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

VEVAK learned its methodology from the Soviet KGB and many of the Islamist revolutionaries who supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini actually studied at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba Friendship University, the Oxford of terrorism. Documented Iranian alumni include the current Supreme Leader (the faqih) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, under whose Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Islamic Jurisprudent) apparatus it has traditionally operated. Its current head is Cabinet Minister Hojatoleslam Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ezhei, a graduate of Qom's Haqqani School, noted for its extremist position advocating violence against enemies and strict clerical control of society and government. The Ministry is very well funded and its charge, like that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the Pasdaran) is to guard the revolutionary Islamic Iranian regime at all costs and under all contingencies.

From the KGB playbook, VEVAK learned the art of disinformation. It's not so difficult to learn: tell the truth 80% of the time and lie 20%. Depending on how well a VEVAK agent wants to cover his/her tracks, the ratio may go up to 90/10, but it never drops below the 80/20 mark as such would risk suspicion and possible detection. The regime in Teheran has gone to great lengths to place its agents in locations around the world. Many of these operatives have been educated in the West, including the U.K. and the United States. Iranian government agencies such as embassies, consulates, Islamic cultural centers, and airline offices regularly provide cover for the work of VEVAK agents who dress well and are clean shaven, and move comfortably within our society. In this country, because of the severance of diplomatic relations, the principal site of VEVAK activities begins at the offices of Iran's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.

Teheran has worked diligently to place its operatives in important think tanks and government agencies in the West. Some of its personnel have been recruited while in prison through torture or more often through bribery, or a combination of both. Others are Islamist revolutionaries that have been set up to look like dissidents - often having been arrested and imprisoned, but released for “medical reasons”. The clue to detecting the fake “dissident” is to read carefully what he/she writes, and to ask why this vocal “dissident” was released from prison when other real dissidents have not been released, indeed have been grievously tortured and executed. Other agents have been placed in this country for over twenty-five years to slowly go through the system and rise to positions of academic prominence due to their knowledge of Farsi and Shia Islam or Islamist fundamentalism.

One of the usual tactics of VEVAK is to co-opt academia to its purposes. Using various forms of bribery, academics are bought to defend the Islamic Republic or slander its enemies. Another method is to assign bright students to train for academic posts as specialists in Iranian or Middle East affairs. Once established, such individuals are often consulted by our government as it tries to get a better idea of how it should deal with Iran. These academics then are in a position to skew the information, suggesting the utility of extended dialogue and negotiation, or the danger and futility of confronting a strong Iran or its proxies such as Hizballah (Hezbollah). These academics serve to shield the regime from an aggressive American or Western policy, and thereby buy more time for the regime to attain its goals, especially in regards to its nuclear weaponry and missile programs.

MOIS likes to use the media, especially electronic media, to its advantage. One of VEVAK's favorite tricks is setting up web sites that look like they are opposition sites but which are actually controlled by the regime. These sites often will be multilingual, including Farsi, German, Arabic French, and English. Some are crafted carefully and are very subtle in how they skew their information (e.g., Iran-Interlink, set up and run by Massoud Khodabandeh and his wife Ann Singleton from Leeds, England); others are less subtle, simply providing the regime's point of view on facts and events in the news (e.g., www.mujahedeen.com or www.mojahedin.ws). This latter group is aimed at the more gullible in our open society and unfortunately such a market exists. However, if one begins to do one's homework, asking careful questions, the material on these fake sites generally does not add up.

Let's examine a few examples of VEVAK's work in the United States. In late October, 2005, VEVAK sent three of its agents to Washington to stage a press event in which the principal Iranian resistance movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), was to be slandered. Veteran VEVAK agent Karim Haqi flew from Amsterdam to Canada where he was joined by VEVAK's Ottawa agents Amir-Hossein Kord Rostami and Mahin (Parvin-Mahrokh) Haji, and the three flew from Toronto to Washington. Fortunately the resistance had been tracking these three, informed the FBI of their presence in Washington, and when the three tried to hold a press conference, the resistance had people assigned to ask pointed questions of them so that they ended the interview prematurely and fled back to Canada.

Abolghasem Bayyenet is a member of the Iranian government. He serves as a trade expert for the Ministry of Commerce. But his background of study and service in the Foreign Ministry indicates that Bayyenet is more than just an economist or a suave and savvy businessman. In an article published in Global Politician on April 23, 2006, entitled “Is Regime Change Possible in Iran?”, Bayyenet leads his audience to think that he is a neutral observer, concerned lest the United States make an error in its assessment of Iran similar to the errors of intelligence and judgment that led to our 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its less than successful outcome. However, his carefully crafted bottom line is that the people of Iran are not going to support regime change and that hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually has achieved greater popularity than his predecessors because of his concern for the problems of the poor and his fight for economic and social justice. To the naive, Bayyenet makes Ahmadinejad sound positively saintly. Conveniently overlooked is the occurrence of over four thousand acts of protest, strikes, anti-regime rallies, riots, and even political assassinations by the people of Iran against the government in the year since Ahmadinejad assumed office. So too, the following facts are ignored: the sizeable flight of capital, the increase in unemployment, and the rising two-figure rate of inflation, all within this last year. Bayyenet is a regime apologist, and when one is familiar with the facts, his arguments ring very hollow. However, his English skills are excellent, and so the naОve might be beguiled by his commentary.

Mohsen Sazegara is VEVAK's “reformed revolutionary”. A student supporter of Khomeini before the 1979 revolution, Sazegara joined the “imam” on his return from exile and served in the government for a decade before supposedly growing disillusioned.

He formed several reformist newspapers but ran afoul of the hardliners in 2003 and was arrested and imprisoned by VEVAK. Following “hunger strikes”, Sazegara was released for health reasons and permitted to seek treatment abroad. Although critical of the government and particularly of Ahmadinejad and KhameneМ, Sazegara is yet more critical of opposition groups, leaving the impression that he favors internal regime change but sees no one to lead such a movement for the foreseeable future. His bottom line: no one is capable of doing what needs to be done, so we must bide our time. Very slick, but his shadow shows his likely remaining ties to the MOIS.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticleprint/2007/01/8583765f-fef2-480e-a844-fef07c85971f.html

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Iran: Tehran Sees A Divide-And-Conquer Policy In The Mideast

By Vahid Sepehri

Iran - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, 13Oct2006
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran in October
epa
January 18, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently denounced what he sees as attempts by the United States to divide Shi'a and Sunnis in the Middle East and to bring Arab states into a coalition hostile to Iran.

Other Iranian politicians have echoed the ayatollah's remarks and, while their interpretations of regional developments are sometimes based on speculation about the motives of Western or Arab powers, the general tendency discerned is a "colonial" tactic of divide and conquer.
The column urged Iranian officials to carefully consider their Arab policy and "find a solution" to the prospect of Arab "cooperation with or...indifference" to strikes on Iran.

Seeking Islamic Unity

Ayatollah Khamenei told a crowd in Qom, central Iran, on January 8 that religious elites and thinkers have a key duty now to avoid religious discord and promote the unity of all Muslims.

Iran's supreme leader continued, saying that "the enemy" wishes to turn longstanding differences between Shi'a and Sunnis into a means for "fratricide and war and bloodshed among Muslims...so Shi'a must not make the slightest remark or move to help this plot," ISNA reported.

Khamanei added that the divisive policies by the United States are a response to its failures in the Middle East, and to the "growing wave of the Islamic awakening" that finds its source in Iran's Islamic regime.

Hostility among Iranian officials to the United States is certainly not new, however the stated concern of Arab states joining Washington is more recent. Khamenei said "certain Arab states" are making concessions to the United States. He referred to "certain analyses, signs, and reports" indicating U.S. plans to form an anti-Iranian coalition including "Great Britain and certain Arab states."

Such a coalition would achieve little, he added, since Iran already withstood eight years of war with Iraq in the 1980s. Iranian officials like to say that Baghdad enjoyed the support of Arab states, the West, and the Soviet Union during that bloody conflict but yet Iraq still did not triumph.

Promoting Discord?

Khamanei made similar remarks on January 15, accusing Western powers of working against Iran and its defense of the rights of Muslims in various places, including Palestine and Lebanon.

His remarks were then repeated by Iranian politicians, who can neither ignore nor criticize the supreme leader's statements. Khamenei's positions set the tone and general direction of Iranian policies. Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said in Tehran on January 9 that "there is no doubt...America and certain powers" are promoting discord in the region, and he said Khamenei had spoken the day before "for the vigilance of nations and governments in the region" and to "prevent discord and divisions," ISNA reported.

He said "it is not about any particular country" while speaking at a joint press conference with United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nuhayyan.

Legislator Kazem Jalali, a member of the parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on January 12 that Iran must be careful with its regional relations, given "America's plot" to divide Shi'a and Sunnis.

Jalali said "naturally we must move [toward] consolidated and strong relations with neighbors," ISNA reported. As "all the governments around us are Sunni Muslims, we have to be duly careful with this plot, so they do not create a difficult and cold atmosphere against Iran."

He said Iran should not relive the time when Western powers isolated it by "frightening" neighboring states about Iran. Jalali may have been referring to the 1980s, when Iran's newly-installed revolutionary state was considered a danger to neighboring monarchies and free-market economies. He said "neighboring countries must know that any radical event happening in this region will harm everyone's interests, and it is not just about the Islamic republic."

Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), warned more forcefully that "the Arab states that wish -- in a sinister alliance with the Americans and British" -- to plot against Iran, should consider "[former Iraqi leader] Saddam [Hussein's] fate."

He said the "blood of martyrs" has pushed Iran's "oppressive enemies to their destruction." Safavi referred to the Soviet Union, Iraq, and "some of these Arab states that boosted Saddam's war machine with billions of dollars," ISNA reported. He said Iran's foreign policy is peaceful but "the enemies should know" that any "plot" will be "firmly suppressed."

Unfriendly Neighbors?

Guardian Council Secretary Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (Fars file photo)On January 16, Guardian Council Secretary Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati also warned that "America's influence and temptations" might create concern about Iran among "certain regional states," IRNA reported. He warned about a bid by "colonial powers" to "create religious divisions" in Saudi Arabia. Jannati said the Hijaz -- where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are found -- should be secure "but unfortunately negative policies have recently been noted there." He accused the United States of backing "Iraq's terrorists."

Several Iranian officials, as well as the media, see a threat to Iran in the Sunni hostility to Iraqi and other Shi'a, as these are seen as Iran's friends.

Concerns have also been expressed in past weeks at moves to present Saddam Hussein's execution as Shi'ite revenge rather than justice for a cruel dictator. A columnist in the reformist daily "Etemad-i Melli" discerned signs of growing hostility to Shi'a and Iran on January 17 in demonstrations in Jordan following Hussein's execution, and the December resignation of Prince Turki al-Faisal as Saudi ambassador in Washington.

The prince is seen as a promoter of moderation with Iran, while the daily observed that Jordanian security forces seemed not to have put restrictions on the demonstration, which was even attended by Saddam Hussein's daughter. The daily also termed undated comments by Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt -- who has reportedly accused Iranians of buying large tracts of land in Lebanon, "in the Zionist manner" -- as "another example of official anti-Iranian inclinations."

Noting many examples of hostility in Arab media to Persians, the columnist said the United States "cleverly" managed the execution of Hussein to foment anti-Iranian feeling and reduce the main obstacle to a military strike against Iran: hostility to such a move among Arabs.

The column urged Iranian officials to carefully consider their Arab policy and "find a solution" to the prospect of Arab "cooperation with or...indifference" to strikes on Iran. "In such conditions, could one witness the presence of Arabs in the streets...to defend Iran and oppose the hostile acts of the United States?" the columnist asked.

