A Voice for the Voiceless

Bus Attacked in Northern Lebanon

By Brandon Kaufman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TRIPOLI, Lebanon–   A bus carrying Syrian workers came under fire Monday in northern Lebanon.  One person was confirmed killed and several others were reported injured by shattered glass during the attack.
The bus was transporting Syrian workers along one of the main highways between northern Lebanon and Syria near an army checkpoint in the Deir Emar district, approximately three miles north of Tripoli.

According to an eyewitness, the vehicle’s tires were riddled with bullet holes and several of the windows on the driver’s side were shattered by the shots.  The person killed was believed to be a seventeen year old migrant worker.

A Syrian police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that gunmen were responsible for the attack although he acknowledged that no motive was known.  In addition to the lone fatality,  three other people were wounded by flying glass on board the bus which was carrying twenty-five Syrian workers.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem described the attack as a criminal act and pledged to inform his Lebanese counterpart of the results of the investigation, the identity of the attackers, and who was behind the shooting without delay.

The attack came a day after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Syrian President Bashar Assad met for two days in Damascus.  The talks between the two leaders were said to be positive according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.

At a press conference held at the Lebanese Embassy, Prime Minister Hariri told reporters that he was optimistic about the growing diplomatic relationship between the two countries.  “We want to have good relations with Syria based on openness and honesty,” Hariri was quoted as saying, conveying the hope that the two neighboring countries would come to a fresh start after decades of war and animosity.  President Assad echoed similar statements saying that he was optimistic about progress for the future.

For more information, please see:

Gulf Times- Lebanon Shooting Kills Syria Worker– 22 December 2009

BBC News- Bus Carrying Syrian Workers Attacked in Lebanon– 21 December 2009

The Jerusalem Post- Hariri, Assad Hold Second Meeting– 20 December 2009

Bus Attacked in Northern Lebanon

By Brandon Kaufman
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TRIPOLI, Lebanon–   A bus carrying Syrian workers came under fire Monday in northern Lebanon.  One person was confirmed killed and several others were reported injured by shattered glass during the attack.
The bus was transporting Syrian workers along one of the main highways between northern Lebanon and Syria near an army checkpoint in the Deir Emar district, approximately three miles north of Tripoli.

According to an eyewitness, the vehicle’s tires were riddled with bullet holes and several of the windows on the driver’s side were shattered by the shots.  The person killed was believed to be a seventeen year old migrant worker.

A Syrian police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that gunmen were responsible for the attack although he acknowledged that no motive was known.  In addition to the lone fatality,  three other people were wounded by flying glass on board the bus which was carrying twenty-five Syrian workers.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem described the attack as a criminal act and pledged to inform his Lebanese counterpart of the results of the investigation, the identity of the attackers, and who was behind the shooting without delay.

The attack came a day after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Syrian President Bashar Assad met for two days in Damascus.  The talks between the two leaders were said to be positive according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.

At a press conference held at the Lebanese Embassy, Prime Minister Hariri told reporters that he was optimistic about the growing diplomatic relationship between the two countries.  “We want to have good relations with Syria based on openness and honesty,” Hariri was quoted as saying, conveying the hope that the two neighboring countries would come to a fresh start after decades of war and animosity.  President Assad echoed similar statements saying that he was optimistic about progress for the future.

For more information, please see:

Gulf Times- Lebanon Shooting Kills Syria Worker– 22 December 2009

BBC News- Bus Carrying Syrian Workers Attacked in Lebanon– 21 December 2009

The Jerusalem Post- Hariri, Assad Hold Second Meeting– 20 December 2009

U.S. Senate Passes Health Insurance Reform

24 December 2009

U.S. Senate Passes Health Insurance Reform

By Stephen Kopko

Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States – In its first Christmas Eve vote since 1895, the United States Senate passed a reform bill that will change the health care system in the United States. The bill will provide health care coverage to millions of Americans that are uninsured now.

The Senate passed the health care bill along party lines. The final tally of the vote was sixty to thirty-nine. All fifty eight Democrats and two Independents voted to send the bill to the Conference Committee with the House of Representatives. The Senate version of the health care bill is similar in some aspects to the version passed earlier by the House. However, there are some notable differences between the two pieces of legislation.

The Senate version of the health care reform bill will cost approximately $871 billion dollars. The House version of the bill costs approximately one trillion dollars. Both costs would be paid over a period of ten years. Under the Senate version of the health care reform bill about fifteen million more people would be added to the health insurance rolls.

Under both the Senate version of the bill and the House version of the bill, approximately thirty million more people would have health insurance. Both versions would prevent suppliers of health insurance from denying people coverage because of pre-existing condition. Insurers would be barred from increasing interest rates because of a person’s gender or past medical history. Both versions of the health insurance bill would make it easier for small businesses and the unemployed to purchase coverage.

