Mission & Justice

13/8/08

Three female international aid workers and their Afghan driver have been killed in an ambush in southern Afghanistan, according to a provincial governor. The three women were driving in a car when the attack occurred in the province of Logar, south of Kabul, Abdullah Wardak said on Wednesday. “Three foreign women employees of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and their local driver were killed in this ambush by the opposition forces,” he said.

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Scott Shane; 12/7/08

Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the CIA’s interrogation methods for high-level al-Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the US officials who approved them guilty of war crimes. A new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001 says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the CIA last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first significant al-Qaeda figure the US captured, were “categorically” torture, which is illegal under both US and international law.

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Yuval Azoulay; 27/6/08

The number of HIV-positive people in Israel increased substantially in 2007, a turnaround from a drop in new diagnoses the previous year. Health Ministry figures indicate a sharp rise in HIV cases in the gay community. The International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent yesterday published its annual disasters report, classifying AIDS as a severe disaster in Africa and urging that it be classified along with famine, war and floods.

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26/5/08

Palestinian officials close to peace talks said Sunday that Israel has offered a West Bank withdrawal map that leaves about 8.5 percent of the territory in Israeli hands, less than a previous plan but still more than the Pales-tinians are ready to accept. Also Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as telling backers that the negotiations have achieved no progress since they were restarted last November with a pledge to U.S. President George W. Bush to try for a full peace treaty by the end of the year. The Palestinian officials said Is-rael presented its new map three days ago in a negotiating session. The last map Israel offered had 12 percent of the West Bank remaining in Israel.

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3/3/08

The Hamas-run administration in the Gaza Strip yesterday called for the formation of an emergency Palestinian unity government after a massive Israeli incursion killed 70 people. The crisis in Gaza “demands unity and an end to divisions and the separation between the West Bank and Gaza,” Hamas government spokesman Taher Al-Nunu told a press conference. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas shared power in a unity government for three months last year, but the president fired the Islamist-led Cabinet after Hamas overran his forces in Gaza in June. “We call for a serious national dialogue project without conditions to study the escalation of the occupation and to form an emergency national unity government,” said Nunu.

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