Related Stories About Iran:
# Government Pressuring Activist Students, Universities
# UN Experts Urge Tehran Not To Execute Ethnic Arabs
# Reformists Say That Right Destined To Split
# U.S. Expert Predicts Oil-Export Crisis Within A Decade
# Released Student Activist Thinks Blog Riled 'Sensitivities'
# Former Officials, Reformists Criticize Nuclear Policy

http://www.dawn.com/2007/01/22/int2.htm

Tigers’ explosives-laden boat slams ship

COLOMBO, Jan 21: Tiger rebels rammed an explosives-laden boat against a private merchant vessel operated by foreign crew in Sri Lanka's northern waters on Sunday, sparking a land, sea and air battle, the navy said.

The MV City of Liverpool, which is chartered by a Sri Lankan company, was taking in water after the attack and was being towed to the port of Kankesanthurai in the Jaffna peninsula, a navy spokesman said.

He said one Tiger suicide craft exploded against the ship, damaging the hull and one crew member was wounded. Two soldiers on board the ship for security fired at the rebels.

The merchant vessel was unloading wheat flour for the half a million civilians living under virtual siege conditions since the only land access to the Jaffna peninsula was cut off due to fighting since August.

The navy deployed 12 Dvora-class fast attack craft to hit the flotilla of 20 rebel boats and two more suicide craft were blown out of the water before they could reach the merchant vessel, spokesman D. K. P. Dassanayake said.

“The fighting lasted about 45 minutes,” Dassanayake said, adding that two sailors were wounded. The navy believed that at least six guerillas may have perished in the fire fight.

“Usually they have two cadres in each boat packed with explosives. That means six were killed in the three suicide boats,” he said. “They may have suffered more casualties too because of the intensity of the fighting.” The crew comprised seven Indians, two Indonesians and nine Sri Lankans, but the nationality of the crew member wounded in the fighting was not immediately known, Dassanayake said, adding that he had been evacuated to a military hospital in the area. It was also not immediately clear who owned the vessel.

“One cluster of Tiger boats went and attacked the merchant vessel while another engaged our Dvoras,” Dassanayake said.

He said the army fired at rebel boats from the Jaffna coastline while airforce Mi-24 helicopter gunships were called in to attack the boats of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Jaffna is linked to the nearest sea port of Trincomalee in the north-east of the island and the guerillas are known to have attacked military as well as civilian craft operating along the island's north-eastern sea board.

The latest sea battle came two days after the military captured the main bastion of the Tamil Tigers in the eastern district of Batticaloa and claimed to have killed more than 386 guerillas in weeks of fighting.

Troops were consolidating in Vakarai, the key rebel outpost which was taken on Friday, according to the defence ministry.

“The Tigers have no doubt suffered a defeat and this will encourage the military to push home the advantage and launch more strikes,” said Sunanda Deshapriya, director at the private Centre for Policy Alternatives think tank.

He said the military success could see the moribund Norwegian-backed peace process placed on the back-burner by the government.

“I don't expect any movement on the peace front unless and until the government makes some more gains and weakens the Tigers,” Deshapriya said.

Diplomats close to the peace process said the Norwegians as well as the island's key financial backers were not expecting any breakthrough in attempts to revive peace talks which have been stalled since October.

Freelance defence columnist Namal Perera said the Tigers had virtually fled their former stronghold of Vakarai without any credible resistance. He said the rebel withdrawal indicated that they had chosen to cut their losses.

“They have simply melted away without putting on a resistance. This has left their fighting cadre in tact,” Perera said. “Their ability to carry out suicide attacks and guerilla warfare remains and will be a threat.” Official figures show that at least 3,800 people have been killed in Sri Lanka in the past year despite both sides publicly vowing to uphold and protect the truce.Politics in the capital has also complicated the peace moves with the collapse of a landmark deal between the government and its main opposition.

Former Tamil separatist turned politician Dharmalingam Sithadthan said the Tigers too were not keen on political moves and appeared to have taken a decision to fight government forces despite losing ground in the island's east.

A declaration by Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in November that his people will now pursue their own independent state had set the stage for a return to full-scale war in Sri Lanka, Sithadthan said.

“He (Prabhakaran) has gone for a declaration of war,” Sithadthan said. “We are already in a state of war, but it will only get worse in the months to come.”

—Agencies

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,245640,00.html

In Video, Al Qaeda No. 2 Al-Zawahiri Taunts President Bush's New Iraq Plan

Monday , January 22, 2007

Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, taunted President Bush in a new video that surfaced Monday on the Web, ridiculing his new Iraq policy and daring the U.S. to "send the entire American Army" to Iraq.

“Why send 20,000 only, why not send 50 or 100 thousand?" al-Zawahiri asks in a video intercepted by SITE Institute. "Aren't you aware that the dogs of Iraq are pining for your troops' dead bodies?”

According to SITE Institute, the 14-minute speech titled “The Correct Equation” was produced by the Al Qaeda's media arm as-Sahab, and was set to be posted on the Web.

Click here to view a clip of the al-Zawahiri video at SITE Institute.

In the message, which includes English subtitles, al-Zawahiri calls on President Bush to send the entire American Army to Iraq, saying the Mujahadeen (warriors engaged in jihad) are capable of destroying the equivalent of 10 armies.

Al-Zawahiri warns that peace is impossible if Americans continue to follow Bush's policies.

“If we are secure, you might be secure; and if we are safe, you might be safe," al-Zawahiri says. "And if we are struck and killed, you will definitely -- with Allah's permission -- be struck and killed.”

Much of the speech is dedicated to inciting Muslims, urging them to join the jihad or at least to support those conducting jihad in war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria.

Axisglobe: Finnish politicians sign open letter worried about Russian ex-security officer Trepashkin

20.01.2007
Eurasian Security Services Daily Review
AIA

Finnish politicians sign open letter worried about Russian ex-security
officer Trepashkin

Representatives of six political parties represented in the Finnish
parliament and several public organizations of Finland have written an
open letter to the Russian authorities, online paper Novy region
reports. The letter expresses deep concern about the destiny of the
political prisoner, former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)
officer Mikhail Trepashkin, 50, who is serving a prison term for
‘divulging state secrets’ in Nizhni Tagil, Sverdlovsk area of
Russia.

Trepashkin suffers from a chronic, life-threatening bronchial asthma
and
should be translated in a medical hospital urgently, the Finns
consider.
Under the Russian laws the ex-officer has such right (when condemned to
imprisonment in a colony-settlement), however the prison’s
administration opposes such moving, contrary to opinion of independent
doctors.
"We also ask that the country presiding in the European Union has
provided presence of diplomatic observers at court sessions on
Trepashkin’s case when they will be continued", the letters says. The
letter is signed by the parliament members from the Finnish Greens
Party, Social-Democratic Party of Finland, Centre Party, the Swedish
People’s Party, the Left Union and others.

Mikhail Trepashkin in 2004 was condemned by the Moscow district
military
court to four years of imprisonment in a colony-settlement for
disclosure of state secret. According to the version of prosecution,
serving in the KGB and the FSB, Trepashkin had copied confidential
documents, that in the further illegally were stored at home.

Trepashkin, who had served for the state security services for more
than
20 years, became widely known since his participation in November, 1998
in the press conference when the former counterintelligence officer
Alexander Litvinenko and his colleagues announced about the order of
the
FSB leadership to participate in a plot with an aim of the billionaire
Boris Berezovsky’s liquidation.

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1200

Monday, 22 January 2007

Litvinenko's widow branded "liar"

The Kremlin has angrily branded Alexander Litvinenko's widow Marina a
"liar" following an interview she has given to Panorama.

She said: "I cannot say exactly that Putin killed my husband but I can
say that Putin is behind everything that happens in Russia."

President Vladimir Putin's press spokesman said: "Indirectly she says
that Russia has done it. I answer directly that Russia has not done it.

"It is absurd even to think about it."

The programme's investigation into the death of the former Russian spy
has found that it is likely that there were multiple attempts to poison
Litvinenko with Polonium 210 with the first as early as two weeks
before
he visited the London Sushi Bar on November 1 with academic Mario
Scaramella.

The first attempted poisoning may have taken place at the same
restaurant in Piccadilly Circus but earlier when Litvinenko met two
former KGB men there back on October 16.

The contamination in the restaurant was not found where Litvinenko and
Scaramella met on November 1 but at another location, most likely at
the
seats where Litvinenko met the Russian businessmen Andrei Lugovoi and
Dimitri Kovtun in October.

Lugovoi was once a KGB officer and is now a millionaire while his
friend
Kovtun who is also ex-KGB has lived a shadowy life in Germany.

Scaramella says that he had no knowledge of how the sushi bar became
contaminated.

A number of other sites, including a Knightsbridge hotel visited by the
two ex-KGB men have already been found to be contaminated.

Panorama has discovered that Aldermaston (the atomic weapons research
centre which tried to locate the source of the polonium) got
Scaramella's test results wrong and that he wasn't contaminated with
polonium.

The first test was based on the wrong type of radiation reading which
produced a wildly inaccurate result.

Two subsequent and more substantial tests showed that Scaramella was
negative. It was reported that Scaramella had tested positive for a
massive dose of polonium.

Scaramella describes the information passed to him from Litvinenko.

He says: "He co-operated for three years with us. He passed such strong
information. Some of this information was lethal information shall we
say. Other people have been killed for this kind of cooperation."

Asked if he had any part in the poison plot, Scaramella says:
"Absolutely not. Not only I have not killed him, of course, but I think
my role in this history is very marginal. I simply meet him in the same
day something horrible happened."

Litvinenko's widow Marina is interviewed for the programme and says: "I
knew about two meetings, with Scaramella, when Sasha (Litvinenko) had
lunch, and second meeting, with Lugavoi, very short meeting he told me,
very short, just like a few minutes."

Marina explained that Litvinenko met the ex-KGB men on another occasion
and that his tea may have been spiked.

She said: "At Millennium Hotel Sasha told me he met Lugovoi and during
this meeting he had drunk tea and he said it was tea already served, on
the table, and he just took this cup of tea, and he, he didn't finished
at all, and how he later said tea wasn't very tasty, because it was
cold."

Panorama has also tracked down a potential witness Mikhail Trepashkin,
who Scotland Yard have not yet been able to talk to.

Smuggled mobile phone

Trepashkin is a former FSB (Russian Secret Service) officer who was
thrown in jail while investigating the Moscow flat bombs which were
blamed on Chechen terrorists, although some people such as Litvinenko
claimed that the security services were responsible for the attacks.

Speaking on a mobile phone smuggled into his prison, Trepashkin
explained how one of his FSB bosses back in 2001 had Litvinenko in his
sights.

"He asked me to go and find out the route to Litvinenko, where he
works,
his pattern of movements, his meeting places. He said find out what
book
he's writing. I realised they wanted to send one person to find out his
whereabouts and the group will follow."

Panorama also visits Laboratory Number 12, in Moscow once a KGB poison
factory. A former Soviet intelligence officer, who preferred to remain
anonymous, said about the factory: "It's the laboratory that every year
gets it budget to work with radioactive poisons."

Panorama has also obtained a document classified as Top Secret by the
Italian government in which Litvinenko accuses Romano Prodi, the former
NATO prime minister, and now Italy's Prime Minister of being a friend
of
the KGB.

Before his death Litvinenko collaborated with Scaramella on his KGB
mole-hunt in Italy, feeding him with highly sensitive information on
KGB
operations.

Scaramella tells Panorama that Litvinenko was warned off defecting to
Italy.

He said: "His idea when he left Moscow was to arrive in Italy and he
mentioned a friend, a colleague in the secret service who told him that
you cannot go to Italy because there are some big friends of Russia in
this country."

