Suicide bomber attacks CIA base in Afghanistan, killing at least 8 Americans

Image via Wikipedia

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 31, 2009; A01

A suicide bomber infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the deadliest single attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency's history, U.S. officials said.

The attack represented an audacious blow to intelligence operatives at the vanguard of U.S. counterterrorism operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that are active on the frontier between the two nations. The facility that was targeted -- Forward Operating Base Chapman -- is in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, which borders North Waziristan, the Pakistani tribal area that is believed to be al-Qaeda's home base.

U.S. sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were civilians and said they believed that most, if not all, were CIA employees or contractors. At least one Afghan civilian also was killed, the sources said.

It is unclear exactly how the assailant managed to gain access to the heavily guarded U.S.-run post, which serves as an operations and surveillance center for the CIA. The bomber struck in what one U.S. official described as the base's fitness center.

In addition to the dead, eight people were wounded, several of them seriously, U.S. government officials said.

While many details remained vague Wednesday, the attack appears to have killed more U.S. intelligence personnel than have died in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion began in late 2001. The CIA has previously acknowledged the deaths of four officers in fighting in Afghanistan in the past eight years.

"It is the nightmare we've been anticipating since we went into Afghanistan and Iraq," said John E. McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director who now serves on a board that supports children of CIA officers slain on the job. "Our people are often out on the front line, without adequate force protection, and they put their lives quite literally in jeopardy."

The CIA has declined to comment publicly on the attack until relatives of the dead are notified. A former senior agency official said it was the worst single-day casualty toll for the agency since eight CIA officers were killed in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983.

"I know that the American people will appreciate their sacrifice. I pray that the government they serve does the same," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because the agency has not yet publicly acknowledged the deaths.

The CIA has been quietly bolstering its ranks in Afghanistan in recent weeks, mirroring the surge of military troops there. Agency officers coordinated the initial U.S.-led attack against the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, and have since provided hundreds of spies, paramilitary operatives and analysts in the region for roles ranging from counterterrorism to counternarcotics. The agency also operates the remote-control aircraft used in aerial strikes on suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the lawless tribal provinces on the Pakistan side of the border. The campaign of strikes in Pakistan has not been officially acknowledged, but it has escalated rapidly in the past two years.

Intelligence experts who have visited U.S. bases in the region say the CIA officers at Chapman would have focused mainly on recruiting local operatives and identifying targets.

"The best intelligence is going to come from the field, and that means working closely with the Afghans," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

The loss of experienced CIA field officers would be particularly damaging to U.S. efforts in the area "because they know the terrain," Hoffman said. "Every American death in a theater of war is tragic, but these might be more consequential given these officers' unique capabilities and attributes."

The bomber and those who aided him must have had very good intelligence to gain access to the secure base without arousing suspicion, he said.

Ninety CIA deaths are memorialized by stars on a wall in the agency's Langley headquarters. The inscription on the memorial reads: "We are the nation's first line of defense. We accomplish what others cannot accomplish and go where others cannot go."

U.S. military officials and diplomats confirmed Wednesday's attack and the eight civilian deaths. "We mourn the loss of life in this attack," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

The number of U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan this year has reached 310, the highest one-year total since the start of the war. Twelve U.S. troops have been killed since Dec. 1.

Khost has been the scene of several major attacks this year. In May, an attack killed 13 civilians and injured 36 others. Seven Afghan civilians were killed and 21 were wounded by an improvised explosive device detonated outside the main gate of Forward Operating Base Salerno on May 13.

Also Wednesday, NATO announced that four Canadian troops and a journalist from Canada were killed in an explosion in Kandahar province, one of the most dangerous areas of southern Afghanistan.

The international coalition said the journalist was traveling with the troops on a patrol near Kandahar city when they were attacked Wednesday.

Kandahar is a hotbed of the insurgency. On Dec. 24, eight people, including a child, were killed when a man driving a horse-drawn cart laden with explosives detonated the cache outside a guesthouse frequented by foreigners. The day before, another Canadian soldier was killed by a homemade bomb in the province.

