Dozens killed in Syrian prison riot: rights group

At least 25 inmates were shot dead by Syrian security forces during a riot in a jail for political prisoners in the mountains outside Damascus on Saturday, according to a human rights group."Islamist prisoners started a riot inside the prison this morning," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement received in Nicosia, quoting a political prisoner in the jail contacted by mobile phone."Shooting is continuing against the prisoners," the London-based group said, adding that a number of inmates had climbed the roof of the military prison in Saydnaya, north of Damascus, to escape the violence.
It said the number of dead was now 25.
The group said it had received phone calls from relatives of prisoners asking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to intervene to stop the clashes in Saydnaya, an ancient town with biblical connections.
There was no immediate comment from the Syrian authorities.

Israel orders razing of Jerusalem 'terrorist' home

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday ordered the demolition of the houses of two Palestinians behind recent deadly attacks against Jews after the attorney-general said the move was legally viable.

Israel wants to destroy the homes of a Palestinian who killed three Israelis in a bulldozer rampage in Jerusalem on Wednesday and another who shot dead eight pupils at a seminary in the city in March. Both lived in the vicinity of Arab East Jerusalem. "Barak has ordered the army to start a process for obtaining demolition orders for the terrorists' houses," said a defense official, who declined to be named.

Menachem Mazuz, the attorney-general, gave his legal response following a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday that Israel should destroy the homes of "every terrorist from Jerusalem" after a Palestinian killed three Israelis in a bulldozer rampage. "The decision comes following the attorney-general's opinion, which said there was no legal obstacle to destroy the terrorists' houses," the defense official added.

Mazuz said in his opinion: "In light of repeated rulings over the years by the Supreme Court, it cannot be said that there is a legal objection ... to demolish houses in Jerusalem, but the move would create considerable legal difficulties."

Blue Israeli ID cards

Israeli authorities say Wednesday's attack and the fatal shootings of eight seminary students in March were carried out by Palestinians who held blue Israeli identity cards that give them wide freedom of movement.

Mazuz warned that apart from legal challenges in Israeli courts, a resumption of the practice of house demolitions could draw international condemnation. "The detailed inspection of the circumstances surrounding each case should be conducted by the Shin Bet and the army in coordination with the Justice Ministry," Mazuz said.

Olmert told an economic conference in the southern resort city of Eilat on Thursday that Israel should "be tougher in some of the means we use against perpetrators of terror.

If we have to destroy houses, then we must do so." Israel abandoned the demolitions of homes of Palestinians involved in attacks against its citizens after human rights groups challenged the practice in Israel's Supreme Court. Defense and legal officials met on Thursday to discuss the issue.

Some 20 people live in the home of the attacker who killed two women and a man in Wednesday's bulldozer rampage. They said they had no prior knowledge of his intentions.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally, after capturing the area in a 1967 war, and gave Palestinians there and in some adjacent villages the same blue identity cards issued to its citizens. Palestinians want parts of Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

Ex-Abu Ghraib prisoners sue US firms for torture

Four Iraqis announced Monday in Istanbul they are suing two U.S. firms and their employees for allegedly torturing them at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad five years ago.
Their lawsuit is against private security contractor CACI International and two of its interrogators, Daniel Johnson and Tim Dugan, and the translation agency L-3 (formerly Titan Corp) and its interpreter, Abel Nakhla, lawyer William Gould told AFP.Their complaint was to be lodged Monday at courts in Maryland, Ohio and Washington
-- the U.S. states where the alleged torturers live
-- as well as Michigan, where L-3 recruited most of its interpreters, said Gould in Istanbul, where he met with his clients from Iraq.
He said the court cases would show that the accused were in Abu Ghraib and involved in a conspiracy that included the torture of the plaintiffs.
Abu Ghraib prison became infamous after the publication in 2004 of photographs showing Iraqi detainees being humiliated and abused by their U.S. guards.
The scandal led to the sentencing of 11 soldiers to up to 10 years in prison. This the second set of lawsuits against CACI and L-3. Another group of former Abu Ghraib prisoners filed complaints against the two firms last year in the states of Washington and California.
One of the current plaintiffs, Suhail Najim Abdullah Al-Shimari, 49, was taken from his Baghdad home in November 2003 and spent more than a year at Abu Ghraib, where he claims to have been subjected to electroshock and night-long cold showers in the winter.
Sa'adon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, 39, said he was repeatedly beaten at Abu Ghraib and tied to door handles.
Taxi driver Mohammed Abdwihed Towfek Al-Taee, 39, was taken to Abu Ghraib in 2003.
He has scars on his leg and head that he said came from beatings with an iron rod. "I wish I would be the last person to be detained and to be tortured," he said.
Abu Ghraib was closed in 2006.

