U.S. Says Rendition to Continue, but With More Oversight

By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday.

Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse.

“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.

Ms. Singh cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cable despite assurances against torture.

The announcement, by President Obama’s Interrogation and Transfer Policy Task Force, seemed intended in part to offset the impact of the release on Monday of a long-withheld report by the C.I.A. inspector general, written in 2004, that offered new details about the brutal tactics used by the C.I.A. in interrogating terrorism detainees.

Though the Obama administration previously signaled that it would continue the use of renditions, some civil liberties groups were disappointed because, as a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama had strongly suggested he might end the practice. In an article in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 2007, Mr. Obama wrote, “To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people.”

Mr. Obama continued, “This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.” In January, the president ordered secret prisons run by the C.I.A. to be shut down.

The task force has proposed a more vigorous monitoring of the treatment of prisoners sent to other countries, but Ms. Singh said the usual method of such monitoring — visits from American or allied consular officials — had been ineffective. A Canadian consular official visited Mr. Arar several times, but the prisoner was too frightened to tell him about the torture, a Canadian investigation found.

The administration officials, who discussed the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would operate more openly and give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.

“The emphasis will be on ensuring that individuals will not face torture if they are sent overseas,” said one administration official, adding that no detainees would be sent to countries known to conduct abusive interrogations.

Rendition began to be used regularly under President Bill Clinton and its use expanded rapidly under President Bush after the terrorist attacks in September 2001. American intelligence agencies often appeared to send detainees to other countries to avoid the legal complications of bringing them to the United States.

Some human rights advocates said they thought the Obama administration was maintaining the rendition program out of fear that its elimination would force the government to accept additional detainees on American soil and threaten Mr. Obama’s pledge to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by January.

The task force that recommended the modified transfer policy was set up in January to study changes in rendition and interrogation policies under an executive order signed by President Obama.

Another recommendation approved by Mr. Obama was a proposal to establish a multiagency interrogation unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to oversee the interrogations of top terrorism suspects using largely noncoercive techniques approved by the administration earlier this year.

The creation of the new unit will formally strip the C.I.A. of its primary role in questioning high-level detainees, but agency officials said they would continue to play a substantial role.

“The C.I.A. took active part in the work of the task force, and the agency’s strong counterterrorism knowledge will be key to the conduct of future debriefings,” said Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman. “That won’t change.”

The new unit, to be called the High Value Interrogation Group, will be made up of analysts, linguists and other personnel from the C.I.A. and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It will operate under policies set by the National Security Council.

The officials said all interrogations would comply with guidelines contained in the Army Field Manual, which outlaws the use of physical force. The group will study interrogation methods, however, and may add additional noncoercive methods in the future, the officials said.

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said the new interrogation policy represented a significant step toward more humane treatment, though he expressed dismay that administration officials failed to impose stricter limits on rendition.

But he praised the Obama administration’s overall approach to difficult counterterrorism issues, saying the government had adopted “some of the most transparent rules against abuse of any democratic country.”

European Cyber-Gangs Target Small U.S. Firms, Group Says

By Brian Krebs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Organized cyber-gangs in Eastern Europe are increasingly preying on small and mid-size companies in the United States, setting off a multimillion-dollar online crime wave that has begun to worry the nation's largest financial institutions.

A task force representing the financial industry sent out an alert Friday outlining the problem and urging its members to implement many of the precautions now used to detect consumer bank and credit card fraud.

"In the past six months, financial institutions, security companies, the media and law enforcement agencies are all reporting a significant increase in funds transfer fraud involving the exploitation of valid banking credentials belonging to small and medium sized businesses," the confidential alert says. The alert was sent to members of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group created to share data about critical threats to the financial sector. The group is operated and funded by such financial heavyweights as American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Morgan Stanley.

Because the targets tend to be smaller, the attacks have attracted little of the notoriety that has followed larger-scale breaches at big retailers and government agencies. But the industry group said some companies have suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in losses.

Many have begun to come forward to tell their tales. In July, a school district near Pittsburgh sued to recover $700,000 taken from it. In May, a Texas company was robbed of $1.2 million. An electronics testing firm in Baton Rouge, La., said it was bilked of nearly $100,000.

In many cases, the advisory warned, the scammers infiltrate companies in a similar fashion: They send a targeted e-mail to the company's controller or treasurer, a message that contains either a virus-laden attachment or a link that -- when opened -- surreptitiously installs malicious software designed to steal passwords. Armed with those credentials, the crooks then initiate a series of wire transfers, usually in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid banks' anti-money-laundering reporting requirements.

The alert states that these scams typically rely on help from "money mules" -- willing or unwitting individuals in the United States -- often hired by the criminals via popular Internet job boards. Once enlisted, the mules are instructed to set up bank accounts, withdraw the fraudulent deposits and then wire the money to fraudsters, the majority of which are in Eastern Europe, according to the advisory.

"Eastern European organized crime groups are believed to be predominantly responsible for the activities that are employing witting and unwitting accomplices in the U.S. to receive cash and forward payments -- from thousands to millions of dollars to overseas locations -- via popular money and wire transfer services," the alert warns.

The FBI said it is working to stem the problem.

"We share a mutual concern with respect to criminals' unrelenting intent to target our nation's financial sector and customers, whether through computer hacking or by other schemes to steal customer account information and make unauthorized withdrawals," Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director for the bureau's cyber division, said in a statement.

Fewer Fraud Protections

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department division that tracks suspected cases of fraud reported by banks, said incidences of wire-transfer fraud rose 58 percent in 2008. But experts say reliable figures about losses from commercial online banking fraud are hard to come by, and many incidents go unreported.

"The data is not quite where it could be, and we don't have a good benchmark in terms of determining the prevalence of this type of fraud," said Cliff Stanford, director of the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. "As a result, banks and consumers might not fully understand where they need to best deploy additional security measures."

Businesses do not enjoy the same legal protections as consumers when banking online. Consumers typically have up to 60 days from the receipt of a monthly statement to dispute any unauthorized charges.

In contrast, companies that bank online are regulated under the Uniform Commercial Code, which holds that commercial banking customers have roughly two business days to spot and dispute unauthorized activity if they want to hold out any hope of recovering unauthorized transfers from their accounts.

Avivah Litan, a fraud analyst with Gartner Inc., said few commercial banks have invested in back-end technologies that can detect fraudulent or unusual transaction patterns for businesses.

"The banks spend a lot of money on protecting consumer customers because they owe money if the consumer loses money," Litan said. "But the banks don't spend the same resources on the corporate accounts because they don't have to refund the corporate losses."

Swallowing the Losses

The incidents in many cases are pitting victims against their banks. In July, a public school district near Pittsburgh filed a lawsuit against ESB Bank, a subsidiary of Ellwood City, Pa.-based ESB Financial Corp., to recover funds lost to cyber-fraud. The Western Beaver school district charges that crooks used malicious software to siphon more than $700,000 from the school's account at ESB. According to the lawsuit, the funds were transferred in 74 separate transactions over a two-day period, to 42 different money mules.

In April, cyber-crooks stole $1.2 million from Unique Industrial Product Co., a Sugar Land, Tex.-based plumbing equipment supply company. Pankaj Malani, the company's operations manager, said a forensic analysis showed the attackers used malware planted on its computers to initiate 43 transfers out of the company's account within 30 minutes. The intruders sent some of the funds directly to Eastern Europe and funneled the remainder through people in the United States.

Malani said the FBI is investigating the case, but because the company spotted the fraud quickly, its bank was able to retrieve all but $190,000 of the stolen money. "This could have put us out of business," Malani said.

Other small to mid-sized companies have not fared so well. In February, fraudsters struck JM Test Systems, an electronics calibration company in Baton Rouge. According to Happy McKnight, the company's controller, on Feb. 19, an unauthorized wire transfer of $45,640 was sent from JM Test's account to a bank in Russia. The company's bank subsequently provided the company with new credentials. But less than a week later, $51,550 of JM Test's money was transferred to five money mules across the country. McKnight said her employer was able to recover just $7,200 of the stolen money, which was returned only because one mule who was to receive that transfer apparently closed his or her account before the transfer could be completed.

"The whole thing consumed us for about a month," McKnight said. "When we start looking at all of the investigation and the things we had to change as a result of this fraud, we estimate the soft costs to our company is already three times what our straight online banking loss was."

