It was tagged "Amnesty Trail." Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens followed it to "amnesty" in the United States. The Strategic Border Initiative was supposed to plug the hole at the border. Just as we predicted, it failed.
Now citizens are documenting just how bad things really are.
    On Friday, March 28, these brave citizens used a thermal camera to document the flood of invaders. Their report not only shows the flood of probable illegal aliens, it documents how negligent the Border Patrol is in apprehending these people.
    "The degree of betrayal of the people of the United States has never seen an historic equal," said Glenn Spencer of American Patrol.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office

From left: Mug shots of Efrain Malave-Bermudez, 34, Ernie Azucey, 23, and Juan Ayende-Nieves, 52.

TAMPA — Airport police arrested three baggage handlers Friday on charges of dealing in stolen property pilfered from Continental Airlines luggage checked at Tampa International Airport.

Among the electronics airport police recovered were laptop computers, digital cameras, cell phones, iPods, a GPS device and headphones.

All three work for Delta Global Services, a company contracted to handle baggage for Continental, arrest reports state.

The three were traced through a rigged laptop computer loaded into luggage March 12 on a Continental flight to Houston.

Continental’s security had the laptop loaded with software that would track any activity on the computer if it was turned on. The computer never made it to Houston, reports state.

On Tuesday, someone turned on the computer and accessed a MySpace account, and the software gave investigators images of what the user viewed while logged on.

The computer was turned on again Wednesday and Thursday. Police were able to trace the computer to a woman who said she got it from one of the baggage handlers who bought it for $350.

An arrest report said one of the men told investigators he bought laptops for $60, iPods for $10 and digital cameras for $50.

Airport police released no further details Sunday.

"It is an ongoing investigation," airport spokeswoman Kelly Figley said.

Arrested were Efrain Malave-Bermudez Jr., 34, 6720 S. Lois Ave., on seven counts of dealing in stolen property; Juan Ayende-Nieves, 52, 2004 E. Lake Ave., on four counts of dealing in stolen property; and Ernie Azucey, 23, 8510 Hyaleah Road, on 33 counts of dealing in stolen property.

Azucey is being held in Orient Road Jail, with bail set at $247,500. Malave-Bermudez’s bail is $52,500, jail records show.

Ayende-Nieves was released after posting $30,000 bail.

The electronics that were seized include six laptop computers, nine digital cameras and three cell phones. Police also recovered nine pairs of sunglasses.

The report says investigators are trying to contact the owners of the items.

[Check out the Arrest Report below. The three men are illegal aliens. Azucey’s POB, name, and ethnicity are questionable] 

Source

ORLANDO, Fla. — Four men in Orlando were charged with a hate crime after they pummeled a 62-year-old woman and her two mentally-challenged companions at a public park after they didn’t pay a "fee" for being white, police said.

Investigators said the victims were walking into a Kaley Park when they were confronted by Christopher Colbert, Erick Golden, Willie Pritts and Antoniette Boone.

Police said the victims were told that since they are white, they had to pay a fee to be in the park.

When the three didn’t pay, the men beat them, officers said.

One of the victims was held up with a knife, a police report said.

Deputies stopped the men a few miles from the park and they were taken into custody.

The men face several charges in connection with the incident.

Source

Heads_Up FR

 By KENNETH P. VOGEL

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion– positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he’s projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize(d) his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago non-profit group that issued it. And it found that Obama – the day after sitting for the interview – filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes adding to one answer.

The two questionnaires, provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign, were later supplied directly from the group, Independent Voters of Illinois – Independent Precinct Organization. Obama and his then-campaign manager, who Obama’s campaign asserts filled out the questionnaires, were familiar with the group, its members and positions, since both were active in it before his 1996 state Senate run.

Through an aide, Obama, who won the group’s endorsement as well as the statehouse seat, did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved – or even read – the latter questionnaire.

“Sen. Obama didn’t fill out these state Senate questionnaires – a staffer did – and there are several answers that didn’t reflect his views then or now,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s campaign, in an emailed statement. “He may have jotted some notes on the front page of the questionnaire at the meeting, but that doesn’t change the fact that some answers didn’t reflect his views. His eleven years in public office do.”

But the questionnaires provide fodder to question Obama’s ideological consistency and electability. Those questions are central to efforts by Obama’s presidential rival Hillary Clinton to woo the superdelegates whose votes represent her best chance to wrest the Democratic nomination from Obama.

Taken together – and combined with later policy pronouncements – the two 1996 questionnaires paint a picture of an inexperienced Obama still trying to feel his way around major political issues and less constrained by the nuance that now frames his positions on sensitive issues.

Consider the question of whether minors should be required to get parental consent – or at least notify their parents – before having abortion.

The first version of Obama’s questionnaire responds with a simple “No.”

The amended version, though, answers less stridently: “Depends on how young – possibly for extremely young teens, i.e. 12 or 13 year olds.”

By 2004, when his campaign filled out a similar questionnaire for the IVI–IPO during his campaign for U.S. Senate, the answer to a similar question contained still more nuance, but also more precision. “I would oppose any legislation that does not include a bypass provision for minors who have been victims of, or have reason to fear, physical or sexual abuse,” he wrote.

The evolution continued at least through late last year, when his campaign filled out a questionnaire for a non-partisan reproductive health group  that answered a similar question with even more nuance.

“As a parent, Obama believes that young women, if they become pregnant, should talk to their parents before considering an abortion. But he realizes not all girls can turn to their mother or father in times of trouble, and in those instances, we should want these girls to seek the advice of trusted adults - an aunt, a grandmother, a pastor,” his campaign wrote to RH Reality Check.

“Unfortunately, instead of encouraging pregnant teens to seek the advice of adults, most parental consent bills that come before Congress or state legislatures criminalize adults who attempt to help a young woman in need and lack judicial bypass and other provisions that would permit exceptions in compelling cases.”

Both versions of the 1996 questionnaires provide answers his presidential campaign disavows to questions about whether Obama supports capital punishment and state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.”

He responded simply “No” and “Yes,” respectively, to those questions on both questionnaires.

But a fact sheet provided by his campaign flatly denies Obama ever held those views, asserting he “consistently supported the death penalty for certain crimes, but backed a moratorium until problems were fixed.” And it points out that as a state senator, he led an effort to reform Illinois’ death penalty laws.

On guns, the fact sheet says he “has consistently supported common sense gun control, as well as the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

After Politico’s story on the first questionnaire, Clinton aides seized on the handgun-ban answer in particular, which a campaign press release asserted called into question Obama’s electability.

That was a curious argument to make in a Democratic primary. But Republicans will certainly seek to make it in the general election if Obama is the Democratic standard-bearer against the presumptive GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

It could also provide ammunition for a line of attack quietly peddled for some time by Republicans. They allege Obama has a penchant for blaming his staff for gaffes ranging from missing a union event in New Hampshire to circulating opposition research highlighting the Clintons’ ties to India and Indian-Americans to underestimating the amount of cash bundled for his campaigns by his former fundraiser, indicted businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

And the questionnaires play into storylines pushed by both Republicans and Clinton suggesting Obama has altered his views to appeal to differing audiences.

That suggestion is galling to many members of IVI-IPO, some of whom have relationships with Obama that date back nearly 15 years. The group had endorsed Obama in every race he’d run – including his failed long-shot 2000 primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) – until now.