According to figures compiled by the Associated Press, the latest casualties bring to 32 the number of Canadian forces killed in Afghanistan this year.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung, Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr. and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Related articles by Zemanta

• CIA Officers Killed in Afghan Attack (online.wsj.com)
• The CIA Takes a Big Hit in the Afghan War (time.com)
• Taliban claims responsibility for bombing (cnn.com)
• CIA Director: 7 CIA workers killed in Afghanistan (ctv.ca)
• Canwest journalist, 4 soldiers die in Afghanistan blast (nationalpost.com)

Predator Drones and Pakistan - The New Yorker

Jane Mayer on Predator Drones and Pakistan

In this week’s issue of the magazine, Jane Mayer writes about the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of drones to kill terrorist suspects in Pakistan—a program that the Obama Adminstration is relying upon more and more. (Subscribers can access the entire article; everyone else can buy access to this issue online.) Mayer spoke about the costs of a remote-controlled war, the C.I.A.’s lack of transparency, and the Pakistan’s complicated response.

How has the use of Predator drones by the United States changed the situation in Pakistan?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. According to the C.I.A., they’ve killed more than half of the twenty most wanted Al Qaeda terrorist suspects. The bad news is that they’ve inflamed anti-American sentiment, because they’ve also killed hundreds of civilians.

And how is it different than other uses of American force?

It’s not coming from the military. It’s a covert program run by the C.I.A. People know about Predator drones, but not that there are two programs. The U.S.-military program is an extension of conventional military force. The C.I.A. runs a secret targeted-killing program, which really is an unprecedented use of lethal force in places where we are not at war, such as Pakistan. It’s a whole new frontier in the use of force.

John Radsen, a former lawyer for the C.I.A., told me that [the C.I.A.] “doesn’t have much experience with killing. Traditionally, the agency that does that is the Department of Defense.” You’ve got a civilian agency involved in targeted killing behind a black curtain, where the rules of the game are unclear, to the rest of the world and also to us. We don’t know, for instance, who is on the target list. How do you get on the list? Can you get off the list? Who makes the list? What are the criteria? Where is the battlefield? Where does the battlefield end?

It originally seemed simple, because in the beginning it seemed like they would just go after Al Qaeda, but the target list has been growing, particularly in Pakistan.

How do these targeted killings not violate the U.S. ban on assassinations?

After 9/11, the Bush Administration declared that terrorism was no longer a crime; it was an extension of war. Soldiers are privileged to kill enemy combatants in a war, and America is legally allowed to defend itself. And these targeted killings became an extension of the global war on terror.

How long has there been drone activity in Pakistan? Is it new?

Toward the end of the Bush Administration, the drone program in Pakistan ramped up, but when Obama became President, he accelerated it even faster. It’s surprising, but the Obama Administration has carried out as many unmanned drone strikes in its first ten months as the Bush Administration did in its final three years. It’s the favorite weapon of choice right now against Al Qaeda, and for good reason: It’s been effective in killing a lot of people the U.S. wants to see dead.

What does Pakistan think of the drones?

Originally, the Pakistani people’s reaction to the U.S. drone strikes in their country was incredibly negative. Pakistanis rose up and complained that the program violated their sovereignty. So, to obtain Pakistani support—or at least the support of the Zardari government—the Obama Administration quietly decided last March to allow the Pakistani government to nominate some of its own targets. The U.S. has been and is involved in killing not just Al Qaeda figures, but Pakistani targets—people like Taliban leader Beitullah Mehsud who are enemies of the Pakistani state.

Are there any safeguards that prevent the U.S. from carrying out political vendettas for top Pakistani officials?

Well, the problem with this program is that it’s invisible; I would guess there must be all kinds of legal safeguards, and lawyers at the C.I.A. are discussing who we can kill and who we can’t, but none of that is available to the American people. It’s quite a contrast with the armed forces, because the use of lethal force in the military is a transparent process. There are after-action reports, and there’s a very obvious chain of command. We know where the responsibility runs, straight on up to the top of the government. This system keeps checks on abuses of power. There is no such transparency at the C.I.A.

