said, according to a transcript of the call. "In Afghanistan ... They fired on German soldiers with two of the sniper scopes and the serial numbers were traced ... and the [German] police are investigating because they were in the hands of the Taliban ... I wonder what the hell they were doing in Afghanistan."

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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/how-german-sniper-scopes-secretly-sold-to-iran-were-given-to-the-taliban-and-brought-down-a-major-it.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/how-german-sniper-scopes-secretly-sold-to-iran-were-given-to-the-taliban-and-brought-down-a-major-it.html Iran arms smuggler Asia Beretta NATO ProPublica Taliban Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:04:04 -0500     Leaked video shows cold-blooded killing of Reuters staff by Apache gunship


    By Leonard Doyle
    With dramatic gunsight video footage, the WikiLeaks investigative journalism organization today directly challenged the US version of a deadly tragedy that took the lives of two Reuters staffers in Baghdad in 2007.
    The classified video footage shows a US Apache air crew lying about encountering insurgents in central Baghdad. They joke about their victims as they release fusillades of deadly cannon fire: "sweet" "look at that bitch go" "nice missile."
    The attack killed Namir Noor-Eldeen, an acclaimed 22-year-old war photographer and his driver Saeed Chmagh, 40.
    One of the Apache crew says he sees six people carrying AK-47s and another with a rocket propelled grenade. The photographer Noor-Eldeen is clearly visible with a camera over his shoulder. His colleague Chmagh is speaking on his mobile phone. It later emerged that he was speaking with a colleague from AFP news agency.
     One of the aircrew is heard to say that a member of the group is firing, although the video shows no such activity. In fact the men are wandering nonchalantly around the street.
    After one of the two helicopters, nicknamed Crazyhorse, opens fire a crew member exclaims: "Ha ha ha. I hit 'em." A short while another says: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards."
    The video depicts prolonged aerial surveillance followed by two deadly bursts of 30mm cannon fire. There is a disturbing callousness to the banter as the gunner, pilot and distant commander urge each other on claiming that they are attacking insurgents. 
    The disturbing footage shows the two Reuters staffers walking around, knowing that the helicopters are overhead. Moments later all hell is unleashed upon them.
    Having shot up a group of men, including Noor-Eldeen, the Apache camera returns to show a man, believed to be Chmagh struggle to his feet as a passing van stops to deliver aid. 


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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/leaked-video-shows-cold-blooded-killing-of-reuters-staff-by-apache-gunship.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/04/leaked-video-shows-cold-blooded-killing-of-reuters-staff-by-apache-gunship.html Iraq AH-64 Apache Apache gunship Baghdad Investigative journalism Julian Assange Middle East Namir Noor-Eldeen New York Times Pentagon Reuters United States Department of Defense Wikileaks YouTube Mon, 05 Apr 2010 11:38:50 -0500     With the Understanding of Gandhi, Aminatou Put Her Life on the Line

    by Barbara Becker

    When I was in college, I had a small book of questions meant to serve as conversation starters for social gatherings. There was one question in particular that I had no idea how to answer, and not having a response seemed to indicate some form of personal shortcoming in my young and idealistic mind: "Is there a cause for which you'd be willing to sacrifice your life?"

    On The Issues Magazine - ©Ellen Pliskin; PORTAL, 2006, watercolor
    ©Ellen Pliskin; "Portal"

    It wasn't until years later when I began working in international human rights that I encountered others who could answer that question affirmatively. This past year, I had the privilege of getting to know such a person when I spent time with Aminatou Haidar, the Western Saharan human rights defender who was in the U.S. last fall to accept the 2009 Civil Courage Prize for her peaceful advocacy on behalf of the Sahrawi people.

