World Terrorism: News, History and Research Of A Changing World #6 Disinformation, Inc.

http://www.itv.com/news//index_df8bc7a5c24a6dcaf4913105943620a8.html

Extremist video uncovered
9.24, Mon Feb 5 2007

Evidence of a leading Muslim extremist calling for the beheading of British Muslim soldiers has been uncovered.

A video of Abu Izzadeen, preaching his message of hate two years ago, has been discovered on an underground website.

In the video, he said: "Whoever allies himself with the Kaffirs (non-believers) against the believers - he is one of them.

"He who joins the British Army, the American Army, he is a mortal kaffir and his only hukum (punishment) is for his head to be removed.

"Indeed, whoever changes his deen (Muslim code of life); kill him."

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/02/01/hub_firm_denies_tie_to_terror/?page=full

Hub firm denies tie to terror
US tax probe studies links to groups that may fund extremists
Overland Capital chief executive James Godec says, 'In my heart, I know what we've done is entirely appropriate.' Overland Capital chief executive James Godec says, "In my heart, I know what we've done is entirely appropriate." (BILL GREENE/GLOBE STAFF)

By Sacha Pfeiffer and Steve Bailey, Globe Staff | February 1, 2007

The chief executive of a Boston private equity firm under federal investigation for its connection to groups that allegedly finance Islamic extremists denied yesterday that his company is linked to terrorism.

"We do everything appropriately and by the book, and we adhere not just to the letter of the law but to the spirit of the law," said James M. Godec of Overland Capital Group. "I am extraordinarily cautious about this kind of stuff."

The US Department of Justice probe centers on alleged criminal tax law violations by Overland. A federal grand jury in Boston is examining suspected tax evasion by the company, according to a filing last week in US District Court in Massachusetts, and Overland's offices at 111 Huntington Ave. in Boston and in Braintree were raided two weeks ago by Internal Revenue Service agents who seized numerous records.

continues

Spain, jihadi, the world:

http://www.jihadmonitor.org/

Thanks to Milford421 for this report:

American Graffiti or Al Qaeda Threat?

http://www.theaviationnation.com/2007/02/05/american-graffiti-or-al-qaeda-threat

American Graffiti or Al Qaeda Threat?
Submitted by admin on Mon, 2007-02-05 20:59. U.S. News

ARTICLE: American Graffiti or Al Qaeda Threat?

Monday
5 Feb 2007
American Graffiti or Al Qaeda Threat?
By Annie Jacobsen in category U.S. Homeland Security

The first time flight attendant Charlotte Smith* found the
mysterious writing inside the bathroom cabinet of a 757 aircraft
while flying for a major airline, she got spooked. It was February
23, 2005. A flight attendant for twelve years, Charlotte was working
the coach class cabin of flight 853 traveling from New Jersey to
California. Everything was normal, until her discovery.

In the first of a series of interviews, Charlotte explained:

"By a fluke, I opened up a compartment in the mid-galley lav
[lavatory] and there it was, on the back of the cabinet behind where
you refill the paper towels:

CHENAULT LIVES

ZATU"

The three words Charlotte found were handwritten in black marker and
in capital letters. Puzzled by the presence of odd handwriting on an
area of an airplane that is off limits to passengers, Charlotte
began to look further. She then opened up each of the compartments
in that lavatory, carefully examining each panel wall. That's when
she discovered another set of words, also written in black marker,
but inside a different cabinet.

Those words were:

"CHENAULT IS KING"

Charlotte documented the incident. She noted the time, the flight
number and the aircraft identification number. Charlotte brought the
unusual discovery to the captain's attention. The captain was not
concerned. Instead, he told Charlotte he would make sure the
cleaning crew cleaned it up.

At home, Charlotte filed a report about the incident with the
airline's Flight Safety Reporting System program, or FASRS. But the
story of the enigmatic writing does not end there. Charlotte didn't
think much more about the incident until fourteen months later. On
April 22, 2006, Charlotte found it again.

Charlotte explained:

"It was 23:05 [11:05 p.m.] at night, in flight. It was a red-eye
from the west coast going back east. It was my job to check the
bathroom. I started opening up the cabinets to do the check. And
there it was again, hidden away behind a different panel, running
along a black wire on the cabinet:

CHENAULT IS KING

ZATU"

That wasn't all, Charlotte then opened up all the compartments. "On
top of where you stuff paper towels, a second thing was written,"
Charlotte explained.

There, it read:

CHENAULT LIVES

Now Charlotte was seriously concerned. "I told the captain
immediately. Immediately! It was a 757 aircraft again. And when I
checked the aircraft number, I discovered it was the same aircraft
number as I'd put in my report [14 months] before. Aircraft number
5428, I was not comfortable with that. There are, I think, thirty-
something 757's in the carrier's fleet. I said to myself, this is
the same plane and it's similar writing in a different place. It's
been over a year."

Charlotte reported the incident to the captain. She pointed out the
similarities and the differences between what she'd witnessed
previously and the situation she was witnessing now. The captain
told Charlotte the writing wasn't something to worry about. But
Charlotte was not convinced. Using her cell phone camera, she
photographed the evidence. This time, when she filed a second safety
report through the airline's reporting system, Charlotte demanded an
answer. She wanted to make sure someone was looking into this
second, suspicious incident involving the air carrier's planes. In
her report, she checked the box that would notify her union.

No answer came. Not from the airlines corporate security and not
from the union. Not from Homeland Security or the FBI. If one is a
coincidence, two begins a pattern. Flight attendant Charlotte Smith
was officially alarmed.

What is Federal Protocol For Reporting Suspicious Behavior?

After 9/11, Congress signed into law the Homeland Security Act of
2002 and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was born. Of the
five major functions of DHS outlined in the Bill, the first function
is "information analysis." To prevent another terrorist attack
inside the United States, the authors of the Bill determined that no
single function of DHS is more important than information gathering
and analysis.

Indeed, many of the 180,000 DHS employees would be the eyes and ears
in the field. Homeland Security agents would gather information and
send it up the chain of command. That information would be assessed
and analyzed and, if appropriate, sent further up the chain. Section
203 of the Homeland Security Act establishes the Homeland
Secretary's "entitlement" to information. Unless the President
himself directs otherwise, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff is
entitled to all information gathered in the field.

One of the few areas where people in the civil sector are obligated
to provide information to the federal government occurs in the
aviation domain. Airline crews are required to report suspicious
behavior in the field to federal officials. Even in a post 9/11
world, this was not always the case. In the early days of Homeland
Security, airline reporting procedures were vague and directed to
airline corporate security. This made for a gap in aviation
security. Former FAA security chief, Billie Vincent, explains why
this system was flawed: "I would doubt that any U.S. airline
security departments have the capability or the training to detect
any level of surveillance." And so the security hole was plugged.

The way the hole was fixed was by tasking the Federal Air Marshal
Service (FAMS) with the job. In 2003, the FAMS briefed airline
corporate Security Directors on how to instruct flight crews to
report suspicious incidents. The new protocol is for airline crews
to contact the Department of Homeland Security via the newly created
email address xxxxxxxxx@dhs.gov.

