By Meredith Lee-Clark

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

 

JERUSALEM, Israel/West Bank – In an effort to keep out illegal migrants, Israel will build a barrier wall in two sections along its southern border with Egypt. The announcement was made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference on January 10.

 

Israel has become a new “promised land” of opportunity for many refugees from war-torn countries in northeast Africa, with border crossings increasing over the past several weeks. In recent years, thousands of undocumented migrants have crossed in Israel through its southern border. Eritrea is the most common country of origin for migrants crossing into Israel from Egypt, followed by Ethiopia and Sudan.

 

International human rights observers have strongly criticized practices by Egyptian border officials; many migrants attempting to cross into Israel have either been shot dead by Egyptian border guards or detained in Egyptian prisons before being sent back to their home countries. This violates the standards set out in the United Nations Convention on Refugees.

 

Israel’s border with Egypt spans 226 kilometers, and Israeli officials estimate the construction will take approximately two years to complete. The border wall will not cover the length of the Israeli-Egyptian border, the initial construction will focus on the area near the Israeli city of Eilat and the area near the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip near the town of Rafah.

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel would “remain open to refugees” but said that Israel “cannot let tens of thousands of illegal workers infiltrate into Israel through the southern border and inundate our country with illegal aliens.” Netanyahu added the decision was one “to secure Israel’s Jewish and democratic character.”

 

Egyptian officials said they had not been notified of Israel’s decision to build a wall, but that they did not object, so long as the wall was built on Israeli soil.

 

Approximately fifty to sixty percent of Israel’s borders are already walled in, according to Alon Liel, a professor at the University of Tel Aviv. Israel has built walls along its borders with Lebanon, Jordan, most of the West Bank, and all of the Gaza Strip.

 

“It is a very unpleasant feeling, but for the Israeli public the alternative to not having a fence seems worse,” said Professor Liel.

 

For more information, please see:

 

Al Jazeera – Israel Plans Wall for Egypt Border – 11 January 2010

 

Ma’an News Agency – Israel to Build Wall Along Egyptian Border – 11 January 2010

 

Palestine News Network – Israel to Construct Barrier Along Egyptian Border – 11 January 2010

 

Ha’aretz – Israel to Build NIS 1.5b Fence Along Egypt Border – 10 January 2010

By Brandon Kaufman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

HEET, Iraq – Coordinated bombings on January 7 targeted the homes of four police officers in western Iraq. The bombings took place in the Iraqi town of Heet and killed seven individuals. Among the dead was the town’s anti-terror chief. The bombings wounded six individuals. Heet is located thirty five miles

The attackers alleged planted explosives around the bedrooms of the policemen in the town. According to Lieutenant Colonel Fadhil Nimrawi, the head of Heet’s emergency response unit, “at 3:00am, men planted bombs around the bedrooms of four houses belonging to members of the police force, including Major Wali al-Heeti, the head of Heet’s anti-terror department.”

According to Nimwari, the dead include Heeti’s wife and mother, child and three other police officers. The four houses targeted were in different neighborhoods across the center of the city. No vehicles were being allowed in or out of the town as part of the ramped up security.

Nimwari also said that several people had been arrested in connection with the attack, but did not specify how many. Security forces were still looking into other people they suspected of being involved in the bombings. According to Sheikh Muhammad Abu Wissam, a tribal leader, “there are terrorist cells there and they are benefiting from an security breach to carry out more attacks.

Violence has been rising in Iraq as the country prepares for a March general election. The attack comes a week after a double suicide blast in the provincial capital Ramadi killed twenty five people and severely injured regional governor Qassim Mohammed. The Anbar Province, where Heet is located, will have over half its seven thousand five hundred American troops withdrawn by the end of the month.

The BBC reports that Anbar province was once a hotbed of insurgency, but two years ago, local Sunni tribes and their followers turned against the militants, and joined common cause against them with the Iraqi government and American forces. The province remained relatively calm for some time, but it appears to be suffering from a number of revenge attacks by Islamist militants.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Anti-terror Chief Among Seven Killed in Iraq Blasts – 7 January 2010

BBC – Iraq Bomb Attack on Senior Police Kills Eight – 7 January 2010

New York Times – Blasts Strike at Officials in Iraq’s West – 7 January 2010

Reuters – Bombings Target Iraqi Army Commander – 7 January 2010

By Meredith Lee-Clark

Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

 

NAGAA HAMMADI, Egypt – Clashes broke out between nearly one thousand Coptic Christians and local police in southern Egypt outside the hospital where the bodies of six Coptic Christians were held. The Christians and one Muslim security guard were killed as churchgoers left Christmas Eve midnight mass, welcoming the Coptic Christmas, which is celebrated on January 7. Ten others were reported wounded.