How does the continued collateral damage from Predator drones square with General Stanley McChrystal’s order to the military to lay off the air strikes in Afghanistan and avoid civilian deaths?

Well, you could argue it either way. There is less collateral damage from a drone strike than there is from an F-16. According to intelligence officials, drones are more surgical in the way they kill—they usually use Hellfire missiles and do less damage than a fighter jet might.

At the same time, the fact that they kill civilians at all raises the same problem that McChrystal is trying to combat, which is that they incite people on the ground against the United States. When you’re trying to win a battle of hearts and minds, trying to win over civilian populations against terrorists, it can be counterproductive. That’s why [the former Petraeus adviser and counterinsurgency theorist] David Kilcullen wrote, “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement.”

Are people in Pakistan scared to move around because of the drones?

According to some recent studies, terrorists are scampering around only at night and accusing each other of being spies and informing on one another. So it’s had the desired effect in unravelling terror cells.

If the C.I.A. doesn’t have experience killing people, who is piloting the drones?

It doesn’t take as much talent or experience or training to pilot a drone as it does to pilot a real plane. The skills are much like what you need to do well in a video game. And the C.I.A. has outsourced a lot of the drone piloting, which also raises interesting legal questions, because you not have only civilians running this program, but you may have people who are not even in the U.S. government piloting the drones.

You mention in your piece that drone pilots, who work from an office, suffer from combat stress.

Someone sitting at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia, can view and home in on a target on the other side of the world with tremendous precision, even at night, and destroy it. Peter Singer, who wrote a book on robotic warfare, said that cubicle warriors experience the same stress as regular warriors in a real war. Detached killing still takes a tremendous emotional toll inside our borders.

Why do you think the Obama Administration chose to rely more on drones?

Basically because they can. It’s sort of the least bad option. They can’t get into the tribal areas of Pakistan where a lot of Al Qaeda suspects are thought to be hiding, but they can see them with these drones. So it’s the only way they can get at them.

But there are all kinds of unintended consequences. For one thing, these missile strikes could scatter Al Qaeda, and cells could move to other parts of Pakistan, maybe down toward Karachi, where the population is denser. There have been reports of people already starting to move there.

Also, if the United States can legally kill people from the sky in a country that we’re not at war with, other countries will argue they can do the same thing. And the people using those joysticks in Langley and the deserts of Nevada could now be considered under international law to be engaged in warfare, which means they can legally be retaliated against. It’s a new horizon.

What would the outlines of a more transparent drone program look like?

Michael Walzer, the political philosopher, has noted that when the United States goes about killing people, we usually know who they can kill and where the battlefield is. International lawyers are calling for a public revelation of who is on this list, where can we go after them, and how many people can we take out with them. They want to know the legal, ethical, and political boundaries of the program.

Opposition figure Maksharip Aushev gunned down in Russia's North Caucasus - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

By Philip P. Pan
Sunday, October 25, 2009 4:58 PM

MOSCOW -- A popular opposition figure in Russia's restive Ingushetia province was gunned down Sunday morning in the latest killing of a government critic in the North Caucasus, prompting outrage from human rights groups and raising fears of further violence in the region.

Maksharip Aushev, a businessman who had led mass protests against abuses by the government's security forces, was driving on a major highway in the neighboring province of Kabardino-Balkaria when a passing vehicle sprayed his car with more than 60 bullets, authorities said. The attack also seriously wounded a passenger.

Colleagues condemned the slaying as an attempt to silence voices critical of the authorities, and said it sent an especially chilling message because Aushev held a post on a human rights council established by Moscow and enjoyed the support of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the local governor appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev last year.

Yevkurov has reached out to human rights activists and the opposition, offering them a degree of protection, but Aushev's killing suggests that he, and by extension the Kremlin, may be losing control over the overlapping law enforcement agencies fighting an growing Islamist insurgency in the region.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Aushev accused the security forces of conducting an indiscriminate campaign of abductions, torture and killings in Ingushetia that had only strengthened the rebels. He singled out the powerful Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the KGB, as well as local police controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's strongman in neighboring Chechnya.

