Blackwater was criticised for its actions while working for the US defence department in Iraq

Two former employees of the US private security contractor Blackwater, now known as Xe, have been arrested over the killings of two Afghans last year.

Justin Cannon and Chris Drotleff were charged on Thursday with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges.

The two Afghans were killed, and a third was wounded, in a shooting incident that apparently took place after a traffic accident Kabul on May 5.

The two men have told the Associated Press news agency that they were justified in opening fire on a car that caused an accident in front of their vehicle, then turned and sped towards them.

“I feel comfortable firing my weapon any time I feel my life is in danger,” Drotleff said. “That night, my life was 100 per cent in danger.”

The indictment, unsealed in a federal court in the US state of Virginia on Thursday, provided no details about the incident other than it occurred at an intersection of two roads in the Afghan capital.

Xe ‘co-operation’

Drotleff and Cannon were employed by Paravant LLC, a unit of Xe which was previously known as Blackwater Worldwide, and were providing weapons training to the Afghan National Army.

“Xe Services immediately and fully co-operated with the government’s investigation of this tragic incident and terminated the individuals involved for violating company policy,” the company said in a statement.

“In respect for the judicial process, the company will not provide further comment.”

The latest charges against former employees of the private security contractor came as Xe settled seven cases concerning alleged illegal activities that led to the deaths of an number of Iraqis.

The company said in a statement that they were “pleased” with the settlement, which came after months of negotiations.

Dozens of Iraqis had accused the company of behaviour that led to a culture of recklessness and illegality, including the deaths of several people, and sought compensation through the courts.

Last week, a court dismissed manslaughter charges against five Blackwater security guards who were accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

Umar Abdulmutallab was on a 'no-fly' list but still managed to board a trans-Atlantic fight

A Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a US plane on Christmas Day has entered a plea of not guilty during his first appearance in a US court.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, made his first court appearance on Friday in the city of Detroit, to hear six charges over his botched attempt to set off a bomb stitched into his underwear on board a Northwest Airlines trans-Atlantic flight.

The 23-year remained mute during his brief appearance in the Detroit court, in which Mark Randon, a US magistrate, entered the not guilty plea on his behalf.

Tom Ackerman, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, said Abdulmutallab was indicted for attempted murder of the 290 people on board the plane.

“But this charge does not carry the longest sentence. Rather, the most serious of the six charges is trying to use a weapon of mass destruction”, he said.

Ackerman added that he may also be detained indefinitely for illegal alien entry to the US.

Security concerns

Allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, Abdulmutallab’s failed attack on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit has triggered worldwide security alarm.

In particular, it has led the United States to adopt stringent new screening and security measures at airports. Dozens of names have also been added to no-fly lists.

Barack Obama, the US president, on Thursday ordered a sweeping overhaul of flawed intelligence services but said “ultimately the buck stops with me”.

Obama said intelligence agencies had the necessary information to prevent the bomb attempt but failed to connect and understand the disparate pieces of data.

The measures outlined at the White House included wider and quicker distribution of intelligence reports and stronger analysis of them, as well as tightened passenger screening and expanded watch lists.

But he warned that “there is, of course, no foolproof solution”.

‘Systemic failure’

The White House also released a report on Thursday of how the alleged bomber in the December 25 failed attack managed to elude the authorities and board the Detroit-bound plane with explosives.

The six-page summary of the report given to Obama stated that US intelligence officials had received unspecified “discreet pieces of intelligence” as early as October to identify the 23-year-old Nigerian as an al-Qaeda operative and keep him off the plane.

But officials did not increase their focus on the threat and did not pull together fragments of data needed to foil the scheme, said the summary.

Obama said the “incident was not the fault of a single individual or organisation, but rather a systemic failure across organisations and agencies”.

“I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately the buck stops with me,” he added.

“As president I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility.”

Blackwater's role in the Iraq war has been highly controversal

Seven lawsuits concerning alleged illegal activities that led to deaths in Iraq filed against the firm formerly known as Blackwater have been settled out of court in the US.

The company, now known as Xe, said in a statement that they were “pleased” with the settlement, which came after months of negotiations.

Susan Burke, the lawyer for the firm, filed for the cases to be dismissed in court late on Wednesday.

“This enables Xe’s new management to move the company forward free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation, and provides some compensation to Iraqi families,” the company said.

Further details of the settlement were not released by the court or Xe.

Dozens of Iraqis had accused the company of behaviour that led to a culture of recklessness and illegality, including the deaths of several people, and sought compensation through the courts.

