Eighteen Kuwaiti activists detained by Israel returned home on Wednesday EPA

Officials in Israel say they have released about 700 activists seized from the Gaza aid flotilla and sent them for deportation.

The hundreds of activists detained on the boats and diverted to Israel have all been released for deportation, said Yron Zamir, a prisons authority
spokesman.

Zamir said all of the people had been taken to Ben Gurion airport or the Jordanian border.

Yehuda Weinstein, Israel’s attorney general, said Israel decided not to prosecute any of them, writing in an order on Wednesday that “keeping them here would do more damage to the country’s vital interests than good”.

Palestinian-Israelis detained

Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Jerusalem, said that four Palestinian-Israelis remained in prison.

Earlier on Wednesday, more than 100 of the activists, mostly from Arab countries, were driven by buses across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan.

Eighteen Kuwaiti activists detained by Israel returned home on Wednesday, accusing Israeli troops of having opened fire without warning.

The activists were flown home aboard a government plane from Jordan after crossing the border.

“Israeli commandos started shooting from the air without warning,” said Mubarak al-Mutawa, a lawyer who was on the main vessel, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara.

“They killed a number of volunteers even before landing aboard the ship,” he said on arrival at Kuwait Airport.

Israel says its commandos opened fire in self defence when they encountered resistance from activists wielding metal rods and chairs, and released pictures which appeared to show a handful of soldiers being beaten and clubbed by dozens of activists.

‘Outrageous attack’

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, condemned Israel for its “outrageous attack”.

The 47-member body passed a resolution on Wednesday establishing a factfinding mission into possible international law violations.

Authorities said 682 people from more than 30 countries had been on board the six ships that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The activists included hundreds of Turks, four of whom were killed.

Turkey has warned it will cut off diplomatic ties with Israel if its citizens killed and injured in the Gaza flotilla raid are not returned by Wednesday night.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said 210 Turkish nationals were scheduled to be flown to Istanbul from Israel on Turkish planes, while it is believed around 20 injured people will return via Ankara, on ambulance planes.

Differing accounts

Sherine Tadros, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from Beersheva in southern Israel, said that while nine people have been confirmed killed, no information had been made public about their identities.

The activists were killed when Israeli troops, using helicopters and dinghies, stormed the Mavi Marmara, the lead vessel of the six-ship convoy dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, on Monday.

Activists’ accounts of what happened contradict Israeli explanations of the raid.

Huseyin Tokalak, the captain of one of the seized ships who was freed on Tuesday, told a news conference in Istanbul that an Israeli navy ship threatened to sink his vessel before troops boarded and trained their guns on him and his crew.

“They pointed two guns to the head of each of us,” Tokalak said.

Others said that the soldiers had opened fire even after passengers had raised the white flag.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who was on board the Mavi Marmara and was released into Jordan on Wednesday morning, said the size of the Israeli attack surprised the ship’s passengers.

“The Israeli assault took those of us on the ship by complete surprise,” Vall said.

“We saw about 30 war vessels surrounding this ship, and helicopters attacking with very luminous bombs.

“More troops came and immediately opened fire, and killed people on the ship without any distinction.”

The UN Security Council has called for “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards” into the Israeli raid.

Another vessel

As a new standoff with another aid ship loomed, David Cameron, the British prime minister, said Monday’s pre-dawn Israeli attack was “completely unacceptable”.

Israel remains defiant about the raid and says it is ready to intercept another aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, that organisers of the Freedom Flotilla planned to send to the Gaza Strip next week.

Accusing international critics of “hypocrisy,” Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, defended the seizure of the aid ships on Wednesday.

In a televised address to the nation, he said he would continue to blockade Gaza, saying that to lift the embargo would turn it into a base for Iranian missiles that would threaten both Israel and Europe.

Amid the international condemnation, Egypt said it was opening the Rafah border it shares with Gaza, to allow in humanitarian aid after a request from the governing Hamas Palestinian faction.

Egypt, in co-ordination with Israel, has rarely opened the border since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Abbas meanwhile criticised Israel’s actions as being “stupid, terrorist and ugly”.

Speaking in Bethlehem, Abbas said that “the way to seek peace has to start by Israel lifting the siege on Gaza, freezing all settlements without preconditions, and the recognition of international references”.

US relations

The bloodshed on Monday also put Israel’s tense ties with the US under further strain and placed under scrutiny the relationship between the allies.

Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught, reporting from Istanbul, said Erdogan, in his speech, “mentioned the unmentionable, saying that Israel acts because it has powerful friends”.