"I don't consider them officers. I consider them bandits," he said, over dinner during the wedding of one of his sons.

Two years ago, another son and a nephew were abducted, taken to Chechnya and tortured. Aushev blamed the FSB and won their release by organizing huge street protests, emerging as one of the most outspoken leaders of the opposition to Ingushetia's governor at the time, Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and an ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

After another opposition figure, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot to death in police custody last year, Aushev agreed to take over his Web site, a news operation that infuriated the authorities with its reports on corruption and human rights violations. He later led protests that helped persuade the Kremlin to fire Zyazikov and bring in Yevkurov.

In a show of support for the new governor, Aushev said he retired from politics and no longer considered himself a member of the opposition. But he had no illusions about the new governor's ability to rein in the security forces. "From day one, they've been sabotaging him, undermining his authority and continuing with the illegal executions and torture," he said.

Aushev added that the FSB still considered him "enemy number one."

A month ago, the security forces stopped his car and attempted to take him into custody after he left a meeting with the government. He escaped only because a crowd of motorists, including an aide to the governor, surrounded him.

"If I had been a half-meter closer, they would have tied me up and I would have disappeared without a trace," he told Caucasian Knot, a Web site that covers the region.

In a statement Sunday, Yevkurov described Aushev's slaying as a "heinous crime intended to destabilize the region" and vowed to do everything in his power to punish the killers.

One of the governor's aides, Musa Pliyev, a former member of the opposition who had worked closely with Aushev, said there was little doubt "the murder was a political one" but stopped short of blaming the security services.

"If the authorities who should guarantee the freedom and safety of their citizens fail to do this, then they must be blamed for Aushev's death and many other human rights activists and journalists who have been killed recently," he added.

The shooting follows the execution-style killings of two charity workers in the Chechen capital of Grozny in August and of Natalya Estemirova, Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, whose body was found in Ingushetia in July.

Pakistani Brigadier Assassinated in the Capital - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By JANE PERLEZ and SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Two assailants on a motorbike fired on a Pakistani Army jeep in heavy rush-hour traffic on Thursday morning, killing a brigadier and his driver, a security official said.

The assassination of the brigadier, Moinudin Ahmed, was believed to be the first targeted attack on a senior military officer in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and also suggested a new tactic in the continuing war between the government and Islamist militants. Until now, the military has been able to move with relative freedom through the capital.

The assailants fired with automatic weapons at the jeep, which was not bulletproof, and then disappeared into heavy traffic, according to witnesses. The attack took place around 9:30 a.m. in the G-11 neighborhood of the capital. Another soldier was wounded in the attack, according to a military spokesman.

The attack appeared to be a direct reprisal for the army’s current offensive against militants in the rugged tribal region of South Waziristan.

On Friday morning, a suicide bomber killed seven people in an attack on a checkpoint near a military complex about 30 miles from Islamabad, The Associated Press reported.

The brigadier returned to Islamabad a few days ago from Sudan, where he was leading the Pakistani contingent attached to the United Nations peacekeeping force, according to an Islamabad police official. He was on his way to Rawalpindi when he was attacked.

Pakistani officials said the brigadier assumed charge as head of the Pakistani contingent in Sudan almost nine months ago. Before that, he was serving in Rawalpindi as deputy director general of military operations. Earlier this year, he helped plan military operations in Swat and Bajaur. He was also involved in a government operation to end a militant siege at the Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007.

“Investigators are looking into this angle,” an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Late Thursday night, the Pakistani Interior Ministry issued a deadline of 72 hours for illegal Afghan immigrants to leave the capital. A door-to-door search was also ordered in three residential neighborhoods of the city.

The army continued to make slow progress in the mountainous terrain of South Waziristan, battling Taliban and Qaeda fighters in a Taliban stronghold, where the government says most of the recent terrorist attacks have been organized.

On Tuesday, Taliban militants killed six people when they struck a student cafeteria and an academic building at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Schools in Islamabad and the province of Punjab remained closed Thursday.

