The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: ‘There is no real hunt. It’s fixed’

Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau’s more ethically murky practices

Craig Monteilh: ‘It is all about entrapment.’ Photograph: The Washington Post

Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away from recording their pillow talk.

“They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did,” Monteilh told the Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.

It is an astonishing admission that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11. While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group as suspicious.

Monteilh was involved in one of the most controversial tactics: the use of “confidential informants” in so-called entrapment cases. This is when suspects carry out or plot fake terrorist “attacks” at the request or under the close supervision of an FBI undercover operation using secret informants. Often those informants have serious criminal records or are supplied with a financial motivation to net suspects.

In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant’s criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot.

Such actions have led Muslim civil rights groups to wonder if their communities are being unfairly targeted in a spying game that is rigged against them. Monteilh says that is exactly what happens. “The way the FBI conducts their operations, It is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It’s such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It’s fixed,” he said.

But Monteilh has regrets now about his involvement in a scheme called Operation Flex. Sitting in the kitchen of his modest home in Irvine, near Los Angeles, Monteilh said the FBI should publicly apologise for his fruitless quest to root out Islamic radicals in Orange County, though he does not hold out much hope that will happen. “They don’t have the humility to admit a mistake,” he said.

Monteilh’s story sounds like something out of a pulp thriller. Under the supervision of two FBI agents the muscle-bound fitness instructor created a fictitious French-Syrian alter ego, called Farouk Aziz. In this disguise in 2006 Monteilh started hanging around mosques in Orange County – the long stretch of suburbia south of LA – and pretended to convert to Islam.

He was tasked with befriending Muslims and blanket recording their conversations. All this information was then fed back to the FBI who told Monteilh to act like a radical himself to lure out Islamist sympathizers.

Yet, far from succeeding, Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County’s Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. In an ironic twist, they also reported Monteilh to the FBI: unaware he was in fact working undercover for the agency.

Monteilh does not look like a spy. He is massively well built, but soft-spoken and friendly. He is 49 but looks younger. He lives in a small rented home in Irvine that blends into the suburban sprawl of southern California. Yet Monteilh knows the spying game intimately well.

By his own account Monteilh got into undercover work after meeting a group of off-duty cops working out in a gym. Monteilh told them he had spent time in prison in Chino, serving time for passing fraudulent checks.

It is a criminal past he explains by saying he was traumatised by a nasty divorce. “It was a bad time in my life,” he said. He and the cops got to talking about the criminals Monteilh had met while in Chino. The information was so useful that Monteilh says he began to work on undercover drug and organised crime cases.

Eventually he asked to work on counter-terrorism and was passed on to two FBI handlers, called Kevin Armstrong and Paul Allen. These two agents had a mission and an alias ready-made for him.

Posing as Farouk Aziz he would infiltrate local mosques and Islamic groups around Orange County. “Paul Allen said: ‘Craig, you are going to be our computer worm. Our guy that gives us the real pulse of the Muslim community in America’,” Monteilh said.

The operation began simply enough. Monteilh started hanging out at mosques, posing as Aziz, and explaining he wanted to learn more about religion. In July, 2006, at the Islamic Center of Irvine, he converted to Islam.

Monteilh also began attending other mosques, including the Orange County Islamic Foundation. Monteilh began circulating endlessly from mosque to mosque, spending long days in prayer or reading books or just hanging out in order to get as many people as possible to talk to him.

“Slowly I began to wear the robes, the hat, the scarf and they saw me slowly transform and growing a beard. At that point, about three or four months later, [my FBI handlers] said: ‘OK, now start to ask questions’.”

Those questions were aimed at rooting out radicals. Monteilh would talk of his curiosity over the concepts of jihad and what Muslims should do about injustices in the world, especially where it pertained to American foreign policy.

He talked of access to weapons, a possible desire to be a martyr and inquired after like-minded souls. It was all aimed at trapping people in condemning statements. “The skill is that I am going to get you to say something. I am cornering you to say “jihad”,” he said.

Of course, the chats were recorded.

In scenes out of a James Bond movie, Monteilh said he sometimes wore a secret video recorder sewn into his shirt. At other times he activated an audio recorder on his key rings.

Monteilh left his keys in offices and rooms in the mosques that he attended in the hope of recording conversations that took place when he was not there. He did it so often that he earned a reputation with other worshippers for being careless with his keys. The recordings were passed back to his FBI handlers at least once a week.

He also met with them every two months at a hotel room in nearby Anaheim for a more intense debriefing. Monteilh says he was grilled on specific individuals and asked to view charts showing networks of relationships among Orange County’s Muslim population.

He said the FBI had two basic aims. Firstly, they aimed to uncover potential militants. Secondly, they could also use any information Monteilh discovered – like an affair or someone being gay – to turn targeted people into becoming FBI informants themselves.

None of it seemed to unnerve his FBI bosses, not even when he carried out a suggestion to begin seducing Muslim women and recording them.

At one hotel meeting, agent Kevin Armstrong explained the FBI attitude towards the immense breadth of Operation Flex – and any concerns over civil rights – by saying simply: “Kevin is God.”

Monteilh’s own attitude evolved into something very similar. “I was untouchable. I am a felon, I am on probation and the police cannot arrest me. How empowering is that? It is very empowering. You began to have a certain arrogance about it. It is almost taunting. They told me: ‘You are an untouchable’,” he said.

But it was not always easy. “I started at 4am. I ended at 9.30pm. Really, it was a lot of work … Farouk took over. Craig did not exist,” he said. But it was also well paid: at the peak of Operation Flex, Monteilh was earning more than $11,000 a month.

But he was wrong about being untouchable.

Far from uncovering radical terror networks, Monteilh ended up traumatising the community he was sent into. Instead of embracing calls for jihad or his questions about suicide bombers or his claims to have access to weapons, Monteilh was instead reported to the FBI as a potentially dangerous extremist.

A restraining order was also taken out against him in June 2007, asking him to stay away from the Islamic Center of Irvine. Operation Flex was a bust and Monteilh had to kill off his life as Farouk Aziz.

But the story did not end there. In circumstances that remain murky Monteilh then sued the FBI over his treatment, claiming that they abandoned him once the operation was over.

He also ended up in jail after Irvine police prosecuted him for defrauding two women, including a former girlfriend, as part of an illegal trade in human growth hormone at fitness clubs. (Monteilh claims those actions were carried out as part of another secret string operation for which he was forced to carry the can.)

What is not in doubt is that Monteilh’s identity later became public. In 2009 the FBI brought a case against Ahmad Niazi, an Afghan immigrant in Orange County.

The evidence included secret recordings and even calling Osama bin Laden “an angel”. That was Monteilh’s work and he outed himself to the press to the shock of the very Muslims he had been spying on who now realised that Farouk Aziz – the radical they had reported to the FBI two years earlier – had in fact been an undercover FBI operative.

Now Monteilh says he set Niazi up and the FBI was trying to blackmail the Afghani into being an informant. “I built the whole relationship with Niazi. Through my coercion we talked about jihad a lot,” he said. The FBI’s charges against Niazi were indeed later dropped.

Now Monteilh has joined an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the FBI. Amazingly, after first befriending Muslim leaders in Orange County as Farouk Aziz, then betraying them as Craig Monteilh, he has now joined forces with them again to campaign for their civil liberties.

That has now put Monteilh’s testimony about his year undercover is at the heart of a fresh legal effort to prove that the FBI operation in Orange County unfairly targeted a vulnerable Muslim community, trampling on civil rights in the name of national security.

The FBI did not respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.

It is not the first time Monteilh has shifted his stance. In the ACLU case Monteilh is now posing as the sorrowful informant who saw the error of his ways.

But in previous court papers filed against the Irvine Police and the FBI, Monteilh’s lawyers portrayed him as the loyal intelligence asset who did sterling work tackling the forces of Islamic radicalism and was let down by his superiors.

In those papers Monteilh complained that FBI agents did not act speedily enough on a tip he gave them about a possible sighting of bomb-making materials. Now Monteilh says that tip was not credible.

Either way it does add up to a story that shifts with the telling. But that fact alone goes to the heart of the FBI’s use of such confidential informants in investigating Muslim communities.

FBI operatives with profiles similar to Monteilh’s – of a lengthy criminal record, desire for cash and a flexibility with the truth – have led to high profile cases of alleged entrapment that have shocked civil rights groups across America.

In most cases the informants have won their prosecutions and simply disappeared. Monteilh is the only one speaking out. But whatever the reality of his year undercover, Monteilh is almost certainly right about one impact of Operation Flex and the exposure of his undercover activities: “Because of this the Muslim community will never trust the FBI again.”

Paul Harris in Irvine, California
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 March 2012 16.50 GMT

Find this story at 20 March 2012

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

Editor of The Progressive Calls for Eric Holder to Resign over Spying on Press, Occupy Protesters

As the Obama administration faces criticism for the Justice Department’s spying on journalists and the IRS targeting of right-wing organizations, newly released documents show how the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local police forces partnered with corporations to spy on Occupy protesters in 2011 and 2012. Detailed in thousands of pages of records from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies, the spying monitored the activists’ online usage and led to infiltration of their meetings. One document shows an undercover officer was dispatched in Arizona to infiltrate activists organizing protests around the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the secretive group that helps corporate America propose and draft legislation for states across the country. We’re joined by Matt Rothschild of The Progressive, who tackles the surveillance in his latest article, “Spying on Occupy Activists: How Cops and Homeland Security Help Wall Street.”