“[Blackwater founder, Erik] Prince personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army … to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians,” one civil lawsuits asserted.

‘Victory’

In one cited case, 17 Iraqis were left dead in 2007 in Nasoor Square in Baghdad, the capital, after alleged shooting by personnel from the security contractor.

“I feel like I achieved victory against the Blackwater firm,” Hassan Jabir, a lawyer who was injured in the Nasoor Square incident, said.

Jabir added that the victims’ families and those wounded in that shooting met lawyers in a Baghdad hotel about a week ago.

The lawsuits also included the killings of three people guarding the Iraqi Media Network in February 2007 and the 2006 killing of an Iraqi guard, amongst others.

The firm has faced intense scrutiny in the US and Iraqi chambers of government in past years.

Last week, a US federal court dropped the charges against the five contractors accused for the 2007 shooting deaths.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has said that Baghdad will still bring them to account, but many Iraqi’s see that decision as a further indication that foreign contractors in the country have been allowed to act above the law.

Afghan arrests

Meanwhile, two former Blackwater contractors have been arrested on murder charges following the killings of two Afghans in 2009.

An indictment charges 27-year-old Justin Cannon and 29-year-old Chris Drotleff with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges. Both of them are in custody.

Both Cannon and Drotleff have said in recent interviews that they were justified when they opened fire on a threatening vehicle last year. Blackwater fired both men after the shooting for failing to comply with the terms of their contract.

Zeid, a Jordanian intelligence officer killed in the attack, was honoured in Amman

A suicide bomber who killed eight people when he attacked a US base in Afghanistan has been identified as a “double agent” working for Jordanian intelligence, according to US media and intelligence reports.

Al Jazeera sources in Afghanistan on Tuesday said that the man, identified as Hammam Khalil al-Balawi, had been brought to the base in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, by car, from across the border in Pakistan.

Al-Balawi, also known as Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, is believed to have offered the CIA new information on the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda second in command.

He had apparently duped his employers into believing that statements he had made in the past on websites about wanting to die as a martyr were part of his cover.

The bombing, which occurred last Wednesday, killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer, identified by Jordan’s state news agency Petra as Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid.

Al-Qaeda connection

Former CIA officers said Zeid, who was related to the Jordanian royal family, was al-Balawi’s reporting officer.

Al-Balawi, who had in the past been imprisoned in Jordan, is thought to have been recruited by Jordanian intelligence to help track down al-Zawahiri because of his connections with al-Qaeda.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and White House adviser, said that according to unconfirmed intelligence reports, al-Zawahiri himself had ordered al-Balawi to carry out the attack using the pretext of information about his whereabouts.

“The bomber allegedly was sent by Ayman Zawahiri himself to conduct the attack and claimed he had information on Zawahiri,” Riedel was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

The Jordanian government has not responded to requests for comment on the story.

‘Double agent’

Nisreen el-Shamayleh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said: “In the past al-Balawi had been imprisoned and tortured in Jordanian prisons for participating in al-Qaeda meetings. That was way back in the past.

“After being released from prison, he was summoned several times by Jordanian intelligence and it is believed that during that period, and because of al-Balawi’s valuable knowledge of al-Qaeda, he may have then been recruited by Jordanian intelligence,” she said.

“We do know that he wasn’t actually recruited by the Jordanian intelligence for very long.”

Al-Balawi, who was from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, is also known to have trained and worked as a doctor in a hospital in Amman.

The US monitoring service Site Intelligence said that so-called jihadist websites had reported al-Balawi’s arrest in December 2007 without specifying where he had been arrested.

‘Love of jihad’

Site also reported that al-Balwai was a prolific contributor to such websites, even after his release from custody when he was supposed to be working as a Jordanian agent, the monitoring group added.

In a September 2009 posting on a site run by al-Qaeda, he wrote: “If [a Muslim] dies in the cause of Allah, he will grant his words glory that will be permanent marks on the path to guide to jihad, with permission from Allah,” according to Site.

“If love of jihad enters a man’s heart, it will not leave him even if he wants to do so. Indeed, what he sees of luxurious palaces will remind him of positions of the martyrs in the higher heaven.”

El-Shamayleh said the attack would likely damage relations between the CIA and Jordanian intelligence.

“For many years Jordanian intelligence has been one of the CIA’s closest and most useful allies in the Middle East. The attack could be embarrassing for the [Jordanian] government,” she said.

“Jordan has always tried to present itself as an ally and a partner with the US in its ‘fight against terror’.”