Karzai Won Election Convincingly, Afghan Official Says

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

KABUL, Aug. 24 -- An Afghan cabinet minister said Monday that President Hamid Karzai won Thursday's presidential election with an overwhelming majority of 68 percent. If confirmed, such a result would eliminate the need for a runoff election in October between Karzai and his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, but could raise questions about the vote's credibility.

Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwol, citing partial and unpublished vote tallies, told journalists at a dinner that support for Karzai was high enough across the nation to cancel out the problem of low voter turnout in the south. Insurgent violence there prevented many people from voting, and there have been widespread accusations of fraud.

Pre-election polls suggested that Karzai, whose base is in the south, would win a high plurality of the vote but not reach the 50.1 percent required to win in the first round. They showed that Abdullah, a former foreign minister, would probably win at least 25 percent. Abdullah charged Sunday that Karzai's supporters and government officials had conducted "heavy rigging" of the elections, especially by stuffing ballot boxes in polling stations across the south, where few voted.

No official results have been announced, but the Independent Elections Commission is due to release preliminary numbers on Tuesday. In the past week, election monitoring groups said they have received hundreds of complaints of fraud, including some serious enough to potentially affect the outcome.

Zakhilwol said his assertion came from figures made available to him as a government official, and that they were based on a tally of about 4.5 million votes out of about 5 million cast. He said Karzai had received about 3 million and that Abdullah had about 1 million. At least 15 million voters were registered.

If official results do show that Karzai won with such a high share of the vote -- and with such a low turnout -- it could set the stage for a period of political turmoil and potential violence by angry opponents who think they were cheated. It could also lead to a government formed under a cloud of doubt, with a limited mandate heavily skewed along ethnic and regional lines.

The United States and NATO are at a critical turning point in their strategy for fighting the Taliban. They are counting on a legitimate election and a strengthened government in Kabul to bolster their arguments that the country needs continued military and economic support.

Military officials said Monday that a U.S. soldier and two Estonian troops were killed in attacks in southern Afghanistan in the past two days. They said the American, the 37th to die in Afghanistan this month, was killed in a Taliban attack in an undisclosed location. The Estonians were killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand province.

Zakhilwol seemed to suggest that the south's results did not matter. He told journalists that one could "leave out" major southern provinces such as Kandahar -- Karzai's home region and the heart of his ethnic Pashtun group -- and he would still have a meaningful victory.

But many election experts here have said they doubt Karzai could have won more than half the votes after several years of steadily declining popularity and increasing insurgent violence. In 2004, when Karzai enjoyed much stronger public support, he won his first presidential election with 55 per cent of the vote.

A spokesman for Abdullah, Fazel Sangcharaki, said late Monday that Zakhilwol's assertion was "not true" and that people should wait until the official results are announced.

Election officials recently asked candidates not to claim victory before official tallies were ready, but aides to both Abdullah and Karzai have asserted that they received overwhelming support.

Officials overseeing the investigation of election complaints said Monday they are confident they can catch as much as 90 percent of the fraud, using computer analyses and other modern techniques.

In interviews this week, elected officials and other sources from several southern provinces described numerous cases in which only a few voters turned out at polling places because of threats and violence from Taliban insurgents; full ballot boxes containing hundreds of votes were later delivered to Kabul for counting. They said they were certain local elections officials or other pro-Karzai groups had stuffed the boxes.

"In Baraki Barak District, only about 500 people were able to vote out of 43,000 registered voters. In Harwar District, nobody at all was able to vote out of 15,000 registered voters. Yet the ballot boxes from these places came to Kabul full," alleged Faizullah Mojadedi, a legislator from Taliban-plagued Logar province. "The fact that people were afraid to vote became a big excuse for those who wanted to take advantage of it."

In Wardak province, where insurgents also threatened voters with warning notices and fired rockets at polling places, provincial officials described an almost identical situation. Roshanak Wardak, a medical doctor and member of parliament from Wardak, said that because of the Taliban threats, only polling sites in the provincial capital received more than a few voters.

"We really had no election at all. Even I was not able to cast my ballot," said Wardak, who filed several complaints. "I don't think more than a few hundred people in the whole province voted, but 52 full boxes were sent to Kabul."

Wardak said one clumsily stuffed box contained a full tablet of ballots that had not even been torn off. "If this election stands, then no one in Afghanistan will ever trust an election again," she said.

Major Shiite Political Parties Exclude Maliki in Forming Coalition

By Ernesto Londoño and K.I. Ibrahim
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

SAMARRA, Iraq, Aug. 24 -- Major Shiite parties with close links to Iran announced a new coalition Monday that excludes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a development that appears to make him the underdog in the coming national elections.

If the new coalition remains intact and secures a majority of parliamentary seats in the Jan. 16 vote, Iraq's next government probably will be run by leaders with deep ties to Iran, which would considerably curb U.S. influence here as American troops continue to withdraw.

The new alliance and the likelihood that Maliki will be forced have to partner with Sunnis suggest that Iraqi politicians are increasingly willing to cross sectarian lines in the pursuit of power.

Maliki's exclusion from the alliance was not entirely surprising. Despite his considerable popularity, the prime minister has become a divisive figure, and a recent surge in violence has triggered criticism from Iraqis who view his administration as cocky and incompetent.

Because of the volatile nature of Iraqi politics and the fickleness of alliances, analysts cautioned that the political groupings are likely to change between now and the time the ballots are printed. Alliances could even be redrawn after the votes are tallied.

"All possibilities are open," said Shiite lawmaker Jaber Habib Jaber, who is part of the new coalition. "Negotiations are still ongoing with Maliki's camp."

The new Shiite coalition will be led by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a conservative party that is among Iran's closest allies in Iraq. It also includes the movement of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the Fadhila Party; former Pentagon ally Ahmed Chalabi; and former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari.

Alliance leaders said they invited Maliki to join but refused to guarantee that he would keep his job if the alliance obtained a majority of seats.

Lawmaker Samira al-Musawi, who is close to Maliki, said members of the prime minister's new political wing, known as State of Law, were unlikely to join the new coalition. "We want to have a solid alliance that does not dissolve," she said in a telephone interview. Maliki is likely to ally himself with Sunni leader Ahmed Abu Risha, who gained prominence as one of the first Sunnis to join forces with the U.S. military in 2006 in western Iraq to fight the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq. In recent months, Maliki has also reached out to Sunni and Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq.

Deposed leader Saddam Hussein, who was Sunni, oppressed Iraq's Shiite majority.

The new Shiite coalition replaces the United Iraqi Alliance, which became the leading bloc in parliament after the country's first parliamentary elections, in December 2005.

The bloc chose Jafari as its nominee for prime minister, but he gave up the nomination weeks later amid pressure from Sunnis, Kurds and U.S. officials.

Maliki, a largely unknown politician at the time, rose to power in April 2006. The alliance later disintegrated amid disputes between its leading factions, Maliki's Dawa party and the Supreme Council.

Maliki became highly popular in 2008 as security improved and his government reached an agreement with the United States that established a strict withdrawal timeline. January's ballot may include a measure that could force U.S. troops to withdraw by January 2011, almost a year ahead of schedule.

Politicians close to Maliki did remarkably well during January's provincial elections, while the Supreme Council performed poorly in southern Iraqi provinces, its main base of support.

But Maliki's administration has come under criticism in recent months as violence has surged and his government has failed to considerably improve the country's infrastructure. The most recent blow was a coordinated attack on two key ministries that killed more than 100 people last week. Critics, including top government officials, accused Maliki of being reckless by loosening security measures in the capital.

Al-Iraqiya, a state-run television station, aired on Sunday a purported confession by a man who said he was the mastermind of the attacks. The man, identified as Wisam Ali Khazim, is a former member of Hussein's Baath Party, Iraqi authorities said.

Violence has increased notably since the June 30 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities.

On Monday, at least 11 people were killed in attacks near Kut, a city in southern Iraq, officials said. Explosives were attached to the chassis of two minibuses traveling from Baghdad to Kut, according to a police official in Kut.

The new alliance was announced during a televised news conference Monday morning. Tellingly, the leaders of the Supreme Council and the Sadr movement were not present because they currently reside in Iran. Supreme Council leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is ailing from lung cancer, is being treated in Iran. Sadr has been based there in recent years, studying under senior Iranian clerics.

