Iraq update 20: Tourism down in Baghdad (and up in Israel)
CONTENTS
1. "Post-war chaos stops Iraq cashing in on tourism" (Reuters, July 24, 2003)
2. "Cleaning Babylon" (Associated Press, July 28, 2003)
3. "Surge in Number of Tourists Visiting Israel" (MFA press release, July 29, 2003)
I attach three articles, with summaries first:
1. "Post-war chaos stops Iraq cashing in on tourism" (By Andrew Gray, Baghdad, July 24, Reuters). "It was hardly the ideal holiday destination. But even Saddam Hussein's Iraq managed to attract some tourists - in these days of military occupation, violence and lawlessness, it has dwindled to almost nothing. Standing outside the former home of the Iraqi Tourist Board, reduced to a burned-out shell of a building by post-war looting, Basim Mohammad Hamza complains he and all of his fellow tour guides have been deprived of a livelihood for months... Hamza said the last group he guided came in February from Germany... Guides say they are being punished because some new ministry officials believe they spied on foreign visitors for Saddam's intelligence services -- a charge they deny. He remembers when major tour operators and hotel chains such as Meridian and Sheraton were doing business here in the 1970s. "We have five-star hotels," said Alawi, "Most of those hotels were full of foreign visitors."
Briton Geoff Hann plans to take visitors to Iraq for a two-week tour starting on September 7 -- providing Baghdad's airport, now a U.S. military base, is open again for civilian traffic. He already has six tourists signed up. Hann has been organising tours to Iraq since the 1970s. During Saddam's rule, his groups had government minders controlling their movements.
2. "Cleaning Babylon" (Associated Press, July 28, 2003). "Babylon, a 4,300-year-old town -- now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums -- knows political and military upheaval well. Dynasties have risen and have fallen here since the earliest days of settled human civilization. King Hammurabi wrote his famous code of laws here. Nebuchadnezzar sent his vast army from here to Jerusalem to put down an uprising and bring the Jews back as slaves. Some say Alexander the Great, who led his army out of Macedonia to conquer most of the known world, died here in 332 B.C. The American military is just the latest to pass through ... The Americans are cleaning up after mobs of looters who ransacked the city's two museums, but fortunately got away mainly with small display copies of ancient artifacts - more than 10,600 U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, aid workers and journalists have passed through ancient Babylon since April 26."
3. "Surge in Number of Tourists Visiting Israel" (July 29, 2003, MFA press release). "Tourism to Israel is on the rise. During this year's second quarter, the number of tourist entries into Israel rose by an annualized 38.9 percent and the number of hotel overnights by 21.1 percent.
The revival in tourism began in April, immediately following the end of the Iraq War. There were 89,700 visitors in June. The number of visitors jumped by 163 percent from the 34,100 visitors in March 2003. The number of hotel overnights jumped by 189 percent to 252,000 in June, compared with 87,100 in March."
El-Al recorded a sharp rise in its sales of tickets for Israel-bound flights. A 103-percent increase was registered on the number of passenger reservations for flights originating from Frankfurt; the rise was 85 percent for flights from London, 80 percent from Milan, 50 percent from Paris, 45 percent from New York and ten percent from Eastern Europe. Foreign aviation companies also reported similar growth: Swiss 40-50 percent and Lufthansa 30 percent.
Israeli Ministry of Tourism officials were hopeful that by the end of this year, 1.2 million tourists would visit Israel - an increase of 400,000 people compared to 2002.
The highest number of tourists to travel to Israel was recorded in 2000 when 2.7 people visited the country."
POST-WAR CHAOS STOPS IRAQ CASHING IN ON TOURISM
Post-war chaos stops Iraq cashing in on tourism
By Andrew Gray
BAGHDAD, July 24 (Reuters) - It was hardly the ideal holiday destination. But even Saddam Hussein's Iraq managed to attract some tourists.
They were only a small fraction of the potential visitors to a country which boasts the sites of ancient civilisations such as Babylon and Ur, the Shia Muslim holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala as well as beautiful deserts, lakes and mountains.
In the long term, Iraqis have high hopes for tourism. But in these days of military occupation, violence and lawlessness, it has dwindled to almost nothing, although a British travel firm is daring to organise a trip for later this year.
Standing outside the former home of the Iraqi Tourist Board, reduced to a burned-out shell of a building by post-war looting, Basim Mohammad Hamza complains he and all of his fellow tour guides have been deprived of a livelihood for months.
"We are 128 persons," he said. "That means 128 families with kids."
The guides took a percentage from entrance fees to historic sites paid by the tour groups they led. Hamza said the last group he guided came in February from Germany and Turkey.
"There are no groups now," he said. "How can we earn a living?"
The guides have not even received emergency payments for public sector employees who cannot work because of post-war disorder. They are not entitled to the money because they were not Ministry of Culture staff, officials say.
SPYING FOR SADDAM?
Guides say they are being punished because some ministry officials believe they spied on foreign visitors for Saddam's intelligence services -- a charge they deny.
But Raad Alawi, a director general in the Culture Ministry who dreams of a bright future for tourism from his small temporary office, insists they are not being paid simply because they were not regular employees.
"They are not registered," he said. "We have no names for them."
Alawi is a former manager of a big Baghdad hotel who believes tourism could one day generate even more money for Iraq than its oil industry.
He remembers when major tour operators and hotel chains such as Meridian and Sheraton were doing business here in the 1970s.
"We have five-star hotels," said Alawi, "Most of those hotels were full of foreign visitors."
But then came war with Iran in the 1980s, war over Kuwait in the early 1990s and a decade of international sanctions.
Hotels still display their five stars but their old televisions, threadbare rooms and dreary colour schemes are not what Westerners would expect of a high-class hotel these days.
The only tourists who came in substantial numbers in recent years were Shi'ite pilgrims from neighbouring Iran at the rate of up to 3,000 a week. But even they are not visiting as much as before because of post-war insecurity, Alawi said.
Undeterred, Briton Geoff Hann plans to take visitors to Iraq for a two-week tour starting on September 7 -- providing Baghdad's airport, now a U.S. military base, is open again for civilian traffic. He already has six tourists signed up.
NEW ERA, NEW PROBLEMS
Hann, who runs a company called Hinterland Travel, has been organising tours to Iraq since the 1970s. During Saddam's rule, his groups had government minders controlling their movements.
"Under the Saddam regime, things were fairy regulated and orderly. We didn't have the chaotic problems that exist today but we did have the security minders problem," he said.
"People weren't free to walk in the bazaars and the souks (markets) unless they had a minder with them," he said by phone from England, having recently returned from a reconnaissance trip to Iraq.
Hann is relying on Iraqi guards to protect his tourists and thinks they will be safe because they will clearly not be part of the U.S.-led military occupying force -- the target of the vast majority of violent attacks on foreigners.
"We're not wearing uniforms so we're not so vulnerable," he said.
Apart from the security problems, the other main worry for Hann is that some of Iraq's many archaeological sites are hard to visit because they are now also home to U.S. military bases.
U.S. forces have occupied an area that includes the site of ancient Babylon, where Saddam also built a palace for himself and a complex of VIP lodges.
Visits are only by appointment with the U.S. military, which provides tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. U.S. troops, coils of barbed wire and big concrete barriers block the way of anyone arriving at the site unannounced.
"Right now it's a military compound," said a U.S. soldier at the entrance. "I don't know how long it's gonna stay that way."
CLEANING BABYLON
Cleaning Babylon
By Bassem Mroue
Associated Press Writer
July 28, 2003
BABYLON, Iraq (AP) -- This 4,300-year-old town -- now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums -- knows political and military upheaval well. Dynasties have risen and have fallen here since the earliest days of settled human civilization.
King Hammurabi wrote his famous code of laws here.
Nebuchadnezzar sent his vast army from here to Jerusalem to put down an uprising and bring the Jews back as slaves.
Some say Alexander the Great, who led his army out of Macedonia to conquer most of the known world, died here in 332 B.C.
The American military is just the latest to pass through the Euphrates River city. And now U.S. soldiers and civilian occupation officials struggle with mixed success to put the city -- with its deep resonance in so many important cultures -- back together yet again.
The newest of the conquerors who have swept through the fertile crescent for millennia have held the site of the Hanging Gardens -- one of the seven wonders of the ancient world -- for a mere 3 1/2 months.
The Americans are cleaning up after mobs of looters who ransacked the city's two museums, but fortunately got away mainly with small display copies of ancient artifacts. Museum managers, fearing looting as the U.S.-led coalition threatened war, had bricked up the museum windows.
The looters yanked air conditioners from walls and climbed through holes, carting off display copies of humankind's earliest handiwork. Most of the real artifacts were stored in vaults at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, which also was looted. It is not known what portion of the stored Babylonian museum treasures were taken in looting of the Iraqi capital.
The holes also were too small for looters to escape with the large pieces in the city's two museums, named after Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar.
Nearly two weeks after Saddam Hussein's regime fell on April 9, U.S. Marines entered Babylon to find dozens of vendors had flooded into the streets as looters robbed the museums, souvenir shops, a restaurant and the police station. U.S. troops said they moved swiftly to stop the lawlessness.
"On my first day here, I caught many people," said U.S. Navy Chaplain Cmdr. Emilio Marrero, a project official of the site. A few looters were arrested, he added, and U.S. authorities "pushed everybody outside the gate so that we could preserve the city."
Babylon has since been closed to the public, but the Marines hope to reopen the site within two months, said Marrero, a New York City native. The Marines have created a major base at the city, calling it Camp Babylon.
Marrero said only three relics were displayed in the Nebuchadnezzar museum. They disappeared with the display copies. He said the Americans were trying to recover the pieces and had found some.
"So many things were looted. The whole antiquities department, the library -- full of historical books, and the city's ancient archive -- were stolen then burned. Why did they burn it?" asked Mariam Omran, director of Babylon's two museums, as she stood in one of Nebuchadnezzar Museum's four large rooms as workers painted the walls and fixed a miniature model of Babylon.
The Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer, has spent $60,000 to repair the damage, an amount expected to double when the work is finished.
"The first phase of reconstruction was to ensure that the museum was protected so we installed an alarm system in the museum. We repainted it, repaired it, fixed the roof ... cleaned it up after the looters," Marrero said.
The souvenir shop, a small ticket office and the police station were repaired as well.
More than two decades of war, U.N. sanctions and international ostracism of the Saddam regime nearly killed tourism to Iraq's unparalleled archaeological sites. Since the regime fell the country has remained unsafe for tourists.
Still, more than 10,600 U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, aid workers and journalists have passed through ancient Babylon since April 26, Marrero said.
Those who visit the ruin in the years to come will be reading the name of Saddam, stamped into the bricks used in reconstructing Nebuchadnezzar's Southern Palace, the seat of the king's ancient empire.
When reconstruction began, the palace walls had crumbled to a fourth of their original height. On Saddam's orders the walls were reconstructed between 1982 and 1987.
Some of the mud bricks in the original wall carried the seal of Nebuchadnezzar. The bricks used in the Saddam reconstruction, not to be outdone by the likes of the ancient king, read: "The City of Babylon was reconstructed during the era of the victorious Saddam Hussein, President of the Republic, protector of the great Iraq, the modernizer of its renaissance and builder of its civilization."
The Marines are getting ready to leave the area soon and will hand security over to Polish troops, Marrero said. But until then U.S. troops are enjoying the site.
"I think its pretty cool. I mean I used to watch the Discovery Channel but never thought I'll actually be where they are. It's kind of cool. I enjoy it," Marine Lance Cpl. Rod Brooks of Chicago, said as he looked at the 2,600 year-old Lion of Babylon, symbol of Babylon's strength against invaders.
Iraq update 19: AP decides to mention that Iraq forced out its Jews.
This is an update to the previous dispatch "Iraq 17: "99-year-old Iraqi Jew reaches Israel at last"
* Media forgets to mention the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Jews."
The Associated Press have today updated their story "Six Elderly Iraqi Jews Arrive in Israel" to include the following line about half way through the article: "His sister was one of about 120,000 Jews to flee Iraq after creation of the state of Israel set off a campaign of state-sponsored persecution of Jews in 1949, including public hangings."
