Closed circuit television camera systems in town and city centres have failed to match their anti-crime expectations, according to a report. Professor James Ditton, of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, says the cameras have not lived up to their early promise. After four years of monitoring the monitors, the professor, who led a Scottish Office […]

The Rendition Project is funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and accredited under the Global Uncertainties programme. It examines the ways in which the Bush administration developed a global system of detention sites, linked by the covert transfer of detainees across state borders. The system has, at its core, three interrelated […]

US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya This report is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi […]

New Accounts of Waterboarding, Other Water Torture, Abuses in Secret Prisons A file folder found after the fall of Tripoli in a building belonging to the Libyan external security services containing faxes and memos between the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Libyan Intelligence Service. Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi to his […]

Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned since he was handed by the SAS to US forces in 2004, but has never been charged Undated Reprieve handout photo of Yunus Rahmatullah. Photograph: Reprieve/PA Human rights campaigners have called for a full criminal investigation into the rendition of a Pakistani man by UK and US forces to Afghanistan, […]

Chris Kitchen calls for IPCC to widen investigation into alleged cover-up over framing of 95 picketing miners in 1984 strikes A picket injured during clashes with police at the Orgreave plant in 1984. The NUM is calling for investigations into South Yorkshire police cover-ups over framing of miners. Photograph: PA Archive/Press Association Ima The police […]

Disclosure in first report of prisons inspector on UK Border Agency’s ‘family-friendly’ Cedars unit near Gatwick G4S staff manage security and the facilities at Cedars, the UK Border Agency’s holding centre near Gatwick for families facing deportation. Photograph: David Jones/PA A pregnant woman in a wheelchair was tipped up and had her feet held by […]

Meeting at British embassy in US raises questions about repeated denials by MI5 and MI6 of connivance in torture Within days of the 9/11 attacks on the US, the CIA told British intelligence officers of its plans to abduct al-Qaida suspects and fly them to secret prisons where they would be systematically abused. The meeting, […]

Police will seek to interview Sir Mark Allen, the former head of MI6’s counterterrorism unit, in connection with allegations of British complicity in the rendition to Libya and torture of two Libyan dissidents, Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi, during the Gaddafi era. Sir Mark suffered a stroke in July, and it is understood Metropolitan […]

French secret services stopped tracking Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah, despite evidence of his extensive links to jihadists, including in the UK, leaked documents suggest. Le Monde newspaper says it has seen notes from the domestic intelligence agency DCRI describing his successful efforts to conceal his movements. The judge investigating the case said he was perplexed […]

The older sister of the Toulouse scooter killer, Mohamed Merah, had been under surveillance as a possible Islamist activist since 2008, it emerged yesterday. Souad Merah, 34, provided money, mobile phones and internet addresses to her brother in the months before his murderous attacks in the Toulouse area in March, the French radio station RTL […]

Mohamed Merah n’avait pas de téléphone à son nom. Pour échapper aux surveillances de la police, l’auteur des tueries perpétrées les 11, 15 et 19 mars à Toulouse et à Montauban s’en était procuré un à celui de sa mère, Mme Aziri. La liste des appels fait partie des documents confidentiels de la Direction centrale […]

France’s Le Monde newspaper says it has seen confidential documents of the police investigation into Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah that suggest he was not working alone. The papers showed he had made more than 1,800 calls to over 180 contacts in 20 different countries, Le Monde said. Merah had also made several trips to the […]

“Everything that we could have missed, we missed”. A former French intelligence agent admits they should have caught Mohamed Merah before his Toulouse shooting spree which left seven people dead, including three children. Merah was killed after a bloody stand-off with police. His older brother Abdelkader is in custody facing charges of complicity to murder. […]

Was Mohamed Merah a French secret service informant? So says a former head of an intelligence agency here in France. Also, an Italian paper says Merah travelled to Israel in 2010 – with the support of French spy agencies. MEDIAWATCH FRANCE, Tues. 27/3/2012: Latest update: 28/03/2012 By James CREEDON Find this story at 28 Marz […]

A detailed new report launched today by the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) highlights how promises made by the police to ‘adapt to protest’ after 2009′s G20 demonstrations in London have been forgotten in a remarkably short space of time and a far more intolerant ‘total policing’ style response to protesters has developed in the […]

Study by network of police monitoring groups says use of pre-emptive arrests and kettling are unjustified curbs on liberty Police tactics, such as the kettling used to quell the 2009 G20 protests in London, have been condemned by Netpol. Photograph: Antonio Olmos Pre-emptive arrests, confinement by kettling and the gathering of personal data give police […]

CINCINNATI – An article just published by the American Heart Association’s premier journal, “Circulation,” presents the first ever scientific, peer-reviewed evidence that Tasers can cause cardiac arrest and death. The article, written by Electrophysiologist Dr. Douglas Zipes of Indiana University, is already generating a buzz among cardiologists in the Cincinnati area, according to Dr. Terri […]

Tighter rules are needed to limit the use of Tasers by police across the USA. “ Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the USA, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used. ” Susan Lee, Americas Programme Director at Amnesty International Wed, 15/02/2012 […]

The sister of a Brazilian student who died after being tasered in Sydney’s CBD has told an inquest that the level of brutality police used on him cannot be ignored. Ana Laudisio told Glebe Coroners Court that sitting through the two-week inquest into the death of her brother, Roberto Laudisio Curti, had been one of […]