The group’s 37-member board of directors, meeting last year soon after Obama distanced himself from the first questionnaire, stalemated in its vote over an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. Forty percent supported Obama, 40 percent sided with Clinton and 20 percent voted for other candidates or not to endorse.

“One big issue was: Does he or does he not believe the stuff he told us in 1996?” said Aviva Patt, who has been involved with IVI-IPO since 1990 and is now the group’s treasurer. She volunteered for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign, but voted to endorse the since-aborted presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and professed disappointment over Obama’s retreat from ownership of the questionnaire.

“I always believed those to be his views,” she said, adding some members of the board argued Obama’s 1996 answers were “what he really believes in and he’s tailoring it now to make himself more palatable as a nationwide candidate.”

It’s more benign than that, contended fellow board member Lois Dobry, who voted to endorse Obama last year and hosted the 1996 interview session at her home.

That “was a long time ago,” she said. “And anybody who hasn’t refined their ideas over that period of time … is not anybody I’m interested in,” she said. Dobry asserted Obama’s views have evolved mostly at the margins and that he’s still the same person she met in the 1990s.

“He always was right from the start very, very clear on where he was coming from on most issues,” she said, “and he certainly wasn’t letting anybody else decide that for him.”

Dobry, Patt and current IVI-IPO state chairman David K. Igasaki, a Clinton supporter, agreed Obama likely didn’t write every word of his campaign’s 1996 answers. But they all dismissed as unbelievable his presidential campaign’s assertion that Obama never saw or signed off on the state Senate questionnaires.

Campaigns are routinely bombarded with all manner of questionnaires from advocacy groups of every stripe, so it’s not uncommon to have staffers fill them out in candidates’ names. But usually there’s some process by which the answers are vetted to insure consistency with the candidates’ views.

And there were plenty of reasons to believe that occurred in the case of Obama’s 1996 IVI-IPO questionnaire.

The group was very influential in Obama’s South Side district. It also was a leader on government reform issues, which Obama has made a centerpiece of his political persona.

He and his campaign manager, Carol Harwell, both were active with IVI-IPO prior to his candidacy, and had once helped interview candidates seeking the group’s endorsement, according to Igasaki.

Dobry called Harwell “an extremely experienced person, also someone highly familiar with IVI. And she would know perfectly well that the candidate would have to answer questions based on these answers and to suddenly have the candidate discover that somebody else had written answers that they were in no way in agreement with would be pretty embarrassing, right?”

Harwell, a veteran Democratic operative who got her start working for the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s and now works for Cook County Clerk David Orr, last year told Politico she filled out the first questionnaire.

But she did not return several telephone messages asking about the second questionnaire and the handwritten notes on it.

They appear under a question asking candidates to “list all endorsements you have received so far.” In typed text that matches that of the rest of the answers, both of Obama’s questionnaires list four local Democratic organizations and two aldermen. But the latter questionnaire adds to that with hand-written notes listing another 10 endorsements, including an Illinois seniors group, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, IBEW and unions representing nurses and firefighters.

Igasaki said Obama was shoo-in for the IVI-IPO endorsement, but that it was important to have a strong showing because “our chapter basically was his field operation. … Those people were already working for him and it was important for him to identify with us.”

Patt, though, conceded the inevitability of the group’s endorsement could have led Harwell to be “less than 100 percent careful” in filling out the questionnaire “because it probably didn’t matter that much at the time. It’s only in the context that it’s now found that has much greater importance than anyone could have imagined it would back in 1996.”

On Tuesday, the federal government begins accepting visa applications for 65,000 skilled foreign workers. But much as it could use some extra help, Progress Software Corp. won’t be applying for any of these coveted H-1B visas.

Instead, the Massachusetts company is embracing a different visa program, called L-1, that lets businesses import workers who’ve already been hired at their overseas offices.

"It’s certainly easier than getting an H-1 visa," said Todd Tracy, the company’s director of talent planning and acquisition.

Despite the slowing economy, companies say it’s hard to find enough highly skilled workers. The H-1B program was designed to help businesses hire capable foreign workers, but demand for the 65,000 visas far exceeded supply in 2007, and the same is expected this year.

Many tech companies have embraced L-1 visas as an alternative. Companies can apply for the visas at any time of year, and there is no limit to the number that can be issued. The United States granted 53,000 L-1s in 2006, up 33 percent from the number granted in 2000.

But critics of U.S. immigration policy say some companies are misusing the L-1 program. "We have found and heard lots of stories recently of companies that are really kind of abusing it," said Bob Meltzer, chief executive of Visanow.com, a Chicago company that processes visa applications online.

Many of the leading recipients of L-1 visas are Indian companies such as Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Ltd., which specialize in providing foreign workers to U.S. companies. The Indian companies’ use of the visas is legal, but Meltzer thinks the L-1 program should be available only to U.S.-based firms.

"It wasn’t created to help the Indian companies," he said. "It was intended to support American companies and the American economy."

Some companies also abuse the L-1 system, according to Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, which seeks to protect U.S. high-tech workers. While the H-1B program requires employers to pay foreign workers the prevailing U.S. wage for a particular job, L-1 has no such requirement. Thus an engineer brought in from, say, India, could be paid the same as in their home country, rather than the much higher pay U.S. engineers demand.

"There’s tens of thousands of foreign workers working in the U.S., and they continue to be paid in their foreign wages," Berry said.

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., have filed legislation to reform the L-1 and H-1B programs. Their bill would require companies to pay a prevailing wage to L-1 visa employees and would forbid the use of L-1 visas by outsourcing companies.

Meanwhile, some in Congress favor jacking up the number of H-1B visas. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., recently introduced a bill to raise the H-1B visa quota from 65,000 to 130,000 a year. Meanwhile, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, filed legislation to raise the cap to 195,000.

Progress officials would welcome an increase.

"We don’t see any decrease in our employment needs at all," said Joe Andrews, vice president of human resources at the company, which makes programs to monitor and manage business computing activities.

But last year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service shut down the H-1B application process the day after it began, having received 133,000 applications for the 65,000 slots. The agency ended up choosing successful applicants through a computer lottery. Many in the technology sector predict a similar rush this year. Faced with such daunting odds, Progress focused instead on L-1 visas.

"The unavailability of the H-1B visas has put us in a position where I don’t think it’s part of our overall strategy right now," Tracy said.

Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc., a microchip manufacturing equipment maker in Gloucester, Mass., hasn’t entirely given up on H-1B visas. Company officials expect to apply for about three of them Tuesday.

But they’re also counting on an H-1B alternative: the O visa, a special program to help companies hire foreign workers with exceptional skills.

The program is sometimes used to enable foreign athletes to play for U.S. teams; Varian uses it to hire scientists and engineers.

"Because some of the people we want to hire are Ph.D.s and are outstanding in their field, we’re able to apply for an O visa," Varian human resources manager Bob Moore said.

O visas are far less controversial than other foreign-worker visas because so few are issued — fewer than 7,000 in 2006, with another 3,700 for workers who assist the exceptional employees.

Many tech companies say they’ll take their chances with the H-1B system.

RSA, the security division of EMC Corp., the giant data-storage company, will ask for about 10 visas.

"We expect to grow this year, and that means we need more people to do more things," RSA president Art Coviello said.

Coviello said he is especially eager to hire foreign recruits who have recently graduated from U.S. universities.

"It just seems a shame that we have so many people coming here to get an education … and we end up sending them home," he said.

Source

An unlicensed cab driver will seek to show a federal jury this week that the police department is failing to abide by Mayor Bloomberg’s pledge that the city won’t alert immigration authorities to illegal aliens who otherwise obey the law.

The case of the cab driver, Waheed Saleh of Jenin in the West Bank, indicates that a New York City police lieutenant casually tipped off a federal immigration officer about Mr. Saleh’s immigration status, court documents in the case show.

Mr. Saleh’s civil trial against the lieutenant and another police officer is expected to begin tomorrow. It may be the first time that the city has been called to account in connection with Mr. Bloomberg’s Executive Order 41. Issued in 2003, that order was intended to encourage illegal immigrants to seek out help from the police department and other agencies and allay fears that the city would turn their names over to federal immigration officials.

Court records show that police officers considered Mr. Saleh to be a troublemaker who could turn violent when confronted by the minor annoyances of big-city life, such as a dispute over a parking spot or the high price of cigarettes. In one instance, officers responded to a 911 call from a bodega employee who claimed Mr. Saleh threw a pack of cigarettes at him after a dispute over its price, according to court documents. In another instance, police officers broke up a fistfight between Mr. Saleh and another man over a parking spot, according to depositions. Police believed that Mr. Saleh, earlier in the fight, had tried to use his vehicle to ram a person standing in the street, the documents say.

Mr. Saleh maintains that the immigration tip-off was in retaliation for the repeated complaints he had made against the second police officer he is suing, Kishon Hickman, who policed the intersection of 231st Street and Broadway in the Bronx, where Mr. Saleh often sought fares for his cab. The complaints, which alleged general harassment but were never substantiated, were made to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of police misconduct.

Mr. Saleh’s lawsuit claims that the retaliation he believes he faced in response to his complaints amounts to a violation of his First Amendment rights. Two acquaintances of Mr. Saleh have filed affidavits in court claiming that Officer Hickman told them to tell Mr. Saleh to drop his complaints or the police would cause him difficulties.

Depositions of police officers and federal immigration officials do indicate that police at the 50th precinct did try to get Mr. Saleh deported. When an agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Rodger Werner, was at the precinct house in late 2003 or early 2004 in search of someone other than Mr. Saleh, a police lieutenant, Kevin Nicholson, volunteered him with Mr. Saleh’s name, Mr. Nicholson, who is now a captain, said in a deposition. And on December 20, 2004, Mr. Nicholson and other officers tipped off the federal agents that Mr. Saleh could be found at his usual intersection. Mr. Nicholson sat in a nearby car until the federal immigration agents had arrested Mr. Saleh.

There is some dispute as to what role Officer Hickman, the recipient of Mr. Saleh’s complaints, played in alerting immigration authorities about Mr. Saleh. In a deposition, Officer Hickman said he had never spoken to any federal immigration officers about Mr. Saleh. In a police report and a deposition, a second immigration officer, Mark Limongelli, claims he was in contact with Officer Hickman about what Mr. Hickman described as Mr. Saleh’s "disturbances in the neighborhood," including his driving an unlicensed livery cab.

The city’s policy for not sharing information with the federal government about illegal immigrants contains an exception for immigrants suspected of crimes. Given Mr. Saleh’s trouble with the law, he appears to fall under that exception. Police policy in effect at the time, but no longer, required communications between the NYPD and federal immigration officials to begin with a written report that went through the NYPD’s Intelligence Division. A police Internal Affairs Bureau report concluded that Captain Nicholson did violate the procedures on alerting the federal immigration officials in Mr. Saleh’s case. But the report, which was filed in federal court, found that Mr. Saleh’s claim that Captain Nicholson was acting in response to the complaints against Officer Hickman was unsubstantiated.

"What you people believe is I am trying to get this guy for complaining," Captain Nicholson said of Mr. Saleh in a deposition. "It is not the truth."

Captain Nicholson, in the deposition, said he was not aware of the procedures required of NYPD officers who wanted to pass on information to immigration authorities. He said he believed he was allowed to release information about immigration status to federal agents if the the alien "is engaged in criminal activity."

Mr. Saleh is represented by the firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Lawyers on the case could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for the city law department declined to comment.

"It may be sound practice for NYPD officers to alert ICE when they encounter unlawful aliens under normal circumstances, but when they do so for retaliatory purposes, they run afoul of the Constitution," the judge handling the case, Sidney Stein of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, wrote in a ruling allowing the case to go forward last year. ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Judge Stein noted that there is no evidence to suggest either Captain Nicholson or Officer Hickman had ever contacted federal immigration officials about any other illegal immigrant besides Mr. Saleh.

At one point, Mr. Saleh had been released from federal custody on bail. His current whereabouts could not be verified. He is expected to be present for his trial.

Source

A task force led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided more than two dozen mostly Latino night clubs, restaurants, pool halls and other businesses Saturday night, arresting 49 undocumented immigrants employed as security guards, officials said.

All of those arrested work for two local security companies, which authorities declined to identify Sunday.

"We don’t want to compromise the investigation so we’re not releasing the two security company names yet," said Jamille Bradfield, spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office, which is participating in the investigation.

It’s unclear if more arrests are expected, officials said.

At 11 p.m. Saturday, teams made up of local, state and federal officers simultaneously hit 26 businesses in the Love Field area, northwest Dallas, Old East Dallas and Lakewood. No injuries were reported.

Authorities recovered four pistols. Federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from possessing firearms.

Those arrested also face charges of being in the country illegally.

Five of the suspects face charges of document tampering in order to get licensed as a security officer and to carry a firearm, Ms. Bradfield said. That is a third-degree felony, and the punishment range is two to 10 years.

"Hopefully, this operation will help us send a message that we will not tolerate the falsification of documents for undocumented aliens under the guise of providing security," said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins in a statement Sunday.

Among those businesses raided were Ojeda’s Restaurant on Maple Avenue and the Dallas Gentlemen’s Club on West Northwest Highway.

None of the managers at any of the businesses reached had any comment.

Four of those arrested were from El Salvador, and the others were Mexican, authorities said.

One of the Salvadorans was in the U.S. legally, immigration officials said.

It’s unclear what charges he faces.

In addition to ICE and the district attorney’s office, the following agencies also participated Saturday night: the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Dallas Police Department; the Texas Department of Public Safety; the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission; and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas.

Source

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Bob Parks is a nationally syndicated political and social columnist. In addition to writing radio commentary, Mr. Parks appears on the award-winning television program, "Black & Right"

By Scott Ott for ScrappleFace

Ending weeks of speculation, Sen. Hillary Clinton today pulled out of the race for the Democrat presidential nomination, and announced she would endorse Prozac, a prescription drug used to combat depression and obsessive compulsive disorder among other conditions.

The New York senator, who launched her White House bid claiming that she didn’t want to start a campaign “but a conversation” that she was “in to win”, this morning said abruptly: “This conversation is over. I win.”

The former presumptive front runner then promptly inked a $7.9 million deal with Eli Lilly to become the national poster-woman for its flagship antidepressant drug.

A spokesman for the pharmaceutical company said, “If Prozac can keep Hillary Clinton on an even keel after the shattering of her life’s ambition and manifest destiny, think what it can do for those of us who are just feeling a little blue.”