Jerusalem bulldozer attack injures dozens

A bulldozer slammed into a commuter bus, other vehicles and pedestrians in Jerusalem on Wednesday, causing dozens of injuries in an apparent deliberate attack, police said.

Israel's Channel Two television said at least one person was killed and some 30 were wounded.

"A suspect driving a tractor ran over a number of vehicles and Israelis in the street, on Jaffa Road. Israeli police arrived at the scene. Many people were injured," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Emergency vehicles rushed to the scene, where a single-decker commuter bus, its side slashed by the tractor, stood on its side in one of Jewish West Jerusalem's main streets.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said there were dozens of casualties.

At least three other vehicles appeared to sustain damage, including a van whose entire front section was crushed.

A radio reporter at the scene said after the tractor hit the vehicles, a man climbed onto its cab and shot at its driver several times. "I saw the tractor's shovel turn to the bus and deliberately hit it.

It hit other vehicles as well," another Israel Radio reporter said. The driver's condition was not immediately known

Bahrain bans websites for stirring sectarian strife

Bahrain has blocked three websites it said were implicated in fuelling sectarian strife, said the official state news agency of the Gulf kingdom, which has a majority Shiite population and is ruled by Sunni Muslims. The move comes after Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa set up a committee this week to monitor sectarianism and comments disparaging the royal family in the media, religious sermons or on the Internet. "The Ministry of Information has issued a decision to shut down three Internet sites found implicated in stoking sectarian strife in Bahrain, which is in breach of the press and publication law," the Bahrain News Agency report said.
A local newspaper said the blocked sites included one close to the main Shiite opposition group, al-Wefaq.
The websites were accessible for web surfers outside Bahrain on Tuesday. "We are with the idea of fighting sectarianism and support national unity, but we are worried the committee will stop any opposition views," Wefaq spokesman Faheem Abdulla told Reuters. "We are calling for clear definitions of sectarianism ... if there is balanced opposition, it should not be blocked, whether Sunni or Shiite," he said.
Last week, thousands of Shiites protested in Bahrain against a Sunni politician's comments they said insulted a Shiite cleric revered in the U.S.-allied island of about 1.05 million people. Shiites have long complained of alleged discrimination in jobs and services, a charge the government denies. In 2006, Bahrain appointed a Shiite as a deputy prime minister for the first time since its independence in 1971. The country, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, witnessed anti-government riots and protests in the early 1990s which the authorities said were led by Shiite opposition groups.

Aziz lawyer offers to support London mayor

The lawyer for Tareq Aziz on Wednesday offered to support London Mayor Boris Johnson who is being probed for possession of a cigar case belonging to Iraq's former deputy prime minister. "I am ready to contact Johnson, stand by him and provide all necessary support in this ridiculous investigation," Badie Izzat Aref told AFP from the Jordanian capital Amman."Johnson did not steal or commit any crime, he simply took a souvenir.

He has always respected Tareq Aziz, who wishes Johnson had taken other valuable things, like his notebooks, which have been seized by the invaders."
The 43-year-old former journalist has admitted to having found the red leather cigar case among the debris of Aziz's home in Baghdad while visiting Iraq as a reporter after the U.S. -led invasion of 2003.