From a Federal Air Marshal Service directive made available to The
Aviation Nation:

Reporting of Suspicious Incidents

Briefing to Airline Corporate Security Directors

Airline Corporate Security Directors will inform their personnel of
the following:

• All reports will be vetted and forwarded to the National JTTF
[Joint Terrorism Task Force] for appropriate analysis and
investigation

• Follow-up investigation will be coordinated with the local FAMS
Field Office, airport police agency and local FBI JTTF or FBI Field
Office

This directive to airline corporate Security Directors couldn't have
been more clear: raw data gathered in the field needs to go to
federal law enforcement agencies. It's the job of federal law
enforcement, not the airlines, to decide what raw data mandates
further investigation and what does not. Federal law enforcement
agents, trained in analysis, are the ones equipped to do the job.

But Charlotte, like an overwhelming number of the more than fifty
flight attendants I've interviewed in the past two years, was never
made aware of the email address to DHS, and did not know she was
supposed to report suspicious incidents directly to the Federal Air
Marshal Service. She'd been trained only to file a report with the
airline's Flight Attendant Safety Reporting System, or FASRS – which
is exactly what she did.

More Puzzling Words on the Aircraft Lavatory Walls, And More Still

August 19th, 2006 was a particularly anxious time for flight crews.
Nine days earlier, British Metropolitan police and MI5 broke apart a
terrorist airplane mega-plot, one in which as many as 10 UK-US bound
airplanes were to be blown up, simultaneously, mid-flight over the
Atlantic ocean. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security put the
aviation domain on "red-alert" — the first time since 9/11. Tension
was high with federal officials warning the public that as many as
five terror suspects were still on the loose. The air carrier's
planes were named as being targeted in the foiled terror plot.

That day, Charlotte was working flight 577, a Chicago to Sacramento
flight. This is from her official FASRS report of the flight:

"I was in the aft [back] galley waiting for catering to finish. I
went to the aft LAV to do my preflight check. I opened one of the
components and found the names written in black marker. CHENAULT IS
KING. SHACK KCAHS [written in reverse]. This is the 3rd time I have
found this and other names in 757 lavatories since Feb. 2005."

Immediately after finding the words, Charlotte took the information
to the captain. She told the captain the history of her finding
messages written on the walls of the aircraft bathroom cabinets. The
captain did not see this situation as a security threat; Charlotte
did. "I couldn't fly," Charlotte explained, "I've never done that
before. I could not fly."

Before Charlotte left the aircraft, Charlotte documented the
incident. Again, using her cell phone camera, she took photographs.
At home, Charlotte filled out what would be her third FASRS incident
report for the airlines. Four days later, she received this in an
email from corporate security:

"Please feel free to report any issues at any time. If you have
photos, please send them to me at WHQSE. Ill [sic] pass this info on
to our investigators for any action they feel relevant."

Charlotte provided corporate security with her photographs. No one
from federal law enforcement followed up. Had the airlines'
corporate security department failed to share this raw data with the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation?

Federal Air Marshals On Board

Nine days later, on September 2, 2006, Charlotte was working a
flight with Federal Air Marshals on board. She told one of the air
marshals about the three incidents of hidden writing on aircraft
lavatory component walls. The air marshal asked Charlotte to email
him the photographs. Five days later, the air marshal sent Charlotte
this email in response:

To:
From:
Sent: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 11:20 AM
Subject: RE: xxx xx Pics

Hey girl,

I have attempted to gather some more info on these words/names with
little luck. My personal opinion though, is that I do not believe
this has a nexus to terrorism. I do find these occurrences extremely
odd due to being specific to a certain types of aircraft etc, but do
not believe there is any danger posed to these aircraft independent
of any additional factors. Let me know if you find any more or
receive any more info.

Take care,
(name omitted)

Charlotte had not asked the Federal Air Marshal for his personal
opinion. Indeed, the air marshal's personal opinion is irrelevant
when it comes to reporting procedures and federal law enforcement
protocol. The protocol that a U.S. Federal Air Marshal is required
to follow was established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002; a
Federal Air Marshal is part of the "personnel structure to support
the Secretary" of Homeland Security.

The reporting procedure for a Federal Air Marshal when receiving raw
data is explicit. According to documents shown to The Aviation
Nation, protocol requires an air marshal to report suspicious
incidents — either by an electronic Surveillance Detection Report
(SDR) or by a written Mission Report — which gets forwarded to an
air marshal working in the Joint Terrorism Task Force – or JTTF.
That JTTF air marshal, in turn, has three direct reporting chains of
command:

The FBI Supervisor
The Federal Air Marshal, Special Agent-in-Charge
The Federal Air Marshal Service Investigative Branch
By having three streams into which the raw data can flow, the system
of checks and balances is in place. No single person is tasked with
the immediate decision of deciding if raw field data is or is not
worthy of further analysis or investigation.

Another Crew Member Finds Suspicious Writing

Charlotte continued to do her job with perseverance, commitment and
with the safety and security of the airline passengers in mind. And
so now, while doing her job, Charlotte carried with her the
photographs she'd collected of the puzzling and suspicious writings
on the aircraft lavatory component walls. Charlotte began to ask
other flight attendants to be on the lookout for this kind of
writing as well. One of the flight attendants Charlotte asked was
Jane Green**, a flight attendant for seventeen years.

Jane told me in our interview:

"Charlotte showed me her pictures, I made a mental note. Every time
I was assigned to check the bathrooms, I did with extra care.
December 29th [2006] it was flight #9915, a 737B. I was in the aft
right lav, refilling the Kleenex box. I pull down, pull out and
there I see,

CHENAULT LIVES."

Jane was so surprised when she too found the cryptic message, she
asked her flying partner to take a picture of the words with his
cell phone as well. "You had to be looking for it to see it," Jane
explained.

Now Jane was alarmed. Of the air carrier's fleet of 741 planes, Jane
was shocked to find the writing on one of her assigned flights. But
the incidents of suspicious writing did not stop there. Twelve days
later, on January 10 [2007], Jane was working an international
flight on one of the airline's wide-bodied 777 aircraft.

"It was the last minute, right before landing and I was re-stuffing
the tissue box. It was the forward lav, left side I was working in.
I had to literally pull the compartment panel down, stick my hand up
there to get the box to change. There's metal up there inside, and
the tissue box is housed upside down. I'm tugging on it, I literally
have to crane my neck around to see the tissue box, I'm almost
upside down and I see it, `CHENAULT LIVES.' Then it says, `ZATU.'"

The next time Jane was flying with Federal Air Marshals, she told
one of the air marshals what she'd found. "The air marshal laughed
at me," Jane explained, "`You're paranoid,' he said."

I asked Jane if she thought the strange writings could be explained
as being graffiti. Jane said, "The average graffiti artist wants his
or her work seen. This writing is hidden to everyone but the person
who is looking for it. You have to pull something open to find it.
You have to literally turn your neck upside down. When I pass under
a bridge and I see, `I love Suzie,' I think, that's graffiti. You
don't think of `ZATU' hidden behind a bathroom component wall as
being just graffiti."

And even if it were just graffiti, isn't that up to the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and
the FBI to decide?

In my interviews with Charlotte, Jane and other flight attendants,
from reviewing their photographs, their flight attendant safety
reports and email correspondences, what is clear is that there's a
lot of raw data that, pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002,
federal agents have an obligation to review.

CHENAULT IS KING, CHENAULT LIVES, SCHAK SHACK, KCAHS, ZATU, LU and
the numbers 2000 and 06 have appeared:

In at least 12 separate instances on the air carrier's planes
As reported by at least 3 flights attendants
Witnessed by at least 5 flight attendants
Photographed by at least 3 flight attendants
Involving at least 4 Flight Safety Reporting System reports
Brought to the attention of at least 5 Federal Air Marshals
Involving at least 3 separate aircraft types (777, 757, 737)
On international and domestic flights…
(To see all twelve photographs of these incidents, Click Here)

In the Absence of DHS and FBI, Where is The Di Vinci Code Author,
Dan Brown?

I thought I'd take a gander at what I would come up with as far as
what "Chenault is King," "Chenault Lives" and "Zatu" might mean. To
do this, I enlisted the help of a federal counterterrorism agent,
someone who spent decades as a criminal investigator before his post
9/11 call to arms. Together, we did a few Google searches and here's
what we found:

Chenault is King: A Google search of this phrase sends you to the
Ohio History Online Encyclopedia where you can read the following:

Marcus Chenault, a twenty-one year old, African-American man from
Ohio, murdered Alberta Williams King — the mother of Martin Luther
King, Jr., on June 30, 1974, while she was playing the organ during
a church service in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chenault also killed a church deacon in the assault. It remains
unclear why Chenault killed King but after the incident, Chenault
shouted, "all Christians are my enemies." Chenault — diagnosed a
schizophrenic — was tried and sentenced to death but died in prison
in 1995. (Read more about Chenault in TIME magazine)

Chenault: A Google search of the word "Chenault" by itself sends you
to the Chenault Family National Association, an organization
dedicated to perpetuating the understanding of the Chenault family
lineage. Originally spelled "de Cheneau," the family has an
interesting crest — one that, like the flag of Islam, bears an icon
of a red crescent:

Zatu: One Google search for "Zatu" delivers a Spanish Wikipedia
entry about a popular rap star whose real name is Saturnino Rey.
Translated into English the word "Rey" becomes "King." But "Zatu"
has another meaning in the ancient, Middle Eastern world. Another
search of "Zatu" delivers the Dictionary of Islam from Answering-
Islam.org.uk. There, you learn that "Zatu" means the road to Iraq.

"On each of the city stages, various roads lead to Makkah [Mecca,
Saudi Arabia] there are at a distance of about five or six miles
from the city stages called Miqat. The following are the names. On
the Medina road, the stage is called Zu'l-Halifah; on the Iraq road,
Zatu `Arq…"

Considering that we are at war with Iraq, that Al Qaeda believes all
Christians are its enemies, and Al Qaeda aims to fly the red
crescent flag of Islam all over the globe, you may call me Dan Brown
if you like — but I say, call in Homeland Security and the FBI.

To Be Continued…

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/under-investigation/

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The following articles may be republished with proper citation given to
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At our website, www.bitterlemons.org, you will also find past editions
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IN THIS ISSUE

>< "No moderation" - by Yossi Alpher
We have no way of knowing whether a different approach would have
produced a
more moderate Hamas.

>< "Turmoil and confusion" - by Ghassan Khatib
All interested parties have to shape their policies around the fact
that Hamas
came to power through free and legitimate democratic elections.

>< "Is Hamas becoming more pragmatic?" - by Reuven Paz
We should be testing Hamas by its deeds rather than its ideology; by
its
practical behavior, not its dreams.

>< "Still going strong" - an interview with Taher al-Nuno
The whole world should understand that the key to security and
stability in
the region is to honor the results of our elections and the rights of
the
Palestinian people.

AN ISRAELI VIEW
No moderation

by Yossi Alpher

When Hamas won the Palestinia

And much more:

Iran envoy 'abducted in Baghdad'
An Iranian diplomat has been kidnapped by gunmen in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Tehran has confirmed.

Jalal Sharafi, the embassy's second secretary, was abducted from his car on Sunday in central Karrada district by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms.

Iran condemned the kidnapping and said it held the US responsible for his life. A US military spokesman said no US or Iraqi troops were involved.

The news comes amid US-Iranian tension over Iranian activities in Iraq.

Last month in a dramatic pre-dawn helicopter raid, the Americans detained five Iranians in northern Iraq, prompting Iran to issue a formal protest to the US.

The US has denied any involvement in the latest incident, but recently has been expressing increasing concern about alleged Iranian support for militant activity in Iraq.

Correspondents say the stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme is adding to the tension.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Iran of "a strategy to create maximum trouble" in the Middle East.

Identification puzzle

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told the Isna news agency that Mr Sharafi had been kidnapped by a group linked to Iraq's defence ministry "which works under the supervision of American forces".

We've checked with our units and it was not a [multinational forces - Iraq] unit that participated in that event
Lt Col Christopher Garver,
US military spokesman

"The Islamic Republic of Iran holds the American forces in Iraq responsible for the life and safety of the Iranian diplomat," he said.

Iraqi officials earlier said the gunmen were wearing uniforms of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion - a special Iraqi unit under US direction.

US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt Col Christopher Garver, could not confirm the diplomat's abduction.

However, he said: "We've checked with our units and it was not a [multinational forces - Iraq] unit that participated in that event."

Mr Sharafi was reportedly kidnapped outside the Baghdad branch of the Iranian state-owned Bank Melli.

But the details of the abduction are still confused.

Kidnapping 'common'

An Iraqi government official told Associated Press news agency there had been a gun battle and a chase after the kidnapping but the car carrying the diplomat escaped.

RISING US-IRAN TENSION
Dec 2006: US forces detain several Iranians in Iraq suspected of planning attacks. Iran says two are diplomats, who are later freed
10 Jan: US President Bush says in a major speech he will take a tough stance on Iran, whom he accuses of destabilising Iraq
11 Jan: US troops in Irbil raid a building Iran says was consulate, arresting five men
18 Jan: Iran demands the release of the five "diplomats". The US says they are Revolutionary Guard arming Shia fighters

Some men were captured but the New York Times quoted Iraqi officials as saying they had legitimate defence ministry identification.

An official told the paper the men may have kept the identification after being dismissed. It is not thought they are still being held.

The BBC's Mike Wooldridge, in Baghdad, says the fact that the kidnappers were wearing uniforms can mean anything in Baghdad.

Kidnapping is common - often criminal rather than political - and frequently carried out by people in some kind of official uniform, he says.

But against the background of the ongoing disagreements between the US and Iran, this is quickly becoming another source of diplomatic tension, our correspondent adds.

Speaking to a committee of MPs in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Iran of "a strategy to create maximum trouble" in the Middle East.

Mr Blair said Tehran was trying to prevent reconciliation in Iraq.

"People are alarmed at the strategy they are pursuing," he said.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6334439.stm

Published: 2007/02/06 12:06:08 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Astronaut in 'love kidnap plot'
A US astronaut has been charged with trying to kidnap a woman she thought was a rival for the affection of a space shuttle pilot.

Navy Capt Lisa Nowak, 43, who flew to the international space station last July, was charged with attempted kidnapping, battery and other crimes.

She drove from Texas to Florida to confront Colleen Shipman, disguised in a wig and trench coat.

Police said Capt Nowak, who was denied bail, used pepper spray on Ms Shipman.

The man in the love triangle was said to be Navy Cmdr William Oefelein, who was a pilot on the Discovery's mission to the space station in December.

E-mails

Police said Capt Nowak drove 1,000 miles (1,600km) from her home in Houston to Orlando International Airport, wearing a nappy to avoid a toilet break.

The arrest affidavit says Capt Nowak then followed Ms Shipman in an airport bus.

Capt Nowak pursued Ms Shipman to her vehicle in the car park.

Ms Shipman locked herself in but rolled down the window when Capt Nowak began to cry, the affidavit says.

Ms Shipman was then attacked with the pepper spray, it says. She drove to a car park booth and police were called.

An officer followed Capt Nowak and she was stopped allegedly carrying the wig, an air rifle, a steel mallet and a knife.

A search of her vehicle revealed pepper spray and e-mails between Ms Shipman and Cmdr Oefelein, police said.

In the affidavit, Ms Nowak describes her attachment to Cmdr Oefelein as "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship".

Capt Nowak told police she just wanted to scare her rival into talking about her relationship with Cmdr Oefelein.

Attempted kidnapping carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Nasa biographies list Capt Nowak as married with three children and Cmdr Oefelein as single with two children. The pair never flew together.

A Nasa spokesman said at present Capt Nowak's status was "unchanged".

Florida's Orlando Sentinel newspaper said Ms Shipman was an engineer with the 45th Launch Support Squadron at a base close to the Kennedy Space Centre.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6333975.stm

Published: 2007/02/06 09:43:24 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Chile probes deadly weekend fires
An investigation is under way in Chile after a huge fire destroyed part of the historic port of Valparaiso, leaving at least three dead and six missing.

The blaze, which officials said was caused by a gas leak, swept through several buildings in the city, which is classed as a UN world heritage site.

It was one of two deadly fires in Chile over the weekend.

A fire swept through a small hotel in the southern city of Punta Arenas, killing 10 foreign tourists.

Four Argentines and four Germans are believed to be among the dead.

Witnesses said several people escaped by jumping from the second floor of the hotel, located in the centre of Punta Arenas, Chile's southernmost city and a popular tourist destination.

Fire officials said the blaze at the Blue House hostel was believed to have been caused by an electrical fault.

In Valparaiso, the search is continuing for people missing from Saturday's deadly fire.

There was good news on Monday when five people feared caught up in the blaze were found to be staying in other parts of the city.

The authorities have warned that it may take some time to identify the bodies discovered so far.

Residents have told Chilean media they had smelled gas for several hours before the explosion.

The fire took hold in an area that was declared a World Heritage Site in 2003 by Unesco.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6331177.stm

Published: 2007/02/05 14:27:21 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Child soldiers 'are a time bomb'
France's foreign minister has warned that the use of child soldiers is a time bomb that threatens stability and growth in Africa and beyond.

Philippe Douste-Blazy told a Paris conference child soldiers were "lost children, lost for peace and lost for the development of their countries."

An estimated 250,000 child soldiers are now fighting in wars, mostly in Africa.

Delegates heard a former child soldier tell of his experiences on the frontline in Sierra Leone.

Ishmael Beah, who fought for almost two years, described shooting someone as being "as easy as drinking a glass of water".

Paris Principles

The former child soldier, now 26, was barely 13 when recruited to fight in an armed faction in Sierra Leone.

"It is the most difficult thing to regain your humanity. I'm living proof that it is possible," he said.

UN WATCHLIST FOR CHILD SOLDIERS
Burundi
Democratic Republic of Congo
Ivory Coast
Somalia
Sudan
Nepal
Sri Lanka

The two-day conference, hosted by the UN children's agency and the French government, will seek to get countries to sign up to a new framework of action known as the Paris Principles.

These aim to ensure countries work harder to release children from conflict and reintegrate them into normal life.

Mr Douste-Blazy said that countries that recruited children to fight should no longer be allowed to "slip through the net".

Mr Beah said that a failure to follow through on rehabilitation programmes left children at risk becoming mercenaries and fuelling further conflicts.

"They know how to use a gun. And there is a conflict next door offering $100 a day and all-you-can-loot, and they will go back to that," he said.

Several countries are under special scrutiny by the UN over child soldiers and there has been growing concern over the use of child soldiers in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan.

Since 2002, the International Criminal Court has defined the use of children in combat as a war crime.

Last week, it announced it was opening its first trial - against a Congolese militiaman Thomas Lubanga, accused of recruiting child soldiers during the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war between 1998 and 2003.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6330503.stm

Published: 2007/02/05 17:05:17 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Germany prevents SS extradition
A German court has blocked the extradition of a former Nazi SS member wanted in Denmark over the killing of a journalist in Copenhagen in 1943.

Soeren Kam, a Dane who has lived for many years in Bavaria, Germany, has admitted being present at the killing of Carl Henrik Clemmensen.

He says he fired a shot at the newspaper editor - but that he only fired after the man was already dead.

The court in Munich said there was not enough evidence for murder charges.

And Mr Kam could not be charged with manslaughter, it said, because the time elapsed since the shooting was greater than that allowed under Germany's statute of limitations.

Clemmensen was kidnapped on 30 August 1943 and found dead the next morning, in Lyngby, a suburb of the Danish capital.

Mr Kam, now in his 80s, has acknowledged being one of three Danish members of the SS present at the journalist's death.

He was arrested in September 2006 and then released on bail.

German prosecutors dropped a murder case against him in 1971, saying there was insufficient evidence.

But Denmark applied for extradition after a Danish court ruled in 2004 that he should be charged with murder.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6332533.stm

Published: 2007/02/05 17:49:47 GMT

© BBC MMVII

'Honour killers' expect to walk free
By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Bahawalnagar district, eastern Pakistan

They don't look like murderers - but the two frail-looking, lower-caste brothers in the village of Khatan in eastern Pakistan are self-confessed killers.

Mohammad Aslam and Maqbool Ahmad admit killing their sister Elahisen and a neighbour, Ghulam Nabi Shah, when they found them together in Elahisen's room on the night of 27 January.

They smashed their skulls with a brick and then strangled them with a rope. Then they gave themselves up to the police saying they had redeemed their family honour.

The event has a familiar ring to it.

According to official figures, more than 2,700 women and about 1,300 men have been killed in honour-related offences in Pakistan since 2001.

Human rights organisations put the number much higher, saying that most honour crimes are never reported to the police.

'Menace'

Sexual indiscretion on the part of men is seldom treated as dishonourable in Pakistani families, but women are expected to be chaste.

As such, the killing of women is hardly ever reported because the perpetrators are usually close male relatives.

Men, on the other hand, are killed by the family of the "dishonoured" woman and their families are more likely to seek justice from the courts.

And this is the dilemma that Mohammad Aslam and Maqbool Ahmad face.

Ghulam Nabi Shah, the man that they killed, belongs to a family of Syeds, said to be descendents of Prophet Mohammad and treated with reverence by rural folk.

Mr Shah's paternal cousin and step father, Syed Akhtar Hussain Shah, has lodged a complaint with the police claiming that he personally saw four people, including the two brothers, murder the victims.

The brothers themselves belong to the Maachhi caste, traditional menial labourers.

Despite this social difference, the people in Khatan, 30km north-east of the town of Bahawalnagar, appear to side with the Maachhis for what the local councillor, Ahmad Riaz Sukhera, calls "obvious reasons".

They are not so dumb as to repeat that confession before the judge
District police chief Zafar Abbas Bukhari

"Mr Shah murdered a village bully more than 10 years ago and became a hero. Then he started jumping into people's houses to sleep with their women. Everyone felt threatened. The Maachhis have rid them of the menace," he says.

But the Maachhi brothers took a long time to "redeem their honour".

"People had been taunting us about Elahisen's affair for a year. We knew that Ghulam Nabi Shah visited her at nights. But he was six feet tall and always carried a gun. We were scared of him," says Mohammad Aslam.

Those who taunted the Maachhi brothers are now all praise for them.

"They have restored their family honour - the deceased deserved to die," says Ghulam Abbas Bhatti, a resident of Khatan village.

The brothers themselves are oozing confidence and dignity even in fetters and handcuffs. "We have done no wrong and the law will not treat us unkindly," says Mohammad Aslam.

Legal experts believe the brothers may be right.

"They have confessed to the murders before the police, but they are not so dumb as to repeat that confession before the judge," says the Bahawalnagar district police chief, Zafar Abbas Bukhari.

Loopholes

"Honour" killers in Pakistan have several cushions within and outside the law, say experts.

Popular opinion in Pakistan has usually remained sympathetic to the perpetrators of such crimes.

This is also reflected in the attitude of the police and judges who are often biased in the offender's favour.

In addition, successive governments have created legal loopholes by mixing Islamic and British colonial laws.

Even the original British law of 1860 contained a clause that prescribed leniency in cases of "sudden and grave provocation".

In 1990, the government introduced the Islamic law of retribution and blood money that allowed the aggrieved party to pardon an offender either "for the sake of God" or in return for an agreed sum of money.

Many believe that this law privatised crime and undermined the principle that crime was an offence against the state.

It also annulled the provocation clause, but judges continued to lend weight to the concept of justifiable anger in honour crimes during the 1990s.

Inspiration for this came from a judgement of the Federal Shariat Court, a parallel court created by the military government of Gen Ziaul Haq in 1980s to interpret Islamic laws.

The judgement laid down that the killing of a person who attempted to approach another family's woman with dishonourable intentions could be considered an act of self defence.

In January 2005, the parliament finally defined honour killing and amended some laws to bring the offence on a par with wilful murder.

Even in the event of an out-of-court settlement under the Islamic laws, judges are now bound to punish an honour killing with no less than 10 years' imprisonment.

Few convictions

But figuring out ways to get around the system is a favourite pastime of people in Pakistan. And the villagers sitting in the Maachhi brothers' courtyard are doing just that.

They believe Ghulam Nabi Shah's stepfather would be willing to accept 200,000 rupees (about $3,200) as his price to forgive and forget. "He was a pain in the neck for him as well," says one villager.

An equal sum offered to the police may persuade them to withhold the evidence they have collected, they speculate.

Villagers say the Maachhi brothers can raise up to $8,000 by selling a little under two acres of land they own.

The drift of the conversation is obvious.

If witnesses retract their evidence and the police show a lack of interest, the Maachhi brothers could simply deny the charges and the court would be left with no option but to acquit them.

And this is not mere speculation, considering the conviction rate in honour crimes is less than 5%.

As for Elahisen, the only woman in the case, the Maachhi brothers need have no fear about any of their own family complaining about her murder.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6332751.stm

Published: 2007/02/05 16:59:22 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Mauritania rejects migrant boat
A vessel which broke down with several hundred illegal migrants on board is being refused permission by Mauritania to dock or allow passengers ashore.

The ship is thought to be carrying mostly Pakistani migrants.

It was reached by a Spanish vessel on Saturday and towed to within 12km (7.5 miles) of Nouadhibou fishing port.

Mauritanian Red Crescent and Spanish Red Cross officials said a boat with urgently needed supplies of food and water had been sent to the vessel.

"Mauritania has nothing to do with this boat breaking down, nor with taking charge of those on board," said a foreign ministry statement on Monday.

Neighbouring Senegal has also said it could not handle the ship.

Canary route

The Spanish foreign ministry earlier reported that Mauritania had agreed to help with the rescue.

There were initially thought to be around 200 people, mostly Pakistani, on board the vessel.

An official from the Mauritanian Red Crescent in Nouadhibou, Ahmedou Ould Haye, told Spanish RNE radio there could be as many as 500 migrants.

He told the French news agency AFP that the migrants included "200 Asians from Kashmir" as well as Africans.

But he did not say if they were from Pakistan or Indian-administered Kashmir.

The Mauritanian foreign ministry had earlier said there were 200 Pakistani nationals on board.

Senegal and Mauritania are launching points for tens of thousands of African migrants looking to reach Europe, many via the Canary Islands.

About 30,000 Africans were caught trying to reach the Spanish island chain last year.

EU patrols are now trying to stem the flow of immigrants.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6330183.stm

Published: 2007/02/06 02:00:19 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Briefcase 'that changed the world'
By Angela Hind
BBC Radio 4's The World in a Briefcase

In the summer of 1940, the war with Germany was at a critical stage.

France had recently surrendered and the Luftwaffe was engaged in a concerted bombing campaign against British cities.

The United Kingdom was being cut off from the Continent, and without allies to help her, she would soon be near the limit of her productive capacity - particularly in the all important field of electronics.

On the morning of 29 August, a small team of the country's top scientists and engineers, under the direction of Sir Henry Tizard and in conditions of absolute secrecy, was about to board a converted ocean liner.

With them they carried possibly the most precious cargo of the war - a black japanned metal deed box containing all of Britain's most valuable technological secrets.

They were on their way to America - to give them away.

This high-powered team included representatives from the Army, Navy and Air Force, along with specialists in the new technologies of war.

Earlier that morning, radar expert, Dr Edward "Taffy" Bowen - a vital member of this Tizard Mission and responsible for looking after the metal deed box that was to become known as "Tizard's briefcase" - almost lost it.

When he had arrived at London's Euston station, the Welshman had handed it to a porter while gathering up his remaining luggage, then watched helplessly as the man headed off to find the 0830 boat train to Liverpool without waiting for his customer.

As he struggled to keep the porter in sight above the wartime throngs, Eddie Bowen would not have drawn much attention from the busy Londoners. Only his face would have betrayed his concern.

Short distance

Just five days short of the war's first anniversary, Britain faced one of its most desperate hours.

The Battle of Britain was raging, and bombs were falling nightly on Liverpool. Nazi armies ringed the country from the Norwegian coast down to France; an invasion was expected within weeks.

As Bowen knew, the seemingly ordinary solicitor's deed box - for which he was personally responsible - held the power to change the course of the war.

Inside lay nothing less than all Britain's military secrets. There were blueprints and circuit diagrams for rockets, explosives, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks, and even the germs of ideas that would lead to the jet engine and the atomic bomb.

But the greatest treasure of all was the prototype of a piece of hardware called a cavity magnetron, which had been invented a few months earlier by two scientists in Birmingham.

John Randall and Harry Boot had invented the cavity magnetron almost by accident.

It was a valve that could spit out pulses of microwave radio energy on a wavelength of 10cm. This was unheard of. Nothing like it had been invented before.

The wavelength for the radar system we were using at the start of the war was one-and-a-half metres. The equipment needed was bulky and the signals indistinct.

The cavity magnetron was to be the key that would allow us to develop airborne radar.

Kitchen technology

"It was a massive, massive breakthrough," says Andy Manning from the Radar Museum in Horning.

"It is deemed by many, even now, to be the most important invention that came out of the Second World War".

Professor of military history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, David Zimmerman, agrees: "The magnetron remains the essential radio tube for shortwave radio signals of all types.

"It not only changed the course of the war by allowing us to develop airborne radar systems, it remains the key piece of technology that lies at the heart of your microwave oven today. The cavity magnetron's invention changed the world."

Because Britain had no money to develop the magnetron on a massive scale, Churchill had agreed that Sir Henry Tizard should offer the magnetron to the Americans in exchange for their financial and industrial help. No strings attached.

It was an extraordinary gesture. By September, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had set up a secret laboratory; by November, the cavity magnetron was in mass production; and by early 1941, portable airborne radar had been developed and fitted to both American and British planes.

The course of the Second World War was about to be changed. It was, says writer Robert Buderi, possibly the most important development of the 20th Century.

In fact, it was so important a development that the official historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, James Phinney Baxter III, wrote: "When the members of the Tizard Mission brought the cavity magnetron to America in 1940, they carried the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores."

The World in a Briefcase, made by Pier Productions, is on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 5 February at 2000 GMT. You will also be able to hear the programme on the Listen Again service on the Radio 4 website .

The original cavity magnetron is held at the Science Museum in London.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6331897.stm

Published: 2007/02/05 13:45:07 GMT

© BBC MMVII

[somehow, I managed to goof up the prior post, this is what the googles go with]

BBC News

Russia's poisoning 'without a poison'
By Julian O'Halloran
BBC File on 4

"He complained about fatigue, and red blotches began to appear on
his skin. His internal organs began collapsing one by one. Then he
lost almost all his hair."

[PHOTO] Journalist and MP Yuri Shchekochikhin died within 16 days of
falling ill.

This was how a witness described the mysterious illness which struck
down 53 year old Yuri Shchekochikhin, a member of the Russian Duma
or parliament, in June 2003.

Within 16 days of falling ill Shchekochikhin was dead. And both
colleagues and family suspect he was murdered.

The strange illness of Yuri Shchekochikhin is one of a series of
deaths investigated in Russia by File on 4 in the wake of the
dramatic radiation poisoning of Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko
in London last November.

The common factor in these deaths is that in each case people close
to the victim suspect that either the state or one of its security
arms was involved.

Family frustrated

As a journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin was one of Russia's top
corruption investigators. His colleagues say family members were
told by medical staff that he may have died from "an allergic
reaction".

But more than three years after his death, his family are said still
to be trying to obtain medical records and tissue samples to allow
an independent scientific analysis to be done.

A friend of Shchekochikhin, Kirill Kabanov, who is a former member
of the Federal Security Service, the FSB, was travelling with him
shortly before his illness.

Kabanov says that among the targets of Shchekochikhin's
investigations were very senior people in the FSB and in other state
agencies.

He recalls that with no official help, friends of the dead man
mounted an independent assessment of the facts they knew.

"We had our own investigation of Yuri's death," says Kirill Kabanov.
And I personally had to use some of my old contacts from the
security services. And the specialist whom I contacted said that
with 90% certainty Yuri's case was a poisoning and most likely he
was poisoned with thallium."

(Thallium was initially suspected by doctors treating Alexander
Litvinenko in London before further tests pinpointed the radioactive
substance, Polonium 210 as the poison.)

Asked why doctors should give other reasons for the death and why
samples should be unobtainable, Kirill Kabanov again draws on his
secret service knowledge.

"Yuri Schekochikhin's treatment and his post-mortem took place at
the Central Clinical Hospital. This is the most important clinic in
Russia and it's tightly controlled by the Russian Federal Security
Service because it treats top-ranking Russian officials."

So could a cover-up have taken place?

"Recently," says Kabanov darkly, "very few people in Russia find the
courage to tell the truth."

Bodyguard's death

There are similar suspicions surrounding the death of another man,
Roman Tsepov, aged 42, in St Petersburg in September 2004.

Tsepov had been run a security agency since the nineties.

He had even guarded the man who became Russia's president seven
years ago, Vladimir Putin.

After a business trip to Moscow Roman Tsepov fell ill and his
condition went downhill dramatically, as his physician, Dr Pyotr
Pirumov, recalled, in an account given to the agency for
Journalistic Investigations in St Petersburg.

"It was poisoning without a poison....It was as if his immune system
was switched off."

Again in under three weeks after falling ill the patient was dead.

Russia is now very different from what it was like back in the
1930s and 1940s

Mikhail Grishankov, deputy chairman of the Duma security committee

No clear cause of death was issued. And when we called Dr Pirumov he
seemed nervous about the case and declined to grant an interview.

But File on 4 has now learned that a few weeks after Alexander
Litvinenko's death, the files on Roman Tsepov were requested from St
Petersburg by the General Prosecutor's Office in Moscow and the case
is now being handled from there.

A claim made by a Moscow investigative journalist, Igor Korolkov, of
the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, only deepens the mystery.

Massive contamination

"My source at the prosecutor's office in St Petersburg told me that
a post mortem on Roman Tsepov showed he was contaminated with a
radioactive element," says Korolkov.

"And the quantity of this element in Tsepov's body exceeded the norm
by one million times."

Suspicions that the state, or its security or armed services could
have had a hand in high profile killings are dismissed by the deputy
chairman of the Duma security committee, Mikhail Grishankov.

He is a member of the pro-Putin United Russia Party and is also a
former member of the FSB.

"Russia is now very different from what it was like back in the
1930s and 1940s," says Mikhail Grishankov.

"And the myths formed in the West back in those times, are a
hangover of the Cold War."

"And this speculation about the alleged connection of the Russian
security services - I see it as an attempt to bring these Cold War
skeletons back to life!"

Hear the full story on Radio 4: File on 4 Tue 6 Feb 2007 or online
at the File on 4 website

Part of 3574 &75:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Yuri+Shchekochikhin&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=one+of+Russia%27s+top+%0D%0Acorruption+investigators&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1779923/posts

Bomb threat at the Vienna International Centre (U.N.)
Schnucki | Feb. 6, 2007 | Schnucki

Posted on 02/06/2007 12:36:39 AM PST by Schnucki

Sorry for the vanity, but the entrances to the Vienna International Centre (the United Nations offices in Vienna) are temporarily blocked by the police.

Apparently there is some sort of bomb threat and they're investigating.

Here's a webcam link of the area, which shows the traffic pretty much at a standstill around the complex.

[see comments for updates]

[Another stolen]

Thanks to Mark Taylor and Milford421:

Stolen construction equipment radioactive

Wednesday, January 31, 2007 11:09 AM CST

Special to The Dispatch

A piece of construction equipment containing radioactive material
was stolen from a toolbox located in the back of a pickup truck over
the weekend.

The moisture-density gauge was last seen at a Meridian job site when
locked in a toolbox Friday afternoon. It was discovered missing
Sunday afternoon by an employee of Aquaterra Engineering LLC, the
Jackson-based company that owns the gauge.

The moisture-density gauge is a common device used by construction
firms to determine the moisture and density of soil and construction
materials. The gauge is yellow and is 9.5 inches wide, 15 inches
long with a 17-inch tall chrome handle. It is labeled "Troxler
3411B" and has the serial number, 9533.

The gauge contains radioactive materials. The radioactive materials
within the gauge are safe when intact and shielded, but the material
can pose a potential health threat if the device is damaged or the
material exposed.

If found, stay away from the gauge, immediately notify local
authorities and contact Aquaterra officials Gomer Wallace, (601) 573-
3230; and David Coleman (601) 956-4467, or the Mississippi Emergency
Management Agency at (800) 222-6362.

A reward is being offered for the return of the gauge or for
information that leads to its recovery.
http://www.cdispatch.com/articles/2007/01/31/local_news/area_news/are
a05.txt

MosNews: Russian Journalist Asks Ukraine to Grant Him Political Asylum

MosNews.com

Russian Journalist Asks Ukraine to Grant Him Political Asylum
Created: 06.02.2007 19:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:00 MSK, 37
minutes ago

Russian journalist Aleksandr Kosvintsev of the Russian newspaper
Novaya Gazeta has asked for political asylum in Ukraine, Russian
news agency Interfax reported on Tuesday quoting the press service
of the legislature of the Ukrainian Lviv Region.

The press service referred to the journalist, who is staying in Lviv
at present. Kosvintsev has applied to the regional department of the
Ukrainian migration service in Lviv.

The Russian journalist told the press service he was forced to leave
Russia due to persecution by Russia's law enforcement bodies.

Novaya Gazeta daily, partially owned by former Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev, is strongly critical of Russian President
Vladimir Putin's policies, especially of the anti-terror campaign in
Chechnya. Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya worked in this
newspaper until her assassination on October 7, 2006.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/

http://www.google.com/search?q=Aleksandr+Kosvintsev&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=forced+to+leave+%0D%0ARussia+due+to+persecution+by+Russia%27s+law+enforcement+bodies&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Novaya+Gazeta+daily%2C+partially+owned+by+former+Soviet+President+%0D%0AMikhail+Gorbachev&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Vysotsky&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Russian+journalist+told+the+press+service+he+was+forced+to+leave+&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Anna+Politkovskaya+worked+in+this+%0D%0Anewspaper+&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=articles+written+by+Anna+Politkovskaya&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=+find+articles+written+by+Anna+Politkovskaya&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

I had forgotten that Anna P. wrote about the poison in the Chechen School...

There are links to other stories on this poison, at site.
granny

http://www.guardian.co.uk/chechnya/Story/0,,1720522,00.html

Poison in the air

When a sinister illness hit schoolchildren and their teachers in war-torn Chechnya in December, doctors were convinced it was a case of poisoning. Then the government came up with its own diagnosis - mass hysteria. Is there an official cover-up going on? Anna Politkovskaya reports
Anna Politkovskaya
Wednesday March 1, 2006

Guardian
A war has been raging in the north Caucasian Republic of Chechnya in the Russian Federation since November 1994. Over the years, officials in Moscow have given the war various names. Sometimes it is called "putting the region in order"; since the beginning of the international "anti-terrorist" era, it has become a "counter-terrorist operation". But it is never called a war, despite the fact that an estimated 70,000-200,000 Russian military personnel are conducting operations as if on enemy territory. The civilian population has taken the brunt of the military impact. For the past 12 years, those living and working in Chechnya have been aware that federal forces were testing new types of weapons. The story of what happened in the Shelkovsk district is simply the biggest such case.

In December last year, there were reports of mass poisonings at schools in the Shelkovsk region. Just before new year, a government commission published its official verdict: there was no need to worry - there were no poisonings, it was mass psychosis due to stress. But did anyone in Chechnya believe these explanations?

On a bed by a wall in room one of Shelkovsk regional hospital a young woman called Sina is having a seizure. Her face is white, then yellow, then bright red; her brother unclenches her teeth with a spoon in order to pull out her tongue while her mother lies on top of her to control the spasms. The girl is now bent in an impossible arch, her heels touching the back of her head.

It is January 6, a third week has gone by, and there is no improvement in her condition. Aset (Sina) Magamshapieva is not a pupil at the school where most of the victims came from. A 20-year-old student teacher, she had gone there for some teaching practice. An elderly nurse arrives with a syringe. The fit has lasted 15 minutes already. The nurse is alone, taking care of 40 patients, and has just been dealing with Marina Tereshchenko in a neighbouring room. Marina has been suffering from similar seizures.

What is in the syringe? "Analgin [an analgesic] and dimedrol [a sedative]," she sighs. But that can't really help, can it? "We don't have anything else," she says. "What can we treat them with? Analgin will at least take the pain away from the spasms, and dimedrol will quieten them down, let them sleep after the fits ..."

Rabadan Ahmethanovich Rabadanov, deputy chief of therapeutics, arrives. He looks at Aset sadly. A sedative is introduced into a vein, and soon tears start to flow down her cheeks. It is the 47th minute of the seizure. Though the girl sees and hears no one, she noticeably starts breathing again. "Tears mean that the seizure is passing," says her mother.

How often do such fits occur? "Three to four times a day. We almost broke her teeth to keep her from swallowing her tongue," her mother says. "I'm in such torment, and she's exhausted by all the fits ... If they could just find out what they were poisoned with, even if they don't tell anyone, just tell us how to treat it ... How long are they going to keep this up?"

Vaha Dardayevich Ehselayev, chief physician at the hospital, is sitting in his office. "We are the doctors who were with these victims from the start," he says, "and we will not change our diagnosis - an intoxication of unknown aetiology. How could it be hysterics or mass psychosis?" A tired Rabadanov enters. Together with Dr Jamilya Halilovna Aliyeva, he was the first to be called to the school in the village of Starogladovsk on December 16 after reports of children collapsing unconscious. "Every child had psycho-motor excitation, hallucinations and some kind of strange laughter," Rabadanov recalls. "Severe spasms. Nothing seemed to help. We gave sedatives and anti-convulsives. But the spasms just kept repeating. I am certain that such a number of children could never enter a state of psycho-motor excitation simply from hysterics. It was some kind of agent. If these were merely hysterical fits, as the commission says, then they would be easy to isolate."

Ehselayev interrupts: "I think that if this was a mass psychosis spread by rumours and the media, then the first to react would have been the 80-plus schizophrenics and as many epileptics we have in the region. But they had no such reaction. We checked. I believe that there is a poisonous agent in the victims' schools. But the political situation is such that it has to be denied. We don't know what the agent was. We don't have the resources to find out." At the hospital there is not a single computer and no internet access; none of the doctors who encountered this unprecedented phenomenon could put out an SOS on the web.

So what next? "We don't know. A dead end." What are they treating? "Only the symptoms. If there are spasms we give an anti-convulsive. If there is pain we give an analgesic. But the fits continue. We have requested, and continue to request, some kind of a treatment plan. But no one is rushing to bring us one. The commissions from Moscow and Grozny were here and told the patients, 'Don't fake.' But how could they? We were alone with them. The agent acting on them is some kind of toxic substance which makes the nervous system hypersensitive. The fits can be summoned by the creak of a door or the rustle of a packet. This doesn't fit any known disease picture."

The relatives of the victims, just like the majority of the local inhabitants, are sure that the source of the infection was the women's toilet in the Starogladovsk school. All the victims at one time or another were there. It was clear that whoever went to the toilet had the most serious symptoms, while those who were nearby had fewer. The doctors insist it is a toxic substance, most likely a solid, but capable of propagation in a gas wave, one that loses its potency in direct proportion to the distance from the source. The same picture is repeated in the Shelkovsk and Shelkozavodsk schools.