AP no longer allows its readers and subscribers (which include most media outlets in the world) to believe that there is no such thing as a Jewish refugee from an Arab country.
The change in their reporting follows criticism by myself and others of AP's previous historical omission. (Several Associated Press staff writers and editors are subscribers to this email list.)
Today's new story, in contrast to the one sent yesterday: --
SIX ELDERLY IRAQI JEWS ARRIVE IN ISRAEL
Six Elderly Iraqi Jews Arrive in Israel
By Ian Deitch
The Associated Press
July 29, 2003
JERUSALEM - Ezra Levy hesitated 51 years ago to come to Israel and missed his chance. This time around, the 82-year-old Iraqi Jew seized the moment and was reunited with his sister after five decades.
Levy is one of six elderly Iraqi Jews brought to Israel in a secretive weekend airlift.
On Monday, he visited Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, speaking Hebrew - a language he says he last used in 1926, when he studied the holy tongue in the first grade.
"I am a Jew," Levy said in halting Hebrew next to the ancient site, a retaining wall of the ancient Temple Mount, where the biblical Temples stood. "I feel very happy and privileged that I am at this place," he said.
The arrival of the six captured the imagination of Israelis and put a human face on the war in Iraq. In the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. Israelis were instructed to carry gas mask kits throughout the recent conflict.
Israeli newspapers carried large color pictures of the six reunited with relatives after decades apart. They included a 99-year-old woman and her 70-year-old daughter. A blind 90-year old Baghdad resident was also on the flight to Israel.
A front-page picture in the Haaretz daily showed Levy, his thin cheeks adorned with gray stubble, being kissed by his sister, Dina, and sister-in law - one on each cheek - after he arrived at Israel's airport.
His sister was one of about 120,000 Jews to flee Iraq after creation of the state of Israel set off a campaign of state-sponsored persecution of Jews in 1949, including public hangings.
Levy recalled that he thought about joining his sister then but thought too long. "By the time I made the decision," he told The Associated Press. "it was too late - we were prohibited from leaving." Asked what it was like under Saddam, Levy gave a derisive snort.
Days after the Saddam regime was toppled, an Israeli emissary was on his way to Baghdad to check into the condition of the Jews there.
Jeff Kaye, who made the trip for the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that deals with Jewish immigration to Israel, said he found 34 Jews, most of them elderly, in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra.
Only six were prepared to make the move to Israel. The others were hesitant to leave the only home they knew or wanted more time to decide. He supplied them with religious items unavailable in Iraq since the 1950s.
Besides the fact that the six were flown to Israel direct from Iraq, other details of the mission are being kept secret.
The Jewish Agency and HIAS, a U.S.-based aid group, organized the charter flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv.
Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000 made their way to Israel between 1949 and 1952, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years.
CONTENTS
1. "Table of casualties in Iraq" (Reuters, July 27, 2003).
2. "Iraq-Most Wanted-Glance" (Associated Press, July 27, 2003)
3. "Iraqi Islamist group tape threatens 'holy war'" (Reuters, July 28, 2003)
4. "Bloody U.S. raid in Baghdad leaves Iraqis furious" (Reuters, July 28, 2003)
5. "Five Iraqis killed as net closes on Saddam" (London Times, July 28, 2003)
6. "Amnesty: Iraqis Complain of Torture by U.S. Forces" (Reuters, July 23, 2003)
7. "Plea for Saddam's sons' bodies" (Financial Times, July 28 2003)
8. "Iraq aid groups being targeted by attackers - U.N." (Reuters, July 24, 2003).
[Note by Tom Gross]
SUMMARIES
I attach articles, reports and allegations concerning Iraq, with summaries first:
1. "Table of casualties in Iraq" (27.07.2003). Reuters lists a breakdown of "casualties both before and after May 1, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared hostilities over," including an estimate of Iraqi civilian dead.
2. "Iraq-Most Wanted-Glance" (23.07.2003). The Associated Press lists "The 55 most wanted Iraqis and their status, according to U.S. Central Command. Of the total, 34 are reported in U.S. custody."
3. "Iraqi Islamist group tape threatens 'holy war'" (Dubai, July 28, Reuters). "A hitherto unknown group of Iraqi Muslim militants warned in a video tape aired on an Arab television channel on Monday that they would fight a "holy war" against U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration... He pledged to avenge the arrest of religious figures and Islamist activists in prisons all over the world including Iraq, the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and India."
4. "Bloody U.S. raid in Baghdad leaves Iraqis furious" (By Cynthia Johnston, Reuters, July 28). "Caked pools of blood and a bullet hole in the window of Baghdad's al-Sa'ah restaurant are the only remaining signs of a U.S. raid that killed five Iraqi civilians as they unwittingly drove into a firestorm. Furious residents of the upscale Mansur district accuse U.S. soldiers of firing indiscriminately at passing cars on Sunday as colleagues raided a villa in a vain search for Saddam Hussein."
5. "Five Iraqis killed as net closes on Saddam" (July 28, 2003, London Times).
"American military commanders in Iraq yesterday predicted the capture of Saddam Hussein "any day now" after a surge in tip-offs from informants hungry for a slice of the $25 million bounty on his head. The boast came after American soldiers narrowly missed catching Saddam's security chief, and possibly the former dictator himself, when they raided three houses near Tikrit, the former dictator's ancestral home, where he was said to be hiding."
6. "Amnesty: Iraqis Complain of Torture by U.S. Forces" (July 23, 2003, Reuters). "Iraqis detained by U.S. troops have complained of torture and degrading treatment, Amnesty International said. There were also reports of troops shooting detainees, the London-based human rights watchdog said in a report based on interviews with former prisoners of the Americans across Iraq. Amnesty staff heard complaints that included prolonged sleep deprivation and detainees being forced to stay in painful positions or wear hoods over their heads for long periods. "Such treatment would amount to 'torture and inhumane treatment' prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention and by international human rights law," Amnesty said. U.S. military officials were not immediately available to comment on the report."
7. "Plea for Saddam's sons' bodies" (By Charles Clover, Financial Times, July 28 2003). "Saddam Hussein's tribe has asked that the bodies of his sons, Uday and Qusay, be given to them for proper burial, Sheikh Mohammed Nida, a leader of the Albu Nasir tribe said yesterday... The bodies are in cold storage in Baghdad airport."
8. "Iraq aid groups being targeted by attackers - U.N." (July 24, 2003, Reuters). "Attacks against humanitarian groups working in Iraq, which have killed two aid workers this week, can no longer be considered isolated incidents, a United Nations spokesman said."
TABLE OF CASUALTIES IN IRAQ
Table of casualties in Iraq
July 27, 2003
BAGHDAD, July 26 (Reuters) -
NOTE: The figures in brackets refer to casualties after May 1, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared hostilities over.
U.S. AND BRITISH TROOPS KILLED:
COMBAT/ATTACKS
United States 162 (48)
Britain 14 (6)
NON-COMBAT
United States 79 (57)
Britain 29 (4)
IRAQIS KILLED:
MILITARY 2,320
CIVILIANS Between 6,073 and 7,782+
- U.S. military estimates relating only to fighting in or near Baghdad. No other figures available.
+ - Figure compiled on Web site www.iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, based on incidents reported by at least two media sources.
NOTE: NON-COMBAT is defined as accidents, U.S. or British fire killing or wounding their own troops, and other incidents unrelated to fighting.
IRAQ-MOST WANTED-GLANCE
Iraq-Most Wanted-Glance
July 23, 2003
By The Associated Press
The 55 most wanted Iraqis and their status, according to U.S. Central Command. Of the total, 34 are reported in U.S. custody:
--No. 1: Saddam Hussein, president.
--No. 2: Qusai Hussein, Saddam's son. Killed July 22.
--No. 3: Odai Hussein, Saddam's son. Killed July 22.
--No. 4: Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, presidential secretary, Saddam's cousin. Taken into custody June 17.
--No. 5: Ali Hassan al-Majid, presidential adviser, Revolutionary Command Council member. Also known as "Chemical Ali." Possibly killed.
--No. 6: Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, RCC vice chairman, longtime Saddam confidant.
--No. 7: Hani Abd al-Latif Tilfah al-Tikriti, director, Special Security Organization.
--No. 8: Aziz Saleh al-Numan, Baath Party Baghdad region command chairman. Taken into custody May 22.
--No. 9: Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, retired RCC member, a leader of 1991 suppression of Shiite rebellion. Taken into custody April 20.
--No. 10: Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, secretary of the Republican Guard, Saddam's son-in-law. Surrendered May 17.
--No. 11: Barzan Abd al-Ghafur Sulayman Majid al-Tikriti, Special Republican Guard commander, Saddam's cousin.
--No. 12: Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti, who headed Iraq's air defenses under Saddam. Taken into custody April 23.
--No. 13 Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al Sattar Muhammad, armed forces chief of staff. Taken into custody May 15.
--No. 14: Sayf al-Din Fulayyih Hasan Taha al-Rawi, Republican Guard chief of staff.
--No. 15: Rafi Abd al-Latif Tilfah al-Tikriti, director of general security.
--No. 16: Tahir Jalil Haboush, chief of Iraqi intelligence service.
--No. 17: Hamid Raja Shalah al-Tikriti, air force commander. Central Command he's in coalition custody. No date was given for his apprehension.
--No. 18: Latif Nusayyif al-Jasim al-Dulaymi, Baath Party military bureau deputy chairman. Taken into custody June 9.
--No. 19: Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, deputy prime minister. Taken into custody May 2.
--No. 20: Taha Yassin Ramadan, vice president, RCC member.
--No. 21: Rukan Razuki Abd al-Ghafar Sulayman al-Majid al-Tikriti, head of tribal affairs office.
--No. 22: Jamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, deputy head of tribal affairs, Saddam's son-in-law. Taken into custody April 20.
--No. 23: Mizban Khadr Hadi, RCC member. Taken into custody July 8.
--No. 24: Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf, vice president, RCC member, only Kurd in Saddam's hierarchy. Taken into custody May 2.
--No. 25: Tariq Aziz, deputy prime minister. Taken into custody April 25.
--No. 26: Walid Hamid Tawfiq, governor of Basra. Surrendered April 29.
--No. 27: Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, defense minister.
--No. 28: Hikmat Mizban Ibrahim al-Azzawi, deputy prime minister, finance minister. Taken into custody April 18.
--No. 29: Mahmoud Diab al-Ahmed, interior minister. Taken into custody July 8.
--No. 30: Ayad Futayyih Khalifa, Quds forces chief of staff. Taken into custody June 4.
--No. 31: Gen. Zuhayr Talib Abd al-Sattar al-Naqib, director of military intelligence. Taken into custody April 23.
--No. 32: Lt. Gen. Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Saadi, presidential scientific adviser. Surrendered April 12.
--No. 33: Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi, presidential adviser, oil minister. Taken into custody April 28.
--No. 34: Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of monitoring directorate, chief liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors. Taken into custody April 27.
--No. 35: Muhammad Mahdi al-Salih, trade minister. Taken into custody April 23.
--No. 36: Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, presidential adviser, Saddam's half brother.
--No. 37: Watban Ibrahim Hasan, presidential adviser, Saddam's half brother. Taken into custody April 13.
--No. 38: Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, presidential adviser, Saddam's half brother. Taken into custody April 16.
--No. 39: Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, reputedly scientist in biological weapons program, first woman elected to Baath Party's national command council. Taken into custody May 9.
--No. 40: Abdel Baqi Abdel Karim Abdallah al-Sadun, Baath Party regional command chairman.
--No. 41: Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq, Baath Party regional command chairman.
--No. 42: Samir Abd al-Aziz al-Najim, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody April 17.
--No. 43: Humam Abdul-Khaliq Abdul-Ghafoor, minister of higher education and scientific research. Taken into custody April 19.
--No. 44: Yahya Abdellah al-Aboudi, Baath Party regional command chairman.
--No. 45: Nayef Shedakh, Baath Party regional chairman, Najaf governorate, reported by Iraqi television to have been killed in battle for Najaf.
--No. 46: Sayf al-Din al-Mashadani, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 24.
--No. 47: Fadil Mahmud Gharib, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 15.
--No. 48: Muhsin Khadr al-Khafaji, Baath Party regional command chairman.