He wrote about it at the time and kept it as a trophy of his trip. Johnson, who took office last month, said on Tuesday he even has a letter from Aziz's lawyers stating that fallen dictator Saddam Hussein's senior aide wanted the mayor to keep the cigar case as a gift. Aref had no knowledge of any such communication, "but I am ready to send him the letter," he said. The London mayor has jokingly said it was "incredible" that he was being investigated while leaders like U.S. President George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair were not being pursued.

Aref agreed. "Blair is the one who should be investigated and put on trial for his role in invading Iraq and for killing thousands of innocent people," the lawyer argued.Aziz, 72, who like Saddam had an affinity for Cuban cigars, and seven others are on trial in Baghdad over the execution of 42 merchants accused of racketeering while Iraq was under U.N. sanctions. He turned himself in to U.S. forces in April 2003 after they overthrew Saddam.

Iraqi dad says US forces killed son in cold blood

Iraqi teenager Abbas Khadum died in his father's arms; one of 25 men locals say were shot dead in a single day by U.S.

troops in a crackdown on Shiite militiamen in east Baghdad.His mother fought back tears while his father held a picture of the 19-year-old, his hair slicked back and dressed in a smart shirt buttoned up to his chin, as he gave his version of how U.S. troops had killed his son.

"In the middle of the night, the Americans positioned themselves on a roof of a nearby building site which overlooks the wall," Khadum's father, Abu Abbas, said, his bespectacled face framed in a traditional red keffiyeh scarf.

"At dawn, I stepped out of my house to go to prayers, and I found a bloodied body on my doorstep.

It was a laborer who had come to work on a building site close to the wall."Neighbors telephoned me to say I shouldn't go out because the Americans were shooting anything that moved.
"A little later, Said Saad, a man who sold drinks, who everyone in the district knew, was also killed.

Then one of my neighbors, Sabah Mahdi, had his head blown off by a bullet," Khadum's father said, as his wife wept.

"About 11 am, my son was due to go to university with his friends.

With all the shooting, he told them not to come and meet him at the house, but to wait a few streets away.

"He left and then a few minutes later, I was called and told he had been wounded.

I raced to him.

He had been shot in the back, at shoulder level. He was still breathing. He died in my arms as we took him to hospital," he said.That evening, a US soldier went to photograph the body at the mortuary and told Abu Abbas that the teenager was shot after attempting to bring down the wall.Khadum had not been in trouble before and "was not involved in politics," his family and friends said.

"It is true that people used to try and knock down the wall, but they came from other districts," his father added.Responding to claims his son was placing roadside bombs, Abu Abbas said Shiite militiamen "don't plant bombs on main streets in Baghdad in broad daylight."
Roadside bombs
U.S. forces, for their part, said Khadum was one of 11 "special group" criminals

-- a term used to describe fighters armed, funded and trained by Iranians

-- attempting to plant roadside bombs. His parents say he was just walking to university.

Khadum's family live in the heart of the Shiite-dominated Al-Obeidi neighborhood, where many followers of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are rumored to have sought refuge after being driven out of nearby Sadr City.

The neighborhood has been a regular scene of bloody battles between U.S. soldiers and Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on militias.

Mahdi army militiamen fought deadly street battles with U.S.

forces in the Shiite slum Sadr City for seven weeks until a truce was agreed, which took effect on May 10.Khadum's family home, an anonymous rectangular building with an iron gate, is around a dozen meters (yards) from a wide main road, part-hidden by a large concrete wall erected in mid May by U.S. f

orces to disrupt militia activities.U.S. forces built concrete barriers throughout Baghdad in a bid to prevent insurgents launching roadside bomb attacks on military convoys and to block militia movements.

People angry at the presence of the ugly grey barrier protested and launched regular attacks against it, to bring it crashing down.

But, according to Abu Abbas, American forces hit back. That same day, May 21, saw a total of 25 people, all men, killed by American gunfire close to the Al-Obeidi wall, according to the district's residents.

Cameraman Wissam Ali Ouda, who worked for private Iraqi television station Afaq, was among those killed; shot dead returning home after work.