Prodi denies allegations

Asked by Panorama's John Sweeney if he thought Prodi was a KGB spy,
Scaramella says: "No I think nothing about that. I simply collected
from
different people some information about him, about the past, about the
present. Some qualified sources, including Litvinenko, told me that
some
officers in Moscow considered him as their man, KGB man."

Prodi has always denied any allegations that he has links with the KGB.

# How To Poison A Spy will be broadcast on BBC One on Monday 22 January
at 2030 and will be offered on this site on demand from Tuesday.

# My Friend Sasha: A Very Russian Murder will follow on BBC Two at
2320.
For three years before his death from poisoning, former KGB agent
Alexander Litvinenko had been making a documentary with his friend
Andrei Nekrasov about authoritarianism in post-communist Russia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6276225.stm

Onetime Afghan Resistance Leader Resurfaces as Terrorist Ally

http://afgha.com/?q=node/1666

Onetime Afghan Resistance Leader Resurfaces as Terrorist Ally
Sat, 20/01/2007 - 20:32 — matt
Voice of America
By Gary Thomas

In recent months the Taleban has ratcheted up its attacks on U.S. and
NATO forces in Afghanistan. According the outgoing U.S. director of
national intelligence, John Negroponte, al-Qaida has also been active
in the area as it forges new alliances with like-minded extremist
groups from their home base in Pakistan. But, as VOA correspondent
Gary Thomas reports, another Afghan extremist leader who was once a
recipient of U.S. aid has now joined the fray.

In the murky world of intelligence, the term "blowback" is often used
to describe the unintended consequences of a covert operation.

During the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received the lion's share of
U.S. covert assistance, funneled through Pakistani intelligence, to
the resistance battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now
Hekmatyar has resurfaced as an ally of al-Qaida and his onetime
rivals, the Taleban.

Larry Goodson, a professor of Middle East studies at the U.S. Army War
College, says the re-emergence of Hekmatyar as a terrorist leader is a
prime example of blowback.

"The whole strategy we used was sort of subcontracting the proxy war
in the 1980s through the Pakistanis," he explained. "Now the
Pakistanis, of course, insisted on it and we went along with it. You
can argue that we didn't have any choice. But, in any event, one of
the byproducts of that was the Taleban. Another byproduct, a much more
direct byproduct, really, was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar."

Hekmatyar, an ethnic Pashtun, led the Hezb-i-Islami, one of the seven
major parties that made up the Afghan resistance. They often quarreled
among themselves.

Ahmad Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who has written extensively about
Afghanistan over the years, says Hekmatyar developed a particular
reputation for the ruthlessness of the attacks he led even from his
own allies in the resistance.

"Everybody hated him, because he was so ambitious and wanted to kill
everyone," he explained. "He's killed more Afghans than Soviet troops."

But former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, who served in Pakistan, says
that is not quite fair. He says Hekmatyar, while ruthless, was
nevertheless useful to the CIA, even when, Scheuer notes, some
elements of the U.S. government objected to his methods.

"Generally speaking, the diplomats in our government -- the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department -- didn't
have much use for Hekmatyar," he recalled. "They thought he was a bad,
evil man. From the [Central Intelligence] Agency's perspective, he was
doing the only thing we wanted done in Afghanistan, and that was kill
Russians."

Larry Goodson, who has dealt with Hekmatyar during his days in
Afghanistan, says even then Hekmatyar made no secret of his deep
mistrust of the West in general and the United States in particular.

"He was always virulently, as long as I knew him anyway, virulently
anti-Western," Mr. Goodson added. "He'd tell you to your face how bad
the Americans were even as he was getting the lion's share of the
American aid. So it's not really very surprising that he is so
opposed, leaving aside the tribal issues and all the other issues,
that he is so opposed to the American-supported government of Hamid
Karzai."

When Kabul fell to the mujahedin guerillas in 1992, the guerrillas
soon began fighting among themselves as they jockeyed for power,
destroying large parts of the capital in the process. Hekmatyar became
prime minister. But the bitter fighting paved the way for the advent
of the Taleban, which was welcomed as a pacifying force by a war-weary
populace. Hekmatyar fled to Iran.

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States,
Hekmatyar returned to Afghanistan. He recently claimed to have even
helped Osama bin Laden escape when the al-Qaida leader was cornered by
the ferocious U.S. bombing in Tora Bora in 2001.

Michael Scheuer says the United States should have dealt with
Hekmatyar and other mujahedin leaders now fighting the United States
when it had the chance in 2001.

"One of the mistakes in going into Afghanistan was we sort of
neglected the last generation of the mujahedin, the people who fought
the Soviets and defeated them," he noted. "When we went in, we should
have either tried to co-opt them, or we should have killed them. And
we did neither. And as a result, they have now resurfaced to become
part of the jihad against the American-led coalition."

Hekmatyar is believed to be moving back and forth from the Bajaur
tribal agency in Pakistan to Kunar province in Afghanstan. He now has
common cause with his former competitors for power, the Taleban, to
dislodge the Karzai government in Kabul. Many Western analysts believe
that Pakistan would like to see a weaker, less pro-Western government
in Kabul, and that Hekmatyar is back in favor with his former mentors
of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

Lawyer: Russian prosecutors set aside case against Berezovsky

By DPA
Jan 22, 2007, 16:00 GMT

Moscow - Russia's case against exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky has
been halted, a lawyer for the onetime adviser to former Russian
president Boris Yeltsin told Russian news agencies Monday.

Moscow has put the brakes on its case against Berezovsky due to the
difficulties involved with investigating the refugee, who now resides
in
London, his lawyer, Andrei Borovkov, said in remarks carried by
Interfax.

'The Prosecutor General's Office informed us that investigative work
had
been completed and that it was impossible to conduct further actions in
the absence of the accused,' Borovkov said.

The Prosecutor General's Office has yet to officially comment.

Russia charged Berezovsky with attempting to forcefully grab power last
February after the media, auto and oil magnate whose name once struck
awe, fear or disgust in many in Russia told Moscow's Ekho Moskvy radio
station that he had 'been making concerted efforts in the direction (of
a power grab) for a sufficiently long time.'

Speaking a year later, once again on the liberal-leaning Ekho Moskvy,
Berezovsky on Monday connected the dropping of charges to Moscow's
attempts to interrogate him in connection with the November murder of
former Russian secret agent Alexander Litvinenko.

'Insofar as the Prosecutor General's Office plans to send detectives to
London, they want to demonstrate that they have no other reason for a
meeting with me than the Litvinenko affair,' Berezovsky told the radio
station.

Russian prosecutors have officially asked Britain to allow their
investigators to question the two Kremlin critic, along with 100 other
witnesses that include Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev. Both
Berezovsky and Zakayev were friends with Litvinenko before he died of
poisoning by the radioactive isotope polonium-210.

London has yet to publicly give an answer.

Berezovsky was credited by many observers with manipulating his media
outlets to secure Yeltsin's presidential victory in 1996, as well as
that of the country's current president, Vladimir Putin, in 2000.

After Putin came to office, however, he and the once-massively powerful
oligarch quickly parted ways.

Russian authorities in 2002 charged Berezovsky with defrauding the
nation's biggest carmaker, AutoVAZ, out of 2,000 cars worth 14 million
dollars through his auto dealership, Logovaz.

The fallen oligarch fled to Britain, where in 2003 he was granted
political refugee status.

Russia has previously tried to achieve Berezovsky's extradition and has
an international warrant out for this purpose.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

January 22, 2007 PM Anti-Terrorism News

(Iraq & U.S.) Details Emerge About Possible Terror Threat - ABC News:
Documents captured at Iraqi house show they considered using student
visas to slip terrorists into U.S.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2813235&page=1

Captured intel reveals al-Qaida U.S. attack plan
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16757401/

New Video of Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri: Warning & "Deal" (with
video link)
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/01/new_video_of_al_qaeda_2_ayman.php
http://www.lauramansfield.com/zawahiri_012207.wmv

SITE Institute: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri Addresses U.S. President Bush's
Baghdad Security Plan in Video Speech from as-Sahab, "The Correct
Equation" â€“ 1/2007
http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications246007&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

Al Qaeda No. 2 mocks new U.S. strategy for Iraq
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/22/qaeda.tape.ap/index.html

In Video, Al Qaeda No. 2 Al-Zawahiri Taunts President Bush's New Iraq
Plan
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245640,00.html

(Iraq) Al-Qaeda claims it shot down US helicopter in Iraq
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070122193907.lqwely2q.html

Iran's Contribution to the Civil War in Iraq - Jamestown Foundation
analysis on Iranian presence before U.S. invasion to today - see also
Iranian Involvement in Afghanistan
http://www.jamestown.org/docs/Jamestown-IranContributionIraq.pdf
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370239

U.S. says killed 93 Qaeda-linked fighters in Iraq - and 57 captured in
10 day operation
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070122/ts_nm/iraq_usa_fighters_dc_1

Update: (Iraq) Bombs kill at least 100 people in Iraq - 156 wounded
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070122/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_070122143735

(Iraq) Karbala attackers posed as U.S. military officials
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/22/iraq.karbala/index.html

Arabiya offices damaged in Gaza blast - Gaza City offices of Al-Arabiya
channel heavily damaged
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070122/wl_mideast_afp/mideastgazamedia_070122211954

Update: (Afghanistan) Taliban to open "jihad schools" - spend $1M on
"Jihad schools"- update to 1/21 story
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\01\22\story_22-1-2007_pg7_7

(Lebanon) Jumblatt to flesh out allegations against Hizbullah -
Hizbullah allegedly attempting to buy real estate through "Izdihar"
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=78824

(Lebanon) Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya says rockets confiscated by army
'belong to us and ... were being used to fight Israel' - Terrorist group
wants Lebanese Army to return 75 seized rockets
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=78832

TSA to track rail shipments with toxic cargo
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-21-rail-cargo_x.htm

(India) Bangalore tense after Muslim riots
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi/20070122-104049-8267r.htm

(Canada) Hamas warns Canada making enemies of Palestinians, says report
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2007/01/hamas_warns_canada_making_enem.html

(UK) Friend 'helped bomb plot accused'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6286271.stm

(South Africa) Man tries to hijack Botswana plane
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L22846551&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-4

South African al-Qaida suspect a "quiet" dentist
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16752206/

Singapore to terror-proof hazmat trucks
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070122/ap_on_re_as/singapore_truck_security_1

(UK) Government seeks radical security, anti-terror overhaul
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070121/wl_uk_afp/britainattackscrimepoliticspolice_070121094920

More Background Information on Adam Gadahn (my title)
http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/the-wild-goat-farmer/274/

Gas Station To Offer 'Terror-Free' Oil
http://www.kirotv.com/money/10815377/detail.html
NOTE: oil industry buys and sells between countries so company selling
"oil" is not necessarily the country that "produced" oil
Nice idea, though...
http://www.driving-out-terrorists.com/challenge_of_sources_of_gasoline.htm

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070120/NEWS03/701200364/1023/NEWS07

3 held, 1 sought in N.J. slaying linked to Orangeburg theft

By Steve Lieberman
The Journal News
(Original Publication: January 20, 2007)

Fourth man sought
Anyone with information on Gregory Stevens, 26, of Paterson, N.J., who is charged with murder, is asked to call the Hawthorne Police Department at 973-427-1800 or the Orangetown Police Department Detective Bureau at 845-359-2121.

ORANGEBURG - Four men have been charged in the slaying of a perfume company employee who police say made tens of thousands of dollars stealing the company's product.

Ariel Velez, 32, who graduated from Ramapo High School in 1992 and worked nearly 10 years for the Clarins Group, died after being shot four times July 10 while running from his Hawthorne, N.J., apartment.