--No. 49: Rashid Taan Kazim, Baath Party regional chairman.
--No. 50: Ugla Abid Saqr, Baath Party regional chairman. Taken into custody May 20.
--No. 51: Ghazi Hammud, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 7.
--No. 52: Adilabdillah Mahdi al-Duri al-Tikriti, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 15.
--No. 53: Brig. Gen. Husayn al-Awadi, Baath Party Regional command chairman, senior officer in Iraqi military's chemical weapons corps. Taken into custody June 9.
--No. 54: Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, Baath Party Regional command chairman, militia commander.
--No. 55: Sad Abd al-Majid al-Faysal, Baath Party Regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 24.
IRAQI ISLAMIST GROUP TAPE THREATENS "HOLY WAR"
Iraqi Islamist group tape threatens "holy war"
DUBAI, July 28 (Reuters) - A hitherto unknown group of Iraqi Muslim militants warned in a video tape aired on an Arab television channel on Monday that they would fight a "holy war" against U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration.
"Bush, Rumsfeld and decision makers in the 'Black House' and in the Pentagon...we will shake the ground under your feet and we will send a fire upon you which only God can prevent," a masked man said on a tape aired on the Dubai-based Al Arabiya.
The man called his group the "Salafist Jihad Group."
"America -- you have declared war on God's soldiers...you will have no security or peace of mind as long as you are an infidel and fighting a war against Islam and Muslims," said the man, standing amid a group of similarly masked men holding weapons.
He pledged to avenge the arrest of religious figures and Islamist activists in prisons all over the world including Iraq, the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and India.
In recent weeks, many groups -- some saying they are Saddam loyalists and one claiming links to the militant al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden -- have claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. occupying forces in Iraq.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Sunday accused the Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera channels of biased reporting from Iraq, adding that Washington was talking to unnamed governments to try to get more "balanced" coverage.
At least 49 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1.
BLOODY U.S. RAID IN BAGHDAD LEAVES IRAQIS FURIOUS
Bloody U.S. raid in Baghdad leaves Iraqis furious
By Cynthia Johnston
BAGHDAD, July 28 (Reuters) - Caked pools of blood and a bullet hole in the window of Baghdad's al-Sa'ah restaurant are the only remaining signs of a U.S. raid that killed five Iraqi civilians as they unwittingly drove into a firestorm.
Furious residents of the upscale Mansur district accuse U.S. soldiers of firing indiscriminately at passing cars on Sunday as colleagues raided a villa in a vain search for Saddam Hussein.
"The cars came down the road. They didn't know the Americans were here. They were normal civilians and wanted to go home," one witness told Reuters on Monday as he stood in the courtyard of the Sa'ah restaurant.
"They (U.S. soldiers) opened fire right away."
A U.S. military spokesman said the raid was conducted by Task Force 20, a special team set up to hunt Saddam and his key aides, but gave no other details.
A soldier at a nearby hospital said the bodies of five people had been brought in from the scene of the raid, including a boy in his early teens.
On Monday morning not a soldier was in sight in Mansur, and four burned or bullet-riddled cars had been taken away.
"All these things are making people hate the Americans," said Muhammad, a Mansur resident.
"In the beginning, all the Iraqi people welcomed the Americans, but now the Americans have built a wall between themselves and the Iraqi people."
NO WARNING
Residents who witnessed the shooting said about 75 U.S. soldiers poured into the area in the early evening, blocking off the main street but failing to prevent innocent motorists straying into the fire zone from quiet side streets.
"They need to have barbed wire up so that people know there is an operation," one witness said. "This is a residential area. They need to take care of the civilians. There are kids here."
Another witness, who gave his name as Abbas, said he had turned away cars in a street near the restaurant. But smaller streets remained open. Witnesses said soldiers opened fire from atop a Humvee armoured vehicle at the first car that neared their position. Moments later they raked a second car with gunfire as well.
"It was indiscriminate firing," one witness said as others nodded in agreement and pointed out a bullet hole in the window of the restaurant.
Flying bullets also hit the gas tank of a parked car, setting it and another car ablaze. In minutes, the shooting was over and the soldiers withdrew.
"They just left," one resident said. "Then the Iraqi firemen came to put out the fires."
FIVE IRAQIS KILLED AS NET CLOSES ON SADDAM
Five Iraqis killed as net closes on Saddam
From Catherine Philp in Baghdad and Elaine Monaghan in Washington
London Times
July 28, 2003
AMERICAN military commanders in Iraq yesterday predicted the capture of Saddam Hussein "any day now" after a surge in tip-offs from informants hungry for a slice of the $25 million bounty on his head. The boast came after American soldiers narrowly missed catching Saddam's security chief, and possibly the former dictator himself, when they raided three houses near Tikrit, the former dictator's ancestral home, where he was said to be hiding.
Last night US soldiers from Task Force 20, a special unit hunting Saddam, raided a villa in central Baghdad, killing five Iraqis and wounding eight others.
The man appointed as Britain's new envoy to Iraq said that Saddam should be caught alive. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who leaves his role as United Nations Ambassador to take up the Baghdad posting in September, said that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sons, in a battle last week was a "genuine success" for the US-led coalition in Iraq.
He told the BBC1 programme Breakfast with Frost: "We have now got to get the father. I would like to see him brought before a court, but that is in the hands of the military team looking for him. I would say it is quite important to do that."
An Iraqi policemen said that all the victims of the attack on the villa in Baghdad had been in cars driving through the area at the time. There was no sign of Saddam at the villa.
Its owner, Rabeeah Amin, a tribal chief, said: "I was told they had been tipped off that Saddam was hiding in my house, that he was my guest, but I know nothing about this."
Earlier, hundreds of troops, backed by Apache helicopters and Bradley fighting vehicles, stormed farmhouses outside Saddam's hometown of Tikrit shortly before dawn after receiving a tip. Iraqis told the military that the security chief they were seeking had been in one of the houses but had left before the raid.
"We missed him by 24 hours," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell, who led the operation, said. Nonetheless, commanders hailed the raid as evidence that troops were closing in on Saddam after the killing of his sons, Uday and Qusay, a week ago.
"They're running out of places to hide, and it's becoming difficult for them to move because we're everywhere," Colonel James C. Hickey, a brigade commander, said. "Any day now we're going to knock on their door, or kick in their door, and they know it."
Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, said that it was only a matter of time before an informant provided the crucial tip-off about Saddam. "It takes time for them to trust us to give us the information," he told NBC television, "but they're giving us more and more. I think what happened last week with the deaths of those two miserable creatures (Saddam's sons) is encouraging more people to come forward."
The Americans would not name the security chief targeted in the raid yesterday, saying only that he was believed to have taken over after the arrest last month of Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam's cousin.
The Bush Administration says that it expects to pay $30 million to the man who revealed the whereabouts of Uday and Qusay. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said: "We look forward to being able to pay the reward, just as we've said we would."
Paul Bremer, head of the coalition's civilian administration in Iraq, has promised informants not only cash but also protection.
Plea for bodies
Ezzedine Muhammad Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's second cousin, has asked the US military to release the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein for burial.
The request was made in a letter to Paul Bremner, the US administrator in Iraq, and aims at an orthodox Muslim burial at the Hussein family cemetary in Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace.
Mr al-Majid, whose wife and children were killed by forces loyal to Saddam said in his letter: "They are, despite what injuries they have put me and my family and the Iraqis through, nothing less than corpses."
The bodies of Uday and Qusay have been held at a makeshift mortuary at Baghdad international airport.
AMNESTY: IRAQIS COMPLAIN OF TORTURE BY U.S. FORCES
Amnesty: Iraqis Complain of Torture by U.S. Forces
July 23, 2003
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis detained by U.S. troops have complained of torture and degrading treatment, Amnesty International said Wednesday. There were also reports of troops shooting detainees, the London-based human rights watchdog said in a report based on interviews with former prisoners of the Americans across Iraq.
Amnesty staff heard complaints that included prolonged sleep deprivation and detainees being forced to stay in painful positions or wear hoods over their heads for long periods. "Such treatment would amount to 'torture and inhumane treatment' prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention and by international human rights law," Amnesty said. U.S. military officials were not immediately available to comment on the report.
Amnesty staff gathered testimony from former detainees around Iraq and from relatives of some still being held.
The organization made several requests to visit detention centers but were denied access by U.S. forces that have struggled to impose law and order since the invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein in April. "Detainees continue to report suffering extreme heat while housed in tents; insufficient water; inadequate washing facilities; open trenches for toilets; no change of clothes, even after two months' detention," Amnesty said.
Amnesty has said thousands are held in prisons run by U.S. troops. They include Abu Ghraib, one the most feared jails under Saddam, and Camp Cropper near Baghdad's airport.
The human rights group said it had received several reports of cases of detainees who have died in custody, "mostly as a result of shooting by members of the coalition forces." Amnesty said 22-year-old Alaa Jassem was killed when soldiers fired on detainees during a riot on June 13 at Abu Ghraib. Demonstrators threw bricks and poles at the soldiers. "According to eyewitnesses, Alaa Jassem was in a tent when he was shot. Seven other detainees were wounded," Amnesty said.
Other allegations reported by Amnesty included the case of Saadi al-Ubaydi on the morning of May 14, when two U.S. armed vehicles crashed through the stone wall surrounding his home. "Several soldiers forced their way in and beat him with their rifle butts. He ran out of the house to get away from them. Soldiers shot him a few meters away and he died immediately," the report said, citing witnesses in Ramadi.
Many Iraqis complain troops use heavy-handed tactics that humiliate householders when conducting weapons searches. "There continue to be many reports of members of the coalition forces engaging in house searches and damaging or destroying property without justification," Amnesty said. "There are also numerous reports of confiscation of property, including large sums of money, upon arrest."
PLEA FOR SADDAM'S SONS' BODIES
Plea for Saddam's sons' bodies
By Charles Clover
July 28 2003
Financial Times
Saddam Hussein's tribe has asked that the bodies of his sons, Uday and Qusay, be given to them for proper burial, Sheikh Mohammed Nida, a leader of the Albu Nasir tribe said yesterday.
Coalition officials were unavailable for comment on the matter, but Mr Nida said they had refused the request "for the time being". The sons were killed by US forces last week in a five-hour shoot-out in the city of Mosul.
The issue of their burial is a delicate one for the coalition: any funeral for the sons could be used to generate support for anti-coalition guerrillas in Iraq, but refusal would be seen as insensitive to Islamic traditions, which mandate a quick burial for the dead. The bodies are in cold storage in Baghdad airport. Charles Clover, Baghdad
UN: IRAQ AID GROUPS BEING TARGETED BY ATTACKERS
Iraq aid groups being targeted by attackers - U.N.
BAGHDAD, July 24 (Reuters) - Attacks against humanitarian groups working in Iraq, which have killed two aid workers this week, can no longer be considered isolated incidents, a United Nations spokesman said on Thursday.
"Certainly we can no longer call these isolated incidents, not at all," U.N. spokesman Salim Lone told a news conference. "It is not possible to believe that when there have been so many attacks.
"It clearly is very, very sad that those...whose only wish is to be of service to the Iraqi people are targeted and killed. It is particularly sad because our people are unarmed."
On Tuesday, a Sri Lankan technician for the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed and a driver was wounded when gunmen shot at their car south of Baghdad.
A day earlier, an Iraqi driver for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) died when his car veered into a bus after being raked by gunfire by a passing car. A foreign worker was wounded in that attack, also south of the capital.
A World Food Programme office in the northern city of Mosul was attacked with a grenade early this month, and an IOM office there has also been attacked.
U.S.-led troops have been struggling to restore order in Iraq since they overthrew Saddam Hussein in April, and 44 soldiers have been killed in attacks since U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1.
Lone said the United Nations was reviewing security for groups that work under its umbrella in Iraq after the attacks, but that "more measures are needed". He said staff had been warned to watch out for possible attackers shooting from the passenger side of cars.
"They are easy, soft targets, and it is so easy to pick on us. We will clearly have to review and are reviewing once again the security precautions we take," he said.