Egypt's emergency law leaves trail of tears

About 18,000 Egyptians detained without charge
Fifteen years after police took away her husband, Zeinab Ahmed says she has lost hope he will return to help raise their daughter, born while he was in jail.
Mohamed el-Leithi stood trial in a military court with dozens of Islamists charged with belonging to the radical group Vanguards of Conquest.
He was acquitted but remains in jail under an emergency law that allows police to hold suspects for long periods without charge.

"Where is justice?" said Ahmed, wearing a black veil that only showed eyes welling with tears. "Drug dealers get out of jail. Murderers get out of jail. What has he done?"

About 18,000 Egyptians are detained without charge under the emergency law, in force since Islamist militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Amnesty International says. The prospect for their early release diminished this week when parliament extended the law for two years.
Local and international human rights groups accuse the ruling establishment of using it to crush dissent.
Ahmed and others with family members in detention share tales of months spent trying to find out where their relatives are detained, fruitless court release orders, financial hardship and traumatized children visiting their fathers behind bars.
During eight years when Leithi was in a prison about 450 km (300 miles) south of Cairo, Ahmed said she visited him only a handful of times a year because she could not afford to travel.
"I don't have money. My father was supporting me financially. He died.
Now my brothers support me," she said. Both Leithi's parents died when he was in jail. Mohamed Abdel-Moneim said it took him six years to find out the whereabouts of his son Amr, who has also been in jail since 1993... "
Tired? I have been running around for 15 years ... filing lawsuits," the 67-year-old retired civil servant said, choking back tears.
Torture
The government says it uses the law, which also allows authorities to send civilians for military trial, only to target terrorism suspects and drug dealers.
"If you knew the number of sabotage crimes that have been thwarted ... you would have said: 'Thank God the emergency law exists'," Moufid Shehab, a state minister, said this week. Analysts and human rights groups note 27 years of emergency law failed to stop militant attacks such as the bombings that rocked Sinai between 2004 and 2006, killing scores of Egyptians and foreign tourists.
They say the law has contributed to the rising influence of the police in public life and to what they say is systematic torture inside prisons and police stations. The interior ministry says it does not condone such practices and prosecutes officers who torture suspects."The government cannot live without a state of emergency," said Mohamed Zarea, director of the Arab Penal Reform Organisation, which offers free legal aid to detainees.Zarea was a detainee himself.
In 1988, he was kept in custody for 75 days for suspected links with an armed leftist group.
He says he was subjected to "all kinds of torture".
"It was torture that makes you wish you could die," he told Reuters, sitting behind a desk at his office in downtown Cairo.
"All kinds of torture, from beating to electric shocks to sleep deprivation, to being questioned while people next to you are beaten up ... to threats of sexual assault. All kinds." Zarea won a lawsuit against the government granting him 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,900) in compensation for his detention.
He used the money to set up his human rights group.

Egypt extends state of emergency by two years

Egypt on Monday extended a controversial decades-old state of emergency by two years despite pledges to replace it by new legislation, in a move slammed by rights groups as anti-constitutional.

Parliament passed the law after a brief debate following a decision by President Hosni Mubarak to extend the state of emergency from June 1, a parliamentary official said.

The state of emergency was imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of President Anwar Sadat and has been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.
Last year Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if the new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.

"The state of emergency has for decades been one of the main causes of human rights violations in Egypt," Hafez Abu Sada of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) told AFP.

Egypt's authorities have used the state of emergency to clamp down on political opponents, including the country's largest opposition movement, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose members sit in parliament as independents.

"We reject the extension of the state of emergency because there is no constitutional justification," Brotherhood political bureau member Essam al-Aryan told AFP.He said the Brotherhood would now start a public awareness campaign about the law.

On Tuesday the state-backed National Council of Human Rights said there was no longer any basis for renewing the state of emergency. Earlier this month two dozen independent human rights groups also called for the emergency to end, saying it "flies in the face of the comprehensive social, economic and political reforms under way in Egypt."

