ei: Passing undefeated: Remembering Haider Abdul-Shafi: "Here was someone who always managed to transcend factionalism and religiosity, tribal politics and self-serving ideologies, maintaining his principles through any external difficulties. He co-founded the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1960s and went on to start the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza in the 1970s. The resilient man led the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace talks in 1991 and in 1993 resigned the post after learning from his hotel radio that Yasser Arafat had reached a secret agreement in Oslo without consulting the Palestinian negotiators in Spain. Abdul-Shafi told me, in the first interview I had with him, that learning of Arafat's secret deal from the media was a particularly embarrassing moment for him."
Evidence of torture used in Iraq | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics : "The Foreign Office says the 'government, including its intelligence and security agencies, never use torture for any purpose' ( MI5 and MI6 to be sued for first time over torture, September 12). The evidence in the public domain from the court martial into the death of Baha Mousa and the serious abuse of 10 other Iraqi civilians is clear in establishing this is not true. UK armed forces went into Iraq with a written policy that allowed hooding, and with a policy of training interrogators to use hooding, stressing and sleep deprivation to gain intelligence. Iraqi civilians were routinely hooded in up to three sandbags - and even old plastic cement bags. When Baha Mousa died in September 2003, partly as a result of abuse while hooded, common sense dictates that at least at that point those in positions of responsibility within the civil service and military would have acted to change the poli...
Comments