* "99-year-old Iraqi Jew reaches Israel at last"
* Media forgets to mention the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Jews
CONTENTS
1. "Elderly Iraqi Jews taken to Israel in a secret airlift," (Miami Herald, July 28, 2003)
2. "52-Year separation ends as Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel" (New York Times, July 28, 2003)
3. "Israel-Iraqi immigrants" (Associated Press, July 28, 2003)
4. "Six of Iraq's 34 remaining Jews immigrate to Israel" (Reuters, July 25, 2003)
5. Reuters article from June 30, 2003, that makes no mention of the fact that the Jews were kicked out of Iraq or why there were only 34 left.
ONLY 28 JEWS LEFT IN IRAQ
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach five articles dealing with the immigration of six of the remaining 34 Iraqi Jews to Israel, with summaries first.
Among the six that arrived was a 99-year-old woman and her 70-year-old daughter, another 70 year-old woman who was the last Jew in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and a blind 90-year old Baghdad resident.
This was the first flight from Iraq to Israel since 1951, and the first ever between the former Saddam Hussein International Airport and Ben Gurion International Airport.
While the articles I attach below from the Miami Herald and the New York Times both acknowledge that 130,000 Jews "fled" Iraq in 1950-51, many other papers – taking their cues from the Reuters and Associated Press news agencies – do not. In the story attached below, for example, Reuters merely states "More than 129,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel after its establishment in 1948." Associated Press writes "Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000 made their way to Israel between 1949 and 1952, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years."
The same newspapers that repeatedly carry articles about Palestinian refugees being "forced or driven out" seem to have trouble writing about Jewish refugees. They do niot mention that Jews were systematically expelled by the Iraqi government. Iraqi legislation in 1948-51 first outlawed Zionist "behavior," then deprived Jews of their Iraqi nationality, access to education, and finally, of all their property. President Truman helped organize a massive airlift in 1951 to bring the desperate Iraqi Jewish community to Israel. (Information in this last paragraph from HonestReporting.)
Unlike Reuters, the Wall Street Journal front page article about Iraqi Jews, (on June 30, 2003) read "In 1948,anti-Jewish riots swept the Arab world. In Iraq, regulations modeled on Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws restricted the role of Jews in commerce. By 1952, most Iraqi Jews were in Israel, while many of their homes became hostels for Palestinian refugees fleeing the other way." (Information courtesy of an anonymous subscriber to this list.)
Furthermore, the newspapers that so readily and wrongly describe Israel as an "apartheid" and "racist" state, seem to be lost for words when there is real ethnic cleansing and government sponsored apartheid against Jews in Arab countries. (Israel has a large Arab population which participates fully in most aspects of Israeli life; to the extent that there is discrimination against minorities, it is no greater than that suffered by minorities throughout Europe and north America, and pales in comparison with countries such as Saudi Arabia.)
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
1. "Elderly Iraqi Jews taken to Israel in a secret airlift" (Miami Herald, July 28, 2003). "Word of the evacuation leaked to the Israeli press, and then around the world over the weekend, with photos gracing Israeli newspapers Sunday. Officials had not planned to publicize it but acknowledged that it was sponsored by the Jewish Agency, which hopes to arrange future flights for the last several dozen elderly remnants of Iraq's once-flourishing Jewish community."
2. "52-Year separation ends as Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel" (New York Times, July 28, 2003). "After more than a half century of separation enforced by Middle Eastern political strife, two Jewish sisters embraced today in a hotel lobby, tears forming in the corners of their eyes. Salima Moshe Nissim, 79, a lifelong resident of Basra, Iraq, was one of six Iraqi Jews who agreed to leave their homeland on a charter flight on Friday that took them directly from Baghdad to Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv. Her sister Marcel Madar, 83, who left Basra in 1951, during a period when the vast majority of Iraq's 130,000 Jews fled the country, was among several relatives waiting just down the road from the airport."
3. "Israel-Iraqi immigrants" (The Associated Press, July 28, 2003). "Six of the estimated 34 Jews remaining in Iraq have arrived in Israel, including a 99-year-old woman, officials said... Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000 made their way to Israel between 1949 and 1952, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years."
4. "Six of Iraq's 34 remaining Jews immigrate to Israel" (Reuters, July 25, 2003). Six of Iraq's 34 known remaining Jews immigrated to Israel on Friday, the first members of the tiny community in Baghdad to do so since the U.S.-led invasion, an Israeli immigration official said. "We have a lot of respect for these people who carried the Jewish burden and maintained their Judaism all these years," Giora Rom, director-general of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said about the newcomers, all of them elderly. "I am happy to come here today," Ezra Levy, 82, said in Hebrew in an interview with Channel Two from inside the airport arrival hall. "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930."
5. Reuters article from June 30, 2003, that makes no mention of the fact that the Jews were kicked out of Iraq or why there were only 34 left. It states: "migration and the simple march of time may end Jewish history in Iraq... Iraq's Jews trace their roots to the capture of Jerusalem nearly 2,600 years ago by King Nebuchadnezzar... Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Iraq still had a vibrant Jewish community – some 280,000 people by Safer's recollection."
ELDERLY IRAQI JEWS TAKEN TO ISRAEL IN A SECRET AIRLIFT
Elderly Iraqi Jews taken to Israel in a secret airlift
By Carol Rosenberg
Miami Herald
July 28, 2003
Ezra Levy, 82, who until last week was a lifelong resident of Baghdad, didn't hesitate a second Sunday when he was asked what he liked best so far about his new life in the land of Israel.
"All the beautiful women I've seen," he replied with a partially toothless grin. "The beautiful women of Israel are different than those of Baghdad."
Levy arrived Friday, along with five other elderly Jews aboard a secret airlift from Iraq, a country where Jewish women are scarce these days.
He expects his son, Imad, 37, to follow soon from his service as the bachelor rabbi of Baghdad, tending to an aged community without a wife.
"I was very glad to come to Israel. I decided to leave everything behind, not to look back and look forward," Levy said in a burst of Arabic, then offered this in a more hesitant Hebrew, the language of his new country: "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930. But I'm beginning to understand."
MEDIA ATTENTION
Word of the evacuation leaked to the Israeli press, and then around the world over the weekend, with photos gracing Israeli newspapers Sunday. Officials had not planned to publicize it but acknowledged that it was sponsored by the Jewish Agency, which hopes to arrange future flights for the last several dozen elderly remnants of Iraq's once-flourishing Jewish community.
Jewish Agency envoy Shlomo Grafi, who traveled to Iraq on a U.S. passport, acknowledged that American troops cooperated with the effort, and dispatched armor to escort a minibus around Baghdad to collect those who chose to come. Friday's flight brought the first six, including a 99-year-old woman who was so feeble that Grafi had to carry her aboard a special Jordanian charter plane for the under-three-hour flight.
Not only was it the first direct Baghdad-Tel Aviv air link since 1951, it was also the first flight of the six Jews' lives, departing the former Saddam Hussein International Airport and arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport just ahead of the Jewish Sabbath.
Iraq broke ties with Israel in the early 1950s, but not before tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews teemed into the newborn Jewish state from the land where their ancestors were exiled 2,500 years ago by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Almost all the rest fled in the 1960s and '70s, and when Saddam Hussein rose to power the last several hundred got special protection from his secular, Baath Party regime.
By the time U.S. forces invaded Iraq this year, they numbered about 35. They recently have been mostly homebound and fearful to even go to synagogue because of chaos in the Iraqi capital since the collapse of Hussein's government.
Just last week, amid reports that U.S. troops had killed Hussein's sons, Iraqis "were shooting all over the place," presumably in celebration, Levy said. "It was worrying."
Levy, for his part, said it was a tough decision to leave. But he said he did it to see his baby sister, Dalia, 60, who left at age 8 and has raised an Israeli family, and to see other relatives, including a nephew, Eli Levy, a Miami psychologist who expects to visit soon.
HARD CHOICE
Grafi said some of the Jews took some convincing to leave, and for all it was an emotional, uncertain choice. Levy, for example, only agreed to go after he went to a Baghdad cemetery, lay down on his wife's grave and wept in a final farewell. She died in 1991.
Levy is by far the fittest and most telegenic of the bunch. One elderly woman went straight to the hospital, after Grafi found her emaciated and in a near coma at her Baghdad home, without water or electricity.
Israeli officials said they will give them geriatric housing and other support to let them live their last days in dignity.
But Levy seemed already accommodating to his new life.
Saturday brought visits from cousins, nieces and nephews, native Israelis born after his brothers and sisters fled Baghdad in 1951. Sunday brought a battery of medical checks, including X-rays to inspect a pin that Iraqi surgeons put in a broken hip; a new immigrant's card; and 1,700 shekels in cash, or about $425, his first government pension.
Today, unless he is too tired, he plans to travel to Jerusalem, and visit Israel's parliament.
52-YEAR SEPARATION ENDS AS IRAQI JEWS ARRIVE IN ISRAEL
52-Year separation ends as Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel
By Greg Myre
New York Times
July 28, 2003
After more than a half century of separation enforced by Middle Eastern political strife, two Jewish sisters embraced today in a hotel lobby, tears forming in the corners of their eyes.
Salima Moshe Nissim, 79, a lifelong resident of Basra, Iraq, was one of six Iraqi Jews who agreed to leave their homeland on a charter flight on Friday that took them directly from Baghdad to Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.
Her sister Marcel Madar, 83, who left Basra in 1951, during a period when the vast majority of Iraq's 130,000 Jews fled the country, was among several relatives waiting today at the Avia Hotel, just down the road from the airport. She was the only one Ms. Nissim had met before.
"I was all alone in Basra, and I was never happy because I could not see my family," Ms. Nissim said. Her last surviving relative in Iraq, her mother, died in 1967, and for years she knew of no other Jews living in the southern Iraqi city.
During Saddam Hussein's long rule, Iraq and Israel traded frequent recriminations and occasional airstrikes. But with the Americans in charge of Iraq for now, Israel is pushing to develop contacts and relations that have not existed since Israel's founding in 1948.
Two Jewish organizations, the Jewish Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, organized the flight with the cooperation of the American military. The Jewish Agency is also working with the Americans to obtain Jewish archives that were seized by the Iraqi government.
Israel has raised the possibility of a peace deal with a future Iraqi government, and last week Israel's Finance Ministry ended a ban on commercial trade with Iraq.
But those projects are in the future, if they happen at all. For the sisters, today was all that mattered.
Ms. Nissim recalled that her two sisters and brother left Iraq in 1951, while she remained with her parents. Ms. Nissim married, but her husband died two years later.
After her parents died, she managed to support herself by giving English lessons, feeling tolerated but not particularly welcome.
After the fall of Mr. Hussein, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society sent representatives to Iraq and located 34 Jews, almost all of them old, in poor health and living in a single Baghdad neighborhood, near a synagogue that rarely opened.
Most decided to stay, at least for now. But six, all but one 70 or older, chose to leave.
The Jewish Agency organized the flight, while the American forces provided a military escort to the Baghdad airport, according to Michael Rosenberg, a Jewish Agency official.
The oldest member of the group, 99-year-old Naima Eliyahu Hallali, came with her 70-year-old daughter. Ms. Hallali was treated for exhaustion immediately upon her arrival.
All have relatives in Israel, but in most instances contact was severed decades ago.
During the 1950's, Ms. Nissim was able to send letters to family members in Israel via another relative in Iran. But that channel was closed around 1960.
As she sat down to a meal at the hotel, she was handed a cellphone, which was clearly alien to her. On the line was a nephew in Belgium. She inquired about every relative who sprang to mind, and in each case the response was the same.
"Everybody I ask about is dead," Ms. Nissim said.
Sitting quietly nearby was Sassoon Abdul, 90, a retired railroad worker and a lifelong bachelor, who had no relatives waiting for him.
"I think I have a nephew here, but I'm not sure," Mr. Abdul said. He speaks fluent English, learned long ago when Britain was running Iraq.
His life in Baghdad was difficult, and the war this year made it unbearable. "When the war came, there was no electricity and I couldn't rest," he said. "They asked me if I wanted to come, and I agreed."
By the time Mr. Hussein came to power three decades ago, the Jewish community in Iraq, as in most Arab countries, had dwindled to a small number, and Jews were mostly ignored.
The Iraqi government seized Jewish archives and stored them in the basement of an intelligence building, according to the Jewish Agency. The United States bombed the building this spring, smashing water pipes that flooded the basement and damaged the archives, which are currently in American possession.
