Tag Archives: leak

U.S. Drone Strike in Yemen Killed Men Who Had Nothing to Do With Al Qaeda, According to Relatives

On the afternoon of April 23, an American drone flying over the remote Al Said area of Yemen’s Shabwah province observed a group of men gathering to eat lunch at a security checkpoint.

Mansoor Allahwal Baras, a former Yemeni Army lieutenant in his late thirties, was chief of the checkpoint, and his younger cousin Nasir, 23, was also stationed there. Khalid, another cousin Nasir’s age, was home on vacation from Malaysia, where he was studying English and aiming for his bachelor’s degree. A car full of five others joined them — local militants, but familiar to the Baras men — and they sent someone else to fetch lunch.

As the drone hovered over them, the men did not panic or flee. For many in the region, the buzzing sound of American drones in the sky has become part of the rhythm of daily life.

But then the drone unleashed its payload of missiles, and in an instant, the impromptu gathering was transformed into a nightmare of heat, smoke and shrapnel. All eight men were killed.

Mansoor’s nephew, Ammar Salim Farid Alawlaqi, heard the explosion from his home nearby, but he didn’t know who had been killed until a cousin called shortly after to tell him what had happened. By some accounts, a second missile had struck his relatives as they went to aid the others.

“We went to the cemetery and found Mansoor, Khalid, and Nasir, all but pieces of flesh [so] that we were not able to tell their appearances,” Alawlaqi told The Intercept in a phone interview. “It was a shock no human can accept and there’s anger at the U.S. government.”

The day after the strike, a Pentagon spokesperson said that the U.S. had killed “eight Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terrorists.” Pentagon officials later added that a key AQAP leader, Abu Ahmed Al Awlaqi, had been among those hit.

yemen-airstrike-victim-1495205589

This photo supplied by Ammar Salim Farid Alawlaqi shows Mansoor Allahwal Baras, killed in an April 23 drone strike, with a phrase attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that reads, “The eyes are shedding tears and the heart is in grief, and we will not say except what pleases our Lord. We belong to Allah and to Him we return.”

Photo: Ammar Salim Farid Alawlaqi

Alawlaqi, a 27-year-old grocer whose aunt was married to Mansoor, gave his own account of what transpired that day, saying that neither his uncle nor the two young men with him were connected to any militant group. What’s more, Alawlaqi says that the five others killed were not current members of AQAP. The man the Pentagon called an AQAP leader was known to Alawlaqi as Muhammad Awad Barasane. He said that Barwane had been with AQAP and then with the Islamic State’s Yemeni branch, but that he had left both groups.

The strike in Al Said was one of the roughly 250 attacks carried out by the United States in Yemen, a campaign that is now alleged to have killed as many as 1,200 people since 2010, up to 200 of them civilians, according to figures kept by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. President Trump appears to be outpacing Obama in Yemen, with more than 80 strikes since January and a disastrous Special Forces raid that killed 25 civilians, including ten children. The Trump administration has also lifted Obama-era rules limiting when strikes can take place for certain parts of Yemen. So far, there have only been a small number of alleged civilian casualties in drone strikes under Trump, but Alawlaqi’s account of who was killed on April 23 raises questions about the people that the military is targeting as terrorist threats.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the strike and the alleged civilian casualties. While Alawlaqi’s version of events could not be independently confirmed, it would not be the first time that the United States has misunderstood the social dynamics of the remote Yemeni provinces it is bombing, where perceptions of militant groups are often fluid and have more to do with tribe and family than international terrorism.

Alawlaqi’s relatives didn’t avoid the militants, he said, because they were known as local tribesman.  “To be honest, the five people in the car had past links to [terror groups], but they had quit this movement two years ago,” he said.

“Relationships between people in the community are about tribe and kinship,” he said, “according to their tribal relationships, people tend to invite each other to eat and talk, regardless of political affiliation.”

The sound of a drone overhead also wasn’t a warning sign. “The drones here are hovering 24 hours nonstop, whether day or night. Sometimes they disturb people sleeping with their annoying buzzing noise,” Alawlaqi said. “But it has become so routine for the general public, people don’t check whether it’s hovering above them or not.”

Alawlaqi told The Intercept that even if the militants were “wanted by the Americans, they have no right to target them while among innocent people.”

He believes the strike must have been based on bad intelligence. “When someone is wanted, they need to have enough evidence,” he said.

After the strike, a few local government representatives came to pay respects to the families of those killed. But Alawlaqi has heard nothing from the U.S. government.

