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April 20 — At least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime, U.S. and European intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS. One year after his fall, U.S. officials say they have evidence, some in cash, that Saddam diverted to his personal bank accounts approximately $5 billion from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program. In what has been described as the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken, the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began in 1996 to help Iraqis who were suffering under sanctions imposed following the first Gulf War. The program allowed Iraq to sell...

Ahmad Chalabi is in possession of "miles" of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds. That may have been enough to provoke yesterday's American raid. So explosive are the contents of the files that their publication would cause serious problems for US allies and friendly states around the globe. Late last year and several months before Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority became involved, Mr Chalabi had amassed enough information concerning corruption in the oil-for-food scandal to realise that he was...

Part three: The Fedayeen have vowed to step up their suicide bombings. Neil Mackay reports that they are just one string of militias ready to fight to the death for Saddam YOU'LL have seen one of their number already -- a middle-aged man in a blue serge suit with a keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head. As the TV cameras rolled, he triumphantly waved his Czech-made assault rifle in the air while Iraqi villagers in the distance behind him stripped down the US Apache helicopter he'd just shot down. This avuncular-looking farmer, Ali Obeid, now praised as a national hero...

France’s longest-running political and corporate corruption scandal ended yesterday with prison sentences and fines for 23 former executives at the Elf oil company and their associates.Loik le Floch-Prigent, 57, Elf’s chief executive between 1989 and 1993, authorised the embezzlement of £210 million while Elf was state-owned. The money went on bribes for politicians and middlemen and lavish lifestyles for senior Elf executives.He was jailed for five years and fined £260,000.Nadhmi Auchi, a British billionaire, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and fined £1.4 million. Auchi, who fled his native Iraq under Saddam Hussein, was found guilty of accepting illegal...

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was quick to blame the bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers on Republicans’ “failed philosophy”. Obama’s September 15 comments were repeated throughout the media--yet reporters have not noted Obama’s glaring conflict of interest—the Lehman debt owed to a bank owned by the financier who loaned millions of dollars to Tony Rezko.

Since assuming office in 2009, President Barack Obama has consistently held that the United States would carry out airstrikes to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This position is supported by the vast majority of U.S. policy makers, lawmakers and the political elite, regardless of political affiliation. Nonetheless, it is also generally agreed that airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would only have a limited impact on preventing Iran from acquiring the bomb. To be sure, a concerted airstrike effort against Iran would delay its ability to build a nuclear arsenal by several years. Nonetheless, Iran would be able to...

There are few anecdotes about him, and pictures, at least ones that have appeared publicly, are scarce. The younger Khamenei operates behind an elaborate security structure, an overlapping world that stretches from Iran's Revolutionary Guards to the motorcycle-riding Basiji. That accumulation of control was used to outflank reformists such as Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hossein Ali Montazeri, revered figures of the Islamic Revolution who years ago had questioned the senior Khamenei's qualifications as supreme leader. The violence that has erupted over the last week -- state media have reported that 10 to 19 people have died -- were in part the...

French Connection IIBy WILLIAM SAFIRE ASHINGTON — What will the world discover, after the war is over, about which countries secretly helped Saddam obtain components for terror weapons?Last week, I wrote that French brokerage was involved in the illicit transfer of the chemical HTBP, a rubbery base for a rocket propellant, from a Chinese company through Syria to Iraq. When Christiane Amanpour asked President Jacques Chirac about it on CBS's "60 Minutes," he replied: "Because The New York Times is a serious newspaper, as soon as I read this I ordered an inquiry. I can now confirm officially, after an...

A tape apparently recorded by murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko a year before he was poisoned has revealed he was digging up links between Vladimir Putin and one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. A Telegraph investigation uncovered the audio recording, in which the dissident claims from beyond the grave that Russia’s president had a “good relationship” with Semion Mogilevich - a Ukrainian crime boss who was on the FBI's most wanted list and whom Mr Litvinenko believed was selling weapons to al-Qaeda. The apparent recording of Mr Litvinenko is published for the first time ahead of a public inquiry...

"Rest in peace," Iraqi government spokesperson Bassem al-Awadi said in a eulogy for the former U.S. vice president shared with Newsweek. "Without delving into the intentions behind actions, the change that took place in Iraq under your leadership and that of President Bush in 2003 was profound." "Despite all the events that followed, the transformations Iraq witnessed after the fall of Saddam’s regime were vast and astonishing, though many have tried to distort them to serve their own interests," Awadi said. "The numbers are remarkable, Mr. Dick Cheney, and too many to list here." Iraqis are even more divided on...

THE search for Saddam Hussein's multi-billion dollar fortune gathered momentum yesterday when special forces seized a half-brother implicated in torture and genocide. Barzan Ibrahim el-Hasan al-Tikriti, the second of Saddam's three half-brothers to be arrested, was captured during a night raid in Baghdad after a tip-off. Barzan, designated the five of clubs in a pack of cards of the most-wanted fugitives, acted as financier, adviser, diplomat and intelligence chief for Saddam. He is believed to have unique knowledge of the billions of dollars hidden abroad for Saddam Hussein and his family. The questioning of Barzan by US investigators is likely...

An even more devastating terrorism charge could be laid on Iran's doorstep if intelligence reports linking Iran to al-Qaeda are confirmed. Insight has learned of new links between top Iranian intelligence officials and the al-Qaeda leadership that suggest direct Iranian government involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mainland. Documents and information provided to this magazine by a recent Iranian defector, if confirmed as authentic, could open a new front in the war on terror. The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, says he worked in the intelligence office of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and personally handled security at two...

1. "Genocide in Darfur – How the Horror Began." By Eric Reeves. SudanTribune September 3, 2005: "likely more than four million if we consider its earlier phase (1955-72)." Add the hundreds of thousands dead since 2005 including 150,000 2023/4 3. Nigeria, Igbo genocide by Hausa-Fulani Jihad: 3 million 2. 1971, 3 Million Bengalis by Pakistan using Islamic themes. 3. Idi Amin, sought to islamicize Uganda, 300,000. 4. Lebanon 1970s-1999 - by Syria and "Palestinians" Muslims: 300,000. 5. Iran 1979 Islamic Revolution: 80,000. 6. Saddam Hussein (- Quran waving dictator), 500,000. 7. Iran-Iraq war (Sunni vs Shiite), 1.5 million. 8. Yemen,...

<p>WASHINGTON - As we prepare to watch President George Bush give his State of the Union address on Tuesday, we think back to Jan. 18 when Saddam's surrogates were in town protesting any use of force against Iraq.</p> <p>In scenes reminiscent of the anti-draft, peace-at-any-price days of Vietnam, some 70,000 demonstrators rallied, marched and orated in Washington and as many again were doing the same in San Francisco. There were smaller efforts in other American cities, along with shows of even greater anti-American enthusiasm surging in some foreign capitals.</p>

Oct. 28, 2003 Iran rejects U.S. demand to extradite al-Qaida operatives By ASSOCIATED PRESS TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran rejected a U.S. demand to hand over senior al-Qaida operatives in its custody, Tuesday, saying the terror suspects would stand trial in Iranian courts, state-run radio reported. A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that senior al-Qaida operatives held by Iran should be turned over to their countries of origin or to the United States for interrogation and trial. "Al-Qaida operatives currently in (our) custody have committed crimes in Iran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted by...

For the first time ever, significant light is being shed on one of the most horrendous human rights atrocities of the second half of the 20th century. In 1988, more than 30,000 political prisoners were senselessly massacred by Iranian officials. More than 30 years later, one of the people who participated in the massacre, Hamid Noury, is on trial in Sweden. The Noury trial should spark more media and public scrutiny about the 1988 massacre, and ultimately trigger a long overdue international investigation. Hamid Noury has been incarcerated in Sweden since November 2019 when he visited the country for personal...

James Bond is smiling. Among one of most astonishing revelations about Israel’s lightning military attack against Iran is its bold decision well before the war began to insert large, secret operational teams into the Islamic country. “Operation Rising Lion’s” clandestine operations will go down in military history as the most ambitious covert military offensive in modern warfare. The press has briefly noted it, but they are missing the real story. Israel’s secret Iranian operations led by Mossad, the country’s spy agency, have not stopped. They are ongoing. And only a few are talking about it. One who is talking about...

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour: Is the U.S. planning to invade Iraq sometime next year? While White House officials are downplaying a "New York Times" report that says the U.S. is considering a major air and ground assault for next year that could include as many as 250,000 American troops. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein celebrated his 65th birthday over the weekend with the usual well-choreographed tributes from the Iraqi people. And, in Baghdad, tens of thousands of people marched as a show of support and defiance in the face of U.S. determination to topple Hussein. Ambassador...

New details of Moscow's intelligence work in Cuba were disclosed by Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. ...Russian KGB officer Nikolai Leonov became "firm friends," with Mr. Castro's younger brother Raul in Prague in 1953 and then worked together with Fidel from 1956 and after he took power in 1959. The book, the second volume of what is known as the Mitrokhin archive, also reveals how Moscow sought to indirectly defeat the United States during the Cold War through large-scale "disinformation" and influence operations in the developing world. "The KGB really believed they could...

The following is an excerpt of the book description written for The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century which Professor Harold Hongju Koh published on June 25, 2024.If re-elected, could President Trump, by a single tweet, withdraw America from the United Nations, NATO, and every treaty and international organization to which the U.S. belongs? Or if re-elected, could President Biden gradually take us to war throughout the Mideast—Gaza, Yemen, Iran, the Red Sea—by supplying weapons and ordering drone strikes, cybercommands and Special Forces without congressional approval?SNIPThis increasing imbalance of foreign affairs power has intensified across recent administrations of both...