The US has, thus far, refused to condemn the Israeli raid, with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, telling reporters in Washington DC that “the situation from our perspective is very difficult and requires careful, thoughtful responses from all concerned”.

Clinton called on the Israeli government to ease the blockade of Gaza, saying that the “situation in Gaza is unsustainable and unacceptable”.

“Israel’s legitimate security needs must be met just as the Palestinian’s legitimate needs for sustained humanitarian assistance and regular access to reconstruction materials must also be assured,” she said.

]]> http://www.awakensource.com/2010/06/02/israel-deports-gaza-aid-activists/feed/ 0 http://www.awakensource.com/2010/06/02/turkey-demands-return-of-citizens/ http://www.awakensource.com/2010/06/02/turkey-demands-return-of-citizens/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:56:45 +0000 Khattab http://www.awakensource.com/?p=1025

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There have been angry protests in Turkey against Israel's raid on the flotilla [AFP

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, also called for an international commission into the raid on the convoy of six ships, which reportedly killed at least four Turkish nationals.

“We have clearly stated that we would review our ties with Israel if all Turks not released by the end of the day,” Davutoglu told a news conference.

Turkey has sent three planes to retrieve hundreds of activists detained following Monday’s raid in international waters, which left nine people dead.

Legal action considered

Davutoglu said 210 Turks were scheduled to be flown to Istanbul from Israel on Turkish planes later on Wednesday, while it is believed around 20 injured people will return via Ankara, Turkey’s capital, on ambulance planes.

The foreign minister added that two Turkish citizens who were in serious condition will remain in Israeli hospitals with a Turkish doctor.

“We will not leave them to the mercy of anyone,” he said.

Davutoglu added Turkey was ready to normalise ties with Israel if it lifted its blockade on Gaza, saying “it was time calm replaces anger”.

His comments came a day a day after Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, called for Israel to be “punished” for its “bloody massacre”.

“It is no longer possible to cover up or ignore Israel’s lawlessness. It is time for the international community to say ‘enough is enough’,” he said.

Relations between Turkey and Israel deteriorated rapidly following the deadly raid, with most of the bloodshed occurring on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged ship carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists.

State media reported on Wednesday that Turkey’s justice ministry is considering legal action against Israel.

Officials are looking into both domestic and international law to see what action might be undertaken after Monday’s operation in international waters, a report by the Anatolia news agency said.

Thousands of Turks staged two days of protests across the country denouncing the action.

Jewish backlash fears

Some members of Turkey’s Jewish community say they fear that anger over the flotilla deaths will lead to a rise in anti-Semitism in the nation.

“We are definitely worried, because that [the anger in Turkey] can turn very easily to anti-Semitism,” Ivo Molinas, the editor in chief of the weekly Istanbul-based publication Shalom, said.

“The rhetoric used by the prime minister has been very radical,” Molinas, a member of the 20,000-member Jewish community residing in Turkey, added.

Turkey says it has beefed up security to protect its Jewish minority, while Israel has ordered families of Israeli diplomats out of Turkey.

Besir Atalay, the Turkish interior minister, said security has been stepped up at 20 points alone in Istanbul, which has several synagogues and centres.

Turkey became Israel’s chief regional ally when the two signed a military co-operation deal in 1996.

But relations have soured since Israel’s devastating war on Gaza last year amid criticism from Erdogan’s government.

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The suspect in the Times Square bomb attempt claims to have visited fighters' camps in Waziristan [AFP

The raid targeted North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border where many Taliban-affiliated networks are based.

Pakistani intelligence officials said two missiles hit the house of Awal Gul, a local tribesman, in Inzarkas, a village 50km west of Miran Shah.

Residents spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

The suspect in the recent failed car bombing in New York City’s Times Square has claimed he visited in a Taliban fighters camp in the Waziristan region.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said Washington expects more co-operation from Pakistan in fighting terrorism and warned of “severe consequences” if an attack on US soil were traced back to the South Asian country.

She made the remarks in an interview with CBS television’s “60 Minutes” that were to be broadcast later on Sunday.

The US has stepped up its drone attacks on suspected Pakistan Taliban sites after a Jordanian suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees at a US base across the border in the eastern Afghan province of Khost last December.

Pakistan publicly rejects CIA’s drone attacks, saying they are a violation of its sovereignty and fuel anti-US feelings, which complicates its efforts against Taliban fighters.

