Mercenaries worked for UK in Iraq - an investigative story

[seemslikeadream]

By Antony Barnett, Solomon Hughes and Jason Burke

(OBSERVER NEWS SERVICE) : Mercenaries accused of planning a coup in an oil-rich African state also worked under contract for the British government providing security in Iraq, raising fears about the way highly sensitive security work is awarded.

The UK government's Department for International Development (DfID) signed a pounds sterling 250,000 deal last summer with the South-African based Meteoric Tactical Solutions (MTS) to provide `close protection' for department staff, including bodyguards and drivers for its senior official in Iraq.

Two of the firm's owners were arrested in Zimbabwe last March with infamous British mercenary and former SAS officer Simon Mann. The men are accused of plotting an armed coup in Equatorial Guinea. MTS is based in Pretoria and run by former members of South African special forces. Its owners are Lourens `Hecky' Horn, Hermanus Carlse and Festus van Rooyen. Horn, the firm's Iraq contact when the contract with Britain was signed, is now in Chikurubi prison in Zimbabwe with Carlse.

The pair appeared in court on 23 March accused of forming an advance party for the coup with Mann. It is alleged they arrived in the Zimbabwe to buy weapons for a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. The trio tried to purchase 61 AK-47 rifles, 45,000 rounds of /ammunition, 1,000 rounds of anti-tank ammunition and 160 grenades.

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http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200406071125.htm

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1. Abu Ghraib: The Charade

By Amer Jubran
Jun 7, 2004, 09:43


June 6, 2004

A month has passed since the release of horrifying stories about US occupation soldiers torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq. Although news about prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib and Baghdad Airport in Iraq, Bagram air base in Afghanistan, prisons in the US, and the US base in Guantanamo in Cuba has been abundant since the "War on Terrorism" was declared, the news from Abu Ghraib was purposely selected out and amplified.

A closer look at the main parties involved in this, other than the Iraqi prisoners, reveals all US players: US media, US military, US President, US Congress, US military courts, and US soldiers. The succession of news events proceeded with suspicious rapidity, from dramatic news leaks, to expressions of outrage by Bush and Rumsfeld, to top-level military investigations, to Congressional hearings, to US soldiers on trial, and on to the issuing of verdicts. Like a Hollywood blockbuster, the story came and went in a month's time, setting records as a major instant scandal.

The news about Abu Ghraib was presented to the whole world with none of the resistance or denial typical of the US government. The source of the story was the US corporate media, which has always acted as another branch of the government in times of crisis. It is impossible to imagine Dan Rather of CBS, Tom Brokaw of NBC, and Peter Jennings of ABC as objective news anchors on the lookout for victims of US imperialism. For decades, the widespread and routine abuse of prisoners in US prisons has failed to attract even the attention of small local media.

One example is that of Jaoudat Abouazza, a Palestinian Canadian who was arrested for a minor traffic violation in Cambridge, Massachusetts in May, 2002 and who ended up being accused of terrorism. Abouazza spent 42 days in a Massachusetts county jail where he was beaten, stripped, deprived of sleep, and subjected to medical torture - the forced removal of four teeth against his will. Despite the efforts of a number of activists to bring this to the attention of the media, the story was ignored. There were no questions asked of the sheriff running the jail, no calls for resignation, no expressions of outrage, and no investigations. There are thousands of other examples in the US prison system alone.

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http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_8677.shtml

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2. Eisenhower's note has lesson for Bush & Co.

And where have these people taken us? Where have George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell (yes, him too) and their heralds taken America?

The answer is in the resignation last week of Tenet, the first big scapegoat. It's in how much safer America feels nearly three years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Not at all. It's in whether Americans feel they were honestly informed about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. And it's in the ultimate sacrifice made by American men and women of the armed forces - more than 800 of them have died in Iraq.

And, yes, it's in the appalling images of Americans abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war. Are those pathetic Americans alone to be held responsible for their conduct? Or does culpability lie with their commanders and their commanders' commanders, even the commander in chief, who sent them there unprepared, untrained, working in the company of mercenaries who are unaccountable?

The answers are not only in Iraq. They exist, too, in Israel and the Palestinians.

Four years ago, the leadership of this nation was doing everything possible to bring about peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Bush administration came to office saying at first that it didn't want to get involved in the process. Then, thanks to the Reshape-the-Middle-East warriors, the administration became so heavily involved on the side of Israel that it has no credibility with the Arabs - no matter which individual is the U.S.-Israeli-designated interlocutor for the Palestinians.

more
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-pe.column06jun06,0,728066.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines