Yemen Refuses To Extradite Cleric If Captured

Yemen Refuses To Extradite Cleric If Captured

By Ahmad Shihadah
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

SA’NA, Yemen – Yemen’s government has announced it will not extradite Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born jihadist cleric who is credited with inspiring the recent wave of anti-American terrorist plots by al Qaeda recruits.

Over the weekend, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al Qirbi said Mr. al-Awlaki would be tried in the Arabian Peninsula state once he is captured.

“The man the U.S. wants to be extradited will stand trial in Yemen under the national law,” Mr. al Qirbi was quoted as saying in the Yemen state news agency, al Saba.

“Because of his recent terrorist activity, Awlaki is now wanted by the Yemeni government. Hence, he must be tried … in his homeland but never by other governments,” Qirbi was quoted as telling Kuwait’s al-Dar newspaper.

U.S. officials said in April President Barack Obama’s administration had authorized operations to capture or kill U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki — a leading figure linked to al Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing, which claimed responsibility for a failed bombing of a Detroit-bound plane in December.

On Christmas Eve, the United States launched an armed drone attack on a compound in Yemen where Mr. al-Awlaki was thought to be staying. The attack missed him.

Mr. al-Awlaki is the spiritual leader of the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. The group is thought to have several thousand armed followers and operates in areas of Yemen that are not under the full control of the San’a government.

Awlaki has said he had contacts with a Nigerian suspect in the attempted bombing of the transatlantic passenger plane and with a U.S. army psychiatrist accused of shooting dead 13 people at a military base in Texas in November.

Andy Johnson, a former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview that Mr. al-Awlaki is like Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, because of his success in radicalizing recruits.

“Awlaki clearly is a driving force in the effort to recruit and radicalize people to carry out jihadist or extremist attacks,” said Mr. Johnson, who is now director of national security programs for the think tank Third Way.

Mr. al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was in e-mail contact with Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged in the killings of 13 people and woundings of 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5.

For more information, please see:

The Washington Times – Yemen Refuses To Let U.S. Try Cleric – 12 May 201

Reuters – Yemen Says Will Not Turn Over Militant Cleric To U.S. – 12 May 2010

Jawa Report – Yemen Refuses To Extradite Awlaki – 12 May 2010

Egypt Extends Emergency Law

By Ahmad Shihadah
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

CAIRO, Egypt – The Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has issued a decree renewing the country’s emergency laws for a further two years.

Parliament approved the law while opponents protested outside amid rows of riot police. The government sought to defuse criticism by emphasizing that the measure would cover only terrorism and drug-related crimes. But critics accused authorities of making cosmetic changes to a 29-year-old system that gives police sweeping discretionary powers against political opponents.

The decision has led to criticism from political opponents and human rights groups, who say the laws stifle political freedom in the country.

“The new law is very ambiguous and can easily be manipulated,” said Hafez abu Seada, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. “The law still persecutes freedoms like gathering in public, which doesn’t fall under terrorism. We will also still have military tribunals and the government’s right to issue military orders.”

Extension of the emergency law, which was passed in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, comes as the government is under widespread pressure. Public anger is high, protests over low wages and for constitutional revisions are increasing, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei is enlivening the opposition with his new National Front for Change.

President Hosni Mubarak, 82 and in frail health, has yet to strike the right tone or inspire policies to calm the furor. Renewing the emergency law, but narrowing its powers, allows the ruling National Democratic Party to claim support for press freedom and human rights while simultaneously keeping mechanisms in place to combat dissent before this year’s parliamentary elections.

“We do not deny that we still have issues, but we are working to resolve them,” said Moufid Shehab, minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, acknowledging violations of civil liberties under the emergency law. “We aspire to one day have an end to emergency law.”

Shehab said the two-year extension, which passed by a wide majority, was needed to counter terrorism. He suggested that cases against bloggers and activists who have been jailed in recent years under the act for crimes unrelated to terrorism may be reviewed. The extension also will prohibit security forces from shutting newspapers and confiscating property. But security forces can still rely on an array of other laws to silence critics.

Shebab said the new emergency law means: “No trial, no indictment unless it’s a terrorist act.”

The government had promised to repeal the emergency law once it passed an anti-terrorism act, which has been bottled up in parliament for years. Emergency law has allowed authorities to detain suspects for long periods without formal charges. It has been used frequently against members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other opponents of the regime, many of whom have been tortured.

The opposition fears the law will be used to crack down on regime opponents ahead of parliamentary elections later this year. Egypt is also to hold presidential elections in 2011.

For more information, please see:

ABC – Egypt Extends Controversial Emergency Law – 12 May 2010

BBC – Egypt Renews Tough Emergency Laws – 12 May 2010

LA Times – Egypt Extends Emergency Rule – 12 May 2010

Body of Missing Ukrainian Yeshiva Student Found

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

KIEV, Ukraine – The body of a missing Jewish student from a Kiev Chabad yeshiva, who had been missing for over two weeks, was found yesterday.

The remains of Aryeh Leib Mizenson, 25, who had disappeared on April 20, were found in the Ukrainian capital.  The police had to used DNA testing to determine the identity of the body, which was found dismembered.

Antisemitic sentiment within the active Ukrainian neo-Nazi community is suspected to have played a role in Mizenson’s death.  Local law enforcement officials have detained a member of a local neo-Nazi gang in connection with his death.  The fact that the day of his disappearance, April 20, is the anniversary of Adolph Hitler’s death, is not believed to be a coincidence.  Acts of violence against Jewish targets have been carried out by neo-Nazi groups in the past in the area.

Yaakov Zilberman, a leading member of Kiev’s Jewish community believes that antisemitism played a role in the killing.  “Many Jews here are confronted by groups of skin-heads wearing Nazi uniforms at metro stations in central Kiev.  The skin-heads walk around without fear in the center of town and no one says a word.”

The chief Ukrainian rabbi, who was out of the country at the time that Misenzon’s body was found, announced that he would return to Ukraine for the student’s funeral.

Law enforcement officials have requested that the Misenzon’s family delay his burial until the investigation can be completed.

For more information, please see:

HAARETZ – Body of Ukrainian Jew missing since Hitler’s birthday found in Kiev – 9 May 2010

INDYPOSTED – Dismembered Body of Ukrainian Jew Found In Kiev – 9 May 2010

JERUSALEM POST – Yeshiva student murdered in Ukraine – 9 May 2010

YNEWSNET – Jewish man murdered in Kiev; Chabad: Anti-Semites did it – 9 May, 2010

Brazil Supreme Court Upholds Amnesty for Torture, Disappearance

By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASILIA,Brazil-International human rights groups are vehemently opposing the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision not to reinterpret a 1979 law giving amnesty to members of the former military government responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. Instead, the Court held that such acts were political acts and therefore deserved amnesty.

While Argentine, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay have prosecuted individuals accused of human rights violations during military dictatorships, Brazil has not. Rights groups argue that the amnesty law puts Brazil in breach of conventional and customary international law that does not allow amnesty for crimes of torture and extrajudicial executions.

Tim Cahill of Amnesty International commented that “in a country that sees thousands of extra-judicial killings every year at the hands of security officials and where many more are tortured in police stations and prisons, this ruling clearly signals that in Brazil nobody is held responsible when the state kills and tortures its own citizens.”

Amnesty International also called on Brazil to come into conformity with the rulings of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, which has stressed that ” all amnesty provisions  . . . designed to eliminate responsibility are inadmissible, because they are intended to prevent the investigation and punishment of those responsible for serious human rights violations such as torture, extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, and forced disappearance, all prohibited because they violate rights recognized by international human rights law.”

The Court voted in a 7-2 majority that the law should remain intact because it had been approved by society as a whole, including the bar association, armed forced, and political exiles. Thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared in Brazil under military rule form 1964-1985.

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International-Brazil Court Upholds Law that Protects Torturers-30 April 2010

AP-Brazil’s Top Court-Amnesty Law Will Not Change-30 April 2010

NY TIMES-Brazil: No Change to Amnesty Law-30 April 2010

Time Square Bombing Suspect Linked To Yemeni Cleric

By Ahmad Shihadah
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

WASHINGTON DC, USA – The Pakistani-American man accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square has told investigators that he drew inspiration from Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric whose militant online lectures have been a catalyst for several recent attacks and plots, an American official said Thursday.

The would-be bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was inspired by the violent rhetoric of Mr. Awlaki, said the official, who would speak of the investigation only on condition of anonymity. “He listened to him, and he did it,” the official said, referring to Saturday’s attempted bombing on a busy street in Times Square.

New evidence is deepening a notion, albeit still unverified, that the failed car bombing in Times Square was not the work of one disgruntled young man, but inspired by a global extremist network stretching from Yemen to Pakistan, united by the Internet and a common radical vision of faith.

According to one account, Shahzad told investigators that he actually met with Awlaki – as well as Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and even Abdulmutallah, who tried to blow up a Northwest airliner landing in Detroit on Christmas Day. Investigators are skeptical, reports the New York Daily News, saying Shahzad claims to know most of the biggest players in the world of radical Islam. They have yet to verify his statements.

If true, Shahzad’s apparent susceptibility to Awlaki’s sermons, coupled with an ability to travel to Pakistan for training, and then back to the US with an American passport, offers a disturbing portrait of a virtual jihadi highway, linking mentality to means and money.

Investigators are not yet sure where that money came from. They are looking to question a courier who allegedly funneled money to Shahzad to pay for the SUV used in the attack, as well as the improvised explosives. But the source country remains unknown, the Associated Press reports.

As a result, the United States is likely to push Pakistan to press harder against militant enclaves in that country’s North Waziristan region, deemed the epicenter of the network behind the failed bombing. But that is likely to strain an already threadbare relationship between Washington and Islamabad, experts warn.

For more information, please see:

CSM – US-Born Cleric Inspired Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad – 7 May 2010

New York Times – Times Sq. Bomb Suspect Is Linked To Militant Cleric – 6 May 2010

AOL News – Times Square Suspect Reportedly Inspired By Radical Cleric – 7 May 2010