In another development, Pakistani army helicopters attacked suspected fighters’ hideouts on Sunday morning in the Shana Garhi area of the Orakzai tribal region, killing at least eight of them, Jahanzeb Khan, a local official, said.

Pakistan security forces are carrying out an operation against fighters who escaped the military offensive in South Waziristan. Some have taken refuge in Orakzai, which lies next to North Waziristan, and other neighbouring tribal areas.

At least nine people, mostly Iraqi soldiers and police, have been killed and another 24 wounded after a series of attacks on security checkpoints across the capital Baghdad.

In the apparently co-ordinated attacks, reports said armed men used silenced weapons to fire on six checkpoints early on Monday, while bombs were planted at three others.

A roadside bomb, set off as a police patrol passed by, also killed two civilians.

The attacks - all executed around dawn - showed a new tactic being used by fighters in the country, the Reuters news agency cited an interior ministry spokesman as saying.

“This was a message to us that they can attack us in different parts of the city at the same time because they have cells everywhere,” he said.

At least eight police officers were also wounded in the western city of Falluja on Monday after bombs were planted outside their homes.

Rising violence

The attacks come just two days after reports that the Iraqi defence ministry was considering building a “security fence”around the capital as a way of curbing violence and controlling the movements of anti-government fighters.

Access to the city would be controlled by eight checkpoints, and construction could be completed by mid-2011, reports from local broadcaster Al Iraqiyya Television said.

Violence across Iraq has dropped significantly since 2006 and 2007, when the country’s sectarian conflict was at its height. But attacks have been on the rise in recent months, particular in Baghdad.

National parliamentary elections on March 7left no clear winner, and continuing wrangling by political blocs to form a governable coalition have left an atmosphere of instability in the county.

‘Backlash’

Security forces have in recent weeks also made a series of arrests of high-profile members of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Baghdad, said.

“Certainly, authorities were predicting a backlash against that, we had seen a number of attacks recently, but this is the most serious in terms, not only of the death toll, but of the sense of co-ordination,” he said.

“It would be a very strong answer, if indeed it is an al-Qaeda group [behind Monday's strikes], that despite the fact that their leadership is gone, they are still capable of carrying out this type of attack.”

Police said three of checkpoints fired at on Monday were in the west of Baghdad, with two more in the east and one in the south. The checkpoints that were bombed were in the south and southeast of the capital.

Full Article

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates (L) talks with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a recent trip to New Delhi.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned that militants might provoke a war between nuclear armed Pakistan and India.

Gates said in New Delhi on Wednesday that India cannot be expected to show restraint, should it be attacked by a militant group with roots in Pakistan.

“I think it’s not unreasonable to assume India’s patience would be limited were there to be further attacks,” Gates said following the talks with senior Indian officials.

Tension between India and Pakistan escalated particularly after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that left nearly 170 people dead.

India blames Pakistani-based anti-India groups for the attacks.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the two neighbors secured independence from Britain in 1947.

Gates, who is visiting the Indian capital of New Delhi, also discussed the prospect of stronger military ties between the US and India. He has pledged to help India gain access to high-tech military technology.

Gates also told Indian officials that Washington intends to be involved in the region for a very long time.

Yemen has boosted troop numbers in three provinces to tackle a growing al-Qaeda challenge

Yemeni fighter jets have attacked the home of a suspected leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the military steps up pressure on the group.

A Yemeni tribal source said a number of people had been killed in Wednesday’s air raids in Erq al-Shabwan village in Maarib province, about 130km east of the capital Sanaa.

The source said the wave of raids, which began in the morning, targeted the house of Ayed al-Shabwani, one of six al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders who, according to the Yemen government, were killed in an air attack last week.

A military official, who would not be named, said there had been three attacks on the house and one on an orange grove near the village where the authorities think al-Shabwani had built a safe haven for dozens of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members.

The official said that there had been a large deployment of government forces at the city of Maarib, about five kilometres from Erq al-Shabwan.

Orange grove targeted

During the afternoon, witnesses said, jets twice fired missiles at the orange grove and afterwards continued to fly in the area.

Mohamed Vall, reporting from the southern city of Aden, said quoting the Yemeni army website that one al-Qaeda member was killed in a separate clash with security forces in Lahij, about 50km north of Aden.

“The fighting took place after a government vehicle was hijacked by al-Qaeda and there was an exchange of fire between the two sides in which the member of the group was killed,” he said.

The clashes come just days after Yemen said it had killed six suspected leaders, including al-Shabwani, of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Saada, a province north of Saana.

Describing Wednesday’s air assault in Maarib, our correspondent said: “[The air raids] started around noon. The government said they targeted the home and farm of al-Shabwani.”

“There were four raids in that area. The government said there was an exchange of fire and that al-Qaeda members were armed with anti-aircraft weapons, which they tried to use against the government aircraft. But the government did not talk about any al-Qaeda casualties.”

In this context, our correspondent noted that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had rejected the Yemeni government’s claim about al-Shabwani’s death, and that the government had not commented on al-Qaeda’s denial.

Airline plot connection

Yemen is under US pressure to clamp down on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the December 25 bid to blow up a US flight from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit.

Wednesday’s air raid comes a day after the United Nations Security Council added Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its list of outlawed organisations.

Two of the group’s purported leaders, Nasser al-Wahayshi and Qasim al-Raymi, face new restrictions after the move by the Security Council’s sanctions committee.

The sanctions against the two men, who were among 23 fighters who escaped from a jail in Sanaa in 2006, include worldwide freezes on their assets and travel bans.

“Today’s actions strengthen international efforts to degrade the capabilities of AQAP,” Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said on Tuesday, referring to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was formed in January 2009 after the merger of groups in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

It has since set up bases inside Yemen and has been blamed for the suicide attack on South Korean tourists in March 2009 and an attempt to assassinate the Saudi deputy interior minister across the border.

The UN committee made its decision shortly after the US state department added the Yemen-based group to it list of proscribed organisations.

“We are determined to eliminate AQAP’s ability to execute violent attacks and to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat their networks,” Philip Crowley, a state department spokesman, said.

Taliban commander speaks out

Al Jazeera has obtained an exclusive interview with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander fighting US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

US commanders have identified the Pakistan-based Haqqani network - widely  believed to have ties with Pakistan’s spy agency – as one of the biggest threats to US forces in Afghanistan.

The network, which was initially nurtured by the CIA, carries out attacks on foreign forces across the majority of eastern Afghanistan.

The US has put a $5 million bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani’s head. David Chater has the latest from Kabul.

Clashes erupted after a dispute over the rebuilding of houses damaged by similar fighting in 2008

Clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs have broken out again in the capital of central Nigeria’s Plateau state, Jos, causing dozens of deaths and forcing police to impose a 24-hour curfew.

A police official said on Tuesday that as many as 60 people might have been killed since Sunday when clashes started.

Mohammed Shittu, an employee at Jos central mosque, where he said bodies were being taken, told the AFP news agency around 150 people had been killed in fighting, with around 800 wounded.

“On Sunday evening, we buried 19 corpses and 52 yesterday. As of right now, there are 78 at the mosque yet to be buried,” Shittu said.

The figures could not be independently confirmed.

Residents said sporadic gunfire could be heard in many neighbourhoods and several houses were on fire, but the violence had not spread beyond the city itself.

Security forces are trying to prevent a repetition of clashes in November 2008, in which hundreds of residents were killed in the country’s worst fighting between Muslim and Christian gangs in years.

Curfew imposed

Earlier on Tuesday, Gregory Anyating, the state’s police commissioner, said: “In view of this situation in town, I hereby declare a 24-hour curfew starting from now.”

Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian vice-president, who has taken over ceremonial duties from Umaru Yar’Adua, the ailing president, has directed the national security adviser and senior police officials to take the necessary action to restore calm to the city.

Ima Niboro, the vice-president’s spokesman, said: “I assure you that the federal government is on top of the situation in Jos and the situation is under control.”

This week’s violence started after an argument between Muslim and Christian neighbours over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the 2008 clashes.

Nigeria has roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, although traditional animist beliefs underpin many people’s faiths.

More than 200 ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side in the West African country, although one million people were killed in a civil war between 1967 and 1970 and there have been outbreaks of religious unrest since then.

At least 40 people were killed last month in clashes between Nigerian security forces and members of an Islamic sect in the northern city of Bauchi.

Peter Goldsmith, the government’s senior legal adviser at the time, wrote in 2002 that he was “not aware of existence of material” that would indicate an “imminent threat from Iraq”.

“I think you should know that I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defence,” Goldsmith wrote to Geoff Hoon, Britain’s defence minister from 1999 to 2005.

“In particular I am not aware of the existence of material indicating the existence of an imminent threat from Iraq of the sort which would justify military action without support of a [UN] Security Council Chapter VII authorisation.”

Goldsmith later told the cabinet in March 2003 that the war was legal without a UN resolution, and the US-led invasion went ahead three days later.

The letters were released as Hoon gave evidence to a British public inquiry into the Iraq war.

He is the most senior politician to appear before the hearings so far.

‘Legal justification’

Hoon told the hearing in London on Tuesday that Goldsmith had “categorically” concluded that “there was a legal justification for military action” in his final conclusion in 2003.

He also said the government wanted a diplomatic solution to the crisis and did not think Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time, gave a promise to George Bush, the US president, to support war come what may.

“I think that right up until the vote in the House of Commons, our attitude towards
the use of force was always conditional,” Hoon said.

He identified mid-2002 as the period when it become clear that Washington “meant business” over Iraq, because the country was so deeply traumatised over the September 11, 2001 attacks and it perceived Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader at the time, as another threat.

“It was getting pretty real by then. I think there was a real sense of the Americans thinking through in a very practical way the consequences of the ‘axis of evil’ speech [by Bush] and focusing on Iraq.

“So we had no doubt at that stage in the summer that they meant business.”

Bush first branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002.

Wide-ranging inquiry

The Iraq war inquiry is Britain’s third and widest-ranging inquiry into the conflict, which triggered huge anti-war huge protests in the UK at the time and in which 179 British soldiers died fighting.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in London, said the inquiry will be looking to Blair, who is due to testify on January 29, for key evidence at the hearing.

“The Iraq inquiry says it is ’struggling to find’ key intelligence evidence supporting Tony Blair’s case for war,” she said.

“It will be asking him to fill in those gaps when he appears here next week.”

Two previous reports on aspects of the war have cleared Blair’s government of wrongdoing over the conflict.

The Yemeni military is fighting al-Qaeda, Houthi rebels, and a separatist movement

A group of Muslim leaders have said Yemenis have a religious duty to resist foreign military intervention in the country.

“In the event of any foreign party insisting on hostilities against, an assault on, or military or security intervention in Yemen, then Islam requires all its followers to pursue jihad,” a statement signed by 150 clerics on Thursday said.

Foreign governments have voiced increasing concern about the situation in Yemen since an attempted attack on a US-bound airliner, after which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed it had armed the alleged bomber.

On Wednesday, Carl Levin, the chairman of the US senate armed services committee, said that Washington should use drone attacks, air raids or covert operations against al-Qaeda fighters in the country.

“Most options ought to be on the table,” short of invasion by US forces, the Democrat senator said.

The US and Britain have announced plans to fund Yemen’s counter-terrorism police force, but Barack Obama, the US president, has explicitly ruled out sending in troops.

Verdict ‘resonates’

Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, said that the religious leaders’ decision to oppose any miltary intervention would carry great weight in the country.

“In a highly conservative, highly religious society like Yemen, it is the word of the clerics and not that of the politicians that really resonates among the masses. And today the clerics of Yemen have announced their verdict,” Vall said.

The clerics said that their opinion was in line with that of most Yemenis and the Sana’a government, while also criticising the killing of foreigners in an apparent allusion to suspected al-Qaeda attacks.

The Yemeni government, which is also fighting a rebel group in the north of the country, and a secessionist movement in the south, has said it is engaged in an “open war” to clear al-Qaeda fighters from its territory.

“The war security forces launched against al-Qaeda elements is open whenever or wherever we find these elements,” a government news website reported on Thursday, quoting an unnamed security source.

It said the source had also warned Yemenis against “hiding any al-Qaeda elements”.

Sana’a has repeatedly denied that it will require foreign intervention to help it defeat the movement, an amalgamation of groups from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

“Yemen is not Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, where terrorists constantly launch attacks while the authorities try to respond,” Ali Anisi, Yemen’s head of national security, said on Wednesday.

“Here, we anticipate the threat. Yemen is not a hideout for the terrorists and will never be.”

‘Repressive government’

Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad and chief of the Iraq Issues Group, told Al Jazeera: “One of the difficulties that [the Americans] see in Yemen is, as we see in many places, is unrepresentative, corrupt and repressive government.

“At the end of the day, the only real solution to the problem of terrorism is to have responsible government, with the willingness and the ability to control its own territory.

“There are many who are inclined to view the Ali Abdullah Salehs [president of Yemen] of the world as American puppets. Well, in fact, maybe unfortunately, it is far from that. … [However], there aren’t really many good alternatives.”

Yemen has insisted that it is making advances against al-Qaeda, citing air raids in December that killed more than 60 people and a string of reported arrests of suspected al-Qaeda figures.

However, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has used the air raids to encourage anti-American feeling, claiming that they were carried out by US warplanes.