The strict localisation of the sick people by school, time and place is the determining detail in this picture of a massive disease outbreak. At Shelkozavodsk, for example, only those who were on the school building's first floor became ill. Those who did not come to school that day are still healthy.

It all began on December 7, when 13-year-old Taisa Minkailova, a pupil at the Starogladovsk school, started suffering attacks of asphyxia, spasms, a severe headache and numbness in her extremities. Her parents took her to the hospital in Kizlyar, in Dagestan, but the treatments there had no effect and her condition deteriorated. On December 9, two high-school seniors from the same school were taken to hospital in Grozny suffering from the same symptoms.

The peak of hospitalisations occurred on December 16, when 19 children and three adults from Starogladovsk were taken to the Shelkovsk hospital. The doctors observed multiple cases of unconsciousness, comatose states, seizures, weakness, amnesia and asphyxia of increasing severity, as well as numbness of the extremities and chills. The children complained of sharp pains in their eyes and dry mucous membranes. It was clear this was a poisoning, and the source was the school. On December 16, a government commission was set up, with V Boriskina, the Chechen president's deputy chief of staff, as its chairman. Military specialists and chemical defence officers were called in. Medicines were offered by the International Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.

And then came the turning point. A memorandum from a military specialist with the results from the trips to Starogladovsk and Shelkovsk landed on the commission chairman's table. Within two days investigators would remove it from circulation, although we obtained a copy. It reports, "The source of the poisoning was located in the main school building, presumably on the second floor [where the ill teachers were working]. The primary route of intoxication could be the respiratory tract, though direct contact is not ruled out. The aggregate state of the toxic substance was probably a liquid or solid, which, under the effects of the environment, could separate into poisonous vapours. It is not possible to determine accurately the form of the toxic substance from only one clinical picture [the victims' symptomology]. Recommended: in order to clarify what the toxic substance was, conduct toxicological testing of the victims and have this examined by toxicology specialists with the necessary equipment and reagents."

After December 17, the commission took an abrupt change of direction, to a psychological-psychiatric diagnosis, disregarding the fact that cases of poisoning continued to appear. On December 19, pupils were brought in from the middle schools of the villages of Kobi, Shelkozavodsk and Shelkovsk. Up to 17 cases of asphyxia were observed. Several were extreme, and comatose. On December 20, all the schools in the Shelkovsk region were closed and the republic's attorney general initiated a criminal investigation.

Then, on December 21, official reports suddenly appeared that "the mass media are totally to blame": the seizures had allegedly increased and new cases showed up in proportion to the number of subjects shown on television. On December 22, the chief narcologist of the Chechen Republic, psychiatrist Musa Dalsayev, gave his diagnosis: there was no poisoning, it was a "pseudo-asthmatic syndrome of a psychogenic nature". Or a "psychological self-infection". Dalsayev assembled the parents and accused the sick children of faking, and their mothers of indulging them. He claimed that the fits were just for show and that if there were no spectators, then the seizures ceased. He called the victims' mothers "renters" - mercenaries who try to prolong their children's diseases to get compensation. (There has been no request from the victims' families for any material assistance.)

On December 23, a further 81 cases were recorded, provoking panic in the Shelkovsk district. No one believed Dalsayev or the commission, which had delivered its conclusions: "i) No evidence of chemical poisoning; ii) No potentially dangerous objects were revealed on the school premises; iii) Final diagnosis: dissociative (conversional) disorders - dissociative disorders of movement and sensation, dissociative disorders of motor activity, dissociative spasms; iv) The commission has come to the conclusion that there was an outbreak of mass hysteria in the Shelkovsk region related to the prolonged emergency situation in the Chechen Republic."

On December 25, the hospitals started to discharge the first victims. On December 26, the country's chief public health officer, Gennady Onishchenko, visited Chechnya and declared that there were no alarming or health-threatening phenomena. Two days later, President Alu Alhanov confirmed this success by travelling to Moscow to report to President Putin that it was all a mass psychosis. He then handed him reports on how much money would be needed in the short term for a grandiose building to overcome any new mass psychoses. On December 31, a group of 17 children and three adults - the most seriously ill - were sent out of sight to the Salyut children's sanatorium in Zheleznovodsk.

Others have not been so lucky. There is not enough room for the rest. Those such as Aset Magamshapieva and Marina Tereshchenko are victims of official lies, sidelined, since they are unable to be discharged "correctly". They are ordered to be forgotten as malingerers.

This is not an isolated incident. At Shelkovsk district central hospital, Aliyeva recalls a similar, though less severe, outbreak in the autumn. "On September 23, 19 children and one teacher were brought from Staroshchedrinskaya village with similar symptoms. We saw the same strange laughter, hallucinations - it was a frightening sight."

Ehselayev says: "The results went for analysis at the legal medical expert's office. There, they acknowledged that the children were poisoned by carbon monoxide. How on earth did that happen during a heatwave, when the stoves had not been fired up? We raised a stink, but everything came to a halt."

Ehselayev thinks the results of analysis are "political", just like the conclusion by the commission on the December poisonings. So what happened in Staroshchedrinskaya? "The same as now: poisoning by an unknown chemical substance. It is being tested on our children."

Halid Dudayev, the head of Staroshchedrinskaya middle school, is also convinced of this: "Until September 23 I had been demanding that criminal proceedings and an investigation be undertaken. On October 23, I received a rejection for instituting proceedings, due to the 'absence of a crime being committed'. That day, there was a second mass poisoning. Eight of our children were affected. Since then they have not been seriously examined and they have difficulty studying."

Abzo Shamilov, the father of one of the victims, says, "My daughter, Seda, constantly has high blood pressure. She's always ill. We can't do anything. Before the autumn, she was never ill. She now has nosebleeds, constant headaches, her hands and feet are cold. What are we to do?"

Similar symptoms of poisoning occurred in 2000, when on July 26, in the outskirts of the Stariye Atagi settlement of the Grozny farming region, two faint explosions were heard and a silvery-violet, tulip-shaped column of smoke appeared, rising to 150m. The column formed a cloud which hung over the outskirts of the village.

An epidemiological report concluded: "A day after the explosions, the first cases occurred showing signs of poisoning: powerful tonic spasms, loss of consciousness, aggressive agitation, inhibited movement, uncontrollable vomiting, severe headaches, sensation of fear and, in some, haemoptysis [coughing up blood]."

There are differences, however. The tragedy in Stariye Atagi led to three deaths out of 23 cases, with death occurring within about two days. The investigation concluded that "the poisoning of inhabitants of Stariye Atagi was caused by a chemical compound of obscure aetiology, excluding any infectious cause for the outbreak".

It is now 2006. Behind us are 11 years of war with short breaks for clearing mines and unexploded shells. So many war crimes have been committed that the tribunals are scared of setting about analysing these atrocities. But the ideology remains: as before, people who have the misfortune to live in Chechnya are seen as biomaterial for experiments.

The authorities have tried to distance themselves by taking a group of the most seriously ill for a month to a medical academy clinic in Stavropol, the largest city in southern Russia. What happened there has been kept secret. During treatment, none of the patients was told which medicines were being injected into them or what the results of the analysis were. On discharge, the case notes contained not a single record of the nature of the treatments administered.

In the Shelkovsk district, the schools where people were poisoned are closed; the parents refuse to allow healthy children to go back there and insist that the premises are detoxified and that the victims' diagnoses be made public. The authorities maintain that nothing unusual has happening.

· This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper
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