Libya : A no lie zone

[Jan Klimkowski]

I thought the western, NATO-led, military intervention was to protect and save the lives of civilians?

Seems not.

Nato units left 61 African migrants to die of hunger and thirst

Exclusive: Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised

Jack Shenker in Lampedusa guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 May 2011 21.30 BST

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

International maritime law compels all vessels, including military units, to answer distress calls from nearby boats and to offer help where possible. Refugee rights campaigners have demanded an investigation into the deaths, while the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, has called for stricter co-operation among commercial and military vessels in the Mediterranean in an effort to save human lives.

"The Mediterranean cannot become the wild west," said spokeswoman Laura Boldrini. "Those who do not rescue people at sea cannot remain unpunished."

Her words were echoed by Father Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome who runs the refugee rights organisation Habeshia, and who was one of the last people to be in communication with the migrant boat before its satellite phone ran out of battery.

"There was an abdication of responsibility which led to the deaths of over 60 people, including children," he claimed. "That constitutes a crime, and that crime cannot go unpunished just because the victims were African migrants and not tourists on a cruise liner."

This year's political turmoil and military conflict in north Africa have fuelled a sharp rise in the number of people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with up to 30,000 migrants believed to have made the journey across the Mediterranean over the past four months. Large numbers have died en route; last month more than 800 migrants of different nationalities who left on boats from Libya never made it to European shores and are presumed dead.

Underlining the dangers, on SundaySunday more than 400 migrants were involved in a dramatic rescue when their boat hit rocks on Lampedusa.

The pope, meanwhile, in an address to more than 300,000 worshippers, called on Italians to welcome immigrants fleeing to their shores.

The Guardian's investigation into the case of the boat of 72 migrants which set sail from Tripoli on 25 March established that it carried 47 Ethiopians, seven Nigerians, seven Eritreans, six Ghanaians and five Sudanese migrants. Twenty were women and two were small children, one of whom was just one year old. The boat's Ghanaian captain was aiming for the Italian island of Lampedusa, 180 miles north-west of the Libyan capital, but after 18 hours at sea the small vessel began running into trouble and losing fuel.

Using witness testimony from survivors and other individuals who were in contact with the passengers during its doomed voyage, the Guardian has pieced together what happened next. The account paints a harrowing picture of a group of desperate migrants condemned to death by a combination of bad luck, bureaucracy and the apparent indifference of European military forces who had the opportunity to attempt a rescue.

The migrants used the boat's satellite phone to call Zerai in Rome, who in turn contacted the Italian coastguard. The boat's location was narrowed down to about 60 miles off Tripoli, and coastguard officials assured Zerai that the alarm had been raised and all relevant authorities had been alerted to the situation.

Soon a military helicopter marked with the word "army" appeared above the boat. The pilots, who were wearing military uniforms, lowered bottles of water and packets of biscuits and gestured to passengers that they should hold their position until a rescue boat came to help. The helicopter flew off, but no rescue boat arrived.

No country has yet admitted sending the helicopter that made contact with the migrants. A spokesman for the Italian coastguard said: "We advised Malta that the vessel was heading towards their search and rescue zone, and we issued an alert telling vessels to look out for the boat, obliging them to attempt a rescue." The Maltese authorities denied they had had any involvement with the boat.

After several hours of waiting, it became apparent to those on board that help was not on the way. The vessel had only 20 litres of fuel left, but the captain told passengers that Lampedusa was close enough for him to make it there unaided. It was a fatal mistake. By 27 March, the boat had lost its way, run out of fuel and was drifting with the currents.

"We'd finished the oil, we'd finished the food and water, we'd finished everything," said Kurke, a 24-year-old migrant who was fleeing ethnic conflict in his homeland, the Oromia region of Ethiopia. "We were drifting in the sea, and the weather was very dangerous." At some point on 29 or 30 March the boat was carried near to a Nato aircraft carrier so close that it would have been impossible to be missed. According to survivors, two jets took off from the ship and flew low over the boat while the migrants stood on deck holding the two starving babies aloft. But from that point on, no help was forthcoming. Unable to manoeuvre any closer to the aircraft carrier, the migrants' boat drifted away. Shorn of supplies, fuel or means of contacting the outside world, they began succumbing one by one to thirst and starvation.

The Guardian has made extensive inquiries to ascertain the identity of the Nato aircraft carrier, and has concluded that it is likely to have been the French ship Charles de Gaulle, which was operating in the Mediterranean on those dates.

French naval authorities initially denied the carrier was in the region at that time. After being shown news reports which indicated this was untrue, a spokesperson declined to comment.

A spokesman for Nato, which is co-ordinating military action in Libya, said it had not logged any distress signals from the boat and had no records of the incident. "Nato units are fully aware of their responsibilities with regard to the international maritime law regarding safety of life at sea," said an official. "Nato ships will answer all distress calls at sea and always provide help when necessary. Saving lives is a priority for any Nato ships."

For most of the migrants, the failure of the Nato ship to mount any rescue attempt proved fatal. Over the next 10 days, almost everyone on board died. "We saved one bottle of water from the helicopter for the two babies, and kept feeding them even after their parents had passed," said Kurke, who survived by drinking his own urine and eating two tubes of toothpaste. "But after two days, the babies passed too, because they were so small."

On 10 April, the boat washed up on a beach near the Libyan town of Zlitan near Misrata. Of the 72 migrants who had embarked at Tripoli, only 11 were still alive, and one of those died almost immediately on reaching land. Another survivor died shortly afterwards in prison, after Gaddafi's forces arrested the migrants and detained them for four days.

Despite the trauma of their last attempt, the migrants who are hiding out in the house of an Ethiopian in the Libyan capital are willing to tackle the Mediterranean again if it means reaching Europe and gaining asylum.

"These are people living an unimaginable existence, fleeing political, religious and ethnic persecution," said Zerai. "We must have justice for them, for those that died alongside them, and for the families who have lost their loved ones."

Additional reporting by John Hooper and Tom Kington in Rome, and Kim Willsher in Paris

[Magda Hassan]

Some spokesperson for the 'rebels' was giving a press conference yesterday when he spilled the beans that 'they were running low on arms but they were receiving a shipment from Italy so things should improve after that'. It is absolutely not part of the UN No Fly mandate to be supplying arms to the rebels. Italy was forced to issue a denial....

[Jan Klimkowski]

Some spokesperson for the 'rebels' was giving a press conference yesterday when he spilled the beans that 'they were running low on arms but they were receiving a shipment from Italy so things should improve after that'. It is absolutely not part of the UN No Fly mandate to be supplying arms to the rebels. Italy was forced to issue a denial....

Nor does it seem to be part of NATO practice to save the lives of civilians, even if they can see them from the decks of their ships:

"We'd finished the oil, we'd finished the food and water, we'd finished everything," said Kurke, a 24-year-old migrant who was fleeing ethnic conflict in his homeland, the Oromia region of Ethiopia. "We were drifting in the sea, and the weather was very dangerous." At some point on 29 or 30 March the boat was carried near to a Nato aircraft carrier so close that it would have been impossible to be missed. According to survivors, two jets took off from the ship and flew low over the boat while the migrants stood on deck holding the two starving babies aloft. But from that point on, no help was forthcoming. Unable to manoeuvre any closer to the aircraft carrier, the migrants' boat drifted away. Shorn of supplies, fuel or means of contacting the outside world, they began succumbing one by one to thirst and starvation.

The Guardian has made extensive inquiries to ascertain the identity of the Nato aircraft carrier, and has concluded that it is likely to have been the French ship Charles de Gaulle, which was operating in the Mediterranean on those dates.

French naval authorities initially denied the carrier was in the region at that time. After being shown news reports which indicated this was untrue, a spokesperson declined to comment.

Presumably the French aircraft carrier was run according the same racist rules as the French football federation:

The Guardian's investigation into the case of the boat of 72 migrants which set sail from Tripoli on 25 March established that it carried 47 Ethiopians, seven Nigerians, seven Eritreans, six Ghanaians and five Sudanese migrants. Twenty were women and two were small children, one of whom was just one year old.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The fact that NATO and the West allowed this boat of black refugees to die, thus revealing the moral hypocrisy at the heart of the "humanitarian intervention" in Libya, has been ignored by nearly all MSM, leading to its early appearance on the Project Censored website.

Presumably, MSM is still awaiting its script from PsyOp Central as to how to "frame the narrative" to "further western interests" and blame "bogeyman state terrorist Gaddafi".

And, as we know, PsyOp Central is busy trying to salvage a few morsels of good pulbicity from the Obama Gets Osama fiasco....

[Peter Lemkin]

Musa Kusa: The CIA Spy Who Came in from the Desert
6th May 2011

" … Rarely has a defector received such red-carpet treatment. I can only assume it is for services rendered to his U.S. and British masters over the years. … "

By Anne Penketh
The Hill | April 19, 2011

The strange case of defector Musa Kusa, the former Libyan foreign minister and longtime intelligence chief, deserves another look.

It's been reported in the British media that he was a double agent who worked for MI-6 and the CIA, recruited in 2001 during a visit to London. That seems plausible, as Kusa has been documented as leading a Libyan diplomatic negotiating team in London in October 2001, in a 2007 book by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. It could also explain why U.K. and U.S. authorities lifted the financial and travel sanctions against him without further ado.

But a U.S. Treasury Department spokesman, announcing the decision on the unfreezing of assets, was still playing along with the scenario that Kusa was a genuine defector who after more than three decades of loyal service to Moammar Gadhafi decided to throw in the towel. "Kusa's defection and the subsequent lifting of sanctions against him should encourage others within the Libyan government to make similar decisions to abandon the Gadhafi regime," said David Cohen, the acting Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

It's revealing to look at Kusa's role in the surrender of Libya's weapons of mass destruction to the U.S. and U.K. in 2003. Many people think that Gadhafi voluntarily gave up his WMDs, fearful of being the next target of George W. Bush after Saddam Hussein. But in fact, the Gadhafi regime only gave them up after being caught red-handed by U.K. and U.S. intelligence. There's a wonderful account in Frantz and Collins's book, The Nuclear Jihadist (which is actually about how Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan set up his nuclear supermarket) on how a CIA agent ends up saying to Gadhafi, following the interception of a shipload of components for centrifuges, "You are the drowning man, and I am the lifeguard." Kusa was the intermediary who set up the fateful meeting with Gadhafi in which "he agreed to be saved."

Kusa a former Michigan State University student had previously negotiated with the U.S. and Britain over the Lockerbie settlement, and on keeping al Qaeda at bay. Yet this is the same guy who is accused of involvement not only in the Lockerbie bombing, but of bringing down a French passenger jet over Niger in 1989 and shipping arms to the Irish Republican Army. He is a former ambassador to London who might be implicated in the murder of a British policewoman in 1984, and was expelled by Britain in 1980 after advocating the assassination of Libyan dissidents abroad. He is hated by the Libyan opposition, who were wary of meeting him when he showed up for talks in Qatar last week, two weeks after his sudden defection from Libya.

So who is Musa Kusa? I think he still has some explaining to do. Rarely has a defector received such red-carpet treatment. I can only assume it is for services rendered to his U.S. and British masters over the years.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/in...the-desert

[Magda Hassan]

The fact that NATO and the West allowed this boat of black refugees to die, thus revealing the moral hypocrisy at the heart of the "humanitarian intervention" in Libya, has been ignored by nearly all MSM, leading to its early appearance on the Project Censored website.

Presumably, MSM is still awaiting its script from PsyOp Central as to how to "frame the narrative" to "further western interests" and blame "bogeyman state terrorist Gaddafi".

And, as we know, PsyOp Central is busy trying to salvage a few morsels of good pulbicity from the Obama Gets Osama fiasco....

I'm sure you are right on there Jan. The whole 'no fly zone' and 'humanitarian intervention' is a figleaf for nothing more than a gross power grab. Human's don't come in to it and they sure don't get to come on NATO boats. They're far too busy destroying the country to save the country than to worry about some needy desperate flotsam and jetsome. :what:angryfire

[Jan Klimkowski]

Just in from Libya's No Lie Zone.

Forget about the NATO ship of war which turned a blind eye to the boat carrying black refugees, allowing them to die horribly. It's all Gaddafi's fault:

Libyan regime accused of exploiting humanitarian crisis

Muammar Gaddafi's officials admits unseaworthy migrant ships are being allowed to sail as a protest against Nato air strikes

Martin Chulov in Tripoli and Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 May 2011 17.57 BST

Full propaganda piece here.

[Jan Klimkowski]

NATO sailors threw "water and biscuits" at the stricken migrants, took some photos, and then waved adios, leaving them to their death....

Part of the broader context for this is that Berlusconi and Sarkozy are so opposed to receiving more black African migrants in their countries that they're trying to change EU law and get border and passport controls reintroduced in the European Union.

Naval crew took photos of us adrift at sea, says migrant

Ethiopian man tells UN refugee agency two military vessels refused to rescue boatload of migrants, many of whom died

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 May 2011 18.04 BST


The crew of a naval vessel took photographs of African migrants begging for help from a broken-down boat adrift on the Mediterranean but refused to offer any assistance, a survivor told the UN refugee agency.

The account, given to the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) by an Ethiopian survivor now in a Tunisian camp, confirms a Guardian report on Sunday and adds new details that make clear western military forces off the Libyan coast were well aware of the plight of the migrants they failed to help.

"We passed by a military big boat," one of the survivors, an ethnic Oromo, told a UNHCR official. "We wanted to go with them as it looked safer than staying in our boat, but they refused [to allow us to board] their boat. We also saw a military helicopter flying above us.

"A second helicopter flew above us and threw biscuits and water at us. Then we passed by a second military boat, but they did not rescue us they just took pictures of us from their boat."

The refugees' boat set off from Libya on 25 March carrying 50 men, 20 women and two small children. When the boat washed up back on the Libyan coast only 11 were left alive after 15 days at sea without food or drinkable water. A woman survivor died on the beach and the remaining 10 men were arrested by the Libyan authorities and put in jail, where another of the men died.

"People were dying every day on board, from dehydration, sun stroke, hunger," the Ethiopian survivor told the UNHCR. "When some of us realised others were about to die, we were trying to pay more attention to them, to comfort them. We were keeping the bodies one or two days, hoping to reach a coast and give them a proper burial and prayers, but also sometimes we did not know if they were really dead or just in a coma. After two days and no coast in view, we had to throw the bodies overboard as they were starting to smell bad."

Nato repeated its denial that warships under its command were involved. A spokesman said there were two reports from Nato ships about migrant boats in distress in the week in question, and both were offered help. Nato also said a Romanian ship under alliance command helped another boatload of 150 migrants on Thursday night, fixing their engine, mending a leak and providing food.

Nato said the defective boat in this latest incident was "allegedly provided by Libyan military officials and crewed by three Syrians". There have been allegations that the regime in Tripoli has been using migrants as a propaganda weapon, deliberately allowing them to leave in unseaworthy vessels.

The US, France, Germany and Spain all have warships off the Libyan coast that are not formally taking part in Nato operations there. None has admitted being involved in the incident described by the survivors.

Melissa Fleming, the UNHCR spokeswoman, said: "We are hugely concerned that boats are encountering other boats in distress at sea but are doing nothing. There is a legal obligation to carry out rescue at sea."

According to the account given to the UNHCR, the Oromo survivor was one of three Ethiopian men on the boat. They had paid smugglers $800 (£495) to make the sea voyage to Europe, although the migrants were expected to operate the boat on their own. They had to pay a further $900, provided by Ethiopian friends, to get out of the Libyan prison, from where they crossed the border into Tunisia.

According to the UNHCR, a total of 12,505 migrants have arrived in Italy from Libya since March. There have been 130 arrivals in Malta. At least 800 possibly many more are believed to have drowned making the crossing.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

From http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/...h-dummies/

NATO ships enforcing the maritime embargo on the Libyan dictator noticed a curiosity in the Mediterranean near the rebel redoubt of Misurata early Monday morning. Two rigid-hull inflatable boats appeared to head toward the Misurata port. When NATO warships and choppers approached, one of them turned and broke away. The other bobbed on course.
What was aboard? Approximately 1 ton of explosives, according to a NATO press release, and "two human mannequins." NATO blew up the boat with small-arms fire.

I don't have enough information to say who and what is behind this, but this story has a bad smell to it.

[Peter Lemkin]

They just gave the OK to use attack helicopters in Libya for NATO......its escalating! :joystick: