REVIEW TOPICS:
Russian Antiterrorism committee head says terrorists after WMD technologies
Russia’s FSB takes record of Stavropol students
Mladic’s intelligence operations chief refuses to enter plea, claims was arrested in Serbia
Slovak National Party plans to submit amendments to laws on Nation’s Memory Institute and elections
In its zeal to please US, Romania finds alleged terrorists, expels foreigners, hosts secret interrogation sites
Romanian Ambassador in Austria resigned amid communist secret police collaboration accusations
FSB Director: terrorists seek nuclear weapons in Russia
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| Nikolai Patrushev |
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Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolai Patrushev, who is also chairman of the National Antiterrorist Committee, speaking at today’s session of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, said terrorists were trying to get hold of nuclear weapons in Russia. The powerful FSB leader confirmed that the National Counter-Terrorism Committee has credible information on the issue, news agency RIA Novosti reports.
According to the agency, the intelligence information stems from the Russian FSB, as well as from foreign intelligence partners. Organized terrorist groups seek both nuclear weapons and nuclear technology, Patrushev said. The FSB leader now stresses that it is of paramount importance to take efficient measures in protecting objects under the Ministry of Defence, as the agencies Rosatom, Rosprom and Roskosmos. Patrushev noted that following the joint statement on a global initiative to counter nuclear terrorism acts adopted by the presidents of Russia and the United States after the Group of Eight summit in July 2006 in St. Petersburg, the security issue has risen to the top of the agenda, RIA Novosti reports. Patrushev said that under the initiative, the two countries will physically protect nuclear facilities and improve measures to prevent terrorists from accessing nuclear materials and radioactive substances. The head of the antiterrorism committee noted that the number of terrorist attacks in Russia last year almost halved.
"Counter-terrorist measures adopted in Russia in recent years have somewhat reduced terrorist activity on the country's territory," news agency quotes Patrushev as saying, citing joint action on all levels of government, security agencies, and civil society as a key factor in this.
ITAR-TASS cites Patrushev saying that the growth of radicalism, extremism and foreign religious expansion helping the spread of the terrorist ideology is seen in Russia. “According to information of experts, there are about 5,000 websites that are actively used by extremist organizations and groups that spread in the net practical guidelines for the organization of the clandestine activity, the manufacture of home-made explosive devices, the choice of facilities for terrorist acts,” Patrushev said. This prompts the need for NAC’s “additional measures for countering the ideology of terrorism, including by the counter-propagandist activity”. Institutions of civil society and the mass media should play an important role in this activity, Patrushev is quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying. He also said “the holding Group IMA has developed a plan of measures for information and propagandist support of the struggle against terrorism.” Interfax writes that Patrushev has expressed concern over the spread of materials promoting extremism and terrorism in the form of printed products and through the Internet. "What causes our concern is the virtually uncontrolled spread of materials of an explicitly extremist and terrorist nature in the form of printed products and via the Internet," Patrushev told the session. "The intensification of radicalism and extremism, as well as this foreign religious expansion" has contributed to the spread of the terrorist ideology, according to Patrushev.
The National Anti-Terrorist Committee should develop more measures aimed at countering the ideology of terrorism, including "active counter-propaganda efforts," he said, Interfax reports.
Russia’s FSB takes record of Stavropol students
Actions of unprecedented security were taken by the security services in southern Russia’s Stavropol yesterday, daily Kommersant reports. All central parks were closed, no entertainment centers will work after midnight and rectors of universities will submit to enforcement authorities the lists of all students (specifying their whereabouts). In Stavropol, they fear the massacre may begin today, as the students killed at night from Saturday to Sunday will be buried exactly June 5, 2007. Dmitry Blokhin and Pavel Chadin were laid to rest today, at 12:00. Dmitry was buried in Stavropol and Pavel’s grave is in Blagodarny, where his relatives are living, the paper expands. The Slavic organizations of Stavropol attempted to rally on the day of burial and the city’s authorities were reportedly ill endeavor to prevent them. In today’s Stavropol, the chances are strong that the rally will turn into a brawl between hundreds of Caucasus migrants and local Russians, Kommersant marks.
According to the paper, the murder of two students scared the city, halving the night strollers and emptying venues of the Caucasians. The rumors are that some 400 arrived from Chechnya and the residents speak about shooting and knifing that happened in downtown Stavropol past night. The authorities had been silent since May 24, when the Caucasians clashed with the Slavs, but the silence was broken yesterday. The prosecutors said investigators found no xenophobia motive neither in the scuffle of May 24 nor in killing of students, Kommersant concludes.