Asked if she would eventually endorse presidential rival Sen. Barack Obama, she said, “With my Prozac contract, we’ve established the benchmark price for all future endorsements. That said, I’d be glad to back Barack for the good of the party, and of the nation.”

PARIS - Boubakeur el Hakim traded his Paris neighborhood of boulangeries and halal butcher shops for the insurgent camps of Iraq. When he came home, he told his war stories to other young men on the forgotten edges of French society, allegedly persuading some to follow in his footsteps.

His younger brother did, and died fighting U.S. forces.

After years of investigation by French authorities, el Hakim, 24, went on trial this month in a case exposing how the Iraq war has sucked radical youths from Europe to a battlefield where they have learned skills that officials fear may one day be used in domestic terror attacks.

Along with four other young Frenchmen, a Moroccan and an Algerian, el Hakim is accused of funneling French Muslim fighters to Iraq. All the Frenchmen except suspected ringleader Farid Benyettou, 26, have acknowledged going to Iraq or planning to go. All deny inciting others to go.

All seven men are accused of criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, a vague charge that carries a maximum 10-year sentence, though the prosecutor only asked for between three and eight years.

The case is a delicate one in France, which strongly opposed the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq but has long struggled against homegrown terrorism. It also highlights a dilemma in many European nations with growing Muslim populations: Cracking down hard risks alienating or radicalizing moderate Muslims and betraying western ideals of tolerance.

The suspected nucleus of the network, janitor-turned-street preacher Benyettou, told the court the case against him was "fantasy" and an affront to his freedom of speech. He told the judge he had served only as a friendly ear to young people in his neighborhood, answering questions about Islam that went ignored by France’s secular schools and institutions.

In one interrogation session with anti-terrorist agents, however, Benyettou said: "I taught that suicide attacks are legitimate under Islam."

"Jihad is justified," he said in another session in the days following his January 2005 arrest, according to the depositions viewed by The Associated Press.

El Hakim described placing and detonating roadside bombs with equipment that resembled a cordless phone, the transcript of one deposition says. He claimed 10 American troops were killed in the last three operations he took part in, it says.

In a French radio interview broadcast from Baghdad in 2003, he urged Parisian friends to join him on the battlefields. "I’m ready to set off dynamite and boom! Boom! We kill all the Americans!" he said on RTL radio.

In court, while he didn’t deny his radio appeal, el Hakim said some of his statements to police were made under duress and that his role in Iraq was primarily "humanitarian."

Investigators say the alleged network funneled about a dozen French fighters to camps linked to al-Qaida in Iraq head Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and sought to send more before he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006. At least seven French insurgents have died, some in suicide bombings, police say.

The classified case file could fill a suitcase. It includes transcripts of taped phone conversations; suspects’ family trees; extremist Islamic sermons; excerpts from a Web site explaining how to use Kalashnikov rifles; and grainy images of dozens of people questioned in the case.

Since the group was dismantled in 2005, young French Muslims wanting to fight abroad have largely steered clear of such organized cells, according to a senior French police official not authorized to be named publicly because of agency policy. Instead, youths are heading to war zones individually, to better avoid detection.

The key concern for French police is not where the fighters go but what they do when they come back to France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, nearly 10 percent of its 62 million people.

There has been no mention in the Paris trial of any plan to attack French sites, but officials say they remain worried about the possibility , and that fear bolsters the prosecutor’s case.

The so-called 19th arrondissement network is named for the Paris district where it was based, a multi-national neighborhood where families with roots in one-time French colonies in North Africa crowd into housing projects that rise above street markets offering Moroccan melons and pungent French cheese.

Frustration among youth of immigrant backgrounds over discrimination and bleak job prospects helped fuel riots in suburban housing projects around France in 2005. That same frustration, defense lawyer Dominique Many said, pushes some toward Islamic extremism.

Benyettou practiced a strict Salafist interpretation of Islam, and enjoyed credibility among radicals because his brother-in-law was a convicted member of an Algerian insurgency movement.

Benyettou exhibited little charisma during the trial, his gaunt frame hunched on the bench, occasionally brushing back his chest-length hair or nudging up his oversized glasses.

But back in the 19th arrondissement, he persuaded , by his own admission to investigators , about 10 young people to leave France for Iraq. In court, he acknowledged he had had "a role" in helping fighters who wanted to go to Iraq, but said there was no organized network.

"I really believed in the idea," said one of his students, defendant Cherif Kouachi, 25. He said he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib.

Another alleged member of the group, Peter Cherif, was arrested by U.S. authorities and his mother says he was held in Abu Ghraib. He faces a separate trial in France.

Another, 25-year-old Mohammed El Ayouni, who lost an arm and an eye in 2004 in a U.S. tank shelling near Fallujah, described administering IVs and shots to injured fighters and keeping watch for American troops. He said Iraqi families welcomed the French fighters, preparing their meals and laundering their clothes.

The fighters said they traveled through Syria first, taking Arabic lessons and getting basic weapons training.

When Boubakeur’s brother Redouane el Hakim was killed in July 2004 , found in an insurgent hideout in Fallujah bombarded by U.S. forces , his mother organized a memorial celebration of her son’s martyrdom, according to court documents and two defense lawyers on the case.

It was American authorities who first confirmed the presence of French citizens among Iraqi insurgents, judicial documents show.

Other European countries have also fed fighters to Iraq.

Two men considered linked to Europe’s deadliest Islamic terror attack, the 2004 bombings in Madrid, are believed to have later killed themselves in suicide attacks in Iraq. Spanish authorities have arrested dozens of people suspected of recruiting Islamic fighters for the Iraq insurgency.

Italian courts have convicted several North Africans of recruiting militants for Iraq in Italy in recent years.

Source

NATO, Pakisatni, Afghan officials

Afghan, Nato and Pakistan officials opened the first of six intelligence-sharing centres to be dotted along the nations’ troubled border to boost anti-terrorism efforts.

The centre opened in key Afghan border town Torkham, and the others, will improve coordination between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the fight against extremists, they said.

Attacks by Taliban and other factions span the porous and rugged frontier with regular deadly suicide blasts and other bombings on both sides by extremist militants.

The violence has tested relations between the Islamic neighbours, each saying the other should do more to end the fundamentalist violence.

A key problem is the movement of militants across the border, which the new centres are expected to monitor.

After complaints from Afghanistan, Pakistan threatened last year to fence or mine part of the frontier.

Military commanders from both nations meet regularly with ISAF commanders in a tripartite commission and they work together in an intelligence-sharing hub opened in the Afghan capital Kabul.

This work would be enhanced by the new border centres, with three each due on either side of the border, said US General David Rodriguez, head of the US-led coalition force that helped to topple the Taliban.

Meanwhile, a bomb blew up a small electricity department building in southern Afghanistan’s troubled Helmand province yesterday, killing two people and wounding eight, police said.

Source

Related: Al Qaeda training ‘Western-looking’ fighters

CIA head Michael Hayden says Al Qaeda is training fighters who have a ‘Western’ appearance and would be more likely to be able to penetrate US borders to mount terrorist attacks.

In a rare public interview, General Hayden said the new recruits were being trained on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which he said was a safe haven that presented a "clear and present danger'’ to the West.

But he would not comment on media reports that the United States is escalating unilateral strikes against Al Qaeda members operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

"What I can tell you about is the situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West in general - and to the United States in particular," General Hayden said.