Many Iraqis are wary of Iranian influence, a connection that could backfire on the new alliance. "This alliance without Maliki is very weak," said Ali Abdel-Ilah, 34, a government employee. "They have no credibility among people in general and Shiites in particular."

But others, such as Alaa Rehha, 31, said they would support the new alliance. "This is an Islamic country and we don't believe in liberalism and secularism," he said. "I hope they win again and assign only religious, qualified people to sensitive positions."

Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Rasheed Flahe Mohammed, commander of the Samarra Operations Center, said he was thrilled to see politicians willing to cross sectarian lines, as Maliki may end up doing. Mohammed said that although he is a Shiite, he would vote for a bloc that would put a Sunni in power if he determined that person was the most qualified leader.

"I'm optimistic about this -- Sunnis are allying with Shiites," he said as he watched the Shiite alliance's announcement on television. "This is something good for Iraq."

Ibrahim reported from Baghdad. Special correspondents Aziz Alwan, Zaid Sabah and Dalya Hassan contributed to this report.

Holder Hires Prosecutor to Look Into Alleged CIA Interrogation Abuses

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

In appointing a prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses, including episodes that resulted in prisoner deaths, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday shook off warnings from President Obama to avoid becoming mired in past controversies.

Holder said that he realizes the move is controversial but that it was the only responsible course to take.

The decision does not reflect a sharp division between the Justice Department and the White House, government officials said, given the limits of the preliminary review and the respect that Obama says he maintains for the role of an independent attorney general. But it could mark the beginning of a painstaking inquiry that tests the boundaries of the Justice Department's discretion and its ability to evaluate incomplete evidence collected on the world's battlegrounds.

Holder has named longtime prosecutor John H. Durham, who has parachuted into crisis situations for both political parties over three decades, to open an early review of nearly a dozen cases of alleged detainee mistreatment at the hands of CIA interrogators and contractors.

The announcement raised fresh tensions in an intelligence community fearful that it will bear the brunt of the punishment for Bush-era national security policy, and it immediately provoked criticism from congressional Republicans.

Legal analysts said the review, while preliminary, could expand beyond its relatively narrow mandate and ensnare a wider cast of characters. They cited U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's identity, which culminated with the criminal conviction of then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney's chief of staff.

In a statement Monday afternoon, Holder cautioned that the inquiry is far from a full-blown criminal investigation. Rather, he said, it is unknown whether indictments or prosecutions of CIA contractors and employees will follow. Lawyers involved in similar reviews said that any possible cases could take years to build because of challenges with witnesses and evidence.

"I fully realize that my decision to commence this preliminary review will be controversial," Holder added. "As attorney general, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law. In this case, given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take."

Obama and White House officials have said that they want to look ahead on national security; White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week that the administration is eager to keep "going forward" and that "a hefty litigation looking backward is not what we believe is in the country's best interest."

But the White House voiced support for Holder in a news conference held Monday on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters that "ultimately, the decisions on who is investigated and who is prosecuted are up to the attorney general. . . . The president thinks that Eric Holder, who he appointed as a very independent attorney general, should make those decisions."

But nearly as important in the high-stakes analysis will be Durham, 59, an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut who has investigated Boston mob kingpins, corrupt FBI agents and his state's GOP governor. Durham rarely speaks publicly, but in private he cracks jokes, follows the Boston Red Sox and regularly attends Mass with his wife of several decades. One of his four sons followed in his father's footsteps and now serves as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.

Though a registered Republican, Durham generally is regarded as apolitical, and attorneys general from both parties -- including Janet Reno, Michael B. Mukasey and Holder -- have tapped him for their most difficult assignments.

Hugh Keefe, a longtime Connecticut defense lawyer who has often squared off against Durham in court, called the prosecutor "the go-to guy for Justice whenever they get a hot case."

Durham risked unpopularity a decade ago when he untangled questionable relationships among FBI agents, Massachusetts police and Boston mob kingpins. Ultimately, he turned over evidence that prompted a federal judge to dismiss several murder cases and he won a conviction against a longtime federal agent who had grown too close to organized crime figures. The investigation later attracted a mass audience in the Academy Award-winning film "The Departed."

Holder selected Durham for the inquiry announced Monday in part because of his role as prosecutor in an ongoing investigation of the destruction of CIA videotapes in late 2005, expanding his mandate to cover additional agency conduct. Durham has appeared in Alexandria's federal courthouse about once a month to present evidence to a grand jury that is probing the incident. The tapes allegedly depicted brutal scenes of waterboarding involving high-value al-Qaeda suspects. That investigation is in its 19th month, though lawyers following the case have cast doubt on whether criminal charges will be filed.

A similar concern could emerge in the detainee mistreatment inquiry. Many of the cases have been subject to review by two sets of prosecutors: counterterrorism lawyers at Justice Department headquarters in Washington as well as a special team from the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia. Lawyers involved in the Bush-era reviews sought and won an indictment in one of nearly 20 cases, after concluding that they were hampered by such problems as unreliable witnesses, scanty forensic work and even missing bodies of prisoners who had died in detention.

In all, more than 100 detainees died in U.S. care, most of them under military custody, according to previous government reports and congressional inquiries. It is not known how many of the cases in the new review by Durham involve detainee deaths.

Mark Califano, a former prosecutor in Connecticut, described Durham's approach as "clinical." He said Durham "very rarely" has walked away from a case without bringing criminal charges.

"He likes to make cases when there is evidence there," said Califano, the son of former Heath, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr. "You've got to balance whether that kind of information exists. . . . You can't move forward if you don't have the evidence."

Keefe, who reached out to Durham several years ago to negotiate a possible settlement in a case involving fugitive financier Martin Frankel, praised the prosecutor for his sense of "perspective."

"The thing about the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut is that they take the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt seriously in deciding whether to indict," Keefe said. "If Durham can't make a case beyond a reasonable doubt, he won't indict."

CIA Report Calls Oversight Of Early Interrogations Poor

By Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

A partially declassified CIA report released Monday by the Obama administration describes the early implementation of the agency's interrogation program in 2002 and 2003 as ad hoc and poorly supervised, leading to the use of "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented" techniques.

Interrogators lifted one detainee off the floor by his arms while they were bound behind his back with a belt. Another interrogator used a stiff brush to clean a detainee, scrubbing so roughly that his legs were raw with abrasions. And another squeezed a detainee's neck at his carotid artery until he began to pass out.

Authorized techniques such as waterboarding were applied in a manner that exceeded the language of Justice Department memos that authorized their use. Interrogators "continuously applied large volumes of water," explaining afterward that they needed to make the experience "more poignant and convincing," the report said.

In releasing the 2004 report and other documents, President Obama continued to confront the legacy of his predecessor's counterterrorism policies while attempting to move beyond them.

On Monday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appointed a prosecutor, John H. Durham, to investigate allegations of detainee abuse by the CIA. The administration also unveiled an elite interagency interrogation team designed to break high-value suspects without coercion.

Cumulatively, the newly released documents provide a forensic accounting of some of the Bush administration's most closely held secrets and deepen public knowledge of a program whose scope and details have emerged piecemeal ever since the first suspected high-level al-Qaeda detainee was questioned in 2002 at a hastily assembled "black site" in Thailand.

The Obama administration was forced to release the CIA documents because of a wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed in 2003. "The report underscores the need for a comprehensive criminal investigation that reaches not just the interrogators who exceeded authority but the senior officials who authorized torture and the Justice Department lawyers who facilitated it," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the organization's national security program.

The releases Monday follow the earlier dissemination of Justice Department memos sanctioning the use of harsh interrogation techniques, as well as the Obama administration's decisions to end the CIA program and close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where high-value detainees are now held.

'Inadequate' Guidance

The inspector general's report said that the CIA's efforts to provide "systematic, clear and timely guidance" to interrogators were "inadequate at first" and that that failure largely coincided with the most significant incidents involving the unauthorized coercion of detainees. Significant portions of the report were not made public, including the inspector general's recommendations.

Interrogators menaced a detainee with a handgun and a power drill, staged mock executions to convince suspects that they too could be killed, and threatened to punish the family of another detainee.

"We're going to kill your children," one interrogator told Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, if there was another attack.