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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/with-the-understanding-of-gandhi-aminatou-put-her-life-on-the-line.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/with-the-understanding-of-gandhi-aminatou-put-her-life-on-the-line.html Morocco Africa Aminatou Haidar Canary Island Human rights Hunger strike Western Sahara Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:42:12 -0500     Between the hammer and the anvil in Yemen Mazrak Camp, north-west Yemen


    Mazrak refugee camp in the tough mountainous scrublands of Yemen's north-west border with Saudi Arabia is now home to more than 10,000 people displaced by the escalating war between the government and rebels from the Huthi clan.
    A man displaced by the war between Huthi rebels and government forces walks with his camel through a refugee camp at Mazrak, north-west Yemen.

    Photo: Hugh Macleod / IRIN

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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/between-the-hammer-and-the-anvil-in-yemen.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/between-the-hammer-and-the-anvil-in-yemen.html Saudi Arabia Yemen Al-Qaeda Government Huthi Internally displaced person Mazrak Middle East Refugee camp Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:55:00 -0500     Thanks for the $3bn Obama, here's what we really think of you
    agent in the white house.png

    Wry photo on P1 of the New York Times: "During Mideast Talks, Another View"

    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/thanks-for-the-3bn-obama-heres-what-we-really-think-of-you.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/thanks-for-the-3bn-obama-heres-what-we-really-think-of-you.html Israel peace process Arab Israel Israel nethanyahu New York Times peace process Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:10:00 -0500     Blind poet, 'Lioness Of Iran,' blocked from flight to Paris

    Simin Behbahani, Iran's most prominent poet, was about to board a flight to Paris when police seized her passport. Behbahani, 82 and nearly blind, has not been charged with any crime. Many fear her treatment may signal a rise in repressive tactics by Iran's government.

    National Public Radio's Davar Ardalan interviewed her from Tehran. One of the most respected figures in modern Iran. She recites two poems inspired by recent events -- one dedicated to the people of Iran and another to Neda, the woman whose death during the protests was viewed by millions on the Internet.


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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/blind-poet-the-lioness-of-iran-blocked-from-flying-to-paris.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/blind-poet-the-lioness-of-iran-blocked-from-flying-to-paris.html Iran Davar Ardalan dissident Iranian peoples National Public Radio Poetry Politics of Iran Simin Behbahani Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:36:51 -0500     Execution beckons for TV presenter 'guilty of sorcery'
  • 1000 lashes for YouTube video 
  • State Department's 2009 human rights report silent on barbaric Saudi sentence

    • Ali_sibatt.png

    ONLY the mercy of King of Saudi Arabia can now save the life of a former television presenter for a Lebanese satellite TV station, who gave advice and predictions about the future and whose death sentence for "sorcery" was upheld by a court last week.

    Its a heartbreaking tale, awful to relate and when the sword falls on the neck of Ali Hussain Sibat, as the court has ordered, it will add to the kingdom's reputation for capricious justice.

    A journalist was at Sibat's home when his small daughter Jamal returned from from school and climbed onto the sofa beside him in her plaited hair and said - unprompted by any of her family - "Are you going to bring my Daddy home?"

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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/execution-beckons-for-tv-presenter-guilty-of-sorcery.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/execution-beckons-for-tv-presenter-guilty-of-sorcery.html Saudi Arabia Ali Hussain Sibat Amnesty International Capital punishment Hajj Human rights Mecca Middle East Universal Declaration of Human Rights Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:23:26 -0500     A return to Gaza and not much to smile about NIGEL ROBERTS runs the World Banks WDR 2011 is one of relatively few independent witnesses allowed by the Israelis to visit Gaza since 'Operation Cast Lead' took place over a year ago. 
    The forthcoming WDR 2011 will look at how peoples' expectations can affect the course of a conflict, and the extent to which actions by governments and the international community can change those expectations. Absent a political settlement, there is not much to hope for he suggests.

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    ]]>     http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/a-return-to-gaza-and-not-much-to-smile-about.html http://www.unfreemedia.com/mideast/2010/03/a-return-to-gaza-and-not-much-to-smile-about.html Gaza Israel Palestine West Bank Gaza Gaza War Human rights Israel Defense Forces Israel-Palestine Israelis Middle East Occupation Operation Cast Lead Palestinian Territory Warfare and Conflict West Bank Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:20:00 -0500