Yemen as a whole is caught in the grip of a massive humanitarian crisis. A U.S-backed Saudi military campaign in the impoverished country has led to massive civilian casualties, as well as food shortages and disease epidemics. Despite growing international outcry over the conflict, no political solution seems to be in sight, as the Saudi-led alliance has repeatedly committed itself to extirpating the Yemeni Houthi rebel movement at all costs. Even in areas like Shabwa, where many Yemenis are fighting the Houthis, when it comes to American counterterrorism operations, there is a sense that civilian populations are being lumped together with terrorists, in order to justify military operations.

“What hurts is that there’s a deliberate stereotyping, categorizing people under these [militant] currents,” Alawlaqi said. “If the population of this area is estimated at 20,000 people, and the militants are no more than 150 people, how can they treat all the population as though they are under the militants’ control?”

The post U.S. Drone Strike in Yemen Killed Men Who Had Nothing to Do With Al Qaeda, According to Relatives appeared first on The Intercept.

from The Intercept bit.ly/2q0Soz4

Live Video: Julian Assange Speaks After Sweden Halts Rape Investigation

As my colleague Glenn Greenwald reports, Sweden’s top prosecutor, Marianne Ny, said on Friday that she has “discontinued” an investigation into allegations that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, raped a woman in Stockholm in 2010, and withdrawn an international warrant for his arrest.

Assange is expected to speak any minute now from a balcony at the embassy, where dozens of reporters have assembled. Ruptly, a state-owned Russian news service, is streaming live video:

“At this point, all possibilities to conduct the investigation are exhausted,” Ny said in her statement earlier in the day. Ecuador’s decision to grant Assange political asylum in its embassy in London nearly five years ago, shielding him from extradition, Ny said, had also made it impossible for her to formally notify the Australian of the charges against him.

“If he, at a later date, makes himself available, I will be able to decide to resume the investigation immediately,” Ny added.

Assange still faces arrest in Britain, however, for failing to surrender to a court in London in 2012, when he lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden and took refuge in the embassy. The Metropolitan Police Service in London said that its officers would be “obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.”

A more serious concern for the WikiLeaks founder is the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently called arresting Assange “a priority,” and the Justice Department has reportedly reopened discussions about bringing charges against Assange for publishing government secrets.

Assange’s first public response to the news from Sweden was to share an old photograph of himself smiling on Twitter.

As reporters “>flocked to the embassy in London to wait for remarks from Assange, Ny was asked at a news conference in Stockholm about the perception that the WikiLeaks founder had “declared victory.”

“It is possible that he still hasn’t had time to read through the entire decision,” Ny responded.

The WikiLeaks founder was originally wanted for questioning on accusations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion brought by two Swedish women in 2010. He strenuously denied those allegations, casting them as part of a politically motivated plot to stifle his work by distorting the circumstances of what he called consensual sex. Three of the four counts were dropped in 2015 when statutes of limitations expired on all but the rape allegation.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in an opinion released in late 2015 that Assange had been “arbitrarily detained by the Governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom” since the legal case against him began in 2010. The Ecuadorean embassy, where Assange has resided since losing his appeal against extradition to Sweden in 2012, is surrounded by British police officers 24 hours a day.

The post Live Video: Julian Assange Speaks After Sweden Halts Rape Investigation appeared first on The Intercept.

from The Intercept bit.ly/2pTxxSf

Sweden Withdraws Arrest Warrant for Julian Assange, but he Still Faces Serious Legal Jeopardy

Swedish prosecutors announced this morning that they were terminating their seven-year-old sex crimes investigation into Julian Assange and withdrawing their August 20, 2010, arrest warrant for him. The chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny, said at a news conference this morning (pictured below) that investigators had reached no conclusion about his guilt or innocence, but instead were withdrawing the warrant because “all prospects of pursuing the investigation under present circumstances are exhausted” and it is therefore “no longer proportionate to maintain the arrest of Julian Assange in his absence.”

marianneny-1495195499

Photo: Maja Suslin/AP

Almost five years ago — in June, 2012 — the UK Supreme Court rejected Assange’s last legal challenge to Sweden’s extradition request. Days later, Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and two weeks later formally received asylum from the government of Ecuador. He has been in that small embassy ever since, under threat of immediate arrest from British police if he were to leave. For years, British police expended enormous sums to maintain a 24-hour presence outside the embassy, and though they reduced their presence in 2015, continued to make clear that he would be immediately arrested if he tried to leave.

In February of last year, a U.N human rights panel formally concluded that the British government was violating Assange’s rights by “arbitrarily detaining” him, and it called for his release. But the U.K. Government immediately rejected the U.N. finding and vowed to ignore it.