As carried out by CIA interrogators, waterboarding was far more aggressive than anything used in military survival schools, whose training programs formed the basis of the harsh techniques. The CIA's use of waterboarding eventually drew a rebuke from the agency's Office of Medical Services, which said the "frequency and intensity" with which the technique was used could not be certified as "efficacious or medically safe."

But the report, noting the steady accumulation of guidelines from agency headquarters, said discipline and safeguards within the program "improved considerably" over time. Still, the report pointed to ongoing tensions between interrogators in the field and officials at the CIA Counterterrorism Center as to when detainees were compliant and when the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" was appropriate.

None of the material, however, is likely to resolve the debate over the effectiveness of such techniques, including waterboarding.

The CIA's first high-value detainee -- Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida -- was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002. Although he provided more information after the technique was applied to him, "it is not possible to say definitively that the waterboard is the reason" for his increased cooperation or if other factors, "such as the length of detention, was a catalyst," the inspector general's report concluded.

The inspector general determined that the repeated waterboarding of Abu Zubaida and Mohammed was inconsistent with guidelines promulgated by the Justice Department. But it noted that the attorney general told investigators that he was "fully aware of the repetitive use of the waterboard."

"The Attorney General was informed the waterboard had been used 119 times on a single individual," the report states. Mohammed was ultimately waterboarded 183 times, according to Justice Department memos.

The report found that "there is no doubt" that the detention and interrogation program itself prevented further terrorist activity, provided information that led to the apprehension of other terrorists, warned authorities of future plots, and helped analysts complete an intelligence picture for senior policymakers and military leaders. But whether the harsh techniques were effective in this regard "is a more subjective process and not without some concern."

Reports Cited by Cheney

The CIA also released two documents that then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney had invoked to assert that the harsh tactics worked and "kept us safe for seven years."

One of the reports said "detainee reporting has become a crucial pillar of US counterterrorism efforts, aiding intelligence and law enforcement operations to capture additional terrorists, helping to thwart additional plots, and advancing our analysis of the al-Qaeda target."

The triangulation of intelligence led to the capture of a succession of key operatives, and the report noted that Walid bin Attash, now charged in a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, "was captured on the verge of mounting attacks against the US Consulate in Karachi, Westerners at the Karachi Airport, and Western housing areas" in Pakistan, according to the report, called "Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al-Qa'ida."

A second report, describing Mohammed as a preeminent source on al-Qaeda, said that "he has provided information on Al Qa'ida strategic doctrine, probable targets, the impact of striking each target set, and likely methods of attacks inside the United States."

Panetta Message to CIA

CIA Director Leon Panetta, in a message to agency employees Monday morning, described the release of the documents as "in many ways an old story" and said that "the challenge is not the battles of yesterday, but those of today and tomorrow."

"My emphasis on the future comes with a clear recognition that our Agency takes seriously proper accountability for the past," Panetta said in the message, which was released by the CIA. "As the intelligence service of a democracy, that's an important part of who we are."

Panetta said the interrogation program obtained intelligence from high-value detainees at a time when the country had little hard information on al-Qaeda's structure and plans, but he noted that "whether this was the only way to obtain that information will remain a legitimate area of dispute, with Americans holding a range of views on the methods used."

Almost from its beginnings, the interrogation program generated concern inside the CIA.

The 2004 report by then-Inspector General John L. Helgerson noted, presciently, that "the agency faces potentially serious long-term political and legal challenges as a result of the . . . program, particularly its use of [enhanced interrogation techniques] and the inability of the U.S. Government to decide what it will ultimately do with terrorists detained by the agency."

The report said CIA personnel "are concerned that public revelation" of the program will "seriously damage" personal reputations as well as "the reputation and effectiveness of the agency itself." One officer said he could imagine CIA agents ending up before the World Court on war crimes charges.

"Ten years from now, we're going to be sorry we're doing this," said one CIA officer. But "it has to be done."

Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report.

Online social networks leak personal information to tracking sites, new study shows

From the News Release:

More than a half billion people use online social networks, posting vast amounts of information about themselves to share with online friends and colleagues. A new study co-authored by a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has found that the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make that personal information available to companies that track Web users’ browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people. The study, presented recently in Barcelona at the Workshop on Online Social Networks, part of the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communications, is the first to describe a mechanism that tracking sites could use to directly link browsing habits to specific individuals.

“When you sign up with a social networking site, you are assigned a unique identifier,” says Craig Wills, professor of computer science at WPI, who conducted the study with an industry colleague. “This is a string of numbers or characters that points to your profile. We found that when social networking sites pass information to tracking sites about your activities, they often include this unique identifier. So now a tracking site not only has a profile of your Web browsing activities, it can link that profile to the personal information you post on the social networking site. Now your browsing profile is not just of somebody, it is of you.”

See Also: Read the Complete Study (PDF)

Source: EurekAlert

UN — Elimination of all forms of religious intolerance: Note by the Secretary-General

Elimination of all forms of religious intolerance: Note by the Secretary-General (PDF; 172 KB)
Source: Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief (UN General Assembly)

The Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief submits the present report to the General Assembly pursuant to its resolution 63/181. In the report, she provides a brief overview of general patterns arising out of the mandate and further issues of concern.

The Special Rapporteur then focuses on persons in vulnerable situations, including persons deprived of their liberty, refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced persons, children, persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and migrants, as regards their ability to freely exercise their right to freedom of religion or belief.

The Special Rapporteur gives an overview of the activities carried out under the mandate since the submission of her previous report to the General Assembly, including communications with Governments, country visits and participation in conferences and meetings, as well as application of a gender perspective in the reporting process.

The Special Rapporteur sets out a number of conclusions and recommendations, especially with regard to the protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief and to the prevention of related discrimination and intolerance. She emphasizes the importance of detecting early signs of intolerance that may not be human rights violations themselves, but that may ultimately lead to discrimination based on religion or belief.

Hat tip: UN Pulse

Documents in the News — Special Review: Counterterrorism Terrorism and Interrogation Activities

Special Review: Counterterrorism Terrorism and Interrogation Activities (PDF; 6.2 MB)
Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General
Heavily redacted

Yahoo! to acquire Maktoob.com

Aug 25, 2009 at 00:32

U.S. internet giant signs deal to acquire Arab world’s largest online media company for undisclosed fee.

Yahoo! has agreed to acquire Maktoob.com, the Arab world’s largest online community, marking the first major investment by a U.S. technology company in a region where internet penetration is still in its infancy.

The global internet giant said on Tuesday it has entered into a definitive agreement with Jordan-based Maktoob Group to acquire Maktoob.com for an undisclosed fee. Maktoob Business is a part of Maktoob.com.

Yahoo! said it expects the acquisition to be completed in the fourth quarter.

Following completion of the deal, Maktoob.com will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!, while the remaining products under the Maktoob Group will operate under a new entity called the Jabbar Internet Group.

Jabbar will retain products such as online auction site Souq.com, online payment platform cashU.com and Arabic search engine Araby.com.

The acquisition will allow Yahoo! to offer Arabic-language content for the first time as well as Arabic versions of its products and services, such as instant messaging and email.

"With the acquisition of Maktoob.com and our investment commitment to the region, the Arab world will soon get the entire Yahoo! experience in Arabic with relevant local language content, programming and services," Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said in a statement.

The deal will also boost Yahoo!’s already considerable market share in a region where rival Google, which began Arabising products and content in 2006, holds the number one spot in most countries.

Maktoob.com, founded in 2000, is among the top 10 internet sites in almost all Arabic-speaking countries, according to U.S.-based research firm Alexa.

"With the combination of the Yahoo and the Maktoob brands … and the breadth of content and services that we have, we expect to be one of the strongest players in the region," Keith Nilsson, Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets, Yahoo!, told Maktoob Business.

GLOBAL BATTLE

Yahoo! and Google are currently embroiled in a global battle for internet domination and facing fresh competition from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Competition has become increasingly fierce amid the global financial crisis, with advertising revenues in developed markets declining dramatically as clients cut budgets.

In an effort to bolster revenues, the pair have been expanding into emerging markets, where internet penetration and technology take-up are relatively low compared to the West and advertising is still witnessing double-digit growth.

Internet penetration across the Middle East stands at around 23.3 percent, compared to more than 70 percent in the UK and U.S., according to InternetWorldStats.com.

In Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, internet penetration stands at just 12.9 percent, while in the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia penetration is only 22.7 percent.