Mladic’s intelligence operations chief refuses to enter plea, claims was arrested in Serbia
General Zdravko Tolimir, number three on the Hague fugitive list, who was arrested a few days ago, did not enter a plea to the charges against him at a June 4 hearing before the Hague International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, although he did claim to have been arrested in Serbia and then illegally transferred to the tribunal, news agency BETA reports.
During the war Tolimir was Assistant Commander for Intelligence and Security of the Main Staff of the VRS, who reported directly to the notorious Commander of the Main Staff, General Ratko Mladic.
Tolimir claimed he was arrested in Serbia (He has Serbia’s citizenship) and transferred to Republika Srpska without his agreement and without getting access to an attorney. Then he said he was taken to a location near Bratunac which is mentioned in most of the charges against him. In his first appearance before the tribunal Tolimir stated he was unnecessarily taken to the location where he “had never been before”, according to BETA.
Tolimir, who stands accused of genocide and other crimes against Bosnian Muslims in the Srebrenica and Zepa regions, will get another opportunity to enter a plea in a month's time, the agency says. Tolimir announced that the court and public had been deceived by the official statement claiming that he had been arrested in Republika Srpska, BETA reports. Tolimir went on to say that while in the Bratunac area, he was photographed near military and police buildings; afterwards, he claimed to have been taken to Banjaluka via Bijeljina. There, officials from the Republika Srpska Ministry of Justice offered him benefits for his family to accept Republika Srpska citizenship, which he refused, according to news agency.
Slovak National Party plans to submit amendments to laws on Nation’s Memory Institute and elections
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| StB files in UPN |
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The governing-coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) in Slovakia plans to submit an amendment to the law on the Nation's Memory Institute (UPN), the office responsible for archiving and publishing state and police files documenting Slovakia's communist and fascist regimes, at the parliamentary session in September, weekly The Slovak Spectator reports, referring to SNS caucus chairman Rafael Rafaj press conference in Bratislava on May 31. Meanwhile one of the founders of the Nation's Memory Institute (UPN is now leaving the institute in protest of recent trends, the weekly adds.
SNS chairman Jan Slota, who was also present, announced that the party was also considering submitting an amendment to the General Election Act using its Hungarian counterpart, where every minority is represented in parliament, as a model, The Slovak Spectator says.
AIA reported last week that the Institute recently posted the names of the 764 former members of the XII Division, the communist counter-intelligence unit. The XII Division, based in Bratislava, was an executive branch of the Czechoslovak interior ministry, and was established as part of the reorganization of the Czechoslovak counter-intelligence force, according to the weekly.
At the same time as publishing the names, the UPN announced that it wants those who committed state-sanctioned crimes against humanity in the communist era (1949-89) to face trial. The UPN points out that there is no set time limit beyond which the perpetrators of such crimes can not be prosecuted.
"We want to process the crimes of former repressive units of the communist state as war crimes,” the paper cites Miroslav Lehky of the UPN. “This includes the shootings at the state borders between 1948-1989, and the denial of freedom to innocent people during this period." According to Lehky, the UPN does not only focus on the "monstrous processes of the 1950s". People were deprived of their freedom right up until the fall of communism, and were accused of crimes that they hadn't committed, "even though in the 1980s punishments usual in the 1950s such as life imprisonment and the death penalty were no longer employed [to the same extent]."
Romanian Ambassador in Austria resigned amid communist secret police collaboration accusations
Since June, Romania's ambassador to Austria, Andrei Corbea Hoisie, does not occupy the high diplomatic post in Vienna any more, as he has resigned after a National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives report claimed he collaborated with the Securitate, the communist-era secret police, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports.
Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu told Romanian public television that he had a private meeting with Hoisie and that the ambassador handed in his resignation afterward.
Under Romanian law, elected officials and civil servants must swear whether they collaborated with the Securitate or not; anyone caught making a false declaration could face prosecution, RFE/RL marks. The ambassador can still contest the report, however, in the meantime, his post remains vacant.