Ecuador’s rationale for granting asylum to Assange has often been overlooked. Ecuadorian officials, along with Assange’s supporters, have always insisted that they wanted the investigation in Sweden to proceed, and vowed that Assange would board the next plane to Stockholm if Sweden gave assurances that it would not extradite him to the U.S. to face charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of documents. It was Sweden’s refusal to issue such guarantees — and Ecuador’s fears that Assange would end up being persecuted by the U.S. — that has been the basis for its asylum protections.

After years of refusing Assange’s offers to interview him in the embassy, Swedish prosecutors finally agreed to do so last November. But the Swedes’ last hope for advancing the case seemed to evaporate last month, when the candidate of the ruling party in Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, won a narrow victory over his right-wing opponent, who had vowed to terminate Assange’s asylum.

With the new president signaling that Assange’s asylum would continue indefinitely, there was virtually nothing else for prosecutors to do. Upon hearing the news, Assange, on his Twitter account this morning, posted a smiling photograph of himself.

 

But that celebration obscures several ironies. The most glaring of which is that the legal jeopardy Assange now faces is likely greater than ever.

Almost immediately after the decision by Swedish prosecutors, British police announced that they would nonetheless arrest Assange if he tried to leave the embassy. Police said Assange was still wanted for the crime of “failing to surrender” — meaning that instead of turning himself in upon issuance of his 2012 arrest warrant, he obtained refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. The British police also, however, noted that this alleged crime is “a much less serious offence” than the one that served as the basis for the original warrant, and that the police would therefore only “provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence.”

That could perhaps imply that with a seriously reduced police presence, Assange could manage to leave the embassy without detection and apprehension. All relevant evidence, however, negates that assumption.

Just weeks ago, Donald Trump’s CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, delivered an angry, threatening speech about WikiLeaks in which he argued: “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.” The CIA Director vowed to make good on this threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”

Days later, Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions strongly suggested that the Trump DOJ would seek to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks on espionage charges in connection with the group’s publication of classified documents. Trump officials than began leaking to news outlets such as CNN that “US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.”

For years, the Obama DOJ had extensively considered the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks and Assange, even convening a Grand Jury that subpoenaed multiple witnesses. Though the Obama DOJ refused to say they had terminated that investigation — which is what caused Ecuador to continue to fear persecution — Obama officials strongly signaled that there was no way to prosecute WikiLeaks without also prosecuting news organizations that published the same documents, or at least creating a precedent that would endanger First Amendment press freedoms. As the Washington Post reported in 2013:

The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials.

That same article noted that “officials stressed that a formal decision has not been made, and a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remains impaneled.” But it seemed that, under Obama, prosecution was highly unlikely. Indeed, last month, in response to my denunciation of Pompeo’s threat as endangering press freedoms, former Obama DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller tweeted this:

But the Trump administration — at least if one believes its multiple statements and threats — appears unconstrained by those concerns. They appear determined to prosecute WikiLeaks, which has published numerous secret CIA hacking documents this year.

Press freedom groups, along with the ACLU and some journalists, such as the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan, have warned of the grave dangers such a prosecution would pose to media outlets around the world. But that seems an unlikely impediment to an administration that has made clear that they regard the press as an enemy.

Indeed, Sessions himself refused to rule out the possibility that the prosecution of Assange could lead to the criminal prosecution of other news organizations that publish classified documents. Trump’s leading candidate to replace James Comey as FBI Director, Joe Lieberman, has long called for the prosecution not only of WikiLeaks but also possibly media outlets such as the New York Times that publish the same classified information. And anonymous sources recently claimed to the New York Times that when Trump met with Comey early on in his administration, the new U.S. President expressly inquired about the possibility of prosecuting news outlets.

The termination of the Swedish investigation is, in one sense, good news for Assange. But it is unlikely to change his inability to leave the embassy any time soon. If anything, given the apparent determination of the Trump administration to put him in a U.S. prison cell for the “crime” of publishing documents, his freedom appears farther away than it has since 2010, when the Swedish case began.

The post Sweden Withdraws Arrest Warrant for Julian Assange, but he Still Faces Serious Legal Jeopardy appeared first on The Intercept.

from The Intercept bit.ly/2qyjrEE

Para se segurar no cargo, Temer faz terrorismo sobre economia

Rouco, tentando aparentar firmeza, isolado e com uma claque tímida e quase envergonhada, Michel Temer anunciou nesta quinta-feira (18) que não vai renunciar.

Com a base de apoio no Congresso esfacelada, até aqui seu maior trunfo para emplacar as reformas Trabalhista e da Previdência, Temer disse que a revelação de conversas gravadas clandestinamente “trouxe de volta o fantasma de crise política de proporção ainda não dimensionada”.