Hawthorne and Orangetown police detectives said Velez was killed during a home-invasion robbery set up by a former Clarins co-worker who knew Velez had made money stealing truckloads of perfume.

Investigators found close to $150,000 in a safe hidden in Velez's apartment, where he lived with his girlfriend and her four children, police said.

Velez was an assistant manager in charge of inventory for Clarins, a French-owned company on Olympic Drive in Orangeburg.

"Velez was a prime player in the theft of product from Clarins for a year and a half," Orangetown Detective Lt. John McAndrew said.

Police estimated up to $5 million worth of products had been stolen.

"He was in charge of inventory and could fluff the numbers and cover up what was stolen," McAndrew said. "We have videotape. They backed the vans into the loading dock."

Orangetown police had been investigating the theft of cosmetics and perfume before Velez's death, McAndrew said.

The homicide took the investigation into different directions as Orangetown detectives began working with Hawthorne detectives.

Over the past month, Hawthorne police arrested Rouniky Arnaud, 22, and Freddy Gonzalez, 30, both of Paterson, and Francisco A. Trinidad, 28, of Charlotte, N.C., and formerly of Teaneck, Hawthorne Detective Jeffrey Vanderhook said.

A fourth man, Gregory Stevens, 26, of Paterson, remains at large, Vanderhook said. Stevens is accused of shooting Velez as he ran from the apartment.

All four were charged with first-degree murder and third-degree burglary, Vanderhook said.

Arnaud and Gonzalez are being held in the Passaic County jail on $500,000 bail each. Trinidad is being held on $1 million bail.

Passaic County Assistant Prosecutor John Latoracca said a grand jury would hear the charges against the four.

Trinidad was arrested in Charlotte. Gonzalez was arrested Dec. 21 in Northvale, N.J., by officers, including Detectives Robert Goldrick, Daniel Costello and Stephen Toth, Orangetown's lead investigators into the Clarins thefts.

Police said Gonzalez, who once worked with Velez at Clarins, knew Velez was making money from stolen perfumes and set up the robbery attempt.

"The shooting was a result of a home-invasion robbery," Vanderhook said. "One of the accused had been a co-worker of the deceased and knew he had money in the house."

The robbery occurred just after Velez's girlfriend left to take the children to summer camp.

The robbers panicked after finding Velez home, McAndrew said.

Velez ran from the second-floor apartment and was shot once in the arm and three times in the back, McAndrew said. Police found him dead at the bottom of the stairwell.

"It's possible he recognized one or more of them," McAndrew said. "They panicked and left."

McAndrew said detectives continued to investigate the perfume theft ring.

Mark Rosenbloom, the president of Clarins, did not return a telephone call for comment. Clarins perfume normally is sold to high-end stores like Bloomingdale's and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Velez spent 16 years in Rockland, living in Spring Valley, New City and Haverstraw. He moved to Hawthorne about a year ago.

Several old friends were saddened by his death and shocked that he would have been implicated in anything dishonest.

"I grew up with Ariel, and he was a stand-up guy," said Seth Marks, 36, owner of a used-car business in Rockland. "He always was a hard worker."

Velez was close to the Marks family, having dated Lea Marks, 32, for 11 1/2 years. Lea and her twin sister, Brie, knew Velez for 15 years.

"His mother and father raised him to be a very moral person," Lea Marks said yesterday.

She said Velez didn't have children of his own but was good with children. She said her nieces and nephew called him "Uncle Ariel."

Brie Marks, 32, of Ramapo said Velez had a zest for life.

"He was a dynamic person who treated every human being like they were his brother or sister," she said. "Anyone who met him felt like they were his friends forever."

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070119/NEWS03/701190371/1023/NEWS07

$17,500 in cell phones stolen from Nanuet Mall

By Steve Lieberman
The Journal News
(Original Publication: January 19, 2007)

How to help
Anyone with information is asked to call the Clarkstown Police Department at 845-639-5800, the detective bureau at 845-639-5840 or the department's tips line at 877-639-6233.

NANUET - Clarkstown police released a photo yesterday of a man suspected of stealing 74 cell phones worth nearly $17,500 from two kiosks at the Nanuet Mall.

The thefts earlier this month appeared to mirror two incidents in New Jersey, Clarkstown police said.

The description of Clarkstown's suspect, taken from a video surveillance camera, was similar to the one in the two New Jersey cases, Detective Lt. Charles Delo said yesterday.

"We're still investigating, but he somewhat fits the description," Delo said.

Police described the man as black, heavy-set, with a goatee, and wearing a gray sweat shirt with "Cheyenne Bulls" in black writing, gray pants, white sneakers and a gray wool hat.

Between 3:27 and 3:35 a.m. Jan. 7, 16 cell phones worth $4,925 were stolen from the T-Mobile kiosk and 58 cell phones worth $12,551 were stolen from the Cingular Wireless kiosk, Detective Gerry King said yesterday.

The Executive Wireless kiosk's cabinets were broken into, but no phones were reported stolen, King said.

Delo said it's possible the thief couldn't get to the phones or the phones were not the type that he wanted.

The video surveillance system from one of the businesses recorded one of the break-ins on tape.

Using the video, police produced a photograph of a man and have circulated it to police departments and the media.

The Nanuet Mall, the county's second largest, doesn't have a surveillance camera system, police said. The county's largest mall, the Palisades Center in West Nyack, has such a system.

Delo said investigators have not determined how the Nanuet Mall was entered that early in the morning.

Clarkstown police didn't release information about the theft until yesterday.

Delo said he had hoped detectives could get the identity of the man by working with other departments in the region.

Clarkstown police have released an image of a man suspected of stealing 74 cell phones worth nearly $17,500 from two kiosks at the Nanuet Mall.