Watch Part Two of interview here
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end our show with a look at newly revealed documents showing how police partnered with corporations to monitor the Occupy Wall Street movement. DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy have obtained thousands of pages of records from counterterrorism and law enforcement agencies that detail how so-called “fusion centers” monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012. These fusion centers are comprised of employees from municipal, county and federal counterterrorism and homeland security entities, as well as local police departments, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

The documents show how fusion center personnel spied on Occupy protesters, monitored their Facebook accounts, and infiltrated their meetings. One document showed how the Arizona fusion center dispatched an undercover officer to infiltrate activist groups organizing protests around the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the secretive group that helps corporate America propose and draft legislation for states across the country. The undercover officer apparently worked for the benefit of the private entity ALEC despite being on the public payroll.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! reached out to the Phoenix Police Department to join us on the show, but they declined our request. Sergeant Trent Crump in the media relations department said in an email, quote, “Occupy Phoenix presented itself with a great deal of civil unrest over a long period of time. We monitored available Intel all the time, as it is used for Intel-driven policing. Intel dictated resources and response tactics to address, mitigate, and manage this ongoing activity which was very fluid and changing day-to-day. This approach ensured that citizens can exercise their civil rights, while we protect the community at the same time,” they said.

Well, for more, we go to Matt Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive magazine, wrote the cover story for the June issue of the magazine, “Spying on Occupy Activists: How Cops and Homeland Security Help Wall Street,” the piece drawing heavily on the documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and DBA Press. Matt Rothschild is also the author of You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression.

Matt, welcome to Democracy Now! Just lay out what you have found.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Hey, Amy. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, I mean, these documents from the Center for Media and Democracy and DBA Press show that law enforcement and Homeland Security have equated protesters, left-wing protesters, as terrorists. They have diverted enormous amounts of resources from counterterrorism efforts to spy on these local protesters, and then they’ve collaborated with the private sector, some of the very institutions—banks—that these protesters were aiming at. And as you read in that statement from the Phoenix Police Department, the effort was to mitigate these protests. I mean, why is law enforcement, why is Homeland Security, in the business of mitigating protests?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to a response that we received from the Phoenix Police Department when we reached them for comment. And they said that they were not treating Occupy protesters as potential terrorists. They said, “[W]e are an all hazards incident management team, we have gathered information at all types of events [such as] Superbowl, World Series, SB 1070 protest etc.” So can you say how it is that their monitoring of Occupy protesters differed qualitatively from the other events that the Phoenix Police Department named?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Sure. Well, they’re using resources from the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, the Arizona fusion center, and they’re using Homeland Defense personnel in the Phoenix Police Department to track Occupy activists. So, it’s a little disingenuous of them to say they’re not treating these protesters as terrorists when they’re using their own anti-terrorist personnel to spend a lot of time simply tracking these activists. One of the police officers who was on the Homeland Defense Bureau of the Phoenix Police Department said she was primarily spending her time tracking Occupy activists on social media.

AMY GOODMAN: We also asked the Phoenix police if law enforcement is infiltrating Occupy meetings. And he replied, quote, “Infiltrate? No. Attend open meetings? Yes.” Democracy Now! also asked Trent Crump if law enforcement tracked Occupy activists online. He replied, “Yes, we gather intel on a number of social media sites regularly.” So, what about this? And also, this issue of law enforcement monitoring the protests against ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, when we asked him this, he said, “Yes, public safety.” Your response?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well, they not only monitored the ALEC protests in late November 2011, but they also sent a face sheet to the security personnel for ALEC, a face sheet of the faces and names and identities of Occupy protesters who have been doing some activism in the Phoenix area, to make the ALEC security personnel aware of who may be coming to their protests. They were also tracking—

AMY GOODMAN: So the police are working with the companies and the organizations.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Absolutely. Yeah, they were working with security for the American Legislative Exchange Council. They were also letting security know when Jesse Jackson was going to be in town to join an Occupy protest and an ALEC protest. Is that really their job to be passing information on to these private entities?

And then, with some of the bank protests that Occupy Phoenix was planning, they were giving downtown banks all sorts of information. “Give downtown banks everything they need.” That was one internal memo from the Phoenix Police Department, when it was a day of protest against these banks and Occupy was urging the bank customers to cut up their credit cards from these banks. And which banks are we talking about? We’re talking about Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase—some of the very targets that Occupy had been protesting against. So, the question is: Who are the police department working for? Are they working for citizens? Are they working for the private sector? Are they working for the banks?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Can you put—Matt Rothschild, can you put this in a wider historical context? Is this kind of surveillance unprecedented in the U.S.? And what accounts for its occurrence during Occupy in the way that you describe?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well, unfortunately, it’s not unprecedented. There’s a terrible history of law enforcement and the FBI spying on left-wing activists, going back to the COINTELPRO program of the FBI in the ’60s and ’70s, where they infiltrated the Black Panther movement and the American Indian Movement. But interestingly, after those revelations came out, there were guidelines imposed by the Justice Department itself, the so-called Levi guidelines. Edward Levi was the attorney general under the Ford administration who said you can’t go spying on and infiltrating activist groups in this country unless there’s a predicate of criminal activity. Well, after 9/11, the Bush administration and Ashcroft, his attorney general, completely destroyed the Levi guidelines and let law enforcement do any kind of infiltration they want, without any necessity for any hint of criminal activity on the part of the activists.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Rothschild, you’ve called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder. Why?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well, for a number of reasons, Amy, first of all, for this scandal about investigating reporters. I think that’s outrageous. We had more than a hundred AP reporters and editors that the Justice Department was gathering information on, and now we have the revelation about the Fox News reporter James Rosen, who was being accused of being a co-conspirator under the Espionage Act of 1917 simply for doing his reporting job. Also, the attorney general has been essentially waging war on whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.

And on top of that, let’s remember, this attorney general, Eric Holder, has been rationalizing the assassination program that the Obama administration has been engaging in, saying that a drone can drop a bomb on a U.S. citizen anywhere in the world, and that U.S. citizen will already have had due process simply because the Obama administration itself or the president or the secretary of defense calls that person a terrorist. Now, that’s not due process, and that’s not what the Justice Department should be doing. Certainly the attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of this country, should know better than that.

AMY GOODMAN: Matthew Rothschild, isn’t he just carrying out President Obama’s policies?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well, he very well might be, and then we have a more serious problem. We have a serious problem at the very top with a president of the United States, again, like George W. Bush, engaging in illegal activity.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to do part two of the interview and post it at democracynow.org. Matt Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive magazine, wrote the cover story for the June issue, “Spying on Occupy Activists: How Cops and Homeland Security Help Wall Street.”

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Find this story at 22 May 2013

Nestlé has nothing to fear from Swiss legal system; No investigation into the murder of Colombian trade unionist

10 May 2013 – Fourteen months after receiving a criminal complaint, the office of public prosecution in the Swiss Canton of Waadt decided on 1 May 2013 not to investigate whether Nestlé and its managers were liable for negligently contributing to the death of Colombian Nestlé trade unionist Luciano Romero. In March 2012 the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) together with Colombian partner organizations lodged a complaint with the prosecution in the German speaking Canton of Zug, who failed to initiate an investigation and instead handed the proceedings over to the Canton of Waadt. Rather than promptly beginning an investigation, the prosecution in Waadt made use of various formalities to delay the proceedings until they could declare that the matter had become time-barred. The victim’s widow, who had lodged her own criminal complaint and who is represented by Zurich lawyers Marcel Bosonnet and Florian Wick, will appeal the decision.

Overall, the proceedings demonstrate that the Swiss judiciary is unwilling to pursue substantiated allegations against corporations. Swiss law makes it effectively impossible for non-European victims of Swiss firms, in particular, to enforce their rights before the courts. The criminal complaint accused senior managers as well as the Nestlé firm itself of negligently contributing to the murder by paramilitaries of Luciano Romero on 10 September 2005 in Vallepudar, Colombia. Despite being informed about the threats made against Romero, they failed to use the resources available to them to prevent the murder. The direct perpetrators of the crime – those who actually carried out the murder – were convicted in Colombia in 2006 and 2007, a rare occurrence in the country with the world’s highest rate of murder and intimidation of trade unionists. At the close of these proceedings in 2007, the Colombian court called for a criminal investigation into the role of Nestlé subsidiary Cicolac as well as the parent company, yet no such investigation was carried out. Despite ample indications of criminal liability, no prosecutor in Switzerland or in Colombia has initiated an investigation. It was left to Colombian lawyers and trade unionists together with the ECCHR to investigate the circumstances of the case and work on behalf of the family of Luciano Romero, work which evidently came too late.

ECCHR General Secretary had the following comment on the prosecution’s decision:

“Even our lowest expectations of the Swiss judiciary have been let down in the Nestlé case. But regardless of how this case proceeds, the problem is clear: Swiss companies have a liability – including a legal liability – for human rights violations committed outside Europe. If current Swiss law prevents the victims of such crimes from enforcing their rights then it – along with the laws of other European countries – must be reformed.”

For further information please contact:

ECCHR, Wolfgang Kaleck, info@ecchr.eu, Tel: ++49 (030) 400 485 90

European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights e.V. (ECCHR)

Zossener Str. 55-58, Aufgang D

D-10961 BERLIN

Phone: + 49 (0)30 – 40 04 85 90

Fax: + 49 (0)30 – 40 04 85 92

E-Mail: info@ECCHR.eu

Nestle under fire over Colombian murder

A Nestle employee and union member in Colombia was murdered by paramilitary forces seven years ago. Human rights organizations say Nestle shares the blame, but investigations have stalled for years.