Ahmed Nassef, General Manager, Maktoob.com, said: "In most part of the Arab world we are just at the start of internet penetration.

"Yahoo! Maktoob will create the products to bring the Arab world online, and then offer Middle East businesses the opportunity to talk to that audience."

For Maktoob.com the takeover will likely bring significant investment and access to Yahoo !technology with which to optimise its current offering.

The deal will also boost the English-language side of Maktoob.com as Yahoo! is already the number two website in many Arab countries without Arabic support or a regionally-focused content.

INTEGRATION TIMELINE

The specifics of the deal and timeframe for integration of the two companies’ products and content have yet to be finalised, but Arabised email, instant messenger and search are likely to be a high priority.

"Our product road map will be put together over the next few months. Today we are announcing the deal. It will take a few more weeks for the deal to be completed and during this time we will be working on the product road map," said Nassef.

"However, it is clear Arabic Yahoo! Mail, Arabic Messenger and Arabic Search are all key pieces that will come up first."

Users will not see noticeable changes to Maktoob.com until the first half of 2010, Nilsson said.

"After the deal closes there will be small changes, you may see the Yahoo! brand on the homepages and a few other changes to the experience, but there will not be substantive changes with introducing Yahoo! products until the first half of next year," he said.

There is also no word yet on whether the acquisition will lead to job cuts.

"We will be looking for synergies - and opportunities," said Nassef.

"There will inevitably be a change in where we focus our resources. We will have a clearer idea of this over the next few weeks."

One hurdle both companies will face is concerns over freedom of speech.

Arab countries are well known for their censorship and many in the region will be looking to see how Yahoo! reacts when governments challenge it over content.

Maktoob users, meanwhile, are concerned the acquisition could lead to censorship of content critical of the U.S. Nilsson said this would be an "unfounded fear".

He added: "We don’t plan to change Maktoob’s approach to content on the Matkoob site. We think Maktoob has taken a healthy, balanced approach to the content."

Utter despair among Rohingyas in detention

The heart-rending tale of the Rohingya refugees continues, each chapter seemingly more tragic than what went before. Two new developments in the sad story have appeared in the media. The deaths of two teenagers in a Ranong province lockup appear to be senseless, and many times worse because they were preventable. And the trial begins this week of a Malaysian customs policeman allegedly involved in an actual slavery ring selling Rohingya at the Thai border. Arguably the worst part of these sordid reports in this newspaper is that top officials in Thailand and neighbouring countries remain silent.

According to doctors, 18-year-old Abdul Salam died on June 30 after he had been held in the immigration detention centre at Ranong. Then, on Aug 13, Hammatula died inside the centre. Abdul was found near death in his cell and died on his way to hospital. Hammatula died alone and unattended, apparently without any medical care. The doctors responsible to the Immigration Department say that the cause of death was cardiac arrest _ which simply means their hearts stopped. This is a well-known catch-phrase used when authorities are unwilling or unable to determine why someone has died.

But in fact authorities have told this newspaper that the two teenagers died of despair. Arrested last January by the Thai navy, they were sent to the immigration lockup where their lives came to an end _ figuratively at that time, literally after months in the lockup. Like many who wind up in the nightmare of the immigration lockup, Abdul and Hammatula gave up on life. They did not eat, did not exercise. They felt, undoubtedly correctly, that they had nothing to look forward to.

Ironically, the group of 78 Rohingya sent to the immigration lockup were supposed to be an example of Thai government compassion. Jolted by foreign news reports of shocking mistreatment of the Muslim refugees and job seekers, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was forced to step in when it appeared that the group would be set adrift at sea, as had many others. But the immigration lockup for the Rohingya is arguably worse than having their boat pushed into the South China Sea.

The Burmese dictators refuse to recognise the Rohingya as citizens. Because of the Kafkaesque immigration law, Rohingya cannot be repatriated, and therefore cannot be freed.

Mr Abhisit, who promised humane and sympathetic treatment for detained Rohingya, did little more than defend the military from charges of brutal treatment of the Rohingya. The unbelievably cruel decision by the Burmese generals to strip the Rohingya of their birthright means that these men could spend the rest of their lives in the Ranong province detention centre. Two, in fact, already have.

In Malaysia, senior immigration office Rahman Selamat faces charges of what amounts to slavery. Allegedly, he detained a Rohingya man, then took him to the Thai border where he was sold to a human trafficking gang for 600 ringgit, less than 6,000 baht. The gang supposedly intended to sell him into slavery to a fishing boat captain.

The Thai and Malaysian governments have been terribly remiss in these and many other cases. Those at the top, Prime Minister Abhisit included, must realise that they are responsible for the health and welfare of detainees. By taking away the freedom of immigrants, the government assumes an obligation to protect them. The Rohingya, who have done nothing wrong except to be poor and abused by their government, deserve a better fate.

Over 1.5 million IDPs return home, says UN

UNITED NATIONS: Around 1.6 million of the over 2 million people displaced by the anti-Taliban military operations in Pakistan’s north-west have returned to their villages, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday, citing Government figures.

The vast majority of the nearly 2.3 million people who had escaped clashes between Government forces and militants were sheltering either in schools and other public buildings, with host families or in rental accommodations.

As a result of the returns, 13 camps have closed down, while another 17 still remain open in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). According to the Provincial Department of Education, the number of schools occupied by internally displaced persons (IDPs) has decreased from 947 to 454, with 2,340 families still living in schools.

Over half of the returnees went back to the districts of Swat and Buner, among the areas hardest hit by the fighting, while the rest returned to Dir and Shangla districts.

To help those returning to their places of origin, the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have pledged to provide shelter assistance to about 10,000 families whose homes were damaged. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing food in Waziristan, where the Government says almost 12,630 families have been displaced as a result of a separate military offensive. OCHA also reported today that donors have stepped up contributions to the $542 million Pakistan Humanitarian Response Plan, which is now more than 60 per cent funded.—APP

Govt may monitor phone calls to counter terror threat

PTI 24 August 2009

NEW DELHI: The government, in the wake terror threats, is planning to set up a centralised system to monitor communications on mobile phones, landlines and the internet.

The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), a telecom research and development organisation, is working on the Telecom Security project, which will help the government to monitor both calls in the country through a centralised system.

Talking about the project, C-DoT Executive Director P V Acharya said: "It is viewed as a national project ... Basically, it is about monitoring certain messages or conversations so that we can ensure security of the country.

Essentially, our technology would provide an interface to operator of any service or technology and it will give them access to the messages traversing through their network," he said.

The present system of surveillance is managed by individual operators, and a phone is tapped and call details are given when law enforcement agencies ask for them.

The government has a Signal Intelligence Agency, a joint service organisation manned by personnel from the army, navy and airforce, which monitors military links (wireless) of other countries.

However, it does not have a centralised monitoring system for voice calls on the mobile, landlines and internet.

The government has not yet decided on how the surveillance system will work.

"We will just provide an opportunity to this ... but how this would be done depends on the agreement between the operators and the government," Acharya said.

Declining to share technical details of the project, Acharya said the first phase of the project will cost Rs 400 crore. It will end next year.

The need for lawful intervention is being felt more after the terror attacks in November last year, when the terrorists were in contact with their instructors on the phone.

Abhisit willing to accept political change

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Monday he would never cling to a political post and was ready for political change, adding he would remain with the Democrat party until the day he quits politics.

The prime minister said this to a group attending a course on political development run by the Election Commission, who called on him at Government House. They included former Council for National Security chairman Gen Sonthi Boonyaratkalin and opposition Puea Thai party spokesman Prompong Nopparit.

Replying to questions, Mr Abhisit said he was not worried about losing his job and was ready for political change when it comes, including the possible dissolution of the Democrat party of which he is the leader, as long as it is done according to the law.

He said the government would have no objection to calling a general election after the constitution has been amended.

Asked about the bills on national reconciliation and amnesty for political groups, Mr Abhisit said he wondered whether all problems would end and all political groups would truly cease their political activities if they were passed into law by the parliament.

It was quite clear that some people did not want to see an end to the problems, he said.

He gave a strong indication the government will impose the Internal Security Act to control the planned red-shirt demonstration on Sunday. The prime minister said the government has the legitimacy to apply the law if problems were foreseen.

The act was designed to integrate action by the authorities to effectively bring a situation under control.