Israel's limited dealings with the Arab world have suffered during the last three years of fighting with the Palestinians. But the last few months have produced renewed contacts.
Silvan Shalom, Israel's foreign minister, met today with his Moroccan counterpart in London, and recently held talks with the foreign minister of Qatar and the crown prince of Bahrain.
According to the Israeli news media, Friday's charter was believed to have been the first direct flight between the countries since an airlift in 1950-51 that brought thousands of Iraqi Jews to Israel.
Upon his arrival, Ezra Levy, 75, brushed off the Hebrew he had rarely used in decades and recited a poem he had learned as a boy.
"Do you bring me friendly greetings from my brothers there in Zion, brothers far yet near," he said on Israeli television. "O the happy! O the blessed! Do they guess what heavy sorrows I must suffer here?"
IRAQ ONCE HAD A COMMUNITY OF 130,000 JEWS
Israel-Iraqi immigrants
The Associated Press
July 28, 2003
Six of the estimated 34 Jews remaining in Iraq have arrived in Israel, including a 99-year-old woman, officials said.
The six were elderly and the effort to take them out of Iraq was considered a humanitarian mission, said Giora Rom, director general of the Jewish Agency, the organization responsible for bringing Jews to Israel.
Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000 made their way to Israel between 1949 and 1952, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years.
Only 34 Jews were found in Iraq by a Jewish Agency envoy who visited the country after the U.S.-led defeat of Saddam Hussein's government, Rom said.
The other 28 Iraqi Jews did not want to come to Israel, said Rom speaking on Israel's Channel 2 TV. The agency supplied those who stayed with religious articles.
Among the six that arrived over the weekend was a 99-year-old woman and her 70-year-old daughter, another 70 year-old woman who was the last Jew in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and a blind 90-year old Baghdad resident.
The names of the six were not released, and the Jewish Agency kept the mission a secret until they landed in Israel.
Rom said that one of the women spoke to her son in Israel for the first time in 35 years during a stopover in Amman, Jordan. Two of the women were taken by ambulance for medical checkups immediately after landing in Tel Aviv.
Channel 2 reported that the six had been flown from Iraq to Jordan with British aid and from there to Israel on a specially chartered plane.
SIX OF IRAQ'S 34 REMAINING JEWS IMMIGRATE TO ISRAEL
Six of Iraq's 34 remaining Jews immigrate to Israel
Reuters
July 25, 2003
Six of Iraq's 34 known remaining Jews immigrated to Israel on Friday, the first members of the tiny community in Baghdad to do so since the U.S.-led invasion, an Israeli immigration official said. "We have a lot of respect for these people who carried the Jewish burden and maintained their Judaism all these years," Giora Rom, director-general of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said about the newcomers, all of them elderly.
"I am happy to come here today," Ezra Levy, 82, said in Hebrew in an interview with Channel Two from inside the airport arrival hall. "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930."
The group, which arrived on a flight from Amman, included a 99-year-old woman. Some were met at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport by family members who immigrated from Iraq to Israel decades ago.
"We want them to be able to end their days with dignity," Rom said.
He gave no other details of their exodus from Iraq, where the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that arranges immigration to the Jewish state, carried out a survey of the Jewish community last month.
It found there were no children among the Jews of Baghdad, half of whom are over the age of 70, and there had not been a Jewish wedding in the city since 1978.
The Jewish Agency said that while Jews in Iraq had faced some persecution and confiscation of property over the years, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had made sure they were not harmed.
But since Saddam's fall, fears have grown among Baghdad's Jews that they could become targets for radicals gaining strength in Iraq.
One Muslim cleric issued a decree last month forbidding followers from selling land to Jews and promised death to any Jew who bought real estate.
Iraq's Jewish community traces its roots to the deportation of thousands of Jews from Jerusalem some 2,500 years ago, after the city was captured by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
More than 129,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel after its establishment in 1948.
WHY ONLY 34 JEWS LEFT IN IRAQ?
(Reuters article from June 30, 2003, that makes no mention of the fact that the Jews were kicked out of Iraq or why there are only 34 left.)
By Daniel Trotta
Reuters
June 30, 2003
Under Saddam Hussein, they were a privileged group, protected and left to worship as they wished.
Since U.S. troops toppled Saddam in April and Iraq cascaded into lawlessness, they have taken refuge behind high walls and closed their house of prayer. One Muslim cleric has made death threats against them and they say they fear for their future.
They are the 34 Jews of Iraq.
"I speak the truth: Saddam Hussein was good to us," said Tawfik Safer, 80, outside the now locked doors of Baghdad's last synagogue.
"I think it was because we had nothing to do with politics," he said on Monday in the courtyard of the synagogue, a plain building but for Hebrew script at the entrance and anonymously surrounded by high walls.
Safer has seen a thriving community that traced its roots back to the Babylon of biblical times, whittled to below three dozen, most of them old and frail like himself. There is little prospect of new births.
Saddam fired Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War and gave money to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
But the Jews of Baghdad, left behind by tens of thousands who departed for Israel over the past half-century, were afforded the direct telephone number of an Iraqi state security officer they could call if anyone bothered them.
"We did our fasting. We celebrated Passover. We read our religious books. Then the war came and the synagogue was closed because of the circumstances," Safer said.
There has been no trouble since Baghdad fell on April 9, said Mohammed Jasim, 30, caretaker of the building, which was put up in 1942 in what is now a largely Christian neighbourhood.
But around Iraq suspicion comes easily, of minorities all the more so. One notable Shi'ite cleric last week issued a decree, or fatwa, forbidding followers from selling land to Jews and promised death to any Jew who bought real estate.
DWINDLING NUMBERS
Whatever the ill intentions of others may bring, migration and the simple march of time may end Jewish history in Iraq.
The Jewish Agency for Israel, which arranges immigration, has sent an envoy to Baghdad to make first contact.
The envoy, who spent three days in Baghdad two weeks ago visiting some of the 34 people the Agency says have presented themselves as Jews, found there were no children among them – the last Jewish wedding in the city was in 1978.
Safer and two Iraqi Jews of the younger generation, Khalida and Nidal Saleh, sisters in their late 30s, said they had not heard from the agency but in any case they would not leave.
"I want to live here. We were born in Iraq," Khalida said.
Iraq's Jews trace their roots to the capture of Jerusalem nearly 2,600 years ago by King Nebuchadnezzar. He sent Jews to his capital Babylon, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, making it the cultural centre of the Jewish world for almost 1,000 years.
Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Iraq still had a vibrant Jewish community – some 280,000 people by Safer's recollection. Nearly half that number settled in the newly created Israel. Others went to Europe or America.
Safer walks in slow motion with two canes and greeted a reporter in pyjamas and sandals. When asked about the days before 1948, he opened his eyes wide and smiled.
"There were 75 synagogues in Baghdad alone!" he said.
Now he is concerned about the state of postwar Iraq.
CONTENTS
1. "Kingdom to Host World Conference on Human Rights" (Arab News)
2. "Troubled Kingdom: Saudis to host human-rights conference. U.N. invited to join event promoting Islam as religion of peace" (WorldNetDaily.com )
3. "Saudi leaders agonize: Where did Wahabism go wrong?" (World Tribune, July 2, 2003)
4. "FBI Warns of Al Qaeda Using Saudi Passports" (LA Times, July 3, 2003)
5. "Saudi Charity Denies U.S. Charges of Terror Links" (Reuters, July 1, 2003)
6. "124 Held in Saudi Anti-Terror Campaign" (LA Times, July 2, 2003)
7. "Wahhabi Strain of Islam Faulted. Saudis' Funding Helps Foster Terror Groups, Experts Say" (Washington Post, June 27, 2003)
Today's dispatch on Saudi Arabia is split into two parts for space reasons. The introductory note is attached to the other dispatch, titled "Saudi Arabia fingerprints all over 9/11."
In this dispatch I attach seven articles, with summaries first:
SUMMARIES
1. "Kingdom to Host World Conference on Human Rights" (Arab News). "Saudi Arabia will host an international conference on human rights on Oct. 14, the first conference of its kind to be organized with the help of the Saudi government... The conference, Saudi government sources said, seeks to promote Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance and love. Islam is the first to acknowledge the rights of human being - a fact, which can be substantiated by historical evidence, they said."
2. "Troubled Kingdom: Saudis to host human-rights conference. U.N. invited to join event promoting Islam as religion of peace" (WorldNetDaily.com ). "Despite its regard by Western nations as one of the world's most repressive regimes, Saudi Arabia is preparing to host its first international conference on human rights this fall, promoting Islam as a "religion of peace." ... Some United Nations organizations, including UNESCO and UNICEF, have been invited to the Oct. 14 event, the Saudi paper said. Others include the Muslim World League, International Red Cross Society, Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Italy-based International Institute for Human Rights."
"In its most recent human-rights report, issued in March, the U.S. State Department said Saudi Arabia's Islamic government in 2002 "prohibited or restricted freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion and movement."
"In its May report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom cited among other things in Saudi Arabia: The harassment, detention, arrest, torture and subsequent deportation by government authorities of Christian foreign workers for worshipping in private; The detention, imprisonment and, in some cases, torture of Shi'a clerics and religious scholars for their religious views, which differ from those of the government."
3. "Saudi leaders agonize: Where did Wahabism go wrong?" (World Tribune, July 2, 2003). "Saudi leaders are planning to revise the ruling Wahabi ideology said to have spawned Al Qaida and related insurgency movements. On Tuesday, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz cited what he termed extremist ideas among young Saudis for the emergence of the Al Qaida network in the kingdom. Prince Nayef said these ideas have deviated from mainstream Islam and led to the attacks in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Newsline reported."
4. "FBI Warns of Al Qaeda Using Saudi Passports" (LA Times, July 3, 2003)
5. "Saudi Charity Denies U.S. Charges of Terror Links" (Reuters, July 1, 2003). "A top Saudi charity, accused by Washington of international terror links, has denied any militant connections but said it has shut down some overseas offices to focus on tackling domestic poverty. In March last year the State Department listed Al-Haramain's offices in Bosnia and Somalia as "terrorist organizations." ... It has provided assistance to Muslims in East Africa, the Balkans, Chechnya and several Asian countries. It has also built 1,300 mosques, sponsored 3,000 preachers, and produced 20 million religious pamphlets."
6. "124 Held in Saudi Anti-Terror Campaign" (LA Times, July 2, 2003)
7. "Wahhabi Strain of Islam Faulted. Saudis' Funding Helps Foster Terror Groups, Experts Say" (Washington Post, June 27, 2003). "In a rare congressional hearing on Saudi funding of extremism, two U.S. senators and a panel of terrorism experts said yesterday that top Saudi officials and institutions spend huge sums from the kingdom's oil wealth to promote an intolerant school of Islam embraced by al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."
FULL ARTICLES
KINGDOM TO HOST WORLD CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Kingdom to Host World Conference on Human Rights
by M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan
Arab News Staff
www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=28245&d=2&m=7&y=2003
RIYADH, 2 July 2003 - Saudi Arabia will host an international conference on human rights on Oct. 14, the first conference of its kind to be organized with the help of the Saudi government.
The announcement comes against the background of steps in the Kingdom to set up two human rights commissions.
Saudi Red Crescent Society (SRCS) official Abdullah Al-Hazza, who is also the conference's secretary-general, said the event was being organized in cooperation with the Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs.
Al-Hazza said a number of international organizations would participate in the conference, whose theme is "human rights at the time of peace and war."
The conference will also shed light on the Islamic approach toward human rights.
The SRCS official said invitations had been sent to many local and international organizations. A number of universities, the Shoura Council, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the King Faisal Foundation, the International Red Cross Society, the Muslim World League (MWL), the Italy-based International Institute for Human Rights and some UN organizations including UNESCO and UNICEF have been invited to attend.
The conference, the SRCS sources said, seeks to promote Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance and love. Islam is the first to acknowledge the rights of human being - a fact, which can be substantiated by historical evidence, they said.
TROUBLED KINGDOM
Troubled Kingdom
Saudis to host human-rights conference
U.N. invited to join event promoting Islam as religion of peace
WorldNetDaily.com
July 3, 2003
Despite its regard by Western nations as one of the world's most repressive regimes, Saudi Arabia is preparing to host its first international conference on human rights this fall, promoting Islam as a "religion of peace."