Iranian Targeted by Onetime Associates

By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 3, 2009

In the early days of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saeed Hajjarian advised the hostage-takers at the U.S. Embassy. During the Iran-Iraq war, he helped establish the much-feared Ministry of Intelligence. Then he turned in a democratic direction, running reformist newspapers and serving as a political adviser to President Mohammad Khatami. In 2000 a gunman aligned with a hard-line government faction shot him in the face, leaving him partially paralyzed and dependent on medication.

And for the past six weeks, Hajjarian, 55, has languished in prison, a key target of the apparatus he helped create.

"He is a great symbol of what the Islamic republic does to its own," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at the University of Hawaii who first met Hajjarian in the 1990s. "Obviously, today, some in the Intelligence Ministry think he was the brain behind [opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein] Mousavi's campaign." Hajjarian's arrest, she added, "suggests his continued significance as a reflection of what the hard-liners most fear."

Hajjarian was arrested three days after the disputed June 12 presidential election, along with thousands of other people. Family members said his medications for problems such as seizures and motor control have been administered erratically, which could lead to brain damage or death. After a visit last week, his wife, a doctor, described him as depressed and tearful, and said he has been interrogated in direct sunlight in temperatures of more than 100 degrees and doused with ice water, affecting his heart rate dangerously.

On Thursday, two days after a Human Rights Watch report described his "deteriorating" condition, officials said Hajjarian had been moved to a "state-owned house" with "suitable" medical facilities. His wife, in an interview, said she had not seen the house or been told anything about it.

Iran on Saturday put 100 political activists and others on trial for conspiring to topple the government, and added 10 defendants on Sunday. The opposition's Mousavi alleged that the government had used "medieval torture" to force confessions from the accused.

Hajjarian, who has not yet been tried, had not been particularly active in the lead-up to the election, though he supported Mousavi. But recent articles in the press aligned with the government have listed him as leading a push for democratic reform.

"In the viewpoint of the Iranian government, transition to democracy is a crime, and democracy is equal to evil, and it is a Western term," said Mohsen Kadivar, a reformist cleric who worked with Hajjarian in Iran and is now a visiting professor at Duke University. "So all those figures that try to democratize their country, they have committed a big crime."

Hajjarian, who grew up in a poor section of Tehran, is described by friends as having a dour face but a sharp sense of humor. Like the revolution itself, he seemed to mature from strident youthful ideology into a middle-aged complexity and thoughtfulness. His transformation echoes that of many revolutionaries who coalesced around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s but later moved toward reform.

The end of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war came as a shock to many who had believed in Khomeini's vows to bring down Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at any cost, said Ahmad Sadri, chair of Islamic world studies at Lake Forest College, who first met Hajjarian in 1992.

"The mentality of the revolutionaries was that this was the dawn of a new age, that this revolution . . . is steadfast, it is non-compromising," he said. When the war ended with no clear victory for either side, "a light went off in their minds and they realized they had been wrong all along about a lot of things, including mixing religion and politics, and that the world of politics is a world of compromise."

After Khomeini's death, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ascended to power as Iran's supreme leader, leftists such as Hajjarian and Mohammad Khatami were sidelined. That, analysts said, gave them time to lick their wounds and turn to studying, many moving in more secular directions.

They formed intellectual circles. They started journals. Hajjarian, working on a PhD in political science at Tehran University, pursued the idea of a transition to democracy and advocated pressuring the government from below while striking bargains at the top.

"He's a thinker," said Bill Berkeley, a former New York Times editorial writer who has interviewed Hajjarian for an upcoming book about the hostage-takers. "He had the feeling the revolution had lost its way and gone off the track. He told me war was a bad way to build democratic institutions; he attributes the authoritarian direction that the revolution ended up taking to the Iran-Iraq war."

Hajjarian espoused a democratic interpretation of Islam, said Kadivar, who during Khatami's tenure was Islamic deputy of the Center for Strategic Studies, an Iranian think tank, while Hajjarian was its political deputy. "I remember he said the leader and president is like the employee of the citizen, and the citizen is like the owner of the land. And they rent out to the president or the supreme leader as their workers, so the workers should do as they tell them."