In its zeal to please US, Romania finds alleged terrorists, expels foreigners, hosts secret interrogation sites
In a story in the Romanian newspaper Jurnalul National, officials from the SRI, Romania's domestic intelligence agency, describe events of early 2005 when Romanian security forces converged on an Iasi mosque and arrested five North African and Middle Eastern students enrolled at the local University of Medicine and Pharmacy on suspicion of being terrorists.
SRI officials depicted the group as an al-Qaeda cell, preparing to brainwash recruits and mount suicide attacks not previously seen in the Eastern European country. In a press release, the SRI described the group's members as "trained in techniques to resist interrogation, torture or eventual pressure from the intelligence services." The students — citizens of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Sudan and Pakistan, along with a Saudi medical student from Bucharest and a Syrian doctor, both also accused of terrorism — were deported in February 2005 without legal proceedings.
What the SRI did not explain was why such supposedly dangerous terrorists were simply kicked out of Romania instead of being held and tried on terrorism charges, Jurnalul National marks. The Romanian government denied a request from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for the exact dates and flight details of their deportations, citing national security concerns. As for the deported students, court documents examined by ICIJ show that Romanian authorities had tapped both their landline and mobile phones, intercepted their text messages and tracked them to a public Internet cafe in Iasi, paper writes. But despite the intense surveillance, Romanian prosecutor Gheorghe Muscalu told ICIJ that the government had to drop the case because it had been unable to find evidence linking the students to terrorism. Mohamed Daoud, an Egyptian physician who graduated from medical school in Iasi, told ICIJ that these young people were not terrorists. He said he suspected that the SRI staged the arrests to justify the need for strict new national security laws that President Traian Basescu wanted the Romanian Parliament to enact. The students were deported anyway under new, controversial powers adopted after the September 11 attacks that gave the Romanian government broad authority to deport terrorism suspects.
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SRI emblem |
In December 2002, the Romanian government issued an emergency ordinance regulating the status of foreign citizens. According to the document, signed by the then-Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, "the removal of foreign citizens is especially covered by this ordinance in order to create effective tools for dealing with threats to national security."
In all, during 2003 and 2004, Romania expelled 44 foreigners, including citizens of Jordan, Syria and Turkey; the majority of the expulsions were carried out at the SRI's request. Documents obtained by ICIJ under the Romanian Freedom of Information Law show that in 2003, the Romanian government expelled 20 Iraqis, including five diplomats, accusing all of posing threats to national security. That same year, the SRI announced that it had stopped a terrorist operation against Israeli interests in Romania. In a press statement, the SRI said the Iraqi Embassy in Bucharest had plotted to provide the would-be terrorists with grenade launchers, though it acknowledged that none of the weapons actually had been brought into Romania, Jurnalul National writes.
Some of the SRI's secrecy policies are regarded by Romanian civil liberties activists as violations of human rights. "There's no control over SRI whatsoever," Catalina Radulescu, a lawyer with the Bucharest-based Center for Legal Resources, said in an interview.
The paper names the case just one sign of Romania's zeal to be an integral partner in America's global war on terror, a commitment that would bring the country significant financial and political benefits. Serving as a transit point, according to investigations by the European Union and the Council of Europe, for CIA-operated aircraft that transported terrorism suspects from Europe and the Middle East to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other, more secretive foreign facilities, where they have been held without trial and subjected to what human rights groups decry as torture. According to a November 2006 EU draft report, CIA-operated aircraft made 21 stopovers at Romanian airports. According to the June 2006 report prepared for the Council of Europe by Swiss lawyer Dick Marty, the pattern and route of at least one of the flights suggests that Romania served as "a detainee transfer or drop off point" for the CIA. In January 2006, the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick published a fax reportedly sent from Cairo to the Egyptian Embassy in London and intercepted by Swiss intelligence that described the interrogation of 23 Iraqi and Afghan prisoners at Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, the same facility the U.S. military used to deploy forces in the invasion of Iraq. The newspaper said the fax identified Romania — along with Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria — as a host of secret interrogation sites.
After the September 11 attacks, U.S. and Romanian military and intelligence interests became more closely intertwined. As President Basescu revealed last year in an interview with The Washington Post, within months of the attacks Romania and the US opened a joint anti-terrorism centre where personnel from the CIA and other US agencies worked alongside their Romanian counterparts.
Romania's secret services — the SRI, which handles domestic intelligence, and the SIE, the foreign intelligence service — became valuable to the CIA because of their extensive connections in the Middle East, according to an SRI officer who was interviewed by ICIJ on the condition of anonymity.
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