Press reactions
Political analyst Diaa Rashwan wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry al-Youm on Monday that "10 anti-terrorist laws could have been drafted in the time since Mubarak said he would lift the state of emergency.

" He called the extension a "crime," while the state-owned Al-Goumhuriya daily stressed the need for stringent security measures after thousands of Gazans forced their way across the frontier into Egypt in January to buy goods.

"Remember what happened when the Palestinians violated our borders... arriving with explosive belts around their waists and with grenades and bullets in their pockets," said an editorial."Was the state supposed to wait for a magistrate's warrant before arresting them?"

Kuwaiti soldier charged over maid's rape, murder

A Kuwaiti soldier has been charged with murdering and then raping a Filipina domestic helper whose naked body was found in the desert 10 days ago, a newspaper reported on Monday.

The soldier confessed to beating the victim to death and then raping her before dumping her corpse in the desert, claiming he was under the influence of alcohol, Al-Qabas daily quoted a security source as saying.

Al-Qabas said the soldier killed Mualana after she refused to sleep with him, and added that the married man with four children was an alcoholic.
The victim, named as Fatima Sagadan Maulana in earlier press reports, went missing on May 9 and her decomposing body was found a week later in the Kabad desert southwest of Kuwait City.

About 73,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait. Some 60,000 are women employed mainly as maids and earning less than 200 dollars a month on average, labor groups say

Iraq's Aziz back in court without lawyers

The prosecutor in the trial of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz called for a stiff penalty on Tuesday to ease the "hearts of the widows" of dozens of merchants he is charged with helping execute.

Aziz, the public face of Saddam Hussein's regime, entered the court wearing a grey suit and supported by a walking stick, a far cry from the once confident, cigar-smoking diplomat who exhibited faultless English, strong nerves and negotiating skills in Iraq's crises.

He was joined by his seven co-defendants in the case. The 72-year-old Aziz is reported to be in poor health.

His defense lawyers were not present, but it was not clear why.

The team of foreign lawyers who had agreed to defend Aziz, including French lawyer Jacques Verges, four Italian lawyers and a Lebanese-French attorney, were not granted visas for Baghdad, his Amman-based son Ziad Aziz said.

Verges has defended some of the world's most notorious figures, including Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan terrorist "Carlos the Jackal.

"The charges relate to merchants who were killed after being accused of breaking price controls imposed in the wake of U.N.

sanctions on Iraq in 1990s.

"We ask that the court decides on a suitable punishment that will ease the hearts of the widows," prosecutor Adnan Ali said.

He said some family members of the merchants were killed.

"There was a systematic campaign planned under the cover of darkness.

Its villains were members of the Revolutionary Command Council and security agencies," Ali said.It is the first time Aziz, who also served as foreign minister under Saddam, has faced any charges since he gave himself up to U.S. troops in April 2003.

Easily recognized by his large glasses and white hair, Aziz played Iraq's top diplomatic role in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War when he was foreign minister.
Plea of innocence
In his own defense, Aziz told the court on Tuesday that just because he was a member of council did not by itself implicate him in the killings.

"This is a selective process wrought by the personal motivations of those intent on destroying Aziz," Aziz said.

"It is a plot of personal revenge.

" The only Christian in Saddam's inner circle, Aziz rose to prominence in the world media around the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War.Aziz is being tried by the same judge who sentenced Saddam to death for his role in the killing of 148 Shiite civilians after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. Other defendants include Saddam's half brothers Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan, then interior minister, and Sabaawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, a former security official.Another was Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed or Chemical Ali, who entered the court wearing traditional Sunni chequered head dress.

Al-Majeed has already been sentenced to death in June for his role in Saddam's "Anfal" military campaign in the 1980s, in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed.

Their executions have been delayed by legal wranglings. Aziz's lawyers had wanted his trial to be moved to Iraqi Kurdistan in the relatively quiet north of the country or to be transferred abroad to ensure it is not influenced by the Baghdad government.Aziz has appeared as a witness in earlier trials of Saddam-era officials. He featured prominently in Iraq's conflict with Iran from 1980-1988, helping to win U.S. support and to forge strong economic ties with the Soviet Union.A former finance minister, central bank governor and two senior Baath party members also faced the Iraqi High Tribunal.