Mr Abhisit said trying to negotiate with the red-shirt leaders was unlikely to produce any significant result.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said earlier on Monday that and Mt Abhisit had discussed enforcing a ''special security law'' for the UDD protest on Sunday, when the red-shirts will demand the dissolution of the House of Representatives.

"We are worried about the demonstration and are considering whether a special law should be used to keep order in the country. We believe people do not want to see more violence or rioting in Bangkok as it would further damage the country," said Mr Suthep, who oversees security matters.

The government may impose the Internal Security Act or declare a state of emergency during the anti-government UDD rally, he said.

This issue would be discussed at the weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Mr Suthep, the Democrat secretary-general, also said he opposed the Bhumjaithai Party's amnesty bill.

The coalition partner Bhumjaithai has submitted draft legislation giving amnesty for protesters of both the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) who have been charged in connection with their political gatherings.

Mr Suthep said on Monday that he had not discussed the bill with other Democrat members.

"I personally disagree with the legislation but I believe it will not become a tool for political negotiation in the future," he said.

"I haven't asked Newin Chidchob [Bhumjaithai's de facto leader and banned politician] about the urgency of passing this bill," he added.

Senate Speaker Prasopsuk Boondej expressed concern on hearing that the government may impose the Internal Security Act to ensure peace and order when the red-shirts stage an anti-government rally on Sunday.

He said the security law should be used only when the situation has turned violent, otherwise it could affect the country's image, which has begun to improve

The situation is unlikely to turn violent because all concerned have learned their lesson from the Songkran riots, he said.

Dengue kills three, afflicts over 300 in Arakan State

by Mizzima News

Monday, 24 August 2009 21:06

New Delhi (mizzima) – At least three people have died and 329 people infected with dengue fever this year in Sittwe and Kyaukphyu of Arakan State in western Burma, according to information from the Ministry of Health. According to the ministry of health, two people in Sittwe, capital of Arakan state, have died and another in Kyaukphyu town. "Though dengue is not very dangerous yet two people died in our town scaring people. There are many dengue afflicted child patients in hospital but I cannot tell the exact number. Besides, there are many more unreported cases in the villages. The villagers cannot afford treatment at the hospital. Only the affluent in the town can get admitted to the hospital. "Dengue has infected not only children but adults as well. There are many people from different age groups being treated at our hospital. Most patients are children and the fever lasts less than a week after which the patient is out of danger," a doctor in Sittwe Hospital said. But some patients need to be treated for over a week. "My daughter had dengue since the beginning of this month and was hospitalized as soon as she was infected. Now she has been discharged. Though her condition has improved she has not yet fully recovered. She has been absent from school for over two weeks," a mother of a child patient in Sittwe told Mizzima. Teachers are worried about their students as many are absent from schools. "There are many children who cannot come to school because of the flu. Their friends say they either have flu or dengue fever. Some could not come to school for a whole month. We are worried about their education given the long absence from classes," a class teacher in the State High School No. 2 in Sittwe told Mizzima. Though the symptoms of this disease are coughing, sneezing, fever and body ache but in this type of influenza, similar symptoms are not found, and there are only sudden high fever plus headaches. Rash, bleeding from the nose and gums, blood stains in the urine and stool were found in these patients. Patients are known to become unconscious, have convulsions, perspire with high fever, vomit continuously and suffer from shock. Dengue fever cases were also reported in Pyi, Pa-an in Karen State and Htantalan town in Chin State. The Health Ministry release said that about 30 people die of dengue fever in Rangoon annually.

The Iran Show

by Laura Secor

In the grotesque pageant of Iran’s show trials, former high officials—hollow-eyed, dressed in prison pajamas, and flanked by guards in uniform—sit in rows, listening to one another’s self-denunciations. Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions. But the spectacle has found a subversive afterlife on the Internet. One image that has gone viral is a split frame showing two photographs of former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Before his arrest, on June 16th, he is a rotund, smiling cleric; in court on August 1st, he is drawn and sweat-soaked, his face a mask of apprehension. The juxtaposition belies the courtroom video, making the point that the only genuine thing about Abtahi’s confession is that it was coerced through torture.

Show trials have been staged before, most notably in Moscow in the nineteen-thirties. Typically, such rituals purge élites and scare the populace. They are the prelude to submission. Iran’s show trials, so far, have failed to accrue this fearsome power. In part, this is because the accused are connected to a mass movement: Iranians whose democratic aspirations have evolved organically within the culture of the Islamic Republic. It is one thing to persuade citizens that a narrow band of apparatchiks are enemies of the state. It is quite another to claim that a political agenda with broad support—for popular sovereignty, human rights, due process, freedom of speech—has been covertly planted by foreigners.

The indictments prepared by the public prosecutor are almost surreally obtuse. Before the election, one indictment claims, Western governments, foundations, and individuals joined forces with corrupt Iranians in an attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic and institute a regime compliant with American designs. The nefarious plotters engaged in “exposing cases of violations of human rights,” training reporters in “gathering information,” and “presenting full information on the 2009 electoral candidates.” Apparently, the Iranian citizen is meant to consider it self-evident that the country’s national interest depends on concealing human-rights abuses, censoring the news, and obfuscating the electoral process.

Forced confessions have been part of Iran’s penal system since the mid-nineteen-seventies. But it was the Islamic Republic that turned the auditorium of Evin Prison, in Tehran, into a macabre theatre. In 1982, after a fierce fight between the extremist theocrats in the government and the radical Muslim guerrillas outside it, the revolutionary regime began broadcasting confessions from Evin. The prisoners—mainly secular leftists and Muslim guerrillas—recanted their views and apologized for betraying Islam. Ervand Abrahamian, the author of “Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran,” quotes a witness who said of the night a major leftist recanted, “Something snapped inside all of us. We never expected someone of his reputation to get down on his knees. Some commented it was as revolting as watching a human being cannibalize himself.”

Revulsion was, in many ways, the point. Those who confessed not only implicated themselves; they implicated others. They persuaded the public either of the existence of malevolent plots against the state or—more likely—of the state’s ruthlessness in crushing opponents. A few Iranians who confessed even became agents of the state, betraying former colleagues. These repenters became hated figures, and the word for them, tavab, a term of abuse. In an era of warring ideologies, the only meaningful contest was for domination, and the repenters were clearly the losers. In 1988, Iran’s inquisition came to a climax with the systematic execution of thousands of political prisoners.

For more than a decade afterward, forced confessions all but disappeared from the airwaves, not because the regime had softened but because it no longer needed them. When the hard-liners again felt threatened, earlier this decade, bogus confessions reappeared on state television. But by then the tactic was badly matched to the threat, which came from former members of the ruling clique who had mellowed as the revolution entered middle age. Such are today’s defendants. They are not ideological warriors but, rather, reformists who have called for incremental, democratic change.

And so a spectacle that was meant to produce compliance and terror has instead stoked fury and derision. The regime has lost control of the political discussion within Iran, which is focussing on the abuse of prisoners rather than on the perfidy of foreigners or the futility of resistance. On July 31st, Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric and former Presidential candidate, shattered a taboo by airing allegations of rape and sexual abuse inside Iran’s prisons. The authorities responded by shutting down a newspaper that Karroubi published. But the burden of shame had shifted squarely from the prisoners to their wardens. A senior ayatollah praised Karroubi, quoting Muhammad: “A realm will survive without believing in God, but will not survive with oppression.”

Meanwhile, Iranians are turning the show trials into a kind of black comedy, by mocking the predictability of their ugliness. Last month, Mohsen Armin, a prominent reformist, issued a preëmptive statement declaring that, no matter what he might say should he be taken to prison, he is not the agent of foreign powers. Perhaps no one has done more to undermine the effect of forced confessions than Ebrahim Nabavi, an exiled Iranian satirist who has released a parody confession video. Dressed in striped pajamas and wearing bandages, he confesses to meeting with a C.I.A. agent, importing green velvet, and having affairs with Carla Bruni and Angelina Jolie (“She had a very ugly and terrible husband”). He apologizes to the Supreme Leader and to the paramilitaries who “kindly” beat him.

In today’s Iran, the interrogator, not the repenter, has become the object of rage and ridicule. Recanting under pressure, Abrahamian told me, is now seen as a sign not of weakness or treachery but, rather, of “being human.” The display of systemic cruelty is not chilling but galvanizing.

