Foreign Office bid to guard secrets at Alexander Litvinenko inquest

The public may be excluded from part of a pre-inquest hearing into the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

A coroner was today considering an application from the government to keep some information secret at the forthcoming inquest.

Mr Litvinenko died at a London hospital in November 2006, three weeks after drinking tea which had been poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210.

…

26 February 2013

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© 2012 Evening Standard Limited

Litvinenko inquest: newspapers launch challenge over withholding of evidence

Media groups including Guardian will challenge government over attempt to conceal sensitive documents

Alexander Litvinenko pictured shortly before his death in 2006. Photograph: Natasja Weitsz/Getty Images

Media groups will on Tuesday challenge what they describe as a “deeply troubling” attempt by the government to withhold evidence from the inquest into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

The Guardian, the BBC, the Financial Times and other newspapers are challenging a submission by the foreign secretary, William Hague, to conceal sensitive documents. Hague argues the material could harm “national security”, as well as the UK’s “international relations”.

The government has refused to say what evidence it wants to hide. But it is likely to deal with revelations made at a hearing in December that at the time of his poisoning in November 2006 Litvinenko was actively working for the British secret services.

Litvinenko was also a “paid agent” of the Spanish security services. MI6 encouraged him to supply information to the Spanish about Russian mafia activities, and alleged links between top organised criminals and the Kremlin, the hearing was told.

Litvinenko travelled to Spain in 2006 and met his MI6 handler, “Martin”, shortly before his fateful encounter with Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, the two men accused of killing him. The inquest – scheduled to begin in May – will hear claims that the pair were part of a “Russian state” plot to murder Litvinenko using radioactive polonium.

The fact that Litvinenko – a former Russian spy – was working for MI6 raises embarrassing questions as to whether British intelligence should have done more to protect him. Litvinenko had a dedicated phone to contact “Martin” and received regular payments to his bank account from MI6 and Madrid, it emerged in December.

In making their submission to the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, on Tuesday, the media groups will seek to argue that Hague’s attempt to withhold evidence could undermine public confidence in the inquest. Currently the media – as well as Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, and son, Anatoly, – are “completely in the dark” over what material the FCO seeks to exclude.

The media groups will seek to persuade the coroner that the government has also failed to explain what “harm” the release of the information might cause. Nor has it properly considered “lesser measures”, such as redaction, which would allow some disclosure of sensitive documents, or the possibility of closed sessions.

Alex Bailin QC, the lawyer acting for the Guardian, will argue that “the public and media are faced with a situation where a public inquest into a death … may have large amounts of highly relevant evidence excluded from consideration by the inquest. Such a prospect is deeply troubling.”

There are grave public concerns that allegations of “state-sponsored assassination” on the streets of London require “maximum openness”. Additionally, the inquest is likely to be the only judicial forum where evidence will be heard, since the Kremlin has refused to extradite Lugovoi and Kovtun.

Speaking on Monday, Litvinenko’s friend Alex Goldfarb said the foreign secretary appeared unwilling to offend Russia’s “vindictive” president. Goldfarb told the Guardian: “I recognise that Mr Hague has a well-founded interest not to rock the boat with [Vladimir] Putin. He’s afraid. He’s afraid Putin will not vote the way he wants in the UN or squeeze Britain’s interests.”

He added: “The inquest is a balance between the interests of international relations and justice. The bottom line is how far do you compromise with your own justice and decency, and the benefits from doing business with arrogant, murderous and dictatorial foreign states?”

Goldfarb said forensic evidence and reports from Scotland Yard had already been disclosed to interested parties. But he said he was worried the government wanted to keep secret highly sensitive documents showing links between Russian mobsters in Spain and “Putin’s inner circle”. “That’s what Sasha [Litvinenko] was up to,” Goldfarb said.

An FCO spokesperson said: “The government has made an application to the court for public interest immunity in line with its duty to protect national security and the coroner is responsible for deciding that application based on the overall public interest.”

Owen is due to hear submissions from the media at a hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday. He has previously indicated that he wants the inquest to be as open and broad as possible.

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guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 February 2013 14.27 GMT

Find this story at 25 February 2013

 

 
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Police spies: in bed with a fictional character

Mark Jenner lived with a woman under a fake name. Now she has testified to MPs about the ‘betrayal and humiliation’ she felt

Mark Jenner, the undercover officer in the Metropolitan police’s special demonstration squad, who went by the name of Mark Cassidy for six years – then disappeared.

He was a burly, funny scouser called Mark Cassidy. His girlfriend – a secondary school teacher he shared a flat with for four years – believed they were almost “man and wife”. Then, in 2000, as the couple were discussing plans for the future, Cassidy suddenly vanished, never to be seen again.

An investigation by the Guardian has established that his real name is Mark Jenner. He was an undercover police officer in the Metropolitan police’s special demonstration squad (SDS), one of two units that specialised in infiltrating protest groups.

His girlfriend, whose story can be told for the first time as her evidence to a parliamentary inquiry is made public, said living with a police spy has had an “enormous impact” on her life.

“It has impacted seriously on my ability to trust, and that has impacted on my current relationship and other subsequent relationships,” she said, adopting the pseudonym Alison. “It has also distorted my perceptions of love and my perceptions of sex.”

Alison is one of four women to testify to the House of Commons home affairs select committee last month.

Another woman said she had been psychologically traumatised after discovering that the father of her child, who she thought had disappeared, was Bob Lambert, a police spy who vanished from her life in the late 1980s.

A third woman, speaking publicly for the first time about her six-year relationship with Mark Kennedy, a police officer who infiltrated environmental protest groups, said: “You could … imagine that your phone might be tapped or that somebody might look at your emails, but to know that there was somebody in your bed for six years, that somebody was involved in your family life to such a degree, that was an absolute shock.”

Their moving testimony led the committee to declare that undercover operations have had a “terrible impact” on the lives of innocent women.

The MPs are so troubled about the treatment of the women – as well as the “ghoulish” practice in which undercover police adopted the identities of dead children – that they have called for an urgent clean-up of the laws governing covert surveillance operations.

Jenner infiltrated leftwing political groups from 1994 to 2000, pretending to be a joiner interested in radical politics. For much of his deployment, he was under the command of Lambert, who was by then promoted to head of operations of the SDS.

While posing as Cassidy, he could be coarse but also irreverent and funny. The undercover officer saw himself as something of a poet. A touch over 6ft, he had a broad neck, large shoulders and exuded a tough, working-class quality.

By the spring of 1995, Jenner began a relationship with Alison and soon moved into her flat. “We lived together as what I would describe as man and wife,” she said. “He was completely integrated into my life for five years.”

Jenner met her relatives, who trusted him as her long-term partner. He accompanied Alison to her mother’s second wedding. “He is in my mother’s wedding photograph,” she said. Family videos of her nephew’s and niece’s birthdays show Jenner teasing his girlfriend fondly. Others record him telling her late grandmother about his fictionalised family background.

Alison, a peaceful campaigner involved in leftwing political causes, believes she inadvertently provided the man she knew as Mark Cassidy with “an excellent cover story”, helping persuade other activists he was a genuine person.

“People trusted me, people knew that I was who I said I was, and people believed, therefore, that he must be who he said he was because he was welcomed into my family,” she said.

It was not unusual for undercover operatives working for the SDS or its sister squad, the national public order unit, to have sexual relationships with women they were spying on. Of the 11 undercover police officers publicly identified, nine had intimate sexual relations with activists. Most were long-term, meaningful relationships with women who believed they were in a loving partnership.

Usually these spies were told to spend at least one or two days a week off-duty, when they would change clothes and return to their real lives. However, Jenner, who had a wife, appears to have lived more or less permanently with Alison, rarely leaving their shared flat in London.

It was an arrangement that caused personal problems for the Jenners. At one stage, he is known to have attended counselling to repair his relationship with his wife. Bizarrely, at about the same time, he was also consulting a second relationship counsellor with Alison.

“I met him when I was 29,” she said. “It was the time when I wanted to have children, and for the last 18 months of our relationship he went to relationship counselling with me about the fact that I wanted children and he did not.”

Jenner disentangled himself from the deployment in 2000, disappearing suddenly from Alison’s flat after months pretending to suffer from depression.

The police spy left her a note which read: “We want different things. I can’t cope … When I said I loved you, I meant it, but I can’t do it.” He claimed he was going to Germany to look for work.

It was all standard procedure for the SDS. Some operatives ended their deployments by pretending to have a breakdown and vanishing, supposedly to go abroad, sending a few letters to their girlfriends with foreign postmarks.

Alison was left heartbroken and paranoid, feeling that she was losing her mind. She spent more than a decade investigating Jenner’s background, hiring a private detective to try to track him down. She had no idea he was actually working a few miles away at Scotland Yard, where he is understood to still work as a police officer today.

The strongest clue to Jenner’s real identity came from an incident she recalled from years earlier when he was still living with her. “I discovered he made an error with a credit card about a year and a half into our relationship,” she said. “It was in the name Jenner and I asked him what it was and he told me he bought it off a man in a pub and he had never used it. He asked me to promise to never tell anyone.”

The Metropolitan police refused to comment on whether Jenner was a police spy. “We are not prepared to confirm or deny the deployment of individuals on specific operations,” it said.

Alison told MPs that the “betrayal and humiliation” she suffered was beyond normal. “This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you,” she said. “It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers’ money. The experience has left me with many, many unanswered questions, and one of those that comes back is: how much of the relationship was real?”

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

Find this story at 1 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Police spy Mark Kennedy may have misled parliament over relationships

Inquiry hears claims of 10 or more women having sexual relations with undercover officer who infiltrated eco-activists

Mark Kennedy’s evidence saying he had sexual relationships with two people is disputed by women taking legal action against the police. Photograph: Philipp Ebeling

Mark Kennedy, the police spy who infiltrated the environmental movement, appears to have misled parliament over the number of sexual relationships he had with women while he was working undercover.

Kennedy told a parliamentary inquiry that he had only two relationships during the seven years he spied on environmental groups.

However, at least four women had come forward to say that he slept with them when he was a police spy.

Friends who knew Kennedy when he was living as an eco-activist in Nottingham have identified more than 10 women with whom he slept.

Kennedy was the only undercover police officer to give evidence to the inquiry conducted by the home affairs select committee.

He testified in private, but transcripts of his evidence released on Thursday reveal that he claimed he had sexual relationships with “two individuals”.

But three women who say they are Kennedy’s former lovers are part of an 11-strong group taking legal action against police chiefs for damages.

A fourth, named Anna, previously told the Guardian she felt “violated” by her sexual relationship with Kennedy, which lasted several months.

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

Find this story at 1 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Home Affairs Committee – Thirteenth Report Undercover Policing: Interim Report

Here you can browse the report which was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 26 February 2013.

Find this story at 1 March 2013

Contents

Terms of Reference

Introduction

The legal framework governing undercover policing

Responsibility for undercover policing

The use of dead infants’ identities

Operation Herne

Conclusion

Conclusions and recommendations

Formal Minutes

Witnesses

List of printed written evidence

List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament

Oral and Written Evidence

5 February 2013 i

5 February 2013 ii

5 February 2013 iii

5 February 2013 iv

Written Evidence

Anatomy of a betrayal: the undercover officer accused of deceiving two women, fathering a child, then vanishing

The story of Bob Lambert reveals just how far police may have gone to infiltrate political groups

The grave of Mark Robinson and his parents in Branksome cemetery in Poole, Dorset. Bob Lambert adopted the boy’s identity, abbreviating his second name to Bob. Photograph: Roger Tooth for the Guardian

The words inscribed on the grave say Mark Robinson “fell asleep” on 19 October, 1959. He was a seven-year-old boy who died of a congenital heart defect, the only child to Joan and William Robinson. They died in 2009 and are buried in the same grave, listed on the headstone as “Mummy” and “Daddy”.

It is perhaps some solace that Mark’s parents never lived long enough to discover how the identity of their son may have been quietly resurrected by undercover police without their knowledge. The controversial tactic – in which covert officers spying on protesters adopted the identities of dead children – stopped less than a decade ago. More than 100 children’s identities may have been used.

Last week the home secretary, Theresa May, announced that a chief constable from Derbyshire would take over an inquiry into undercover policing of protest, after revelations by the Guardian into the use of stolen identities.

Despite an internal investigation that has cost £1.25m, senior officers seem genuinely baffled at the activities of two apparently rogue units that have been monitoring political campaigners since 1968.

The story of the officer who appears to have used the identity of Mark Robinson, adopting it as his own, reveals much of what has gone wrong with police infiltration of political groups. Bob Lambert, who posed as an animal rights campaigner in the 1980s, not only adopted the identity of a dead child. He was also accused in parliament of carrying out an arson attack on a Debenhams department store and deceiving two women into having long-term sexual relationships with him.

One of them has now revealed how Lambert fathered a child with her before vanishing from their lives when his deployment came to an end in 1989. She only discovered he was an undercover police officer eight months ago – more than 20 years after he disappeared from the lives of mother and child, claiming to be on the run.

Using the pseudonym Charlotte, she said in a statement to the home affairs select committee: “There can be no excuses for what he did: for the betrayal, the manipulation and the lies … I loved him so much, but now have to accept that he never existed.”

Gravestone

The story of how Bob Lambert became Bob Robinson begins on the outskirts of Poole, Dorset, in 1983. For almost 25 years, a sculpture of the boy stood guard above the grave in Branksome cemetery. “Safe in the arms of Jesus,” the engraving said.

Lambert would have come across the boy’s paperwork in St Catherine’s House, the national register of births, deaths and marriages. It was a rite of passage for all spies working in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a unit dedicated to spying on protesters. For ease of use, SDS officers looked to adopt the identities of dead children who shared their name and approximate date of birth. They called it “the Jackal Run”, after its fictional depiction in Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal.

Mark Robinson was the ideal match. He was born in Plumstead, south-east London, on 28 February, 1952 – just 16 days before Lambert’s date of birth. His second name was Robert, which the spy could abbreviate to Bob. He died of acute congestive cardiac failure after being born with a malformed heart. Other SDS officers are known to have chosen children who died of leukaemia or were killed in road accidents.

Undercover police did not merely adopt the names of dead children, but revived entire identities, researching their family backgrounds and secretly visiting the homes they were brought up in.

When the spy made his debut in London as a long-haired anti-capitalist, he introduced himself as Bob Robinson and said he was born in Plumstead. He had fake identity documents, including a driving licence in the name of Mark Robinson. Recently, he is understood to have said his full undercover alias was Mark Robert Robinson. The date of birth he gave is still in a diary entry of one close friend: it was the same date as that of the dead child.
Bob Lambert, aka Bob Robinson Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Double life

It was the start of a surreal double life. For most of the week he lived as Robinson, a gardener and active member of the environmental group London Greenpeace. For one or two days a week, he returned to the more conventional life with his wife and children in Hertfordshire. SDS insiders say Lambert was revered as one of the best operatives in the field. He helped jail two activists from the Animal Liberation Front who were convicted of planting incendiary devices in branches of Debenhams in protest at the sale of fur in July1987.

Lambert’s relationship with Charlotte, then 22, helped bolster his undercover credibility. When they met in 1984, Lambert was her first serious relationship, and 12 years her senior.

“He got involved in animal rights and made himself a useful member of the group by ferrying us around in his van,” she said. “He was always around, wherever I turned he was there trying to make himself useful, trying to get my attention. I believed at the time that he shared my beliefs and principles. In fact, he would tease me for not being committed enough.”

Around Christmas that year, Charlotte became pregnant. “Bob seemed excited by the news and he was caring and supportive throughout the pregnancy,” she said. “Bob was there by my side through the 14 hours of labour in the autumn of 1985 when our son was born. He seemed to be besotted with the baby. I didn’t realise then that he was already married with two other children.”

Two years later, Lambert’s deployment came to an end. He told friends police were on his tail and he needed to flee to Spain. “He promised he would never abandon his son and said that as soon as it was safe I could bring our baby to Spain to see him,” Charlotte said. Instead, the man she knew as Bob Robinson disappeared forever.

She was left to bring up their son as a single parent. It was an impoverished life, made worse because there was no way she could receive child maintenance payments. “At that time I blamed myself a lot for the break-up and for the fact that my son had lost his father,” she said.

When Charlotte’s son became older, the pair tried to track down Bob Robinson, who they presumed was still living in Spain. They could not have known he was working just a few miles away.

In the mid-1990s, Lambert was promoted to head of operations at the SDS, giving him overarching responsibility for a fleet of other spies. Just like their boss, they adopted the identities of dead children before going undercover to cultivate long-term and intimate relationships with women. That was the unit’s tradecraft and Lambert, with his experience in the field, was its respected spymaster. “I chatted to Bob about everything.” said Pete Black, an SDS officer who infiltrated anti-racist groups under Lambert. “You used to go in with any sort of problems, and if he could not work out how to get you out of the shit, then you were fucked.”

After his senior role in the SDS, Lambert rose through the ranks of special branch and, in the aftermath of 9/11, founded the Muslim Contact Unit, which sought to foster partnerships between police and the Islamic community.

Intimate relationships

He was awarded an MBE for services to policing and retired to start a fresh career in academia, with posts at St Andrews and Exeter universities.

‘It was my Bob’

In 2011, Lambert’s past returned to haunt him. That year Mark Kennedy, another police spy, was revealed to have spent seven years infiltrating eco activists. He had several intimate relationships with women, including one that lasted six years. Kennedy worked for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, another squad dedicated to monitoring protesters and the second, according to the Metropolitan police, believed to have used the identities of dead children.

Amid the outcry over Kennedy’s deployment, there was a renewed push among activists to unmask police infiltrators. It was some of Lambert’s old friends in London Greenpeace who eventually made the connection, comparing YouTube videos of Lambert speeches with grainy photographs of Bob Robinson in the 1980s.

Lambert was giving a talk in a London auditorium when members of the audience – veterans from London Greenpeace – confronted him about his undercover past. He left the stage and walked out of a side door. Outside, he was stony-faced as he was chased down the street by a handful of ageing campaigners. He jumped into a taxi and melted into the afternoon traffic.

It was only the start of a cascade of claims to tarnish the senior officer’s reputation. In June last year, the Green MP Caroline Lucas used a parliamentary speech to allege that Lambert planted one of three incendiary devices in branches of Debenhams. No one was hurt in the attack on the Harrow store, in north-west London, which caused £340,000 worth of damage. Pointing to evidence that suggested Lambert planted the device, the MP asked: “Has another undercover police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur?”

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Thursday 21 February 2013 18.00 GMT

Find this story at 21 February 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Inside the Terror Factory; Award-winning journalist Trevor Aaronson digs deep into the FBI’s massive efforts to create fake terrorist plots.

Editor’s note: This story is adapted from The Terror Factory [1], Trevor Aaronson’s new book documenting how the Federal Bureau of Investigation has built a vast network of informants to infiltrate Muslim communities and, in some cases, cultivate phony terrorist plots. The book grew from Aaronson’s award-winning [2] Mother Jones cover story “The Informants [3]” and his research in the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley.

Quazi Mohammad Nafis was a 21-year-old student living in Queens, New York, when the US government helped turn him into a terrorist.

His transformation began on July 5, when Nafis, a Bangladeshi citizen who’d come to the United States on a student visa that January, shared aspirations with a man he believed he could trust. Nafis told this man in a phone call that he wanted to wage jihad in the United States, that he enjoyed reading Al Qaeda propaganda, and that he admired “Sheikh O,” or Osama bin Laden. Who this confidant was and how Nafis came to meet him remain unclear; what we know from public documents is that the man told Nafis he could introduce him to an Al Qaeda operative.

Our Yearlong Investigation Into the Program to Spy on America’s Muslim Communities [3]
How the Bureau Enlists Foreign Regimes to Detain and Interrogate US Citizens [4]
When Did Lefty Darling Brandon Darby Turn Government Informant? [5]
Charts from Our Terror Trial Database [6]
Watch an FBI Surveillance Video [7]
Documents: FBI Spies and Suspects, in Their Own Words [8]
It was a hot, sunny day in Central Park on July 24 when Nafis met with Kareem, who said he was with Al Qaeda. Nafis, who had a slight build, mop of black hair, and a feebly grown beard, told Kareem that he was “ready for action.”

“What I really mean is that I don’t want something that’s, like, small,” Nafis said. “I just want something big. Something very big. Very, very, very, very big, that will shake the whole country.”

Nafis said he wanted to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, and with help from his new Al Qaeda contact, he surveilled the iconic building at 11 Wall Street. “We are going to need a lot of TNT or dynamite,” Nafis told Kareem. But Nafis didn’t have any explosives, and, as court records indicate, he didn’t know anyone who could sell him explosives, let alone have the money to purchase such materials. His father, a banker in Bangladesh, had spent his entire life savings to send Nafis to the United States after his son, who was described to journalists as dim by people who knew him in his native country, had flunked out of North South University in Bangladesh.

Kareem suggested they rent a storage facility to stash the material they’d need for a car bomb. He said he’d put up the money for it, and get the materials. Nafis dutifully agreed, and suggested a new target: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Nafis later met Kareem at a storage facility, where Nafis poured the materials Kareem had brought into trash bins, believing he was creating a 1,000-pound car bomb that could level a city block.

In truth, the stuff was inert. And Kareem was an undercover FBI agent, tipped off by the man who Nafis had believed was a confidant—an FBI informant. The FBI had secretly provided everything Nafis needed for his attack: not only the storage facility and supposed explosives, but also the detonator and the van that Nafis believed would deliver the bomb.

On the morning of October 17, Nafis and Kareem drove the van to Lower Manhattan and parked it in front of the Federal Reserve Bank on Liberty Street. Then they walked to a nearby hotel room, where Nafis dialed on his cellphone the number he believed would trigger the bomb, but nothing happened. He dialed again, and again. The only result was Nafis’ apprehension by federal agents.

“The defendant thought he was striking a blow to the American economy,” US Attorney Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement after the arrest. “At every turn, he was wrong, and his extensive efforts to strike at the heart of the nation’s financial system were foiled by effective law enforcement. We will use all of the tools at our disposal to stop any such attack before it can occur.”
How many of these would-be terrorists would have acted were it not for an FBI agent provocateur helping them? Is it possible that the FBI is creating the very enemy we fear?

Federal officials say they are protecting Americans with these operations—but from whom? Real terrorists, or dupes like Nafis, who appear unlikely to have the capacity for terrorism were it not for FBI agents providing the opportunity and means?

Nafis is one of more than 150 men since 9/11 who have been caught in FBI terrorism stings, some of whom have received 25 years or more in prison. In these cases, the FBI uses one of its more than 15,000 registered informants—many of them criminals, others trying to stay in the country following immigration violations—to identify potential terrorists. It then provides the means necessary for these would-be terrorists to move forward with a plot—in some cases even planting specific ideas for attacks. The FBI now spends $3 billion on counterterrorism annually, the largest portion of its budget. Our nation’s top law enforcement agency, traditionally focused on investigating crimes after they occur, now operates more as an intelligence organization that tries to preempt crimes before they occur. But how many of these would-be terrorists would have acted were it not for an FBI agent provocateur helping them? Is it possible that the FBI is creating the very enemy we fear?

Those are the questions I set out to explore beginning in 2010. With the help of a research assistant, I built a database of more than 500 terrorism prosecutions since 9/11 [9], looking closely and critically at every terrorism case brought into federal courts during the past decade. We pored through thousands of pages of court records, and found that nearly half of all terrorism cases since 9/11 involved informants, many of them paid as much as $100,000 per assignment by the FBI. At the time of the story’s publication in Mother Jones in August 2011, 49 defendants had participated in plots led by an FBI agent provocateur, and that number has continued to rise since.

Historically, media coverage of these operations—begun under George W. Bush and continuing apace under Barack Obama—was mostly uncritical. With their aggressive tactics essentially unknown to the public, the FBI and Justice Department controlled the narrative: another dangerous terrorist apprehended by vigilant federal agents!

But in late 2011, the conversation began to shift. A couple of months after my story in Mother Jones and following the announcement of a far-fetched sting in which a Massachusetts man believed he’d been poised to destroy the US Capitol building using grenade-laden, remote-controlled airplanes, TPM Muckraker published a story headlined: “The Five Most Bizarre Terror Plots Hatched Under the FBI’s Watch [10].” Author David K. Shipler, in an April 2012 New York Times editorial [11], questioned the legitimacy of terrorism stings involving people who appeared to have no wherewithal to commit acts of terror: “Some threats are real, others less so. In terrorism, it’s not easy to tell the difference.” Stories in other major news outlets followed suit, and by October 2012, a post in Foreign Policy was asking: “How many idiot jihadis can the FBI fool? [12]”

Which brings us back to Nafis. “The case appears to be the latest to fit a model in which, in the process of flushing out people they believe present a risk of terrorism, federal law enforcement officials have played the role of enabler,” reported the New York Times, after the Justice Department announced Nafis’ arrest. “Though these operations have almost always held up in court, they have come under increasing criticism from those who believe that many of the subjects, even some who openly espoused violence, would have been unable to execute such plots without substantial assistance from the government.”

In the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal law enforcement profile of a terrorist has changed dramatically. The men responsible for downing the World Trade Center were disciplined and patient; they were also living and training in the United States with money from an Al Qaeda cell led by Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. In the days and weeks following 9/11, federal officials anxiously awaited a second wave of attacks, which would be launched, they believed at the time, by several sleeper cells around the country.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born, high-ranking Al Qaeda official became something of the terrorist group’s Dear Abby. Have a question about Islam? Ask Anwar!

But the feared second wave never crashed ashore. Instead, the United States and allied nations invaded Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s home base, and forced Osama bin Laden and his deputies into hiding. Bruised and hunted, Al Qaeda no longer had the capability to train terrorists and send them to the United States.

In response, Al Qaeda’s leaders moved to what FBI officials describe as a “franchise model.” If you can’t run Al Qaeda as a hierarchal, centrally organized outfit, the theory went, run it as a franchise. In other words, export ideas—not terrorists. Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations went online, setting up websites and forums dedicated to instilling their beliefs in disenfranchised Muslims already living in Western nations. A slickly designed magazine, appropriately titled Inspire, quickly followed. Article headlines included “I Am Proud to Be a Traitor to America,” and “Why Did I Choose Al-Qaeda?”

Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born, high-ranking Al Qaeda official who was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen on September 30, 2011, became something of the terrorist group’s Dear Abby. Have a question about Islam? Ask Anwar! Muslim men in nations throughout the Western world would email him questions, and Awlaki would reply dutifully, and in English, encouraging many of his electronic pen pals to violent action. Awlaki also kept a blog and a Facebook page, and regularly posted recruitment videos to YouTube. He said in one video:

I specifically invite the youth to either fight in the West or join their brothers in the fronts of jihad: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. I invite them to join us in our new front, Yemen, the base from which the great jihad of the Arabian Peninsula will begin, the base from which the greatest army of Islam will march forth.

Al Qaeda’s move to a franchise model met with some success. US Army Major Nadal Hassan, for example, corresponded with Awlaki before he killed 13 people and wounded 29 others in the Fort Hood shootings in 2009. Antonio Martinez, a Baltimore man and recent convert to Islam who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for trying to bomb a military recruiting office, sent Awlaki messages and watched Al Qaeda propaganda videos online before getting wrapped up in an FBI sting operation.

The FBI has a term for Nafis, Martinez, and other alleged terrorists like them: lone wolf. Officials at the Bureau now believe that the next terrorist attack will likely come from a lone wolf, and this belief is at the core of a federal law enforcement policy known variously as preemption, prevention, and disruption. FBI counterterrorism agents want to catch terrorists before they act, and to accomplish this, federal law enforcement officials have in the decade since 9/11 created the largest domestic spying network ever to exist in the United States.

In fact, the FBI today has 10 times as many informants as it did in the 1960s, when former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made the Bureau infamous for inserting spies into organizations as varied as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s and the Ku Klux Klan. Modern FBI informants aren’t burrowing into political groups, however; they are focused on identifying today the terrorist of tomorrow. US government officials acknowledge that while terrorist threats do exist from domestic organizations, such as white supremacist groups and the sovereign citizen movement, they believe the greatest threat comes from within American Muslim communities.

The FBI’s vast army of spies, located today in every community in the United States with enough Muslims to support a mosque, has one primary function: identify the next lone wolf, likely to be a single male age 16 to 35, according to the Bureau. Informants and their FBI handlers are on the lookout for young Muslims who espouse radical beliefs, are vocal about their disapproval of American foreign policy, or have expressed sympathy for international terrorist groups. If they find anyone who meets the criteria, they move him to the next stage: the sting operation.
The terrorism sting operations are an evolution of an FBI tactic that has long captured the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers: undercover drug busts.

On a cold February morning in 2011, I met with Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, in a coffee shop outside Washington, DC, to talk about how the FBI runs its sting operations. Ahearn was in the bureau’s vanguard as it transformed into a counterterrorism organization in the wake of 9/11. An average-built man with a small dimple on his chin and close-cropped brown hair receding in the front, Ahearn oversaw one of the earliest post-9/11 terrorism investigations, involving the so-called Lackawanna Six—a group of six Yemeni American men living outside Buffalo, New York, who attended a training camp in Afghanistan and were convicted of providing material support to Al Qaeda. “If you’re doing a sting right, you’re offering the target multiple chances to back out,” Ahearn told me. “Real people don’t say, ‘Yeah, let’s go bomb that place.’ Real people call the cops.”

Indeed, while terrorism sting operations are a new practice for the bureau, they are an evolution of an FBI tactic that has for decades captured the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers. In 1982, as the illegal drug trade overwhelmed local police resources nationwide and funded an increase in violent crime, President Ronald Reagan’s first attorney general, William French Smith, gave the FBI jurisdiction over federal drug crimes, which previously had been the exclusive domain of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Eager to show up their DEA rivals, FBI agents began aggressively sending undercover agents into America’s cities. This was relatively new territory for the FBI, which during Hoover’s 37-year stewardship had mandated that agents wear a suit and tie at all times, federal law enforcement badge easily accessible from the coat pocket. But an increasingly powerful Mafia and the bloody drug war forced the FBI to begin enforcing federal laws from the street level. In searching for drug crimes, FBI agents hunted sellers as well as buyers, and soon learned one of the best strategies was to become part of the action.

At its most cliché, the Hollywood version of this scene is set in a Miami high-rise apartment, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cresting waves of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a man seated at the dining table; he’s longhaired, with a scruffy face, and he has a briefcase next to him. Hidden on the other side of the room is a grainy black-and-white camera recording the entire scene. The apartment’s door swings open and two men saunter in, the camera recording their every move and word. The two men hand over bundles of cash, and the scruffy man then hands over the briefcase. But instead of finding pounds of cocaine inside it, the two guests are shocked to find the briefcase is empty—and then FBI agents rush in, guns drawn for the takedown.

Federal law enforcement officials call this type of sting operation a “no-dope bust,” and its the direct predecessor to today’s terrorism sting. Instead of empty briefcases, the FBI today uses inert bombs and disabled assault rifles (and now that counterterrorism is the bureau’s top priority, the investigation of major drug crimes has largely fallen back to the DEA). While the assumptions behind both types of stings are similar, there is a fundamental flaw as applied to terrorism stings. In drug stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any buyer caught in a sting would have been able to buy or sell drugs elsewhere had they not fallen into the FBI trap. The numbers support this assumption. In 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, the DEA seized 29,179 kilograms, or 64,328 pounds, of cocaine in the United States.

In terrorism stings, however, federal law enforcement officials assume that any would-be terrorists caught would have been able to acquire the means elsewhere to carry out their violent plans had they not been ensnared by the FBI. The problem with this assumption is that no data exists to support it—and in fact what data is available often suggests the opposite.

Few of the more than 150 defendants indicted and convicted this way since 9/11 had any connection to terrorists, evidence showed, and those that did have connections, however tangential, lacked the capacity to launch attacks on their own. Of the more that 150 defendants, an FBI informant not only led one of every three terrorist plots, but also provided all the necessary weapons, money, and transportation.
The informant goaded them on the whole time, encouraging the pair with lines like: “We will teach these bastards a good lesson.” For his work on the case, he received $100,000 from the FBI.

The FBI’s logic to support the use of terrorism stings goes something like this: By catching a lone wolf before he strikes, federal law enforcement can take him off the streets before he meets a real terrorist who can provide him with weapons and munitions. However, to this day, no example exists of a lone wolf, by himself unable to launch an attack, becoming operational through meeting an actual terrorist in the United States. In the terrorism sting operations since 9/11, the would-be terrorists are usually uneducated, unsophisticated, and economically desperate—not the attributes for someone likely to plan and launch a sophisticated, violent attack without significant help.

This isn’t to say there have not been deadly and potentially deadly terrorist attacks and threats in the United States since 9/11. Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian, opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002, killing two and wounding four. Afghan American Najibullah Zazi, who trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan in 2008, came close to attacking the New York City subway system in September 2009, with a plan to place backpack bombs on crowded trains coming to and from Grand Central and Times Square stations. Faisal Shahzad, who trained with terrorists in the tribal regions of Pakistan, attempted but failed to detonate a crude car bomb in Times Square on May 1, 2010. While all three were dangerous lone wolves, none fit the profile of would-be terrorists targeted today in FBI terrorism sting operations. Unlike those caught in FBI stings, these three terrorists had international connections and the ability to carry out attacks on their own, however unsuccessful those attacks might have been for Zazi and Shahzad.

By contrast, consider another New York City terrorism conspiracy—the so-called Herald Square bomb plot. Shahawar Matin Siraj, a 22-year-old Pakistani American, struck up a friendship with a seemingly elderly and knowledgeable Islamic scholar named Dawadi at his uncle’s Islamic Books and Tapes shop in Brooklyn. Dawadi was an FBI informant, Osama Eldawoody, who was put on the government payroll in September 2003 to stoke Siraj’s extremist inclinations. Siraj asked if Eldawoody could help him build a nuclear weapon and volunteered that he and a friend, James Elshafay, wanted to detonate a car bomb on one of New York’s bridges. “He’s a terrorist. He wants to harm the country and the people of the country. That’s what I thought immediately,” Eldawoody said in court testimony.

Siraj introduced Dawadi to Elshafay, who had drawn schematics of police stations and bridges on napkins with the hopes of plotting a terrorist attack. Elshafay’s crude drawings prompted Siraj to hatch a new plan that involved the three men, Dawadi’s supposed international connections, and an attack on New York’s Herald Square subway station. The two young men discussed how they’d grown to hate the United States for invading Iraq and torturing prisoners. In Eldawoody’s car, the three of them talked about carrying 20- to 30-pound backpack bombs into the Herald Square subway station and leaving them on the train platform. Their conversations were recorded from a secret camera in the car’s dashboard. From April to August 2004, the men considered targets, surveilled the subway, checked security, and drew diagrams of the station. The informant goaded them on the whole time, encouraging the pair with lines like: “We will teach these bastards a good lesson.” For his work on the case, Eldawoody received $100,000 from the FBI.

The evidence from the sting was enough to win convictions, and Siraj was sentenced to 30 years in prison and Elshafay 5 years. But it was also clear from the trial that Siraj was a dimwitted social recluse—a mother’s boy with little capacity to steal a car on his own, let alone bomb a subway station as part of a spectacular terrorist attack. In fact, Siraj was recorded during the sting operation as saying: “Everyone thinks I’m stupid.”
During Obama’s first term in office, the Justice Department prosecuted more than 75 targets of terrorism stings.

The question underlying the Herald Square case can be asked in dozens of other similar sting operations: Could the defendants have become terrorists had they never met the FBI informant? The answer haunts Martin Stolar, the lawyer who represented Siraj at trial and fully expected to win an acquittal through an entrapment defense. “The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” Stolar said. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”

…

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-fbi-trevor-aaronson-book

Links:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Terror-Factory-Manufactured-Terrorism/dp/1935439618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354811860&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Terror+Factory
[2] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/fbi-informants-data-journalism-award
[3] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants
[4] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/proxy-detention-gulet-mohamed
[5] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/brandon-darby-anarchist-fbi-terrorism
[6] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/terror-trials-numbers
[7] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-surveillance-video-sting
[8] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-sting-greatest-hits
[9] http://www.motherjones.com/fbi-terrorist
[10] http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/the_five_most_bizarre_terror_plots_hatched_under_the_fbis_watch.php
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
[12] http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/17/how_many_idiot_jihadists_can_the_fbi_fool
[13] http://theterrorfactory.com/documents/HolderSpeechDec2010.pdf

By Trevor Aaronson | Fri Jan. 11, 2013 3:01 AM PST

Find this story at 11 January 2013

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress

The Informants; Another alleged terrorist was just busted by the FBI. But is the bureau preventing plots—or leading them?