Parece chantagem, e é. Até porque os fantasmas citados por ele jamais saíram de cena.

Quem ouve Temer falar sobre o risco de jogar no “lixo da história o trabalho feito em prol do país” para sair de “sua enorme recessão” poderia imaginar, talvez em outro Planeta, que sua gestão tem debaixo do braço índices chineses de crescimento. Não é bem assim.

De fato, a variação anual do Índice de Preços ao Consumidor Amplo, o IPCA, ficou em 4,08% em abril deste ano, ainda fora do centro da meta, mas bem inferior aos 9,2% registrado no mesmo mês do ano passado, quando a agenda no Congresso estava trancada pelas discussões do impeachment.

Economistas do mercado financeiro haviam reduzido, há pouco tempo, as projeções para o índice oficial de inflação neste ano, de 4,01% para 3,93%. Seria a décima quedanona queda semanal consecutiva para essa previsão.

As taxas de juros também caíram, de 14,15 há um ano para os atuais 12,15% ao ano – ainda uma das maiores do mundo (em 2012, o índice chegou a 7,14).

Além disso, a taxa de desocupação continua em alta: segundo o IBGE, o país registra 14,2 milhões de desempregados no trimestre encerrado em março, número 14,9% superior ao trimestre anterior (outubro, novembro e dezembro de 2016).

No ano passado, o PIB registrou a pior recessão da história, com queda de 3,6% da atividade econômica.

A expectativa de melhora era exatamente isso: uma expectativa.

Pesquisa recente do Datafolha mostrou que o número de brasileiros a esperar uma melhora nos índices econômicos subiu de 28% para 31%, e a expectativa de piora caiu de 41% para 31%.

Parte do mercado apostava na aprovação das reformas como condição básica para a retomada da atividade econômica, embora a relação não seja unanimidade entre especialistas.

Em entrevista recente ao site BBC Brasil, o professor do departamento de Direito de Cambridge Simon Deakin, especialista no impacto de leis trabalhistas sobre emprego e renda, disse não haver evidências de que mudanças nas formas de contrato criem empregos.

Em geral, afirmou, o afrouxamento dos controles sobre o trabalho temporário e em tempo parcial não só não leva necessariamente à criação de emprego como pode ter o efeito de reduzir o emprego na economia formal, já que estes postos de trabalhos ficam menos atraentes.

A aposta de Temer, além disso, parte de um pressuposto tão frágil quanto a estabilidade jamais alcançada por seu governo, apesar do esforço, este sim notável, de demonstrar que tudo corre bem. Com o facão da Lava Jato sobre a cabeça de alguns de seus principais auxiliares, e com indícios cada vez mais nítidos da participação de Temer em irregularidades, agora oficialmente sob investigação, era possível supor que o otimismo mambembe do mercado estivesse, de saída, vulnerável a qualquer espirro – quanto mais à suspeita de pagamento pelo silêncio de um ex-deputado encarcerado.

A queda na Bolsa e a disparada do dólar ao longo do dia é sintomática da fragilidade deste pacto. Segundo Nelson Marconi, coordenador do Fórum de Economia e professor da Escola de Economia de São Paulo da Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV EESP), a atividade econômica vai piorar ainda mais em razão da incerteza política, da crise de confiança e do cenário fiscal.

Em nota divulgada nesta quinta-feira, ele ressaltou que o único setor que vinha demonstrando sinais de melhora até aqui era o agronegócio. “O emprego aumentou no interior do país, e como ele é exportador e depende das condições do mercado externo, vai ser pouco afetado pela crise”, avaliou.

Para ele, no entanto, os demais setores serão impactados, pois os parcos investimentos serão paralisados em razão da crise de confiança.

A gravação de Joesley Batista que comprometem Temer e o agora senador afastado Aécio Neves (PSDB-MG), fiador da aliança peemedebista, colocou uma pá de cal nesta confiança alicerçada em expectativas de recuperação, e não exatamente no deslanche da economia clamado agora por um presidente cada vez mais acuado.

The post Para se segurar no cargo, Temer faz terrorismo sobre economia appeared first on The Intercept.

from The Intercept bit.ly/2q1shr9

Republican Immigration Bill Threatens to Turn Millions of People Into Criminals Overnight

Republican lawmakers are pushing legislation that would bring sweeping changes to the nation’s immigration enforcement apparatus, adding thousands of new deportation officers and, among other things, equipping each of them with body armor and an assault rifle.