In 2006, Jordanian intelligence helped track down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in an air raid in Iraq in June that year.

Taliban claim

The new details of attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman run contrary to earlier claims that the Taliban were behind the attack.

Soon after the blast Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in an email: “This deadly attack was carried out by a valorous Afghan army member when the officials [Americans] were busy gaining information about the mujahideen.”

The Afghan government later rejected the claim that the bomber had been from the Afghan army.

The attack in Khost was the worst single loss of life for the CIA since the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983.

Following the attack, the base was locked down. An Al Jazeera source said that about 150 mostly Afghan labourers at the base were detained for three days.

The CIA has not released the names of those killed or provided details about the work its agents had been carrying out, citing “the sensitivity of their mission and other ongoing operations”.

Hillary Clinton said instability in Yemen could have 'global implications'

The US has offered to support the Yemeni government’s fight against al-Qaeda, saying instability in the country could have “global implications”.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Monday that the US sees “global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region”.

But Yemen’s foreign minister ruled out direct US military intervention to tackle al-Qaeda fighters operating in his country.

“Yemen is going to deal with terrorism in its own way, out of its own interests and therefore I don’t think it will counter fire,” Abu Baker al-Qirbi told Al Jazeera on Monday.

Al-Qirbi said Yemen was happy to receive “development assistance” but not military intervention, adding: “The negative impact on Yemen is if there is direct intervention of the US and this is not the case.”

‘Not satisfied’

In her first comments since the attempted attack, she said the US administration was “not satisfied” with the Christmas Day incident.

Clinton told reporters after a meeting with Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the visiting Qatar prime minister, that she would discuss additional steps with other US administration members this week.

“[We] will be meeting with the president tomorrow to go over our international reviews, to hear what others in our government also have concluded and to take whatever additional steps are necessary.”

She said a meeting on Yemen planned to be held in London this month would give the international community a chance to assess both the threat in the Middle East country and the world’s response.

Clinton also said the US embassy in Yemen – which closed on Sunday along with the British, Spanish and French embassies due to unspecified al-Qaeda threats – would only reopen when security conditions permit.

Yemen is battling to control an al-Qaeda movement estimated to have hundreds of fighters in the country, as well as so-called Houthi rebels in the north of the country and a secessionist movement in the south.

Economic aid

Al-Qirbi told Al Jazeera that Yemen needed development aid to improve social conditions in the country.

“Economic growth is a necessity for Yemen because one of the main challenges facing Yemen is to improve the standards of living, create jobs and fight poverty because these are the elements that contribute to extremism in Yemen.

“Our first priority is development assistance and then we need also assistance to build and expand our counter-terrorism units,” he said.

“I know the Americans have committed more money for our counter-terrorism units and that is one area we need support in.”

Detroit attack

Over the weekend, Barack Obama, the US president, accused al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula of arming and training a Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a US airliner bound for the city of Detroit on Christmas Day.

The Yemen-based group, which claims to be affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s organisation, had earlier claimed responsibility for the failed attack and called for strikes on embassies in Yemen.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said the failed attack was in response to a series of raids in western Yemen, which the group says were carried out by US warplanes.

Washington and Sanaa have denied the claims.

The intensification of security efforts in Sanaa comes just days after the British government announced plans to join the US in funding an “anti-terrorist” force in Yemen.

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has said he would hold a meeting in London on January 28 to discuss how to counter radicalisation in Yemen.

On Monday at least two suspected al-Qaeda members were killed during a raid near Sanaa, and up to three other suspects wounded during the operation in the Arhab district, around 30km northeast of the capital.

Security concerns

Security officials told The Associated Press news agency the raid was not connected to the threats that prompted the Western embassy closures.

The Japanese embassy has also suspended consular activities and Yemeni authorities have increased security in the city.

John Brennan, the US president’s assistant for homeland security and counter-terrorism, warned on Sunday that “there are indications that al-Qaeda is planning an attack against a target in Sanaa”.

Hillary Mann-Leverett, a former US diplomat who worked at the national security council, told Al Jazeera that Yemen had long been a troubled state plagued by poverty and violence.

“The most important thing here for geopolitics globally and within the region, is that Yemen has been a fractured, desperately poor and deeply fractious country that all the countries in the region and the superpowers have used as a battleground,” she said.

But she also said the Obama administration’s policies towards the region were partially to blame for threats against Washington and its allies.

“We have given the Saudis a green light to militarily intervene in Yemen and to characterise what is happening in Yemen as a Sunni-Shia war [with] the Saudis there to defend the Sunnis against craven Shia,” she said.