"They are bringing operatives into that region for training, operatives that wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dallas with you when you’re coming back from overseas.

"They look Western, [people] who will be able to come into this country without attracting the kind of attention that others might."

Concern about the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region is not isolated to the US.

Australia’s recently reappointed Australian Defence Force (ADF) Chief, Angus Houston, is calling for more diplomatic pressure to convince Pakistan to crack down on insurgents flowing into Afghanistan.

In an interview with the Fairfax newspaper group, Air Chief Marshal Houston says Australia must help engage Pakistan in practical and diplomatic ways to ensure that the Taliban is denied the freedom to move across the border into Afghanistan.

On the Iraq conflict, General Hayden admitted he was kept in the dark about the Iraqi Government’s plan to crack down on Shiite militiamen in the oil-rich southern city of Basra.

"It’s a very decisive moment, it’s a very challenging thing. I guess one would say that success is not guaranteed," General Hayden said.

And he conceded it could take years for the Iraqi forces to be able to function without the help of the Americans.

As for neighbouring Iran, General Hayden still believes that country is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, even though a recent intelligence report found that it had been suspended in 2003.

"Personally, yes. It’s hard for me to explain - and this is not court of law stuff, this is in terms of beyond all reasonable doubt," he said.

Iran still insists its nuclear program is peaceful.

Source

SGT. Keith Matthew Maupin

BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) — The father of a soldier listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004 said Sunday that the military had informed him that his son’s remains were found in Iraq.

Keith Maupin said at a news conference in suburban Cincinnati that an Army general told him DNA testing had identified the remains of his son, Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, or "Matt" as he was commonly known.

Lt. Lee Packnett, an Army public affairs officer in Washington, confirmed that the Maupins were notified Sunday that their son’s remains had been identified. Packnett said an official statement about the identification would be released Monday.

Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy, part of the 724th Transportation Company, was ambushed west of Baghdad.

A week later, the Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.

That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim’s head and not the actual shooting.

The Maupins refused to believe it was their son, and the Army had listed him as missing-captured. The Maupins lobbied hard for the Army to continue listing their son as missing-captured, fearing that another designation would undermine efforts to find him.

"You never stop hoping. You never know," his mother, Carolyn Maupin, said in 2006 after Iraqi al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike, leading to speculation that U.S. intelligence could be getting closer to learning Maupin’s fate.

Matt Maupin graduated from Glen Este High School, just east of Cincinnati, in 2001 and attended the University of Cincinnati for a year before joining the Army Reserves.

Dan Simmons, the athletic director at Glen Este, remembered Maupin as a quiet but hardworking backup player on the school’s football team.

"Matt was a selfless kid on the football field," Simmons said. "He did whatever the coaches told him. He wasn’t a starter, but he made the other kids play harder."

A month after his capture, Maupin was promoted to the rank of specialist. In April 2005, Maupin was promoted to sergeant.

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The two good friends posed against a backdrop of pine trees in their adopted home. Olimjon Sobirov, the older one at 33, had recently arrived in Boise as a refugee from Uzbekistan and had landed a job manufacturing electronics.

His friend and fellow Uzbek refugee, 29-year-old Zohid Makhmedov, relished his new life in Idaho, working at Wal-Mart and spending time fishing and taking long, meandering drives.

But within two months of that photo, snapped July 1, 2006, in the mountains near Idaho City, both men would be dead in unexpected and largely unexplained ways, and a ripple of fright and intrigue would stun Uzbeks in Boise and around the world.

Rumors swirled about untraceable poisons and threats against both refugees and family members left behind, and a group of people who left their homeland in fear discovered that they didn’t feel secure in their adopted country, either.

Many of Boise’s small community of Uzbeks and their fellow refugees in a dozen states fled Uzbekistan, a country north of Afghanistan and once a part of the Soviet Union, during a military attack that left hundreds dead in a city square.

Boise’s two mysterious deaths have been discussed at the United Nations, may have attracted the attention of the FBI (though adding to the intrigue, the agency denies it), and could have helped spur a wave of refugee returns that experts say is almost unprecedented.

Around the time the two men died, Uzbek refugees living in the U.S. and other countries began returning to their homeland amid allegations the Uzbek authorities were pressuring them to come back. The most recent wave included several refugees from Boise who left this month, even as the U.S. State Department added Uzbekistan to its list of the top 10 violators of human rights.

Now, almost two years after the deaths, most of the refugees and even the local people who work with them still refuse to talk about what could have happened to the two men.

Of all the local investigators who explored the deaths, just one, Ada County Coroner Erwin Sonnenberg, will even discuss them. He can only speculate that they could be more than a mere coincidence.

"The whole espionage thing," he said. "We can’t disagree, but we can’t prove it. Yes, anything is possible, but what’s the probability?"

And just one man - Zohid Makhmedov’s brother Akram, who took that picture to commemorate what was supposed to be the start of their new lives - continues to push for the answers that have eluded him so far.

Boise has about 130 Uzbeks, he points out.

What is the probability that two of them, both friends, both young, would die in their sleep one month apart for basically unknown reasons?

"I just want to know why they died," he said.

UNEXPLAINED DEATHS A MONTH APART STUMP INVESTIGATORS

Ada County authorities investigated both deaths - the second one far more intensely than the first. But neither inquiry arrived at satisfactory answers.

During the autopsy of Olimjon Sobirov, who died first, Deputy Coroner Jack Chaffin determined Sobirov suffered from hardening of the arteries, which Chaffin figured was a likely, though not definitive, cause of death.

This common problem rarely causes death in people age 45 and younger. Only 13 Idaho residents under the age of 45 have died from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease since 1999, according to the state’s Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics.

Ada County Forensic Pathologist Glenn Groben was unable to determine how or why Zohid Makhmedov died. His death certificate states that both the cause and manner of death are undetermined, a relatively rare occurrence in the Ada coroner’s office.

"We don’t like them," Sonnenberg said.

His office gets maybe one or two deaths a year in which both the cause and manner are undetermined. Usually the cases are newborn babies or bodies too decomposed to determine what happened.

Groben told investigators he considered whether several different substances contributed to Zohid Makhmedov’s death, including cyanide and anthrax, but found no evidence.

Numerous substances can kill a person, said Sonnenberg, but without symptoms or other evidence, it is impossible to know which toxins to test for.

"We cannot test for all poisons, the state could not afford it," Sonnenberg said.

Both men now are buried in Uzbekistan, but the coroner’s office has small tissue samples preserved from each for future testing should new information come to light.

Akram Makhmedov hopes the matter isn’t dropped.

"Why? Why did this happen," he asked on a recent evening, as he sat in his living room sipping tea and eating warm homemade bread.

Glancing at the television, he noticed the program was about the first 48 hours of a murder and the actions police and investigators take to try and solve a crime. Makhmedov wasn’t interviewed until three weeks after his brother’s death.

"There!" Makhmedov gestured to the television. "Why not did the police do this? Why not did the police interview neighbors? Why not did they interview me? My family? I am very upset. Why not ask who has been in my brother’s house?"

Makhmedov shook his head when asked what he thinks may have happened to his brother and his friend. But he made it clear he is convinced the deaths were not natural and coincidental.

Other family members and Uzbek and American friends and coworkers of Zohid Makhmedov and Sobirov refused to talk to the Idaho Statesman because they did not want to get involved or are afraid. The funeral home director refused to talk, too.

"They are too afraid to even think about it," said Nigmat Nazaraliev, a close friend of the two men and the only other Uzbek refugee who would talk on the record about the fear the two deaths caused.

Nazaraliev, too, is reluctant to speculate about the deaths. He worked as a human rights activist in Uzbekistan and had his own share of difficulties with the Uzbek government. But like Akram Makhmedov, he believes both deaths were unnatural.

Foreign policy experts and people who work with refugees say the fear is prevalent, justified and deeply ingrained following years of rigid government control in Uzbekistan. The fear is simple: that they, or their family, will face retribution for making the government look bad.

"If their name or photo is in the paper, [the Uzbek government] will find out," said Goran Debelnogich, who has worked with Uzbek refugees in Ohio.

FARM FAMILY FLEES HEAVY-HANDEDUZBEK GOVERNMENT

Uzbekistan declared its independence in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Under Soviet rule the state owned all the farms, and in rural areas, much of the population worked on these massive operations.

The new Uzbek government continued to own and operate the collective farms, but it started leasing small plots for families to operate. The government told the farmers what crops to grow, whom to sell the produce to and at what price.

This is the world where Zohid and Akram Makhmedov lived, as Akram explains it.

The Makhmedov family leased 20 hectares - about 50 acres - on a collective farm to grow an orchard of several thousand apple trees. In hopes of improving the business, the family started to sell their apples on the open market, not to the local government.

When the farm operators demanded the family turn over their acres and earnings, the family refused. Police arrived and began chopping down the apple trees.

When the family tried to intervene, an officer punched their 75-year-old mother in the face. Police destroyed the orchard, and Akram Makhmedov was sentenced to five years in prison.

The family sought help from a human rights organization, and after 100 days, Makhmedov was released from jail. With the help of the United Nations, the two brothers were granted political asylum in the United States.

Craig Murray, British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2005, wrote a similar account in his book "Dirty Diplomacy."

He visited a family who refused to return their farm to the collective. The mother was beaten by a mob, one son was murdered and another jailed "for stealing his own apples," Murray wrote.

In late 2003, the brothers and their wives, along with Akram Makhmedov’s three children, arrived in Boise.

The families began learning English and enrolled their children in school.

Zohid and his wife started working at Wal-Mart. Akram and his wife got jobs at electronics manufacturing companies.

Soon the two families purchased homes across the street from each other in Meridian. They quickly assimilated into American life.

The brothers became avid PlayStation players, they watched movies and soccer games on television - Brazil was Zohid’s favorite team.

Zohid Makhmedov got personalized plates for his gray Pontiac that read "Uzbek." He frequently went on long drives, often to go fishing. Twice he visited the Oregon Coast.

"He liked the ocean," Akram Makhmedov said.

HUNDREDS FLEE AFTER SOLDIERS MASSACREHUNDREDS IN ANDIJAN

Olimjon Sobirov’s journey to Boise was even more harrowing.

On May 13, 2005, an estimated 10,000 people gathered in Babur Square in Andijan, Uzbekistan, to protest the country’s poor living conditions. Uzbek military troops began firing into the crowd. People took cover or fled. According to reports from the media and human rights groups, more than 400 people escaped down a side street and didn’t stop walking.

They trekked overnight about 30 miles to the neighboring country of Kyrgyzstan, where they entered a refugee camp. They fled Uzbekistan so quickly and so chaotically that they left everything behind, including their spouses and children.

About 250 of the Andijan refugees resettled in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, including a group of 55 who joined the Makhmedovs and other Uzbek refugees in Boise in March 2006. Sobirov was part of that group.

He moved into an apartment complex off State Street, as did many of the Andijan refugees. Already able to speak English, he got a job at PKG Inc., an electronics manufacturing company in Meridian, where Akram and Nazaraliev also worked.

The Makhmedov brothers and Nazaraliev befriended some of the new Andijan refugees. They took them fishing and to the hot springs. They played chess. They invited them to dinner in their homes.

They asked the newcomers about Andijan, about that May evening that has been referred to as Uzbekistan’s Tiananmen Square.

The Uzbek government reported 187 people died. Reports from witnesses and human rights organizations put the estimate at 300 to 1,000.

But the newcomers refused to talk about what happened - even to other Uzbeks.

"A lot of refugees in general are very protective about their refugee experience," said Leslye Boban, refugee resettlement director for International Rescue Committee Boise office. "They may have left behind family that are still at risk."

Uzbek refugees living in the United States still fear their old government, said Debelnogich, who works with refugees through the International Institute of Akron in Ohio.

"They are truly scared for their families in Uzbekistan," Debelnogich said.

His agency helped about 30 Andijan refugees resettle in Ohio. Two have since returned to Uzbekistan at the urging of family members.

During his investigation into Zohid Makhmedov’s death, Meridian police Detective Mike Lock talked to Rene Hage from World Relief, the agency that helped the Makhmedovs resettle here. She would not talk about the Uzbeks with the Statesman, citing privacy concerns, but she told Lock the Uzbek embassy was calling for all Andijan refugees to return home, saying, "[W]hen they refuse, there are consequences like something bad could happen to your family."

She also told Lock about a rumor.

"[Hage] has heard in the Uzbek community that there is a drug in their community that you can use to kill people and would not be detected," he wrote in his report.

Lock also talked to Lynn Hyneman, who helped teach the Makhmedovs English. She repeated the rumor.

"Uzbekistanis were here to persuade others to go back; otherwise they would kill them for not returning," Lock wrote.

Less than a year after arriving in the United States, more than one-third of the 250 Andijan refugees had returned to the country from which they fled. Of the 55 Andijan refugees living in Boise, 10 women left shortly after the two men’s deaths.

According to Akram Makhmedov, neither his brother nor Sobirov had planned to return to Uzbekistan.

Like Hage, Hyneman declined to speak to the Statesman about the Uzbek reaction to the deaths, as did other staff from the local refugee agencies that helped relocate the Uzbek refugees to Boise.

TWO YOUNG, HEALTHY MEN ARE FOUND DEAD IN THEIR HOMES

On the last night of July, Sobirov swam and ate dinner with friends. He went to bed at around 1 a.m.

A few hours later, his roommates awoke to get ready for work. Sobirov did not. The roommates went into Sobirov’s bedroom and found him in his bed, cold and unresponsive. They called the police.

Deputy Coroner Roy Mullen arrived at 4:45 a.m.

Boise police Detective Dave Smith noted in his report that between 20 to 30 Uzbek men gathered outside Sobirov’s apartment.

"No one spoke the entire time," Smith wrote.

Zohid Makhmedov bowled with his brother Akram on Sept. 1, the night before his death. His family joined his brother’s family for dinner and to watch movies. Nazaraliev, who was living with Akram Makhmedov at the time, joined them for dinner.

At about midnight, Zohid Makhmedov and his family walked across the street to their home where they fell asleep on the couches in the living room.

One of the children started to cry a few hours later. Zohid asked his wife Nafisa to take the child to bed. The wife and child went into the bedroom, and Nafisa fell asleep with the child for a short time.

She went back into the living room and noticed her husband’s face was white. She tried to awaken him, but he did not respond.

When the paramedics arrived and started CPR at about 5:45 a.m., the body was still warm. Deputy Coroner Erik Schmidt was called at 6:30 a.m.

