500lbguerilla
10-29-2005, 06:21 PM
UN's Mehlis report discredited :: International espionage over Syria? ::
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
(Friday October 28 2005)
"Detlev Mehlis’ role in the investigation into the La Belle bombing raises disturbing questions about his role in the investigation of the assassination of Hariri. As Berlin public prosecutor, Mehlis inadvertently but consistently covered up the dubious involvement of US, Israeli and German intelligence interests in the 1986 terrorist attack; actively built a selective politically-motivated case against suspects without objective material proof; while ignoring and protecting a group of suspects with documented connections to western secret services. This background fundamentally challenges the credibility of his investigation of the Hariri assassination."
_______________________
The Bush and Blair governments have rallied together on the back of the new UN report, released last Friday, into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, drumming up international pressure on Syria. President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, along with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, called for urgent Security Council action in response to the report’s findings that Syrian military intelligence officials were behind the plot.
Man behind the report
But the background of the UN report’s author, Detlev Mehlis - Commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the Hariri assassination – raises disturbing questions about the integrity of the UN investigation, and indeed about the wider role and motives of the US and British governments.
Mehlis is currently Senior Public Prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney General in Berlin, and has prosecuted numerous terrorism and organized crime cases including most prominently the 1982 bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin. That terrorist attack was promptly blamed by the Reagan administration on Libya, justifying the US bombing of the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, killing at least 30 civilians including children.
Concocting evidence
The immediate evidence used to blame Libya consisted of alleged National Security Agency intercepts of coded exchanges between Tripoli and the East Berlin Libyan Peoples Bureau saying “We have something that will make you happy”, and another after the bombing: “An event occurred. You will be pleased with the result.” But according to former Israeli intelligence colonel Victor Ostrovsky in his sworn testimony for the Lockerbie trial, Mossad commandos had set up the transmitter in Tripoli generating false telex signals about the “success” of the Berlin bomb. The intercepts had been concocted by Mossad, he said.
German TV reveals all
An investigation by German public television’s Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) broadcast on 25th August 1998 reported that several leading suspects in the Berlin disco bombing were being protected from prosecution by western intelligence services. These included a group of terrorists led by “Mahmoud” Abu Jaber, a man “particularly involved in the preparation of the La Belle attack.” The group lived in East Berlin and met almost daily with the official suspects who were defendants in the court proceedings. According to Russian and East German intelligence services, the group worked for western intelligence.
KGB and Stassi files
KGB files reviewed by reporter John Goetz in the Spring 1996 edition of Covert Action Quarterly revealed that Abu Jaber was a CIA informer. Indeed, one KGB report documented a meeting between Abu Jaber and his CIA handler two days before the La Belle bombing. Abu Jaber apparently told his handler that the price of the bombing would be $30,000. Colonel Frank Weigand, who defected from the Stassi (East German police), recounted a conversation between a Berlin official involved in the La Belle investigation and a high-ranking West German intelligence officer. The Berlin investigator told his West German colleague: “Well, when I add it all up, I think the Yanks did this thing themselves.” Even the German role is questionable. According to the German Law Journal, two of the defendants charged as conspirators in the bombing, Ali Chanaa and Verene Chanaa, were agents of the East German Ministry of State Security since 1982, responsible for gathering intelligence on Arabs in West Berlin.
(more much more...)
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/22038
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quite the coincidence if you ask me...
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
(Friday October 28 2005)
"Detlev Mehlis’ role in the investigation into the La Belle bombing raises disturbing questions about his role in the investigation of the assassination of Hariri. As Berlin public prosecutor, Mehlis inadvertently but consistently covered up the dubious involvement of US, Israeli and German intelligence interests in the 1986 terrorist attack; actively built a selective politically-motivated case against suspects without objective material proof; while ignoring and protecting a group of suspects with documented connections to western secret services. This background fundamentally challenges the credibility of his investigation of the Hariri assassination."
_______________________
The Bush and Blair governments have rallied together on the back of the new UN report, released last Friday, into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, drumming up international pressure on Syria. President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, along with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, called for urgent Security Council action in response to the report’s findings that Syrian military intelligence officials were behind the plot.
Man behind the report
But the background of the UN report’s author, Detlev Mehlis - Commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the Hariri assassination – raises disturbing questions about the integrity of the UN investigation, and indeed about the wider role and motives of the US and British governments.
Mehlis is currently Senior Public Prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney General in Berlin, and has prosecuted numerous terrorism and organized crime cases including most prominently the 1982 bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin. That terrorist attack was promptly blamed by the Reagan administration on Libya, justifying the US bombing of the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, killing at least 30 civilians including children.
Concocting evidence
The immediate evidence used to blame Libya consisted of alleged National Security Agency intercepts of coded exchanges between Tripoli and the East Berlin Libyan Peoples Bureau saying “We have something that will make you happy”, and another after the bombing: “An event occurred. You will be pleased with the result.” But according to former Israeli intelligence colonel Victor Ostrovsky in his sworn testimony for the Lockerbie trial, Mossad commandos had set up the transmitter in Tripoli generating false telex signals about the “success” of the Berlin bomb. The intercepts had been concocted by Mossad, he said.
German TV reveals all
An investigation by German public television’s Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) broadcast on 25th August 1998 reported that several leading suspects in the Berlin disco bombing were being protected from prosecution by western intelligence services. These included a group of terrorists led by “Mahmoud” Abu Jaber, a man “particularly involved in the preparation of the La Belle attack.” The group lived in East Berlin and met almost daily with the official suspects who were defendants in the court proceedings. According to Russian and East German intelligence services, the group worked for western intelligence.
KGB and Stassi files
KGB files reviewed by reporter John Goetz in the Spring 1996 edition of Covert Action Quarterly revealed that Abu Jaber was a CIA informer. Indeed, one KGB report documented a meeting between Abu Jaber and his CIA handler two days before the La Belle bombing. Abu Jaber apparently told his handler that the price of the bombing would be $30,000. Colonel Frank Weigand, who defected from the Stassi (East German police), recounted a conversation between a Berlin official involved in the La Belle investigation and a high-ranking West German intelligence officer. The Berlin investigator told his West German colleague: “Well, when I add it all up, I think the Yanks did this thing themselves.” Even the German role is questionable. According to the German Law Journal, two of the defendants charged as conspirators in the bombing, Ali Chanaa and Verene Chanaa, were agents of the East German Ministry of State Security since 1982, responsible for gathering intelligence on Arabs in West Berlin.
(more much more...)
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/22038
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quite the coincidence if you ask me...