Today we added 60-year old Bill Williams (Everett, WA) as the 181st taser-related death in America since 2009. [NOTE: the full list is shown below]. According to Amnesty International, between 2001 and 2008, 351 people in the United States died after being shocked by police Tasers. Our blog has documented another 181 taser-related deaths in […]

The IPCC is investigating an incident in Chorley, where an innocent person was struck by a 50,000-volt stun gun An innocent blind man was shot in the back with a 50,000-volt Taser by police after they mistook his white stick for a samurai sword. Colin Farmer, 61, was hit after reports of a man walking […]

  In midtown Manhattan, police officers shot and killed an African-American man in August after he had walked across Times Square waving a kitchen knife. His last moments tell the story of a broken law enforcement system in New York City. Darrius Kennedy’s date with death begins at 3 p.m., in front of the Stars […]

Five Royal Marines charged with murder over the death of an insurgent in Afghanistan in 2011 British soldiers in Helmand: the incident took place last year but it is thought investigators only began inquiries in recent weeks. Photograph: Corporal Barry Lloyd Rlc/AFP Five Royal Marines have been charged with murder over the death of an […]

Murdered loyalist Alan McCullough was a military intelligence spy who double-crossed both factions of a feuding terror organisation, his killers claimed. As detectives continued to question a man about the murder, the Ulster Defence Association also accused McCullough of being heavily involved in four assassinations. The paramilitary grouping provoked a wave of revulsion for killing […]

  In 1994 six men were shot dead in a bar at Loughinisland – but no one was charged. Ian Cobain follows the supply of arms used in the massacre and investigates allegations of state collusion Aidan O’Toole, a survivor of the Loyalist attack on the Heights Bar in Loughinisland, County Down, in 1994, and […]

Relatives of Catholics killed in 1994 claim compensation, alleging security service complicity in arming UDA The bloodstained interior of the Heights Bar at Loughinisland, the morning after six Catholic men had been killed and five others injured in a loyalist gun attack. Photograph: Pacemaker Allegations that the government helped to arm loyalist gangs with a […]

After CIA director Leon Panetta revealed last summer that private contractor Blackwater was part of a covert CIA hit squad, tasked with summary killings and assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives, the CIA vowed to sever its contacts with the trigger-happy security firm. But did it do so? It doesn’t look like it. Last November, it became […]

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author […]

In the eyes of many, the United States-based security firm formerly known as Blackwater is synonymous with ‘scandal’. Founded in 1997 by self-confessed CIA agent Erik Prince, the company was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in non-competitive contract bids by the Bush administration, to provide wide-ranging security services in Iraq. But the company’s ‘shoot-first-ask-questions-later’ […]

Ex-employees Tell ABC News the Firm Used Dog Food Sacks to Smuggle Unauthorized Weapons to Iraq A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned. Under State Department rules, Blackwater […]

Last week I gave a live television interview to the main news program of RT, about the company formerly known as Blackwater. As intelNews reported on August 8, the private military outfit, which rebranded itself to Academi in late 2011, agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle no fewer than 17 violations of United States […]

Top brass are said to have boasted of access to ministers, sparking a crackdown on lobbying at the Ministry of Defence General Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the army The Sunday Times claimed Dannatt had offered to help two executives from a South Korean defence company who wanted to sell the UK military […]

TOP-RANKING retired military officers have been secretly filmed boasting about lobbying to win multi-million-pound defence deals for arms firms in breach of official rules. The “generals for hire” can be exposed after a Sunday Times investigation recorded them offering their contacts with ministers and former colleagues for six-figure sums. During a three-month investigation into the […]

Guardian research in the aftermath of the ‘jobs for generals’ scandal shows extent of links between MoD and private sector Lt General Sir John Kiszely, who has resigned as president of the Royal British Legion, was one of several former senior members of the military caught in a lobbying sting. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/Press Association Senior […]

Il merito della cattura del rais sarebbe stato dei servizi di Parigi. Il Colonnello «venduto» all’Occidente da Assad TRIPOLI – Sarebbe stato un «agente straniero», e non le brigate rivoluzionarie libiche, a sparare il colpo di pistola alla testa che avrebbe ucciso Moammar Gheddafi il 20 ottobre dell’anno scorso alla periferia di Sirte. Non è […]

He claimed to own 100 corporations in the United States and Europe, many of them real and many of them shells. He had an apartment in Geneva; a hunting lodge in England; a seaside villa in Tripoli, Libya; a town house in Washington; and real estate in North Carolina, Lebanon and Mexico. He entertained congressmen, […]

SEATTLE (AP) — Edwin Wilson set up front companies abroad for the CIA, made millions in the arms trade and entertained generals and congressmen at his sprawling Virginia farm. His high-powered, jet-setting life in the 1970s and early 1980s followed a career in the CIA. But it came crashing down when he was branded a […]

A U-28A plane, painted in a civilian paint scheme, is seen about to touch down on a landing strip, in this file photo. (US Airforce) America’s top commander in Africa revealed that the U.S. military has conducted spy operations all over the continent as part of the fight against international adversaries from al Qaeda-allied terror […]

Libyans celebrate the end of the Gadhafi regime in Benghazi, October 2011. After the attack on the U.S. consulate, these same Libyans could be key for the CIA’s counterterrorism efforts. Photo: Flickr/Magherebia President Obama told the truth when he said there would be no U.S. ground troops in Libya after last year’s war to oust […]