 

The shootings were believed to be revenge for the alleged rape of a twelve-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man in November 2009. Since news of the alleged rape spread throughout the Nagaa Hammadi community, sectarian violence has gripped the southern Egyptian town. For five days after the alleged assault, Muslim residents ransacked the town, and set fire to Christian homes and businesses.

 

At the hospital where the bodies of the victims were being held, protestors threw stones at police and smashed ambulances. Police responded with tear gas, and witnesses reported the crowd shouted: “No to repression,” and “O blessed Cross we will defend you with our soul and our blood.”

 

The recent clashes are the latest in Upper Egypt (so-named because it is further upstream on the Nile River), an area that is known for its fierce tribal loyalties and practice of honor killings. In recent years, many Coptic Christians have reported increasing harassment by both residents and government officials. The Copts make up one of the oldest communities of Christians in the world, descended from Egyptians who converted during the first century A.D.

 

Mounir Megahed, director of Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination, said that sectarian violence has escalated in Egypt during the past year, with a new example coming nearly every week. Megahed also alleges that the Egyptian state is “soft on tackling the issue,” and that “they do not put people who commit these crimes to trials.” The most infamous of the violent outbreaks was the killing of twenty-one Christians in the southern Egyptian town of El Kosheh in 2000. Nearly ninety villagers were reportedly involved in the killing, but none were prosecuted, according to Megahed.

 

The lack of official attention to the sectarian violence in southern Egypt may also be rooted in cultural stereotypes and prejudices held by many Egyptians in the north. Salem Abdel Galil, the deputy minister for preaching at Egypt’s ministry of religious endowments said the violence was due to the “low standard of culture or education” in Upper Egypt, rather than any underlying religious intolerance.

 

For more information, please see:

 

Al Jazeera – Clashes After Egypt Copt Killings – 7 January 2010

 

BBC News – Clashes in Egyptian Town After Coptic Killings – 7 January 2010

 

The National – Egypt Fears Rise in Sectarian Violence After Church Killings – 7 January 2010

 

The Telegraph – Coptic Christians Clash With Egyptian Police After Mass Shooting – 7 January 2010

 

Voice of America – Attack on Coptic Christians in Egypt Leaves 7 Dead – 7 January 2010

By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – On January 4 Iraq has filed a lawsuit against Blackwater in a United States court. Another lawsuit will be filed against the US-based private security firm, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The charges come amid anger in Iraq over an American court dropping charges against five Blackwater guards. The guards were charged with killing fourteen Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in September 2007.

According to Maliki, “the US Justice Departments has protested” the court’s ruling that the charges be dropped. Maliki also confirmed that Iraq had “formed a committee and filed a case against Blackwater in the United States and will file one here in Iraq.” Without providing elaboration, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that Iraq had “started to take the necessary measures to bring Blackwater to justice.”

The guards charged in the original case were part of convoy of armored vehicles who were escorting a US State Department vehicle in a Sunni-controlled district in September 2007. They were charged with killing fourteen unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding eighteen others at a busy Baghdad roundabout using both guns and grenades. Iraq alleges that seventeen people were killed in the action. Blackwater claimed that the convoy was attacked by an explosive device and smalls are fire and the guards were acting in self-defense. Witnesses and victims, however, allege that the Blackwater employees shot indiscriminately.

A US federal judge, Ricardo Urbinia, dismissed the charges against the five Blackwater guards. Urbina concluded that prosecutors had violated the rights of the guards by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a US State Department probe. The Iraqi government called this ruling “unacceptable and unjust.”

The immunity was lifted in a bilateral agreement that came into effect in 2009. It is not clear how an Iraqi case against the Blackwater guards or the company itself would get around the immunity that was valid at the time of the September 2007 incident.

Blackwater pulled out of Iraq in May 2009 after the United State State Department refused to renew its contracts. The company subsequently changed its name to Xe Services.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Iraq to Take Blackwater to Court – 5 January 2010

Daily Mail – Iraq Seeks Revenge in Court for the Blackwater Shootout – 5 January 2010

AFP – Iraq Files Case Against Blackwater: PM – 4 January 2010

Reuters – Iraq Will File Lawsuits Against Blackwater – 4 January 2010