Coincide Hosting the Largest Communication Conference in Africa, an opposition's Web Site is being Blocked

Egyptian Government should Unblock Kefaya Homepage

Cairo on 12th May, 2008 The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said today, that the website of the Egyptian Movement for Change:Kefaya “http://harakamasria.org/” was blocked in Egypt and the Internet users who have access to Internet through the T-Data Company,
the largest Internet Service Providers in Egypt, which is controlled by the Egyptian Government since 4th May. Many of Kefaya website visitors were surprised of their disability to browse the site during the call on for the past 4th of May Strike,
whether through T-Data or “Link” company, while Link has pulled back blocking the site later, but T-Data that belongs to the Egyptian Government continued blocking the site until today, leaving the internet users unable to get access to it, to be a cheek irony, that the time when the website of the most important political movement in Egypt is blocked coincides with the hosting the largest telecommunication conference in Africa- Africa Telecoms Conference.
Some of the ANHRI's technicians made an attempts to browse blocked website using different computers machines, and from different locations but all their attempts went in vain, while using the free internet dial up connections of T-Data and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL).

What indicates clearly the Egyptian government return to its practice in blocking the internet site, which it has abandoned earlier.Said Samir Gad the editor-in-chief of Kefaya Website “ the website is performing normally with other ISP companies, but the technical supervisor of the website informed us that the T-Data Co. blocked Kefaya website through the IP Address.

Mohamed Ragab- Director to the Technical Unit- Arab Network for Human Rights Information stated: “ Blocking Kefaya Website decision from the T-Data ISP clients is a ridiculous decision, which is not any more practiced but by the most dictator governments in the world, the internet users will use the proxy so as to overcome this block, or simply transfer their accounts to other companies, the only loser of this decision is the T-Data and the Egyptian government that non of its officials will dare to declare that Egypt is supporting the Freedom to use the Internet.

”The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information condemns very much the decision to block Kefaya web site, calling on the government to work on correcting this wrongdoing, through unblocking Kefaya website and stop harassing the Internet activists in Egypt. http://www.hrinfo.net/en/reports/2008/pr0512.shtml

Israel lifts blockade of fuel deliveries to Gaza

Israel on Wednesday resumed fuel shipments to the sole power plant in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said a day after officials said supplies would last for only 30 hours before it shut down.

"A million liters of fuel for the central power plant are being transferred today through Nahal Oz, which opened this morning," said an army spokeswoman, referring to the fuel terminal on the Israeli border with northern Gaza.Israel cut fuel supplies for Gaza's power plant by half and halted the supply of petrol and diesel after Palestinian militants attacked the terminal two weeks ago, killing two Israeli civilian employees.

It resumed shipments of fuel for the plant several days later, but stopped deliveries again last week after another attack killed three Israeli soldiers near Nahal Oz.On Tuesday Kanaan Obeid, vice president of Gaza's power authority, warned that the plant's fuel supply would last only another 30 hours, which would mean it would have to shut down on Wednesday night.

The Gisha Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement sent a request to Israel's attorney general warning that the cuts "violate the state's commitment to the Israeli supreme court to permit a minimum amount of fuel to enter Gaza."The plant provides around 30 percent of the territory's electricity, with most of the rest supplied from Israel and a small amount from Egypt.Israel slapped a punishing blockade on Gaza after the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory in June

Egypt jails 25 Islamists for up to 10 years

An Egyptian military court on Tuesday jailed 25 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood for up to 10 years for financing a banned organization and acquitted 15 others, a court official said.

The Brotherhoood's number three Khayrat al-Shater and fellow leader Hassan Malek were jailed for seven years while seven other Islamists were jailed in absentia for 10 years.Sixteen others were jailed for between 18 months and five years, the source said.

The Islamists were sentenced following a repeatedly delayed verdict that has no right of appeal because it is issued by a military tribunal.