Over three months ago, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin (ECCHR) and Sinaltrainal, the Colombian trade union for the food industry, teamed up to press charges against food giant Nestle with the public prosecutor in the Swiss canton of Zug.

The groups accused Nestle of responsibility for the murder of Luciano Romero in 2005, due to neglect of safety precautions. However, investigation into the case has yet to begin.

It looks like the complaint is a hot one for the Swiss prosecution to handle. The case would set a new precedent. It would be the first time that a Swiss business had been held legally responsible for a breach of law abroad.

Nestle, which is the biggest food company and one of the most multinational companies in the world, is also the biggest taxpayer in Switzerland. The company has 328,000 employees in more than 150 countries, with revenue last year of 70 billion euros ($87.6 billion) and a net profit of eight billion euros.

Union members threatened
Columbians protest ties between president and paramilitaries

Nestle has been active in Colombia since 1944, where it has grown to be one of the biggest purchasers of milk. The town of Valledupar is home to the Cicolac factory, a subsidiary which buys up most of the milk in the region and is an important economic force.

In the 1990s, Romero was one of 191 employees at Cicolac. Nestle planned a joint venture with another company, and Romero became an active opponent of the move.

“Romero became one of the most important union activists in the region,” said legal expert Claudia Müller-Hoff, who is working on the case for the ECCHR. “Because of his active involvement, local paramilitaries often threatened to kill him.”

Romero was unable to stop Nestle’s plans.

“During the process of restructuring, all employees were let go and replaced by new staff with worse contracts,” said Michel Egger of Alliance Sud, one of the biggest development aid organizations in Switzerland.

Tortured to death
Müller-Hoff says Nestle did not do enough to protect its employee

In the face of serious threats, Romero temporarily went into exile in Spain through an organized protection program. Once that expired, he returned to Colombia in 2005 and filed a complaint against the termination of his contract.

“At the same time, he prepared for a public witness hearing in Switzerland regarding working conditions at Nestle’s Colombian subsidiary,” Müller-Hoff said.

But he was never able to testify. Shortly before the hearing, Romero was abducted by members of a paramilitary death squad and tortured to death.

The paramilitaries were caught and sentenced by a Colombian court. In his verdict, the judge concluded it was impossible that the group acted on its own.

The judge ordered the state prosecutor to “investigate leading managers of Nestle-Cicolac to clarify their likely involvement and/or planning of the murder of union leader Luciano Enrique Romero Molina.”

The Colombian prosecution has drawn out the investigation up to today.

Dangerous terrain for unions

Colombiais “one of the most dangerous countries for union activities,” the International Trade Union Confederation said in a 2010 report. Since 2000, 60 percent of all murders of union members have happened there. Most remain unsolved to this day. More than 20 members of Sinatrainal have been murdered since 1986. Thirteen of them had, like Romero, worked for Nestle.

After Romero’s murder, Alliance Sud initiated a process of dialogue with Nestle to discuss the conflicts in Valledupar, sending people to Colombia to speak with locals involved in the case. The results left much to be desired.

“The corporate culture is very technocratic and profit-oriented,” Egger said. “That’s something we strongly criticized.”

In its final report, Alliance Sud said Nestle is lacking in conflict sensitivity, including when it comes to dealing with past events that left the union traumatized.

No comment from Nestle

In the eyes of ECCHR, Nestle and its managers share considerable responsibility for Romero’s death.

“After all, despite being well-informed about continuing threats against the Cicolac employee’s life, they failed to do anything to protect him,” Mueller-Hoff said.
Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe: the company won’t talk

So far, Nestle has rejected all allegations of responsibility and fails to answer requests for an interview. Allegations about the company’s operations up to 2005 evidently do not jibe with positions Nestle has taken since then.

An example is Nestle’s 2008 sustainability report, which claims that every employee should have the opportunity “to develop his potential in a safe and fair work environment where he is listened to, respected and appreciated.” The report describes employee safety as “non-negotiable.”

A company brochure from 2006 states, “especially in a war-torn country like Colombia, after consultations with both authorities and the unions, we have undertaken great efforts to protect our union leaders, workers and managers.”

Delays after unclear jurisdiction

The complaint against Nestle is also backed by the German-based Catholic relief agency Misereor.

…

Date 27.08.2012
Author Andreas Zumach / ag, srs
Editor Michael Lawton

Find this story at 27 August 2013

© 2013 Deutsche Welle

MI5 allegedly applies for secret court session after informant sues for being denied protection

Former IRA mole accuses Home Office of cover-up and claims he was denied medical treatment after being shot by IRA hit team

MI5 has allegedly applied for a controversial secret court hearing after being sued by a former IRA mole who claims he has been denied medical treatment after being shot in a reprisal attack.

Martin McGartland, originally from west Belfast, has been credited with saving the lives of 50 police officers and soldiers in Northern Ireland as a spy within the IRA providing intelligence to the special branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

He is suing MI5 and the Home Office for failing to support him after he was attacked and repeatedly shot by an IRA hit team who tracked him to a safe house in North Tyneside in 1999.

Mr McGartland has told The Independent that solicitors acting for the Home Office, the government department responsible for the Security Service, have applied to have the matter dealt with by a Closed Material Procedure (CMP) hearing.

At CMPs, due to come into force shortly with the introduction of the Justice and Security Act 2013, claimants must be represented before the judge by special advocates who have been cleared for security. Such a hearing would mean that neither Mr McGartland or his lawyers were able to attend.

Labour, which says CMPs deviate from the “tradition of open and fair justice”, has called for the use of such closed proceedings to be limited unless a judge agrees a fair verdict cannot be reached by any other means.

The Law Society president, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, has also raised objections to CMPs on the grounds that they undermine the essential principle of justice that all parties are entitled to see and challenge all the evidence placed before the court.

CMPs are seen by the Government as a way of bringing before a judge information which, for security reasons, cannot be revealed in open court.

Mr McGartland said that funding for treatment he was receiving for the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered after the assassination attempt had been stopped. He claimed the secret hearing was designed to cover up the Home Office’s failure to meet its duty of care, rather than to protect genuine state secrets.

“This is being done despite my legal case against them being related to their removing funding for my medical treatment, which they were funding after my 1999 shooting,” he told The Independent. “They removed the medical funding even after they were supplied two medical reports stating that I required a further three to five years of treatment. That resulted in a serious deterioration in my condition and it also led to my now requiring round-the-clock care, help and support. In other words MI5 are going to use CMP solely to cover up their own embarrassment and wrongdoing and not, as the Government has been claiming, in cases that relate to ‘National Security’.”

…

Ian Burrell
Monday, 6 May 2013

Find this story at 6 May 2013

© independent.co.uk

Undercover police ‘gave drugs to dealers in return for information’

Former detective Christian Plowman writes book claiming that unit targeted low-level criminals rather than criminals at top of chain

Christian Plowman claims that he often found himself targeting crack addicts instead of dealers and spying on ordinary people. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA

Heroin and crack cocaine bought with taxpayers’ money was routinely given to drug dealers in return for information, a former Scotland Yard undercover officer has alleged.

Christian Plowman, 39, claims that officers from SO10, the elite covert operations unit of the Metropolitan police, would allow dealers to take amounts of class-A drugs as a form of bribe.

Although not illegal, the practice of officers handing over illicit drugs in return for leads is likely to reignite the debate over the ethics of undercover policing and bring fresh accusations of a lack of control over covert operatives.

“We were treading a line. Often we’d buy some drugs off somebody who would be a junkie and he would promise to take us directly to the dealer the next time, but in return for that he’d want some of the drugs he’d bought for us. We had to be careful that if we agreed to that, he took the drugs himself so he couldn’t say that we supplied him,” said Plowman.

But Plowman said they never sold drugs, unlike detective constable Nicholas McFadden of West Yorkshire police, who was jailed for 23 years last Thursday after stealing more than £1.2m-worth of drugs seized in police raids and selling them back onto the streets.

Speaking publicly for the first time about his experiences as a covert operative since leaving the Met in 2011, Plowman also accused the undercover unit of targeting “low-hanging fruit” instead of individuals at the top of the criminal chain. He said some covert operations became focused upon getting “heads on sticks”, which Plowman said meant “let’s bag as many as people as possible for whatever offence we can”.

As a result, the full-time undercover officer claims he often found himself targeting crack addicts instead of dealers and spying on ordinary people.

Plowman spent 16 years in the Met and was one of around 10 full-time covert operatives. He was a close friend of Mark Kennedy, 43, the undercover officer who had at least one sexual relationship with a woman while infiltrating eco-activists. Plowman has written a book about his experiences, Crossing the Line, which is published next month.

Although he praises his colleagues, the former officer describes the culture of SO10 as riven with machismo, to the extent that undercover officers who requested psychological help were seen as not fit for the job.

“You need a culture where you can go and see a shrink and you won’t be blacklisted, but there was a proper locker-room culture,” said Plowman, who now lives abroad and works as a security manager for a fashion firm. Unable to ask for support and struggling to balance his aliases with his own identity, Plowman admits he contemplated suicide.

He reveals that some former colleagues have threatened him since he left. “One of them said ‘next time you’re in London, I’m gonna headbutt you’, but who’d do that anyway? You’re a policeman for starters.”

Plowman’s last job was working at a north London pawnshop called TJ’s Trading Post that was set up by Scotland Yard to trade in stolen goods, but which he believes operated as a “honey trap” that lured people to commit crime. More than 100 people are believed to have been convicted, many for illegally trading their own passports and driving licences.

Plowman claims the store encouraged people in a poor area to commit offences by giving the impression that they could make easy money by trading ID documents. “They were not people whose arrest would make any visible impact on the community. If TJ’s had never opened, those people would not have been in prison for any offence,” he said.

…

The Met declined to comment.

Mark Townsend
The Observer, Saturday 6 April 2013 15.40 BST

Find this story at 6 April 2013

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

From a Mexican kingpin to an FBI informant

After agents arrest a drug cartel chieftain named Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela, he becomes one of the bureau’s most valuable sources of information, according to confidential interview reports.

WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver appeared not startled at all. “My friend,” he said, “I have been waiting for you.”

And with that, Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela stepped out of his white 2002 BMW X5 and into the arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Over the next several days at his ranch in Colorado and an FBI safe house in Albuquerque, the Mexican cartel chieftain — who had reputedly fed one of his victims to lions in Mexico — was transformed into one of the FBI’s top informants on the Southwest border.

Around a dining room table in August 2010, an FBI camera whirring above, the 34-year-old Miramontes-Varela confessed his leadership in the Juarez cartel, according to 75 pages of confidential FBI interview reports obtained by The Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.

He told about marijuana and cocaine routes to California, New York and the Great Lakes. He described the shooting deaths of 30 people at a horse track in Mexico, and a hidden mass grave with 20 bodies, including two U.S. residents.

He told them about his African lions, which he had acquired as circus cubs. The story about feeding one of his enemies to them was false, he claimed, but he said he had seen plenty of “violence and suffering.” He told agents he was desperate to trade his knowledge for government protection. He wanted a new life for himself and his wife and three daughters.

A week later Miramontes-Varela pleaded guilty in federal court in New Mexico to a minor felony as an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm. Then he disappeared, almost certainly into the federal witness protection program.

FBI officials in Arizona and Washington declined to comment about Miramontes-Varela, citing bureau policy against discussing informants. But the documents tell plenty.

During the interview sessions, Miramontes-Varela “provided significant information about drug trafficking activity,” the documents said, leading to several successful unnamed law enforcement operations in the U.S. and Mexico.

***

After Miramontes-Varela was stopped in Brighton, Colo., agents took him back to his ranch. They advised him and his wife, Mari, that he was “the subject of an FBI investigation for his involvement in drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, money laundering and the interstate transportation of stolen property.”

In Spanish, they read him his Miranda rights. He called an attorney; they spoke quietly in Spanish. Miramontes-Varela hung up and turned to the agents. “Yes,” he said. “He told me to do as much as I can for you.”

Miramontes-Varela signed the Miranda waiver and looked up at the agents. He asked, “Where do you want to start?”

First, they said, any guns?

Miramontes-Varela mentioned a black 9-millimeter semiautomatic Glock pistol he said he bought after being shot at in El Paso. The agents asked to see it. “Yes, yes, no problem,” he said. He walked to a floor safe in a far corner of the living room, unlocked it and handed the weapon over.

Agents drove the couple to the FBI safe house in Albuquerque. Inside, they pointed to two cameras. One was in the master bedroom, where Miramontes-Varela and his wife would stay. Agents showed that that it was unplugged and that they had covered it with a white plastic bag. “Very nice,” Miramontes-Varela said.

Miramontes-Varela talked to them around the dining room table. That is where the other camera was. It stayed on.

***

His story poured out. He was born the third of 10 children in Terrero, Mexico, and grew up in Namiquipa, northern Mexico. He married when he was 18, his bride 15. They sneaked though Nogales, Ariz., coming to the U.S., he said, “to make money.”

They settled in Denver. Miramontes-Varela installed drywall. But in the late 1990s a brother, Yovany, lost an arm in a tractor mishap, and Miramontes-Varela returned home. He grew apples and traded in cattle.

In early 2002, he said, the Juarez cartel came to Namiquipa. Pedro Sanchez, known as El Tigre, controlled things. He offered Miramontes-Varela a job collecting a monthly $35,000 “tax” from marijuana growers.

Every 15 days, growers carted 20 tons to a local warehouse. It was shipped north through El Paso, the proceeds funneled back to the cartel and the growers.

One day the military arrived and gunfire ensued. “The mayor and town treasurer were killed,” Miramontes-Varela said. Later, El Tigre was arrested.

In 2008, Miramontes-Varela said, he fled with his family to El Paso. When he failed to return, the cartel burned his ranch and stole his cattle, all 120 cows. He was done with the violence, he said.

***

That part, according to the FBI, was not true. Miramontes-Varela shuffled between ranches in New Mexico and Colorado, they said, often in an armored car with bodyguards, and set up his own drug- and gun-smuggling operation.

When a courier was arrested with 18 kilos of cocaine, Miramontes-Varela offered the man’s family the choice of one of his 16 homes in Mexico, including his “big house,” according to telephone wiretaps outlined in the documents.

In March 2010, the FBI listed him as head of the “Miramontes-Varela Drug Trafficking Organization,” tied to the Juarez, Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels. From two confidential sources and two wiretaps, agents learned that his organization had stolen tractors in the U.S. and driven them to Mexico as payment for lost loads. One debt alone reached $670,000. They learned that one of Miramontes-Varela’s bosses in Mexico, “Temoc,” was tortured and killed by the Sinaloans.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also wanted him arrested. It had tracked $250,000 in illegal gun purchases to Miramontes-Varela and his brother through its ill-fated Fast and Furious gun-smuggling surveillance operation in Arizona.

FBI agents rigged a 24-hour pole camera outside his ranch near Santa Teresa, N.M. But Miramontes-Varela figured it out. Five of his men in two vehicles followed a surveillance agent for 90 minutes, then slashed his tire.

…

richard.serrano@latimes.com

By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times

8:12 PM PDT, April 21, 2012Advertisement

Find this story at 21 April 2012

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

NSU-Angeklagte Beate Zschäpe Die Frau im Schatten

Beate Zschäpe fand im Urlaub schnell Freunde, verabredete sich zum Sport und erzählte von ihren Katzen. Da lebte sie schon im Untergrund. Jetzt steht sie wegen der zehn Morde des NSU vor Gericht. Ein Blick in das Leben einer mutmaßlichen Neonazi-Terroristin.

Beate Zschäpe schweigt – und alle fragen sich: Wie ist aus der “Diddlemaus” eine gefährliche Neonazi-Terroristin geworden? – Foto: dpa

Die Zeugin, die das Bundeskriminalamt im Juli 2012 befragt, verschweigt offenbar nichts. Obwohl Sabine Schneider (Name geändert) der frühere Kontakt zur rechten Szene peinlich zu sein scheint. „Politik ist überhaupt nicht mein Ding“, gibt Schneider den BKA-Beamten zu Protokoll, „ich war halt bei diesen Runden damals dabei, das war lustig und da wurde getrunken.“ Rechtsradikales Gedankengut „habe ich persönlich überhaupt nicht“.

Die Frau Anfang 40 aus Ludwigsburg (Baden-Württemberg) wirkt wie die Mitläuferin einer rechten Clique, die sich mit Kumpels aus Thüringen und Sachsen traf.

Mal dort, mal in Ludwigsburg. Schneider fand die Ostler sympathisch, vor allem eine Frau aus Thüringen. Die war fröhlich und die Einzige, die sich nicht szenetypisch kleidete. Die Frau hieß Beate Zschäpe. In ihr hat sich Schneider, so sieht sie es heute, furchtbar getäuscht.

Schneider erlebte „die Beate“ als „liebevolle, nette, höfliche Dame“. Auch ihre Mutter sei von Zschäpe begeistert gewesen, sagt Schneider. „Beate hatte ja Gärtnerin gelernt und gab meiner Mutter Tipps.“ Von 1994 bis 2001 hielt der Kontakt, Zschäpe kam meist mit Uwe Mundlos nach Ludwigsburg, selten nur war Uwe Böhnhardt dabei. Offenbar ahnungslos lachte und trank Sabine Schneider mit rechten Mördern. Sie hat sich „auch mit dem Uwe Mundlos bestens verstanden“. Bis zum Sommer 2001 hatten sie, die beiden Killer der Terrorzelle „Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund“, bereits vier Türken erschossen und einen Sprengstoffanschlag verübt, vier Geldinstitute und einen Supermarkt überfallen.

Ahnungslos war auch der Staat. Er wusste nichts vom NSU, trotz aufwendiger Ermittlungen nach jedem Verbrechen, das die Terroristen begangen hatten. Es erscheint unglaublich, auch heute noch, fast anderthalb Jahre nach dem dramatischen Ende der Terrorgruppe. Mundlos und Böhnhardt sind tot, vom Trio, das 1998 untertauchte, ist nur Beate Zschäpe übrig. Sie wird in der kommenden Woche ein gewaltiges Medieninteresse auf sich ziehen, über Deutschland hinaus.

Am 17. April beginnt am Oberlandesgericht München der Prozess gegen die 38 Jahre alte Frau und vier Mitangeklagte – den Ex-NPD-Funktionär Ralf Wohlleben sowie André E., Holger G. und Carsten S. Die vier Männer sollen dem Trio geholfen haben, es geht da um Waffen, falsche Ausweise, unter Tarnnamen gemietete Wohnmobile. Der 6. Strafsenat wird über eine unfassbare Serie von Verbrechen zu urteilen haben, mit fassbaren Kategorien wie Täterschaft, Schuld, Unschuld, Strafmaß. Eine gigantische Aufgabe.

In einigen Medien ist schon vom „Jahrhundertprozess“ die Rede. Der Superlativ erscheint sogar plausibel. Das NSU-Verfahren ist, sieht man von den Prozessen zum Staatsterrorismus der Nazis ab, das größte zu rechtsextremem Terror seit Gründung der Bundesrepublik. Der Präsident des Gerichts, Karl Huber, erwartet eine Dauer von mehr als zwei Jahren. Die juristische, aber auch die politische Dimension des Prozesses erinnert an die so spektakulären wie schwierigen Verfahren gegen Mitglieder der Roten Armee Fraktion. Und der Blick auf den Komplex RAF, auf die hier immer noch schmerzlich offenen Fragen zu Morden, Motiven und Hintergründen, verstärkt die Ahnung, auch im NSU-Verfahren werde vieles unbegreiflich bleiben. Vielleicht auch die Person Beate Zschäpe.
Beate Zschäpe schweigt. Die Akten erzählen aus ihrem Leben.

Die Angeklagte schweigt – voraussichtlich auch im Prozess, zumindest am Anfang. Dass Zschäpe nicht redet, ist ihr gutes Recht. Auch Zschäpes Mutter und Großmutter sprechen nicht mit den Medien. Dennoch kommt man ihr näher bei der Lektüre von Ermittlungsakten des BKA und anderen Unterlagen. Zschäpe erscheint da zunächst wie eine Durchschnittsfigur, die sich radikalisiert hat, die an den beiden Uwes hing und plötzlich mit ihnen verschwand. Keine Ulrike Meinhof, die den Kampf für die RAF intellektuell zu begründen suchte, keine Fanatikerin mit einem bizarren Charisma wie Gudrun Ensslin. Nur ein unbedeutende Thüringer Rechtsextremistin. Die dann, so sieht es die Bundesanwaltschaft, eine ungeheure kriminelle Energie entwickelte. In der knapp 500-seitigen Anklage werden aufgelistet: Beteiligung an den zehn Morden des NSU, an mehreren Mordversuchen, an 15 Raubüberfällen, dazu Mitgliedschaft in einer terroristischen Vereinigung und besonders schwere Brandstiftung. Zschäpes Anwälte halten die Vorwürfe für weit übertrieben. Doch aus Sicht der Ermittler wurde die junge, unauffällige Frau aus Jena, in der rechten Szene als „Diddlmaus“ verniedlicht, die gefährlichste Neonazi-Terroristin in der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte.

Die Biografie bis zum Gang in den Untergrund zeugt, wie bei vielen Rechtsextremisten üblich, von einer schwierigen Kindheit. Geboren am 2. Januar 1975 in Jena, wächst Zschäpe bei ihrer Mutter Annerose Apel und ihrer Großmutter auf. Annerose Apel hatte den rumänischen Vater beim Zahnmedizinstudium in Rumänien kennengelernt. Als die Mutter 1975 heiratet, einen Deutschen, nimmt sie dessen Nachnamen an. 1977 lässt sie sich scheiden, ein Jahr später heiratet sie Günter Zschäpe und zieht zu ihm in eine andere Stadt in Thüringen. Tochter Beate bleibt bei der Großmutter. Als wenig später auch die zweite Ehe scheitert, zieht Annerose Zschäpe zurück nach Jena und nimmt Beate wieder zu sich. Doch Mutter und Tochter verstehen sich nicht, es gibt häufig Streit. Familiäre Wärme erlebt Beate offenbar nur bei der Großmutter.

Bei der Festnahme im November 2011 sagt Beate Zschäpe einem Polizisten, sie sei als „Omakind“ aufgewachsen. 1981 wird sie in Jena an der Polytechnischen Oberschule „Otto Grotewohl“ eingeschult, 1992 macht sie an der Oberschule „Johann Wolfgang von Goethe“ den Abschluss nach der 10. Klasse. Der Wunsch, sich zur Kindergärtnerin ausbilden zu lassen, geht nicht in Erfüllung. Zschäpe macht eine Lehre als Gärtnerin für Gemüseanbau, die Abschlussprüfung besteht sie 1995 mit „befriedigend“. Übernommen wird Zschäpe nicht. Sie ist länger arbeitslos, ein Jahr lang hat sie eine ABM-Stelle als Malergehilfin, dann wieder nichts.

Es sind die Jahre, in denen Beate Zschäpe in den Rechtsextremismus abdriftet. 1993 beginnt sie eine Beziehung mit dem Professorensohn Mundlos, der auch in einer rechten Clique abhängt. Das ist die Keimzelle der „Kameradschaft Jena“, einem kleinen, verschworenen Neonazi-Trupp, der sich später dem Netzwerk „Thüringer Heimatschutz“ anschließt. 1995 fällt Zschäpe erstmals dem Verfassungsschutz auf, als sie an einem größeren rechtsextremen Treffen teilnimmt – zusammen mit Mundlos und Böhnhardt. Im selben Jahr werden Zschäpe und Böhnhardt ein Paar. 1996 zieht sie bei Böhnhardts Familie ein. Doch der enge Kontakt zu Mundlos bleibt erhalten. Das Trio wird zunehmend fanatisch und für Zschäpe eine Art Ersatzfamilie.

In den kommenden Jahren fallen sie Polizei und Verfassungsschutz immer wieder auf. Es sind die für die Szene typischen Provokationen, zum Beispiel ein Auftritt von Mundlos und Böhnhardt in SA-ähnlicher Kluft in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Buchenwald. Aber bald schon reicht das nicht, die Aktionen werden härter. An einer Autobahnbrücke nahe Jena hängt das Trio einen Puppentorso auf, der einen Juden darstellen soll und mit einer Bombenattrappe verbunden ist. Der Drang zur Militanz wird stärker. Mundlos, Böhnhardt und Zschäpe planen den bewaffneten Kampf.

Als Polizisten am 26. Januar 1998, auf einen Tipp des Verfassungsschutzes hin, eine von Zschäpe gemietete Garage in Jena durchsuchen, finden sie eine Sprengstoffwerkstatt. Da liegen eine fertige und vier halb gebastelte Rohrbomben, ein Sprengsatz in einer Blechdose, eine Zündvorrichtung mit einem Wecker, 60 Superböller, Schwarzpulver und ein TNT-Gemisch. Die Beamten entdecken eine Diskette, darauf ein Gedicht mit dem Titel „Ali-Drecksau, wir hassen Dich“. Durchsucht wird auch Zschäpes Wohnung, in die sie 1997 gezogen ist. Die Polizisten stellen mehrere Waffen sicher und ein Exemplar des Brettspiels „Pogromly“, eine obszöne, Auschwitz glorifizierende Version von Monopoly.
Bei ihrem letzten Anruf sagte sie: Es ist was passiert in Eisenach.

Für die Beamten ist die Aktion trotz der Funde ein Fehlschlag, das Trio taucht ab. Es wird fast 14 Jahre dauern, bis die Polizei Mundlos, Böhnhardt und Zschäpe wieder entdeckt. Die beiden Uwes am 4. November 2011 als Leichen in einem brennenden Wohnmobil in Eisenach, Beate Zschäpe vier Tage später an der Pforte einer Polizeistation in Jena. Die Frau stellt sich.

Die 14 Jahre Untergrund bleiben bis heute zumindest in Teilen eine Black Box. Die Ermittler haben nur wenige Erkenntnisse darüber, was Zschäpe in all den Jahren gemacht hat, warum sie bei den Uwes blieb, was sie von deren Mord- und Raubtouren wusste. Bei Mutter und Großmutter hat sie sich offenbar nie gemeldet. Nachbarinnen aus Zwickau, wo sich das Trio von 2000 an in drei Wohnungen versteckte, und Urlaubsbekanntschaften, die das Trio bei Urlauben auf der Insel Fehmarn erlebten, schildern so ungläubig wie Sabine Schneider eine freundliche, lustige, warmherzige Frau. Die sich allerdings in dieser Zeit nicht Beate Zschäpe nennt, sondern „Lisa Dienelt“ oder „Susann Dienelt“ oder einfach „Liese“. „Ich habe mit Liese häufig morgens Sport gemacht“, erzählt später eine Zeugin der Polizei, die Zschäpe 2001 auf Fehmarn kennengelernt hatte. „Und mittags haben wir uns gesonnt“. Die Liese habe ihr auch erzählt, „dass sie zwei Katzen hat, die zu Hause von einer Freundin versorgt werden“. Das mit den beiden Katzen stimmt sogar. „Heidi“ und „Lilly“ geht es gut in der Wohnung in der Zwickauer Frühlingsstraße, wo sie auch einen kleinen Kratzbaum haben.