Natana DeLong-Bas: American Professor, Wahhabi Apologist

by Stephen Schwartz Real Clear Politics January 19, 2007

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3035

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/natana_delongbas_american_prof.html

Perhaps no single figure better represents the lamentable situation of Middle East studies (MES) today than Professor Natana J. DeLong-Bas, a Georgetown graduate who currently teaches at Brandeis University and Boston College. Her specialty happens to be Wahhabism, the ultrafundamentalist Islamic sect and state religion in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism inspires al-Qaida and its variants--including the Sunni jihadists currently murdering U.S. and coalition troops, as well as Shia Muslims, in Iraq.

DeLong-Bas is a professional apologist for Saudi extremism. She recently reached a depth of mendacity about radical Islam it is hard to imagine her exceeding. In an interview with the Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat of December 21, 2006, while visiting the desert kingdom, DeLong-Bas announced that she had found "no convincing evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center." Her interview was made public in translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) at www.memri.org.

In a long colloquy clearly intended to flatter her Saudi patrons, DeLong-Bas claimed that she had been studying the works of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, for a decade, and had read all of them. But she was forced by a persistent Saudi reporter to admit that she had never read the Islamist preacher's correspondence, which critics of Wahhabism and other Saudis consider key to understanding him. She rambled on, claiming that Islamist terror has nothing to do with radical religious interpretations, and with an almost absurd predictability blamed everything wrong in the Muslim and Arab world on the U.S. and Israel. She even described the "democracy" of terrorist groups like Hamas and the Wahhabi agents in Somalia as superior in achievement to U.S. democratization efforts.

Intellectually, Natana DeLong-Bas fits comfortably in the philosophical milieu of contemporary MES. For the majority of MES scholars in the U.S., certain clich�s--little more than slogans--have become the foundation for teaching a new generation of American scholars. These truisms include the claim that radical Islam is a construct fabricated by Western "Orientalists," that all the problems of the Arab and Muslim nations are caused by Western economic rapacity, and, of course, that American support for Israel is the principal cause of Arab and Muslim discontent.

Prior to September 11, a relatively unknown DeLong-Bas appeared to be little more than one of many disciples of John L. Esposito, a renowned Georgetown professor and Islamist apologist who directs the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. She was a mere research assistant at Georgetown, completing a dissertation on Wahhabism and co-authoring a second edition of Esposito's volume Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).

When the fact that 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 suicide squad were Saudis came to America's attention, and scrutiny of Saudi Wahhabism began, Esposito introduced DeLong-Bas to the media as an "expert" to counter suspicion about the Wahhabi danger. DeLong-Bas argued in The Boston Globe as early as 2003 that the writings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the eponymous sect, were moderate and unthreatening and treated other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, tolerantly and fairly.

This outlandish opinion, delivered in the wake of the atrocities less than two years before, was fleshed out when her volume Wahhabi Islam was published by Oxford University Press in 2004. There she presented Wahhabism as anti-jihad and so benevolent as to be even feminist. Her book seemed to have been rushed into print with official Saudi support: DeLong-Bas thanked such individuals as Faisal bin Salman, whose status as a Saudi prince she failed to mention; Abd Allah S. al-Uthaymin, son of a notoriously extreme member of the Wahhabi clerical class in the kingdom; and Fahd as-Semmari, director of the King Abd al-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. She also acknowledged the latter foundation for financial support. Even during the worst period of American academic accommodation to Soviet Communism, in the late 1980s, it is difficult to imagine an American academic scholar admitting direct receipt of funding from Moscow.

But Saudi Arabia, as we all know, is different, and DeLong-Bas is remarkably candid; she soon became the most strident defender of Wahhabism in the West, and especially in academia.

Western politicians and academics, who determine and interpret, respectively, the course of world affairs, are more to blame for the public's ignorance of Middle East affairs than are the media. As an experienced news reporter for a major American daily, I believe most reporters simply followed the practice of the profession. Acting as "first responders" similar to firefighters, police, and nurses, they accumulated quickly-observable facts and then turned to academic "experts" to analyze them. It was among American professors of Middle East studies, rather than on the battlefield, that truth became the first casualty.

The totalitarian influence exercised over MES is profoundly alarming. A small list of sensible and well-developed American authorities in the discipline has challenged MES stereotypes, but these critics are frequently attacked, isolated, and ostracized.

Why should this "treason of the intellectuals" matter to most Westerners? Because it implies treason to civilization. Its effects may even be worse for the Muslim world than for the West; but the field of Middle East Studies lacks any conscience about the consequences of its practitioners' surrender to ideology.

Stephen Schwartz is author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism, and Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism [www.islamicpluralism.org]. He was a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1989 to 1999. He writes for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Jan 23, 6:23 AM EST

Russia Examining Politkovskaya Killing

By JIM HEINTZ
Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian prosecutors are looking into the possibility
that police officials in Chechnya were involved in the killing of
journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed rights abuses in the war-
battered region, an international media watchdog group said Tuesday.

Leaders of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said
a Russian Foreign Ministry official told them Monday that the
Prosecutor General's Office had opened a criminal investigation into
several police officials in the region who may have killed
Politkovskaya because she was about to publish an article alleging
their involvement in torture.

"The Foreign Ministry stressed that this is one of several lines of
investigation," CPJ director Joel Simon told a news conference.

A Foreign Ministry official gave a different account, saying that
the criminal probe was opened by prosecutors in Chechnya - not the
Prosecutor General's Office - and that they were investigating
allegations of abuse that Politkovskaya raised in an article
published after her slaying.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the subject, said that no connection had yet been
established between the article and her killing.

Politkovskaya was fatally shot in her Moscow apartment building last
October in a killing that caused an international outcry and
deepened concerns about the freedom of media in Russia. The slaying
also underscored the dangers for journalists who criticize the
authorities or expose injustice.

A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow, Natalya
Brusentsova, said prosecutors there are pursuing a single
investigation into Politkovskaya's killing and would not disclose
details while it continues. She said the office is unaware of a
separate investigation involving Chechen police.

The Foreign Ministry official said that if a connection is
established between Politkovskaya's article and her killing, the
cases could be merged into one.

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

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