James Cromitie [1] was a man of bluster and bigotry. He made up wild stories about his supposed exploits, like the one about firing gas bombs into police precincts using a flare gun, and he ranted about Jews. “The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi,” he once said [2].

A 45-year-old Walmart stocker who’d adopted the name Abdul Rahman after converting to Islam during a prison stint for selling cocaine, Cromitie had lots of worries—convincing his wife he wasn’t sleeping around, keeping up with the rent, finding a decent job despite his felony record. But he dreamed of making his mark. He confided as much in a middle-aged Pakistani he knew as Maqsood.

“I’m gonna run into something real big [3],” he’d say. “I just feel it, I’m telling you. I feel it.”

Our Yearlong Investigation Into the Program to Spy on America’s Muslim Communities [4]
How the Bureau Enlists Foreign Regimes to Detain and Interrogate US Citizens [5]
When Did Lefty Darling Brandon Darby Turn Government Informant? [6]
Charts from Our Terror Trial Database [7]
Watch an FBI Surveillance Video [8]
Documents: FBI Spies and Suspects, in Their Own Words [9]

Maqsood and Cromitie had met at a mosque in Newburgh, a struggling former Air Force town about an hour north of New York City. They struck up a friendship, talking for hours about the world’s problems and how the Jews were to blame.

It was all talk until November 2008, when Maqsood pressed his new friend.

“Do you think you are a better recruiter or a better action man?” Maqsood asked [10].

“I’m both,” Cromitie bragged.

“My people would be very happy to know that, brother. Honestly.”

“Who’s your people?” Cromitie asked.

“Jaish-e-Mohammad.”
Crunch the Numbers
We analyzed the prosecutions of 508 alleged domestic terrorists. View them by affiliation or state, or play with the full data set.

Maqsood said he was an agent for the Pakistani terror group, tasked with assembling a team to wage jihad in the United States. He asked Cromitie what he would attack if he had the means. A bridge, Cromitie said.

“But bridges are too hard to be hit,” Maqsood pleaded, “because they’re made of steel.”

“Of course they’re made of steel,” Cromitie replied. “But the same way they can be put up, they can be brought down.”

Maqsood coaxed Cromitie toward a more realistic plan. The Mumbai attacks were all over the news, and he pointed out how those gunmen targeted hotels, cafés, and a Jewish community center.

“With your intelligence, I know you can manipulate someone,” Cromitie told his friend. “But not me, because I’m intelligent.” The pair settled on a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx, and then fire Stinger missiles at airplanes taking off from Stewart International Airport in the southern Hudson Valley. Maqsood would provide all the explosives and weapons, even the vehicles. “We have two missiles, okay?” he offered [11]. “Two Stingers, rocket missiles.”

Maqsood was an undercover operative; that much was true. But not for Jaish-e-Mohammad. His real name was Shahed Hussain [12], and he was a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI’s No. 1 priority, consuming the lion’s share of its budget—$3.3 billion, compared to $2.6 billion for organized crime—and much of the attention of field agents and a massive, nationwide network of informants. After years of emphasizing informant recruiting as a key task for its agents, the bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies—many of them tasked, as Hussain was, with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. In addition, for every informant officially listed in the bureau’s records, there are as many as three unofficial ones, according to one former high-level FBI official, known in bureau parlance as “hip pockets.”
The bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies, some paid as much as $100,000 per case, many of them tasked with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States.

The informants could be doctors, clerks, imams. Some might not even consider themselves informants. But the FBI regularly taps all of them as part of a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical peer might be COINTELPRO [13], the program the bureau ran from the ’50s to the ’70s to discredit and marginalize organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to civil-rights and protest groups.

Throughout the FBI’s history, informant numbers have been closely guarded secrets. Periodically, however, the bureau has released those figures. A Senate oversight committee in 1975 found the FBI had 1,500 informant [14]s [14]. In 1980, officials disclosed there were 2,800 [15]. Six years later, following the FBI’s push into drugs and organized crime, the number of bureau informants ballooned to 6,000, the Los Angeles Times reported [15] in 1986. And according to the FBI, the number grew significantly after 9/11. In its fiscal year 2008 budget authorization request [16], the FBI disclosed that it it had been been working under a November 2004 presidential directive demanding an increase [17] in “human source development and management,” and that it needed $12.7 million [18] for a program to keep tabs on its spy network and create software to track and manage informants.

The bureau’s strategy has changed significantly from the days when officials feared another coordinated, internationally financed attack from an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. Today, counterterrorism experts believe groups like Al Qaeda, battered by the war in Afghanistan and the efforts of the global intelligence community, have shifted to a franchise model, using the internet to encourage sympathizers to carry out attacks in their name. The main domestic threat, as the FBI sees it, is a lone wolf.

The bureau’s answer has been a strategy known variously as “preemption,” “prevention,” and “disruption”—identifying and neutralizing potential lone wolves before they move toward action. To that end, FBI agents and informants target not just active jihadists, but tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.

Here’s how it works: Informants report to their handlers on people who have, say, made statements sympathizing with terrorists. Those names are then cross-referenced with existing intelligence data, such as immigration and criminal records. FBI agents may then assign an undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical. Sometimes the operative will propose a plot, provide explosives, even lead the target in a fake oath to Al Qaeda. Once enough incriminating information has been gathered, there’s an arrest—and a press conference [19] announcing another foiled plot.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because such sting operations are a fixture in the headlines. Remember the Washington Metro [20] bombing plot? The New York subway [21] plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower [22]? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree [23] lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.

Over the past year, Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley have examined prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases, as defined by the Department of Justice. Our investigation found:
Nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations. (For more on the details of those 508 cases, see our charts page [24] and searchable database [25].)
Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur—an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.
With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings. (The exceptions are Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing [26] the New York City subway system in September 2009; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet [27], an Egyptian who opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport; and failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad [28].)
In many sting cases, key encounters between the informant and the target were not recorded—making it hard for defendants claiming entrapment to prove their case.
Terrorism-related charges are so difficult to beat in court, even when the evidence is thin, that defendants often don’t risk a trial.

“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York’s Herald Square [21] subway station. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.” In the FBI’s defense, supporters argue that the bureau will only pursue a case when the target clearly is willing to participate in violent action. “If you’re doing a sting right, you’re offering the target multiple chances to back out,” says Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and oversaw the investigation of the Lackawanna Six [29], an alleged terror cell near Buffalo, New York. “Real people don’t say, ‘Yeah, let’s go bomb that place.’ Real people call the cops.”
Terms
of
Entrapment
A guide to counterterrorism jargon.

1001: Known as the “Al Capone,” Title 18, Section 1001 [30] of the federal criminal code covers the crime of lying to federal agents. Just as the government prosecuted Capone for tax violations [31], it has frequently used 1001 against terrorism defendants [32] whose crimes or affiliations it couldn’t prove in court.
Agent provocateur: An informant or undercover operative who incites a target to take unlawful action [33]; the phrase originally described strikebreakers trying to provoke violence [34].

Assessment: The term for a 72-hour investigation [35]—which may include surveillance—that FBI agents can launch without having a predicate [36] (see below).

COINTELPRO [13]: From 1956 to 1971, the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program attempted to infiltrate and sometimes harass domestic political groups [37], from the Ku Klux Klan to the National Lawyers Guild and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [38].

DIOG: The Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide [36], a 258-page FBI manual for undercover operations and the use of informants. Recently revised to allow agents to look for information—including going through someone’s trash—about a person who is not formally being investigated [39], sometimes to flip them as an informant.

Domain Management: An FBI data-mining and analysis program [36] used to map US communities along ethnic and religious lines.

Hip pocket: An unregistered informant who provides information [40] and tips to FBI agents but whose information is not used in court.

Joint Terrorism Task Force: A partnership among federal and local law enforcement agencies [41]; through it, for example, FBI agents can join forces with immigration agents [42] to put the squeeze on someone to become an informant.

Material support: Providing help to a designated foreign terrorist organization. This can include money, lodging, training, documents, weapons, and personnel [43]—including oneself, and including joining a terrorist cell dreamed up by the FBI [44].

Operator: Someone who wants to be a terrorist; in the FBI’s view, sympathizers become operators [45].

Predicate: Information clearly suggesting that an individual is involved in unlawful activity; it’s required for the FBI to start an investigation [36].

Even so, Ahearn concedes that the uptick in successful terrorism stings might not be evidence of a growing threat so much as a greater focus by the FBI. “If you concentrate more people on a problem,” Ahearn says, “you’ll find more problems.” Today, the FBI follows up on literally every single call, email, or other terrorism-related tip it receives for fear of missing a clue.

And the emphasis is unlikely to shift anytime soon. Sting operations have “proven to be an essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing potential terror attacks,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a December 2010 speech [46] to Muslim lawyers and civil rights activists. President Obama’s Department of Justice has announced sting-related prosecutions at an even faster clip than the Bush administration, with 44 new cases since January 2009. With the war on terror an open-ended and nebulous conflict, the FBI doesn’t have an exit strategy.

Located deep in a wooded area on a Marine Corps base west of Interstate 95—a setting familiar from Silence of the Lambs—is the sandstone fortress of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. This building, erected under J. Edgar Hoover, is where to this day every FBI special agent is trained.

J. Stephen Tidwell graduated from the academy in 1981 and over the years rose to executive assistant director, one of the 10 highest positions in the FBI; in 2008, he coauthored the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, or DIOG [47] (PDF), the manual for what agents and informants can and cannot do.

A former Texas cop, Tidwell is a barrel-chested man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He’s led some of the FBI’s highest-profile investigations, including the DC sniper case and the probe of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

On a cloudy spring afternoon, Tidwell, dressed in khakis and a blue sweater, drove me in his black Ford F-350 through Hogan’s Alley [48]—a 10-acre Potemkin village with houses, bars, stores, and a hotel. Agents learning the craft role-play stings, busts, and bank robberies here, and inside jokes and pop-culture references litter the place (which itself gets its name from a 19th-century comic strip). At one end of the town is the Biograph Theater, named for the Chicago movie house where FBI agents gunned down John Dillinger [49] in 1934. (“See,” Tidwell says. “The FBI has a sense of humor.”)

Inside the academy, a more somber tone prevails. Plaques everywhere honor agents who have been killed on the job. Tidwell takes me to one that commemorates John O’Neill, who became chief of the bureau’s then-tiny counterterrorism section in 1995. For years before retiring from the FBI, O’Neill warned [50] of Al Qaeda’s increasing threat, to no avail. In late August 2001, he left the bureau to take a job as head of security for the World Trade Center, where he died 19 days later at the hands of the enemy he’d told the FBI it should fear. The agents he had trained would end up reshaping the bureau’s counterterrorism operations.

Before 9/11, FBI agents considered chasing terrorists an undesirable career path, and their training did not distinguish between Islamic terror tactics and those employed by groups like the Irish Republican Army. “A bombing case is a bombing case,” Dale Watson, who was the FBI’s counterterrorism chief on 9/11, said in a December 2004 deposition. The FBI also did not train agents in Arabic or require most of them to learn about radical Islam. “I don’t necessarily think you have to know everything about the Ku Klux Klan to investigate a church bombing,” Watson said. The FBI had only one Arabic speaker [51] in New York City and fewer than 10 nationwide.

But shortly after 9/11, President George W. Bush called FBI Director Robert Mueller to Camp David. His message: never again. And so Mueller committed to turn the FBI into a counterintelligence organization rivaling Britain’s MI5 in its capacity for surveillance and clandestine activity. Federal law enforcement went from a focus on fighting crime to preventing crime; instead of accountants and lawyers cracking crime syndicates, the bureau would focus on Jack Bauer-style operators disrupting terror groups.

To help run the counterterrorism section, Mueller drafted Arthur Cummings, a former Navy SEAL who’d investigated the first World Trade Center bombing. Cummings pressed agents to focus not only on their immediate target, but also on the extended web of people linked to the target. “We’re looking for the sympathizer who wants to become an operator, and we want to catch them when they step over that line to operator,” Cummings says. “Sometimes, that step takes 10 years. Other times, it takes 10 minutes.” The FBI’s goal is to create a hostile environment for terrorist recruiters and operators—by raising the risk of even the smallest step toward violent action. It’s a form of deterrence, an adaptation of the “broken windows” theory used to fight urban crime. Advocates insist it has been effective, noting that there hasn’t been a successful large-scale attack against the United States since 9/11. But what can’t be answered—as many former and current FBI agents acknowledge—is how many of the bureau’s targets would have taken the step over the line at all, were it not for an informant.

So how did the FBI build its informant network? It began by asking where US Muslims lived. Four years after 9/11, the bureau brought in a CIA expert on intelligence-gathering methods named Phil Mudd [52]. His tool of choice was a data-mining system using commercially available information, as well as government data such as immigration records, to pinpoint the demographics of specific ethnic and religious communities—say, Iranians in Beverly Hills or Pakistanis in the DC suburbs.

The FBI officially denies that the program, known as Domain Management, works this way—its purpose, the bureau says, is simply to help allocate resources according to threats. But FBI agents told me that with counterterrorism as the bureau’s top priority, agents often look for those threats in Muslim communities—and Domain Management allows them to quickly understand those communities’ makeup. One high-ranking former FBI official jokingly referred to it as “Battlefield Management.”

Some FBI veterans criticized the program as unproductive and intrusive—one told Mudd during a high-level meeting that he’d pushed the bureau to “the dark side.” That tension has its roots in the stark difference between the FBI and the CIA: While the latter is free to operate internationally without regard to constitutional rights, the FBI must respect those rights in domestic investigations, and Mudd’s critics saw the idea of targeting Americans based on their ethnicity and religion as a step too far.

Nonetheless, Domain Management quickly became the foundation for the FBI’s counterterrorism dragnet. Using the demographic data, field agents were directed to target specific communities to recruit informants. Some agents were assigned to the task full time. And across the bureau, agents’ annual performance evaluations are now based in part on their recruiting efforts.

People cooperate with law enforcement for fairly simple reasons: ego, patriotism, money, or coercion. The FBI’s recruitment has relied heavily on the latter. One tried-and-true method is to flip someone facing criminal charges. But since 9/11 the FBI has also relied heavily on Immigration and Customs Enforcement [42], with which it has worked closely as part of increased interagency coordination. A typical scenario will play out like this: An FBI agent trying to get someone to cooperate will look for evidence that the person has immigration troubles. If they do, he can ask ICE to begin or expedite deportation proceedings. If the immigrant then chooses to cooperate, the FBI will tell the court that he is a valuable asset, averting deportation.
A well-muscled 49-year-old with a shaved scalp, Craig Monteilh has been a versatile snitch: He’s pretended to be a white supremacist, a Russian hit man, a Sicilian drug trafficker, and a French-Syrian Muslim.

Sometimes, the target of this kind of push is the one person in a mosque who will know everyone’s business—the imam. Two Islamic religious leaders, Foad Farahi [53] in Miami and Sheikh Tarek Saleh in New York City, are currently fighting deportation proceedings that, they claim, began after they refused to become FBI assets. The Muslim American Society Immigrant Justice Center has filed similar complaints on behalf of seven other Muslims with the Department of Homeland Security.

Once someone has signed on as an informant, the first assignment is often a fishing expedition. Informants have said in court testimony that FBI handlers have tasked them with infiltrating mosques without a specific target or “predicate”—the term of art for the reason why someone is investigated. They were, they say, directed to surveil law-abiding Americans with no indication of criminal intent.

“The FBI is now telling agents they can go into houses of worship without probable cause,” says Farhana Khera, executive director of the San Francisco-based civil rights group Muslim Advocates. “That raises serious constitutional issues.”

Tidwell himself will soon have to defend these practices in court—he’s among those named in a class-action lawsuit [54] (PDF) over an informant’s allegation that the FBI used him to spy on a number of mosques in Southern California.

That informant, Craig Monteilh, is a convicted felon who made his money ripping off cocaine dealers before becoming an asset for the Drug Enforcement Administration and later the FBI. A well-muscled 49-year-old with a shaved scalp, Monteilh has been a particularly versatile snitch: He’s pretended to be a white supremacist, a Russian hit man, and a Sicilian drug trafficker. He says when the FBI sent him into mosques (posing as a French-Syrian Muslim), he was told to act as a decoy for any radicals who might seek to convert him—and to look for information to help flip congregants as informants, such as immigration status, extramarital relationships, criminal activities, and drug use. “Blackmail is the ultimate goal,” Monteilh says.

Officially, the FBI denies it blackmails informants. “We are prohibited from using threats or coercion,” says Kathleen Wright, an FBI spokeswoman. (She acknowledges that the bureau has prevented helpful informants from being deported.)

FBI veterans say reality is different from the official line. “We could go to a source and say, ‘We know you’re having an affair. If you work with us, we won’t tell your wife,'” says a former top FBI counterterrorism official. “Would we actually call the wife if the source doesn’t cooperate? Not always. You do get into ethics here—is this the right thing to do?—but legally this isn’t a question. If you obtained the information legally, then you can use it however you want.”

But eventually, Monteilh’s operation imploded in spectacular fashion. In December 2007, police in Irvine, California, charged him with bilking two women out of $157,000 as part of an alleged human growth hormone scam. Monteilh has maintained it was actually part of an FBI investigation, and that agents instructed him to plead guilty to a grand-theft charge and serve eight months so as not to blow his cover. The FBI would “clean up” the charge later, Monteilh says he was told. That didn’t happen, and Monteilh has alleged in court filings that the government put him in danger by letting fellow inmates know that he was an informant. (FBI agents told me the bureau wouldn’t advise an informant to plead guilty to a state criminal charge; instead, agents would work with local prosecutors to delay or dismiss the charge.)

The class-action suit, filed by the ACLU, alleges that Tidwell, then the bureau’s Los Angeles-based assistant director, signed off on Monteilh’s operation. And Tidwell says he’s eager to defend the bureau in court. “There is not the blanket suspicion of the Muslim community that they think there is,” Tidwell says. “We’re just looking for the bad guys. Anything the FBI does is going to be interpreted as monitoring Muslims. I would tell [critics]: ‘Do you really think I have the time and money to monitor all the mosques and Arab American organizations? We don’t. And I don’t want to.'”

Shady informants, of course, are as old as the FBI; one saying in the bureau is, “To catch the devil, you have to go to hell.” Another is, “The only problem worse than having an informant is not having an informant.” Back in the ’80s, the FBI made a cottage industry of drug stings—a source of countless Hollywood plots, often involving briefcases full of cocaine and Miami as the backdrop.

It’s perhaps fitting, then, that one of the earliest known terrorism stings also unfolded in Miami, though it wasn’t launched by the FBI. Instead the protagonist was a Canadian bodyguard and, as a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, newspaper put it in 2002 [55], “a 340-pound man with a fondness for firearms and strippers.” He subscribed to Soldier of Fortune [56] and hung around a police supply store on a desolate stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, north of Miami.

Howard Gilbert aspired to be a CIA agent but lacked pertinent experience. So to pad his résumé, he hatched a plan to infiltrate a mosque in the suburb of Pembroke Pines by posing as a Muslim convert named Saif Allah [57]. He told congregants that he was a former Marine and a security expert, and one night in late 2000, he gave a speech about the plight of Palestinians.

“That was truly the night that launched me into the terrorist umbrella of South Florida,” Gilbert would later brag [58] to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Nineteen-year-old congregant Imran Mandhai, stirred by the oration, approached Gilbert and asked if he could provide him weapons and training. Gilbert, who had been providing information to the FBI, contacted his handlers and asked for more money to work on the case. (He later claimed that the bureau had paid him $6,000.) But he ultimately couldn’t deliver—the target had sensed something fishy about his new friend.

The bureau also brought in Elie Assaad [59], a seasoned informant originally from Lebanon. He told Mandhai that he was an associate of Osama bin Laden tasked with establishing a training camp in the United States. Gilbert suggested attacking electrical substations in South Florida, and Assaad offered to provide a weapon. FBI agents then arrested Mandhai; he pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison. It was a model of what would become the bureau’s primary counterterrorism M.O.—identifying a target, offering a plot, and then pouncing.

“These guys were homeless types,” one former FBI official says about the alleged Sears Tower plotters. “And yes, we did show a picture where somebody was taking the oath to Al Qaeda. So what?” Illustration: Jeffrey Smith
Gilbert himself didn’t get to bask in his glory; he never worked for the FBI again and died in 2004. Assaad, for his part, ran into some trouble when his pregnant wife called 911. She said Assaad had beaten and choked her to the point that she became afraid [60] for her unborn baby; he was arrested, but in the end his wife refused to press charges.

The jail stint didn’t keep Assaad from working for the FBI on what would turn out to be perhaps the most high-profile terrorism bust of the post-9/11 era. In 2005, the bureau got a tip [61] from an informant about a group of alleged terrorists in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. The targets were seven men [62]—some African American, others Haitian—who called themselves the “Seas of David” [63] and ascribed to religious beliefs that blended Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The men were martial-arts enthusiasts who operated out of a dilapidated warehouse, where they also taught classes for local kids. The Seas of David’s leader was Narseal Batiste [64], the son of a Louisiana preacher, father of four, and a former Guardian Angel.

In response to the informant’s tip, the FBI had him wear a wire during meetings with the men, but he wasn’t able to engage them in conversations about terrorist plots. So he introduced the group to Assaad, now playing an Al Qaeda operative. At the informant’s request, Batiste took photographs of the FBI office in North Miami Beach and was caught on tape discussing a notion to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago. Assaad led Batiste, and later the other men, in swearing an oath to Al Qaeda, though the ceremony (recorded and entered into evidence at trial) bore a certain “Who’s on First?” flavor:

“God’s pledge is upon me, and so is his compact,” Assaad said as he and Batiste sat in his car. “Repeat after me.”

“Okay. Allah’s pledge is upon you.”

“No, you have to repeat exactly. God’s pledge is upon me, and so is his compact. You have to repeat.”
Ultimately, the undercover recordings suggest that Batiste was mostly trying to shake down his “terrorist” friend.

“Well, I can’t say Allah?” Batiste asked.

“Yeah, but this is an English version because Allah, you can say whatever you want, but—”

“Okay. Of course.”

“Okay.”

“Allah’s pledge is upon me. And so is his compact,” Batiste said, adding: “That means his angels, right?”

“Uh, huh. To commit myself,” Assaad continued.

“To commit myself.”

“Brother.”

“Brother,” Batiste repeated.

“Uh. That’s, uh, what’s your, uh, what’s your name, brother?”

“Ah, Brother Naz.”

“Okay. To commit myself,” the informant repeated.

“To commit myself.”

“Brother.”

“Brother.”

“You’re not—you have to say your name!” Assaad cried.

“Naz. Naz.”

“Uh. To commit myself. I am Brother Naz. You can say, ‘To commit myself.'”

“To commit myself, Brother Naz.”

Things went smoothly until Assaad got to a reference to being “protective of the secrecy of the oath and to the directive of Al Qaeda.”

Here Batiste stopped. “And to…what is the directive of?”

“Directive of Al Qaeda,” the informant answered.

“So now let me ask you this part here. That means that Al Qaeda will be over us?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Assaad said. “It’s an alliance.”

“Oh. Well…” Batiste said, sounding resigned.

“It’s an alliance, but it’s like a commitment, by, uh, like, we respect your rules. You respect our rules,” Assaad explained.

“Uh, huh,” Batiste mumbled.

“And to the directive of Al Qaeda,” Assaad said, waiting for Batiste to repeat.

“Okay, can I say an alliance?” Batiste asked. “And to the alliance of Al Qaeda?”

“Of the alliance, of the directive—” Assaad said, catching himself. “You know what you can say? And to the directive and the alliance of Al Qaeda.”

“Okay, directive and alliance of Al Qaeda,” Batiste said.

“Okay,” the informant said. “Now officially you have commitment and we have alliance between each other. And welcome, Brother Naz, to Al Qaeda.”

Or not. Ultimately, the undercover recordings made by Assaad suggest that Batiste, who had a failing drywall business and had trouble making the rent for the warehouse, was mostly trying to shake down his “terrorist” friend. After first asking the informant for $50,000, Batiste is recorded in conversation after conversation asking how soon he’ll have the cash.

“Let me ask you a question,” he says in one exchange. “Once I give you an account number, how long do you think it’s gonna take to get me something in?”

“So you is scratching my back, [I’m] scratching your back—we’re like this,” Assaad dodged.

“Right,” Batiste said.
“When we put forth a case like that to suggest to the American public that we’re protecting them, we’re not protecting them. The agents back in the bullpen, they know it’s not true.”

The money never materialized. Neither did any specific terrorist plot. Nevertheless, federal prosecutors charged (PDF [65]) Batiste and his cohorts—whom the media dubbed the Liberty City Seven—with conspiracy to support terrorism, destroy buildings, and levy war against the US government. Perhaps the key piece of evidence was the video of Assaad’s Al Qaeda “oath.” Assaad was reportedly paid [66] $85,000 for his work on the case; the other informant got $21,000.

James J. Wedick, a former FBI agent, was hired to review the Liberty City case as a consultant for the defense. In his opinion, the informant simply picked low-hanging fruit. “These guys couldn’t find their way down the end of the street,” Wedick says. “They were homeless types. And, yes, we did show a picture where somebody was taking the oath to Al Qaeda. So what? They didn’t care. They only cared about the money. When we put forth a case like that to suggest to the American public that we’re protecting them, we’re not protecting them. The agents back in the bullpen, they know it’s not true.”

Indeed, the Department of Justice had a difficult time winning convictions in the Liberty City case. In three separate trials, juries deadlocked [67] on most of the charges, eventually acquitting one of the defendants (charges against another were dropped) and convicting five of crimes that landed them in prison for between 7 to 13 years. When it was all over, Assaad told ABC News’ Brian Ross [59] that he had a special sense for terrorists: “God gave me a certain gift.”

But he didn’t have a gift for sensing trouble. After the Liberty City case, Assaad moved on to Texas and founded a low-rent modeling agency [68]. In March, when police tried to pull him over, he led them in a chase through El Paso [69] (with his female passenger jumping out at one point), hit a cop with his car, and ended up rolling his SUV on the freeway. Reached by phone, Assaad declined to comment. He’s saving his story, he says, for a book he’s pitching to publishers.

Not all of the more than 500 terrorism prosecutions [25] reviewed in this investigation are so action-movie ready. But many do have an element of mystery. For example, though recorded conversations are often a key element of prosecutions, in many sting cases the FBI didn’t record large portions of the investigation, particularly during initial encounters or at key junctures during the sting. When those conversations come up in court, the FBI and prosecutors will instead rely on the account of an informant with a performance bonus on the line.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud [70] was an 18-year old wannabe rapper when an FBI agent asked if he’d like to “help the brothers.” Eventually the FBI gave him a fake car bomb and a phone to blow it up during a Christmas tree lighting. Illustration: Jeffrey Smith
One of the most egregious examples of a missing recording involves a convoluted tale that begins in the early morning hours of November 1, 2009, with a date-rape allegation on the campus of Oregon State University. Following a Halloween party, 18-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud [71], a Somali-born US citizen, went home with another student. The next morning, the woman reported to police that she believed she had been drugged.

Campus police brought Mohamud in for questioning and a polygraph test; FBI agents, who for reasons that have not been disclosed had been keeping an eye on the teen for about a month, were also there [72]. Mohamud claimed that the sex was consensual, and a drug test given to his accuser eventually came back negative.

During the interrogation, OSU police asked Mohamud if a search of his laptop would indicate that he’d researched date-rape drugs. He said it wouldn’t and gave them permission to examine his hard drive. Police copied its entire contents and turned the data over to the FBI—which discovered, it later alleged in court documents, that Mohamud had emailed someone in northwest Pakistan talking about jihad.

Soon after his run-in with police, Mohamud began to receive emails from “Bill Smith,” a self-described terrorist who encouraged him to “help the brothers.” “Bill,” an FBI agent, arranged for Mohamud to meet one of his associates in a Portland hotel room. There, Mohamud told the agents that he’d been thinking of jihad since age 15. When asked what he might want to attack, Mohamud suggested the city’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony [73]. The agents set Mohamud up with a van that he thought was filled with explosives. On November 26, 2010, Mohamud and one of the agents drove the van to Portland’s Pioneer Square, and Mohamud dialed [74] the phone to trigger the explosion. Nothing. He dialed again. Suddenly FBI agents appeared and dragged him away as he kicked and yelled, “Allahu akbar!” Prosecutors charged him with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction; his trial is pending.
The FBI’s defenders say the bureau must flush out terrorist sympathizers before they act. “What would you do?” asks one. “Wait for him to figure it out himself?”

The Portland case has been held up as an example of how FBI stings can make a terrorist where there might have been only an angry loser. “This is a kid who, it can be reasonably inferred, barely had the capacity to put his shoes on in the morning,” Wedick says.

But Tidwell, the retired FBI official, says Mohamud was exactly the kind of person the FBI needs to flush out. “That kid was pretty specific about what he wanted to do,” he says. “What would you do in response? Wait for him to figure it out himself? If you’ll notice, most of these folks [targeted in stings] plead guilty. They don’t say, ‘I’ve been entrapped,’ or, ‘I was immature.'” That’s true—though it’s also true that defendants and their attorneys know that the odds of succeeding at trial are vanishingly small. Nearly two-thirds of all terrorism prosecutions since 9/11 have ended in guilty pleas, and experts hypothesize that it’s difficult for such defendants to get a fair trial. “The plots people are accused of being part of—attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building—are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury,” notes David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who has studied these types of cases.

But the Mohamud story wasn’t quite over—it would end up changing the course of another case on the opposite side of the country. In Maryland, rookie FBI agent Keith Bender had been working a sting against 21-year-old Antonio Martinez [75], a recent convert to Islam who’d posted inflammatory comments on Facebook [76] (“The sword is cummin the reign of oppression is about 2 cease inshallah”). An FBI informant had befriended Martinez and, in recorded conversations, they talked about attacking a military recruiting station.

Just as the sting was building to its climax, Martinez saw news reports about the Mohamud case, and how there was an undercover operative involved. He worried: Was he, too, being lured into a sting? He called his supposed terrorist contact: “I’m not falling for no BS,” he told him [76].

Faced with the risk of losing the target, the informant—whose name is not revealed in court records—met with Martinez and pulled him back into the plot. But while the informant had recorded numerous previous meetings with Martinez, no recording [77] was made for this key conversation; in affidavits, the FBI blamed a technical glitch. Two weeks later, on December 8, 2010, Martinez parked what he thought was a car bomb in front of a recruitment center and was arrested when he tried to detonate [78] it.

Frances Townsend, who served as homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, concedes that missing recordings in terrorism stings seem suspicious. But, she says, it’s more common than you might think: “I can’t tell you how many times I had FBI agents in front of me and I yelled, ‘You have hundreds of hours of recordings, but you didn’t record this meeting.’ Sometimes, I admit, they might not record something intentionally”—for fear, she says, that the target will notice. “But more often than not, it’s a technical issue.”

Wedick, the former FBI agent, is less forgiving. “With the technology the FBI now has access to—these small devices that no one would ever suspect are recorders or transmitters—there’s no excuse not to tape interactions between the informant and the target,” he says. “So why in many of these terrorism stings are meetings not recorded? Because it’s convenient for the FBI not to record.”

So what really happens as an informant works his target, sometimes over a period of years, and eases him over the line? For the answer to that, consider once more the case of James Cromitie [1], the Walmart stocker with a hatred of Jews. Cromitie was the ringleader in the much-publicized Bronx synagogue bombing plot that went to trial last year [79]. But a closer look at the record reveals that while Cromitie was no one’s idea of a nice guy, whatever leadership existed in the plot emanated from his sharply dressed, smooth-talking friend Maqsood, a.k.a. FBI informant Shahed Hussain.

A Pakistani refugee who claimed to be friends with Benazir Bhutto and had a soft spot for fancy cars, Hussain was by then one of the FBI’s more successful counterterrorism informants. (See our timeline of Hussain’s career as an informant [12].) He’d originally come to the bureau’s attention when he was busted in a DMV scam [80] that charged test takers $300 to $500 for a license. Having “worked off” those charges, he’d transitioned from indentured informant to paid snitch, earning as much as $100,000 per assignment.
At trial, informant Hussain admitted that he created the “impression” that his target would make big money by bombing synagogues in the Bronx.

Hussain was assigned to visit a mosque in Newburgh, where he would start conversations with strangers about jihad [81]. “I was finding people who would be harmful, and radicals, and identify them for the FBI,” Hussain said during Cromitie’s trial. Most of the mosque’s congregants were poor, and Hussain, who posed as a wealthy businessman and always arrived in one of his four luxury cars [82]—a Hummer, a Mercedes, two different BMWs—made plenty of friends. But after more than a year working the local Muslim community, he had not identified a single actual target [83].

Then, one day in June 2008, Cromitie approached Hussain in the parking lot outside the mosque. The two became friends, and Hussain clearly had Cromitie’s number. “Allah didn’t bring you here to work for Walmart,” he told him [84] at one point.

Cromitie, who once claimed he could “con the corn from the cob,” had a history of mental instability. He told a psychiatrist that he saw and heard things that weren’t there and had twice tried to commit suicide [85]. He told tall tales, most of them entirely untrue—like the one about how his brother stole $126 million worth of stuff from Tiffany.

Exactly what Hussain and Cromitie talked about in the first four months of their relationship isn’t known, because the FBI did not record [86] those conversations. Based on later conversations, it’s clear that Hussain cultivated Cromitie assiduously. He took the target, all expenses paid [87] by the FBI, to an Islamic conference in Philadelphia to meet Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a prominent African-American Muslim leader. He helped pay Cromitie’s rent [88]. He offered to buy him a barbershop [89]. Finally, he asked Cromitie to recruit others [90] and help him bomb synagogues.

On April 7, 2009, at 2:45 p.m., Cromitie and Hussain sat on a couch inside an FBI cover house on Shipp Street in Newburgh. A hidden camera [91] was trained on the living room.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Cromitie told the informant [92].

“Who? I—”

“Think about it before you speak,” Cromitie interrupted.

“If there is American soldiers, I don’t care,” Hussain said, trying a fresh angle.

“Hold up,” Cromitie agreed. “If it’s American soldiers, I don’t even care.”

“If it’s kids, I care,” Hussain said. “If it’s women, I care.”

“I care. That’s what I’m worried about. And I’m going to tell you, I don’t care if it’s a whole synagogue of men.”

“Yep.”

“I would take ‘em down, I don’t even care. ‘Cause I know they are the ones.”

“We have the equipment to do it.”

“See, see, I’m not worried about nothing. Ya know? What I’m worried about is my safety,” Cromitie said.

“Oh, yeah, safety comes first.”

“I want to get in and I want to get out.”

“Trust me,” Hussain assured.

At Cromitie’s trial, Hussain would admit that he created the—in his word—”impression” that Cromitie would make a lot of money by bombing synagogues.

“I can make you $250,000, but you don’t want it, brother,” he once told [93] Cromitie when the target seemed hesitant. “What can I tell you?” (Asked about the exchange in court, Hussain said that “$250,000” was simply a code word for the bombing plot—a code word, he admitted, that only he knew.)

But whether for ideology or money, Cromitie did recruit three others, and they did take photographs of Stewart International Airport in Newburgh as well as of synagogues in the Bronx. On May 20, 2009, Hussain drove Cromitie [94] to the Bronx, where Cromitie put what he believed were bombs [95] inside cars he thought had been parked by Hussain’s coconspirators. Once all the dummy bombs were placed, Cromitie headed back to the getaway car [96]—Hussain was in the driver’s seat—and then a SWAT team surrounded the car.