Jordan prison unrest continues after 3 dead

Inmates at a prison north of the Jordanian capital of Amman set fire to their cells on Tuesday a day after three rioting prisoners died in clashes with security forces at another jail, police said. "A number of prisoners convicted of murder and robbery inflicted injuries on themselves and set fire to their cells this morning at Swaka prison" north of Amman, police spokesman Mohammed Khatib said in a statement.

"They were showing solidarity with inmates who rioted on Monday at Muaqqar prison (in southeast Amman), but police tackled the situation and evacuated the inmates from the cells for their own safety."
Khatib did not elaborate, but a security source told AFP that the prisoners were protesting at being segregated from other convicts.

On Monday, three Muaqqar inmates were killed and dozens were injured in clashes with police after prison authorities decided to segregate them from others.They also cut themselves with sharp tools and set fire to their cells.

In March 2006, inmates at Juweideh prison south of the capital rioting for the same reason briefly held prison officials hostage

Jordan was CIA's top rendition location: HRW

The CIA secretly transported at least 14 war on terror detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

"While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," the rights group said in a statement.

The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by Jordan's General Intelligence Department, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that documents eight previously unknown cases of rendition.

GID officials who met with Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied using torture.

But the rights group said the denials were unconvincing "given the weight of credible evidence showing otherwise.

"The report is "based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects," it said."We've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch.Prisoners rendered to Jordan included at least five Yemenis, three Algerians, two Saudis, a Mauritanian, a Syrian, a Tunisian, and one or more Chechens from Russia, the group said.

They may also have included a Libyan, an Iraqi Kurd, a Kuwaiti, one or more Egyptians, and a national of the United Arab Emirates.

The report includes an excerpt of a note handwritten by a rendered prisoner while in Jordanian custody in late 2002.

The prisoner is now at the U.S. war on terror prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi wrote that GID interrogators beat him "in a way that does not know any limits.""They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs .... [They said] we'll make you see death .... They threatened to rape me," the note said.A common torture method was falaqa, by which prisoners are given extended beatings on the bottoms of their feet.

"Just about everyone at GID was beaten with sticks," a Jordanian former prisoner told Human Rights Watch.

"People were beaten on their feet. They did it in the basement.""Outsourcing torture is not only wrong, it's illegal," Mariner said. "And the U.S. can't say it doesn't torture if it sends people to countries that do."

Palestinian tale of kindness plays in West Bank

For the first time, a documentary about a Palestinian boy whose tragic death saved the lives of five Israeli children

– thanks to his father – has been screened in the West Bank.

The documentary -- "The Heart of Jenin"

– tells the story of 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmad al-Khatib, who was shot dead by Israeli troops when they mistook his toy gun for a real weapon.The shooting happened in the West Bank town of Jenin on Nov. 2, 2005.

At the time, Israeli soldiers had orders to "shoot anything that moved," one soldier said in the documentary.

The shot to Ahmad's head proved fatal, killing the boy from Jenin refugee camp. Ahmad's father Ismael al-Khatib later decided to donate his boy's organs to patients at the Haifa hospital where his son was pronounced dead."If I can't help my son to recover, then may be I can help other kids," he says in the documentary.

Five Israeli children received Ahmad's life-saving organs. The feature length documentary – directed by Marcus Vetter and Lior Geller –was screened at the German-French Cultural Center in Ramallah on March 27, the first time the film was shown in the Palestinian territories for a general audience.Palestinian cinemas refused the film because Geller is Israeli, said Farid Maajari, director of the cultural center.

Storyline

The Heart of Jenin follows Ahmad's father Ismael on his journey through Israel, visiting the children who found life through his son's death.Ahmad's kidneys went to the daughter of a Jewish settler in Occupied Jerusalem and a Bedouin boy from the Negev Desert region. His heart went to a Druze family in northern Israel. Two other beneficiaries chose not to participate in the documentary.

The extraordinary donation was approved not only by the boy's grief-stricken mother and father, but religious and political scholars too.