Iran was a radical place in the eighties. Both the regime and much of its opposition were absolutist, utopian, messianic, apocalyptic. Forced confessions, so effective in that climate, convey little more than illegitimacy when they are used against an opposition that is asking for the counting of votes and the rule of law. Today’s show trials are a sign of how much Iran has changed in the past thirty years, and how poorly its regime has kept pace.

Journalist shot dead in Pakistan

Unidentified gunmen have shot dead an Afghan journalist in north-west Pakistan, officials say.

Janullah Hashimzada, 40, was the bureau chief in Peshawar for Afghanistan's Shamshad television channel.

He was returning from Afghanistan when his bus was ambushed near Jamrud, the main town in Khyber tribal district.

No one has admitted carrying out the attack. The area is a stronghold of the Taliban. Mr Hashimzada was an outspoken critic of the militants.

"The attackers in a Toyota Corolla car intercepted the bus and made it stop and then they went inside and shot him dead," Reuters news agency quoted Rehan Khattak, a government official in Jamrud, as saying.

One passenger was wounded, he said.

Mr Hashimzada was a well-known face on Shamshad TV.

He also worked as a freelance, supplying video footage to international media organisations around the world, including the BBC.

The Shamshad channel is popular in insurgency-hit provinces in Afghanistan and also broadcasts to Pakistan, including some parts of the tribal areas which border Afghanistan.

At least three other journalists have been killed in north-west Pakistan this year.

Media freedom groups say the region, which is beset with Islamist militancy and tribal violence, is one of the world's most dangerous for journalists.

Yemeni troops 'kill 100 rebels'

Yemeni troops carrying out an offensive against Shia rebels in the north of the country claim to have killed more than 100 fighters, including two leaders.

The operation, involving air strikes, artillery and tanks, began two weeks ago, aimed at crushing the rebels and recapturing the town of Harf Sufyan.

The rebels deny their leaders, Mohsen Saleh Gawd and Salah Jorman, have been killed and say civilians have died.

There has been no independent confirmation of the numbers killed.

A government statement said: "The bodies of more than 100 rebels have been recovered from the roadside outside the town of Harf Sufyan.

"It seems that the bodies were those of rebels trying to flee the town during a mopping-up operation over the past two days."

The statement added that security forces had succeeded in "totally purging the town of rebel elements in the past two days, forcing the rebels to surrender or flee".

The rebels, from the Zaidi Shia sect, want the restoration of Shia rule in the north of Yemen, which is mainly Sunni.

Yemen's president has accused the rebels of trying to overthrow the government.

Kenya set for contentious census

Kenya has begun holding its first national census for 10 years, amid controversy over a question which asks which ethnic group people belong to.

Many Kenyans believe the question is insensitive, coming 18 months after more than 1,000 people were killed in ethnic violence after an election.

Ministers say the question is needed to help the authorities plan better.

Critics say the census will be misused by politicians and could damage efforts to heal rifts between communities.

The BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says ethnic divisions are deeply rooted in Kenyan society and many people are proud of their tribe.

Many Kenyans vote along ethnic lines, which meant that a dispute over allegations of fraud after the December 2007 election led to people being attacked and killed because they were from the same group as either the president or his main challenger.

Our correspondent says some people say they intend to answer "I am a Kenyan", when asked which group they belong to.

Collins Opiyo, from the National Bureau of Statistics, said it would have been "an exhibition of professional recklessness" to leave out questions about tribes.

"If we do not have the official position and people come up with figures and numbers we cannot be able to dispute them," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

The census is intended to shed light on a range of issues including education, fertility and mortality levels as well as migration patterns.

Security has been beefed up for the census, which will last all week.

Tuesday has been declared a public holiday as officials encourage people to answer the questions.

Africa seeks climate change cash

Ministers from 10 African countries are meeting in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting.

They are expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming.

And they are likely to ask rich nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2012.

African nations are among the lightest polluters but analysts say they will suffer the most from climate change.

BBC science reporter Matt McGrath says the move to agree a common negotiating platform for Africa recognises the continent's failure to make its voice heard on the debate.

'Dismal co-ordination'

Kenya's environment secretary, Alice Kaudia, told the BBC that the continent had to learn from other countries' mistakes.

"One single country will not solve its environmental problems on its own, it will need partners, and that's why it's very important that there's that unified common position," she said.

“African interests have not always received the attention they needed in the UN climate process ”

"The development of Africa should not go alongside the same mistakes that the developed world already made - to have these high emissions that are now affecting the whole world."

One of the documents prepared for the meeting refers to the "dismal co-ordination" of the African negotiation process.

So far, delegations from individual countries have had limited success in making the case that Africa needs special help to cope with climate change.

The "representatives and experts" of African Union (AU) leaders - who include environment and agriculture ministers from the 10 countries - are meeting in Addis Ababa under Libyan chairmanship in an attempt to change this.

Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said all African leaders should support the AU's efforts to form a clear message.

But she said Africa too had its responsibilities.

"We are all hoping we will develop and attain a higher quality of life, so there has to be a very serious commitment on the part of Africa that we will not be opting for development patterns that will reverse whatever other countries are trying to do," she said.

Kyoto replacement

Delegates from powerhouses South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are among those attending the AU conference.

They will discuss a suggestion that developed countries should cut emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and that richer nations should provide $67bn (£40bn) a year to help the least well-off cope with rising temperatures.

They will also attempt to agree a set of key ideas in order to help national delegations to the UN negotiations in Copenhagen this December to present a co-ordinated position.

The Copenhagen conference will try to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, elements of which expire in 2012.

Correspondents say the US, China, India and the EU will have the greatest sway at the UN conference.

But African leaders will be hoping that by speaking with one voice at Copenhagen, their negotiating position can be significantly enhanced.

Thailand's King Calls for Unity

By JAMES HOOKWAY

BANGKOK – Thailand's widely respected king made a rare foray into the country's long-running political problems, warning that Thailand could become increasingly unstable if its feuding politicians fail to unite, media reports here said Saturday.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 81, offered the remarks at an audience at a seaside palace late Friday night as worries grew about the durability of the current government led by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. His words were later broadcast on national television and reported by Thai media.

"Right now, it can be said that our country is going towards ruin," the Bangkok Post newspaper reported King Bhumibol as saying, but he added that disaster can be averted if different sectors of society can bring themselves to work together.

Thailand, one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia and a major production hub for companies such as Toyota Motor Co., has lurched from crisis to crisis since a military coup unseated former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006. Yellow-wearing royalists helped pave the way for the ouster, accusing the former telecommunications magnate of using dictatorial powers to sidestep the country's parliamentary system of checks and balances. Last year, yellow-clad protesters invaded and closed Bangkok's international airports in a successful attempt to force the collapse of a pro-Thaksin government.

Mr. Thaksin's supporters, meanwhile, took up red as their color and have demanded greater democracy and less military influence in Thailand. Last week 20,000 of them gathered outside Bangkok's Grand Palace to submit a 3.5 million-name petition seeking a royal pardon for Mr. Thaksin, who is currently living abroad to avoid imprisonment for a corruption conviction.

Economists worry the continuing tension could derail a possible economic recovery in Thailand as its neighbors begin to bounce back from the global financial crisis. At the moment, the government expects the Thai economy to contract 3.5% this year before expanding in 2010.

In addition, concern is growing that Thailand's current leader – the Oxford-trained economist Mr. Abhisit – is losing control of the fragile, military-backed coalition which came to power last December. Thai police officials last week refused to accept his nomination for a new national police chief, raising speculation that Mr. Abhisit main soon dissolve parliament and call fresh elections. On Friday, Mr. Abhisit said he was still in charge and that he was still on good terms with his coalition partners, which include defectors from the Thaksin camp.

It is unclear what impact King Bhumibol's words may have. As a constitutional monarch, like Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, he typically steers clear of political controversies.

Yet, at the same time, King Bhumibol commands substantial moral authority and has intervened in previous political crises, sometimes endorsing military coups but also encouraging the restoration of democratic rule, as he did in 1973 and 1992.

When King Bhumibol missed his customary birthday speech last December because of ill health, many Thais worried whether Thailand would be able to resolved its protracted political conflicts without the steadying hand of their monarch.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

Killings Rattle Pakistan Taliban

By ZAHID HUSSAIN

ISLAMABAD -- The struggle among the Pakistan Taliban's leadership intensified Sunday, as members of the militant group killed several people close to slain commander Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistani government officials said.