…

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants

Links:
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[4] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants
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[6] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/brandon-darby-anarchist-fbi-terrorism
[7] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/terror-trials-numbers
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[9] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-sting-greatest-hits
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[11] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230139-cromite-uc-transcripts-2.html#document/p109/a12
[12] http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/shahed-hussain-fbi-informant
[13] http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro
[14] http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/0509/chapter2.htm
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[67] http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-04-17/news/17147416_1_mistrial-elie-assad-defense-lawyers
[68] http://www.fbmonitor.com/monitor/2010/10october/102810/community/102810_community5.html
[69] http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_17526478
[70] http://motherjones.com/fbi-terrorist/mohamed-osman-mohamud
[71] http://motherjones.com/node/127152
[72] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230979-mohamudnon-fisa.html#document/p3/a30274
[73] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/229270-mohamud-complaint.html#document/p5/a30261
[74] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/229270-mohamud-complaint.html#document/p36/a30263
[75] http://motherjones.com/node/127147
[76] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/229269-martinez-complaint.html#document/p4/a30266
[77] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/229269-martinez-complaint.html#document/p14/a30267
[78] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/229269-martinez-complaint.html#document/p19/a30269
[79] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/nyregion/25plot.html?ref=jamescromitie
[80] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/231512-1-complaint.html
[81] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230984-9-16-10.html#document/p55/a30796
[82] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230984-9-16-10.html#document/p56/a12
[83] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230991-9-23-10.html#document/p89/a30459
[84] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230124-cromite-uc-transcripts-1.html#document/p72/a30278
[85] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230987-cromitie-parole-hearing-transcript.html#document/p8/a30460
[86] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230989-9-22-10.html#document/p101/a12
[87] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230992-9-20-10.html#document/p70/a12
[88] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230993-9-8-10-shahed-included.html#document/p22/a30462
[89] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230990-9-21-10.html#document/p69/a30280
[90] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230990-9-21-10.html#document/p68/a30281
[91] http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/10/18/nyregion/1248069169871/bomb-plot-defendant-expresses-doubts.html?scp=2&sq=Cromitie&st=cse
[92] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230139-cromite-uc-transcripts-2.html#document/p74/a30272
[93] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230986-hussaincromitietelephonetranscript.html#document/p3/a30273
[94] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230999-9-15-10-shahed-included-redirect.html#document/p17/a12
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[97] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-29/new-york-city-synagogue-bomb-plotters-are-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison.html
[98] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/230985-8-25-10-fuller.html#document/p179/a30282
[99] http://journalism.berkeley.edu/program/investigative/
[100] http://motherjones.com/authors/trevor-aaronson
[101] http://fij.org/
[102] http://motherjones.com/authors/lauren-ellis
[103] http://motherjones.com/authors/hamed-aleaziz

By Trevor Aaronson | Fri Jul. 29, 2011 2:44 PM PDT

Find this story at Septembet/October 2011

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress

Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren’t Invented by Al Qaeda — They’re Manufactured by the FBI

The following is an excerpt from The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism [3] by Trevor Aaronson (Ig Publishing, 2012).

Antonio Martinez was a punk. The twenty-two-year-old from Baltimore was chunky, with a wide nose and jet-black hair pulled back close to his scalp and tied into long braids that hung past his shoulders. He preferred to be called Muhammad Hussain, the name he gave himself following his conversion to Islam. But his mother still called him Tony, and she couldn’t understand her son’s burning desire to be the Maryland Mujahideen.

As a young man, Martinez had been angry and lost. He’d dropped out of Laurel High School, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and spent his teens as a small-time thief in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. By the age of sixteen, he’d been charged with armed robbery. In February 2008, at the age of eighteen, he tried to steal a car. Catholic University doctoral student Daniel Tobin was looking out of the window of his apartment one day when he saw a man driving off in his car. Tobin gave chase, running between apartment buildings and finally catching up to the stolen vehicle. He opened the passenger-side door and got in. Martinez, in the driver’s seat, dashed out and ran away on foot. Jumping behind the wheel, Tobin followed the would-be car thief. “You may as well give up running,” he yelled at Martinez. Martinez was apprehended and charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle—he had stolen the vehicle using an extra set of car keys which had gone missing when someone had broken into Tobin’s apartment earlier. However, prosecutors dropped the charges against Martinez after Tobin failed to appear in court.

Despite the close call, Martinez’s petty crimes continued. One month after the car theft, he and a friend approached a cashier at a Safeway grocery store, acting as if they wanted to buy potato chips. When the cashier opened the register, Martinez and his friend grabbed as much money as they could and ran out of the store. The cashier and store manager chased after them, and later identified the pair to police. Martinez pleaded guilty to theft of one hundred dollars and received a ninety-day suspended sentence, plus six months of probation.

Searching for greater meaning in his life, Martinez was baptized and became a Christian when he was twenty-one years old, but he didn’t stick with the religion. “He said he tried the Christian thing. He just really didn’t understand it,” said Alisha Legrand, a former girlfriend. Martinez chose Islam instead. On his Facebook page, Martinez wrote that he was “just a yung brotha from the wrong side of the tracks who embraced Islam.” But for reasons that have never been clear to his family and friends, Martinez drifted toward a violent, extremist brand of Islam. When the FBI discovered him, Martinez was an angry extremist mouthing off on Facebook about violence, with misspelled posts such as, “The sword is cummin the reign of oppression is about 2 cease inshallah.” Based on the Facebook postings alone, an FBI agent gave an informant the “green light” to get to know Martinez and determine if he had a propensity for violence. In other words, to see if he was dangerous.

The government was setting the trap.

On the evening of December 2, 2010, Martinez was in another Muslim’s car as they drove through Baltimore. A hidden device recorded their conversation. His mother had called, and Martinez had just finished talking to her on his cell phone. He was aggravated. “She wants me to be like everybody else, being in school, working,” he told his friend. “For me, it’s different. I have this zeal for deen and she doesn’t understand that.” Martinez’s mother didn’t know that her son had just left a meeting with a purported Afghan-born terrorist who had agreed to provide him with a car bomb. But she wasn’t the only one in the dark that night. Martinez himself didn’t know his new terrorist friend was an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that the man driving the car—a man he’d met only a few weeks earlier—was a paid informant for federal law enforcement.

Five days later, Martinez met again with the man he believed to be a terrorist. The informant was there, too. They were all, Martinez believed, brothers in arms and in Islam. In a parking lot near the Armed Forces Career Center on Baltimore National Pike, Martinez, the informant, and the undercover FBI agent piled into an SUV, where the undercover agent showed Martinez the device that would detonate the car bomb and how to use it. He then unveiled to the twenty-two-year-old the bomb in the back of the SUV and demonstrated what he’d need to do to activate it. “I’m ready, man,” Martinez said. “It ain’t like you seein’ it on the news. You gonna be there. You gonna hear the bomb go off. You gonna be, uh, shooting, gettin’ shot at. It’s gonna be real. … I’m excited, man.”

That night, Martinez, who had little experience behind the wheel of a car, needed to practice driving the SUV around the empty parking lot. Once he felt comfortable doing what most teenagers can do easily, Martinez and his associates devised a plan: Martinez would park the bomb-on-wheels in the parking lot outside the military recruiting center. One of his associates would then pick him up, and they’d drive together to a vantage point where Martinez could detonate the bomb and delight in the resulting chaos and carnage.

The next morning, the three men put their plan into action. Martinez hopped into the SUV and activated the bomb, as he’d been instructed, and then drove to the military recruiting station. He parked right in front. The informant, trailing in another car, picked up Martinez and drove him to the vantage point, just as planned. Everything was falling into place, and Martinez was about to launch his first attack in what he hoped would be for him a lifetime of jihad against the only nation he had ever known.

Looking out at the military recruiting station, Martinez lifted the detonation device and triggered the bomb. Smiling, he watched expectantly. Nothing happened. Suddenly, FBI agents rushed in and arrested the man they’d later identify in court records as “Antonio Martinez a/k/a Muhammad Hussain.” Federal prosecutors in Maryland charged Martinez with attempted murder of federal officers and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. He faced at least thirty-five years in prison if convicted at trial.

“This is not Tony,” a woman identifying herself as Martinez’s mother told a reporter after the arrest. “I think he was brainwashed with that Islam crap.” Joseph Balter, a federal public defender, told the court during a detention hearing that FBI agents had entrapped Martinez, whom he referred to by his chosen name. The terrorist plot was, Balter said, “the creation of the government—a creation which was implanted into Mr. Hussain’s mind.” He added: “There was nothing provided which showed that Mr. Hussain had any ability whatsoever to carry out any kind of plan.”

Despite Balter’s claims, a little more than a year after his indictment, Martinez chose not to challenge the government’s charges in court. On January 26, 2012, Martinez dropped his entrapment defense and pleaded guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction under a deal that will require him to serve twenty-five years in prison—more years than he’s been alive. Neither Martinez nor Balter would comment on the reasons they chose a plea agreement, though in a sentencing hearing, Balter told the judge he believed the entire case could have been avoided had the FBI counseled, rather than encouraged, Martinez.

The U.S. Department of Justice touted the conviction as another example of the government keeping citizens safe from terrorists. “We are catching dangerous suspects before they strike, and we are investigating them in a way that maximizes the liberty and security of law-abiding citizens,” U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement announcing Martinez’s plea agreement. “That is what the American people expect of the Justice Department, and that is what we aim to deliver.”

Indeed, that is exactly what the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been delivering throughout the decade since the attacks of September 11, 2001. But whether it’s what the American people expect is questionable, because most Americans today have no idea that since 9/11, one single organization has been responsible for hatching and financing more terrorist plots in the United States than any other. That organization isn’t Al Qaeda, the terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden and responsible for the spectacular 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. And it isn’t Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Shabaab, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any of the other more than forty U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations. No, the organization responsible for more terrorist plots over the last decade than any other is the FBI. Through elaborate and expensive sting operations involving informants and undercover agents posing as terrorists, the FBI has arrested and the Justice Department has prosecuted dozens of men government officials say posed direct—but by no means immediate or credible—threats to the United States.

Just as in the Martinez case, in terrorism sting after terrorism sting, FBI and DOJ officials have hosted high-profile press conferences to announce yet another foiled terrorist plot. But what isn’t publicized during these press conferences is the fact that government-described terrorists such as Antonio Martinez were able to carry forward with their potentially lethal plots only because FBI informants and agents provided them with all of the means—in most cases delivering weapons and equipment, in some cases even paying for rent and doling out a little spending money to keep targets on the hook. In cities around the country where terrorism sting operations have occurred—among them New York City, Albany, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Portland, Tampa, Houston, and Dallas—a central question exists: Is the FBI catching terrorists or creating them?

In the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal law enforcement profile of a terrorist has changed dramatically. The men responsible for downing the World Trade Center were disciplined and patient; they were also living and training in the United States with money from an Al Qaeda cell led by Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. In the days and weeks following 9/11, federal officials anxiously awaited a second wave of attacks, which would be launched, they believed at the time, by several sleeper cells around the country. But the feared second wave never crashed ashore. Instead, the United States and allied nations invaded Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s home base, and forced Osama bin Laden and his deputies into hiding. Bruised and hunted, Al Qaeda no longer had the capability to train terrorists and send them to the United States.

In response, Al Qaeda’s leaders moved to what FBI officials describe as a “franchise model.” If you can’t run Al Qaeda as a hierarchal, centrally organized outfit, the theory went, run it as a franchise. In other words, export ideas—not terrorists. Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations went online, setting up websites and forums dedicated to instilling their beliefs in disenfranchised Muslims already living in Western nations. A slickly designed magazine, appropriately titled Inspire, quickly followed. Article headlines included “I Am Proud to Be a Traitor to America,”9 and “Why Did I Choose Al-Qaeda?” Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born, high-ranking Al Qaeda official who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on September 30, 2011, became something of the terrorist organization’s Dear Abby. Have a question about Islam? Ask Anwar! Muslim men in nations throughout the Western world would email him questions, and al-Awlaki would reply dutifully, and in English, encouraging many of his electronic pen pals to violent action. Al-Awlaki also kept a blog and a Facebook page, and regularly posted recruitment videos to YouTube. He said in one video:

I specifically invite the youth to either fight in the West or join their brothers in the fronts of jihad: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia.

I invite them to join us in our new front, Yemen, the base from which the great jihad of the Arabian Peninsula will begin, the base from which the greatest army of Islam will march forth.

Al Qaeda’s move to a franchise model met with some success. U.S. army major Nadal Hassan, for example, corresponded with al-Awlaki before he killed thirteen people and wounded twenty-nine others in the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings in 2009. Antonio Martinez and other American-born men, many of them recent converts to Islam, also sent al-Awlaki messages or watched Al Qaeda propaganda videos online before moving forward in alleged terrorist plots.

The FBI has a term for Martinez and other alleged terrorists like him: lone wolf. Officials at the Bureau now believe that the next terrorist attack will likely come from a lone wolf, and this belief is at the core of a federal law enforcement policy known variously as preemption, prevention, and disruption. FBI counterterrorism agents want to catch terrorists before they act, and to accomplish this, federal law enforcement officials have in the decade since 9/11 created the largest domestic spying network ever to exist in the United States. In fact, the FBI today has ten times as many informants as it did in the 1960s, when former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made the Bureau infamous for inserting spies into organizations as varied as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and the Ku Klux Klan. Modern FBI informants aren’t burrowing into political groups, however; they are focused on terrorism, on identifying today the terrorist of tomorrow, and U.S. government officials acknowledge that while terrorist threats do exist from domestic organizations, such as white supremacist groups and the sovereign citizen movement, they believe the greatest threat comes from within U.S. Muslim communities due, in large part, to the aftereffects of the shock and awe Al Qaeda delivered on September 11, 2001.

The FBI’s vast army of spies, located in every community in the United States with enough Muslims to support a mosque, has one primary function: to identify the next lone wolf. According to the Bureau, a lone wolf is likely to be a single male age sixteen to thirty-five. Therefore, informants and their FBI handlers are on the lookout for young Muslims who espouse radical beliefs, are vocal about their disapproval of U.S. foreign policy, or have expressed sympathy for international terrorist groups. If they find anyone who meets the criteria, they move him to the next stage: the sting, in which an FBI informant, posing as a terrorist, offers to help facilitate a terrorist attack for the target.

On a cold February morning in 2011, I met with Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, in a coffee shop outside Washington, D.C., to talk about how the FBI runs its operations. Ahearn was among the Bureau’s vanguard as it transformed into a counterterrorism organization in the wake of 9/11. An average-built man with a small dimple on his chin and close-cropped brown hair receding in the front, Ahearn oversaw one of the earliest post-9/11 terrorism investigations, involving the so-called Lackawanna Six—a group of six Yemeni-American men living outside Buffalo, New York, who attended a training camp in Afghanistan and were convicted of providing material support to Al Qaeda. “If you’re doing a sting right, you’re offering the target multiple chances to back out,” Ahearn told me. “Real people don’t say, ‘Yeah, let’s go bomb that place.’ Real people call the cops.”

Indeed, while terrorism sting operations are a new practice for the Bureau, they are an evolution of an FBI tactic that has for decades captured the imaginations of Hollywood filmmakers. In 1982, as the illegal drug trade overwhelmed local police resources nationwide and contributed to an increase in violent crime, President Ronald Reagan’s first attorney general, William French Smith, gave the FBI jurisdiction over federal drug crimes, which previously had been the exclusive domain of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Eager to show up their DEA rivals, FBI agents began aggressively sending undercover agents into America’s cities. This was relatively new territory for the FBI, which, during Hoover’s thirty-seven-year stewardship, had mandated that agents wear a suit and tie at all times, federal law enforcement badge easily accessible from the coat pocket. But an increasingly powerful Mafia and the bloody drug war compelled the FBI to begin enforcing federal laws from the street level. In searching for drug crimes, FBI agents hunted sellers as well as buyers, and soon learned one of the best strategies was to become part of the action.

Most people have no doubt seen drug sting operations as portrayed in countless movies and television shows. At its most cliché, the scene is set in a Miami high-rise apartment, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cresting waves of the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a man seated at the dining table; he’s longhaired, with a scruffy face, and he has a briefcase next to him. But that’s not all. Hidden on the other side of the room is a camera making a grainy black-and-white recording of the entire scene. The apartment’s door swings open and two men saunter in, the camera recording their every move and word. Everyone sits down at the table. The two men hand over bundles of cash. The scruffy man then hands over the briefcase. The two guests of course expect to find cocaine inside. Instead, the briefcase is empty, and as soon as they open it to find the drugs missing, FBI agents rush in, guns drawn for the takedown. Federal law enforcement officials call this type of sting operation a “no-dope bust,” and it has been an effective tool for decades. It’s also the direct predecessor to today’s terrorism sting. Instead of empty briefcases, the FBI today uses inert bombs and disabled assault rifles, and now that counter-terrorism is the Bureau’s top priority, the investigation of major drug crimes has largely fallen back to the DEA. Just as no-dope busts resulted in the arrest and prosecution of those in the drug trade in the twentieth century, terrorism sting operations are resulting in the arrest and prosecution of would-be terrorists in this century.

While the assumptions behind drug stings and terrorism stings are similar, there is a fundamental flaw in the assumption underpinning the latter. In drug stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any buyer caught in a sting would have been able to buy or sell drugs elsewhere had that buyer not fallen into the FBI trap. The numbers support this assumption. In 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, the DEA seized 29,179 kilograms, or 64,328 pounds, of cocaine in the United States. Likewise, in terrorism stings, federal law enforcement officials assume that any would-be terrorists caught in a sting would have been able to acquire the means elsewhere to carry out their violent plans had they not been ensnared by the FBI. The problem with this assumption is that no data exists to support it, and what data is available suggests would-be Islamic terrorists caught in FBI terrorism stings never could have obtained the capability to carry out their planned violent acts were it not for the FBI’s assistance.

In the ten years following 9/11, the FBI and the Justice Department indicted and convicted more than 150 people following sting operations involving alleged connections to international terrorism. Few of these defendants had any connection to terrorists, evidence showed, and those who did have connections, however tangential, never had the capacity to launch attacks on their own. In fact, of the more than 150 terrorism sting operation defendants, an FBI informant not only led one of every three terrorist plots, but also provided all the necessary weapons, money, and transportation.

The FBI’s logic to support the use of terrorism stings goes something like this: By catching a lone wolf before he strikes, federal law enforcement can take him off the streets before he meets a real terrorist who can provide him with weapons and munitions. However, to this day, no example exists of a lone wolf, by himself unable to launch an attack, becoming operational through meeting an actual terrorist in the United States. In addition, in the dozens of terrorism sting operations since 9/11, the would-be terrorists are usually uneducated, unsophisticated, and economically desperate—not the attributes of someone likely to plan and launch a sophisticated, violent attack without significant help.

Reprinted from The Terrorr Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism [3] — Copyright © 2012 by Trevor Aaronson. Reprinted with permission of Ig Publishing, Brooklyn, NY.

February 15, 2013 |

Find this story at 15 February 2013

The Many Scandals Of The Prisoner X Affair

There is a joke among spies that the worst curse you can bestow on a colleague is, “I hope to read about you in the newspapers one day.” In the tragic case of Ben Zygier, the curse wasn’t a joke, and he had to die for it to become a reality. Needless to say, the gallows humor that is a hallmark of my former profession has lost much of its luster.

This file photo taken on February 14, 2013 shows Australian newspapers leading their front pages in Australia with the story of Ben Zygier. (William West / AFP / Getty Images)

In a piece in these pages entitled “What Prisoner X Scandal? (/articles/2013/02/20/what-prisoner-x-scandal.html) “, Professor Gil Troy argues that Zygier was the author of his own demise—both figuratively and literally—and that his treatment at the hands of the state was decidedly unscandalous and in accordance with all the norms associated with a liberal democracy.

I would strongly disagree with Troy, and go so far as to say that what is unfolding in this case is more than just one scandal but a culmination of many. I also take strong issue with Troy’s observations about Zygier’s state of mind and motives for committing suicide.

I know what it was like to walk in Zygier’s shoes (and he in mine, since I preceded him by a decade). I served in the Mossad for 13 years and the first 7 of those as a member of the same covert operations unit that Zygier belonged to. For a short while, we would have even been in the field at the same time (albeit in different units) at that stage of my career. Like Zygier, I grew up in the Anglosphere, with all the inherent cultural differences separating me from native-born Israelis. In my case however, I wasn’t even born Jewish and my family had settled in Canada long before Confederation (Troy—an expert on the War of 1812—may be interested to know that I am a direct descendant of Laura Secord). All the psychobabble of divided loyalties and identity crisis were never a part of the equation for me, nor any of my colleagues. We got on with the business of being at the sharp-end of Mossad operations because we knew what we were doing was important and engendered universal values that apply to any Western democracy. I do not see any evidence that Zygier was any less dedicated to this ideal.

I find the circumstances of Zygier’s incarceration in solitary confinement—ostensibly as a means to “protect him and others” for reasons of national security—scandalous. Zygier was tucked away by the state after a bout of closed-door legal proceedings. The two main criteria a prosecutor must consider when assessing a case is whether the prosecution is in the public interest and whether it has a good chance of being successful. It is clear that this case was not in the public interest and bears all the worst elements of legal expediency excused by national security interests. Zygier did not present any danger to the public and could have been summarily dismissed, placed under house arrest, and the matter dealt with internally. This was an exceptional case requiring an exceptional solution and I see little in the way of critical thinking on behalf of those who decided to remand him in solitary for an indeterminate time.

The management of Zygier’s cover by his Mossad commanders is no less scandalous. Zygier was placed in an untenable situation that was prone to his being compromised when the decision was made to dispatch him to Australia on several occasions to alter his name and passport. These decisions were all made on the heels of a very public scandal that put Australian Jewry and their travel documents under the spotlight in 2004. The other scandal is the churlish and clearly vindictive behaviour of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), who decided to leak Zygier’s name and details to a journalist presumably with a view to embarrassing its ally into “good behavior.” There are flaps and deconfliction issues all the time between allied intelligence services, and they are worked out behind closed doors. The Mossad has on more than one occasion been the aggrieved party in these cases and solved the issue with the offending service out of the public domain. These scandals both large and small have caused serious damage to the Mossad’s operational capability, the Jewish community in Australia, and more importantly, Zygier’s family.

I also take issue with Troy’s assertion that Zygier lacked the mental toughness for the job. Living and working in hostile locales for long periods under cover is, with all due respect, very different from the globe-trotting escapades of an academic with dual citizenship. Building cover is a long and painstaking process that involves more than remembering not to use a Hebrew word here and there. Hollywood notwithstanding, cover is an operative’s first, last, and only line of defense against a visit to the “fingernail factory” and an unpleasant death. To suggest that Zygier did not possess the mental scaffolding necessary to cope with the stresses of his job is wholly without merit.

…

by Michael Ross (/contributors/michael-ross.html) | February 21, 2013 5:00 PM EST

Find this story at 21 February 2013
© 2013 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

ASIO ‘burned’ Zygier

Analysis: Australian intelligence agency’s conduct played key role in Mossad operative’s decision to commit suicide

Ben Zygier was a victim. From details that have already been published by British and Australian media we learn that he was a victim of his own personality and also of the over-enthusiasm and lack of caution on the part of his handlers in Israel. Most infuriating is the fact that people who worked for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) purposely got the Mossad operative in hot water and indirectly contributed to his decision to commit suicide.

According to the details that have surfaced so far, Zygier and two of his colleagues, who were also born in Australia and held Australian citizenship, were recruited to Mossad at the beginning of the last decade. After a few years of service in Europe, the three were sent back to Australia to obtain new, authentic passports. Australian law allows a person to change his name and have a passport issued under the new name every calendar year. The three took advantage of this law, ASIO claims, to obtain a number of passports under various names that concealed their Jewish identities and presented them as Australians with an Anglo-Saxon background.

Opinion

Many questions remain unanswered / Ron Ben-Yishai

‘Prisoner X’ affair shows Mossad, PM’s Office do not understand how media works in information revolution era
Full story

Zygier, for instance, had four passports issued during the four years he had spent in Australia. The Australians claim Mossad needed these passports to allow fighters and spies to enter enemy states such as Iran and Syria and carry out missions under false identities. Apparently Zygier and his friends were not sent on missions in these “target states” themselves, but their passports were used by other people who operated under assumed names. Zygier was not in Dubai, as the Kuwait newspaper claimed.

These events occurred at the time of the al-Aqsa Intifada, when Mossad increased its activity regarding the monitoring and thwarting of the Iranian nuclear program, and at the same time prevented the smuggling of weapons and terror attacks initiated by Iran – such as the transfer of arms and aid to Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinian organizations. This activity increased significantly after then-prime minister Sharon appointed Meir Dagan as Mossad chief in 2002 and instructed him to focus on Iran.

During this time a number of embarrassing work accidents occurred that angered some of Israel’s allies. One such incident occurred in 2004 in New Zealand, one of Australia’s closest allies. Another incident was the assassination of Mabhouh, Hamas’ smuggler, during which it was revealed that Mossad operatives made extensive use of authentic passports belonging to Jews, including Australian Jews – at least this is what the Dubai police chief claimed. During this time, the ASIO also claimed that an Israeli diplomat from the embassy in Canberra took advantage of romantic relations to gather information on the activities of the Australian government. The diplomat, Amir Laty, was deported from Australia in 2005. Against this background, Australian government offices were apparently instructed to raise their level of alertness regarding Israeli activity to gather information, and in 2009 the government office in charge of issuing passports warned of the frequent name changes by Zygier and his colleagues.

The warning was relayed to ASIO, which apparently began to follow the three and later summon them for questioning. According to Australian newspaper The Age and another newspaper based in Brisbane, Zygier became the main suspect following things he said during the interrogation or due to details revealed by one of his colleagues. However, this occurred before the diplomatic crisis between Israel and Australia that broke out following the Mabhouh assassination. Seemingly, there was no reason for Australia to act against Zygier because he did not commit any acts of espionage on its soil or collect any information on the country.

The ASIO is tasked only with foiling subversive and terrorist activity against Australia. Apparently, the intelligence agency had no evidence indicating that the passports issued for Zygier were used illegally. It is also possible that the Australian government chose to turn a blind eye for the benefit of the close ties between Mossad and ASIS, Australia’s intelligence agency that operates overseas.

But at least some ASIO officials apparently had their own agenda, and they were not willing to give up on the Israeli prey so easily – perhaps due to frustration, damaged professional pride or simply because they were anti-Israel. Or maybe they realized that Zygier was the weak link in the story and thought that more pressure would break him and cause him to reveal all of his activities on behalf of Mossad. It appears that the two other Australian Jews who were interrogated did not disclose enough information, prompting the ASIO to use the media as a tool to apply more pressure.

The plan was to have the media attack Zygier in order to convince him that his activities had been exposed and there is no point in getting in trouble with the Australian authorities by continuing to conceal them. The ASIO investigation was launched in the summer of 2009. Mabhouh was assassinated in February 2010. At the end of that month The Age published an article on how three young Israelis holding Australian citizenship were given passports with false names which they used to enter Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

The reporters who wrote the article were Jason Koutsoukis and Jonathan Pearlman, who had visited Israel for work and were familiar with the Israeli scene. Koutsoukis did not try to hide the fact that their source was an Australian intelligence officer. To justify the surveillance of the Jews with the dual citizenship, reporters were told that as a student, Zygier was in contact with students from Saudi Arabia and Iran. The reporters were essentially being told that Zygier was spying for Israel on Australian soil and should therefore be followed.

Zygier was in Israel when the Australian intelligence officer leaked the information to Koutsoukis. According to all accounts, he returned to Israel willingly and even reported to his superiors in Mossad that he was interrogated in Australia. It is safe to assume that he also informed Mossad that his colleagues had been questioned as well. But even before the Mabhouh assassination, Koutsoukis called Zygier and asked about the passports and his activity in the service of Mossad. Koutsoukis claims an “anonymous source” in Israel gave him Zygier’s phone number. It is entirely possible that this source was not Israeli.

In any case, in his conversation with the reporter Zygier denied working for Mossad, but Koutsoukis got the impression that Zygier would eventually tell him the entire story. The reporter continued to call, and Zygier may have softened and told him of his work for the Israeli intelligence agency.

At a certain point it was decided that there was enough evidence to justify an arrest and an investigation. The rest is known. Zygier was held in isolation under an assumed name because the names on the various passports, including his real name, were known. Zygier was not a senior Mossad operative. It is not surprising that Zygier, a passionate Zionist, could not bear the guilt and committed suicide. He did not betray the country; he simply could not live up to his own expectations and those of his family and his surroundings. The burden became too heavy for his tormented soul.

…

Published: 02.17.13, 12:10 / Israel Opinion

Find this story at 17 February 2013

Copyright © Yedioth Internet

Did British intelligence also know about Mossad suspect Ben Zygier?

Did Ben Zygier, the Australian-Israeli identified by Australian media last week as the mysterious “Prisoner X” who died in Israeli prison in 2010, also have British citizenship?

Australian reporter Jason Koutsoukis broke the story in February 27, 2010 that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) had been investigating three Australian-Israelis suspected of links to Mossad. He confronted two of the (unnamed) men about the allegations, quoting one in his 2010 report:

“I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to,” he said. ”I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.”

The same man is also believed to hold British citizenship, and is believed to have come to the attention of British intelligence after he had changed his name.

Now see what Koutsoukis told The Guardian last week, after the Australian Broadcasting Company aired an investigation suggesting that Prisoner X who had died in Israel’s Ayalon prison in December 2010 was Ben Zygier :

At the time Zygier said: “I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to, I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.”

So we now know the man who told Koutsoukis in 2010 “I have never been to those countries” was Zygier. And that Koutsoukis indicated that he had been told at the time– presumably by Australian intelligence–that Zygier had also previously come on the radar of British intelligence for taking out a passport in a new name.

If Koutsoukis’ original information was correct, that Zygier also had British citizenship and another British alias, it would be interesting to know what the British government and intelligence services might know about the case and how Israel came to suspect that Zygier was compromised.

Update: Why did Israel move to arrest Zygier in February 2010? One possible theory is also suggested by information in Koutsoukis’s February 27, 2010 report.

In the piece, that came out days after Zygier was secretly detained, Koutsoukis writes:

In January the Herald visited the offices of the European company that connects the three men.

The company’s office manager confirmed to the Herald that one of the men being monitored by ASIO – the same man believed to hold a British passport – was employed by the company but was “unavailable”.

The company’s chief executive later emphatically denied that this man was ever employed by his company, and totally rejected that his company was being used to gather intelligence on behalf of Israel.

ASIO said it had no comment to make on the case.

So in January 2010, the head of an alleged Mossad front company allegedly involved in selling communications equipment to the Middle East discovers that a foreign reporter seems to know about it and the name of one of the men associated with it. We now know the name Koutsoukis gave the alleged front company was Zygier’s. (Koutsoukis’ home was broken into a day after he confronted Zygier in early 2010, he told Israel’s Channel 10 last week.)

How did Koutsoukis get the name of the firm? Likely from his ASIO source, who originally called him in October 2009. How did ASIO get it? Hypothetically, it seems possible that Zygier might have given the name of the firm to ASIO under questioning about suspected passport fraud. (Zygier had reportedly been in Australia in the fall of 2009 attending an MBA program at Monash University.)

(It’s not clear to this reporter if that is the kind of disclosure that Mossad would consider a serious breach, or not, given Australia and Israel are allies. Some Israeli sources have insisted that Zygier must have committed some more serious transgression, with intent, involving an entity hostile to Israel, to have been treated so severely. Other Israeli journalists and former officials, however, seem to believe Zygier was compromised by officials with the Australian security service. Australia’s ASIO “burned” Zygier to Koutsoukis, YNet analyst Ron Ben-Yishai wrote Sunday, amid a series of actions by Mossad in Australia that deeply angered Canberra. Former Israeli intelligence official Michael Ross agrees.)

However Koutsoukis learned of it, Mossad would, after Koutsoukis’ visit to the company in January 2010, soon have been aware that there had been a serious compromise of the firm and all associated with it.

…

(For more on the Prisoner X case, see Ron Ben-Yishai, ABC (Part I) and (Part II), The Age, Daoud Kuttab, Yossi Melman, and the Guardian.)

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Laura Rozen

Find this story at 17 February 2013

© 2013 AL-MONITOR

Interview: Israel’s ‘Prisoner X’ linked to 2010 al-Mabhouh killing

This morning I spoke to SBS Radio Australia’s Greg Dyett about the mysterious case of Ben Zygier, an Australian-born naturalized citizen of Israel, who is said to have killed himself in 2010 while being held at a maximum-security prison near Tel Aviv. As intelNews reported on Wednesday, Zygier, who is believed to have been recruited by Israel’s covert-action agency Mossad, had been imprisoned incommunicado for several months and was known only as ‘Prisoner X’, even to his prison guards. Is there any connection between Zygier’s incarceration and the January 2010 assassination of Palestinian arms merchant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai? And what could Zygier have done to prompt Israel to incarcerate him? You can listen to me discuss this mysterious case in an eight-minute interview here, or read the transcript, below.

Q: You say that, after conferring with your contacts in Israel, Europe and the United States, you believe that Ben Zygier had some sort of involvement in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010.

A: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a weapons procurer for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. At this point, there is little doubt that the Mossad was behind this operation. Several members of the team that killed al-Mabhouh were using third-country passports —Irish, British, Australian, and others— to travel to and from Dubai. In the aftermath of the assassination, there were questions about how the Mossad operatives managed to get those passports; and, if you’ll remember, that led to the expulsion of several Israeli diplomats from around the world, including Australia. At least four of those who conducted the assassination were using Australian passports. It appears that, although Zygier himself was not necessarily involved with the assassination on the operational level, he must have possessed significant knowledge about how these passports are actually obtained by the Mossad. And the general sense seems to be that his imprisonment in Israel is connected with his knowledge of how exactly this system works in Israel.

Q: What could he have done that would have prompted Israel to incarcerate him?

A: In order to answer that question one has to be aware of what is perhaps the main practical intelligence concern for Israel. The primary operational terrain for Israeli intelligence activities is of course the Middle East and North Africa. However, the problem Israeli intelligence agencies face —the Mossad in particular, which is Israel’s primary covert-action agency— is that Israeli officers cannot travel to most of the Arab world [or Iran], because Israeli passports are not accepted there. Because of this, Israeli intelligence agencies, including the Mossad, are constantly in a sort of desperate need for high-quality travel documents, which are considered indispensible in their work. Without them, they cannot fulfill their intelligence mission. So, procuring passports, especially from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, is seen as highly important. Such passports are highly coveted because these countries are seen as politically neutral and their passports do not carry the baggage that you get when you carry, say, an American or an Israeli passport, especially around the Middle East. Therefore, a person like Zygier, if he had knowledge of how the system works and how exactly Israeli intelligence procures these passports, would have been absolutely critical for the operational cohesion of an agency like the Mossad.

Some people tend to think that, because Zygier was incarcerated in Ayalon, the same prison and the same cell that was built specifically for the person who killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, his crime must have been comparable in magnitude to killing an Israeli political leader. Now, I personally don’t think so. I think what he must have done is somehow compromised himself by collaborating with a foreign intelligence agency in the weeks or months following the al-Mabhouh assassination. Now, was that agency the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation? Was it perhaps the authorities in Dubai, who were investigating the al-Mabhouh assassination? Did he perhaps decide for some personal ethical reason to turn into some sort of whistleblower, reminiscent of Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 spilled the beans about Israel’s nuclear weapons program? That is, of course, an unanswered question. But I think the answer has to do with one of those three possibilities.

Q: If we go back to December 2009, an Australian journalist had the first of several telephone calls with Zygier, in which he put to Zygier that he had information that he was one of three Israeli-Australians involved in the production of false identity documents, like passports. What seemed interesting to me was the fact that Zygier was prepared to engage with that journalist to the point of taking several telephone calls from him between December 2009 and January the next year, shortly before the [al-Mabhouh] assassination on January 19 and just a month before Zygier was jailed in February.

A: Yes, this is very interesting, indeed. I think that if Zygier —and it seems almost certain at this point— was recruited by Israeli intelligence, when he received that call his world must have collapsed, because for someone like him, operational discretion would have been of the utmost importance. However, he did engage with the journalist and did continue to be in communication with him. This might perhaps point to Zygier not being a full-time operations officer for the Mossad, but rather a recruit —an asset— somebody recruited for a particular operation with an expiration date, who then falls into a sleeper-agent-type mode until he is recalled. It could also point to the possibility that Zygier was involved with the Mossad but seemed to have some kind of ethical concerns about the use of Australian passports to conduct assassinations around the world.