Such ideas, in a system where the word of the supreme leader is considered divine, can be deadly. Analysts say Hajjarian may have been targeted for assassination because he used his insider knowledge to accuse the Intelligence Ministry of a string of killings of intellectuals in the late 1990s.

After recovering from a coma, Hajjarian was physically disabled, but his mental capacities were unharmed. Analysts said the government has targeted him now not for any particular activity but because of his symbolic importance. They said some in the government hope to force a confession of conspiring against the state, an accusation also leveled against other arrested reformists.

"I think it's kind of a terror tactic, to scare people, by showing that even a guy like Hajjarian could be forced to confess," Berkeley said. "If he died [in prison], it would be a debacle for the regime. But if he survives and confesses, that might be something that would be considered an asset."

It could also backfire.

"They have overused this tactic," Farhi said. "Now people will just say that he was forced to do it and further turn their anger against the government."

Special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie contributed to this report.

Natalya Estemirova - Fighting for Human Rights with Life

2:06

July 18, 2009

In Guatemala, Chasing Away the Ghost of Alvarado

by Tim Padgett

It's been five centuries since Pedro de Alvarado, a homicidal Spanish conquistador, seized from the Maya the volcanic realm that became Guatemala. But his bloodlust still haunts the country, which today has one of the highest homicide rates in the western hemisphere. Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war, which ended in 1996, killed 200,000 people. Its cloak-and-dagger murders have made locals so paranoid that "even the drunks are discreet," as one 19th century visitor wrote.

That neurosis still shrouds Guatemala City, a gloomy capital that no amount of marimba music can brighten. Rich and poor communities alike are surrounded by walls topped with enough razor wire and rifle-toting guards to look like penitentiaries. This year tandem motorcycle-riding was banned because it was such a popular M.O. for drive-by shootings, and daylight saving time was canceled because the dark mornings created too many opportunities for foul play. Even so, bus drivers face being killed by armed extortionists during rush hour, and lawyers who complain about government corruption can turn up under the bougainvilleas with a few bullets to the head.

That's apparently what happened to Rodrigo Rosenberg, a corporate lawyer murdered on May 10 while biking near his home. In a twist that's macabre even for Guatemala, Rosenberg had taped a video three days earlier in which he anticipated his assassination and put the blame on President Alvaro Colom and his imperious wife Sandra Torres. They deny it, saying their right-wing foes coerced Rosenberg into making the video and then had him killed.

But since the shocking video was uploaded to YouTube on May 11, the nation has begun to confront the benighted lawlessness that plagues not only Guatemala but most of the rest of Central America too. Younger Guatemalans, organizing protests via social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, have turned out by the thousands to protest their putrid judicial system and festoon Rosenberg's murder scene with banners. "Older people say they haven't seen an awakening like this in 60 years," says Alejandro Quinteros, 26, a cherubic fast-food manager and political novice who helps lead the National Civic Movement. "We're not afraid anymore."

Fear is understandable in a country that feels like a "baroque game of chess played with bodies," says Francisco Goldman, whose book The Art of Political Murder details the 1998 assassination of Catholic bishop Juan Gerardi, who was bludgeoned to death after issuing a report on army massacres during the civil war. In a nation where just 2% of last year's 6,200 murders were solved, "impunity opens doors to murderous imaginations," says Goldman.

But the outcry over the Rosenberg case has opened doors to reform. Guatemala's congress was compelled to pass a law, long resisted by powerful political and business interests, that allows public scrutiny of judicial appointments. This month lawmakers say they're set to convene at least one special session to act on measures such as concealed-weapons laws and the creation of organized-crime and anticorruption courts. Activists like Alfonso Abril, 24, of the civic group ProReforma, want to revise Guatemala's sclerotic constitution to modernize lawmaking and codify individual rights. "I'm from the upper class," says Abril, "but I know we can't keep living in a country like this."