In the movie, Jenin's mufti approves organ donations. The opinion is backed by the Jenin commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

"We have no problem with Jews as Jews.

There's no problem as long as this will save lives," says Zakaria Zubeidi.In the movie, the father of the Jewish girl said he did not want to meet the donor family and would have preferred if they were Jewish.

He said Arabs only want to kill Israelis, apparently oblivious to the actions of Ahmad's father who donated his son's kidney to save the settler girl.After the screening in Ramallah, German director Vetter told the audience the film was banned from the Tel Aviv film festival allegedly for technical reasons.

"Some people said the film is biased towards the Palestinians because it tackles the death of the child and focuses on checkpoints, collective punishment, and the destruction of Jenin refugee camp," Vetter said.

Ismail al-Khatib now runs a music school for children in Jenin.

"Without peace, only killing will remain. Children from Palestine and Israel and all the world will die," Khatib said.

killing the civilian people by the israeli's forces

this documentarian movies shows the largest masscare and most dirty by the israeli's forces against the civilian people in palestine ( in jinin and nablus) in the year 2001

Aid groups deem Somalia too risky

A number of leading international aid agencies have announced that they consider it too dangerous for their staff to work in Somalia.

The statement was made on Wednesday by 39 organisations, including Oxfam, World Vision and Save the Children.

It came as seven people were killed in a battle on in Jowhar between fighters associated with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Ethiopian troops supporting the interim Somali government.

Mukhtar Robbow, a spokesman for the fighters, said his group had briefly seized the town.
Over the past year, Mogadishu, the capital, and other key cities have been hit by almost daily violence. Hundreds of civilians have died and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes.

The aid agency statement said: "The crisis engulfing Somalia has deteriorated dramatically while access to people in need continues to decrease; 360,000 people have been newly displaced and an additional half a million people are reliant on humanitarian assistance."

The statement is based on a report released last October.

"There are now more than one million internally displaced people in Somalia. Intense conflict in Mogadishu continues to force an average of 20,000 people from their homes each month."

Last week, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, presented the Security Council with a report proposing the deployment of 27,000 peacekeepers to replace the stretched African Union force.

The Security Council has reviewed options for increased UN involvement in Somalia, but certain members have ruled out an early deployment of a full peacekeeping force.

The aid agencies said families left in the capital are among "the poorest of the poor who did not have the means to flee".

"Record high food prices, hyper-inflation and drought in large parts of the country is leaving communities struggling to survive," they said.

Dutch Islam film posted on website

Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, has posted a film on the internet that accuses the Quran of inciting violence, despite government fears that it will offend Muslims and cause protests.

It was posted on his Freedom Party's website but could be watched only briefly before the site said it was not available for technical reasons.
The 15-minute film called Fitna, a Quranic term sometimes translated as "strife", started with a warning that it contains "very shocking images".

It is interspersed with images of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre and other bombings with quotes from the Quran.

The Dutch government has distanced itself from Wilders' views and fears the film will cause protests by Muslims similar to those sparked by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers in 2006.
Before seeing the film, demonstrators have already taken to the streets from Afghanistan to Indonesia to express their anger at the Netherlands, while the governments of Pakistan and Iran have sharply criticised the project.
The film shows a young girl in a headscarf being asked about Jews and Dutch broadcasters have refused to screen the film and a US-based web service on which Wilders had planned to show his film, deactivated the site at the weekend after receiving complaints.

Dutch exporters have expressed fears of a possible boycott in the Muslim world, though trade with such countries makes up only a small percentage of total exports.
There is also concern for 25,000 Dutch citizens living in Muslim countries.
Wilders has been under heavy guard because of death threats since the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch director who made a film critical of Islam's treatment of women.
His killing by a Muslim extremist triggered a wave of unrest in the Netherlands, home to almost one million Muslims out of a total population of 16 million.

Earlier this month, Dutch officials raised the national risk level to "substantial" partly because of the Wilders film and perceptions of an increased al-Qaeda threat.