With a theme of "human rights at the time of peace and war," the conference will "shed light on the Islamic approach toward human rights," according to the Arab News, a government-approved daily.
Some United Nations organizations, including UNESCO and UNICEF, have been invited to the Oct. 14 event, the Saudi paper said. Others include the Muslim World League, International Red Cross Society, Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Italy-based International Institute for Human Rights.
Abdullah Al-Hazza, a Saudi Red Crescent Society official who also is the conference's secretary-general, said the event was being organized in cooperation with the Saudi Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs.
Red Crescent officials told Arab News the conference seeks to promote Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance and love.
Islam is the first to acknowledge the rights of the human being - a fact, which can be substantiated by historical evidence, they said.
Nevertheless, the Western understanding of human rights is decidedly at odds.
In its most recent human-rights report, issued in March, the U.S. State Department said Saudi Arabia's Islamic government in 2002 "prohibited or restricted freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion and movement."
The State Department's annual report on religious freedom says bluntly, "freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia."
In its May report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said "Saudi Arabia is a uniquely repressive case where the government forcefully and almost completely limits the public practice or expression of religion to one interpretation: a narrow and puritanical version of Islam based on the Wahhabi doctrine."
Consequently, the commission - an independent panel established by Congress - said, "those Saudis and foreign contract workers who do not adhere to the Saudi government's interpretation of Islam are subject to severe religious freedom violations."
Among the most serious abuses and forms of discrimination, according to the USCIRF, are:
• Virtually complete prohibitions on establishing non-Wahhabi places of worship, the public expression of non-Wahhabi religion, the wearing of non-prescribed religious dress and symbols, and the presence of identifiable clerics of any religion other than the government's interpretation of Islam;
• The harassment, detention, arrest, torture and subsequent deportation by government authorities of Christian foreign workers for worshipping in private - with many forced to go to great lengths to conceal private religious practice to avoid these abuses;
• The detention, imprisonment and, in some cases, torture of Shi'a clerics and religious scholars for their religious views, which differ from those of the government;
• The offensive and discriminatory language found in Saudi government-sponsored school textbooks, sermons in mosques and articles and commentary in the media about Jews, Christians and non-Wahhabi streams of Islam; and
• The interpretation and enforcement of religious law in Saudi Arabia, which affects every aspect of women's lives and results in serious violations of their human rights.
As WorldNetDaily reported, an American woman kidnapped by her Saudi father as a child sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah last month. She pleaded with U.S. officials to help her and her Saudi-born children, age 3 and 5, travel to America but was forced to leave the kingdom without them.
Saudi law dictates that no woman, American or not, can leave the country without permission of her husband or father.
The woman eventually fled the kingdom for the U.S., but left her children behind.
SAUDI LEADERS AGONIZE: WHERE DID WAHABISM GO WRONG?
Saudi leaders agonize: Where did Wahabism go wrong?
Special to WorldTribune.com
July 2, 2003
ABU DHABI - Saudi leaders are planning to revise the ruling Wahabi ideology said to have spawned Al Qaida and related insurgency movements.
On Tuesday, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz cited what he termed extremist ideas among young Saudis for the emergence of the Al Qaida network in the kingdom. Prince Nayef said these ideas have deviated from mainstream Islam and led to the attacks in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Newsline reported.
"Why are these things happenings?" Prince Nayef told the Shura Council on Tuesday. "What are the motives behind them? We need to ask: Did the source of this ideology come from this land or was it imported from outside?
Was it the result of fanatical ideas from people who have been brainwashed? Or is it a combination of factors, inside and out? But above all, how powerful is this ideology and how widespread is it?"
"They blame us for being Wahabis," Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz told military commanders on Tuesday. "Everybody knows who was Mohammed Bin Abdul Wahab. He was a worldly man who studied Islamic culture in India, Pakistan and Egypt."
Nayef said the kingdom must focus on the beliefs and behavior of young Saudis. He said a government priority is to return these youngsters to what he termed the straight path of the Muslim nation.
"We have witnessed the criminal acts of some of our youth, who are citizens of this country," Nayef said. "They have killed people, destroyed property and terrorized families. If a person does something wrong and is convinced it is right, then we have to look at the root causes."
Saudi leaders said Al Qaida and related insurgency groups have distorted Wahabi beliefs and focused only on jihad. They said this has hurt both the domestic and foreign interests of the kingdom.
Western diplomatic sources said the Saudi royal family have discussed the prospect of removing elements of Wahabi doctrine taught in mosques and schools around the kingdom. They said Saudi security and intelligence agencies have concluded that Wahabi teachings were exploited to launch insurgency operations against the kingdom.
So far, up to 1,000 Saudi clerics regarded as being linked to Al Qaida have been either dismissed or restricted in their activities, the sources said. They said Riyad has also drafted regulations that would restrict the references to jihad, or holy war, in radio and television broadcasts.
Saudi officials, who have not denied the report, said at least 124 people were arrested in the kingdom since the May 12 suicide strikes by Al Qaida in Riyad. The suicide bombings against Western compounds killed 35 people, eight of them Americans.
Many of those arrested, the officials said, were minors who had been recruited by Al Qaida. They said in many cases the parents were either uninformed or pressured into allowing their children to help carry weapons or relay messages within the Al Qaida network.
Nayef said the recent crackdown of Al Qaida suspects included many foreign nationals. He said many of the suspects were under age 25 and appeared to have been brainwashed.
Saudi Arabia has also bolstered its security and intelligence apparatus. King Fahd appointed Prince Faisal Ibn Abdullah Bin Mohammed Al Saud as deputy national intelligence chief. The Saudi Royal Court said in a statement that Al Saud will be responsible to Prince Nawaf, appointed chief of domestic intelligence in August 2001.
FBI WARNS OF AL QAEDA USING SAUDI PASSPORTS
FBI Warns of Al Qaeda Using Saudi Passports
From LA Times Wire Reports
July 3, 2003
The Al Qaeda terrorist network, whose operatives have used fraudulently obtained passports for international travel, has acquired stolen blank Saudi passports, the FBI said. The FBI said the unissued Saudi passports are authentic and have key security features that allow them to pass routine examination.
"Numerous Al Qaeda terrorists have also carried Saudi passports issued in the holy capital, another term for the city of Mecca," the FBI said. It said past bulletins have noted Al Qaeda's use of altered or fraudulent Colombian identification.
SAUDI CHARITY DENIES US CHARGES OF TERROR LINKS
Saudi Charity Denies U.S. Charges of Terror Links
By Dominic Evans
July 1, 2003
RIYADH (Reuters) - A top Saudi charity, accused by Washington of international terror links, has denied any militant connections but said it has shut down some overseas offices to focus on tackling domestic poverty.
Al-Haramain Foundation director Sheikh Aqil al-Aqil said his organization, which raises about 200 million riyals ($53 million) a year, promoted moderation and had distanced itself from violent groups when it was established 10 years ago.
"We set up this institution to preach Islam peacefully. It's very strange that we are described as terrorist," Aqil said in an interview late on Monday. "Maybe there was a mistake. We have absolutely no inclination to violence."
In March last year the State Department listed Al-Haramain's offices in Bosnia and Somalia as "terrorist organizations." A U.S. Treasury official told a congressional hearing in Washington last week Saudi Arabia had shut down 10 of the charity's offices overseas after the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh and that its board of directors was purged.
Saudi Arabia has come under increasing U.S. pressure to clamp down on any support or funding inside the kingdom for militant groups after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, carried out by mainly Saudi hijackers.
Al-Haramain, which has provided aid to Muslims around the world for a decade, has always mixed its relief work with a program to promote Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi Islam.
It says it has provided assistance and food to Muslims in East Africa, the Balkans, Chechnya and several Asian countries. It has also built 1,300 mosques, sponsored 3,000 preachers, and produced 20 million religious pamphlets.
Aqil said it had traditionally focused 70 percent of its spending abroad, but was switching attention to domestic needs in response to "the wish of the government" and poverty caused by rapid population growth in the oil producing kingdom.
He said it was shutting offices in Bosnia, Somalia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Kosovo, Indonesia, Kenya and Ethiopia, blaming the closure on the behavior of host governments.
"These countries cooperate with America," he said. "They always accused us, inspected us, raided us. It disturbed us."
An adviser to Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah said in Washington last month that Al-Haramain would shut all its offices outside the kingdom and that it would be illegal for any Saudi charity to have an office abroad.
But Aqil said Al-Haramain still had branches in Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania, Nigeria and Bangladesh. "All the offices that are working have a legal position," he said.
Saudi government measures since September 11, 2001, had stopped the institute from public fund-raising campaigns and had also made it tighten up its accounting practices.
But though U.S. pressure had affected some corporate donations, Aqil said public support for Al-Haramain had soared: "We are like heroes in the Islamic world because America is against us."
124 HELD IN SAUDI ANTI-TERROR CAMPAIGN
124 Held in Saudi Anti-Terror Campaign
July 2, 2003
Authorities launched the manhunt after fatal bombings in May and an alleged plot on Mecca.
From LA Times Staff and Wire Reports
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi police have arrested 124 people in the kingdom's recent crackdown on terrorism, and some of the suspects are linked to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, the government said Tuesday.
Saudi authorities launched extensive manhunts after May 12 bombings that killed nearly three dozen people in Riyadh, the capital, and following a June 14 raid on a terrorist cell that was allegedly planning attacks in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.
The kingdom's interior minister, Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, said 124 people have been arrested. The detainees include people linked to Al Qaeda, individuals who have returned from Afghanistan, foreign nationals and at least five women, the official Saudi Press Agency quoted the prince as saying.
The minister also said security authorities have confiscated a wide range of weapons, including hundreds of explosive devices and machine guns.
Chief among those arrested is Ali Abdulrahman Said Alfagsy Ghamdi, the suspected mastermind of the Riyadh bombings. The interior minister denied reports that Ghamdi struck a deal with officials to surrender. "The noose was tightening around him. He had no alternative but to turn himself in," Nayif said.
In Washington, President Bush said Tuesday that Saudi Arabia is making strides against Al Qaeda, singling out the recent killing in the kingdom of a "major Al Qaeda operational planner and fund-raiser" known as Swift Sword.
A U.S. intelligence official said Swift Sword is Yousif Salih Fahad Ayeeri, an Al Qaeda financier. The official described him as a senior Al Qaeda figure in the kingdom, a "facilitator, fund-raiser and propagandist. He didn't conduct attacks but was a promoter of them."
WAHHABI STRAIN OF ISLAM FAULTED
Wahhabi Strain of Islam Faulted
Saudis' Funding Helps Foster Terror Groups, Experts Say
By John Mintz
Washington Post
June 27, 2003
In a rare congressional hearing on Saudi funding of extremism, two U.S. senators and a panel of terrorism experts said yesterday that top Saudi officials and institutions spend huge sums from the kingdom's oil wealth to promote an intolerant school of Islam embraced by al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
"The problem we are looking at today is the state-sponsored doctrine and funding of an extremist ideology that provides the recruiting grounds, support infrastructure and monetary lifeblood to today's international terrorists," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who chaired the hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee's terrorism panel.
Although administration officials have avoided suggesting that Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally, is the world's leading source of terrorist funding, Treasury Department general counsel David Aufhauser testified yesterday that "in many ways, [Saudi Arabia] is the epicenter" for the financing of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and other terrorist movements.
"We are not at war with a faith, nor with any particular sect," Aufhauser said. But he added that Islam's "severe and uncompromising" Wahhabi movement "is a very important factor to be taken into account when discussing terrorist financing."
Aufhauser added that the Saudis' largely unmonitored spending to disseminate the Wahhabi viewpoint worldwide "is a combustible compound when mixed with religious teachings in thousands of madrasahs [Islamic schools] that condemn pluralism and mark nonbelievers as enemies . . . It needs to be dealt with."
Wahhabism was founded in the 18th century by the cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who preached an austere brand of Islam that harkens to the prophet Mohammed. Historians say the modern Saudi state is led by an alliance of his followers, who handle the kingdom's religious affairs, and the royal Saud family.