He also knows Guatemalan politics is still treacherous. More than 50 candidates were assassinated during the general election in 2007, the same year three visiting Salvadoran congressmen were murdered by rogue policemen (who were then mysteriously killed themselves). In his video, Rosenberg says his coffee-baron client Khalil Musa was gunned down along with his daughter in April because Musa knew too much about drug-money-laundering. "Rodrigo wanted to talk about the deadly manipulation of laws and lives here," says his half brother Eduardo Rodas. Guatemala has asked the U.N. and the FBI to investigate his murder. After 500 years, Rosenberg's ghost may be the first to challenge Alvarado's.

The Courage of Natalya Estemirova

by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 07/15/2009

In October 2007, Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova wrote for us about the assassination of the crusading investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Today, Estemirova was assassinated.
Her body, dumped near the capital city of Ingushetia, was discovered with two close-range bullet wounds in the head.

A woman who courageously investigated kidnappings, killings and other rights abuses in Chechnya, a single mother in her early 40s, a leading member of the esteemed human rights group Memorial, Estemirova received the first annual award from the international human rights group RAW in WAR (Reach all Women in War) in October 2007.

She understood, as she wrote in her harrowing story about Anna Politkovskaya's confrontation in Chechnya with a notorious police official responsible for the imprisonment, torture and murder of Chechen civilians that: "There are those with a vested interest in keeping the Russian Abu Ghraib forgotten--so that they can once again kidnap and torture. Our task, however, is to uncover their deeds and to fight them. Anna was at the forefront of this work for many years."

Natalya Estemirova was also at the forefront of that dangerous work, never ceasing to expose human rights abuses committed by the brutal leadership in Chechnya, where she lived and worked. Members of Memorial are now saying what they feared to say before, out of concern for Natalya's safety. They are accusing the 32-year old leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, of involvement in her assassination.

"Ramzan Kadyrov is personally responsible, not only because he leads Chechnya," said Oleg Orlov, Memorial's chairman. But, because "he personally threatened Natalya, told her that her hands would be covered in blood and that he destroys bad people." Kadyrov leveled these threats, according to Orlov, when he dismissed Estemirova as head of the Grozny Human Rights Public Council last year. Kadyrov has not replied to accusations that he was involved. What is clear is that the two bloody wars Moscow has fought with Chechnya, (from 1994 to 1996 and starting again in 1999) to halt the Muslim republic from seceding in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, have led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths, mass disappearances and killings, and rampant corruption. Putin installed Kadyrov as the republic's president in 1994 and his regime has been notorious for its corruption and human rights abuses.

For journalists, Russia has become --according to the International Union of Journalists--one of the most dangerous countries to work in. More than thirty journalists have been murdered for their work or have died under suspicious circumstances since Boris Yeltsin came to power; the pattern continues under Vladimir Putin and Dmitrii Medvedev. In only one case have the killers been convicted.

After learning of Estemirova's killing, President Medvedev issued a statement condemning the murder and ordered Russia's Investigative Committee to conduct a thorough probe. Kadyrov released a statement on Wednesday night saying he would "spare no expense: to find her killers.

The leading opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta has paid the heaviest price for its crusading investigations into high-level corruption, human rights violations, and brutality in Chechnya. Three of its leading reporters, including Anna Politkovskaya, have been murdered for their unflinching investigations. Most recently, 25-year old freelance reporter for Novaya, Anastasiya Baburova -- who was covering the rise of race-motivated crimes and Neo-Nazi groups -- was gunned down on a Moscow street. (There is no progress to report in her case.) And Estemirova was a frequent contributor to Noyava, reporting on extrajudicial killings, abductions and punitive arsons; after a wave of threats from the Chechen authorities, she wrote under a pseudonym. Despite the physical threats, assaults, and financial and political pressures, the newspaper's reporters and editors have continued to remain independent and publish crusading investigative reporting.

The issue of impunity for violent crimes against journalists is a matter of international importance. Deadly violence against journalists in Russia -- and in all countries, has led to self-censorship, leaving issues of global significance under reported or entirely uncovered.

Today we honor the courage of Natalya Estemirova. She tenaciously exposed human rights abuses and was a powerful voice for justice in her country.

Those who have so brutally stifled her voice must be brought to justice.