Nafisa Makhmedov, who left Boise in December and could not be reached by the Statesman, would later tell police that her husband had no health problems. He did not drink alcohol, did not do drugs and did not have any allergies.

INVESTIGATIONS RAISE QUESTIONS BUT OFFERFEW ANSWERS

Boise Police Department’s two-page report on Sobirov’s death was completed Aug. 17, about two weeks before Zohid died. The death was presumed natural. No one was interviewed.

The body was returned to Uzbekistan.

Smith, the Boise detective in charge, added no new information following the second death, though, according to the Meridian police report, Smith met with Meridian officers, the deputy coroner and members of the FBI joint terrorism task force to discuss whether the two deaths were linked.

Smith has since retired from the Police Department and could not be reached for comment.

Lock, the Meridian detective who investigated the second death, conducted a far more extensive inquiry. He hired a translator to help interview Akram Makhmedov and Nazaraliev. He collected trash from both Makhmedov houses and booked about 90 water, juice and soda containers into evidence.

Almost two weeks into the investigation, Lock requested a meeting with Boise officer Smith, forensic pathologist Groben and "members of the FBI terrorist task force." He concluded the inquiry on Nov. 22.

"During the investigation I did not find any evidence to indicate foul play," he wrote in his report. "At this time I feel that this case is closed, unless other new facts present themselves in the future." Lock, too, wouldn’t talk for this story.

And adding to Akram Makhmedov’s frustration and the aura of intrigue surrounding the events, the Meridian police report contains references to the FBI. The coroner’s office and others said they were interviewed by the FBI. The FBI, though, adamantly denies it conducted an investigation into the deaths.

"We don’t have an investigation. We didn’t have an investigation, and we never have," said John Morton, supervisory senior resident agent in the Boise office.

Akram Makhmedov even went to the governor’s office for help shortly after the deaths.

Then-Gov. Jim Risch said he remembers the incident well. He, too, thought the coincidental nature of the deaths warranted a closer look and forwarded the information to the Idaho State Police.

The State Police have no records pertaining to Risch’s request, though. But the deaths occurred out of ISP’s jurisdiction, so the most ISP could do is provide assistance if requested from the investigators, ISP officials said.

If not for the police reports and Sonnenberg, the coroner who is the only official who will talk about the cases, it could seem as though nothing ever happened.

Foul play cannot be proved, nor can it be disproved, Sonnenberg said.

"Right now we do not have anything," he said. "Bring us something and we’ll look into it."

ANOTHER MYSTERY UNFOLDS AS UZBEKS RETURN EN MASSE

Of the 250 Andijan refugees who spent more than a year in refugee camps in Kyrgyzstan and Romania before being relocated to the U.S., between one-third and one-half have since returned to the country from which they fled.

The first group, 12 refugees in Arizona, left in July 2006. The most recent group, about a dozen refugees, left Boise earlier this month.

The refugees’ return to Uzbekistan has some human rights and refugee organizations baffled - and wondering whether the country was indeed pressuring its citizens to return.

"It is extremely rare, in my experience the idea or situation of a group returning en masse, together is unprecedented," said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees, who has worked with thousands of refugees over 20 years.

A few refugees occasionally will return to their home country if a war ends or a regime changes. Conditions in Uzbekistan, though, remain volatile.

"The country continues to suppress independent civil society activism and independent religious worship, and to resist investigation of and accountability for the 2005 Andijan massacre," reported Human Rights Watch, a group that says dozens of human rights workers and journalists have had to leave the country because of threats to their lives and their families.

Some of the refugees who returned to Uzbekistan have once again fled the country.

These returnees "have been a particular target of government pressure," Human Rights Watch reported in January. "They have been subjected to interrogations, constant surveillance, ostracism, and in some cases overt threats to life, which has triggered a new wave of refugees."

And in the midst of international discussions about the fears, the pressures and the ways the Uzbek government could be influencing refugees around the world, these puzzling deaths in Idaho continue to come up.

"Uncertainty surrounds the fate of Uzbeks who fled the country," reads a November 2007 report presented to the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

That report says dozens of the refugees have returned "allegedly because of homesickness" and based on "promises from the government that they would not be harmed."

"[C]oercion is thought to have been used against them or, perhaps, against their relatives in Uzbekistan," the report said.

"Concerns were even more maintained with the mysterious deaths of two Uzbek refugees in the United States while they attempted to stay."

Source

SAN ANTONIO - Their goal was an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.

However, the wording in a draft by students at the University of Texas at San Antonio appears to match another school’s code — without proper attribution.

The student currently in charge of the honor code project said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it illustrates a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don’t know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

"That’s the consequence of the Internet and the availability of things," said Daniel Wueste, director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University. "It doesn’t feel like what would be in a book. You Google it and here it comes."

Source

Wanted: Brian Woodford

A British millionaire is being sought by the FBI on charges of illegally exporting military aircraft parts to Iran.

Brian Woodford, 77, and his Chinese-American wife Laura, 63, face 20 counts, including money-laundering and illegally exporting parts from commercial aircraft and military helicopters.

According to the US Justice Department, the couple, who own 17th Century Chalmington Manor in Evershot, Dorset, shipped the pieces through their Singapore-based company, Monarch Aviation, to Tehran.

Under US law, it is illegal to sell American aircraft parts to Iran without a special licence, which the Woodfords did not have.

If convicted, they could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Mr Woodford is believed to be living in the Far East and using the name Abdullah.

His wife is being held in custody in New York and has been refused bail.

She strongly denies the charges, which her husband has also dismissed as "rubbish".

Source

 VIDEO and Photos

The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca.

Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.

One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: “He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.

We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.”

The 21-year-old plumber added: “He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.

But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

The passenger added: “One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.

“An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

“After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.”

The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.

He said: “They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.”

Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: “I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.

“I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.”

Muslims pray at pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening.

A spokesperson for bus company London United said: “We are aware of a reported incident involving our route 81.

“We are currently undertaking a full investigation into the matter.”

Route to Mecca … he kneels on prayer mat
placed at front of the bus

At the wheel … ‘Hrun’ drives No81

Source

Heads_Up FR

JERUSALEM (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday branded Zimbabwe’s president a "disgrace" to his people and to Africa, and expressed concerns about verifying whether the country held free and fair elections.

Rice, in the Mideast for peace talks, made the harsh comments after voting Saturday in Zimbabwe that presented Robert Mugabe with the toughest challenge to his 28-year rule. The main opposition party on Sunday claimed an early lead; preliminary results were expected by Monday.

"We’ve made very clear our concerns about how this election might be conducted, given the very bad record of Mugabe concerning his people, the opposition and the region," Rice told reporters after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

"We’ve tried to make a case … that there needed to be free and fair elections in Zimbabwe as much as it was possible. It’s difficult since really no international observation was allowed," the top U.S. diplomat said.

"But really, the Mugabe regime is a disgrace to the people of Zimbabwe and a disgrace to southern Africa and to the continent of Africa as whole," she said.

Zimbabwe had barred observers traveling from the United States and the European Union and several international media organizations. The State Department said Friday the U.S. would field almost a dozen poll watchers for the elections and would report afterward on the electoral process and the results.

The department, in his annual accounting of human rights practices around the world, listed Zimbabwe this month as among abusers of human rights.