Wie die Wohnung des Trios sonst noch aussah, ist für die Bundesanwaltschaft ein Beweis dafür, dass Zschäpe in die Taten von Mundlos und Böhnhardt eingeweiht war. Fünf Kameras überwachten die Umgebung der Wohnungstür. Eine weitere Tür war massiv gesichert und mit einem Schallschutz versehen, der Eingang zum Kellerraum mit einem Alarmsystem ausgestattet. Nachdem Zschäpe am 4. November 2011 die Wohnung angezündet hatte und dabei das halbe Haus in die Luft flog, fand die Polizei im Brandschutt zwölf Schusswaffen, darunter die Ceska Typ 83. Mit ihr erschossen Mundlos und Böhnhardt die neun Migranten türkischer und griechischer Herkunft.

Aus Sicht der Bundesanwaltschaft gibt es noch mehr Belege für die Beteiligung Zschäpes an allen Verbrechen. Sie habe 2001 gemeinsam mit Mundlos und Böhnhardt vom Mitangeklagten Holger G. die Ceska entgegengenommen, sagen Ermittler. Sie habe zudem mit erfundenen Geschichten gegenüber Nachbarn die häufige Abwesenheit der beiden Uwes „abgetarnt“. Und sie habe die Beute der Raubzüge verwaltet und nach der Brandstiftung in Zwickau 15 Briefe mit der Paulchen-Panther-DVD verschickt, auf der sich der NSU zu den Morden und Anschlägen bekennt.

Die Ermittler betonen auch, eine Zeugin erinnere sich daran, Zschäpe am 9. Juni 2005 in Nürnberg gesehen zu haben. Sie soll in einem Supermarkt gestanden haben, kurz bevor Mundlos und Böhnhardt im benachbarten Imbiss den Türken Ismail Yasar erschossen. Zschäpes Anwälte halten gerade diese Aussage für unglaubhaft. Die Zeugin habe erst, nachdem Zschäpes Bild über die Medien bekannt geworden war, behauptet, sie damals gesehen zu haben. Für die Verteidiger gibt es keinen tragfähigen Beweis, dass Zschäpe an den Morden beteiligt war.

 

…

08.04.2013 12:51 Uhr
von Frank Jansen

Find this story at 8 April 2013

Copyright © Der Tagesspiegel

Lawmaker: German neo-Nazi trio likely had helpers

BERLIN — A neo-Nazi group suspected of committing a string of murders and bank robberies across Germany likely had more assistance than currently known, a German lawmaker with access to still-classified material on the case said Wednesday.

Sebastian Edathy, who heads a parliamentary inquiry into why security services failed to stop the group for more than a decade, said the self-styled National Socialist Underground couldn’t have carried out two bombings, 10 murders and more than a dozen bank heists without a support network.

The crimes took place between 1998 and 2011, when two of the three core members of the group died in an apparent murder-suicide. The surviving core member, Beate Zschaepe, and four alleged accomplices go on trial April 17.

“If you live underground for 13 years in a country like Germany, if you depend on logistical help to carry out crimes, then you will probably have had to draw on a network of supporters,” Edathy told reporters in Berlin.

Germany’s chief federal prosecutor Harald Range said last month that authorities believe the three were an “isolated group” without a nationwide network of helpers.

But many in Germany and abroad – eight of the victims were of Turkish origin and one was Greek – have questioned how the group could have committed so many murders across Germany, as well as the bank robberies and bomb attacks, without further help.

There also are concerns that police may have missed earlier opportunities to nab the trio, who in years past had been sought for lesser infractions.

In one instance, security services in the eastern state of Brandenburg failed to act on an informant’s tip about the trio’s whereabouts shortly after they went on the lam in 1998, Edathy said. The informant’s handlers were afraid that passing the information to officers searching for the group might compromise their agent, he said.

…

FRANK JORDANS | April 3, 2013 02:04 PM EST |

Find this story at 3 April 2013

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

NSU-Umfeld: Edathy rechnet mit weiteren V-Leuten

Die Liste der V-Leute und Helfer rund um die Terrorzelle NSU beläuft sich derzeit auf über 100 Beteiligte. Für den Kopf des Untersuchungsausschusses Edathy war das noch nicht das Ende.

Ausschussvorsitzender Edathy geht davon aus, dass das NSU-Netzwerk größer ist als bislang bekannt
© Rainer Jensen/DPA

Der Vorsitzende des NSU-Untersuchungsausschusses im Bundestag, Sebastian Edathy (SPD), hat Zweifel daran geäußert, dass die bislang vorliegenden Listen der V-Leute im Umfeld der rechtsextremen Terrororganisation vollständig sind. “Ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob die jüngste Liste mit Namen von Helfern, Helfershelfern und Kontaktpersonen im Zusammenhang mit dem NSU, die wir vom Bundeskriminalamt bekommen haben, nicht schon überholt ist und es noch mehr Namen gibt”, sagte Edathy der “Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung”. Er wolle “bis nach der Osterpause” wissen, welches der aktuelle Stand sei.

Der Ausschussvorsitzende erwartet nach eigenen Angaben noch weitere Erkenntnisse über V-Leute im Umfeld des Nationalsozialistischen Untergrunds (NSU): “Ich bin ziemlich sicher, dass wir noch nicht von allen V-Leuten im Umfeld des NSU-Trios wissen, dass sie V-Leute waren.” Auch auf der Liste, die dem Ausschuss jetzt vorliege, seien gegenüber früher einige Personen hinzugekommen, “bei denen noch geprüft werden muss, ob sie nicht Täterwissen hatten oder ob sie V-Leute waren”, sagte Edathy der “FAS”.

…

31. März 2013, 15:47 Uhr

Find this story at 31 March 2013

© 2013 stern.de GmbH

Geheime NSU-Liste macht klar Zwickauer Terrorzelle hatte mehr als hundert Helfer

Das Netzwerk der Zwickauer Terrorzelle ist offenbar viel größer als bislang bekannt. Einer geheimen Fahnder-Liste zufolge gehörten 129 Personen aus der rechtsextremen Szene zum engeren und weiteren Umfeld des Untergrund-Trios. Womöglich sind auch V-Leute darunter.
Die rechtsextreme Zwickauer Terrorzelle hatte nach einem Zeitungsbericht mehr Helfer als bislang bekannt. Nach einer geheimen Liste der Sicherheitsbehörden gehörten 129 Personen aus der rechtsextremen Szene zum engeren und weiteren Umfeld des „Nationalsozialistischen Untergrunds“ (NSU), berichtete die „Bild am Sonntag“ („BamS“).

Der NSU soll in den Jahren 2000 bis 2007 neun türkisch- und griechischstämmige Kleinunternehmer und eine Polizistin getötet haben. Die Gruppe war erst im November 2011 aufgeflogen. Der Prozess gegen die mutmaßliche Neonazi-Terroristin Beate Zschäpe und vier Mitangeklagte beginnt am 17. April vor dem Oberlandesgericht München. Er könnte mehr als zwei Jahre dauern.

Liste soll auf V-Leute geprüft werden
Gegen knapp ein Dutzend weiterer Beschuldigter wird noch ermittelt. Hinzu kämen zahlreiche Helfer und Helfershelfer, die direkt oder indirekt Kontakt mit den mutmaßlichen Terroristen hatten, denen sie unter anderem Geld, falsche Papiere oder Waffen beschaffen sollten.

Die Liste mit den Namen von 129 Personen ging dem Bericht zufolge dem NSU-Untersuchungsausschuss des Bundestages zu. Der Ausschussvorsitzende Sebastian Edathy (SPD) sagte der „BamS“: „Die neue Zahl ist erschreckend hoch. Jetzt muss schnell geklärt werden, ob es darunter Mitwisser der NSU-Verbrechen und weitere V-Leute gab.“

…

Sonntag, 24.03.2013, 15:20

Find this story at 24 March 2013

© FOCUS Online 1996-2013

Fahnder durchleuchteten das Umfeld der NSU-Terrorzelle Neonazi-Trio hatte 129 Helfer und Helfershelfer

Kurz vor Beginn des Prozesses gegen Beate Zschäpe gibt es neue Erkenntnisse der Ermittlungsbehörden zur Terrorzelle NSU: Das braune Netzwerk des Trios Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos und Beate Zschäpe war laut Informationen von BILD am SONNTAG größer als bisher bekannt.

Demnach gehörten 129 Personen aus der rechtsextremen Szene zum engeren und weiteren Umfeld des Nazi-Trios, dem zehn Morde an Migranten und einer deutschen Polizistin angelastet werden. Die 129 Namen stehen auf einer geheimen Liste der Sicherheitsbehörden, die dem NSU-Untersuchungsausschuss des Bundestags jetzt zuging.

Als harter Kern der Terrorgruppe gelten die vier Angeklagten, die neben Zschäpe ab dem 17. April vor Gericht stehen, sowie knapp ein Dutzend weiterer Beschuldigter, gegen die noch ermittelt wird.
Prozess gegen Nazi-Braut Zschäpe
NSU-Terror
HIER wird der Nazi-Braut der Prozess gemacht

Gerichtssaal umgebaut, Sicherheitsschleusen angebracht, Fenster zugemauert: Hier wird Beate Zschäpe am 17. April der Prozess gemacht.
mehr…
München
JVA Stadelheim Nazi-Braut sitzt jetzt im Knast in München
Beate Zschäpe (37) Vom schüchternen Teenie zur Terror-Braut
in München Gerichtssaal wird für NSU-Prozess umgebaut

Dazu kommen zahlreiche Helfer und Helfershelfer, die direkt oder indirekt Kontakt mit den mutmaßlichen Terroristen hatten, denen sie unter anderem Geld, falsche Papiere oder Waffen beschaffen sollten.