Among those killed, officials said, were Mawlvi Ikramuddin, the father-in-law of Mr. Mehsud, along with Mr. Ikramuddin's two sons and a brother. Taliban militants accused the slain individuals of tipping off authorities about Mr. Mehsud's whereabouts.

"According to our information they all have been killed," Rehman Malik, the federal interior minister, told reporters Sunday. The Taliban didn't claim responsibility for the deaths.

Several weeks ago, militants killed a driver of Mr. Mehsud's, apparently following allegations that the driver had spied for the government. Also slain: Saadullah Mehsud, a medic treating Baitullah Mehsud, who suffered from a kidney ailment.

Baitullah Mehsud headed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a disparate alliance of tribal militant factions. He was thought killed in South Waziristan this month, when a missile fired by a U.S. drone struck the house of Mr. Ikramuddin, the father of his second wife.

Because the missile hit the house shortly after Mr. Mehsud's medic had departed, the Taliban also accused the medic, Saadullah Mehsud, of passing information to the authorities, according to a government official.

The news of the killing of Mr. Ikramuddin and others came a day after the Taliban announced it nominated Hakimullah Mehsud to succeed Baitullah Mehsud as chief of the TTP. Hakimullah Mehsud and Baitullah Mehsud aren't related but are members of the Mehsud tribe.

A TTP spokesman said a 42-member Shura, or tribal council, elected Hakimullah Mehsud to succeed Baitullah Mehsud, who was described as in failing health. Taliban leaders insist that Baitullah Mehsud is alive.

Hakimullah Mehsud, thought to be 29 years old, is known as a ferocious fighter. He was reportedly involved in a shootout with his rival, Wali Ur Rehman, during a Shura meeting called earlier this month to elect Baitullah Mehsud's successor. Mr. Rehman, a former spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, was believed to have been injured in the exchange of gunfire.

Some Pakistan and U.S. officials say they believe Hakimullah Mehsud may have died in the shootout. "There's no question," said a senior U.S. intelligence official in the region, "He's dead. He was killed in the shootout. We've got no reason to doubt the [intelligence] we're seeing."

However, Pakistani journalists who say they recognize the rebel leader's voice say they spoke to Hakimullah Mehsud shortly after he was rumored to have been killed. No public evidence has emerged of his death.

Since Baitullah Mehsud's apparent death, the TTP has struggled to hold together its loosely grouped militancy. As Baitullah Mehsud's deputy, Hakimullah Mehsud earned a reputation as a ruthless enforcer. Analysts said the election of the young and impetuous militant could accentuate divisions in the group.

"Hakimullah seems to have overpowered his rivals and managed to get himself elected through intimidation, but the tussle is far from over," said Mahmood Shah, a retired army brigadier and a former security chief in Pakistan's tribal regions. "His nomination could lead to bloody clashes between the rival factions," he added.

Hakimullah Mehsud's men have been blamed for attacking U.S. and NATO supply convoys traveling to Afghanistan. He has also claimed responsibility for the June bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, and the deadly attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan, earlier this year.

—Matthew Rosenberg in Kabul contributed to this article.

Woman in Malaysia Caning Sentence Freed

By JAMES HOOKWAY

BANGKOK -- Malaysian authorities appeared to have set free a Muslim woman who was scheduled to be caned under Islamic laws for drinking beer in a hotel bar, in a case that some political analysts described as a symptom of the country's increasingly fractious politics.

Drinking alcohol is illegal for Malaysia's Muslims, who make up about 60% of the nation's 27 million people. Usually, those caught are subjected to a fine or brief prison sentence. Non-Muslims, including large ethnic-Chinese and Indian communities, are free to drink and aren't subject to Shariah law.

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, however, was sentenced to six lashes with a rattan cane. On Friday, the 32-year-old mother of two asked for the punishment to be carried out in public to deter other Muslims from drinking alcohol.

But on Monday, Reuters reported, Ms. Kartika was freed while on her way to jail to receive the sentence. It wasn't immediately clear whether Ms. Kartika would be spared the punishment, or whether Islamic authorities had decided not to imprison her in order to carry out her sentence. Shararfuddin Zainal Ariffin, head of enforcement for the state of Pahang's Islamic Affair's Department, told reporters that "the warrant cannot be executed," Reuters reported.

• Opinion: Caning in Malaysia

Malaysian authorities previously said they won't cane Ms. Kartika in public, contrary to what she and her father requested. They also said she will be fully clothed as the sentence is carried out and that she will be struck on the rear with a thin bamboo cane with moderate force, with the prison officer raising it no higher than the shoulder before delivering the blow.

Ms. Kartika's punishment, ordered by an Islamic court Wednesday, and subsequent release come at a time of political tension in Malaysia. The ruling National Front and the Islamist component of an opposition alliance are competing to place themselves as the guardians of a faith that has taken on an increasingly political face in Malaysia over the past 20 years.

The National Front accuses the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, or PAS, of giving up some of its Islamic ideals by showing a willingness to compromise with its secular allies in matters such as whether convenience stores can sell alcohol in majority Muslim areas, or the location of pig abattoirs-sensitive issues in this multiracial society.

PAS, meanwhile, accuses the National Front and its main party, the United Malays National Organization, of being so entrenched in power after more than 50 years in office that they are unable to govern in accordance with the ethical principles of Islam.

Farish A. Noor, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, says that the potential caning of Ms. Kartika "is just a sign of what is to come." Both PAS and UMNO, he said, are pushing for wider use of Shariah law in Malaysia.

The battle between UMNO and PAS over who has a greater claim as defender of the faith is being brought into relief in Penang state in the north of the country, where a special election for a state assembly seat will be held Tuesday.

The National Front, in particular, is using a campaign strategy designed to undermine PAS among prospective voters in the Chinese and Indian communities by playing up the party's efforts to ban beer sales at convenience stores. At the same time, the National Front is attempting to convince Muslim Malay voters that PAS is too willing to cut deals with its secular allies in order to secure political power. Senior UMNO leaders have condemned the leader of the opposition alliance, Anwar Ibrahim, as a "traitor" to the Malay race.

The sentence initially handed down to Ms. Kartika, meanwhile, triggered a debate on whether Islamic laws are too severe for a multiracial society such as Malaysia.

Ms. Kartika, who lives in Singapore, was caught drinking beer at a hotel in Kuantan, in Malaysia's Pahang state, during a raid in 2007 by religious authorities. She declined to appeal and came back to Malaysia for the punishment.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

Slate Is Switching From ‘Today’s Paper’ to a News Roundup

By BRIAN STELTER

Slate is retiring “Today’s Papers,” one of the original aggregators of the Web, 12 years after it started its beloved once-a-day summary of the nation’s news pages.

In its place comes a new recap of the news, one that acknowledges that the news cycle has, well, sped up quite considerably since “Today’s Papers” started in 1997. That is why the “Slatest,” the name of the new feature that comes online Monday morning, will collect the world’s news three times a day.

David Plotz, editor of the online magazine Slate, very superlatively calls it a “very fast, very intelligent, very witty news aggregation feature.”

The new feature will succeed both “Today’s Papers” and its companion, “Other Magazines.” In an interview, Mr. Plotz said that when “Today’s Papers” was introduced in the early days of the Web, it met a need “our readers hadn’t even known they had.”

The editors would collect front pages of newspapers and summarize them for readers each morning. Back then, Slate did not call what it was doing aggregation; instead, it termed it “meta-news.” Terminology aside, it quickly became one of Slate’s most popular features.

But as the news cycle sped up, “Today’s Papers” stuck to its format. Slate, owned by The Washington Post Company, started to talk about a change in its strategy almost a year ago.

In an editorial meeting, Jack Shafer, the media columnist for Slate, observed that the news cycle had three distinct parts: an overnight shift led by newspapers, a daytime phase when other news media entities react to the overnight news, and an afternoon phase when, as Mr. Plotz put it, “the day’s news events break and are digested.”

The Slatest will be updated three times a day to try to capture that. It will also include an even more frequently updated Twitter stream.

“The major newspapers still drive the news agenda,” Mr. Plotz said, but the Slatest recognizes “that the daily newspaper is only one part of the news universe. That’s why we’re expanding our aggregation efforts so aggressively.” BRIAN STELTER