Incidentally, you might argue that his discovery by the press was not necessarily his own fault, but rather the fault of his Israeli handlers. His name was leaked to the press in Australia, probably by Australian intelligence, which was alerted by the fact that Zygier traveled back to Australia at least four times to legally change his name and to request new Australian passports, which he then must have used to travel around the world. That raised flags for Australian counterintelligence, which must have realized at some point that the Mossad had asked Zygier to anglicize his name so that he could travel to the Middle East without appearing to be in any way connected to Israel [or Judaism]. That is sloppy intelligence work, any way you look at it.

Q: Now, attention has been pointed to the fact that Zygier was being held in a supposedly suicide-proof prison cell. Would Israel have any motivation in wanting to kill this gentleman?

A: I really don’t think so. Let us take the gravest possibility, namely that Zygier had actually compromised himself —had collaborated with an intelligence agency of a country considered by Israel to be an adversary. In that possibility, the Mossad would have nothing to gain from his death. In a case like that, once the compromised officer or agent is incarcerated, he is seen as a card, which you can use to exchange with your agents or officers who might have been captured abroad. So he would be very useful in that respect. In addition, once he was considered essentially a defector-in-place —someone who collaborated consciously with a foreign intelligence agency— the Mossad would have had a lot more to gain by interrogating him for many, many years. Through this process, it could gain valuable information about the mode of operation of that adversary intelligence agency, which would be far more productive than actually killing him. So there is nothing to be gained by simply killing a compromised officer of the kind of Zygier.

[The last question, below, and the corresponding answer, were not aired as part of the SBS segment]

Q: Do you think we will ever find out the truth behind this story?

A: Yes. I am very optimistic that we will eventually find out a lot more information than we currently have available about this case. It is interesting how, in the hours after the initial revelation of Zygier’s identity by ABC Australia, a lot of Israeli news media received telephone calls by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, requesting emergency meetings to discuss the case. In those meetings, the media were urged to exercise restraint and were warned of “very dramatic repercussions” to Israel’s security if more about this case was released. …

February 15, 2013 by intelNews

Find this story at 15 February 2013

Zygier ‘ran Mossad front company selling electronics to Iran’

Alleged Australian-Israeli agent, who reportedly killed himself in jail here in 2010, said to have been held in solitary on suspicion of treason

Jason Koutsoukis, a reporter for Australian’s Fairfax newspapers, began an investigation into Ben Zygier — aka “Prisoner X,” who is said to have committed suicide in Ayalon Prison in 2010 — in 2009, when an anonymous source fed him information regarding a Mossad front company that was operating in Europe and selling goods to Iran, the Guardian reported Wednesday evening.

According to the Guardian report, the source gave Koutsoukis the names of three Australians with joint Israeli citizenship who were working for the Mossad. The alleged agents were said to be selling electronics to Iran through a company based in Europe.

In 2009, Koutsoukis said, he contacted Zygier at his home in Jerusalem and confronted him with allegations of the story.

“The company did exist,” Koutsoukis was quoted as saying. ”I also managed to establish that Zygier and another of the individuals had worked for it. I wasn’t able to confirm the third name.”

According to Koutsoukis’s account, Zygier changed his name four times in Australia. Although Australian law permits changing one’s name legally once a year, Australian authorities grew suspicious and were beginning to close in on Zygier, Koutsoukis said.

Koutsoukis reported in 2010 that two Australian intelligence sources told him that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization was investigating three Australians who had emigrated to Israel in the last decade and who had changed their names and requested new passports.

“The three Australians share an involvement with a European communications company that has a subsidiary in the Middle East. A person travelling under one of these names sought Australian consular assistance in Tehran in 2004,” he reported at the time in the Sydney Morning Herald.

After a Mossad hit squad reportedly killed senior Hamas weapons importer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010, Koutsoukis decided to confront Zygier and telephoned him, the Guardian report said.

“When I spoke to him he was incredulous at first and said f*ck off – but what was interesting was that he did not hang up,” Koutsoukis said. “He did soundly genuinely shocked. But he listened to what I had to say.

“I still wonder why he didn’t hang up. He denied everything, however. He said he hadn’t visited the countries it had been claimed he had. I tried calling again but in the end he told me to buzz off.”

Koutsoukis said he also had a series of bizarre exchanges with the CEO of the alleged front company. He reported that the company’s office manager confirmed that one of the three Australians was being monitored by the ASIO.

“He seemed a bit weird. He denied all knowledge of what I was talking about, but then wanted to talk to me again and make an arrangement to meet up,” he later told the Guardian.

Koutsoukis claimed that a senior government official later confirmed the story, even though he had the opportunity to refute it.

Zygier was reportedly imprisoned later in 2010, a fact the Australian spy agency was aware of, according to The Australian. Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Thursday acknowledged to the Australian Senate that Canberra was given assurances by Israel that Zygier’s rights would be respected.

“The Australian government was informed in February 2010 through intelligence channels that the Israeli authorities had detained a dual Australian-Israeli citizen – and they provided the name of the citizen – in relation to serious offences under Israeli national security legislation.” he said.

…

By Greg Tepper and Ilan Ben Zion February 14, 2013, 1:29 am 6

Find this story at 14 February 2013

© 2013 The Times of Israel

Exposure of alleged agent could have ‘dramatic implications’ for Mossad

Channel 10: Iran and Syria will now be checking through their records, working out when Ben Zygier entered, who accompanied him, and who he met with

The exposure in the Australian media this week of alleged former Mossad agent Ben Zygier, who reportedly committed suicide in Ramle’s Ayalon Prison two years ago, could have very dramatic repercussions for ongoing Mossad operations, Israeli media reported on Wednesday night.

Assuming the information is accurate, the impact of the exposure of the alleged agent and his movements on behalf of Israeli intelligence in Iran, Syria and Lebanon, will have “very significant” consequences for ongoing work, Channel 10 news said.

In countries such as Iran and Syria, the authorities would now be checking through their records, working out when Zygier entered, who accompanied him, and who he met with, the TV report said.

The ABC Australia reporter who broke the story, Trevor Bormann, said in interviews on Wednesday that he was first told about the case in Israel by an Israeli source who said he had “a terrific story” to tell but couldn’t publish it in Israel because of “a gag order” surrounding the case. Bormann said he worked on the story for 10 months, putting the pieces together.

Some Hebrew media reports Wednesday night indicated that Zygier was initially exposed in 2010 by the Australian security authorities.

He immigrated to Israel in around 2000, and was subsequently recruited by the Mossad, they said.

During his years in Israel, Zygier, a lawyer by profession, also worked at the Herzog, Fox, Neeman law firm of Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, Channel 2 reported.

In 2009, he went back to Australia and enrolled for a master’s degree at Melbourne’s Monash University, where he mingled with students from Arab countries, including from Saudi Arabia and Iran.

This attracted the suspicions of the Australian national security services, who called him in for questioning, the reports said, suspecting that he had used his Australian passport to spy for Israel. One Israeli media report on Wednesday night claimed Zygier admitted to the Australian interrogators that he was working for the Mossad, and then also told an Australian journalist. Another report said it was the Australian security services that “burned him” by leaking the story to a local Australian journalist. When this journalist called Zygier, he responded with an angry denial, insisting he had never been involved in espionage.

Three other suspected Mossad agents active at the Australian university campus were also questioned by the authorities, it was reported on Wednesday night. No further details were available.

Not long after he had been questioned, Zygier returned to Israel. He was subsequently arrested and held for eight months in Ayalon jail, in a cell originally designed for Yigal Amir, the assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. His jailers did not know his identity, the reports said. There was no definitive explanation for why he was taken into custody.

It was also not clear why he had committed suicide, although the speculation on Wednesday night was that it might have been a consequence of his exposure. There were unanswered questions, too, about how he had been able to take his own life on December 15, 2010 — reportedly via “asphyxiation by hanging,” according to a post-mortem carried out by the Abu Kabir center for forensic medicine outside Tel Aviv — in a cell with constant camera surveillance and other supervision.

Israel on Wednesday night confirmed that a suicide of a security prisoner occurred at the prison in late 2010, and ordered an investigation into possible negligence by the prison authorities.

Zygier was 34 when he died. His remains were sent to Melbourne for burial shortly afterward.

The handling of the affair in the past two days has come in for withering criticism from several Knesset members — some of whom used parliamentary privilege to bypass the gag order on Tuesday — and by unnamed government sources quoted in the TV reports on Wednesday night. These unnamed sources were quoted as saying that Tamir Pardo, the head of the Mossad, is out of touch with modern media, and mistakenly believed it would be possible to prevent reporting of the story by utilizing court orders and military censorship.

A Channel 10 report quoted government sources as saying that the military censor’s office — utilized to prevent publication of material damaging to Israel national security — should be closed down. Those who broke the law by publishing illegal information should be prosecuted via normal judicial processes, these sources suggested.

Channel 10 also said the sources intimated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had panicked over the affair on Tuesday, when Israeli editors were summoned in an effort to suppress the story. Netanyahu was also said to have panicked when a Mossad attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal went awry in Amman in 1996 during his first prime ministership, and when details of the alleged Mossad assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010 began to leak out.

The Dubai incident, another episode that involved the alleged use of Australian and other foreign passports, has also been linked to Zygier, in a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East,” Australian reporter Bormann said Wednesday, but “when it comes to matters of security, it can be very heavy-handed.”

Attempting to assess the potential damage to Israeli-Australian relations, reports Wednesday night noted that the Australian authorities have not filed any formal complaint with Israel over the affair. It was noted that Israel reportedly did inform an official at the Australian Embassy of Zygier’s detention and suicide at the time, although this information apparently did not reach the Australian government.

…

By Times of Israel staff February 13, 2013, 10:38 pm 7

Find this story at 13 February 2013

© 2013 The Times of Israel

Mossad and Australian spies: how Fairfax reporter homed in on Zygier

Tip-off for journalist Jason Katsoukis led to espionage trail of Australian-Israeli spies, false passports and Zygier interview

The tombstone of Ben Zygier at the Chevra Kadisha Jewish cemetery, Melbourne, Australia. Photograph: Julian Smith/EPA

For Jason Katsoukis, the Australian journalist who first investigated allegations that Ben Zygier was a Mossad agent, the claims initially sounded “outlandish”.

In 2009, while living in Jerusalem and filing stories to the Australian Fairfax group, Katsoukis was contacted by an anonymous source with connections to the intelligence world.

The story that the source told over a series of conversations was indeed extraordinary.

The source named three Australians with joint Israeli citizenship whom, he said, were working for a front company set up by Mossad in Europe selling electronic equipment to Iran and elsewhere.

“I was tipped off in October 2009,” Katsoukis told the Guardian on Wednesday, recalling the events that would lead to his calling Zygier at his home in Jerusalem and accusing him of being an Israeli spy.

“The story was that Mossad was recruiting Australians to spy for them using a front company in Europe. It all seemed too good to be true.

“But what I was told seemed to check out. The company did exist. I also managed to establish that Zygier and another of the individuals had worked for it. I wasn’t able to confirm the third name.

“I was told too that the Australian authorities were closing in on Zygier and that he might even be arrested.

“There was other stuff about Zygier. In Australia you can change your name once a year. He’d done it four times I think, but they were beginning to get suspicious. I also found out that he had applied for a work visa for Italy in Melbourne.”

The repeated changes of name would have allowed Zygier to create new identities and multiple passports.

While Katsoukis was working on the story – still uncertain if it stacked up – something happened that encouraged both his editors and Katsoukis himself to bring forward their contact with Zygier.

In January 2010, a Mossad hit squad murdered the Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai.

It emerged that the team had been supplied with false passports from a number of countries including Germany, Ireland and the UK, apparently confirming the very practice Katsoukis was investigating.

“The feeling was that we should go to Zygier and put the story to him. It wasn’t difficult to find him. He’d was back in Jerusalem so I called him at home.

“When I spoke to him he was incredulous at first and said fuck off – but what was interesting was that he did not hang up. He did soundly genuinely shocked. But he listened to what I had to say.

…

Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 February 2013 18.35 GMT

Find this story at 13 February 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Australian diplomat ‘aware Zygier being held’

AN AUSTRALIAN diplomat knew that Melbourne man Ben Zygier was being held in an Israeli prison before he died in his cell, the government has admitted, amid explosive reports that Mr Zygier was a Mossad agent known as ”Prisoner X”.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr was forced into an embarrassing backflip on Wednesday as he ordered his department to investigate the Zygier case.

His office was forced to correct earlier claims that the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv knew nothing of the case until after Mr Zygier died in prison in December 2010 when his family – a prominent Jewish family in Melbourne – asked for his body to be repatriated.

Do you know more about this story or Ben Zygier? Email us here

In a revelation that raises questions about the extent of the Australian government’s knowledge, Senator Carr’s spokesman said an Australian diplomat – who was not the ambassador – was aware that Mr Zygier, 34, was being held by Israeli authorities.

The revelation follows a report by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent that said Mr Zygier was the notorious ”Prisoner X”, an inmate held in the utmost secrecy in a special section of Israel’s maximum security Ayalon prison.

The report stated that Mr Zygier, a husband and father of two, moved to Israel around 2000 and became a Mossad spy. But the report said something went tragically wrong with his intelligence activities and he eventually committed suicide in a tightly guarded cell, where he was being held in solitary confinement.

His father, Geoffrey Zygier, executive director for B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, did not comment on Wednesday.

The government acknowledges Mr Zygier died in jail but Senator Carr’s spokesman could not confirm that it was Ayalon prison. The Foreign Affairs Department refused to say who the official was or when they knew of the case.

As Fairfax Media reported in 2010, ASIO was investigating at least three dual citizens for their links to Mossad. We reveal now that Mr Zygier was one of them.

The issue has sparked a political storm in Israel, where opposition politicians demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lift a veil of secrecy surrounding Mr Zygier’s death and brief the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee.

Outgoing Justice Minister Yaakov Neema vowed that ”if true, the matter must be looked into”.

…

With TOM ARUP and STEPHEN CAUCHI

David Wroe and Ruth Pollard
Published: February 14, 2013 – 12:01PM

Find this story at 14 February 2013

Copyright © 2013 Fairfax Media

Prisoner X, Ben Zygier, was ‘rational’ before apparent suicide in Israeli prison cell

Lawyer claims Australian-born suspected Mossad spy was considering plea bargain

Ben Zygier, the suspected Mossad spy previously known only as Prisoner X, was “rational” and “balanced” the day before he apparently hanged himself in a maximum-security Israeli prison, one of his lawyers has said.

Avigdor Feldman told Israel’s Channel Ten that Australian-born Mr Zygier had been considering a plea bargain offered by prosecutors. “I met with a balanced person … who was rationally weighing his legal options,” said Mr Feldman, adding that his client denied the “serious” charges he was facing. The exact nature of the charges remains unknown.

On Wednesday, after Australia’s ABC TV aired a documentary revealing Prisoner X’s identity, Israel admitted for the first time that it had secretly detained a man with dual citizenship for security reasons. However, it did not explain how Mr Zygier, 34 – who emigrated to Israel in 2000, married an Israeli woman and fathered two children – managed to kill himself while under 24-hour surveillance in a cell designed to be “suicide-proof”.

The cell was built to hold Yigal Amir, the ultra-Zionist who assassinated then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Cameras inside the cell were supposed to be monitored around the clock, and Israeli newspapers have reported the room contained sensors to monitor temperature and heartbeat.

The Israeli Justice Ministry said that an inquiry had been ordered into possible negligence.

Mr Zygier’s family in Melbourne have declined to comment, but Harry Greener, a friend of Mr Zygier’s father, Geoffrey, a respected Jewish community leader, told Fairfax Media: “We all knew there was something suspicious and underhanded about Ben’s death.” Mr Greener said: “I think there should be justice for Ben, to find out what happened – because nobody really knows.” Mr Zygier had been a “friendly, warm, outgoing” person, he said, and his death had “gutted’ the Jewish community. Mr Zygier’s uncle, Willy, a musician, told ABC local radio in Melbourne that the saga was a “family tragedy”.

…

Kathy Marks
Thursday, 14 February 2013

Find this story at 14 February 2013

© independent.co.uk

Israels Agenten-Affäre; Mossad im Feindesland

Im Fall “Häftling X” werden mehr Details bekannt, als Israel lieb sein kann. Er gibt Einblicke, wie der Auslandsgeheimdienst Mossad gezielt Agenten mit Doppelstaatsbürgerschaft einsetzt, um in arabischen Ländern zu spionieren – und Tarnfirmen für Operationen zu nutzen.

Tel Aviv – Die Affäre um den “Häftling X” sorgt in Israel für Aufregung. Dabei geht es nun nicht mehr allein darum, ob der israelisch-australische Doppelstaatsbürger und Mossad-Agent Ben Zygier heimlich in einem Hochsicherheitsgefängnis festgehalten wurde, bis er mutmaßlich Selbstmord beging.

Der Vorfall bringt weitere Details ans Tageslicht, die Israel lieber verborgen wüsste: Er gibt Einblicke in die Operationsweise des israelischen Auslandsgeheimdiensts im Feindesland.

Viele arabische Länder und Iran stehen mit Israel offiziell auf Kriegsfuß, sie lassen israelische Staatsbürger nicht einreisen. Doch gerade diese Länder sind es, die natürlich besonders im Visier des Mossad stehen. Wie also dort vorgehen? Der Fall “Häftling X” liefert auf diese Frage einige Antworten.

Agenten reisen mit zweiter Staatsbürgerschaft

Offenbar sind für den Mossad als Agenten vor allem israelische Doppelstaatsbürger interessant – besonders Australier. “In Australien kann man einmal im Jahr seinen Namen ändern”, erklärte der australische Journalist Jason Koutsoukis SPIEGEL ONLINE. Koutsoukis enthüllte, dass Ben Zygier für den Mossad arbeitete. “Zygier hatte bereits rund viermal in Australien seinen Namen geändert”, sagte Koutsoukis. Der Australier soll ab 2000 für den Mossad gearbeitet haben.

Die israelischen Agenten agieren dann im Ausland offenbar unter ihrer zweiten Staatsbürgerschaft wie wohl bei der mutmaßlichen Mossad-Operation in Dubai im Januar 2010. Damals wurde in einem Hotel Mahmud al-Mabhuh erst betäubt und dann mit einem Kissen erstickt. Der Palästinenser galt als Waffeneinkäufer der radikalislamistischen Hamas. Bis zu 29 Verdächtige listeten die Behörden von Dubai – sie haben britische, irische, französische, australische Reisepässe. Ein Verdächtiger reiste mit deutschem Pass.

Israels Auslandsgeheimdienst nutzt offenbar Tarnfirmen

Noch brisanter sind die Erkenntnisse, dass der Mossad möglicherweise komplette Firmen im Ausland aufbaut und als Tarnunternehmen nutzt, um seine Agenten ins Feindesland zu schleusen.

So haben Ben Zygier und mindestens ein weiterer Australier nach Erkenntnissen von Jason Koutsoukis für eine Firma gearbeitet, die in Europa ihren Sitz hatte und Elektrotechnik unter anderem an Iran verkaufte.

Dies wirft die Frage auf, ob Zygier möglicherweise bei der “Operation Olympische Spiele” mitarbeitete – einem Cyberwaffen-Programm, das nach Berichten der “New York Times” Israel und die USA ab 2006 gemeinsam entwickelten, um das iranische Nuklearprogramm zu schädigen.

Das bekannteste Instrument der “Operation Olympische Spiele” ist der Computerwurm Stuxnet, der ab etwa Juni 2009 zum Einsatz kam und vor allem Computer in Iran schädigte. IT-Experten vermuten, dass Stuxnet gezielt die Zentrifugen in Irans Atomanlage Natans ausschalten sollte. Auch das Schadprogramm Flame, das hauptsächlich Computer in Iran und im Libanon befiel, soll Teil der “Operation Olympische Spiele” sein.

Wie es gelang, Stuxnet in die Atomanlage zu schmuggeln, ist unklar. Möglicherweise sind die europäischen Mossad-Lieferanten für Elektrotechnik ein Teil der Antwort.

In Zygiers Zeit fallen heikle Mossad-Missionen

In Zygiers Zeit beim Mossad fallen einige der wohl heikelsten Missionen, die dem israelischen Auslandsgeheimdienst zugeschrieben werden. Unter Meïr Dagan, der den Mossad ab 2002 bis Ende 2010 leitete, wurden die Operationen im Ausland massiv ausgeweitet, sie wurden riskanter und aggressiver. Zu den Aktionen, bei denen der Mossad als Drahtzieher in Frage kommt, gehören etwa auch die Ermordung des Hisbollah-Mitglieds Imad Mughnija 2008 in Damaskus und die Ermordung iranischer Atomwissenschaftler in Teheran.

…

14. Februar 2013, 18:47 Uhr

Von Raniah Salloum

Find this story at 14 February 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Australia was investigating ‘Mossad agent’ Zygier who died in Israeli jail

Ben Zygier, Melbourne man known as Prisoner X, also questioned by reporter over spying before death in 2010

Ayalon jail, in Ramle, near Tel Aviv, where Ben Zygier was held incommunicado. He was found hanged in his cell. Photograph: Nir Elias/Reuters

Extraordinary new details emerged on Wednesday about the alleged double life of Ben Zygier – known as “Prisoner X” – an Australian-Israeli national and reported Mossad agent, who died after being secretly detained in an Israeli prison in 2010.

In the midst of an escalating diplomatic storm over the 34-year-old’s treatment and the revelation that he was being investigated by Australian authorities as a suspected Israeli agent who used Australian passports for operations, it emerged that he was confronted shortly before his arrest by an Australian journalist who accused him of being a spy.

As the scandal over Zygier’s suicide, while being held incommunicado in Ayalon prison, continued to grow in Israel and Australia, it was also revealed by Australian news organisations that he was under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation [ASIO] as one of three citizens suspected of using of Australian passports on behalf of Mossad.

More details of the case emerged as the Israeli government partially lifted its blanket ban on reporting any details of Zygier’s imprisonment, first imposed by an Israeli court after his arrest.

Zygier, who was married to an Israeli and had two young children, was found hanged in his cell in late 2010. His body was flown to Melbourne for burial the following week.

In Israel the case has triggered demands by opposition politicians, human rights groups and the media for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to supply more information about the man’s imprisonment and death, and to reform its antiquated and authoritarian military censorship rules.

When the story about Prisoner X first emerged, Israeli media said the unidentified man was being held incommunicado at Ayalon high-security prison in the wing built to accommodate Yigal Amir, the assassin of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

While the case remains deeply murky, the new revelations will be deeply embarrassing to Mossad, not least because they have lifted the lid again on how the Israeli spy agencies acquire cover identities for agents.

In the last three years the Mossad department charged with providing cover identities has been caught out in a series of high-profile bungles as it has been found to have been improperly using foreign passports for its operations.

The details came only a day after an ABC documentary revealed Prisoner X’s identity for the first time, and after ham-fisted efforts by Netanyahu’s office to prevent reporting of the story by Israeli media messily backfired.

According to The Age, Zygier had applied for Australian passports using three identities over the years – those of Ben Alon, Ben Allen and Benjamin Burrows.

The new details about Australian suspicions that Zygier was a Mossad agent came as the Australian government was forced to backtrack on claims that it had no knowledge of his arrest and to admit that Israeli officials had briefed Australian diplomats over the case.

There has still been no official explanation for why Zygier was secretly imprisoned without trial, and information on his case ruthlessly suppressed. But speculation is growing that he may have offered to provide information to a foreign power.

It is still not clear whether Zygier was actively working for Mossad, or whether he simply acquired passports for the spy agency to use in its overseas operations.

According to The Age, Zygier had been approached by a Fairfax journalist after being tipped off that the Australian intelligence agency ASIO was investigating three dual national citizens who had emigrated to Israel, on suspicion that the men had used Australian passports to spy for Israel in Iran, Syria and Lebanon – which is illegal under Australian law.

Zygier, known as Benji, was approached by the reporter Jason Koutsoukis shortly before his arrest in 2010 and asked whether he was an Israeli spy after being accused of travelling back to Australia to change his name and obtain a new Australian passport.

At the time Zygier said: “I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to, I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.”

In recent years the issue of both Mossad operations involving citizens of friendly nations and use of passports of allies, has become a source of serious friction with governments usually friendly with Israel.

“There are informal rules,” said one person familiar with intelligence co-operation arrangements. “You inform your allies if you want to speak to someone or do something. There is a feeling the Israelis don’t play by the rules.”

…

Peter Beaumont and Alison Rourke in Sydney
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 February 2013 17.32 GMT

Find this story at 13 February 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Silenced in Israel, Spy Tale Unfolds in Australia

JERUSALEM — The story had all the trappings of a spy thriller: an anonymous prisoner linked to Israel’s secret service, Mossad, isolated in a top-security wing originally built for the assassin of a prime minister. A suicide — or was it a murder? — never officially reported. A gag order that barred journalists from even acknowledging the gag order. And a code name to rival 007: Prisoner X.

The first reports about the death of Prisoner X leaked out in 2010, both in Israel and the United States, where a blogger identified the mystery man as a former Iranian general. Government censors immediately forced an Israeli news site to remove two items related to Prisoner X — and journalists were interrogated about it by the police.

On Tuesday, after an extensive Australian television report identifying Prisoner X as an Australian father of two who became an Israeli spy, the prime minister’s office summoned Israeli editors to a rare meeting to remind them of the court order blocking publication of anything connected to the matter.

It remains unclear what Prisoner X might have done to warrant such extreme treatment — and such extreme secrecy, which human rights groups have denounced as violating international law. What is clear is that the modern media landscape makes the Israeli censorship system established in the 1950s hopelessly porous: the Australian report quickly made the rounds on social media, prompting outraged inquiries from opposition lawmakers on the floor of Parliament.

“The Israeli public will know sooner or later what happened,” declared Nahman Shai, a Parliament member from the Labor Party.

Aluf Benn, the editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz, said the government forced him and another news organization to delete items about the Australian reports from their Web sites on Tuesday. Later, Haaretz posted an article on the unusual editors meeting and the parliamentary discussion.

“They live in a previous century, unfortunately,” Mr. Benn said of the Israeli administration. “Today, whatever is blocked in news sites is up in the air on Facebook walls and Twitter feeds. You can’t just make a story disappear. I hope that they’re more updated in whatever they do professionally.”

The prime minister’s office and prison service declined on Tuesday to comment. “I can’t tell you anything; I’m not dealing with this,” said the prison spokeswoman, Sivan Weizman. “I can’t answer any question about it. Sorry.”

The Australian report, a half-hour segment based on a 10-month investigation that was broadcast Tuesday on the ABC News magazine program “Foreign Correspondent,” identified Prisoner X as Ben Zygier and said he had used the name Ben Alon in Israel. Mr. Zygier immigrated to Israel about a decade before his death at age 34, married an Israeli woman and had two small children, according to the report.

“ABC understands he was recruited by spy agency Mossad,” read a post on the Australian network’s Web site. “His incarceration was so secret that it is claimed not even guards knew his identity.” Mr. Zygier “was found hanged in a cell with state-of-the-art surveillance systems that are installed to prevent suicide,” it said, adding that guards tried unsuccessfully to revive him and that he was buried a week later in a Jewish cemetery in a suburb of Melbourne.

A spokeswoman for the Australian government said in an e-mail that its embassy was unaware of the prisoner’s detention until his family asked for help repatriating the remains, and that she could not “comment on intelligence matters (alleged or actual).”

The Australian report builds on news items from 2010 that described the death of Prisoner X in solitary-confinement cell 15 in a part of Israel’s Ayalon Prison said to have been created especially for Yigal Amir, who killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Prisoner X was not allowed visitors or a lawyer, according to those reports.

Richard Silverstein, an American blogger, claimed in 2010 that Prisoner X was Ali-Reza Asgari, a former general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and a government minister, who had previously been reported to have defected to Israel and cooperated with Western intelligence agencies. On Tuesday, Mr. Silverstein acknowledged his error, saying his source apparently was part of “a ruse designed to throw the media off the scent of the real story.”

Bill van Esveld, a Jerusalem-based analyst with Human Rights Watch, said the reports suggested a serious violation of international law. “That’s the most basic obligation you can think of, not disappearing people,” he said. “You can’t take somebody into detention, deny any knowledge of them, and not allow their families to be in communication with them, not allow them to see a lawyer or have any due process. That’s what needs to be looked into.”

Dov Hanin, a member of Parliament from the left-wing Hadash Party, on Tuesday questioned Israel’s justice minister, Yaakov Ne’eman, about Prisoner X, asking: “Are there people whose arrest is kept a secret? What are the legal monitoring mechanisms in charge of such a situation? What are the parliamentary monitoring systems in charge of such a situation? And how can public criticism exist in cases of such a situation?”

Mr. Ne’eman replied that the matter did not fall under his jurisdiction, but said, “There is no doubt that if true, the matter must be looked into.”

…

February 12, 2013
By JODI RUDOREN

Find this story at 12 February 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Australian suspected of Mossad links dies in Israeli jail

Evidence has been unearthed that strongly suggests Israel’s infamous Prisoner X, who was jailed under extraordinary circumstances in 2010, was an Australian national from Melbourne.

Investigations by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program have revealed Ben Zygier, who used the name Ben Alon in Israel, was found hanged in a high-security cell at a prison near Tel Aviv in late 2010.

His body was flown to Melbourne for burial a week later.

The death goes part of the way to explain the existence in Israel of a so-called Prisoner X, widely speculated in local and international media as an inmate whose presence has been acknowledged by neither the jail system nor the government.

The case is regarded as one of the most sensitive secrets of Israel’s intelligence community, with the government going to extraordinary lengths to stifle media coverage and gag attempts by human rights organisations to expose the situation.

Watch the full Foreign Correspondent report on Prisoner X on iview.

The Prisoner X cell is a jail within a jail at Ayalon Prison in the city of Ramla. It was built for the assassin of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The ABC understands Mr Zygier became its occupant in early 2010. His incarceration was so secret that it is claimed not even guards knew his identity.

Israeli media at the time reported that this Prisoner X received no visitors and lived hermetically sealed from the outside world.

When an Israeli news website reported that the prisoner died in his cell in December 2010, Israeli authorities removed its web pages.

An Israeli court order prohibiting any publication or public discussion of the matter is still in force; Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, has effectively blocked any coverage of the matter.
Secret imprisonment
Photo: Bill van Esveld has described the secret imprisonment of Prisoner X as “inexcusable”. (ABC)

Foreign Correspondent can reveal that Mr Zygier was 34 at the time of his death and had moved to Israel about 10 years earlier. He was married to an Israeli woman and had two small children.

Mr Zygier’s arrest and jailing in Israel remains a mystery, but the ABC understands he was recruited by spy agency Mossad.

It is understood Mr Zygier “disappeared” in early 2010, spending several months in the Prisoner X cell.

At the time, human rights organisation Association for Civil Rights in Israel criticised the imprisonment and wrote to Israel’s attorney-general.

“It’s alarming that there’s a prisoner being held incommunicado and we know nothing about him,” wrote the association’s chief legal counsel Dan Yakir.

The assistant to the attorney-general wrote back: “The current gag order is vital for preventing a serious breach of the state’s security, so we cannot elaborate about this affair.”

Contacted by the ABC, Mr Yakir would not comment on the case, quoting a court order gagging discussion.

It’s called a disappearance, and a disappearance is not only a violation of that person’s due process rights – that’s a crime.
Human rights advocate Bill van Esveld

Bill van Esveld, a Jerusalem-based advocate for Human Rights Watch, has described the secret imprisonment of Prisoner X as “inexcusable”.

“It’s called a disappearance, and a disappearance is not only a violation of that person’s due process rights – that’s a crime,” he told Foreign Correspondent.

“Under international law, the people responsible for that kind of treatment actually need to be criminally prosecuted themselves.”

Mr Zygier’s apparent suicide in prison adds to the mystery. He was found hanged in a cell which was equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems installed to prevent suicide. Guards reportedly tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

His body was retrieved and flown to Melbourne. He was buried in Chevra Kadisha Jewish cemetery in the suburb of Springvale on December 22, seven days after his death.

Mr Zygier’s family has declined to speak to the ABC, and friends and acquaintances approached by Foreign Correspondent in Melbourne have also refused to comment.
Mossad activity
Video: Former ASIS agent Warren Reed speaks to ABC News 24’s The World (ABC News)

Australia’s domestic intelligence agency ASIO has long scrutinised Australian Jews suspected of working for Mossad.

The agency believes Mossad recruits change their names from European and Jewish names to “Anglo” names. They then take out new passports and travel to the Arab world and Iran, to destinations Israeli passport holders cannot venture.

Warren Reed, a former intelligence operative for Australia’s overseas spy agency ASIS, told Foreign Correspondent that Australians were ideal recruits for Mossad.

“Australians abroad are generally seen to be fairly innocent,” he said.

“It’s a clean country – it has a good image like New Zealand.

“There aren’t many countries like that, so our nationality and anything connected with it can be very useful in intelligence work.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that Mr Zygier also carried an Australian passport bearing the name Ben Allen.
‘Allegations troubling’

When told details of Foreign Correspondent’s investigation, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said he was concerned by the claims.

“Those allegations certainly do trouble me,” Senator Carr said.

“It’s never been raised with me. I’m not reluctant to seek an explanation from the Israeli government about what happened to Mr Allen and about what their view of it is.

“The difficulty is I’m advised we’ve had no contact with his family [and] there’s been no request for consular assistance during the period it’s alleged he was in prison.”

Senator Carr says in the absence of a complaint by Mr Zygier’s family, there is little for the Australian Government to act upon.

However the transgression came about, it would have to be involved with espionage, treachery – very, very sensitive information that known to others would pose an immediate threat to Israel as a nation state.
Former ASIS operative Warren Reed

International conventions spell out that when a foreigner is jailed or dies, their diplomatic mission must be informed.

Senator Carr claims Australian diplomats in Israel only knew of Mr Zygier’s incarceration after his death.

Mr van Esveld says it is inexcusable for the Australian Government not to be notified.

…

Foreign Correspondent By Trevor Bormann

Updated Wed Feb 13, 2013 3:07pm AEDT

Find this story at 13 February 2013

© 2013 ABC

Zygier ‘planned to expose deadly use of passports’

Security officials suspect that Ben Zygier, the alleged spy who died in a secret Israeli prison in 2010, may have been about to disclose information about Israeli intelligence operations, including the use of fraudulent Australian passports, either to the Australian government or to the media before he was arrested.

Mr Zygier ”may well have been about to blow the whistle, but he never got the chance”, an Australian security official told Fairfax Media.

Sources in Canberra are insistent that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was not informed by its Israeli counterparts of the precise nature of the espionage allegations against Mr Zygier. However, it is understood that the Melbourne law graduate had been in contact with Australian intelligence officers.

Israeli intelligence informed ASIO of the arrest and detention of Mr Zygier just eight days after authorities in Dubai had revealed that suspected Israeli agents had used fraudulent Australian passports in the assassination of a Palestinian militant.

The consequent crisis in Australian-Israeli intelligence relations provided the context in which the Australian diplomats did not seek consular access to Mr Zygier, who was regarded by Australian security officials as a potential whistleblower on Israeli intelligence operations.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, on Thursday revealed that the government learnt of Mr Zygier’s detention through ”intelligence channels” on February 24, 2010. He told a Senate estimates hearing that Israel had ”detained a dual Australian-Israeli citizen – and they provided the name of the citizen – in relation to serious offences under Israeli national security legislation”.

Fairfax Media has been told by security sources that ASIO’s liaison office in Tel Aviv was notified of Mr Zygier’s detention by the Israeli security agency Shin Bet. It is understood that ASIO promptly notified the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), including the ambassador to Israel, Andrea Faulkner.

However, officials were unclear when or whether the then foreign minister, Stephen Smith, was briefed. Senator Carr’s office declined to respond when asked on Thursday about the government’s precise knowledge of Israeli allegations about Mr Zygier and the reasons for his secret detention. As no request for consular assistance was made by Mr Zygier or his family, the matter was left to intelligence liaison channels. No consular contact was made with Mr Zygier, and Australian diplomats did not become involved in the matter until after his reported suicide in prison in December 2010.

Mr Zygier’s detention came at an increasingly tense time in Australian-Israeli relations.

On February 16, 2010, Dubai authorities revealed that suspected Israeli agents had used Western passports in a covert operation that resulted in the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the United Arab Emirates.

News of the Israeli passport fraud caused a strong reaction from the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd. On February 25, according to a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, DFAT told the US embassy in Canberra that ”Australian officials are ‘furious’ all the way up the chain of command over the incident, and Prime Minister Rudd has vowed to get to the bottom of it”.

Australian Federal Police investigators travelled to Israel to pursue the Dubai passport fraud case, and that was followed by a visit to Tel Aviv by ASIO director-general David Irvine, who met Israeli intelligence chiefs. Mr Irvine subsequently provided a classified report to the government on the passport fraud issue.

However security sources have told Fairfax Media that the ASIO director-general did not raise the case of Mr Zygier.

Senator Carr told the Senate hearing that the Australian government sought ”specific assurances” that Mr Zygier’s legal rights would be respected and the government relied on these assurances. DFAT on Thursday declined to provide details of these exchanges.

…

Philip Dorling
Published: February 15, 2013 – 10:35AM

Find this story at 15 February 2013

Copyright © 2013 Fairfax Media

Secrets and lies – the double life of Prisoner X; Rumours swirl about ‘Mossad man’, Ben Zygier, found dead in Israeli jail

He was “a double agent working for Iran”; he was “responsible for the botched operation in a Dubai hotel in 2010” in which Mossad agents killed a senior Hamas commander; he was “just a loud mouth who couldn’t keep quiet” about being a member of Israel’s secret service. These are some of the many theories about why Ben Zygier, or “Prisoner X” as he was known until last week, was held in Israel’s most secure prison for a few months before apparently killing himself in December 2010. His detention was kept so secret that even his guards didn’t know his name; his presumed crime so grave that even his family haven’t gone public about his case.

Zygier’s name, and indeed his existence, would not have been known had it not been for an investigation by Foreign Correspondent, a programme produced by Australia’s ABC television, which unearthed details about the Israeli-Australian. They disclosed that his body was returned to his native Melbourne just before Christmas (and just after the birth of his second daughter) in 2010.

What Foreign Correspondent did not reveal was why Zygier was secretly jailed, a void that the Israeli government has not been eager to fill. So what exactly did this keen Zionist, a volunteer in the Israeli army, do to warrant such treatment? He was held in solitary confinement in the cell designed for Yigal Amir, the killer of the then Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and had access to nothing but a few books. Even Australian officials in Canberra admitted last week that they were unaware of Zygier’s case, despite his status as an Australian national.

The lack of official information has inevitably been filled by speculation. Because of the timing, the first theory was that Zygier had been involved in the operation in Dubai to kill the Hamas agent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January 2010. Zygier was arrested just a month later.

Several countries were outraged when it was revealed that some of the Mossad agents had travelled on fake passports – indeed, Australia expelled an Israeli diplomat in the aftermath. Was Zygier responsible for the images of Mossad agents being captured by CCTV? Was he responsible for bungling the passports? Or, more seriously, did he get turned by domestic security agents, as a Kuwaiti newspaper suggested last week?

One of the men who took part in the Dubai mission was Joshua Daniel Bruce, almost certainly an alias. The picture in a forged passport identifying Bruce appears to be of a man about the same age as the then 34-year-old Zygier, and of the 26 suspects he bears the greatest resemblance to Zygier. But on Friday a forensic facial recognition report commissioned by Reuters showed that Zygier and Bruce are not the same person, but it does not entirely dismiss the idea that Zygier was somehow involved in the Mabhouh operation.

At the beginning of 2010, the Australian journalist Jason Katsoukis uncovered evidence that Zygier was one of three Israeli-Australians running a front company in Italy, which ostensibly sold electronic equipment, to Iran among others. Zygier denied being a Mossad agent when asked by Mr Katsoukis, but it seems likely that he was working on contacts within the Sunni group, Jundallah, which has launched attacks against the Shia Iranian government.

Could Zygier’s incarceration be linked in some way to the arrest in February 2010 of Abdolmajid Rigi, the leader of Jundallah? Did Rigi blow Zygier’s cover and tell Iranian officials about the operation in Italy? In an interview with the Iranian Press TV after his arrest, Rigi said that American and Israeli agents were trying to persuade Jundallah to take their fight to Tehran. Rigi was eventually hanged, but what did he tell the authorities in Iran first?

…

Alistair Dawber
Sunday, 17 February 2013

Find this story at 17 February 2013

© independent.co.uk

De staatsveiligheid en de zaak-Debie, deel 1

Bart Debie, gewezen veiligheidsadviseur van het
VB en voormalig Antwerps politiecommissaris, verklaarde vandaag dat hij drie jaar lang informant van de staatsveiligheid was. Hij bespioneerde zo het VB. Hij maakte dat uitgerekend vandaag bekend omdat minister van Justitie Annemie Turtelboom (Open Vld) vrijdag verklaard had dat “de staatsveiligheid geen politici volgt uit hoofde van hun functie”. Volgens Debie is dat niet waar. Deze hele zaak roept nieuwe vragen op over de rol en de werking van de staatsveiligheid. We proberen de belangrijkste te beantwoorden in acht vraagjes en enkele bedenkingen.

1. WAT IS DE STAATSVEILIGHEID?

De Staatsveiligheid (SV) is België’s bekendste inlichtingendienst. Ze bestaat sinds 1831, hoort niet bij de politie, maar valt onder de verantwoordelijkheid van de Minister van Justitie. Ze zamelt inlichtingen in over al wat de veiligheid van de staat bedreigt: moslimfundamentalisten, antiglobalisten, extremisten van rechts en links. Ze speurt ook naar gevaarlijke sekten en criminele organisaties en naar de mogelijke verspreiding van gevaarlijke wapens die aanslagen (vuile bommen bv.) kunnen veroorzaken. Ze onderzoekt ook de economische spionage (zoals die bij Lernout & Hauspie).

Verder voert ze veiligheidsonderzoeken uit voor mensen die bv. bij de Navo of andere gevoelige instellingen willen gaan werken. Het gaat om honderden onderzoeken per jaar. Ze beschermt – in opdracht van de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken – ook hooggeplaatste personen (staats- en regeringsleiders en hun familie). In 2011 ging het om 100 opdrachten.

2. WAT GING VOORAF?

Vooraf: een woordje geschiedenis.

Op 15 oktober 1830 werd Isidore Plaisant (sic) de eerste administrateur-generaal van de Staatsveiligheid, die toen nog Openbare Veiligheid heette. Ze moest vooral orangisten opsporen, Belgen die aansluiting bij Nederland zochten.

Naarmate de negentiende eeuw vorderde, ging de Openbare Veiligheid alle buitenlanders in kaart brengen. De politie moest vanaf 1840 dagelijks een lijst van gegevens over iedere buitenlander op het grondgebied bezorgen (biografie, financiën, activiteiten). In die periode stroomden vele vluchtelingen België binnen, onder hen Karl Marx. De arbeidersbeweging en de Vlaamse beweging waren twee andere interessepunten van de Openbare Veiligheid. Omdat ze sinds haar ontstaan een personeels- en geldtekort had, deed ze veel een beroep op informanten. Maar die namen het niet zo nauw met de deontologie. Toen de beruchte arbeidersrellen na 1886 voor het assisenhof kwamen, bleek dat hun aanstokers agenten van de Staatsveiligheid waren. Ei zo na werd de dienst opgedoekt.

In 1929 kreeg de dienst zijn nieuwe naam, maar hij bleef op dezelfde schimmige wijze werken als voorheen. Er was nog altijd geen wettelijke regeling, hoewel die al in 1830 als ‘hoogst dringend’ was aangekondigd. Op het einde van de vorige eeuw kwam die er toch: in 1991 ontstond het Comité I, dat de Staatsveiligheid in opdracht van het parlement zou controleren, in 1998 – na 167 jaar – kwam er een wet op de Staatsveiligheid. De dienst kreeg toen de meeste van zijn huidige taken. Pas in 2010 kwam er dan op initiatief van senator Hugo Vandenberghe (CD&V) een behoorlijk strenge “BIM-wet”, een wet die de bijzondere inlichtingenmethoden van de SV regelt.

3. WIE WERKT BIJ DE SV?

Wie werkt bij de SV?

Ze heeft officieel 650 personeelsleden – naast een onbekend aantal informanten – en een budget van 45 miljoen. Ze wordt sinds 2006 geleid door Alain Winants, een Brussels parketmagistraat van liberalen huize. Zijn mandaat is eigenlijk al afgelopen, hij moet binnenkort worden vervangen. Maar hij kan opnieuw kandideren. De meest genoemde tegenkandidaat is Cédric Visart de Bocarmé, voormalig procureur-generaal van Luik en voormalig kabinetschef van minister Joëlle Milquet (cdH).

Einde november 2012 klaagde de grote baas van de SV erover dat zijn dienst te weinig personeel en middelen heeft, vooral om het dreigende salafisme, het moslimextremisme dus, te volgen. Dat salafisme is volgens Alain Winants momenteel het grootste gevaar voor de democratie.

Justititiminister Annemie Turtelboom ontkende echter dat de SV te weinig geld en personeel heeft. “De begroting van de staatsveiligheid is de jongste zeven jaar met 82% gestegen, van 23,86 miljoen in 2003 naar 43,46 miljoen in 2010. De voorbije twee jaren had de SV vaak moeilijkheden om het geld dat ze kreeg ook te besteden”, zo zegde ze op 27 november 2011 in de Kamercommissie Justitie aan Michel Doomst (CD&V). “De staatsveiligheid kreeg in 2010 82 nieuwe personeelsleden, terwijl er 32 vertrokken. Voor 2011 zijn de cijfers: 21 nieuwkomers, 25 vertrekkers. Ik zal nu met het topmanagement van de staatsveiligheid overleggen over de prioriteiten van de dienst”, zo besloot ze.

4. WAT MAG DE STAATSVEILIGHEID DOEN?

4.1. Wat màg de staatsveiligheid doen?

De SV maakt financiële analyses, bestudeert pamfletten en boeken, volgt vergaderingen van extremistische groepen en gaat na hoe groot hun actiekracht is. Ze kan daarvoor een beroep doen op alle openbare bronnen en ook op informanten. De SV is géén politiedienst, ze doet geen gerechtelijke onderzoeken en verricht geen aanhoudingen.

Tot 1998 was er dus geen enkele wet die de SV reglementeerde. En pas in 2010 kwam er een BIM-wet die de methoden die de SV mag gebruiken om inlichtingen in te zamelen, wettelijk vastlegt. Sinds dan zijn er gewone, specifieke en bijzondere methoden. De gewone bestuderen open bronnen (kranten, openbare verslagen, vergaderingen, gebruik van informanten e.d.).

Daarnaast heb je de specifieke methoden: observatie van een openbare plaats (of van een private plaats die toegankelijk is voor het publiek, zoals een discotheek of een kerk) met technische middelen (bv. een camera); doorzoeking van dit soort plaatsen met technische middelen; kennis nemen van de afzender of de geadresseerde van post of van de eigenaar van een postbus; kennisnemen van wie telefoneert met wie of van het IP-adres van een computer. De bijzondere methoden zijn: de observatie in woningen; het oprichten van een front store (een nepbedrijf of nepvzw om zo inlichtingen in te zamelen, nvdr); doorzoeking van private plaatsen; openen van post; inzamelen van gegevens op bankrekeningen; hacken van computers, behalve die van de overheid; telefoontap.

Een speciale BIM-commissie van drie magistraten moet op voorhand ingelicht worden van de specifieke methoden en voor de uitzonderlijke methoden moet ze op voorhand toestemming geven. Die BIM-commissie kan ook beslissen dat de SV misdrijven mag plegen, als dat absoluut nodig is voor het werk van de agenten (valse naamdracht, overtredingen van de wegcode….) en als het misdrijf in verhouding staat tot het doel dat wordt nagestreefd. In geen geval mag ze iemand’s fysieke integriteit schenden. Moorden kunnen dus – in tegenstelling tot bij de CIA, die van president Obama Osama bin Laden mocht vermoorden – in België niet.

4.2. Wat doét de staatsveiligheid?

Volgens het Comité I past de SV in 2011 731 keer specifieke methoden toe (grotendeels opvragen van telefoon- en gsm-nummers: 1.892 nummers in totaal) en 33 keer uitzonderlijke methoden toe (11 keer ging het om afluisteren van telefoons en 10 keer om inkijken van bankverrichtingen. Veertien operaties werden door de BIM-controlecommissie stopgezet.

5. HOE WERKT DE CONTROLE?

De staatsveiligheid wordt sinds 1991 gecontroleerd door het Comité I. Dat bestaat uit drie (politiek benoemde) personen: twee magistraten (onder wie voorzitter Guy Rapaille, een Luiks magistraat van PS-signatuur) en één ambtenaar. Dat Comité controleert de inlichtingendiensten: naast de staatsveiligheid, controleert het dus ook de militaire veildigheid ADIV. Iedere burger kan klacht indienen bij het Comité I als hij meent dat de staatsveiligheid zijn boekje te buiten ging. Het Comité I kan ook audits en toezichtonderzoeken over de staatsveiligheid of over bepaalde aspecten doen en daarvoor alle documenten opvragen.

Het Comité I wordt op zijn beurt gecontroleerd door een parlementaire begeleidingscommissie in de Senaat. Die staat onder leiding van Senaatsvoorzitter Sabine de Bethune (CD&V) en bestaat verder uit telkens één lid van PS, MR, N-VA en CD&V. Het VB wordt al sinds jaar en dag uit deze begeleidingscommissie geweerd, CD&V heeft twee leden in de begeleidingscommissie.

Daarnaast heb je nog de BIM-commissie, die toezicht houdt op de methoden van de SV. Zij moet voor de zwaarste methoden op voorhand toestemming geven en kan die methoden zelfs stopzetten bij misbruik. De BIM-commissie wordt voorgezeten door de Antwerpse onderzoeksrechter Paul Van Santvliet. De BIM-commissie bestaat verder nog uit twee magistraten, onder wie de Mechelse rechter Viviane Deckmyn.

6. KAN U UW DOSSIER INZIEN?

Kan U Uw dossier van de staatsveiligheid inzien?

Nee. Iedereen kan zijn dossier bij de staatsveiligheid laten inzien door de privacycommissie. Rechtstreeks Uw dossier inkijken kan U niet. De privacycommissie mag dat wel, maar ze mag U niet zeggen wat ze in Uw dossier gelezen heeft en ze kan alleen maar aanbevelingen doen om iets aan Uw dossier te veranderen. Maar ook daarover mag ze U niets vertellen. En de staatsveiligheid moet geen rekening houden met de aanbevelingen van de privacycommissie. In feite heeft U dus geen controle op wat in Uw dossier bij de staatsveiligheid staat.

Iedere burger kan ook klacht tegen de staatsveiligheid indienen bij het Comité I, maar dat doet dan hetzelfde als de privacycommissie, met dezelfde mogelijkheden en beperkingen. Het Comité I kan wel een en ander hierover publiceren in zijn jaarverslag.

U kan U ook tot de voogdijminister (justitieminister Turtelboom) wenden. Zij is baas van de staatsveiligheid en kan ook een en ander laten onderzoeken. Maar zij is net zoals Alain Winants gebonden door een geheimhoudingsplicht.

Als de BIM-wet op U werd toegepast, als dus een specifieke of uitzonderlijke inlichtingenmethode is gebruikt, dan kan U aan de baas van de staatsveiligheid hierover informatie vragen. Hij moet dan het juridisch kader schetsen waarin de methode werd toegepast en U kan dan aan het Comité I vragen om dat te controleren. U moet wel een wettig belang aantonen, de bewuste methode moet minstens vijf jaar beëindigd zijn en in die vijf jaar mogen geen nieuwe gegevens over U ingezameld zijn. Bovendien moeten de wetten op de veiligheidsmachtigingen, de privacy en de openbaarheid van bestuur nageleefd worden. U moet ook zelf informatie over de BIM-methodes vragen, men licht U niet automatisch in. En omdat men dat niet doet, kan U natuurlijk helemaal niet weten of er een BIM-methode op jou is toegepast. Deze hele regeling werd overigens op 22 september 2011 door het Grondwettelijk Hof vernietigd. Dat Hof vond dat de staatsveiligheid zelf de betrokkene moet inlichten zodra dat kan zonder hun onderzoek in gevaar te brengen. Door deze vernietiging vervalt de hele regeling tot het parlement een nieuwe heeft goedgekeurd.

7. WAT IS DE ZAAK-DEBIE?

== Bart Debie verklaarde vandaag dat hij tussen 2007 en 2010 informant was van de staatsveiligheid. Hij had dit zelf voorgesteld aan de dienst en kreeg hier naar eigen zeggen geen geld voor. Hij kwam vandaag met zijn verklaring omdat hij boos was omdat minister Turtelboom had gezegd dat de staatsveiligheid geen politici volgt. Naar eigen zeggen koos hij ook dit moment omdat er geen verkiezingen in zicht zijn en zijn verklaringen “dus geen electorale invloed kunnen hebben”.

Debie was commissaris bij de Antwerpse politie, waar hij morgen exact tien jaar weg is. Hij werd samen met de huidige korpschef Serge Muyters bekend omdat hij het Falconplein “opkuiste”. Maar Debie’s methodes waren – volgens justitie – nogal hardhandig. Hij werd op donderdag 31 januari 2008 door het Antwerpse Hof van Beroep veroordeeld tot vier jaar cel, waarvan één effectief omdat hij 12 allochtone arrestanten, onder wie een minderjarige, wel erg hardhandig had aangepakt: geslagen, geschopt, tegen het hoofd gestampt. Volgens het Hof was zijn bijnaam in het korps was “Bart Penalty”. Debie werd bovendien gestraft voor vervalsing van processen-verbaal, racisme tegen vier Turken en nog enkele andere dingen.

Debie zelf heeft altijd beweerd dat hij onschuldig was en dat binnen de politie een complot tegen hem was gesmeed. Op zijn weblog zegt hij dat hij wil aantonen dat hij helemaal geen racist is. “Mijn partner is nota bene een moslima van Afrikaanse origine. Zij werkt als professioneel fotomodel en verkeert in de kringen van zogenaamde bekende mensen. En als zij daar dan soms vertelt wie haar man is, dan vallen er wel eens monden open van verbazing”, zo schrijft hij.

Debie moest zijn straf niet uitzitten, maar kreeg een enkelband. Hij was toen al lang weg bij de Antwerpse politie, want hij ging al sinds 2004 bij het VB werken. Daar werd hij veiligheidsadviseur van Filip Dewinter. In 2007 nam hij contact op met de staatsveiligheid. Naar eigen zeggen omdat Dewinter hem had gevraagd om voor enkele kalashnikovs te zorgen. Dewinter wilde die hebben voor een persconferentie waarop hij gebruik van geweld met kalashnikovs wilde aanklagen naar aanleiding van een schietpartij in Brussel. Debie wilde die kalashnikovs niet zoeken “omdat dit een misdrijf was en hij al een strafblad had”. De veiligheidsadviseur was het ook beu dat de partijtop geen rekening hield zijn zijn eerdere klachten over het gedrag van de VB-jongeren in Dilbeek, “die ramen van winkeliers met opschriften in twee talen hadden gevandaliseerd” en over een medewerker van voormalig VB-voorzitter Bruno Valkeniers, “die neonaziconcerten met Blood and Honour organiseerde”. Debie: “Ik had dit allemaal intern aangeklaagd, maar de partijleiding deed er niets mee. Vandaar mijn stap naar de staatsveiligheid”.

Na zijn voorstel aan de staatsveiligheid kreeg hij naar eigen zeggen in Vilvoorde bezoek van iemand van die dienst. Die wilde vooral weten welke zakenlui het VB sponsorden en wie er deelnam aan de fundraising dinners die Dewinter organiseerde. De SV was verder geïnteresseerd in een Amerikaan die overal in de wereld anti-islambewegingen wilde financieren. Volgens Debie gedroeg zijn begeleider bij de SV zich heel correct: “Ik moet wel zeggen dat die man zeer correct en professioneel was. In het privéleven van Dewinter was hij niet geïnteresseerd. Het was hem te doen om de geldstromen en de contacten. Ik heb hem daar hopen documenten en informatie over bezorgd.”

Debie werd in 2010 uit het VB gezet omdat hij zich op Facebook vrolijk had gemaakt over de kanker van Marie-Rose Morel. Maar hijzelf ontkent dat dit zo was.

Debie zegde gisteren dat zijn straf helemaal is afgelopen dat hij momenteel een verzoek tot eerherstel heeft ingediend bij het Antwerpse Hof van Beroep. Hij werkt momenteel als zelfstandige, hij organiseert bedrijfsopleidingen over dringende medische hulp, zo zegt hij.

== De staatsveiligheid liet vandaag weten dat “een aantal verklaringen van Debie volledig verkeerd en onjuist zijn”. Welke verklaringen dat zijn, zegt de dienst er niet hij. De SV wil ook niet bevestigen of ontkennen dat Debie informant bij haar was. De dienst legt nooit uit wie haar informanten zijn. Wel wijst de SV erop dat Debie een misdrijf heeft gepleegd als hij effectief informant van de staatsveiligheid was én dat zelf openbaar heeft gemaakt. Want wie dit soort geheime informatie bekend maakt kan tot 6 maanden cel en 3.000 euro boete krijgen.

Debie hierover: “Dit schrikt mij niet af. Men zal het eerst en vooral moeten bewijzen en de staatsveiligheid mag zelf niet zeggen wie haar informanten zijn. Dat bewijs leveren lijkt me dus moeilijk. Ik vraag me bovendien af of ik officieel wel een “informant” was. Niemand van de staatsveiligheid heeft mij ooit gewezen op die geheimhoudingsplicht”.

Winants herhaalde vandaag dat de staatsveiligheid geen parlementsleden, politici of politieke partijen volgt, screent of schaduwt vanwege hun parlementaire activiteiten. “Maar we zijn wel bevoegd om een aantal bedreigingen te onderzoeken, waaronder extremisme. Fondsenwerving uit het buitenland voor het opzetten van anti-islambewegingen zou daaronder kunnen vallen”, verwijst hij naar de uitspraken van Debie, evenwel “zonder die te bevestigen”.

== Filip Dewinter reageerde verbolgen op de verklaringen van Debie. Hij “voelde zich verraden door een goede vriend, die hij in moeilijke situaties altijd had gesteund”. Hij overweegt een klacht tegen Debie. De ex-veiligheidsadviseur hierover: “Dit schrikt mij niet af, klacht indienen is een sport geworden”. Dewinter wil verder justitieminister Annemie Turtelboom over de zaak interpelleren. Hij vraagt dat de privacycommissie zijn gegevens nakijkt en dat Turtelboom zijn persoonlijk dossier aan hem bezorgt. Turtelboom zelf heeft bij het Comité I al een onderzoek over deze zaak gevraagd, zo liet ze weten.

== Het Comité I wilde vandaag geen commentaar geven op de verklaringen van Winants, Turtelboom en Dewinter omdat het onderzoek van het Comité I naar deze problematiek nog bezig is.

8. WAT IS HET RUIMER KADER VAN DE ZAAK-DEBIE?

Wat is het ruimer kader van de zaak-Debie? In ieder geval stelt deze zaak opnieuw de rol van de staatsveiligheid aan de orde. Volgt de dienst nu politici of niet? Dat kwam vorige week al aan bod in de Scientology-zaak.

8.1. Waarover ging de Scientology-zaak?

Hierover was vorige week veel te doen naar aanleiding van het lekken van twee geheime rapporten van de staatsveiligheid over de invloed van de schadelijke sekten Scientology, Sahaja Yoga en de Moslimbroederschap. In die rapporten stonden namen van politici. Diverse politici wilden weten hoe de staatsveiligheid met deze gegevens omsprong en of politici worden gevolgd. “Waarom krijgt de Koning dit rapport? Krijgt hij alle rapporten? Ook rapporten over Opus Dei?”, zo vroeg Stefaan Van Hecke (Groen). Turtelboom legde vorige vrijdag een en ander uit in de Kamercommissie Justitie.

Een eerste rapport werd alleen elektronisch ter beschikking gesteld. Het ging over de invloed van Scientology op de Congolese gemeenschap in België. Volgens Turtelboom kregen slechts 6 personen van buiten de staatsveiligheid dat eerste elektronisch rapport. “Daarnaast konden ook sommige medewerkers van de staatsveiligheid het inzien, maar omdat het elektronisch is, kan ieder manoeuvre van deze mensen geregistreerd worden. De Koning kreeg dit eerste rapport niet.”

Het tweede rapport was schriftelijk. Het ging naar 67 mensen, onder wie 43 van buiten de staatsveiligheid. Het was een fenomeenanalyse over de invloed van sekten zoals Scientology, Sahaja Yoga en de Moslimbroederschap. De Koning kreeg dat rapport wel. In dat rapport werden de namen van politici zoals Maggie De Block, Tony Van Parys, Elio Di Rupo en Rik Torfs vermeld. Maar wel als gecontacteerde personen. Het Comité I kreeg beide rapporten.

8.2. Wat deed Turtelboom?

Turtelboom zegde dat zij zelf aan het Comité I heeft gevraagd om een onderzoek naar beide lekken in te stellen. “Mensen kunnen zo’n geheim rapport maar inzien als ze daarvoor een aparte veiligheidsmachtiging hebben en bovendien als de informatie uit het rapport nuttig is voor hun werk. Wie die rapporten lekt kan tot 5 jaar cel en 30.000 euro boete krijgen”, waarschuwde de minister. Ze bevestigde nog dat de staatsveiligheid een klacht met burgerlijke partijstelling heeft ingediend, zodat de lekken nu ook onderzocht worden door het gerecht.

De minister zegde dat “geen parlementsleden worden gevolgd uit hoofde van hun functie en dat er ook geen dossiers worden bijgehouden van parlementsleden”. Turtelboom zegde dat de Koning “niet alle rapporten krijgt, maar alleen die waarvan de staatsveiligheid vindt dat het Hof ze moet krijgen. Koning Albert kreeg slechts één van de twee gelekte rapporten”.

Minister Turtelboom heeft naar aanleiding van deze lekken een onderzoek gevraagd bij het Comité I. Dat moet een aantal vragen beantwoorden. “Ik vroeg aan het Comité I om na te gaan hoe het aantal bestemmelingen van dit soort rapporten kan worden beperkt. Er moeten bovendien duidelijke criteria komen op grond waarvan geheime rapporten worden verspreid aan wie. Verder moet het Comité I nagaan of de namen van politici niet kunnen worden gedepersonaliseerd of minstens in categorieën opgesomd, zodat duidelijk wordt of een politicus gecontacteerd werd, effectief contact had of de organisatie steunde of niet”.

Turtelboom wil in de toekomst ook dat de minister van justitie een aparte nota krijgt als de staatsveiligheid politici vermeldt in een geheim rapport. Want in het dossier van Scientology gebeurde dat niet, terwijl het al van in 2009 zou moeten.

8.3. Hoe reageert het VB?

Het VB gelooft er niets van. In een reactie zegde senator Filip Dewinter dat politici van het VB en de PVDA wel degelijk gevolgd. “Dat blijkt uit de lijst van te volgen staatsbedreigende organisaties die opgesteld wordt door de staatsveiligheid en de federale politie. De lijst bestaat uit drie categorieën: code rood, code oranje en code geel. Code rood betreft terreurorganisaties zoals o.a. Hizb-Ut-Tahir (partij van de extremistische moslims), GIA (Algerijnse terreurorganisatie), de PKK, de DHKPC (de groep rond Feyrihe Erdal) en Blood and Honour. Code oranje betreft onder meer Sharia4belgium, de Outlaws/Hells Angels, de (Turkse) Grijze Wolven en Internationaal Verzet (anarchisten). Onder code Geel vallen onder meer Vlaams Belang en PVDA. Hun mandatarissen worden dus wel degelijk – in tegenstelling tot wat minister van Justitie Turtelboom beweert – actief gevolgd door de politiediensten en de staatsveiligheid”. Voor Dewinter is zo’n lijst “wel degelijk nuttig en nodig,maar enkel voor terroristische en subversieve organisaties die geweld willen plegen of oproepen tot het gebruik van geweld”.

“Het volgen van partijen zoals het Vlaams Belang is ondemocratisch en neigt naar Stasipraktijken. Blijkbaar worden vooral Vlaams-nationale organisaties gevolgd. Onder het mom van de bescherming van de staat, beschermt de staatsveiligheid vooral de bestendiging van het Belgische regime”, stelt Filip Dewinter. In de Kamer vroeg zijn collega Bert Schoofs of de staatsveiligheid indertijd Leopold III had gevolgd, maar daarop kwam geen antwoord.

8.4. Evaluatie

Eigenlijk spreken de visies van Turtelboom/Winants en Dewinter elkaar niet tegen. Turtelboom zegt dat de staatsveiligheid geen politici volgt in hun hoedanigheid van politici. Maar de staatsveiligheid moet wel het extremisme en het radicalisme in kaart brengen, bv. bewegingen die anti-islamgroepen willen oprichten. Dan kunnen bepaalde politici in het vizier komen. Net zoals dat in de fenomeenanalyse over Scientology het geval was. Alain Winants van de SV bevestigde dat nog eens vandaag. Hij zegde daarbij niet meer van wat al in zijn jaarverslag over 2011 stond. Turtelboom wil nu dat ze bij ieder rapport waarin een politicus wordt vernoemd een aparte nota krijgt waarin verwezen wordt naar die politicus en zijn rol in het onderzoek.

9. WAARHEEN MET DE STAATSVEILIGHEID?

9.1. Deze eeuw kwam de staatsveiligheid al meerdere malen in opspraak. Zo waren er de klachten dat zij het moslimextremisme niet efficiënt kon opvolgen uit misbegrepen politiek-correct gedrag en dat ze onvoldoende alert was geweest in de opvolging van het Putse koppel Sayadi-Vinck dat door de VN op een terroristenlijst was gezet, maar daar ondertussen weer is afgehaald. Deze klachten gelden nu zeker niet meer: het salafisme is nu een topprioriteit voor de staatsveiligheid. En de staatsveiligheid kon al een reeks terreurnetwerken ontmaskeren vooraleer ze actief waren. De dienst leert dus wel degelijk uit de kritieken van het Comité I, dat hiermee ook zijn nut heeft bewezen.

Er was deze eeuw ook de ophef rond de ontsnapping van de Turkse DHKPC-terroriste Feyrihe Erdal. Dat kon gebeuren omdat de auto van de SV die Erdal achtervolgde voor een rood licht moest stoppen. Door de BIM-wet wordt dit probleem opgelost, want voortaan mogen agenten van de SV verkeersmisdrijven plegen.

Er was ook heisa over de informantenwerking van de staatsveiligheid, toen bleek dat een van haar informanten, Abdelkader Belliraj in België zes moorden zou hebben gepleegd en in Marokko werd vervolgd voor terrorisme. De problematiek van het informantenbeheer werd eveneens aangepakt door de BIM-wet van 2010, die de bijzondere inlichtingenmethodes regelt.

Recent nog was er de veroordeling van Justitieminister Turtelboom tot 100.000 euro morele schadevergoeding omdat de staatsveiligheid in 1981 in een gelekte geheime nota foutieve en lasterlijke informatie had verspreid over de omstreden baron Benoît de Bonvoisin, die toen door de staatsveiligheid de “zwarte baron” en financier van extreem-rechts werd genoemd. Deze nota’s dateren evenwel uit de tijd dat de staatsveiligheid nog helemaal niet gereglementeerd was en de mysterieuze Albert Raes de dienst nog leidde.

9.2. De discussie in de zaak-Debie keert periodisch weer. Ze gaat echter niet alleen over de vraag of politici door de staatsveiligheid mogen worden gevolgd of niet. Maar ook over het statuut van de staatsveiligheid zelf. Eerder al vonden het VB en de sp.a dat de SV als aparte dienst moet worden afgeschaft en moet worden ondergebracht bij de politie. Die laatste kan in principe alleen maar inlichtingen over misdrijven inzamelen nadat die misdrijven gepleegd zijn. Maar sinds een decennium kan ze ook “zachte informatie”, info over verdachte personen en situaties zonder dat een misdrijf is gepleegd, inzamelen. Dat kan natuurlijk tot overlappingen leiden op sommige domeinen (criminele organisaties bv.). De politie mag echter alleen maar zachte informatie inzamelen met het oog op criminele feiten, de SV mag dit ook met het oog op de gevaren voor de democratie. De vraag naar de “plaats” van de staatsveiligheid (bij justitie of bij de politie) komt onvermijdelijk opnieuw aan de orde.

…

11/02 John de Wit 11 FEBRUARI 2013 –

Find this story at 11 February 2013

©1994-2013 Concentra Media Groep N.V.

Winants: “Bart Debie liegt”

“Bart Debie liegt. Hij zegt dat hij voor de staatsveiligheid heeft gewerkt tussen
2007 en 2010. Maar de eerste mail, waarin hij ons dat voorgesteld heeft, dateert pas van 10 augustus 2010.” Dat zegt Alain Winants, de grote baas van de staatsveiligheid. Gazet van Antwerpen kon de mail inkijken.

“Of wij daarop ingegaan zijn, mag ik niet zeggen. Want ik mag niet reageren op de verklaringen van een ex-politieman die veroordeeld is voor buitensporig geweld tegen Turken, schriftvervalsing en racisme. Anders ben ik strafbaar”, gaat het verder.

“Maar als hij al liegt over de periode waarin hij mogelijk voor ons zou gewerkt hebben, kan kan iedereen oordelen of de rest van zijn uitspraken waar is en wat zijn motieven zijn”. Aldus Winants.

Vorige maandag verklaarde de voormalige Antwerpse politiecommissaris Bart Debie dat hij tussen 2007 en 2010 voor de staatsveiligheid heeft gespioneerd om de geheimen van het Vlaams Belang door te briefen. In die periode was Debie veiligheidsadviseur van het VB en persoonlijke vriend van senator Filip Dewinter.

Eerst lekten twee geheime rapporten over schadelijke sekten zoals Scientology en de Moslimbroederschap uit. Vervolgens verklaarde ex-flik Bart Debie dat hij jarenlang voor de staatsveiligheid heeft gespioneerd om het Vlaams Belang in kaart te brengen. Daarna wilde Renaat Landuyt de staatsveiligheid afschaffen. Krokusverlof? Nee, voor administrateur-generaal Alain Winants van de staatsveiligheid was het absoluut geen vakantie om lui achterover te hangen. Een gesprek over zijn visie. (Een uitvoerig overzicht van de manier waarop de staatsveiligheid werkt en ook van beide incidenten, Debie en Scientology, vindt U hier, nvdr).

“Of Bart Debie voor de staatsveiligheid heeft gewerkt of niet, mag ik niet zeggen”, zo betoogt Winants. “Ik mag niet reageren op de verklaringen van een ex-politieman die veroordeeld is voor buitensporig geweld tegen Turken, schriftvervalsing en racisme. Anders ben ik strafbaar. Maar wat ik wél kan zeggen is dat Debie de staatsveiligheid maar pas gecontacteerd heeft op 11 augustus 2010. Van toen dateert zijn eerste mail, waarin hij voorstelt om voor ons te komen werken.”

En ging U op zijn voorstel in?

Daar kan ik niets over zeggen. Maar het is duidelijk dat hij heeft gelogen als hij zegt dat hij tussen 2007 en 2010 voor onze dienst heeft gespioneerd. En iedereen moet dan maar zelf oordelen of de rest van zijn verklaringen waar zijn en wat zijn motieven zijn.

U zei dat hij tot zes maanden cel kan krijgen omdat hij zelf bekend maakte dat hij voor U spioneerde. Gaat U klacht indienen?

Nee. Wij dienen geen klacht in, want wij mogen zelf niet bekend maken wie onze informanten zijn. Maar niets belet het parket van de woonplaats van Debie om een onderzoek te starten. Dat zal dan wel via een speciale procedure moeten gebeuren. Dat parket weet nu dat Debie desgevallend een misdrijf heeft gepleegd en zij mogen in het kader van een opsporingsonderzoek alle documenten inzien. Ze hebben daar voor geen speciale veiligheidsmachtiging nodig. Maar als de zaak later voor de rechter komt, dan zitten we weer strop. Want de advocaten en de rechters, die het vonnis moeten vellen, moeten wél een veiligheidsmachtiging hebben om die documenten in te zien. En die hebben ze niet. Ze zullen dus niet kunnen oordelen over de vraag of Debie schuldig is of niet.

Hét probleem in deze zaak is dus: hoe zal het juridisch kunnen bewezen worden?

Kan er dan helemaal niets gebeuren?

Ik weet natuurlijk zelf hoe de vork aan de steel zit en ik zal dit ook duidelijk maken aan het Comité I, dat de staatsveiligheid controleert. Want de leden van dat Comité hebben een veiligheidsmachtiging, ze mogen alle geheime dossiers inzien. Maar voor het publiek is dat niet bestemd.

Door de zaak-Debie kwam Uw organisatie helemaal onder schot?

Ja, men focust niet meer op wat Debie heeft bekend gemaakt. Je leest niets meer over de aanschaf van die kalashnikovs en over het organiseren van neonazistische concerten door een medewerker van Bruno Valkeniers. De focus verschoof eerst naar mij: mag ik al dan niet nog verlengd worden. En nu naar de hele staatsveiligheid. Die zou nu plots nutteloos zijn.

Wat vindt U van de verklaringen van Landuyt? Hij wil de staatsveiligheid afschaffen en hun inlichtingenwerk door de politie laten doen.

Onbegrijpelijk, fundamenteel onjuist en onbeschoft. Renaat Landuyt en Philippe Moureaux hebben een totaal gebrek aan kennis van wat een inlichtingendienst is. En dat voor een justitiespecialist en een oud-minister van Justitie! Zo lees ik met verbijstering dat terrorisme alleen het werk van de politie zou zijn. Niet dus. Ze kennen het verschil tussen het werk van de politie en een inlichtingendienst niet.

De politie moet misdrijven oplossen en daders voor het gerecht brengen. Weliswaar mogen ze ook “pro-actief” informatie inzamelen naar handelingen die misschien tot een misdrijf zouden kunnen leiden in het kader van terrorisme-onderzoeken. En daar is misschien soms enige overlapping met wat wij doen. Maar wij hebben goede afspraken met de politie. En vooral: wij werken met een andere doelstelling. Wij maken analyses op langere termijn, wij doen aan prospectie, brengen evoluties en gevaarlijke, staatsbedreigende fenomenen in kaart. Wij werken voor, tijdens en na de misdrijven op gevaarlijke fenomenen door.

Met succes. Vele belangrijke terreurnetwerken zijn opgerold op basis van onze informatie. Ik denk aan de groep van Maaseik, de GICM (Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain, een Marokkaanse terreurgroep, nvdr), de GIA (Groupe Islamique Armé, een Algerijnse terreurgroep,nvdr). We hebben dus wel degelijk een nut.

De verklaringen van Landuyt en Moureaux zijn ook ongehoord en onbeschoft. Als ik hen hoor zeggen dat de staatsveiligheid uit veredelde boyscouts bestaat, dat wij alleen maar krantenknipsels en roddels verzamelen en dat wij altijd politieke spelletjes spelen, dan is dit hoogst onfair tegenover de vele mensen van mijn dienst die veel moeite doen om van hun soms gevaarlijke job met beperkte middelen het beste te maken.

Landuyt en Moureaux zeggen dat sommige landen géén inlichtingendienst hebben. Waarom wij dan wel?

Er zijn maar twee landen ter wereld zonder inlichtingendienst. Skandinavië heeft een ander systeem. Daar zit de inlichtingendienst bij de politie. Maar inlichtingendiensten bestaan daar ook, ze hebben er een dubbele rol: misdrijven opsporen én gevaarlijke fenomenen op de langere termijn bestuderen. Bovendien is het inlichtingenwerk, ook fysiek, er strikt gescheiden van de politie. De meeste ons omringende landen hebben echter een aparte inlichtingendienst. En de meeste van die diensten zijn niet alleen bevoegd in hun eigen land, maar ook in het buitenland. Dat is zo voor Duitsland, Engeland, Frankrijk en Nederland.

Het is nu niet meer mogelijk om zich alleen te beperken tot ons eigen land. Buitenlandse situaties, zoals de verkiezingen in Congo, het Israëlisch-Palestijnse conflict, de strijd tussen Koerden en Turken hebben hier rechtstreekse gevolgen en bepaalde bedreigingen voor de Belgische democratie komen ook uit het buitenland. In Brussel zitten momenteel meer spionnen dan tijdens de Koude Oorlog.

Ik pleit er niet voor dat we ook operaties in het buitenland zouden kunnen uitvoeren, maar we zouden wel in een aantal belangrijke staten een verbindingsofficier moeten hebben. Die zou ons op de hoogte kunnen houden van conflicten die die staten die ook hier dunnetjes worden overgedaan.

Overigens: het debat over de afschaffing van de staatsveiligheid is ruim twintig jaar oud. Het is een steeds weerkerend monster van Loch Ness. De socialisten wilden dat al nog voor de politiehervorming werd doorgevoerd. Ze wilden toen al de staatsveiligheid integreren in de rijkswacht onder één en dezelfde minister. (Nu valt de politie onder binnenlandse zaken en de staatsveiligheid onder justitie, nvdr). Nu willen ze dat weer in de federale politie. Maar dit vereist een nieuwe politiehervorming. En ik weet niet of de oude al helemaal verteerd is en al voldoende resultaten heeft opgeleverd. Bovendien is het ondemocratisch als de politie én de inlichtingendiensten onder een en dezelfde minister zouden vallen. Laat staan dat politie aan inlichtingengaring zou doen!

Landuyt zegt ook dat de staatsveiligheid niet genoeg wordt gecontroleerd?

Daar moet ik even om lachen, zij het dan groen. Wij zijn de meest gecontroleerde dienst van België! Eerst en vooral heb je een interne controle. Daarnaast is er het Comité I. Dat bestaat uit drie magistraten en het heeft een eigen enquêtedienst. Dat Comité I kan bij ons alles onderzoeken en mag alle documenten inkijken. Alle burgers kunnen er klacht indienen. Vervolgens heb je nog de parlementaire begeleidingscommissie van vijf senatoren. En dan is er nog de BIM-commissie die al onze specifieke en uitzonderlijke methoden controleert. Voor de zwaarste methoden moeten we zelfs vooraf toestemming vragen. Wat Landuyt zegt is lachwekkend. Zeker als je bedenkt dat in België meerdere privé-inlichtingendiensten werken, die door niemand worden gecontroleerd en die doorgaans wel veel geld hebben om hun ding te doen.

Moet er toch niet meer transparantie zijn?

Algemene transparantie kan natuurlijk niet bij een inlichtingendienst. Wij zijn echter wel zelf vragende partij voor de grootst mogelijke transparantie naar onze controle-organen toe. Voor zover die mensen een veiligheidsmachtiging hebben natuurlijk, want het gaat om zeer geheime informatie. En daar knelt het schoentje bij de parlementaire begeleidingscommissie. Deze vijf senatoren hebben géén veiligheidsmachtiging. Zij mogen dus onze geheime informatie niet inzien en wij mogen ze hen ook niet geven. Dat is nu eenmaal de wet. De leden van de begeleidingscommissie vinden dat ze geen veiligheidsmachtiging nodig hebben, want ze willen geen onderzoek naar hun betrouwbaarheid. Wij zijn verkozen, zo zeggen ze. Het Comité I moet zich bij hen dan in acrobatische bochten wringen om toch nog min of meer iets uit onze rapporten te kunnen zeggen.

Ik wil de senatoren van de begeleidingscommissie responsabiliseren. Nu sluiten ze zich af van alle geheime informatie. En het is toch absurd dat een kuisvrouw bij ons een veiligheidsmachtiging moet hebben maar de parlementsleden die ons controleren niet. Wie een veiligheidsmachtiging heeft, mag alles inzien, maar dat betekent niet dat hij alles hierover mag zeggen. Dit schept dus bepaalde verantwoordelijkheden.

Doet de staatsveiligheid niet nodeloos geheimzinnig?

Nee, want de inhoud van onze fenomeenanalyses wordt best niet publiek gemaakt om drie redenen. Eén: de openbare veiligheid kan in het gedrang komen als de bestudeerde groepering precies weet wat wij van hen weten. Twee: onze menselijke bronnen bij die groeperingen kunnen gevaar lopen. Niet alleen zullen ze misschien hun werk moet stopzetten, in extreme gevallen kan ook hun leven in gevaar zijn. En drie: buitenlandse inlichtingendiensten spelen ons nu nogal wat geheime informatie door. Als die bekend wordt, zullen we die informatie niet meer kregen. En waar staan we dan?

Is de begeleidingscommissie niet wat klein? Zowel Groen als het VB pleiten voor een uitbreiding en een proportionele samenstelling.

Of vijf senatoren van de vier grootste partijen volstaan als begeleidingscommissie: daarover kan gediscussieerd worden. In Nederland is de begeleidingscommissie samengesteld uit de fractievoorzitters van de partijen in het parlement. Misschien is dat democratischer. Maar het is niet aan mij om hierover een mening te uiten. In ieder geval zouden alle leden een veiligheidsmachtiging moeten hebben.

Komt U naar de Kamer om op vragen van politici te antwoorden?

Dat heeft weinig zin. Het probleem van de begeleidingscommissie stelt zich daar in het groot. In plaats van vijf senatoren zonder veiligheidsmachtiging zit ik daar tegenover 150 kamerleden zonder veiligheidsmachtiging. In plaats van een gesloten zitting heb je daar een openbare zitting. Zo’n hoorzitting heeft dus geen zin, want ik kan er toch geen geheime informatie bekend maken, ook niet achter gesloten deuren.

Volgt Uw dienst politici?

Nee, wij volgen geen politieke partijen, parlementsleden of politici as such. Maar wij bestuderen wel het terrorisme, het extremisme, het radicalisme van extreem-rechts en extreem-links. Mogelijk dat dan politici in beeld komen, als ze met die fenomenen verbonden zijn, maar ze worden niet geviseerd. We bestuderen deze verschijnselen op lange termijn en voor zover ze een bedreiging zijn voor de democratie en voor de staat. Daarom volgen we ook economische spionage en gevaarlijke sekten op. Net als de activiteiten van allerlei buitenlandse inlichtingendiensten op ons grondgebied, al dan niet privé. We willen weten of en hoe zij onze democratie, onze economie en onze samenleving beïnvloeden.

Volgt U ook het nationalisme?

Nee.

In Uw Scientologyrapport werden toch politici genoemd?

Ja, maar wel als personen die door deze sekten benaderd zijn, niet als geviseerde doelwitten van onze fenomeenanalyse. Het Comité I had dit rapport trouwens al sinds einde oktober vorig jaar. Als zij hadden gevonden dat er problemen mee waren, dan hadden ze hier uitleg kunnen komen vragen en dan mochten ze alle nodige documenten meenemen. Ze lieten ons echter niets weten en zagen er dus geen graten in.

Had U niet de minister apart moeten inlichten?

De minister heeft dit rapport ook gekregen. Soms voegen we er nog een aparte nota bij waarin we de aandacht erop vestigen dat politici in een rapport worden genoemd. Als we de regels strikt interpreteren, hadden we dat misschien moeten doen. En we deden het niet. Daarover valt te discussiëren. Maar wij zagen er dus geen graten in.

Waarover maakte u nog fenomeenanalyses?

Dit onze derde fenomeenanalyse. Ze was 130 pagina’s en beschreef de pogingen van enkele sektarische organisaties om ons sociale, politieke, economische en financiële leven binnen te dringen. De analyse liep over meer dan twee legislaturen.

Eerdere fenomeenanalyses gingen over het islamitisch extremisme in België en (staatsgestuurde) inmenging (pogingen tot beïnvloeding door andere buitenlandse veiligheidsdiensten, nvdr).

Wie krijgt deze analyses?

Deze analyse over Scientology ging naar 32 mensen van buiten de staatsveiligheid én 1 naar het Comité I. Fenomeenanalyses worden alleen verstuurd aan mensen met een veiligheidsmachtiging. Om die te krijgen worden ze grondig onderzocht op hun betrouwbaarheid. En als ze die hebben weten ze ook dat ze moeten zwijgen over de geheime informatie die ze te lezen krijgen. Anders kunnen ze vijf jaar cel krijgen. Maar naast die veiligheidsmachtiging moeten ze die analyse ook absoluut nodig hebben voor hun functie. Deze twee voorwaarden moeten altijd samen vervuld zijn.

Waarom kreeg de Koning die analyse?

De Koning krijgt maar een kleine minderheid van onze rapporten, niet eens de helft. We sturen ze naar de mensen op zijn dienst met een veiligheidsmachtiging, als we dat nodig vinden. De Koning ontmoet ambassadeurs en mensen uit de samenleving. Het kan dus wel nuttig zijn dat hij sommige dingen weet vooraleer hij contacten legt.

De staatsveiligheid is een gewone administratie van Justitie. Kan de minister van Justitie zeggen wie U moet volgen en wie U niet mag volgen?

Onze opdrachten staan in de wet. Binnen dat kader bepaalt het Ministerieel Comité voor Inlichtingen en Veiligheid, die alle veiligheidsdiensten overkoepelt en onder leiding staat van de premier, de prioriteiten. En het College Inlichtingen en Veiligheid ziet toe op de uitvoering ervan. Wij moeten zelf ook een activiteitenplan opstellen waarin we duidelijk maken hoeveel personeelsleden we op welke opdrachten willen zetten. Onze activiteiten worden dus op een gestructureerde manier aangestuurd door Comités en Colleges waar de minister van Justitie mee inzit.

Ik heb echter geen weet van een minister van Justitie die de staatsveiligheid heeft verboden om een bepaald verschijnsel te onderzoeken.

Volgens het Comité I hebt U officieel 650 personeelsleden. Is dat genoeg?

Over ons personeelssterkte communiceren wij niet. Maar ik zou wel graag de 100 mensen bijkrijgen die wij volgens ons kader momenteel te weinig hebben. Maar ik begrijp ook wel dat men moet bezuinigen. Toch mag je niet vergeten dat onze bevoegdheden de jongste vijftien jaar enorm zijn uitgebreid: de strijd tegen terrorisme, radicalisme en extremisme vereisen flink wat meer mankracht dan vroeger, net als de bescherming van het wetenschappelijk en economisch potentiëel. Ook het aantal onderzoeken voor veiligheidsmachtigingen is exponentieel toegenomen.

Niet alleen zijn onze taken uitgebreider geworden, maar de kosten stijgen almaar meer met de index en de aanwervingsprocedures duren lang.

Binnen onze taken is het werk ook gestegen. In Brussel heb je momenteel zeker zoveel spionnen als in Washington of Genève, want de Navo en de EU zijn hier. Er zijn ook heel wat debatten die interessant kunnen zijn voor spionnen: het energiedebat met zijn uitstap uit de kernenergie en zijn mogelijke compensaties. Daar zijn veel belangen mee gemoeid.

Wil U ook taken afstoten?

Een probleem is de bescherming van staatshoofden en andere VIP’s die op bezoek komen. Wij moeten daar ook voor zorgen. In 2012 hadden wij zo 161 beschermingsopdrachten, waaronder vijf permanente 24 uur op 24 en zeven dagen op zeven. Dat probleem is enorm toegenomen door al die Europese toppen. Het vereist veel personeel, auto’s en financiële middelen. Dit is eigenlijk geen taak voor een inlichtingendienst. Wij zijn een van de weinige inlichtingendiensten ter wereld die zo’n taak heeft. Ofwel richt men dus een speciaal korps op voor dat werk. Dat kan bestaan uit leden van de federale politie, militairen, bepaalde van onze mensen. En daar ben ik eigenlijk voor. Ofwel behoudt men de huidige toestand, maar dan is veel meer personeel, auto’s en geld nodig.

In Mortsel is Robin Libert, het hoofd van Uw dienst analyses, oppositieleider voor Open Vld in de gemeenteraad. Kan hij een politiek mandaat cumuleren met zijn taak als analist van de staatsveiligheid?

Het is wettelijk niet verboden en er zijn in die vele jaren dat hij politiek actief is nooit problemen mee geweest. Hij zamelt zelf geen informatie in en hij doet ook de analyses niet zelf he. Ik heb geen verslagen gelezen waaruit bleek dat hij partijdig was.

Ik begrijp wel de drukte die hierover is ontstaan, maar de meeste ambtenaren mogen nu eenmaal aan politiek doen. Alleen sommigen mogen het niet, zoals bv. politiemensen. Op de staatsveiligheid heb je zelfs twee statuten op dat vlak: de inspecteurs van de buitendiensten die de informatie over gevaarlijke groepen inzamelen, mogen géén politiek mandaat hebben. Dat staat zo in hun statuut. De medewerkers van onze analysedienst hebben echter geen speciaal statuut, hoewel ze daar al lang om vragen. Zij zijn dus gewone rijksambtenaren, die onder de regels van 1937 vallen. En daarin staat niet dat een ambtenaar geen politiek mandaat mag hebben.

Over de vraag of een politiek mandaat hun neutraliteit schendt mag een debat gevoerd worden. Maar dan voor alle ambtenaren. Niet alleen voor die van de staatsveiligheid. En de regeling moet ook niet te ingewikkeld worden. Als magistraat ben ik persoonlijk geneigd om zo’n politieke cumul te verbieden, maar het moet dan voor alle ambtenaren zo zijn. Ook Libert zelf is voor een aangpast statuut, waarin het cumulverbod kan worden opgenomen.

…

16 FEBRUARI 2013 – Binnenland

Find this story at 16 February 2013

©1994-2013 Concentra Media Groep N.V.

Software that tracks people on social media created by defence firm

Exclusive: Raytheon’s Riot program mines social network data like a ‘Google for spies’, drawing ire from civil rights groups

A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites.

A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an “extreme-scale analytics” system created by Raytheon, the world’s fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Raytheon says it has not sold the software – named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – to any clients.

But the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing “trillions of entities” from cyberspace.

The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns.

The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a “Google for spies” and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.

Using Riot it is possible to gain an entire snapshot of a person’s life – their friends, the places they visit charted on a map – in little more than a few clicks of a button.

In the video obtained by the Guardian, it is explained by Raytheon’s “principal investigator” Brian Urch that photographs users post on social networks sometimes contain latitude and longitude details – automatically embedded by smartphones within “exif header data.”

Riot pulls out this information, showing not only the photographs posted onto social networks by individuals, but also the location at which the photographs were taken.

“We’re going to track one of our own employees,” Urch says in the video, before bringing up pictures of “Nick,” a Raytheon staff member used as an example target. With information gathered from social networks, Riot quickly reveals Nick frequently visits Washington Nationals Park, where on one occasion he snapped a photograph of himself posing with a blonde haired woman.

“We know where Nick’s going, we know what Nick looks like,” Urch explains, “now we want to try to predict where he may be in the future.”

Riot can display on a spider diagram the associations and relationships between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them.

The video shows that Nick, who posts his location regularly on Foursquare, visits a gym frequently at 6am early each week. Urch quips: “So if you ever did want to try to get hold of Nick, or maybe get hold of his laptop, you might want to visit the gym at 6am on a Monday.”

Mining from public websites for law enforcement is considered legal in most countries. In February last year, for instance, the FBI requested help to develop a social-media mining application for monitoring “bad actors or groups”.

However, Ginger McCall, an attorney at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre, said the Raytheon technology raised concerns about how troves of user data could be covertly collected without oversight or regulation.

“Social networking sites are often not transparent about what information is shared and how it is shared,” McCall said. “Users may be posting information that they believe will be viewed only by their friends, but instead, it is being viewed by government officials or pulled in by data collection services like the Riot search.”

Raytheon, which made sales worth an estimated $25bn (£16bn) in 2012, did not want its Riot demonstration video to be revealed on the grounds that it says it shows a “proof of concept” product that has not been sold to any clients.

Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems department, said in an email: “Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation’s rapidly changing security needs.

…

Ryan Gallagher
The Guardian, Sunday 10 February 2013 15.20 GMT

Find this story at 10 February 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Raytheon’s “Riot” Social-Network Data Mining Software

A video touting software created by Raytheon to mine data from social networks has been attracting an increasing amount of attention in the past few days, since it was uncovered by Ryan Gallagher at the Guardian.

As best as I can tell from the video and Gallagher’s reporting, Raytheon’s “Riot” software gathers up only publicly available information from companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. In that respect, it appears to be a conceptually unremarkable, fairly unimaginative piece of work. At the same time, by aspiring to carry out “large-scale analytics” on Americans’ social networking data—and to do so, apparently, on behalf of national security and law enforcement agencies—the project raises a number of red flags.

In the video, we see a demonstration of how social networking data—such as Foursquare checkins—is used to predict the schedule of a sample subject, “Nick.” The host of the video concludes,

Six a.m. appears to be the most frequently visited time at the gym. So if you ever did want to try to get ahold of Nick—or maybe get ahold of his laptop—you might want to visit the gym at 6:00 a.m. on Monday.

(The reference to the laptop is certainly jarring. Remember, this is an application apparently targeted at law enforcement and national security agencies, not at ordinary individuals. Given this, it sounds to me like the video is suggesting that Riot could be used as a way to schedule a black-bag job to plant spyware on someone’s laptop.)

At the end of the video, there’s also a brief visual showing how Riot can use such data to carry out a link analysis of a subject. In link analysis, people’s communications and other connections to each other are mapped out and analyzed. It first came to the attention of many people in and out of government via an influential 2002 slide presentation by data mining expert Jeff Jonas showing how the 9/11 hijackers might have easily been linked together had the government focused on the two who were already wanted by the authorities. As Jonas later emphasized in the face of attempts to make too much of this:

Both Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar were already known to the US government to be very bad men. They should have never been let into the US, yet they were living in the US and were hiding in plain sight—using their real names…. The whole point of my 9/11 analysis was that the government did not need mounds of data, did not need new technology, and in fact did not need any new laws to unravel this event!

Nevertheless, link analysis appears to have been wholeheartedly embraced by the national security establishment, especially the NSA, and to be justifying unconstitutionally large amounts of data collection on innocent people.

We don’t know that Raytheon’s software will ever play any such role—it just appears to aspire to do so. As with any tool, everything depends on how it’s used. But the fact is, we’re living in an age where disparate pieces of information about us are being aggressively mined and aggregated to discover new things about us. When we post something online, it’s all too natural to feel as though our audience is just our friends—even when we know intellectually that it’s really the whole world. Various institutions are gleefully exploiting that gap between our felt and actual audiences (a gap that is all too often worsened by online companies that don’t make it clear enough to their users who the full audience for their information is). Individuals need to be aware of this and take steps to compensate, such as double-checking their privacy settings and being aware of the full ramifications of data that they post.

At the same time, the government has no business rooting around people’s social network postings—even those that are voluntarily publicly posted—unless it has specific, individualized suspicion that a person is involved in wrongdoing. Among the many problems with government “large-scale analytics” of social network information is the prospect that government agencies will blunderingly use these techniques to tag, target and watchlist people coughed up by programs such as Riot, or to target them for further invasions of privacy based on incorrect inferences. The chilling effects of such activities, while perhaps gradual, would be tremendous.

Finally, let me just make the same point we’ve made with regards to privacy-invading technologies such as drones and cellphone and GPS tracking: these kinds of tools should be developed transparently. We don’t really know what Riot can do. And while we at the ACLU don’t think the government should be rummaging around individuals’ social network data without good reason, even a person who might disagree with us on that question could agree that it’s a question that should not be decided in secret. The balance between the intrusive potential of new technologies and government power is one that should be decided openly and democratically.

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:08pm

Find this story at 12 February 2013

© ACLU

‘Google for spies’ software mines social networks to track users’ movements and could even predict what you’ll do next

Raytheon’s Riot software sifts through data from suspects’ online accounts
Critics say it will be used for monitoring citizens’ online lives
Similar to Geotime software bought by London’s Met police two years ago

New software which mines data from social networks to track people’s movements and even predict future behaviour poses a ‘very real threat to personal freedom’, civil rights groups warned today.

Multinational defence contractor Raytheon has developed the ‘extreme-scale analytics’ software which can sift through vast quantities of data from services like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Critics have already dubbed it a ‘Google for spies’ and say it is likely to be used by governments as a means of monitoring and tracking people online to detect signs of dissent.

‘Google for spies’: A screengrab of a video demonstrating Raytheon’s Riot software, which mines the personal data from social networking websites to track people’s movements and even predict their future behaviour

Raytheon claims it has not yet sold the software – known as Rapid Information Overlay Technology, or Riot – to any clients but admitted it had shared the technology with the U.S. government in 2010.

However, it is similar to another social tracking software known as Geotime which the U.S. military already uses and was in recent years purchased for trials by London’s Metropolitan Police.

Such tools are likely to form the backbone of future surveillance systems which will exploit the information we share online to automatically monitor citizens’ behaviour.

Val Swain, from the Network for Police Monitoring, told MailOnline that police had already publicly indicated they want to use ‘advanced analytical software’ to keep tabs on social media.

‘The HMIC report ‘rules of engagement’ on the policing of the riots included a recommendation for the development of a ‘data-mining engine’ to scan across publicly available social media,’ she said.

‘Technologically advanced methods now exist that make this possible.

‘This [kind of] software is extremely powerful, able to identify and monitor people who are ‘of interest to the police”, even if they have committed no criminal activity.

‘The software identifies ‘people, organisations and concepts’ and even sentiments, as the software is able to automatically pick up on ‘emotional states’.

‘It was also recommended that this software be used as part of a vast “intelligence hub” to be developed by the new National Crime Agency.’

There’s nowhere to hide: The software aggregates data from suspects’ social media profiles to build a detailed picture of their movements, their current whereabouts and where they are likely to go next

A restricted video put together by Raytheon as a ‘proof of concept’ demonstration to potential buyers was obtained by British daily the Guardian and published on its website today.

It shows an executive for the security firm, Brian Urch, explaining how photos posted on social media from smartphones frequently contain metadata revealing the precise location where they were taken.

As an example, Mr Urch demonstrates how this information can be used to track a Raytheon worker called ‘Nick’, whose social media profiles reveal he frequently visits Washington National Park.

Nick is pictured on one occasion posing with a blonde woman, revealing to any agency using Riot what he looks like.

‘Now we want to predict where he may be in the future,’ Mr Urch said. He demonstrates how Riot can display a diagram of the relationships between individuals online by looking at their Twitter communications.

We know your friends: As an example, the video shows how a Raytheon worker called Nick can be tracked. This is an image he posted onto a social network, which can be analysed to reveal the location it was taken

The software is also able to mine information from Facebook and track GPS location data from Foursquare, which over 25million people use on their smartphones to share their whereabouts with friends.

This Foursquare data can be analysed to show the top 10 locations visited by individuals using the service, and also at what times they went there.

Nick, for example, frequently checks into Foursquare at a particular gym at 6am.

‘So if you ever did want to try to get hold of Nick, or maybe get hold of his laptop, you might want to visit the gym at 6am on a Monday,’ says Mr Urch.

Riot’s features are similar to that of Geotime, which MailOnline revealed two years ago had been bought by the Met Police.

Geotime aggregates information gathered from social networking sites, GPS devices like the iPhone, mobile phones, financial transactions and IP network logs to build a detailed picture of an individual’s movements.

The Met, Britain’s largest police force, confirmed at the time that it had purchased the software and refused to rule out its use in investigating public order disturbances.

Open book: This pie chart reveals the top 10 places that Nick has visited, as harvested from his Foursquare account

How to find Nick: This graphic breaks down the details of the times and dates that Nick has visited the gym

The effectiveness of both Riot and Geotime would be multiplied by plans by the UK government to install ‘black box’ spy devices on Britain’s internet and mobile infrastructure to track all communications traffic.

Those plans, part of the Data Communications Bill, have been stalled by opposition from some Liberal Democrats, but an influential committee of MPs last week revealed that British spy agencies were keen for them to go ahead.

The spy network would rely on a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection to log data from communications ranging from online services like Facebook and Twitter, Skype calls with family members and visits to pornographic websites.

The government argues that swift access to communications data is critical to the fight against terrorism, paedophilia and other high-level crime, but it has been delayed after the Liberal Democrats dropped support for the bill.

Already in use: Two years ago London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed it had purchased Geotime, another program with similar online tracking functions to that of Raytheon’s Riot software

If it were to go ahead, such a spy network would offer a wealth of easily accessible data for software such as Riot and Geotime to work with.
HOW RIOT COULD BE PART OF THE GOVERNMENT’S SPYING PLANS

Social media tracking software like Riot and Geotime could have their effectiveness multiplied by plans to install ‘black box’ surveillance devices across the UK’s internet and mobile communications infrastructure.

At the moment spy agencies rely on communications providers willingly revealing personal information from users’ accounts to investigate suspects’ communications.

But a report by an influential committee of MPs has revealed such agencies are keen to implement a nationwide surveillance regime that would give them automatic access to the data.

The network will rely on a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection to log data from communications ranging from online services like Facebook and Twitter, to Skype calls with family members and visits to pornographic websites.

Authorities say swift access to communications is critical to the fight against terrorism and other high-level crime, but civil liberties have reacted with outrage, saying that the technology will give the government a greater surveillance capability than has ever been seen before.

MI5 chief Jonathan Evans told the committee: ‘Access to communications data of one sort or another is very important indeed. It’s part of the backbone of the way in which we would approach investigations.

‘I think I would be accurate in saying there are no significant investigations that we undertake across the service that don’t use communications data because of its ability to tell you the who and the when and the where of your target’s activities.’

A key part of security agencies’ plans is a ‘filter’ which would make the data collected easily searchable – a function that could be carried out by software like Riot.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, explained that this would work as a kind of search engine for everyone’s private data, linking it together from the various online and telecoms accounts people use to communicate.

‘This would put data from your mobile phone, email, web history and phones together, so the police can tell who your friends are, what your opinions are, where you’ve been and with who,’ he said.

‘It could make instant surveillance of everything you do possible at the click of a button.’

Either program could form the backbone of the government’s planned ‘filter’, a kind of search engine for personal data described by the report from Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee published last week.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for freedom online, explained: ‘This would put data from your mobile phone, email, web history and phones together, so the police can tell who your friends are, what your opinions are, where you’ve been and with who.

‘It could make instant surveillance of everything you do possible at the click of a button.’

Ms Swain revealed that Raytheon is just one company which is developing this kind of software for sale to governments and domestic spy agencies.

‘IBM are also marketing analytic software which has this functionality, and there are a number of others,’ she said.

‘It is being used by companies who want to identify, understand and influence existing and potential customers, and it is extremely expensive.

‘The police will use this, not just to investigate crime, but to identify and stop crime and disorder, even before it happens.

‘Some may consider that a good thing – but the level of social control involved poses a very real threat to individual freedom.

‘The software will inevitably be used to monitor political dissent and activity, as well as crime and disorder. Surveillance already exercises a ‘chilling effect’ over basic freedoms – this can only make things a great deal worse.’

Her sentiments were echoed by Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch.

He said: ‘Privacy as we know it is being slowly eroded and it’s not just our friends that are looking at what we share.

‘A wide range of companies are trying to develop tools that capture data online and analyse it in difference ways, exploiting the growing amount of information we share online and the wider opportunities to track us.

‘If the only barrier is the amount of computing power at your disposal, clearly Governments have the potential to use these tools to profile and analyse their populations in ways never before possible.

‘This kind of tool joins the dots of our online lives, exploiting data for whatever purpose the user wants.

‘The best way to protect yourself is to control the data you share, but Governments around the world need to be clear with their citizens how they are using these kinds of tools and if they are trying to search for criminals before they have committed a crime.’

…

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 10:19 GMT, 11 February 2013 | UPDATED: 12:13 GMT, 11 February 2013

Find this story at 11 February 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Second police spy unit stole dead children’s IDs

Met police’s deputy assistant commissioner admits to Commons committee that both units broke internal guidelines

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, criticised the Met police for not apologising for the ‘gruesome’ practice. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Police chiefs have admitted that a second undercover unit stole the identities of dead children in the late 1990s or even more recently in a series of operations to infiltrate political activists.

Growing evidence of the scale of the unauthorised technique – nicknamed the “jackal run” after its fictional depiction in Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal – now means the number of families affected could total more than 100.

The Metropolitan police’s deputy assistant commissioner Patricia Gallan told a parliamentary inquiry that both secret police units broke internal guidelines when they employed the technique, which MPs criticised as “gruesome” and “very distressing”.

She had been called to give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee following the Guardian’s disclosures that the Metropolitan police had secretly used the tactic without consulting or informing the children’s parents in order to bolster their fake persona when operating undercover.

But, despite mounting concern over the practice, she declined to apologise to the families of the children until Scotland Yard had completed an internal investigation.

She said: “I do absolutely appreciate the concern and I understand the upset and why people are very distressed about this.”

Keith Vaz, chairman of the committee, told her: “I’m disappointed that you’ve not used the opportunity to be able to send out a message to those parents who have children who may have had their identity being used that the Met is actually sorry that this has happened.”

In another development, a family who believe that their son’s identity was stolen as recently as 2003 has lodged a complaint against Scotland Yard. Barbara Shaw, the mother of a baby who died after two days, is pressing the police to reveal the truth and to issue an apology. She said she was deeply upset to discover that her child’s identity was used in this way. “He is still my baby. I’ll never forget him,” Shaw said.

The Guardian has disclosed that, over three decades, undercover police officers in a covert unit known as the special demonstration squad had been hunting through birth and death records to find children who had died in infancy. Once they found a suitable candidate, they then created an alter ego to infiltrate political groups for up to 10 years. They were issued with official records such as national insurance numbers and driving licences to make their personas more credible, in case the campaigners in the groups they were spying on became suspicious and began to investigate them.

The SDS adopted the technique after it was founded in 1968. The evidence suggested that the unit stopped using it in the mid-1990s when officials records became more computerised.

However it now appears that the tactic has been used more recently by a second unit which started operating in 1999.

The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), which is still running, was also tasked with gathering intelligence on protesters.

Gallan told the committee that the practice “has been from the evidence I have seen confined to two units, the SDS and the NPOIU”.

Pressed by MPs on whether the squads had gone “rogue” and had gone out of control, Gallan said they were operating at the time outside of police’s guidelines for undercover operations. “From what I have seen, the practices at that time would not be following the national guidelines.” She said the units had departed from the accepted practices, but she had yet to find out why.

MPs also heard allegations that a suspected undercover police officer stole the identity of the dead child, Rod Richardson, when he posed as an anticapitalist protester for three years.

Jules Carey, the lawyer for the family, told the committee : “I am instructed by one family who have a son who was born and died in 1973 and we believe that a police officer used the name Rod Richardson which is the name of the child and was deployed as an undercover police officer in about 2000 to 2003 using that name and infiltrated various political groups.

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Tuesday 5 February 2013 21.15 GMT

Find this story at 5 February 2013 
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Britse undercoveragenten stalen identiteit van 80 dode kinderen

Agenten van de Britse Metropolitan Police, de grootste politiedienst van het
land, hebben tussen 1968 en 1994 de identiteit van ongeveer 80 dode kinderen gestolen. Ze gebruikten de aliassen bij undercoveroperaties zonder dat de ouders van de overleden kinderen op de hoogte waren van deze werkwijze. Dat blijkt uit een onderzoek van The Guardian.

Het lijkt op een spionagethriller maar over het Kanaal was het gedurende drie decennia een vaak gebruikte manier om personen te volgen: de identiteit stelen van kinderen die het leven hadden gelaten in een ongeval of kinderen die bezweken waren aan de gevolgen van een slepende ziekte.
1968

De praktijken zouden begonnen zijn in 1968 met als doel het bespioneren van groeperingen die protesteerden tegen onder meer kernenergie, racisme, oorlog en het kapitalisme. Agenten van de Metropolitan Police gaven leden van de speciale eenheid Special Demonstration Squad de toestemming om de aliassen te gebruiken. De agenten kregen zelfs (valse) officiële documenten als paspoorten en rijbewijzen en gingen kijken bij de huizen waar de kinderen waren opgegroeid.

Het hele proces werd “jackal run” genoemd, naar de roman ‘The Day of the Jackal’, waarin auteur Frederick Forsyth zulke praktijken omschrijft.
Stasi

Een voormalig lid van de Special Demonstration Squad – de dienst werd in 2008 ontmanteld – vergelijkt de praktijken zelfs met die van de Stasi, de geheime dienst van de DDR.

…

05/02 Buitenland

Find this story at 5 February 2013

©1994-2013 Concentra Media Groep N.V.

Scotland Yard ‘eco-spy’ Mark Kennedy dragged into French anarchist plot

A former Scotland Yard officer who infiltrated groups of environmental “terrorists” has been dragged into a high-profile investigation in France over claims he provided “fantasist” information leading to 10 activists’ arrest.

Mark Kennedy, 42, who spent seven years posing as “ecowarrior” Mark Stone, was exposed as a police spy in Britain last year following the collapse of a prosecution against environmental activists.

During his undercover life, he visited 11 countries on more than 40 occasions, fielding information to the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit, now the National Domestic Extremism Unit.

Since he was unmasked, 20 convictions in cases he was involved in against activists have been quashed in the court of appeal. He was also sued by three female eco-activists for being “duped” into having sexual relations with a policeman.

Now his name has cropped up in the investigation into French activists over an alleged anarchist plot to overthrow the state.

Their lawyers insist that the investigation is unfairly based on information Mr Kennedy allegedly provided to his UK police unit, including claims the activists discussed and “practised” building improvised explosive devices.
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The French leftists are under formal investigation for allegedly sabotaging high-speed train lines – seen as a high-profile symbol of the French state – in November 2008, causing massive delays but no injuries. They deny any wrongdoing.

Mr Kennedy’s role in the inquiry could see the case quashed.

The so-called “Tarnac affair” erupted in November 2008 when 100 French police raided the tiny rural village of Tarnac, arresting anti-capitalists running a communal farm and village shop.

The government of then President Nicolas Sarkozy alleged they were dangerous “anarcho-terrorists” hoping to overthrow the state.

French sociology graduate Julien Coupat was accused of being the group’s “ringleader” and author of a seminal work, The Coming Insurrection.

It has now emerged that British police helped French prosecutors build a case against the campaigners by confirming Mr Coupat’s presence at two activists’ meetings in France and one in New York. In one of them, it said, “the making of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) was both discussed and practised”.

…

By Henry Samuel, Paris

7:17PM GMT 08 Nov 2012

Find this story at 8 November 2012

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

[Le Procès du Forgeron] « Qui vole un œuf, viole un bœuf » Procès du forgeron de Tarnac : « On incrimine ma volonté »

Pour avoir refusé de donner son ADN aux officiers de l’anti-terrorisme, Charles Torres, « le forgeron de l’affaire Tarnac », lavé de tous soupçons depuis, est passé devant la justice. Le délibéré sera rendu par le tribunal de grande instance de Rouen le 6 mars 2013.

Mercredi 6 janvier 2013, Charles Torres était jugé pour refus de se soumettre au prélèvement d’ADN. Prélèvement demandé par la cellule anti-terroriste lors d’une garde-à-vue justifiée par sa possible appartenance à l’affaire Tarnac. Au moment de cette garde-à-vue, le 23 février 2012, Charles Torres, forgeron de profession, est soupçonné d’être l’artisan des crochets qui auront servi en 2008 à saboter des caténaires de la SNCF.

Le palais de justice de Rouen accueille donc le jour de l’audience du « Forgeron de Tarnac », tous ses soutiens, sa famille et une bonne dizaine de journalistes alléchés par cette audience connexe à l’affaire Tarnac. Quelques policiers, arnaché de gilets pare-balles et de talkie-walkies. Normal, c’est le procès d’une personne qui soupçonnée début 2012 d’association de malfaiteurs dans une entreprise terroriste.

La juge aura dû, en début d’audience faire taire le public venu en nombre pour soutenir Charles Torres. Celui-ci a souhaité lire devant le tribunal « sa plaidoirie » car il n’est « pas très à l’aise à l’oral ». L’homme de 28 ans, spécialisé dans la forge médiévale, a commencé son diatribe timidement, posant la question qui le taraude : « Pourquoi suis-je ici devant vous aujourd’hui ? Je ne le sais pas, personne ne le sait. À part peut-être, l’officier de la DCRI que j’ai vu arpenter ce tribunal aujourd’hui, avec une veste de moto. »

Le forgeron a eu à cœur de pousser les traits d’ironie, malgré sa gêne à parler publiquement. Il s’est même retourné une fois vers l’assemblée pour chercher du regard un soutien. « Adressez-vous au tribunal », le reprendra la juge. Après avoir raconté sa garde à vue, Charles Torres, cultivé et aux mots littéraires, donne ses hypothèses sur les raisons de sa présence devant le tribunal, s’appuyant sur sa connaissance du droit, de l’histoire et sa culture politique. « Dans refus de se soumettre au prélèvement biologique, il y a refus de se soumettre », commence-t-il, « On incrimine ici ma volonté. »

Le forgeron de Roncherolles-sur-le-Vivier explique ensuite pourquoi il s’est refusé à ce prélèvement d’ADN : « Je m’oppose au fichage génétique. » Il rappelle l’historique du Fichier national automatisé des empreintes génétiques (Fnaeg) initialement mis en place en 1998 pour ficher les délinquants sexuels, donc les personnes jugées coupables par la justice. Voulant prouver le ridicule de sa présence au tribunal, il se joue de l’adage « Qui vole un œuf, vole un bœuf » : « Qui vole un œuf, viole un bœuf. »

Sans désarmer, Charles Torres continue de justifier son refus de se soumettre, rappelant l’affaire Élodie Kulik, violée puis assassinée (2002). En 2011, les gendarmes parviennent à confondre l’un de ses agresseurs grâce à l’ADN de son père déjà fiché. Le forgeron s’appuiera sur ce détournement du Fnaeg : « Aujourd’hui, donner mon ADN, c’est donner celui de mon frère jumeau, mes parents et mes descendants ». Il conclut : « L’ADN est un instrument de contrôle. » Ce quart d’heure de discours est applaudi par l’assemblée.

Contre Charles Torres, le procureur a requis une peine « d’avertissement » : un mois de prison avec sursis. Ce qui ne suffit évidemment pas à Me William Bourdon et Me Marie Dosé, avocats de la défense. Ils s’appuient sur la pauvreté du dossier entre les mains du tribunal de Rouen. « Le tribunal de grande instance de Nanterre vous a confié un dossier de misère. Ce que vous savez, c’est ce que la presse vous a dit et ce nous vous disons », argumente Me Dosé.

Au dossier, quelques procès-verbaux, parfois non datés, ou des notifications de mise en garde à vue de Charles Torres. Le tribunal n’a pas accès au dossier de l’affaire Tarnac dans lequel figurent les raisons pour lesquelles le forgeron a été soumis à une garde à vue. « On vous empêche de vérifier s’il y avait des raisons plausibles pour le détenir » et donc pour lui demander son ADN.

Et Me Dosé d’avancer : « Dans la procédure Tarnac, Charles Torres n’est rien sauf les conséquences de son refus » de se soumettre au prélèvement biologique. Dans leur plaidoirie, les deux avocats du forgeron frôlent la violation de l’instruction judiciaire, sans jamais vraiment tomber dedans. « Les policiers mentent au tribunal, il n’y avait aucune raison pour le mettre en garde à vue, vous devez sanctionner cette manipulation judiciaire », reprend Me Bourdon qui considère le dossier Charles Torres comme « un vide intersidéral ».

Le tribunal rendra son délibéré le 6 mars 2013.

L’affaire du Forgeron soulève une question de constitutionnalité

Charles Torrès est jugé pour avoir refusé de donner son ADN aux policiers de l’anti-terrorisme dans le cadre de l’affaire Tarnac. Pour aller plus loin, ses avocats ont tenté de mettre en doute la constitutionnalité du prélèvement ADN à répétition et du fichage de tout un chacun. Le délibéré sera rendu le 6 mars 2013.

Le procès de Charles Torres, s’est ouvert ce mercredi 6 janvier 2013, au tribunal de grande instance de Rouen. Il est jugé pour avoir refusé de donner son ADN lors d’une garde à vue dans le cadre de l’affaire Tarnac. Ses avocats, Me William Bourdon et Me Marie Dosé, tous les deux au dossier de l’affaire Tarnac, essaieront de poser une question prioritaire de constitutionnalité (QPC).

Entrée en vigueur en 2010, la QPC permet de mettre en doute la constitutionnalité d’une loi déjà promulguée. Elle peut être posée par n’importe quel citoyen. On la pose devant un tribunal qui décide ou non de la transmettre à la cour de cassation.

Dans l’affaire de Charles Torres, ses avocats mettent en doute la constitutionnalité de l’article 706-56 du code de procédure pénal. Cet article encadre le prélèvement de l’empreinte biologique. Pour Me Bourdon, le dossier de Charles Torres, si petit et si peu extraordinaire soit-il, permettrait « d’envoyer un message puissant aux législateurs ». L’avocat remet en question l’alinéa 4 de l’article. Cet alinéa qui permet qu’en cas de refus de prélèvement, les officiers de police judiciaire peuvent récupérer l’ADN s’il est détaché du corps. « Lorsque Charles Torres refuse de se soumettre, il ne sait pas, que dans son dos, ou plutôt dans ses cheveux, on prélèvera la particule magique », plaide Me Bourdon, « S’il avait su que les policiers de la Sdat pouvaient faire cela, il aurait pu ajuster son comportement ». Ici, l’avocat pointe du doigt la faille de la loi qui peut conduire un citoyen à s’auto-incriminer sans être en mesure de se défendre.

L’avocat parle aussi « d’un cambriolage de l’enveloppe corporelle« , qui porte atteinte au droit de chaque citoyen de disposer de son corps. Enfin, pour plaider le dépôt de cette QPC, Me Bourdon pointe le « laisser-aller, la paresse » des policiers qui ne prennent pas le temps de vérifier si la personne concernée est déjà fichée qui peuvent conduire à une succession de prélèvements ADN sur un même citoyen.

Sans compter que le tribunal de Nanterre qui s’est dessaisi en 2012 de cette affaire, a omis de prévenir le tribunal de Rouen que la justice était bien en possession de l’ADN de Charles Torres… jugé pour avoir refusé de le donner.

La procureur refuse la QPC au motif que l’article 706-56 du code de procédure pénale aura déjà été jugé constitutionnel, dans sa globalité, par la cour de cassation. Le tribunal est allé dans ce sens et a refusé de transmettre la question prioritaire de constitutionnalité. Le procès de Charles Torres a donc bien eu lieu mercredi 6 février et les débats se sont donc poursuivis pour celui qui risque 15’000 euros d’amende et un an de prison ferme.

Publié par des larbins de la maison Poulaga (Zoé Lauwereys, Grand-Rouen.com, 7 février 2013)

Rencontre avec le « Forgeron » de Tarnac

Charles Torres a été « enlevé » par la police début 2012 dans le cadre de l’affaire Tarnac. Il est soupçonné, à ce moment là, d’être complice du sabotage de caténaires en 2008. Aucun fait n’aura été retenu contre lui. Pourtant, il est jugé mercredi 6 février 2013 au tribunal de grande instance de Rouen pour avoir refusé son ADN au moment de la perquisition.

Nous l’avons rencontré la veille de son procès pour refus de prélèvement génétique du 6 février 2013 au tribunal d’instance de Rouen. Avec son pull marin, ses cheveux en bataille, sa moustache et sa chevalière rehaussée d’une pierre blanche, il nous rejoint à la Conjuration des Fourneaux au 149 rue Saint-Hilaire. Le restaurant soutient Charles dans ses déboires judiciaires. Il nous raconte ces trente heures de garde à vue pendant lesquelles il a refusé de parler.

Ce matin du 23 février 2012, Charles Torres dort dans sa chambre, chez ses parents, à Roncherolles-sur-le-Vivier, près de Darnétal. À 28 ans, il y revient de temps en temps pour travailler. Son père, monteur en bronze, lui a installé dans son atelier, une forge pour qu’il puisse exercer son activité d’auto-entrepreneur forgeron. Il est 8 heures du matin quand une trentaine de policier de la sous-direction de l’anti-terrorisme (Sdat) frappe à la porte. « On a eu de la chance, il n’était pas 6 heures du matin et ils n’ont pas défoncé la porte », ironise celui que la presse surnommera le Forgeron dans l’affaire dite « de Tarnac ». Ce matin-là, les policiers de l’anti-terrorisme viennent perquisitionner. Ils pensent avoir trouvé celui qui a fabriqué les crochets en fer à béton responsables du sabotage de caténaires de la SNCF en 2008.

Pour ces faits, qui deviennent très vite l’affaire de Tarnac, dix personnes ont été mises en examen, pour « association de malfaiteurs en relation avec une entreprise terroriste » et « dégradations en réunion en relation avec une entreprise terroriste ». Les principaux accusés dans cette affaire sont Julien Coupat et sa compagne Yldune Lévy. Le rapport entre Tarnac et Charles Torres ? Ce dernier se l’explique facilement. « Je suis colocataire dans une maison, rue de Constantine, à Rouen, où plusieurs habitants, ont été mis en examen en 2008. Mais je n’étais même pas un des potes de Julien Coupat. Tarnac ce n’est même pas une bande de copains. Concrètement, on me soupçonnait d’avoir un comportement plus ou moins subversif d’un point de vue politique. » Charles avoue même ne pas connaître vraiment le dossier Tarnac, seulement ce que les mis en examen lui auront dit et ce qu’il aura lu dans les journaux. Il délivre son analyse : « Tarnac est devenu un groupe suite aux accusations. Il a fallu donner un cadre, d’où le nom. Ce qui fait que tu es dans le dossier ou pas, c’est ta place dans le scénario de la police. »

Quatre ans après le début de l’affaire de Tarnac, devenu au fil des années un bourbier judiciaire, la Sdat pense donc avoir trouvé un nouveau complice du sabotage. Ce 23 février 2012, « des flics de haut-vol » fouillent donc la maison des parents du forgeron après lui avoir signifié sa mise en garde à vue. Une garde à vue qui durera 35 heures. La perquisition aura fait beaucoup rire Charles qui avoue avoir eu « envie de plaisanter » mais s’être retenu par « peur qu’ils me prennent au premier degré ». « Ils ont fouillé toute la maison, ont retourné ma chambre, ont scruté mes bouquins, mon bureau, mes affaires de fac. Mais ils n’ont rien saisi dans ma chambre », se rappelle-t-il. « Pour prouver l’association de malfaiteurs et me lier aux mis en examen de Tarnac, ils ont saisi de vieux téléphones portables. » Rien non plus n’aura été saisi dans la forgerie, pourtant l’endroit le plus à même de receler des indices du sabotage. Et pourquoi pas quatre ans plus tard ? Charles se rappelle d’un détail qu’il raconte goguenard. « Dans la chambre de mon frère, ils ont trouvé deux cagoules trois trous. Elles avaient été utilisées pour l’enterrement de vie de garçon d’un copain », rit-il encore.

Charles Torres préférait ne pas être pris en photo.

La perquisition terminée, les policiers le menottent et l’emmènent « à 200 kilomètres/heure » à Levallois-Perret, dans les Hauts-de-Seine. Avant d’atteindre le siège de la Sdat, il rapporte avoir eu les yeux cachés par un masque de sommeil. « Là, j’ai senti que l’on descendait de cinq étages sous terre. Arrivés dans les locaux, on est passés de sas de sécurité en sas de sécurité »… jusqu’à la salle de garde à vue. Pendant ces 30 heures de garde à vue, Charles refusera de répondre aux questions : « J’ai décliné mon état-civil, sinon j’ai répondu des blagues ». La meilleure solution pour quelqu’un qui ne sait pas ce qu’on lui reproche, mis à part la vague « association de malfaiteurs ». « Ils n’avaient rien pour me mettre en garde-à-vue, il n’était pas question pour moi de leur donner de quoi me mettre en examen ». L’ancien étudiant en histoire se rappelle de quelques questions posées par la police. « Ils m’ont demandé ce que je pensais de la société capitaliste marchande ou quelles étaient mes opinions politiques », évoque-t-il. En lui présentant des photos des crochets utilisés pour saboter les caténaires, on lui aura même demandé s’il les avait fabriqués. Charles répondra avec l’ironie qui lui semble chère : « Vous m’amenez le modèle et je vous fais un devis ».

En fin de garde à vue, on lui demandera de donner son ADN, justifié par « des motifs graves ou concordants » dans l’affaire pour laquelle il était entendu. Chose qu’il refusera. Par conviction. « Je n’ai pas envie de faire partie d’un fichier ADN des catégories politiques », affirme-t-il. Pour lutter contre le « flicage », il refuse aussi d’avoir un téléphone ou une carte bancaire. Ce qu’il ne sait pas, à ce moment-là, c’est que la police a pris soin de nettoyer de fond en comble la salle de garde à vue, revèle Laurent Borredon, dans Le Monde du mardi 5 février 2013 : « Ce matin-là, les policiers ont nettoyé à fond les locaux de garde à vue, à l’aide d’une solution hydroalcoolique. Le bureau et le sol. Dans quelques instants, Charles Torrès va être entendu pour la quatrième fois. Les policiers souhaitent récupérer son ADN et il faut que tout soit immaculé. » Selon Le Monde qui s’est procuré le procès-verbal de la garde à vue, Charles fait bien en sorte ce jour-là de consommer « sa brique de jus d’orange sans en utiliser la paille » puis d’en « laver soigneusement l’extérieur, de sorte à n’y laisser aucune trace biologique. » Charles aura aussi mangé sans utiliser de couverts, « directement au moyen de ses doigts », pour être sûr de ne laisser aucune trace. Les policiers récupèrent tout de même quelques cheveux sur le sol du local où il était interrogé.

L’absurde du procès du mercredi 6 février 2013 ? La justice est en possession de l’ADN de Charles Torres mais on lui reproche de ne pas avoir voulu le donner. Il risque 15’000 euros d’amende et un an de prison ferme. Sur son blog, il appelle ses soutiens à « venir rire » au TGI de Rouen à 13h30, « parce qu’on ne peut que se réjouir de chaque humiliation que l’antiterrorisme s’inflige à lui-même ».

Publié par des larbins de la maison Poulaga (Zoé Lauwereys, Grand-Rouen.com, 6 février 2013)

Tarnac : un homme jugé pour refus de donner son ADN, déjà prélevé à son insu

Les policiers de la sous-direction antiterroriste (SDAT) de la police judiciaire n’ont pas peur de la contradiction. Le 24 février 2012, à 11h15, ils ont recueilli l’ADN de Charles Torrès, 28 ans, à son insu. Puis, à 11h35, ils ont lancé une procédure contre le jeune homme gardé à vue dans le cadre de l’affaire de Tarnac pour… refus de prélèvement génétique. Charles Torrès doit être jugé, mercredi 6 février, par le tribunal correctionnel de Rouen. Il risque, au maximum, un an de prison et 15’000 euros d’amende. À la suite de sa garde à vue, il avait été relâché sans charge, mais cela n’empêche pas d’être dans l’obligation de laisser son ADN. Il suffit qu’existent des “indices graves ou concordants” contre la personne entendue, indique le code de procédure pénale.

Ce matin-là, les policiers ont nettoyé à fond les locaux de garde à vue, à l’aide d’une solution hydroalcoolique. Le bureau et le sol. Dans quelques instants, Charles Torrès va être entendu pour la quatrième fois. Les policiers souhaitent récupérer son ADN et il faut que tout soit immaculé. Les enquêteurs veulent vérifier si le jeune homme, interpellé la veille près de Rouen, n’a pas forgé les crochets qui ont servi à saboter des lignes de TGV, à l’automne 2008.

“DÉLOYAUTÉ”

Charles Torrès est aussi prudent que les policiers sont méticuleux : il a “consommé sa brique de jus d’orange sans en utiliser la paille, puis en [a] soigneusement lavé l’extérieur, de sorte à n’y laisser aucune trace biologique (…). À l’heure du déjeuner, il a été constaté qu’il mangeait sans utiliser de couverts, directement au moyen de ses doigts”, note le lieutenant de la SDAT, dans son procès-verbal, que Le Monde a pu consulter.

Mais le stratagème réussit : les hommes de la police technique et scientifique parviennent à récupérer “les prélèvements de traces de contact” là où il “a apposé ses mains”. Encore mieux, “à l’aplomb du siège où [il] s’est assis, des cheveux jonchent le sol”. Précis, le policier indique “que la présence de ces cheveux au sol résulte de la propension qu’a manifestée Charles Torrès à se passer (nerveusement) les mains dans les cheveux”. Trente heures de garde à vue dans les locaux de la SDAT, c’est un peu stressant…

Comment justifier une procédure pour refus de prélèvement d’ADN quand on vient de le recueillir ? En faisant comme si de rien n’était : le procureur qui poursuit puis les magistrats qui vont juger le dossier “ADN” n’ont accès qu’aux pièces du dossier Tarnac que la SDAT veut bien leur transmettre. Le PV de recueil de traces génétiques a été opportunément exclu. Au contraire, une enquêtrice justifie la procédure en assurant que le prélèvement demandé à Charles Torrès “aurait utilement permis de déterminer le profil génétique de l’intéressé aux fins de comparaison avec les empreintes génétiques à ce jour non identifiées”.

“Il s’agit d’un symptôme de plus de la déloyauté qui contamine tout le dossier”, estime Me William Bourdon, l’un des avocats de Charles Torrès. Il souhaite déposer une question prioritaire de constitutionnalité, mercredi. Pour lui, les articles de loi sur les prélèvements d’ADN sont “défaillants” face au principe de libre disposition de son corps : l’officier de police judiciaire n’a pas d’obligation d’informer qu’il peut y avoir un prélèvement clandestin, puis que ce prélèvement a eu lieu — ce qui interdit tout recours — et, enfin, il n’est pas obligé de vérifier que le gardé à vue est déjà fiché, avec le risque d’une multiplication des prélèvements.

Et la comparaison des empreintes génétiques ? Au final, elle n’a rien donné.

Publié par des larbins de la maison Poulaga (Laurent Borredon, LeMonde.fr, 5-6 février 2013)

Pourquoi j’ai refusé de livrer mon ADN

Le 6 février 2013, Charles Torres comparaît au tribunal de Rouen pour avoir refusé le prélèvement de son ADN lors d’une garde à vue de 35 heures début 2012. Forgeron, on le soupçonnait de complicité dans l’affaire de Tarnac et d’avoir fabriqué les crochets qui servirent à bloquer des TGV en 2008.

Le 23 février 2012, je fis bien malgré moi une entrée fracassante dans l’affaire dite « de Tarnac ». Une escouade de policiers de la Sous-Direction antiterroriste (SDAT), avec à leur tête le médiatique juge Fragnoli, vint me sortir du lit de bon matin. Bien qu’habitant la Seine-Maritime, je devins ce jour-là « le forgeron de Tarnac ». À défaut de pouvoir établir le moindre lien entre les mis en examen et les fameux crochets, le juge voulait à toute force insinuer un lien entre eux et quelqu’un qui aurait pu les fabriquer. Je fus donc, avec mon père de 86 ans, soupçonné le temps d’une garde à vue d’avoir confectionné les crochets qui servirent à bloquer des TGV une nuit de novembre 2008.

On sait que le storytelling antiterroriste ne s’embarrasse guère de la vraisemblance, et les différents articles parus dans la presse lors de mon arrestation le reproduisirent fidèlement. Il n’y eut d’ailleurs à peu près personne pour mentionner le fait que je fus libéré au bout de 35 heures sans la moindre charge ; et ni le juge ni les policiers ne me présentèrent leurs excuses pour m’avoir ainsi kidnappé sans raison valable. Faute d’excuses, je pensais qu’ils auraient à cœur de se faire oublier pour ces 35 heures de séquestration légale. Sur ce point, c’est bien moi qui me suis trompé.

Comme je le précisais plus haut, des amis harcelés par l’antiterrorisme, j’en ai quelques-uns, à Rouen comme à Tarnac. Je lis la presse aussi. De ce fait, je sais comme tout un chacun que tout ce que l’on peut déclarer dans une garde à vue a vocation à être déformé et utilisé contre vous. Je réservais donc mes réponses aux questions des policiers sur mes idées politiques au juge en charge de l’enquête. Malheureusement, il ne crut pas bon de me recevoir. Quelques jours plus tard, je fis tout de même l’effort de lui écrire afin de ne laisser aucun doute quant à l’erreur manifeste que représentait mon arrestation. Le jour même où cette missive devait paraître, le juge, qui allait être dessaisi, la recouvrit de l’annonce de son autodessaisissement. Il fit ainsi d’une pierre deux coups, et la missive ne parut jamais.

Pas plus que je n’avais de raison d’être en garde à vue à Levallois-Perret, n’avais-je de raison de livrer mon ADN à la police, qui de toute façon alla le récupérer lamentablement sous la forme d’un cheveu laissé sur le sol d’une salle d’interrogatoire. Je refusai donc. Faut pas pousser.

Mais refuser de donner son ADN est un délit, en soi. C’est-à-dire que même lorsque l’on vous l’a pris malgré vous, qu’on l’a analysé, qu’il vous a dédouané et que vous êtes à l’évidence lavé des soupçons qui avaient justifié qu’on vous le demande, vous êtes encore et toujours coupable d’avoir refusé. C’est cela la loi sur l’ADN, et c’est pour cela que je comparaîtrai au tribunal de Rouen ce mercredi 6 février.

De prime abord, on pourrait penser que je suis, ici, victime de l’un des effets pervers d’une loi mal formulée et qu’il suffirait d’un peu de bon sens pour que tout rentre dans l’ordre. C’est tout le contraire que mon procès révèle.

On peut ainsi remettre en question l’efficacité de l’ADN, et la mystification qui consiste à corréler une trace souvent partielle avec un acte. On peut évoquer ce professeur d’EPS récemment accusé d’avoir tiré sur la police à Amiens car son ADN avait été retrouvé sur une arme : il avait eu le malheur de revendre sa voiture à quelqu’un du quartier insurgé longtemps auparavant. Coup de chance, il put prouver qu’il était en Bretagne la nuit des tirs. On peut avancer le cas de cette chimiste assermentée de Boston, Annie Dookhan, qui par zèle a bidonné, des années durant, ses « expertises », ce qui aboutit à la remise en cause de dizaines de milliers de condamnations dans le Massachusetts. On peut faire valoir que les traces génétiques que partout nous déposons se mêlent et s’entrelacent avec toutes celles de tous ceux que nous croisons, que nous aimons. Que l’existence est toujours collective et qu’aucune analyse génétique ne permettra jamais de décrypter le monde tel qu’il est vécu.

On peut tout autant s’indigner du fait que ce qui fut initialement vendu comme le « fichier des violeurs » comporte aujourd’hui plus de 2 millions d’identifications. On peut même tomber des nues en lisant dans Le Monde du 21 février 2012 que désormais la police, grâce à un « vide juridique », détourne les garde-fous du FNAEG pour retrouver des gens grâce à l’ADN de leurs parents (ce qui fait évidemment exploser le nombre de personnes effectivement fichées à des dizaines de millions).

…

Les invités de Mediapart, 5 février 2013

Posted on 9 février 2013 by juralib

Find this story at 9 February 2013

Britische Spitzel in Erklärungsnot

Auch ein UN-Gesandter kritisiert die sexualisierte Informationsbeschaffung britischer verdeckter Ermittler. Der Guardian enthüllte am Wochenende, wie die Polizisten Identitäten toter Kinder stehlen

Britische verdeckte Ermittler haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten in mindestens 80 Fällen die Identitäten gestorbener Kinder und Jugendlicher angenommen. Dies berichtete der Guardian am Wochenende. Die Spitzel bzw. deren Vorgesetzte suchten sich jene Kinder aus, deren Geburtsdatum etwa ihrem eigenen entsprach. Mit der jetzt vielfach kritisierten Praxis sollte das Auffliegen der Spitzel erschwert werden, da diese neben Geburtsdokumenten auch eine Biographie vorzeigen konnten.

Zur Ausgestaltung der falschen Identitäten unternahmen die Polizisten bisweilen Ausflüge in die frühere Umgebung der Toten, um auf etwaige Fragen antworten zu können. In keinem Fall wurden die Eltern der Kinder hiervon benachrichtigt. Die Verwandten der Gestorbenen tragen aber im Falle des Auffliegens der Spitzel ein beträchtliches Risiko, wenn etwa wütende, ausgeforschte Demonstranten bei ihnen vorstellig werden. Nach der Veröffentlichung bemühte sich die Polizei um Schadensbegrenzung: Angeblich würde der Identitätsdiebstahl nicht mehr angewandt.

Spitzel zeugen Kinder und tauchen ab

Der Skandal wirft ein weiteres Schlaglicht auf die dubiosen Methoden der britischen Polizei. Heute befasst sich der Innenausschuss des Parlaments in einer Anhörung mit Spitzeln, die mit den von ihnen ausgeforschten Ziel- oder Kontaktpersonen jahrelang emotionale Bindungen eingingen und Sexualität praktizierten. Dies hatte in der britischen Öffentlichkeit für Entsetzen gesorgt.

Elf Frauen und ein Mann brachten die Fälle letztes Jahr vor Gericht und verwiesen darauf, dass die Polizisten dabei mindestens drei Kinder gezeugt hatten (Emotionaler und sexueller Missbrauch durch Polizisten wird öffentlich). Die zwischen sieben Monaten und sechs Jahre dauernden Beziehungen endeten aber mit dem plötzlichen Abtauchen der vermeintlichen Partner, wenn deren Einsatz abgebrochen wurde. Die Klagen richten sich gegen die britische Metropolitan Police und die halbprivate “Association of Chief Police Officers”, die für die klandestinen Ermittlungen zuständig war.

Die Zivilklage betont unter anderem die Europäische Menschenrechtskonvention, die in Artikel 8 das “Recht auf Achtung des Privat- und Familienlebens” behandelt. Der zuständige Richter verglich das sexuelle Gebaren mit dem Geheimagenten James Bond, was in Großbritannien zu Debatten geführt hatte. Zwar unterstrich der traditionell gelockte Richter die Glaubwürdigkeit der Klagen, beschloss aber gleichzeitig, dass diese in Teilen nicht-öffentlich verhandelt werden. Derartige Geheimverfahren waren bislang nur für den Geheimdienst MI5 vorgesehen. Für die Klägerinnen bedeutet dies, dass sie nicht auf Einlassungen der Polizisten reagieren können.

Vom Geheimverfahren betroffen sind die Einsätze des bekannten Spitzels Mark Kennedy, der jetzt in den USA lebt. Mit seinem Kollegen, der unter dem Namen “Marco Jacobs” auftrat, unterwanderte Kennedy die linke Mobilisierung gegen den G8-Gipfel in Heiligendamm 2007 und den NATO-Gipfel in Strasbourg 2009 (Polizeispitzel belügen Staatsanwaltschaften und Gerichte).

Bundesregierung verweigert Aufklärung

Der geltungssüchtige Kennedy, der seine Spitzelei sogar in einer Doku-Fiction zu Geld machte, hatte sich letztes Jahr selbst zum Opfer erklärt: Öffentlichkeitswirksam nutzt er die Klagen der Frauen, um seinerseits Schadensersatz von seinen früheren Vorgesetzten zu fordern. Da diese ihn nicht an den sexuellen Affären und Beziehungen gehindert hätten, sollen sie ihm den dadurch entstandenen posttraumatischen Stress mit rund 120.000 Euro vergüten.

Im Januar schlug sich der UN-Berichterstatter für Versammlungsfreiheit und Vereinigung, Maina Kiai, auf die Seite der betroffenen Frauen. Der Kenianer richtete eine Protestnote an die britische Regierung, in der er eine öffentliche Untersuchung zu den Vorfällen fordert. Dies würde auch ein neues Licht auf den Spitzeltausch mit Deutschland werfen.

…

Matthias Monroy

Find this story at 5 February 2013

Copyright © 2013 Heise Zeitschriften Verlag

Senior Met officer quizzed by MPs over undercover police – as it happened

Metropolitan police’s Patricia Gallan gives evidence to MPs following Guardian revelations about undercover policing – along with victims’ lawyers and reporter Paul Lewis

The identities of an estimated 80 dead children have been used by undercover police. A police operative who used the alias Pete Black to spy on protest groups explains how they did it

Hello and welcome to live coverage of the Commons home affairs select committee’s hearing into the Guardian’s revelations about undercover policing.

Patricia Gallan, a deputy assistant commissioner in charge of the Metropolitan police’s investigation into the controversy, faces questions from MPs about the scandal, which this week widened to include the stealing by police of the identities of dead children.

Before Gallan appears, the public hearing will begin at 3.15pm with evidence from solicitors for women who feel they were duped into having relationships with undercover officers. Eleven women are currently bringing legal action against the Metropolitan police for damages. The lawyers appearing before the committee today are:

• Harriet Wistrich, solicitor, Birnberg Peirce & Partners
• Jules Carey, solicitor, Tuckers Solicitors
• Marian Ellingworth, solicitor, Tuckers Solicitors

Also speaking will be my colleague Paul Lewis, who along with fellow Guardian reporter Rob Evans two years ago broke the story that led to these hearings when they reported that police officer Mark Kennedy had lived for seven years undercover in the environmental protest movement, establishing sexual relationships with activists during the course of his work. One woman was his girlfriend for six years.

Lewis and Evans went on to report that, of nine undercover police identified by the Guardian over the past two years, eight were believed to have slept with the people they were spying on. In at least three cases, relationships between police and the women they were spying on resulted in the birth of children.

Kennedy will also give evidence today – but in private.

In a further development, this week Lewis and Evans reported that police secretly authorised undercover officers to steal the identities of around 80 dead children over three decades. (Kennedy is not thought to have done this.) In this video, a police operative who used the alias Pete Black to spy on protest groups explains how they did it.

Keith Vaz, the chair of the home affairs committee, has said he is “shocked” at the “gruesome” practice, and has said the police should inform parents whose children’s identities were used. Scotland Yard has announced an investigation into the controversy, and has said the practice is not “currently” authorised. Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, has called for a public inquiry into undercover policing following the revelations.

We’ll be covering the hearing live here, and you can watch it on the parliament website.
Updated at 3.21pm GMT
3.21pm GMT

The committee seems to be running late – or the live broadcast is not working. Apologies.
Updated at 3.30pm GMT
3.36pm GMT

The live stream has begun. Sorry for the delay.
3.38pm GMT

Keith Vaz, the committee chair, says the committee has sat in private to take evidence from witnesses.

Now the lawyers are here to speak in public.

He starts with the issue of police using dead children’s identity.

Lawyer Jules Carey says he has been instructed by one family whose son Rod Richardson’s name was used by an undercover police officer, who infiltrated various political groups.
Updated at 3.38pm GMT
3.39pm GMT

Carey says his client wants to understand why he child’s name was used. He says he is also representing a number of women who are concerned that such operations are still carrying on.

He says he has submitted a written complaint to the police, which he believes is the complaint that has triggered a police investigation.
3.40pm GMT

Vaz asks lawyer Harriet Wistrich if there is any justification for police to use undercover tactics.

She says there is no justification for them to use sex in their work.

That is the issues she is concerned with: the “overwhelming damage” that has been caused.

All the women involved have been “very, very seriously psychologically harmed” as a result of what the police did to them, Wistrich says.

The police were aware of this, she says.
3.46pm GMT

Vaz quotes from Mr Justice Tugendhat’s recent judgment about undercover police, in which the judge used James Bond as context for police using sex during undercover work.

Wistrich asks what controls we can put on undercover police.

She says MPs could not have meant sexual relationships to have been part of the Regulation of Investigatory Practices Act.

Does the law need to be changed, Vaz asks lawyer Marian Ellingworth.

Ellingworth says sex should not be sanctioned.

Carey says RIPA cannot approve sexual relationships. The structure of the act does not envisage sexual relationships, he says. The words “personal and other relationships” cannot have been meant to include sex – they are too vague for that.

You cannot legislate to breach a fundamental right such as “bodily integrity”, Carey says.
3.49pm GMT

Tory Lorraine Fullbrook asks what the absolute legal limit should be on undercover police officers’ behaviours.

Wistrich says you have to completely stop before a sexual relationship.

Fullbrook tries to pin her down on the “absolute legal limit”, but Wistrich says that depends on the circumstances.

Vaz says Fullbrook is looking for a list of what is and isn’t acceptable.

Wistrich says again there are circumstances when different things are acceptable – for example to stop a child trafficking ring.

Carey says undercover officers shouldn’t be deployed unless it’s necessary and proportionate – political groups wouldn’t be covered, he says.
3.51pm GMT

Tory Michael Ellis repeats Tugendhat’s point that undercover policing wouldn’t surprise the public.

These kind of sexual relationships “probably happen more often to men” than to women, he claims, citing the example of Mata Hari.

He accuses the lawyers of wanting to tie the police’s hands unreasonably.
3.54pm GMT

Wistrich says using sex in this way is massively beyond the bounds of a civilised society.

Labour’s Bridget Phillipson asks if police were directed to form these relationships or did so of their own volition.

Ellingworth says the police won’t even confirm that the men in question were undercover officers, let alone say whether they were following orders.

Wistrich says the police have not yet tried to come up with a circumstance that they say are justified.

Phillipson asks if female officers have had relationships with men.

Carey says they are aware of one female officer who has been deployed in this way. None of the lawyers are instructed by males.

Wistrich says there are always exceptions, but this is really a form of “institutionalised sexism”.

The impact is massively upon women, she says.
3.57pm GMT

Labour’s David Winnick asks if it’s naive to believe the police were not aware sexual relationships were taking place involving undercover officers.

Wistrich says she believes they were, officially or unofficially.

Carey says there is a striking similarity in terms of how many of these relationships started and ended. Many of their clients felt these relationships were entered into by design by the officers. That suggests senior officers were aware of it.

Carey says the public would expect police officers to behave like James Bond if we lived in a world full of Dr Nos. But we don’t, he says.

There is no necessity for these actions, Carey says.
3.59pm GMT

Winnick raises the adopting of the names of dead children. Was this authorised?

Wistrich says she felt this would have been authorised.

Winnick asks if the lawyers consider that a particularly despicable act.

Carey says every aspect of this policing operation is “utterly depraved”. It’s very hard to quantify particular aspects.

“It’s utterly despicable,” says Wistrich.

Ellingworth agrees.
4.02pm GMT

Labour’s Chris Ruane asks how the police can be held to account here.

Wistrich says that’s what the lawyers are aiming to do.

They have met with “a complete barrage of obstacles” from the police. The police have asked for information from them but given none in return.

Wistrich says she has written to the IPCC, which is supervising an investigation into some of these issues, but got no response.

Ruane asks what the key questions that need to be answered. Wistrich suggests:

Why were the police involved in these people’s lives? What information did they gather? How can this be stopped from happening in the future?
4.05pm GMT

Carey says the principal question he would ask is whether they have read the nine principles of policing from 1828.

He reads one out: the police’s actions depend on public approval of those actions.

They’ve lost public respect through these actions, Carey says.

Tory Mark Reckless asks whether the deception by the officers means the sex they had with activists was non-consensual.

Wistrich says that’s a very good point. She’s written to the CPS but got no reply.

Vaz asks for copies of all these letters.

Carey says he is representing a client who had a child from one of these relationships.
Updated at 5.31pm GMT
4.11pm GMT

The Guardian’s Paul Lewis takes his seat.

Vaz asks how Lewis and Rob Evans discovered all this information.

Lewis says they spoke to police officers while working on a book related to this. He says the police officers were not just using the names of dead children, they were adopting many aspects of that person’s identity.

Where does the figure of 80 officers using this tactic come from, Vaz asks.

It’s an estimate, says Lewis. He’d like to hear from the Met police about this. It’s possible it could be fewer or more than 80 officers.

Carey’s complaint comes from 2003, he says.

Vaz says it’s a “pretty gruesome practice” and that it must be “heartless and cruel” for the parents not to have been informed.

Lewis ask if this was limited to the Special Demonstration Squad or was used more widely.
4.13pm GMT

Lewis says he has spoken to people whose children’s identities have been used in this way.

He says the Met police have placed the families of these children at some risk. Other activists could try to track down the undercover officers and seek out the family of the child whose identity was stolen. Far right groups were infiltrated in this way, Lewis says.

Vaz asks if the Met police have asked Lewis for this information.

Lewis says he has an obligation to protect his sources. He’s confident that the police know all the children’s identities.
4.15pm GMT

Vaz asks him to accept that in some circumstances the police are justified in using undercover agents.

Lewis says some undercover operations are justified, but raises the issue of proportionality. He mentions far right groups and violent animal rights groups. But in the main we are talking about non-violent activists, he says.
4.18pm GMT

Tory Michael Ellis asks if the public have a human right to be protected from crime and suggests senior officers are best-placed to decide when it’s right to use undercover officers.

He says he agrees with that.

But he begs to differ that the public would be unsurprised by officers using sex in this way.

Ellis says it was Tugendhat who said the public would be unsurprised, and he has great experience.

Lewis says Tugendhat was not referring to the public’s view, but to MPs’ view when they passed the relevant law.
4.21pm GMT

Ellis asks if Lewis has heard any account of absence of consent in these sexual relationships – discounting the overall deception.

Lewis says men and women have had sex with undercover police officers. They may argue that they did not have the necessary information to give informed consent – although Lewis says he doesn’t agree with that.

He says police say this behaviour was only happening among “bad apples”.

But he and Evans have identified nine undercover officers, and eight were having sexual relationships with activists. One officer was a woman, he says.

One undercover policeman told Lewis that of a team of 10 nine were having sexual relationships with activists.

Fullbrook asks if senior officers knew about this. Lewis says it’s likely. One undercover officer says he was told by a senior officer to use contraception. That implies the senior officer knew.
4.24pm GMT

Labour’s Bridget Phillipson says the length of the relationships involved shocked her.

Lewis says having met the victims he has found it difficult to convey their pain. He suggests the committee’s MPs think about how they would feel if their own partner turned out to be an agent of the state.

At least four children have been born as a result of these relationships, Lewis says.

Lewis says he does not believe MPs intended this in the RIPA, and would have used the words “sexual relationships” rather than “personal relationships”, and he certainly does not think they would have imagined children resulting from these relationships.
4.25pm GMT

Winnick asks if undercover agents could have done this job without embarking on sexual relationships with activists.

Lewis says some officers did not do this, so the answer is yes.
4.28pm GMT

Was it a rogue operation?

Lewis says some senior officers were unaware of the existence of the Special Demonstration Squad.

How can the police clean up this matter and restore confidence?

Openness and transparency, says Lewis. Over the last two years, the Met police have offered “very little help”.

We are heavily reliant on sources who have the courage to come forward, Lewis says.

At some stage the Met police will have to think about the best strategy to regain trust, he says.

The truth tends to come out eventually, he says.
4.30pm GMT

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan of the Met police takes her place next.
4.33pm GMT

Vaz says there will be an open session and then a private session.

He says he was pretty shocked to learn about the use of dead children’s identities. Was she equally shocked?

Gallan tries to outline her role instead.

Vaz insists she answers the question.

Gallan says we are investigating something that has been going on since 1968 and it is important to understand the context.

She says she is overseeing the operation examining past practices relating to this.

She says she does not know if the figure of 80 children’s identities being used is accurate. She knows of two cases. More evidence will probably come to light, but she does not want to prejudge the investigation.

But she is very concerned at what she has heard, she says.

That is why the Met have asked the IPCC to supervise.
4.35pm GMT

Gallan says it is looking at the activities of the SDS over 40 years.

There are more than 50,000 documents to sift through and retired officers to speak to. They want to hear from anyone who has any evidence, she says.

But was she shocked, asks Vaz.

Gallan says she was “very concerned” because “it is not practice as I know it”.

That doesn’t sound very condemnatory, Vaz says.

It isn’t still happening, Gallan says. It has been confined to the SDS and the NPOIU (National Public Order Intelligence Unit).
4.38pm GMT

Vaz asks who is dealing with the operational matters regarding undercover policing. The commander of cover policing, Richard Martin, she says.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley is above him, she says.

She can’t give a date when the practice of using dead children’s identities stopped, she says. But it is not sanctioned today among the Met or any other police force in the country, she says.

Should the children’s parents be informed, Vaz asks.

Gallan says it’s important to find out all the circumstances and whether they are accurate.

She says ethical and legal issues also need to be considered.

Would it affect any operatives whose positions would be exposed, she says.

Vaz says some members of the committee have heard this kind of thing regarding phone-hacking.
4.39pm GMT

Vaz stresses that where the police have names and addresses now, they should inform parents now.

Gallan says she can’t give a blanket yes or no.
4.42pm GMT

It has never been practice within most areas of undercover policing to take identities in this way, she says. Only the SDS and National Public Order Intelligence Unit did this.

Thirty-one staff are working on Operation Hearn, looking into the issue of undercover police regarding the SDS, including 20 police officers.

The estimated cost to date is £1.25m.

Vaz says that sounds like a lot of money and a lot of officers, implying that they can probably get through all those 50,000 documents more quickly than they are.

Vaz asks if when she has completed her operation she will inform the parents.

Gallan says she needs to consider all the issues and can’t give a yes or no answer.
4.44pm GMT

Vaz asks if she would like to apologise for this scandal.

Gallan says at the appropriate time statements would be made.

Until she knows all the facts she can’t do anything like that, she says.
4.46pm GMT

The admission that a second unit, the NPOIU, has used dead children’s identities is very important, since that unit was only formed in 1999.
4.48pm GMT

Vaz asks if the Guardian revelations broke the news to her of the use of children’s identities. She knew of one example in September last year.

Since then has she informed the parents, Vaz asks. She says she hasn’t and she’ll explain why in closed session.

Gallan is asked again about apologising. She says there are live proceedings ongoing and the Met police will decide at the end.
4.49pm GMT

Michael Ellis asks what rank of officer was in charge of the SDS or the NPOIU.

Superintendent, Gallan says.

Were they rogue units?

Gallan says from what she has seen the practices in place weren’t following national guidelines. We need to get all the evidence, she says, so she doesn’t want to go further than that.
4.51pm GMT

Ellis asks if taking children’s identities was not accepted practice even at the time.

Gallan says it was not standard procedure.

Ellis says these were unauthorised practices even at the time. He suggests these were rogue units or units operating outside their protocols.

That’s one of the things we’re investigating, Gallan says.

A senior officer cannot authorise something that is outside of procedures at the time, Ellis says.
4.53pm GMT

Winnick asks if Gallan thinks it was in the public interest for the Guardian to give the names of some of the dead children?

She says she believes in the free press.

Has the reputation of the press been harmed?

Gallan says when used appropriately undercover work is very important, and they are worried about anything that undermines confidence in that.

Asked the same question again, she says: “I think it is.”

I’ll take that to be a yes, says Winnick.
4.55pm GMT

How far is it possible for undercover work to take place without sexual relationships, Winnick asks.

Gallan says she doesn’t believe you can authorise such activities, morally.

If something like that does happen it should be reported immediately.

Winnick asks if it’s right to assume the officers were not not told to engage in sex.

Gallan says she might be able to explain that in closed session, but it was not authorised.
4.59pm GMT

Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has said it is “almost inevitable” some undercover officers will have sexual relationships in this way although he wouldn’t encourage it, Vaz says. Doesn’t that contradict Gallan’s view?

Nick Herbert, the policing minister, has said that to ban such actions would provide a ready-made test for the targeted group, Vaz says.

What is her view?

Gallan repeats that there is a moral issue. Legally, the law is silent on that, and she will explain that in closed session, she says.

The Met police does not authorise that conduct, she repeats.

She says she cannot envisage under any circumstances a commander authorising this kind of behaviour.
5.02pm GMT

But was it prohibited, asks Vaz.

In the closed session, she will explain more, says Gallan.

Tory James Clappison suggests that some of these relationships went on for so long that senior officers must have known what was happening.

Vaz says he is disappointed that Gallan has not sent out a message that the Met police is sorry that the practice of using dead children’s identities has taken place.

Winnick adds that the committee is disappointed.

Vaz says he is concerned that she has known about one incident since September and still has not got to the bottom of it.

One of the victims followed the trail and turned up at the house of the dead child’s parents. They weren’t there, but imagine their grief if they had have been, Vaz says.

Gallan repeats her “concern” and says she is keeping an open mind about the facts.

It would be inappropriate to rush to make statements in haste, Gallan says.
5.03pm GMT

Does she have a timetable for the conclusion of Operation Hearn, Vaz asks.

Gallan says it would be wrong to put a timescale on it.

We are determined to go where the evidence takes us, she says.
5.03pm GMT

With that the committee goes into closed session.
5.36pm GMT
Summary

Here is a summary of what we have learned from that committee session.

• The use of dead children’s identities by undercover police officers was not confined to the Special Demonstration Squad, but was also a practice employed by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, a unit that was only set up in 1999, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan of the Metropolitan police revealed to the Commons home affairs committee.

• Gallan knew about one case of a child’s identity being used in this way in September last year. The practice is not sanctioned today among the Met or any other force in the country, she said.

• Including the case that came to light in September, she knew of only two cases of this happening, she said, and did not know if the Guardian’s estimate of 80 cases was accurate. But she felt that more cases would probably come to light.

• Keith Vaz, the chair of the committee, said he was “disappointed” that Gallan would not apologise for the police’s actions, saying only that she was “very concerned” at the allegations and wanted to wait until all the facts had been established before rushing to make a statement.

• Vaz was also extremely concerned that Gallan had not informed the parents in the case discovered in September last year, and wanted her to promise she would inform all the parents involved as soon as possible. Gallan would not agree to this.

• Police officers having sex with activists in groups they infiltrated was not authorised, and could not justified morally, Gallan said. She could not envisage any circumstances under which a commander would authorise this.

• She admitted the Metropolitan police’s reputation had been harmed by the scandal.

• Thirty-one staff are working on Operation Hearn, looking into the issue of undercover police, including 20 police officers. The estimated cost to date is £1.25m.

• Lawyers for women who feel they were duped into having relationships with undercover officers attacked the practice as being “depraved”, “dispicable” and beyond the bounds of a civilised society. MPs on the committee broadly seemed to agree, although Tory Michael Ellis drew attention to Mr Justice Tugendhat’s contention that such relationships would not surprise the public, accused the lawyers of wanting to tie the police’s hands unreasonable. He asked if the public had a human right to be protected from crime and suggested senior officers were best-placed to decide when it was and was not right to use undercover officers.

That’s all from me. Thanks for all your comments.
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House of Commons · Keith Vaz ·

Police must inform parents of children whose IDs were used by spies, says MP

4 Feb 2013

Keith Vaz says it would be heartless not to tell affected parents, and asks Theresa May to investigate whether practice was legal

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Police spy: ‘How we stole dead children’s identities’ – video

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Chief police officers criticise recruitment and promotion reforms

30 Jan 2013

If China lifts its game console ban, what will adults panic about next?

Should outsiders be allowed fast-track entry into the police?

30 Jan 2013

Home secretary Theresa May will today announce plans to allow police forces to recruit senior officers from outside the service, meaning business leaders, for example, could quickly move into top jobs rather than having to start as constables pounding the beat. Many police are opposed. Do you support the move?

Paul Owen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013 14.17 GMT

Find this story at 5 February 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Verdeckte Ermittler; Ermittlungstaktik, Lust und Liebe

In England hatte ein Undercover-Polizist regelmäßig Sex mit Frauen aus der überwachten Szene. In Deutschland wäre das unzulässig, beteuert das Innenministerium.von Christian Rath

Die Berichterstattung des „Guardian“ über Mark Kennedy brachte den Stein ins Rollen. Bild: screenshot guardian.co.uk

BERLIN taz | Verdeckte Ermittler von Bundeskriminalamt und Bundespolizei dürfen keine sexuellen Beziehungen eingehen, um Informationen zu erlangen. Das erklärte jetzt das Bundesinnenministerium auf eine parlamentarische Anfrage des Linken-Abgeordneten Andrej Hunko.

Anlass der Nachfrage ist der Fall des englischen Polizisten Mark Kennedy, der mit falschem Namen, langen Haaren und Ohrringen einige Jahre lang militante Umweltschützer und Globalisierungskritiker in ganz Europa ausspionierte. Auch in Deutschland war Kennedy aktiv: während des G-8-Gipfels in Heiligendamm 2007 sowie beim Nato-Gipfel in Baden Baden 2009.

Im Rahmen seiner Spitzeltätigkeit unterhielt der Polizist Kennedy auch zahlreiche Liebschaften. Wie die englische Zeitung Guardian aufdeckte, war es durchaus üblich, dass verdeckte Ermittler sexuelle Beziehungen in der von ihr überwachten Szene knüpften. Jetzt klagen zehn Frauen und ein Mann vor dem englischen High Court auf Schadensersatz. Sie hätten ein emotionales Trauma erlitten, nachdem Menschen, mit denen sie „tiefe persönliche“ Beziehungen eingingen, sich als Spitzel entpuppten.
Die Lustfrage

Der Bundestagsabgeordnete Andrej Hunko wollte deshalb von der Bundesregierung wissen, ob sie es für zulässig hält, wenn Verdeckte Ermittler „Sexualität oder sonstige emotional tiefgehende Beziehungen mit ihren Zielpersonen oder deren Kontaktpersonen praktizieren“. Antwort: Die Bundesregierung ist der Auffassung, „dass das Eingehen derartiger Beziehungen aus ermittlungstaktischen Gründen in aller Regel unzulässig ist“. Und Innenstaatssekretär Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, von dem die Antwort stammt, fügt hinzu: „Dies gilt auch für den Einsatz von Mitarbeitern ausländischer Behörden in Deutschland mit deutscher Zustimmung.“

Die Auskunft klingt eindeutig, enthält aber eine wichtige Einschränkung: Unzulässig ist der Ermittler-Sex nur, wenn er „aus ermittlungstaktischen Gründen“ stattfindet – sprich: Wenn der Polizist eigentlich keine Lust hat. Wenn der Verdeckte Ermittler aber aus Lust und/oder Liebe gerne mit einer Ziel- oder Kontaktperson schlafen will, scheint dies nach Ansicht von Staatssekretär Fritsche rechtlich nicht ausgeschlossen.

Dagegen hatte der auf Geheimdienstrecht spezialisierte Anwalt Udo Kauß 2011 im taz-interview gefordert: „Genauso wie ein Verdeckter Ermittler keine Straftaten begehen darf, darf er mit den Zielpersonen und deren Umfeld auch keine Liebesbeziehungen führen.“ Wenn ein Einsatz „aus dem Ruder“ laufe, müsse er abgebrochen werden.
Der deutsche Fall Bromma

In Baden-Württemberg hatte die Polizei 2010 den jungen Beamten Simon Bromma in linke studentische Gruppen eingeschleust. Er sollte herausfinden, ob im Umfeld der Antifaschistischen Initiative Heidelberg (AIHD) Gewaltakte gegen Polizisten und Nazis geplant waren. Er erschlich sich mit seiner freundlichen und hilfsbereiten Art in den Kreisen um die studentische „Kritische Initiative“ zahlreiche Freundschaften, flog dann aber auf, als ihn eine Ferienbekanntschaft erkannte.

Sieben Betroffene aus der bespitzelten Szene erhoben im August 2011 Klage beim Verwaltungsgericht Karlsruhe. Sie verlangen die Feststellung, dass der Undercover-Einsatz gegen die linke Heidelberger Szene generell rechtswidrig war. Sie seien keine „gewaltbereiten Gefährder“. Außerdem seien die Privatsphäre und die Menschenwürde verletzt, wenn den Aktivisten „ohne eigenes Wissen eine Freundschaft/Bekanntschaft zu einem polizeilichen Ermittler aufgezwungen“ werde.

Das Verfahren kommt allerdings nicht voran, weil der baden-württembergische Innenminister Reinhold Gall (SPD) alle Spitzelberichte Brommas gesperrt hat. Die Arbeitsweise Verdeckter Ermittler müsse geheim bleiben, da die Undercover-Agenten sonst leicht enttarnt werden könnten, argumentierte Gall. Dagegen klagten die Betroffenen in einem Zwischenverfahren und erzielten nun einen Teilerfolg.
Teilweise rechtswidrig

…

04.02.20133 Kommentare

Find this story at 4 February 2013

© der taz

Brother of boy whose identity was stolen by police spies demands apology

Anthony Barker says police could have put family in danger by using identity of brother John, who died aged eight

John Dines, a police sergeant who adopted the identity of John Barker to pose as an environmental campaigner, pictured in the early 1990s

Undercover police were “reckless” when they stole the identity of an eight-year-old boy who had died of leukaemia, according to his brother, who is demanding an apology for putting his family at risk.

Anthony Barker, whose brother John Barker died in 1968, said he was shocked to discover the boy’s identity was resurrected and adopted by undercover police spying on political groups.

The Metropolitan police has admitted that two of its undercover units appear to have used the identities of dead children, a practice which has lasted four decades and was still going on in the 2000s.

The identity of John Barker was adopted by a police sergeant called John Dines, who posed as an environmental campaigner between 1987 and 1992.

“The danger the police put my family in – and all the other families this has happened to – is horrendous,” Barker said. An investigation by the Guardian has established police used the identities of dead children so their undercover agents could pose as real people. Barker said that in doing so, they placed innocent families at risk.

“In our case, we now discover, there was a girlfriend who was left behind when the policeman pretending to be my brother disappeared from the scene,” he said. “Apparently she was so worried about him that she tracked him down to the house we had moved out of a few years earlier.

“Now, imagine that policeman had infiltrated a violent gang or made friends with a volatile person, then disappeared, just like this man did.

“Someone wanting revenge would have tracked us down to our front door – but they wouldn’t have wanted a cup of tea and a chat, like this woman says she did.”

Although many police spies using dead children’s identities were infiltrating peaceful leftwing and environmental groups, many were also deployed in violent far-right groups.

“If we had told those sorts of people that the man they thought they had known for so many years has died as a little boy, they would have thought we were lying,” Barker said. “Who knows what would have happened to us then?”

He added: “These people could have found our family in a heartbeat. That was an absolutely reckless thing for the police to do.”

Anthony Barker, who was born the year after his brother died, said: “My parents always said he was a lovely lad. They could not afford more than one child. They only had me because John passed away.

“It totally shattered my parents when he died. You can see from photographs how much his death aged them. When I was a toddler they looked like my grandparents.”

Barker described the use of dead children’s identities as a “clinical, mechanic way of policing” and morally “horrific”. He believed his parents, who are now deceased, would have been appalled to discover a police officer was posing as their beloved son.

“In my view, these were politically motivated undercover operations. That is what I cannot understand. What kinds of crimes did these political activists commit? We’re not talking about drug dealers or terrorists. These operations must have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and all the while my parents were living in poverty.”

He added: “Not only is it horrendous to steal the identity of a child but by taking that identity into an unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation, they’re putting entire families at risk.”

The Met has declined to say how many dead children’s identities it believes have been used by covert agents, although the force has stressed that the practice is not currently in use.

A document seen by the Guardian indicates that the Special Demonstration Squad, one of two police units known to have used the practice, used the identities of around 80 dead children.

On Tuesday the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner Patricia Gallan told a parliamentary inquiry that a second unit involved in spying on protesters appears to have used dead children’s identities.

The second unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, was founded in 1999 and operated throughout the 2000s.

It suggests the total number of dead children’s identities used by police could exceed 100.

MPs expressed their disapproval when Gallan, who is overseeing a £1.25m review of protest spying operations, refused to apologise for any hurt caused until her inquiries were complete.

She also refused to say whether she would contact the families involved, saying there were “legal and ethical issues” to consider.

Barker said: “I strongly believe all the families who this has happened to need to be told. They have been placed at risk. That is the bottom line. These were undercover operations. Anything could have happened.”

…

Amelia Hill, Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 February 2013 16.55 GMT

Find this story at 6 February 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

“Schaf de Staatsveiligheid af”

Renaat Landuyt (justitiespecialist sp.a): “We kunnen beter het federale parket en andere opsporingsdiensten versterken. Die zullen in elk geval nuttiger werk verrichten.” © belga.

Sp.a-justitiespecialist Renaat Landuyt pleit voor een afschaffing van de Belgische inlichtingendienst. “Die harkt toch maar krantenknipsels en roddels bijeen.” PS-senator Philippe Moureaux ziet alvast geen graten in het voorstel van de Vlaamse socialist.

Landuyt is sinds begin dit jaar burgemeester van Brugge. Maar de advocaat staat vooral bekend als justitiespecialist van zijn partij. De Staatsveiligheid functioneert na enkele hervormingen volgens hem al iets beter dan vroeger. “Maar niet in die mate dat ik ervan onder de indruk ben”, klinkt het.

“Ik vraag mij echt af of we een instelling zoals de Staatsveiligheid nodig hebben. In een democratie is er nood aan transparantie. Geheime organisaties zoals onze inlichtingendienst zijn niet meer van deze tijd. De dienst dateert nog uit een tijd dat staten in de eerste plaats vijanden van elkaar waren. Concurreren met die paar inlichtingendiensten in de wereld die er wel toe doen, kunnen we niet.”

Het argument dat je een inlichtingendienst nodig hebt om gevaarlijke organisaties en potentiële terroristen op te volgen, houdt volgens de Vlaamse socialist geen steek. “Net alsof we een Staatsveiligheid nodig hebben om ons tegen terrorisme te beschermen. Dat is eigenlijk opsporingswerk. Het federale parket kan en moet dat doen.”

Door de Staatsveiligheid af te schaffen, kunnen het federale parket en andere opsporingsdiensten worden versterkt. “Die zullen in elk geval nuttiger werk verrichten dan een dienst die toch maar krantenknipsels en roddels bijeenharkt.”

Moureaux, PS-senator en minister van Staat, zal naar eigen zeggen niet minder goed slapen als de Staatsveiligheid verdwijnt en het parket meer macht krijgt. “Ik ben destijds als minister van Justitie verantwoordelijk geweest voor de instelling. Veel respect heb ik nooit voor die mensen gehad”, klinkt het. “Ze werken vaak op basis van geruchten en zijn altijd aan spelletjes te spelen. Ik heb dat eerlijk gezegd altijd een beetje miserabel gevonden.”

Door een gebrek aan middelen zijn de agenten van de Staatsveiligheid eigenlijk niet meer dan veredelde scouts, stelt de Franstalige socialist. “Het beste voorbeeld daarvan is het rapport over politici die betrokken zouden zijn bij Scientology.”

…

Door: Steven Samyn en Martin Buxant
13/02/13 – 06u47

Find this story at 13 February 2013

© 2013 De Persgroep Digital

‘Map met naam Dewinter bevat oud juridisch dossier’; RTBF heeft beelden van dossier Dewinter bij Staatsveiligheid

De beelden van het interview met Alain Winants, de administrateur-generaal van de Staatsveiligheid, die maandag werden uitgezonden in het tv-journaal van de RTBF, tonen een dossier dat de naam van Filip Dewinter draagt. ‘Het betreft in feite een oud dossier betreffende een juridische procedure die door betrokkene opgestart werd’, aldus de Staatsveiligheid dinsdagmiddag in een reactie.

Bart Debie, de gewezen veiligheidsadviseur van Vlaams Belanger Filip Dewinter, zei maandag dat hij drie jaar lang als “mol” van de Belgische Staatsveiligheid binnen de partijtop van het Vlaams Belang heeft gefungeerd.

De RTBF draaide maandag beelden tijdens een interview met Winants. Op het moment dat de topman van de Staatsveiligheid benadrukt dat zijn diensten zich niet bezighouden met politici, filmde de tv-ploeg van de Franstalige openbare televisie een dossier op zijn bureau. Op de farde was te lezen “Dewinter Filip”.

…

dinsdag 12 februari 2013, 13u04 Bron: rtbf

Find this story at 12 February 2013

© De Standaard

Bart Debie et VB: la polémique enfle autour de la Sûreté de l’Etat

ABart Debie, ancien commissaire de police et conseiller de Filip Dewinter au sein du Vlaams Belang, affirme avoir été “une taupe” au sein du parti flamand d’extrême droite. Il aurait en effet fourni durant trois ans des informations sur le fonctionnement interne du parti à la Sûreté de l’État, a-t-il déclaré aux quotidiens De Standaard et Het Nieuwsblad. Filip Dewinter se dit trahi. La ministre de la Justice a rappelé à l’ordre la Sûreté quant à son devoir d’information à son égard.
Et aussi
Sûreté de l’Etat: le dossier “Dewinter Filip” est un “ancien dossier juridique”

“J’ai été recruté comme informateur en 2007. Jusqu’à ma démission du parti en 2010, j’ai rencontré presque tous les mois une personne des services de renseignements”, a déclaré Bart Debie qui était à cette époque une figure-clé du Vlaams Belang.

Bart Debie aurait notamment fourni des informations concernant les soutiens financiers du Vlaams Belang.

Il a décidé de s’exprimer quant à son rôle d’informateur à la suite de déclarations de la ministre de la Justice, Annemie Turtelboom, qui a affirmé récemment que la Sûreté de l’État n’était pas impliquée dans l’espionnage de parlementaires.

Annemie Turtelboom rappelle la Sûreté de l’Etat à l’ordre

La ministre de la Justice, Annemie Turtelboom, a rappelé lundi, dans un communiqué de presse, avoir demandé récemment à la Sûreté de l’Etat de vérifier si l’obligation d’information à son égard était bien respectée dans les cas de surveillance de parlementaires.

Une circulaire de 2009 prévoit que le ministre de la Justice doit être immédiatement informé chaque fois que le nom d’un membre actif du parlement fédéral apparaît dans un rapport de la Sûreté. Début février, après plusieurs affaires de surveillance impliquant des politiciens, Mme Turtelboom a demandé au Comité R, chargé de superviser la Sûreté, de vérifier que cette instruction était bien suivie.

Dans un communiqué diffusé lundi, Mme Turtelboom a répété ses demandes.

“A la suite de la fuite de l’analyse de phénomène, la ministre de la Justice a demandé à la Sûreté de l’Etat si toutes les instructions concernant le fonctionnement de la Sûreté de l’Etat sont rigoureusement appliquées”, selon le communiqué.

“Vu l’importance d’une organisation de l’information correcte par les services de renseignements, (elle) a également demandé une enquête de contrôle au Comité R, qui est responsable légalement du contrôle parlementaire sur le fonctionnement de ces services”, est-il précisé.

“Annemie Turtelboom doit s’expliquer”

Colère de Filip Dewinter qui se dit “trahi par un bon ami”. Il fait remarquer qu’il avait aidé Bart Debie par le passé, lors de son procès, que le parti a payé ses amendes et qu’il a été salarié du Belang pendant des années.

L’ancien président du parti d’extrême-droite a également indiqué lundi attendre de la ministre de la Justice, Annemie Turtelboom, de “très sérieuses explications”. Cette dernière avait affirmé que la Sûreté de l’État ne pistait par les parlementaires.

“Soit elle ment, soit elle n’est pas au courant. Dans les deux cas, c’est problématique”, a-t-il dit.

Au-delà des moyens juridiques dont il envisage de faire usage, le sénateur VB entend placer le débat sur la scène politique. “Utiliser la Sûreté comme un service de renseignement politique, selon le régime en place, cela va beaucoup trop loin. Qui plus est, l’objectif, ici, était clairement de déstabiliser un parti ou un homme politique”, a-t-il souligné.

M. Dewinter exige de pouvoir examiner son dossier à la Sûreté. Il demande également que la Sûreté fasse étalage de ses méthodes et qu’on fasse savoir si d’autres taupes ont infiltré le Belang.

“S’il était informateur, ce serait un délit pour lui de le révéler”, rappelle le patron de la Sûreté

Alain Winants, le patron de la Sûreté de l’Etat, a confirmé lundi qu’il ne souhaitait donner aucune information sur l’éventuel rôle d’informateur qu’aurait joué l’ancien membre du Vlaams Belang Bart Debie. “Je ne peux pas vous parler de nos éventuelles sources, cela serait un délit”, a-t-il dit à Belga. “Mais si Debie était effectivement un informateur, cela serait un délit pour lui aussi” d’en parler, a-t-il ajouté.

Alain Winants a répété lundi que la Sûreté ne suivait aucun politicien pour ses activités parlementaires. “Mais nous sommes compétents pour enquêter sur un certain nombre de menaces, notamment l’extrémisme. La collecte de fonds à l’étranger pour la création de mouvements anti-Islam pourrait tomber sous cette catégorie”, a-t-il dit, sans pour autant confirmer les propos de M. Debie.

Certaines affirmations sont “totalement erronées ou fausses”

“Un certain nombre d’affirmations de monsieur Debie sont totalement erronées ou fausses”, a encore fait savoir la Sûreté de l’Etat dans un communiqué de presse diffusé lundi soir, en réaction à l’aveu par l’ancien membre du Vlaams Belang, Bart Debie, de sa collaboration avec l’agence de renseignements. Elle n’en dit toutefois pas davantage.

“Avant toute chose, nous souhaitons clairement indiquer que le service ne souhaite en aucun cas faire de déclaration concernant le fait que l’intéressé soit ou non un informateur de la Sûreté de l’Etat, étant donné que communiquer à ce sujet est un délit, aussi bien pour les membres du service que pour toute personne qui offre sa collaboration en application de la loi organique des services de renseignement et de sécurité du 30 novembre 1998”, rappelle la Sûreté.

Elle insiste par ailleurs “fermement sur le fait qu’elle ne suit pas, ne screene pas, ne file pas – etc – en tant que tels des partis politiques, des mandataires, des politiciens dans le cadre de l’exercice de leur mandat parlementaire et/ou ministériel”.

“Notons par ailleurs que monsieur Debie, pour peu que l’on croirait son récit, déclare que l’initiative de la prise de contact serait venue de lui-même. En outre, il faut également noter qu’un certain nombre d’affirmations de monsieur Debie sont totalement erronées ou fausses”, ajoute encore la Sûreté, sans préciser lesquelles.

Le Comité R va enquêter

Les “récentes révélations sur des informateurs éventuels dans le milieu politique seront reprises” dans l’enquête que mène actuellement le Comité R sur la manière dont les services de renseignement s’intéressent, le cas échéant, à des mandataires, a indiqué lundi le président de l’organe de contrôle, Guy Rapaille.

“Le Comité permanent R a reçu, ces derniers jours, tant du Sénat que du ministre de la Justice, des missions d’enquêtes relatives aux documents de la Sûreté de l’Etat qui, malgré leur caractère secret, ont été diffusés dans les médias. Il s’agit d’une part d’une note relative à l’infiltration de la communauté congolaise de Bruxelles par le mouvement de la Scientologie, et d’autre part d’un rapport concernant une analyse de phénomène sur des activités d’ingérence non étatiques. Le Comité permanent R a repris les diverses questions de ces autorités dans deux enquêtes de contrôle distinctes”, a-t-il indiqué dans un communiqué.

La première enquête, qui a déjà démarré, mais dont la portée est à présent étendue, traite de la manière dont les documents susmentionnés ont été “préparés et diffusés”, ainsi que de leur “conformité aux règles en vigueur”, a confirmé Guy Rapaille. “L’enquête sur les fuites en tant que telles est en premier lieu du ressort des autorités judiciaires, étant donné qu’il pourrait s’agir de délits”, a-t-il toutefois précisé.

Une seconde enquête, plus générale, traitera “la manière dont la Sûreté de l’Etat et le Service Général du Renseignement et de la Sécurité recueillent, le cas échéant, des informations sur des mandataires politiques, la manière dont ils conservent et utilisent ces informations et la manière dont ils en font rapport aux ministres de tutelle ou à d’autres autorités”, a ajouté M. Rapaille. “Il va de soi que de récentes révélations sur des informateurs éventuels dans le milieu politique seront reprises dans cette enquête”, a-t-il précisé.

Bart Debie et les méthodes musclées

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BELGIQUE | lundi 11 février 2013 à 4h37

Find this story at 11 February 2013

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