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24.03.2013 – 09:56 Uhr
Von KAYHAN ÖZGENC Und OLAF WILKE

Find this story at 24 March 2013

© Copyright BILD digital 2011

NSU-Verfahren: Ausschuss will V-Mann-Führer verhören

Hat V-Mann “Primus” das rechtsextreme NSU-Netzwerk unterstützt? Um diesen Verdacht zu klären, will der Untersuchungsauschuss des Bundestags den zuständigen Beamten des Verfassungsschutzes vernehmen.

Welche Rolle spielte V-Mann “Primus” im Fall des NSU? Der zuständige Beamte des Verfassungsschutz soll dazu Auskunft geben.

Nach Berichten über einen V-Mann namens “Primus” und dessen mögliche Hilfe für das NSU-Terrortrio wollen Mitglieder des Bundestags-Untersuchungsausschusses die zuständigen Beamten befragen. Es müsse geklärt werden, inwieweit der Verfassungsschutz “Primus” genutzt habe, um die untergetauchte Terrorzelle zu finden, sagte die SPD-Obfrau im Ausschuss, Eva Högl, der “Süddeutschen Zeitung”. “Sollte dies nicht in ausreichendem Maße geschehen sein, fragt sich natürlich, warum.” Medienberichten zufolge half er den Rechtsextremen möglicherweise beim Anmieten von Autos.

Auch die Linke-Politikerin Petra Pau sprach sich dafür aus, die sogenannten V-Mann-Führer zu vernehmen. Sollte sich der Verdacht erhärten, dass “Primus” verwickelt gewesen sei, stelle sich immer mehr die Frage, warum der “Nationalsozialistische Untergrund” (NSU) jahrelang von den Behörden unbehelligt geblieben sei, sagte Pau.

Laut “Spiegel” stießen Ermittler bei der Suche nach Unterstützern des NSU auf einen langjährigen Rechtsextremisten, der unter dem Decknamen “Primus” bis kurz nach der Jahrtausendwende für den Verfassungsschutz gearbeitet habe. In Unterlagen einer Zwickauer Autovermietung hätten Beamte Verträge für Fahrzeuganmietungen auf seinen Namen gefunden. Es gebe zeitliche Überschneidungen mit zwei dem NSU zugeschriebenen Morden im Juni und August 2001 in Nürnberg und München. Hinsichtlich beider Taten fehlten bisher Hinweise zu Fluchtwagen. Nach den Abrechnungen seien beide Wagen für lange Fahrten genutzt worden.
Edathy rechnet mit weiteren V-Leuten

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Erscheinungsdatum: 1. April 2013, 09:18 Uhr

Find this story at 1 April 2013

© 2013 stern.de GmbH

New Twist in British Spy’s Case Unravels in U.S.

Mark Kennedy, a British police officer who spent seven years infiltrating environmental and activist groups while working undercover for the Metropolitan Police force in London, may have monitored an American computer scientist and spied on others while in the United States.

The computer scientist, Harry Halpin, said that he was at a gathering of activists and academics in Manhattan in January 2008 that Mr. Kennedy — then using the pseudonym Mark Stone — also attended. He said Mr. Kennedy collected information about him and about a man and a woman who were accused later that year of associating with “a terrorist enterprise” and sabotaging high-speed train lines in France.

In addition to Mr. Halpin’s assertions, documents connected to the case indicate that prosecutors in Paris looked to American officials to provide evidence about a handful of people in the United States and events that took place in New York in 2008.

“Mark Kennedy spied upon myself on United States soil, as well as Julien Coupat and Yildune Levy,” Mr. Halpin wrote in an e-mail, naming two defendants in the group known in France as the Tarnac 10, after the small mountain village where several of them had lived in a commune.

Mr. Halpin added that Mr. Coupat introduced him to Mr. Kennedy in the fall of 2007. “It appears that Mark Kennedy also passed information to the F.B.I. that I knew Julian Coupat,” he added.

Reached via e-mail on Thursday, Mr. Kennedy, who now works with The Densus Group, a security consulting firm based in the United States, declined to comment on Mr. Halpin’s statements.

In 2010, Mr. Halpin said that F.B.I. agents detained him for five hours after he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport from Europe, seizing his computer and threatening put him in jail if he did not agree to provide information about Mr. Coupat. Mr. Halpin said that he refused but the agents let him go when they were asked to explain the charges against him.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. in New York, James Margolin, declined to comment on the encounter described by Mr. Halpin.

The accounts of events in New York provided by Mr. Halpin and others added a new twist to two dramas that have received widespread attention in Europe, where they have slowly unraveled over the past few years.

Mr. Kennedy’s actions while spying on political activists in Britain have brought embarrassment to Scotland Yard, as officials there have been forced to confront allegations of inappropriate behavior by some undercover operatives.

As reported in The Guardian newspaper, Mr. Kennedy was said to have had sexual relationships with a number of women connected to groups he had infiltrated.

In 2011, the trial of six people accused of planning to take over a coal-fired power plant collapsed amid claims, denied by Mr. Kennedy, that he had acted as an agent provocateur. Mr. Kennedy was also shown to have worked undercover in more than 20 other countries, including Iceland, Spain and Germany, where members of parliament have raised questions about his role.

Eventually, 10 women, including three who said they had intimate relationships with Mr. Kennedy, sued the police in London saying that they had formed strong personal ties with undercover officers. Later, it was reported in British papers that Mr. Kennedy sued the police, saying that his superiors had failed to prevent him from sleeping with an activist and falling in love.

In France, l’affaire de Tarnac, as it is known, has become a cause célèbre among civil libertarians who have criticized the use of terrorism statutes against people suspected of sabotage but not accused of harming anyone. The defendants have denied wrongdoing, but the authorities have portrayed them as dangerous subversives who plotted attacks against the state then “refused to answer questions, or gave whimsical answers” about their activities.

An unusual element of the case involves a book called “The Coming Insurrection” by an anonymous group of authors called the Invisible Committee. The book advocates rebellion against capitalist culture, encourages readers to form self-sufficient communes and calls for “a diffuse, efficient guerrilla war to give us back our ungovernableness.” Prosecutors have said that Mr. Coupat and his comrades wrote the volume. The suspects denied authorship but Mr. Coupat told journalists in France that the book had merit.

While the Tarnac case has moved slowly through the French legal system, documents have emerged showing that F.B.I. agents were posted outside the Manhattan building where the activists gathered in 2008, videotaping the arrival and departure of Mr. Halpin, Mr. Coupat and Ms. Levy, among others. Those tapes were later given to French prosecutors along with a detailed log compiled by the F.B.I. agents.

As the French investigation continued, documents show that prosecutors in Paris asked officials in the United States about a “meeting of anarchists” in New York and about several people who could be connected to Mr. Coupat. They also asked for information about a low-grade explosive attack in March 2008 that damaged an armed forces recruitment center in Times Square.

In 2012, letters show that Justice Department officials said they had not identified any connection between the people at the Manhattan gathering and the attack on the recruitment center. The officials also gave French prosecutors background information on some American citizens who appeared to have visited the commune in Tarnac and records of an interview that F.B.I. agents had conducted with an assistant professor and French philosophist at New York University who had translated “The Coming Insurrection.”

The professor, Alexander Galloway, told the agents that he had taught the books in a class on political theory and French philosophy, but had never met Mr. Coupat.

Official documents do not mention Mr. Kennedy but several people from New York said that he spent about a week there in early 2008 on his way to visit a brother in Cleveland. During that period, witnesses said Mr. Kennedy attended several informal gatherings, sometimes with Mr. Coupat and Ms. Levy.

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March 15, 2013, 3:06 pm
By COLIN MOYNIHAN

Find this story at 15 March 2013

Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Obama’s Visit to Israel Renews Effort to Free Spy

JERUSALEM — When President Obama lands here on Wednesday, he may encounter some Israelis staging a hunger strike in support of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American serving a life term in a North Carolina prison for spying for Israel.

But the call for Mr. Pollard’s release will not be restricted to the strident, right-wing protests that have previously greeted American officials.

Instead, it will come from Israel’s dovish president, Shimon Peres, and some of the country’s most respected public figures: Nobel Prize-winning scientists, retired generals, celebrated authors and intellectuals who have signed, along with more than 175,000 other citizens, an online petition appealing for clemency for Mr. Pollard.

After years of being viewed as a somewhat marginal and divisive issue here, the campaign to free Mr. Pollard has become a mainstream crusade. Prominent Israelis are shedding the shame long felt over the affair, one of the most damaging, painful episodes in the annals of the American-Israeli relationship, and recasting it as a humanitarian issue ready to be resolved.

The effort has gathered momentum, and many Israelis consider Mr. Obama’s visit to be the perfect opportunity for a gesture of good will.

“I will sum it up in three words: enough is enough,” said Amnon Rubinstein, a law professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, and a former minister of education. “It is not humane to keep him in jail any longer.”

A main factor behind the shift, Israelis supporting the campaign say, is the time that Mr. Pollard, 58, who is said to be ailing, has already served — 28 years. Advocates for his release say that is unprecedented among Americans convicted of spying for an ally.

Another factor is the growing number of former officials in the United States who have called for clemency in recent years, including two former secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger, and a former director of the C.I.A., R. James Woolsey.