Nevertheless, there are major differences between the two pieces of legislation. The most revealing difference between the two versions is that the House has a public option while the Senate does not. The public option is something that the Democrats have fought hard for since taking the majority in both the House and the Senate. Another striking difference between the two versions is how health insurance reform is going to be paid. Under the House version, those people making five hundred thousand dollars or more per year and those families making more than a million dollars a year will pay a five point four income tax surcharge. Under the Senate bill, health insurance companies would be subject a forty percent tax when they only offer the most premium plans that only the wealthy could afford.

For more information, please see:

CNN – Senate Approves Health Care Reform Bill – 24 December 2009

MSNBC – Senate Passes Historic Health Care Legislation – 24 December 2009

NYTIMES – Senate Passes Health Care Overhaul on Party-Line Vote – 24 December 2009

Numerous Bombings Kill Scores Throughout Iraq

By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

HILLA, Iraq – A string of bombings in Iraq on December 24 have killed more than thirty four people. The bombs also injured over one hundred people. Among the bombings was a double explosion in the central Iraqi town of Hilla. Additionally there as a bombing in Sadr City, a predominantly Shi’ite district in Baghdad.

The bombings came three days before the climax of Ashura, when hundreds of thousands of pilgrims converge on Kerbala to mourn the killing of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein. The forty day mourning period commemorates this 680AD event that sealed the split between Sunni and Shi’ite. Most of the individuals killed by the bombings were Shi’ite pilgrims attending mourning ceremonies.

The two bombs in Hilla, the capital of Babil province, targeted Shi’ite pilgrims who gathered at a bus station to mark Ashura.  The first bomb was in a car and exploded at 2pm. The second bomb came fifteen minutes later when police had arrived. According to Fadel Hassa, an eyewitness, “police came to disarm a bomb some twenty meters from the site of the first attack, and it exploded as they arrived, causing numerous injuries among passersby and the police.

The bomb in Sadr City appeared to target a funeral procession. The attack killed at least nine people and injured thirty three. The bomb went off in a tent where mourners were gathered. According to Ahmed Rushdi, a journalist in Baghdad, “they were not by the hand of al Qaeda – they were not suicide bombers, but mostly car bombs and bombs besides cars.”

Another bomb in Baghdad went off in the eastern district of Zafraniya, south of the city center, and killed three people. The Zafraniya bombing injured twenty people and was located near the area where a preliminary Ashura ceremony was taking place. Additionally, a bomb blast in the Shi’ite sacred city of Karbala, about one hundred kilometers south of Baghdad, killed two people and injured four others.

More than twenty five thousand security forces have been assigned by the Iraqi government to protect the Shi’ite pilgrims during the celebrations for Ashura.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Iraq Attacks Kill Scores on Eve of Christmas, Ashura – 24 December 2009

Al Jazeera – Scores Killed in Iraq Blasts – 24 December 2009

BBC – Iraq Bomb Explosions Leave 23 People Dead – 24 December 2009

Guardian – Iraq Sectarian Bomb Attacks Kills 26 – 24 December 2009

Pakistan Court Orders Removal Of 2 Mens Ears, Noses

By Michael E. Sanchez
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan- A Pakistani court has ordered the noses and ears of two men cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.  In September, the two brothers were found guilty of kidnapping 19-year-old Fazeelat Bibi, one of their cousins.  

The Sentence was passed on Monday under a rarely invoked Islamic law dating back to the 1980s.  The anti-terrorism court in the court in the eastern city of Lahore said it was applying Islamic law by ordering the punishment.  Similar sentences in the past have been revoked on appeal.  The court also ordered that the brothers spend life in prison and pay 700,000 rupees($8,300) in compensation to the victim, Punjab province chief prosecutor Chaudary Mohammad Jahangir said on Tuesday.

Ehtisham Qadir, prosecutor for the government said the punishment had been awarded in accordance with the Islamic principle of “an eye for an eye”  

Lahore prosecutor Chaudrhy Ali Ahmed said Sher Mohammad, one of the accused, was a cousin of the 19-year-old woman and wanted to marry her.  Sher Mohammad and Ammanat Ali, along with their cousin Mohammad Ali and two other men abducted Fazeelat Bibi on her way home from work at a brick kiln in the Raiwing area of Lahore, and strangled her with a wire.  Mr. Qadir told the BBC, “They put a noose around her neck, and then cut off her ears and nose.”  The crime was committed after her parents refused to give their daughter’s hand in marriage to Sher Mohammad.

They mutilated her body “to set an example”, prosecutor Jahangir said.

Mohammad Ali has also been arrested, while the other two men allegedly involved in the attack have not been charged.  The brothers were tried under anti-terror laws because the incident “created tyranny” in the district.  The high court must confirm the sentence before it is carried out, and a doctor must determine that they can survive the punishment.

Pakistani human rights groups have long campaigned for more to be done to stop attacks against women, which often includes facial disfigurement.  However, they also disagree with the type of punishment handed out in Lahore, correspondents say.

For more information, please see:

BBC News- Pakistan Court Orders Ears and Noses To Be Cut Off – 22 December 2009

The Associated Press- Pakistani Court Orders 2 Men’s Noses, Ears Cut Off – 22 December 2009

CNNWorld- Pakistan Court Orders Men’s Ears, Noses Hacked Off – 22 December 2009