Saudi Embassy officials did not respond to requests for comment yesterday evening. But in the past they and their defenders have said critics of Wahhabism exhibit an anti-Islamic bias and want to disrupt the U.S.-Saudi alliance. Saudi officials discourage the use of the term Wahhabism to describe their religious view, preferring the term Salafism.
Witnesses at the hearing did not provide many details about the Saudi religious establishment's spending practices around the world -- a problem confronted by Wahhabism's critics for years, in part because of the Saudis' traditional secrecy about their affairs.
Alex Alexiev, an expert on extremist movements and a fellow at the conservative Center for Security Policy, cited figures in Saudi government reports showing that between 1975 and 2002, the government had spent $70 billion on aid projects around the world. He said it was unclear whether this included the large sums in private donations doled out by Saudi-regulated foundations.
Saying the scale of some of these charities is immense, Alexiev quoted reports by one of the largest Saudi charities, al-Haramain, showing that each year it prints 13 million Islamic books, dispatches 3,000 proselytizers, and founds 1,100 mosques, schools and centers.
Aufhauser also mentioned al-Haramain, saying that after the recent synchronized bombings of several residential compounds in Saudi Arabia that killed 34 people, including eight Americans, Saudi officials closed 10 of the charity's offices around the world. Al-Haramain's board of directors was purged, he added, and "a significant number of prominent fundraisers" were arrested.
Saudi officials had dragged their feet for months in cracking down on al-Haramain, in part because of its influence in the highest circles of Saudi society, U.S. officials said privately. But yesterday Aufhauser said that since the May 12 suicide bombings there, Saudi officials have worked closely with the United States to clamp down on Islamic radicals.
Muslim convert Stephen Schwartz, author of "The Two Faces of Islam," a book that warns of the spread of Wahhabism, said the Saudis established and continue to finance hundreds of mosques and centers in this country, as well as some of the nation's leading Muslim activist organizations. They also control the training and appointment of many imams, he said.
"The Wahhabi presence in the United States is a foreboding one that has potentially harmful and far-reaching consequences for our nation's mosques, schools, prisons and even our military," where a number of chaplains are influenced by the movement, said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
CONTENTS
1. "CIA Erases Details Of Saudi Ties To Al Qaeda," (Middle East Newsline)
2. "September 11 pair 'helped by Saudi agent'" (London Daily Telegraph, July 22, 2003).
3. "Exclusive: The Saudis - Straddling Both Sides. Capture of Qaeda ringleader touted as proof of effectivity of Bush administration's efforts" (Newsweek, July 7)
4. "Our Enemies the Saudis" (By Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report, June 3, 2002)
5. "Saudi Islamic Charities Say Mauritania Has Shut Them" (Reuters, July 22, 2003)
6. "Exclusive - The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI" (By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, July 28)
Today's dispatch on Saudi Arabia is split into two parts for space reasons.
The 900-page report on the September 11 terror attacks is due out in Washington today.
The 28 page-section on Saudi government links and support for the 9/11 hijackers has been censored and will remain classified, US government sources have said. At least one of the reasons is to protect the Saudi government - a close ally of the Bush administration, and to protect personal friendships between senior Saudis and senior members of the Bush administration and the Bush family.
Some US commentators are predicting that the Bush White House's cover-up of the Saudi government's "direct involvement" in the 9/11 attacks, and not any issue relating to Iraq, will ultimately prove to be the administration's undoing when all the facts come out.
(Those new to this list who want to read one of my own recent articles on Saudi Arabia, "Time to face Mecca," published last year, can do so at www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross020802.shtml)
In this dispatch I attach six articles:
1. "CIA Erases Details Of Saudi Ties To Al Qaeda," Middle East Newsline. "The U.S. intelligence community has eliminated from a congressional report significant details of the ties of the Saudi royal family to Al Qaida. Congressional sources said the 800-page report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was delayed for months because of arguments with the Bush administration over details of Saudi involvement with Al Qaida... The sources said the congressional study was completed in December 2002. The administration kept the report for six months and the commission said the White House withheld documents required for the investigation."
2. "September 11 pair 'helped by Saudi agent'" (London Daily Telegraph, July 22, 2003). "A Saudi citizen who provided help to two of the September 11 hijackers may have been an agent for the Riyadh government, a congressional report will highlight this week. The explosive allegation in the report, which is understood to be highly critical of the FBI, is likely to reignite the controversy over Saudi Arabia's links with al-Qa'eda and has already led to accusations that the Bush administration is covering up for the House of Saud... any evidence that Bayoumi was a Saudi agent would be explosive, transforming the September 11 investigation into an inquiry into possible state-sponsored terrorism... The FBI is already investigating "charity" payments sent by Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, to a family linked to Bayoumi. She gave tens of thousands of dollars to relatives of Osama Bassnan, a Saudi citizen who was friendly with Bayoumi, in monthly instalments in 2000... Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles in January 2000 and then went straight to a restaurant where he met [9/11 plane suicide hijackers] al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi, whom he accompanied back to San Diego. He later arranged for the men to move into a flat next to his home, paid their rent for the first two months and enlisted a friend to help them obtain social security cards and contact flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons."
3. "Exclusive: The Saudis - Straddling Both Sides. Capture of Qaeda ringleader touted as proof of effectivity of Bush administration's efforts" (Newsweek, July 7)
4. "Our Enemies the Saudis" (By Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report, June 3, 2002). "Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudis' cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet shortly after September 11. They refuse to provide - as almost every other country has - manifests of plane passengers flying to the United States. Such behavior is nothing new. The Saudis stymied the FBI investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Saudis refused a U.S. request in 1996 that they take custody of bin Laden; he went to Afghanistan instead. They refused in 1995 to hand over Imad Mughniyah, believed responsible for the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983."
5. "Saudi Islamic Charities Say Mauritania Has Shut Them" (Reuters, July 22, 2003). (Pro-western, pro-democracy, pro-Israel) Mauritania, which blamed Islamists for inciting a failed coup attempt last month, has ordered the closure of two Saudi Arabian Islamic charities, one of the organisations said on Monday.
6. "Exclusive - The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI" (By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, July 28). "THE LONG-DELAYED 900-page report also contains potentially explosive new evidence suggesting that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key associate of two of the hijackers, may have been a Saudi-government agent, sources tell NEWSWEEK. The report documents extensive ties between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers. But the bureau never kept tabs on al-Bayoumi - despite receiving prior information he was a secret Saudi agent, the report says."
CIA erases details of Saudi ties to Al Qaida
Middle East Newsline
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The U.S. intelligence community has eliminated from a congressional report significant details of the ties of the Saudi royal family to Al Qaida.
Congressional sources said the 800-page report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was delayed for months because of arguments with the Bush administration over details of Saudi involvement with Al Qaida. The sources said the administration did not want the report by the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks to reopen wounds with Riyad amid its new cooperation with the U.S.-led war against Al Qaida.
The report, which could be released over the next week, will discuss how the United States underestimated Saudi links to Al Qaida. The investigation by the 10-member commission reviewed the FBI failure to detect Saudi aid to two of the 19 Al Qaida hijackers in September 2001.
"There's little doubt that much of the funding of terrorist groups -- whether intentional or unintentional -- is coming from Saudi sources," John Lehman, a member of the independent commission, told a congressional hearing earlier this month.
The sources said the congressional study was completed in December 2002. The administration kept the report for six months and the commission said the White House withheld documents required for the investigation.
Last week, former Senate Select Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham quoted the report as saying that Al Qaida has trained between 70,000 and 120,000 terrorists. The report said many of those trained were sent around the world, including the United States.
"We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world, some were placed inside the United States," Graham, a Florida Democrat, said. "Some of them are in the United States today."
Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate, has criticized the Bush administration for delaying the release of the report. The senator said the Bush administration has approved inclusion of the Al Qaida training estimate in the final report.
"We allowed Al Qaida to regroup and regenerate," Graham said. "They've conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far none of it in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia."
Over the weekend, the United States launched another effort to promote human rights in Saudi Arabia. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Lorne Craner arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday to discuss the human rights situation in the kingdom.
SEPTEMBER 11 PAIR 'HELPED BY SAUDI AGENT'
September 11 pair 'helped by Saudi agent'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Daily Telegraph, U.K.
July 22, 2003
A Saudi citizen who provided help to two of the September 11 hijackers may have been an agent for the Riyadh government, a congressional report will highlight this week.
The explosive allegation in the report, which is understood to be highly critical of the FBI, is likely to reignite the controversy over Saudi Arabia's links with al-Qa'eda and has already led to accusations that the Bush administration is covering up for the House of Saud.
According to Newsweek magazine, the 900-page report will document extensive ties between Omar al-Bayoumi and the two hijackers after they arrived in San Diego in 2000.
Al-Bayoumi, who will be identified as a possible Saudi government agent, assisted Khalid al-Mindhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi, who were among the five al-Qa'eda operatives who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon.
Any evidence that Bayoumi was a Saudi agent would be explosive, transforming the September 11 investigation into an inquiry into possible state-sponsored terrorism.
The White House has resisted calls for the whole report to be published, insisting that a 28-page section dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments be kept secret.
"They are protecting a foreign government," said Senator Bob Graham, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and oversaw the inquiry, conducted jointly by the Senate and House of Representative's intelligence committees.
Robert Mueller, who took over as FBI director just before September 11, has already been criticised because his agents did not investigate al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi even though they were living in the house of an FBI informant.
The report is also expected to criticise the Pentagon for failing to carry out air strikes against al-Qa'eda camps in Afghanistan before September 11 and the CIA for not telling the FBI about the presence of al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi at a meeting of terrorists in Malaysia.
It is the FBI, however, which is due to get the harshest verdict. The FBI's informant also had contact with Hani Hanjour, another hijacker, but the bureau did not discover he was in contact with al-Qa'eda operatives despite his regular conversations with his handler.
One congressional investigator described the report as "a scathing indictment of the FBI as an agency that doesn't have a clue about terrorism".
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis but President George W Bush has consistently sought to play down Saudi Arabia's links to terrorism.
Bayoumi was enrolled in a graduate business course at Aston University in Birmingham and was arrested in Britain after the September 11 attacks. He had left America two months before the attacks.
Records of telephone calls to diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Washington were found but he was released without charge after a week. He was charged with visa fraud in America but this was not an extraditable offence and he was thought to have returned to Saudi Arabia.
The FBI is already investigating "charity" payments sent by Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, to a family linked to Bayoumi.
She gave tens of thousands of dollars to relatives of Osama Bassnan, a Saudi citizen who was friendly with Bayoumi, in monthly instalments in 2000.
However, the White House said there was no evidence that the princess knew the eventual destination of her donation, which was said to have been given to the Bassnan family to help pay for medical treatment.
Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles in January 2000 and then went straight to a restaurant where he met al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi, whom he accompanied back to San Diego.
He later later arranged for the men to move into a flat next to his home, paid their rent for the first two months and threw a welcoming party for them.
Sources have said Baymoumi also helped them open a bank account and enlisted a friend to help them obtain social security cards and contact flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons.
THE SAUDIS - STRADDLING BOTH SIDES
Exclusive: The Saudis - Straddling Both Sides
Capture of Qaeda ringleader touted as proof of effectivity of Bush administration's efforts
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK
July 7 issue - The capture last week of a Qaeda ringleader in Saudi Arabia is being touted by Bush administration officials as the strongest evidence yet that their effort to prod the Saudis to crack down on Osama bin Laden's network is working.
THE OPERATIVE, 30-YEAR-OLD Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, is described as an Afghan veteran and a key figure in the May 12 bombings in Riyadh that killed 34 people, including eight Americans - an attack that U.S. officials insist finally energized the Saudis to take the terror threat seriously. Al Ghamdi, who comes from the same Saudi tribe as two of the 9-11 hijackers, appears to have taken instructions for the attack from senior Qaeda leaders in Iran - possibly including military commander Saif Al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, one of Osama's sons. Even more importantly, NEWSWEEK has learned, U.S. investigators now believe al Ghamdi received help from bin Laden sympathizers within the Saudi National Guard - a development that could trigger an uproar inside Saudi Arabia since National Guard members were killed in the attacks.