The little noticed bills, marked up in the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, would bring additional legal force to the Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda, which has already seen the pool of individuals prioritized for deportation broadened to include virtually all the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Spearheaded by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), two of the bills pertain to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), laying out new powers and responsibilities for both agencies, while a third, introduced by Goodlatte and Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), takes aim at a wide range of issues in immigration enforcement.

That third bill, the “Michael Davis, Jr. and Danny Oliver in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act,” which appeared in a tweeted photo of White House strategist Steve Bannon’s policy agenda, would see immigration violations traditionally treated as civil infractions transformed into criminal violations, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Speaking before judiciary committee members Thursday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), said the provision would “turn millions of Americans into criminals overnight.” Nadler added that the legislation was “straight out of the Donald Trump mass deportation playbook.”

BROADVIEW, IL - MAY 25:  An undocumented immigrant stands cuffed and shackled at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility before he and other undocumented immigrants were transported to the airport for a deportation flight May 25, 2010 in Broadview, Illinois.  The immigrants at the suburban Chicago facility were flown by charter flight to Harlingen, Texas where they were then bussed to Brownsville and finally walked to the Mexican border and released from custody. The U.S. deports over 350,000 immigrants a year for entering the country illegally, most are Mexican, and more than 90 percent are men.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

An undocumented immigrant was cuffed and shackled at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility before he and other undocumented immigrants were transported to the airport for a deportation flight in 2010 in Broadview, Ill.

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Brad Schneider (D-IL) noted that under the language of the proposed law recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — the Obama-era program currently shielding hundreds of thousands of young people brought to the U.S. as undocumented children from deportation — could be stripped of their protections because they are in the country while knowingly in violation of the law.

“This draconian bill is absolutely wrong,” Schneider said. “DACA recipients are not criminals.”

In addition to radically altering the nature of charges used against undocumented immigrants, and calling for an expansion of federal immigrant detention facilities, the 184-page Davis-Oliver act would codify the Trump administration’s controversial threats to cut Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security grants to state and local law enforcement agencies that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement initiatives. Under the law, states would also be required to provide DHS a wide range of details on all immigrants who are apprehended and “believed to be inadmissible or deportable,” including that individual’s name, address, photo, and license plate number, as well as other identifying information.

The bill echoes Trump’s call to increase ICE’s ranks with the addition of 10,000 new agents, as well as 2,500 new detention officers and 60 new full-time ICE prosecutors. Deportation officers on the ground would inherit new arrest powers under the proposed legislation, including the power to arrest immigrants accused of criminal or civil offenses without a warrant, even if the agency determines those individuals are not “likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.” Under the bill, those deportation officers would be heavily armed, with each officer issued “high-quality body armor” and “at a minimum, standard-issue handguns, M–4 (or equivalent) rifles, and Tasers.”

To insure state and local authorities are falling in line with federal immigration enforcement objectives, Goodlatte’s ICE authorization bill has called for an “ICE Advisory Council” — a panel that would include members appointed by himself, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, ICE’s prosecutors’ union, ICE’s union (which endorsed Trump), and the president himself.

With deep ties to a range of far-right policy organizations, GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee have long been known for their hawkish views on immigration — it was Goodlate’s aides who secretly worked alongside the Trump White House in crafting the executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim majority nations. During Thursday’s mark up, the Republicans defended the proposed legislation on law order and grounds, making the case that all laws surrounding immigration should be equally and aggressively enforced.

Addressing the Davis-Oliver bill in particular, Goodlatte said the legislation, named after a pair of law enforcement officers killed by an undocumented immigrant, “decisively delivers the immigration enforcement tools that ICE, its officers, and all of us need in order to show the obstructionists, the criminal aliens, and all those who benefit from a culture of lawlessness that breaking our immigration laws will no longer be tolerated.”

Immigration advocates and legal experts argue the Republican lawmakers’ “enforcement only” approach reflects a lack of interest in solving complex policy issues and, in doing so, threatens to tear families apart while further ballooning the historic backlog in the nation’s immigration courts.

“These bills constitute an unprecedented ramp up in enforcement,” Greg Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told The Intercept. “Instead of recognizing that there needs to be a solution that improves the immigration system, these bills fall into line with President Trump’s mass deportation agenda that’s just going to hurt the country and isn’t going to do anything to improve public safety.”

Debate on the proposed bills is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.

Top photo: Supplies are displayed at the entrance of the Adelanto immigration detention center in Adelanto, Calif. on April 13, 2017.

 

The post Republican Immigration Bill Threatens to Turn Millions of People Into Criminals Overnight appeared first on The Intercept.

from The Intercept bit.ly/2qwNCMB