Mission & Justice

9/10/08

An inquiry by the US military says US air strikes on an Afghan village in August killed more than 30 civilians, far more than commanders have acknowledged, The New York Times reports. The August 22 air strike on Azizabad village outraged Afghans and opened up a rift between the coalition forces on the one hand and the Afghan government and the United Nations on the other, which both said more than 90 civilians were killed. In the days after the raid, the US military said the strike had killed 30 to 35 militants but it planned to reopen its investigation after cell phone video emerged showing bodies of people said to have been killed in the strike.

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James Hider; 8/10/08

Five Palestinian landowners are suing the state of Israel over the loss of their land to an illegal outpost, in a lawsuit that could set a precedent for tackling Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank. The case comes as settlers have boasted of rapid expansion of their communities, despite hopes raised last year in a US-backed peace summit that the Jewish state would freeze settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territory. The lawsuit calls the 40 or so Jewish families who have built trailer homes on the hilltop of Migron, near Ramallah, “ideological robbers of the land” and makes a demand for 1.5 million shekels ($600,000) from the state for failing to remove them.

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8/10/08

Environmental groups and the Bush administration yesterday reached a partial court settlement that requires the Department of Interior to designate critical habitat for polar bears by June 30, 2010. The Department of Interior in May listed the polar bear as being threatened by global warming, but did not designate any critical habitat protection. The Centre for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace,and the Natural Resources Defence Council filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force the Government to do more for the bear’s long-term survival under the Endangered Species Act. “This agreement will provide an additional layer of protection,” said Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity.

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Mark Dodd; 8/10/08

Australian special forces probably killed an Afghan tribal leader and close ally of President Hamid Karzai, defence force chief Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston admitted yesterday, 19 days after the incident. The death, on September 18, followed an exchange of fire between Australian special forces and bodyguards loyal to Chora district governor Rozi Khan. Initial reports by the Australian Defence Force said a special forces patrol responded after being fired on by unknown attackers. It confirmed Mr Khan was among those killed but claimed there was no evidence to suggest Australians were directly responsible.

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Nadav Shragai; 8/10/08

Settler leaders on Tuesday urged Defense Minister Ehud Barak not to transfer the security control of the West Bank town of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority. The leaders, from Hebron and the nearby settlements of Kiryat Arba and Gush Etzion, made this plea in a letter they sent in the wake of recent reports about the potential transfer of security control over the town. In the letter, rabbis expressed shock and outrage about the proposal, which they say would transfer control to what they call “the Fatah and Tanzim terrorists known as the Palestinian Authority.” They added, “Similar steps in the past have always lead to terrible bloodshed.”

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8/10/08

A US judge has ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what has been seen as a rebuke to the Bush administration. US district judge Ricardo Urbina said there was no evidence the men were a security risk and that the US constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause. Local Uighur residents and human rights activists cheered as he told a Washington courtroom the men, who have been in custody for almost seven years, should be freed. The ruling is the first court-ordered release of Guantanamo detainees since the facility opened in 2002.

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7/10/08

Turkish warplanes carried out a bombing raid against Kurdish rebel hideouts in neighbouring northern Iraq last night in retaliation for an attack that killed 15 Turkish soldiers. The air strikes came as thousands of people gathered across Turkey yesterday for the funerals of the soldiers killed in a Kurdish rebel attack on a border post. Turkey’s leaders have vowed to crush the separatists. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a fresh appeal to Iraqi Kurds to take action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose militants - reportedly entering the country from camps in the mountains of northern Iraq - carried out the bloody attack on the outpost near the frontier on Friday.

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Mark Dodd; 7/10/08

Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has supported comments by the commander of British forces in Afghanistan that the war against the Taliban is unwinnable. Mr Fitzgibbon said yesterday he agreed with comments by Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith that a military victory over the Taliban is “neither feasible nor supportable”. The brigadier, who will this month hand over control of British forces in Afghanistan after a six-month tour of duty in which 32 of his troops have been killed and 170 injured, said there would be no peace unless a political accommodation was reached with the Taliban. In answer to questions from The Australian, Mr Fitzgibbon said hewas not surprised by Brigadier Carleton-Smith’s comments, and agreed with them.

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7/10/08

Pakistani authorities have begun expelling Afghan refugees from a tribal region that has become the main battleground between troops and fighters linked to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda, officials said yesterday. “They have to go. There will be no concession,” Safirullah Wazir, the government’s top administrator in Bajaur, told Reuters. “We have reports of their links with militants and their involvement in terrorist activities.” Troops, backed by fighter planes and helicopter gunships, have killed more than 1,000 fighters in the Bajaur region since early August.  A Pakistani general last month described Bajaur as a new “center of gravity” for militancy and said that if the security forces prevailed two-thirds of the militant problem in the region could be eradicated.

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Mohammed Mar’I; 7/10/08

For the first time in the history of illegal takeovers of privately owned Palestinian land, the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din on behalf of five Palestinian landowners demanded compensation from Israel for assistance it provided to builders of the illegal settlement outpost Migron in the West Bank as well as its failure to evacuate it. Yesh Din’s attorney Michael Sfard has filed a 1.5 million Israeli shekel ($427,000) lawsuit with the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on behalf of five Palestinians from the West Bank villages of Burqa and Dair Dibwan, who claim their land was confiscated for the sake of erecting Migron, northeast of Ramallah. The sum demanded as compensation is based on calculations of loss of potential income from the lands during the years when the outpost occupied it, and since Israel’s violation of its obligation as an occupying power to protect Palestinian civilians and their property began. As well, the claim states that the landowners are entitled to compensation from Israel due to the cooperation of various state authorities in the establishment of the outpost.

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