In January, the Bush administration imposed financial penalties on Zimbabwe’s intelligence chief, Mugabe’s nephew, as well as two companies accused of undermining democracy in the southern African country.

It was the government’s latest move to apply more financial pressure on Mugabe, who over the years has become increasingly authoritarian, spearheading media control and takeovers of white-owned farms.

 Source

Footage of airstikes on insurgents

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) – Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his followers to stop fighting and to cooperate with Iraqi security forces Sunday, as U.S. and Iraqi forces targeted his Mehdi Army in Basra and Baghdad. [more on the ass kickin’ here]

[The article refers to Mexican anchor babies as “American teenagers”. The Mexican teenagers are allowed to travel across the border unimpeded, which makes them excellent recruits for the drug cartels]

CAMARGO, Mexico – The ranch near this border community is isolated, desolate and laced by arroyos – an ideal place, experts say, for training drug cartel assassins.

Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps.

The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico are used to train cartel recruits – ranging from Mexican army deserters to American teenagers – who then carry out killings and other cartel assignments on both sides of the border, authorities say.

"Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle," said a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat training courses. … And that’s not something that we have seen before."

Many of the camps are temporary, used for a time and then abandoned or used intermittently. Others are hidden on private land behind locked gates and have more permanent facilities, the officials said.

The land is seldom held in the name of known cartel members but is usually purchased through someone fronting for a cartel, authorities said. Sometimes "mobile" training camps are conducted on private land without the owner’s consent.

The camps include locations in Mexico’s interior, but U.S. law enforcement officials said they are acutely concerned about those along the 1,000-mile-long Texas-Mexico border – another example of the escalating drug war among feuding cartels.

In Texas, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores said he and other law enforcement officials are "doing everything we can to secure our borders with limited resources."

"We know through intelligence sources that narco-traffickers invest money in Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens in training camps to instruct them in the black art of assassination and terror," he said. "It’s even more shocking to hear that they even have mobile training sites because they take loads of money to set up."

In the state of Tamaulipas, for example, the Zetas – paramilitary enforcers of the Gulf cartel – train with other mercenaries, including the Kaibiles from Guatemala, the officials said.

The testimony of the five protected witnesses is in documents from the Mexico attorney general’s office obtained by The Dallas Morning News . Fernando Castillo, the spokesman for the attorney general’s office, confirmed the authenticity of the documents and said the report of six training camp locations in two states abutting Texas was "about right."

"We’re not talking about Marine-style or al-Qaeda-type training camps," Mr. Castillo said Friday. "These are more informal places used for target shooting and for physical exercising."

According to the printed testimony, the training has taken place at locations southwest of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville; near the town of Abasolo, between Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria; just north of the Nuevo Laredo airport; and at a place called "Rancho Las Amarillas" near a rural community, China, that is close to the Nuevo León-Tamaulipas border.

Two other ranches used as training camps, both east of Matamoros, have clandestine landing strips for cocaine shipments originating in Colombia and destined for the United States via Texas, according to the officials and testimony.

Mr. Castillo described Rancho Las Amarillas as a more sophisticated operation than the others and said Mexican authorities seized the ranch in 2002. The ranch manager, Eduardo Salvador López, was sentenced Feb. 23 to 20 years in prison for drug crimes.

Mr. Castillo added: "When we know there is a training camp, we seized them and shut them down. But because they’re often mobile and often temporary, we can’t do much about them."

Two Mexican soldiers stationed in Reynosa, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the camps are sometimes heavily fortified.

"In some cases, they’re better armed than we are," one soldier said of the cartel members. "They can bring down a plane."

A former senior Mexican intelligence official said that the use of training camps has become "standard practice" for the cartels. "Yes, there are training camps where hitmen from both sides of the border train with weapons from the United States," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There is no firm estimate of the number of people who have received training in the camps, but a U.S. intelligence official said the number was in the "hundreds" across Mexico.

It’s all part of a strategy by drug cartels to intimidate their enemies and assert control over besieged communities along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, the officials said. The result has been unprecedented violence – at least 5,000 people killed nationwide in two years – and ongoing brutal confrontations with local, state and federal forces.

"The Zetas paramilitarized the situation with training camps and military background," said a senior U.S. law enforcement official and weapons specialist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They turned battles into a prolonged war."

In small towns along the Texas-Tamaulipas border, the Zetas operate with seeming impunity, driving late-model SUVs and carrying gold-plated rifles. Roadside altars are appearing that pay tribute to "Santa Muerte," the Saint of Death, adorned with candles and Grim Reaper figurines. Residents regard them as a sign of cartel activity.

According to the witness testimony and interviews with U.S. and Mexican officials, training in the camps may range from a few weeks to months, and trainees have included American teenagers.

One of them is Rosalio Reta, 18, who was sentenced last year to 40 years in prison for a murder in Laredo. Mr. Reta’s career as a cartel hitman began at age 13, he told investigators. Authorities say he may have been involved in as many as 30 execution-style murders in the U.S. and Mexico.

Last year, Mr. Reta gave Laredo police Detective Roberto García an account of how he and other high school-age boys were trained as teenage hitmen for the Zetas. Mr. Reta told Laredo authorities he spent months training under Mateo Díaz López, "Comandante Teo," an alleged top Zeta member arrested last year in the state of Tabasco on drug and weapons charges.

Mr. Reta’s confession led to the discovery of three clandestine cells in Laredo, allegedly carrying out assignments for reputed cartel leader Miguel Treviño.

"I know we’re fighting terrorism throughout the world … but here along the border the narco-terrorists operate on both sides of the border, and so far it’s gone largely unnoticed by Washington," said Webb County Assistant District Attorney Jesús Guillén, who prosecuted Mr. Reta.

According to the printed testimony, Rancho Las Amarillas was under the control of reputed Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.

Mr. Cárdenas has been extradited to the U.S. and is awaiting trial in Houston on 17 counts of importing and distribution of drugs, as well as three charges of threatening a U.S. federal agent and one of money laundering. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Mr. Cárdenas used the ranch to raise cattle as well as to train his personal militia, many of them former army soldiers lured by promises of higher pay, according to the testimony. Pay started at about $300 a week but would double within six months – far higher than salaries for soldiers or police. Pay for hitmen and bodyguards began at $1,000 per week, according to testimony.

In September 2001, Mr. Cárdenas, a former federal police officer, began ordering new recruits lured from Mexican special forces units to the ranch for advanced training, according to the testimony.

"That course lasted two months," according to the testimony of one protected witness, who said he worked for Zeta leader Arturo Guzmán Decena. "From that point on, the Zetas, numbering more than 50, began to engage in larger operations."

Mr. Guzmán was later killed in a battle with the Mexican army in Matamoros. Today, the number of "hardcore" Zeta members is more than 300, according to an internal Mexican military intelligence report.

The training is extensive and includes the use of such weapons as AK-47 assault rifles, AR-15s, grenade launchers and .50-caliber machine guns, according to the testimony and U.S. officials.

And the training can be deadly. In September 2002, Zeta member Omar Bautista Hernández drowned during an exercise that required him to swim with his backpack and high-powered weapon, according to the testimony.

The camps serve other purposes. In his confession, Mr. Reta told Detective García that the ranches are used as execution sites, where cartel members dispose of their enemies.

In one incident, according to testimony, the bodies of four Nuevo Laredo police officers were set on fire inside barrels filled with diesel fuel. The remains were buried there the next day.

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