To root out the bin Laden network, administration officials say, the Saudis have moved more aggressively to shut down charities linked to Qaeda financing and begun working with the CIA on new, highly sensitive covert operations. "The Saudis are doing some incredible stuff right now," says one top counter narcotics official. One possible example: last week's dramatic commando-style raid in Malawi that netted five terror suspects - including one, a Saudi national, who was the local director of the Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Special Committee for Relief, a charitable foundation overseen by Saudi Arabia's longtime Defense minister. The five suspects -believed to have been instrumental in helping to finance Qaeda operations in Africa -were rounded up early on June 22 and surreptitiously flown out of Malawi on a CIA-charted aircraft two days later, despite an order from the High Court of Malawi barring their removal. The court is now demanding answers from Mala-wian officials who assisted the CIA in the roundup.
Still, some U.S. officials remain skeptical that the Saudis will continue the crackdown, and suspect the White House may be hyping it for political reasons. Administration officials are extremely nervous about the contents of an 800-page congressional report on the 9-11 attacks that documents apparent financial links between Saudi officials and some of the hijackers. Administration officials are battling with congressional leaders over declassifying the report, but some version is expected to be released in the next few weeks. "The Saudis are an extremely sensitive subject with [the White House]," said one U.S. investigator familiar with the negotiations over the report. Meanwhile, with a large coterie of Qaeda operatives still on the loose and actively plotting against Western diplomats, nearly half the 120-member U.S. mission to Saudi Arabia has been ordered home. The arrest of al Ghamdi was a "big deal," said one U.S. official in Riyadh, "but it's not the whole story."
OUR ENEMISE THE SAUDIS
Our Enemies the Saudis
By Michael Barone
U.S. News & World Report
June 3, 2002
Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudis' cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet shortly after September 11. They refuse to provide - as almost every other country has - manifests of plane passengers flying to the United States.
Such behavior is nothing new. The Saudis stymied the FBI investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Saudis refused a U.S. request in 1996 that they take custody of bin Laden; he went to Afghanistan instead. They refused in 1995 to hand over Imad Mughniyah, believed responsible for the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. Far from aiding our efforts against terrorism, the Saudis have worked against them - to protect the terrorists in their own ranks. Also, the Saudis have praised suicide bombings and raised money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Government-controlled Saudi media have frequently spread the vilest kinds of anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda.
Such has been the behavior of those the State Department has long referred to as "our friends the Saudis." It would be more accurate to call them our enemies the Saudis.
Freedoms? Zero for seven. The Saudis run a totalitarian society. Not one of the seven freedoms identified by President Bush in his State of the Union speech - the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, religious tolerance - is honored by the Saudis. There is no free speech and no freedom of religion (during the Gulf War the Saudis did not allow President Bush to conduct a religious service on Saudi soil), and women are restricted and physically assaulted by religious police who prowl the streets (and, by some accounts, would not allow teenage girls to leave a burning school, lest they not be properly clad; 15 girls died).
But the Saudis are not content to run a totalitarian society at home; they are trying to export their totalitarian Wahhabi Islam around the world. Since the Gulf War, the Saudis have financed Wahhabi clerics and Wahhabi-run mosques and schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Western Europe, and the United States. The results can be seen on the Edgware Road in London or Leesburg Pike in Northern Virginia: Journalists have no trouble finding young people spouting the most vituperative anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda and swearing that they would fight for Islam against the United States. The Saudis are waging war against us, financing the spread of the idea that our free society must be overthrown and totalitarian Wahhabi Islam must be imposed by force.
So why do some still call the Saudis our friends? Because they have the power to keep oil prices down? That leverage is being reduced by increased oil production by our friends Russia and Mexico. Because they are anti-Communist? Communism is no longer a threat. Because they are used to heeding the mellifluous advice of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar? What has he done to stop al Qaeda or the propagation of totalitarian Wahhabi Islam? Because we depend on Saudi military bases? Despite Pentagon denials, it seems we are wisely dispersing our forces in the gulf.
It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us. And they should know that we have the capacity to destroy their military, presumably in a matter of hours. The Saudis' eastern provinces, with their oil, could be given to their Shiite Muslim majority, now oppressed by the Sunni Muslim Saudi rulers. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina could be returned to the custody of the Hashemites (Jordan's King Abdullah's family), who unlike the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Let the Saudis have the sands of central Arabia and their bank accounts in Switzerland, hotel suites in London, and villas on the Riviera.
President Bush has said that we must have regime change in Iraq to be safe from terrorism. It is increasingly clear that we must have regime change in Saudi-ruled Arabia as well.
SAUDI ISLAMIC CHARITIES SAY MAURITANIA HAS SHUT THEM
Saudi Islamic Charities Say Mauritania Has Shut Them
Reuters
July 22, 2003
NOUAKCHOTT, July 21 Mauritania, which blamed Islamists for inciting a failed coup attempt last month, has ordered the closure of two Saudi Arabian Islamic charities, one of the organisations said on Monday. The attempted coup by renegade soldiers on June 8 followed the arrest of dozens of Islamists and activists of the pan-Arab Baath party sympathetic to Saddam Hussein amid signs of unrest after the U.S.-led war on Iraq.
President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, whose country's economy could be revolutionised by oil reserves discovered offshore, accused Islamists of inciting support for the coup bid, the most serious challenge to his rule since his own coup in 1984.
A representative of the Saudi Preaching Centre said it and another Islamic charity, the Global Islamic Rescue Organisation, had been visited by government officials on Sunday who served them with official notices ordering them to close. Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
THE 9-11 REPORT: SLAMMING THE FBI
Exclusive - The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI
By Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
July 28 issue (advance copy) - The FBI blew repeated chances to uncover the 9-11 plot because it failed to aggressively investigate evidence of Al Qaeda's presence in the United States, especially in the San Diego area, where two of the hijackers were living with one of the bureau's own informants, according to the congressional report set for release this week.
THE LONG-DELAYED 900-page report also contains potentially explosive new evidence suggesting that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key associate of two of the hijackers, may have been a Saudi-government agent, sources tell NEWSWEEK. The report documents extensive ties between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers. But the bureau never kept tabs on al-Bayoumi - despite receiving prior information he was a secret Saudi agent, the report says.
In January 2000, al-Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles - and then went directly to a restaurant where he met future hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, whom he took back with him to San Diego. (Al-Bayoumi later arranged for the men to get an apartment next to his and fronted them their first two months rent.) The report is sure to reignite questions about whether some Saudi officials were secretly monitoring the hijackers - or even facilitating their conduct.
Questions about the Saudi role arose repeatedly during last year's joint House-Senate intelligence-committees inquiry. But the Bush administration has refused to declassify many key passages of the committees' findings. A 28-page section of the report dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments will be deleted. "They are protecting a foreign government," charged Sen. Bob Graham, who oversaw the inquiry.
The report criticizes the Pentagon for resisting military strikes against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan prior to 9-11, and the CIA for failing to pass along crucial information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi at a terrorists' summit in Malaysia. But the FBI gets the toughest treatment. A few months after al-Bayoumi took them to San Diego, Almihdhar and Alhazmi moved into the house of a local professor who was a longtime FBI "asset." The prof also had earlier contact with another hijacker, Hani Hanjour. But even though the informant was in regular touch with his FBI handler, the bureau never pieced together that he was living with terrorists.
The bureau also failed to pursue other leads, including a local imam who dealt with several key 9-11 figures. The report, one congressional investigator said, "is a scathing indictment of the FBI as an agency that doesn't have a clue about terrorism." Furious bureau officials say the report misstates the evidence. They say the bureau checked out al-Bayoumi - now back in Saudi Arabia - and concluded he had not given the hijackers "material support." As for Almihdhar and Alhazmi, "there was nothing there that gave us any suspicion about these guys," said one FBI official.
CONTENTS
1. "PA report: 26 terror acts against Israelis since hudna" (Ha'aretz, July 22, 2003).
2. "Arafat is said to fund truce foes" (Boston Globe, July 23, 2003)
3. "Israeli cyclist stabbed near Arab refugee camp in capital" (The Jerusalem Post, July 24, 2003).
4. "Two would-be suicide bombers held; IDF soldier still missing" (Ha'aretz, July 23, 2003)
5. "Hezbollah shells northern Israel, two injured" (The Times of India / AP, July 22, 2003).
6. "Abbas won't crack down on militants" (The Age (Australia), July 23, 2003)
7. "Palestinian attacks on Israelis are 'crimes against humanity': rights group" (Agence France-Presse, July 21, 2003)
8. "Hamas building 1,000 Kassam rockets" (The Jerusalem Post, July 21, 2003)
9. "Report: New PA textbooks full of anti-Israel propaganda" (The Jerusalem Post, July 22, 2003)
[Note by Tom Gross]
Although there has been a reduction in terror attacks against Israelis since the "truce" was called, they are continuing at a rate that no other country would find acceptable.
Because the European and American media are virtually ignoring them, I am sending out articles from the Israeli, Indian, and Australian media concerning terror attacks in recent days. The latest attack was tonight on an Israeli cyclist who was stabbed as he rode home in Jerusalem; he was rushed to Hadassah University Hospital with the knife still lodged in his back. On Sunday night, a 64 year old Jerusalem man was stabbed in the city's upscale Yemin Moshe neighborhood. Last week a 24-year-old Israeli was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in an attack claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a "military" wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. At least two suicide bombers were caught today en route to perpetrate attacks. An Israeli soldier, Oleg Shaichat, remains missing, thought to have been kidnapped in the manner that an Israeli taxi driver was kidnapped last week. Hezbollah has shelled northern Israel, injuring two civilians, one seriously.
I attach 9 stories with summaries first:
1. "PA report: 26 terror acts against Israelis since hudna" (Ha'aretz, July 22, 2003). "There were 26 separate terror incidents since the Palestinian factions announced their unilateral cease-fire, a Palestinian security forces report says. The report cites mortar fire, anti-tank rocket fire, shots fired at IDF patrols and the suicide attack at Kfar Yavetz and the stabbing in Jaffa." (This article was written before the latest stabbings.) "Seven Palestinians have been killed since the hudna took effect, nearly all while attempting to conduct attacks on Israeli targets."
2. "Arafat is said to fund truce foes" (By Charles A. Radin and Sa'Id Ghazali, Boston Globe, July 23, 2003.) This is a remarkable article from the front page of today's Boston Globe. At last, a senior correspondent at a major newspaper has acknowledged that it is Yasser Arafat who is orchestrating much of the terror against Israel. Radin and Ghazali write: "JENIN, West Bank - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his followers are supplying financial and political support to armed groups that reject the current cease-fire ... The groups include units of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades organization, a military affiliate of Arafat's Fatah movement that is listed as a terrorist group by the US State Department. In recent days, the Brigades led attacks on pro-Abbas leaders in major West Bank cities and hounded from office the governor of Jenin. ... 'They won - they have forced me to resign,'' a bruised and battered Governor Haider Irsheid said in his home as he recovered from his abduction and public beating last Saturday at the hands of armed militants in Jenin. ''I am exhausted,'' the 49-year-old Jenin native and former diplomat said. ''They beat me all over my body.'' Irsheid said Arafat knows of and supports the continuing payments to the militant groups despite their rejection of the cease-fire... Abdel Fattah al Hamayel, who is a Fatah leader and a Palestinian Authority minister without portfolio, confirmed that Fatah is providing money to the Brigades, Irsheid said ... Fatah had given $10,000 to Brigades members from the Jenin camp on July 12."
"Fatah-affiliated militias also are sending waves of shock and fear through Nablus, where, during an attempt to abduct an alleged collaborator last week, they shot dead a 36-year-old woman carrying her 3-month-old baby along a street. Two cars belonging to Nablus Governor Mahmoud al Aloul and one belonging to another Palestinian official who criticized the activities of armed gangs in the city were torched."
3. "Israeli cyclist stabbed near Arab refugee camp in capital" (July 24, 2003, The Jerusalem Post). "A 40 year old Israeli resident of Jerusalem riding home on bicycle Wednesday night was stabbed and moderately wounded by four Arab assailants near the city's northern Shuafat refugee camp, police said. It was the second major stabbing in the capital in the last three days. As a manhunt for the attackers got underway, the victim was rushed by Magen David Adom par