“We’re paying the price today of outsourcing our policy to the Saudis.”

Judith Miller used neocon and CIA-concocted propaganda to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people.

If we are to believe a recent poll posted on the Fox News website, more than 70% of Americans favor going into Yemen to get rid of al-Qaeda. “With over 20,000 people taking part in the poll, 71% voted that ‘the problem is not going away,’ and “troops need to be sent there to eliminate Al Qaeda and the threat it poses to national security.”

Fox News is infamous for providing propaganda for the neocons who engineered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. A poll on the Fox News website will naturally reflect the views of neocon followers who are conditioned to accept the idea that a manufactured terrorist threat must be countered with Predator drone attacks and possibly direct U.S. military involvement in Yemen.

The so-called liberal media will also play its part in any military action against al-Qaeda in Yemen. During the Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the New York Times and other supposedly liberal newspapers and media outlets ran blatant pro-invasion propaganda on a daily basis. Case in point: Times reporter Judith Miller, who eagerly ran neocon concocted stories about Iraqi metal tubes allegedly intended to be used to enrich nuclear material. “Mr. Hussein’s dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq’s push to improve and expand Baghdad’s chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war,” wrote Miller, who eventually “retired” from the newspaper as a result on her pro-invasion reporting.

The invasion of Iraq was preceded by the most intense and deceptive propaganda campaign since the Second World War. Most of this propaganda came from the Project for a New American Century and a handful of neocon think tanks. PNAC pushed for an invasion of Iraq prior to Bush taking office.

Bush and the neocons exploited Hitler’s “Big Lie” tactic as they prepared for invasion and mass murder. The neocons used repetition and misinformation to create the false impression that Iraq was behind the September 11th attacks, particularly in the case of the fairy tale meeting in Prague five months earlier between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials.

The neocons deceived the American people into the absurd belief that Saddam Hussein posed a threat not only to the United States, but the whole world. It did not matter that most of the claims made by the neocons and the government were patently absurd and illogical.

The “Big Lie” tactic worked famously during the first invasion of Iraq by Bush’s father. Recall the 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah who told the story of Iraqi soldiers dumping hundreds of premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die. It later came out that this disgusting bit of propaganda was invented by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a PR front group created by Hill and Knowlton.

In the lead up to the second invasion, the CIA hired the Rendon Group, a PR firm run by John Rendon, to conduct a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. Rendon created the Iraqi National Congress and fed propaganda to Judith Miller who basically served as a propaganda operative for the CIA.

Like the invasion of Iraq, an invasion of Yemen is a done deal. On December 30, it was reported that a plan is in place to attack the impoverished Arab country. The plan is part of a new classified agreement with the Yemeni government to use al-Qaeda as a pretext to establish a new front in the manufactured global war on terror. According to CNN, “by all accounts, the agreement would allow the US to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in Yemen with the consent of that government.”

In the meantime, the CIA, through its Mockingbird assets in the corporate media, will manufacture consent as it did in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

About 113,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan fighting Taliban-led fighters

Two separate roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan have left four US troops and a British soldier dead.

The US soldiers, the first American military casualties in Afghanistan in the new year, were killed in an explosion on Sunday in the south of the country, Nato-led forces said in a statement.

The UK soldier died while on foot patrol in Helmand province, Britain’s ministry of defence said on Monday.

The Taliban said that a series of explosions on Sunday in Panjwai district of southern Kandahar had killed several foreign soldiers, but their report could not be verified immediately.

Meanwhile, the Afghan defence ministry said its soldiers killed more than 10 Taliban fighters on Sunday in northern Kunduz province’s Imam Sahib district.

Nato and the US have 113,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting Taliban-led fighters, who are aiming to overthrow the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

Break suspended

On Monday, Karzai ordered parliament to suspend a winter break so that politicians can vote on new cabinet nominees, after politicians rejected over two thirds of his original candidates.

Parliament refused 17 out of 24 of his nominees on Saturday, casting Afghanistan into further political array after a UN-backed probe in October threw out nearly one third of his votes from August’s presidential poll.

Karzai’s decree ordered that the legislature should delay its 45-day recess until he proposes new ministers in place of those rejected by the parliamentarians at the weekend, his office said in a statement.

It ordered “the national assembly to postpone leave until the members of the cabinet are approved”.

If Karzai fails to have his cabinet approved in the next few weeks he will have to head to a London conference later this month seeking extra funds from Western donors without being able to say who will control a significant chunk of them.

US-bound passengers from countries such as Yemen will undergo tighter security checks

The US government has announced that visitors from several countries will be subject to new airport security screening procedures.

Beginning Monday, all passengers flying from or via at least 14 countries, including Nigeria and Yemen, will be patted down and have all carry-on luggage searched before boarding flights bound for the US.

The move is part of the security crackdown following the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, was arrested after being accused of carrying a bomb sewn into his underwear on to a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Abdulmutallab, who had got through security screening, was subdued by passengers and crew after allegedly attempting, unsuccessfully, to detonate the bomb on board the plane.

Barack Obama, the US president, said on Friday that it appeared Abdulmutallab was a member of al-Qaeda and had been trained and equipped by the group in Yemen.

The US government is investigating why its intelligence agencies failed to stop Abdulmutallab from boarding the plane but on Sunday, John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser, said that while some errors were made in tracking him, there was no one piece of evidence to help officials connect all the dots.

‘Beyond borders’

“Because effective aviation security must begin beyond our borders … every individual flying into the US from anywhere in the world travelling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening,” the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said in a statement.

“The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on US bound international flights,” the US agency responsible for air security measures added.

The US currently lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as “state sponsors of terrorism” but the air travel directive also includes Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen, the Reuters news agency cited an Obama administration official as saying.

Meanwhile, London’s Heathrow airport – Europe’s busiest – is the latest airport to ramp up security by introducing full body scanners to screen passengers.

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, said on Sunday the authorities were acting “quickly” to introduce the new measures because a new form of explosive used by al-Qaeda “is not being identified by ordinary machines”.

“They [passengers] will see checks for explosive traces – that will be done on hand luggage. Transit passengers will also be checked as well as transfer passengers,” he said, adding that he hoped it would not lead to longer queues at airports.

The Netherlands announced on Wednesday that body scanners would be used on all flights from Amsterdam’s Schipol airport to the US.

Lt. General Thomas McInerney spokes to Fox News about what he called pending terror attacks on US airliners.

A retired US general and member of Iran Policy Committee (IPC) says all 18 to 28 years old Muslim men should be strip searched at airports as “one of these bombers” will explode an airliner in the coming days.

Thomas McInerney, a retired Lt. Genera with the US Air Force, told Fox News television on Saturday that within the next 30 to 120 days, “there is a danger of high probability” awaiting US airliners.

“If you are an 18 to 28-year-old Muslim man then you should be strip searched. And if we don’t do that there’s a very high probability we’re going to lose an airline,” he said.

The retired general went on to say that US officials should profile all Muslims. “We have to use profiling. And I mean be very serious and harsh about the profiling.”

Asked if such a racial approach would not “generate more hatred and violence towards the West,” McInerney said he did not want “a racial profile.”

“I want to profile on that group that we have enough evidence from 9/11, and other [high-profile] cases that we know what we are looking at,” he said.

The suggestions made by the US retied general comes on the heels of a purported bomb attack on a US transatlantic airliner on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who allegedly received al-Qaeda training in Yemen.

Lawmakers and congressional leaders in the US have echoed similar sentiments by urging President Obama abandon or suspend his plan to shutter the Guantanamo Bay Prison.

Around half of the remaining Gitmo detainees are from Yemen, and of those, about 40 have been cleared for release.

The raid took place in the province of Meta, an area used by the Farc to produce cocaine

At least 18 Colombian Farc rebels have been killed when the country’s air force bombed a southern jungle camp where dozens of guerrillas were celebrating the new year, officials said.

The bombardment took place on Friday in the province of Meta, an area used by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, to produce the cocaine that funds its decades-old war insurgency.

“While Colombia’s families celebrated the holiday, our soldiers kept their commitment to confront narco-terrorism in the jungles of the country,” Defence Minister Gabriel Silva said.

Fifteen Farc guerrillas surrendered to Colombian ground troops who stormed the camp after the bombing, officials said.

The two sides exchanged fire, but there were no immediate reports of military
casualties.

In another attack, a teenager and a soldier were killed in a New Year’s Eve raid by the leftist rebels, the country’s military said on Friday.

Guerrillas from the Farc opened fire against an army patrol in the southwestern region of Huila, killing the soldier and a 14-year-old who was caught in the crossfire.

Four other people were hurt in the incident, according to a military spokesperson.

The armed forces have offered a reward of $15,000 for information leading to the capture of the perpetrators.

The Farc, which is thought to number 6,000 to 10,000 fighters,  has been at war with the Colombian government for around 45 years.