Mr. Woolsey, who has firsthand knowledge of the case and strongly opposed clemency for Mr. Pollard during his tenure at the C.I.A., told Israel’s Army Radio last week that three other spies for friendly countries who were tried and convicted in the United States were each sentenced to less than five years in prison.

Such voices have given the advocates for Mr. Pollard a new level of respectability and have allowed more Israelis to speak out.

Amos Yadlin, the former director of Israeli military intelligence who now runs the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, recently appeared on Israeli television to appeal for Mr. Pollard’s release.

“Clemency for Pollard, given his health situation, is a humanitarian issue that we can put behind us as our two countries face extraordinary challenges in 2013,” Mr. Yadlin said.

Yair Lapid, the new centrist force in Israeli politics, also signed the petition, as did Gilad Shalit, a former soldier who was held captive by Hamas militants for five years. Veteran campaigners have also changed their tone. After Israel refused to recognize Mr. Pollard as a “prisoner of Zion” in 2005, his wife, Esther, called the government’s attitude “petty and meanspirited.”

Now, Mrs. Pollard is taking a more stately approach. Lawrence J. Korb, who was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and is now pushing for clemency for Mr. Pollard, has accompanied Mrs. Pollard to meetings with Israeli leaders in recent years.

Last week on Israeli television, Mrs. Pollard said that she and her husband felt “profound remorse and sorrow for what has happened” and begged Mr. Obama for mercy.

Mr. Pollard, a former United States Navy intelligence analyst, began spying for Israel after he approached an Israeli officer in 1984. When he was discovered 18 months later, he sought refuge in the Israeli Embassy in Washington but was refused entry. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

At first, Israel disowned Mr. Pollard, saying that he was an actor in a rogue operation. But he was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his first term in office in the late 1990s, officially recognized Mr. Pollard as an Israeli agent.

Many details of the case remain classified. But recently declassified documents from a 1987 C.I.A. damage assessment stated that Mr. Pollard’s instructions were primarily to provide Israel with American intelligence on Israel’s Arab adversaries and the military support they received from the Soviet Union, including information on Arab chemical and biological weapons.

Mr. Pollard’s supporters note that he was not asked to spy on the United States per se.

Mr. Pollard delivered suitcases full of copies of classified documents to the Israelis every two weeks. The copious disclosures posed multiple risks to American intelligence sources and methods, and to American foreign policy interests, the C.I.A. assessment stated.

In the past, Mr. Netanyahu pushed for Mr. Pollard’s release to balance concessions he was being pressed to make in Middle East peace negotiations.

But Sallai Meridor, Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2006 to 2009, said that a “strong nucleus of people” within the United States defense establishment had adamantly opposed Mr. Pollard’s release, “exerting a lot of influence over others.”

“None of us know all the details,” Mr. Meridor said. “But assuming he did something really bad, the very worst that you could anticipate in this realm, 28 years is more than enough.”

…

March 17, 2013
By ISABEL KERSHNER

Find this story at 17 March 2013

Copyright The New York Times Company

Curveball

boek van Bob Drogin
Ook verschenen in het Nederland als Codenaam Curveball

Erg Amerikaans boek, de tekst schreeuwt je tegemoet wat gaandeweg begint tegen te staan. Toch is het een verdienstelijk boek. Minutieus brengt Drogin het functioneren van geheime diensten in beeld tegen het licht van een menselijke bron. Curveball is de man die de bron was van de informatie over de chemische fabrieken op wielen van Saddam Hussein. De hele wereld kreeg ze te zien toen Colin Powell beelden van deze diepladers tijdens een praatje bij de Veiligheidsraad vertoonde. Ze bleken echter niet te bestaan. De informant of beter gezegd overloper, Curveball, wordt afgeschilderd als een leugenaar, maar eigenlijk is hij een klokkenluider. Geheime diensten deugen niet doordat alles geheim is en daarmee ook te manipuleren. Het boek van Drogin geeft inzicht in het gebrek aan samenwerking tussen diverse geheime diensten zowel nationaal als internationaal, de politieke sturing van diensten, de tunnelvisie en het wishful thinking.
Curveball is een voormalig taxichauffeur uit Irak die in Duitsland asiel aanvraagt. Hij presenteert zich als een politiek vluchteling die aan een super geheim biologisch wapenprogramma in Irak heeft meegewerkt. Bij zijn asielaanvraag zegt hij niet direct dat hij dat werk deed, maar in de loop der tijd spint hij een verhaal met behulp van informatie die hij vindt op het internet. De BND, de Duitse geheime dienst voor buitenlandse aangelegenheden, wordt volledig om de tuin geleid, hoewel zij twijfels blijven houden omdat ze zijn verhaal niet kunnen checken. De Engelsen voegen er wat feiten aan toe en een van de vele inlichtingen en veiligheidsdiensten in de Verenigde Staten denken de bron te hebben gevonden voor het bestaan van het biologische en chemische wapenprogramma van Saddam Hussein. De stunt van Curveball is hilarisch, maar ook tragisch. De oorlog in Irak was er misschien ook zonder hem wel gekomen, maar hij heeft het een schijn van legitimatie gegeven. Men dacht dat Irak chemische en biologische wapen had, wat ook logisch was, want ongeveer alle apparatuur en grondstoffen waren door het Westen geleverd en Saddam Hussein had ze tot twee keer toe gebruikt. Na de eerste wapeninspectie ronde, waarbij een groot deel van deze wapens waren vernietigd begin jaren negentig, bleef vooral de Verenigde Staten, maar ook andere staten Irak hardnekkig beschuldigen van de productie van biologische en chemische wapens. Het bewijs ontbrak echter. Curveball stapte begin 1999 in deze status quo en reconstrueerde met behulp van de rapporten van de wapeninspecties van Verenigde Naties die hij van het internet plukte een verhaal van mobiele laboratoria. Bij zijn verhaal gebruikte hij zowel feiten als fictie, maar doordat het verhaal aansloot bij de veronderstelling van veel diensten dat Irak over faciliteiten beschikte, kon het wortel schieten in de inlichtingen gemeenschap. Alle feiten die zijn verhaal tegenspraken werden gaandeweg weggemoffeld en het bestaan van mobiele laboratoria was een vaststaand feit. Zoals bij de Schiedammer parkmoord tunnelvisie leidde tot de veroordeling van een onschuldige werd mede door toedoen van Curveball Irak in een tunnelvisie ervan beticht chemische en biologische wapens te produceren. Niet dat het Irakese regime nu een stel lieverdjes waren, maar de beschuldigingen waren ongegrond. Er moest worden ingegrepen. Een tunnelvisie die leidde tot een straf, maar niet alleen voor Hussein en zijn staf. Het gehele Irakese volk moest boeten. De oorlog heeft op dit moment het leven gekost van tussen de 80.000 en de 400.000 Irakezen en een ware exodus ontketend. En zullen de schuldigen van dit drama terecht staan? Nee, dat past niet in een rechtstaat die beweert het altijd bij het rechte eind te hebben. Saddam Hussein was een wrede dictator die hoe dan ook een keer weg moest. Met of zonder Curveball.

Find this story at 2 April 2008

British journalists worked for MI6 during the Cold War: investigation

Numerous notable journalists working for some of Britain’s most prestigious publications routinely collaborated with British intelligence during the Cold War, according to a BBC investigation. In 1968, Soviet newspaper Izvestia published the contents of an alleged British government memorandum entitled “Liaison Between the BBC and SIS”. SIS, which stands for Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, is Britain’s foremost external intelligence agency. The paper, which was the official organ of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, claimed that the foreign correspondents of most leading British newspapers secretly collaborated with the British intelligence community. It also alleged that the BBC’s world radio service had agreed with MI6 to broadcast preselected sentences or songs at prearranged times. These signals were used by British intelligence officers to demonstrate to foreign recruits in the Eastern Bloc that they were operating on behalf of the UK. At the time, the BBC virulently rejected the Izvestia’s claims, calling them “black propaganda” aimed at distracting world opinion from the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, which had taken place some months earlier. But an investigation aired this week by the BBC Radio 4’s investigative Document program suggests that the memo published by the Soviet newspaper was probably genuine. The program says it discovered a memorandum in the BBC’s archives, which laments the embarrassment caused to MI6 by the Soviet claims. The memorandum, dated April 24, 1969, describes MI6 as “our friends”. The BBC program, which is available to listen to here, discusses the Soviets’ claims that several notable British journalists were MI6 agents. They include Edward Crankshaw and David Astor of The Observer, Lord Hartwell and Roy Pawley of The Daily Telegraph, Lord Arran of The Daily Mail, Henry Brandon of The Sunday Times, and even Mark Arnold-Foster of the left-leaning Guardian newspaper. Leading veteran security and intelligence correspondent Phillip Knightley told Document that he would not be surprised if Izvestia’s claims turned out to be true.

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March 5, 2013 by Joseph Fitsanakis 11 Comments

Find this story at 5 March 2013

MI6 and the Media

Jeremy Duns examines leaked documents which suggest close links between MI6 and the British press during the Cold War.

In December 1968, the British media was shaken by a series of secret documents leaked to Soviet state newspapers. The documents claimed a range of key Fleet Street correspondents and news chiefs were working for the intelligence services. Further papers alleged close links between the BBC and MI6.

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Duration: 28 minutes
First broadcast: Monday 04 March 2013

Find this story at 4 March 2013

BBC © 2013

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.

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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.

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.

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16 FEBRUARI 2013 – Binnenland

Find this story at 16 February 2013

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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 
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