Police deployed amid Algeria riots

Fresh riots erupt overnight following days of protests over rising prices and unemployment in Algeria.

Middle East Online

By Beatrice Khadige - ALGIERS

Anger at a spike in costs of basic food, unemployment, lack of social housing Police deployed outside mosques and a university in the Algerian capital Friday after fresh rioting erupted overnight following days of protests over rising prices and unemployment. About 40 youths armed with swords attacked several shops in the city's El Biar area late Thursday, looting a restaurant and emptying a jewellery store before security forces arrived, local reporters and witnesses said. There was a second night of clashes in the volatile Bab el Oued suburb, with police firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators, a witness said. One witness said youths had hurled Molotov cocktails and another said they carried swords. Police positioned around mosques in Bab el Oued, Belcourt and Bachjarrah, poorer areas of the city, in case of more unrest after Friday prayers, according to reporters on the scene. There was also extra security at a police station, a new shopping mall and a major hotel in an area near Bab Ezzouar airport, while a nearby university was surrounded by security forces. Travellers said a road between the capital and eastern suburbs on the coast had been blocked since Thursday afternoon after youths set up barricades, also clashing with security forces. Authorities cleaned up the debris Friday after the overnight unrest in Algiers, removing damaged cars at dawn, a journalist said. In the Annacer-Diar el Afia suburb, a Renault-Dacia car dealership showed signs of fire and residents said a public bus was also torched, although only burn marks on the road were visible by morning. "Why are they doing this?" an elderly woman asked. "Yesterday I cried at home. Young people have a reason but they shouldn't be reacting like this," she said. Protests led by small groups of young men have flared in several towns this week, linked to anger about a spike in the costs of basic food items by about 30 percent this month, unemployment and a lack of social housing. El-Watan newspaper reported that several people had been wounded in the Algerian clashes, but the official media has made no comment and authorities have only assured that they are tackling the spike in costs. Commerce Minister Mustapha Benbada said after meeting with producers and importers of cooking oil and sugar -- which have seen the steepest price hikes -- that his ministry "is beginning to control the crisis" and it would be resolved by next week, national radio reported Thursday. About 75 percent of Algerians are under the age of 30, and 20 percent of the youth are unemployed, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Sarkozy: Mideast Christians victims of 'cleansing'

French President makes damning comments following church attacks in Egypt, Iraq.

Middle East Online

Pot calls the kettle black PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that Christian minorities in the Middle East are victims of "religious cleansing", following deadly attacks on churches in the region. "We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly wicked programme of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing," he said in an annual New Year's address to religious leaders. An attack on a Coptic church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 1 killed 21 people. No one has yet claimed responsibility for that attack, which came after threats published online against Egypt's Copts from an Al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq which had said it was behind a deadly assault on a church in Baghdad in October. Forty-four worshippers and two priests died in the attack on a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad in October, the worst of a series of attacks against Christians in Iraq. French security sources said this week they had launched an investigation on terrorism-related charges after a priest filed a complaint over threats made online against a Coptic church in France. Police in France and several other European countries have boosted security at Coptic churches which were due to celebrate Christmas on Friday, according to the eastern Orthodox church calendar.

Division in Israel over gender-segregated buses

Israel court rules Jewish gender-segregated buses illegal but could not halt 'voluntary' segregation.

Middle East Online

'Mehadrin (kosher) buses are dead' JERUSALEM - Israel's Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that buses for ultra-Orthodox Jews that force women to sit apart from men are illegal, but it also said it could not halt voluntary segregation. The decision ended a three-and-a-half-year legal battle launched by a group of ultra-Orthodox women and their supporters, who challenged the rules on "kosher" bus lines catering to Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. "A public transport operator (like any other person) is not allowed to order or tell women where to sit or what to wear. They have the right to sit wherever they want on the bus," the Supreme Court said. "Tolerance is an important social principle that should be promoted, sometimes even at the expense of infringing on the rights of individual." The ruling comes years after the Israel Religious Action Centre (IRAC) filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Transportation and two bus companies, accusing them of discriminating against women by operating the bus lines. The lines, which began running in 1998, required women passengers to wear modest clothing and to board and sit at the rear of the vehicle. IRAC filed the lawsuit after it said that at least five women were attacked verbally or physically and in some cases denied permission to board because they failed to observe the modesty and boarding/seating regulations. Anat Hoffman, the centre's executive director, called the Supreme Court's decision a "tremendous victory. "We are ecstatic. The fact that the court ruled that segregation on the buses in Israel is not in accordance with democratic values of equality, the equality of women, is fantastic," she said. "The mehadrin (kosher) buses are dead and gone and every bus is going to have two signs above each door proclaiming that everyone is able to sit anywhere on the bus they like." But she admitted disappointment with the court's decision to continue allowing women to "self-segregate" by voluntarily boarding the bus through the back door and sitting in the rear section. "The court unfortunately left one thing undone, they allowed the bus back door to remain open, which means that women who are trained to sit at the back will continue to enter there rather than going in the front," she said. "I would like them to shut that back door. I want the women to enter with the men through the front door, everyone together." But Hoffman, a prominent activist for women's rights, particularly in the religious context, said she expected the ruling would eventually pave the way for a single bus entrance for all men and women. "This is a huge step in the right direction," she said. "I think we're going to have to do the long haul and then next year they'll close the back door."

srael army kills 67-year-old Palestinian 'by mistake'

Israeli soldiers accused of murdering Palestinian 'in cold blood with 13 bullets in the head without even checking his identity'.

Middle East Online

By Samih Chahine – HEBRON, West Bank

'After they killed him, they asked for his identity card' Israeli troops in Hebron shot dead an elderly Palestinian civilian on Friday in a case of mistaken identity as they searched for a Hamas prisoner released a day earlier. The Israeli army expressed regret over the killing, with a spokesman admitting the 67-year-old man was an innocent civilian who lived in the same house as the wanted Hamas operative. Palestinian witnesses and security officials said the shooting took place inside an apartment building in central Hebron as troops were searching for one of the five prisoners released from the city's jail on Thursday. The dead man was identified as Omar Kawasme, with family members saying he was an uncle of Wael al-Bitar, one the Hamas prisoners being sought by Israel. Speaking to AFP, the dead man's son Rajaeh Kawasme said the soldiers had entered the house while his mother was praying and his father was asleep. They had locked her in another room, then opened fire on his father in his bed. "They murdered him in cold blood with 13 bullets in the head without even checking his identity," he said. "After they killed him, they asked for his identity card. "They thought that Bitar lived in this apartment so they shot my father without confirming his identity." An AFP correspondent at the scene said the shooting took place in a bedroom on the building's first floor, with the bed drenched in blood. Bitar's home is on the ground floor. The Israeli army admitted Kawasme had been killed by mistake by troops who were trying to find Bitar, a member of Hamas's armed wing whom they said was wanted for his involvement in a number of suicide bombings. "During this morning's arrest operation, a Palestinian man who was present in one of the terrorist's homes was killed. The IDF regrets the outcome of the incident," a statement said, adding an investigation had been opened. "There is no indication that he himself was a terrorist," a spokesman explained, saying the killing of Kawasme was "definitely not intentional" as he was "not a target." "There is no indication that he was involved in any terror activity at any stage and therefore we regret the incident," he said. The army said it had rearrested all five Hamas prisoners overnight, including Bitar, whom they said was responsible for planning several suicide attacks, including one which killed an Israeli woman and wounded 10 other people in the southern town of Dimona in 2008. The pre-dawn killing prompted a furious response from the Islamist Hamas movement which rules the Gaza Strip, with a spokesman blaming the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas. "Hamas holds the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank responsible, along with the occupation, for this crime," Sami Abu Zuhri told a news conference. "We call on the Palestinian Authority to immediately stop political arrests and to give the resistance a chance to protect the Palestinian people in the West Bank." The prisoners had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority, which is controlled by the secular Fatah movement, a bitter rival of Hamas, and were being held on unspecified "security grounds" prompting them to go on hunger strike. Abbas had on Thursday ordered their release. Kawasme was buried in a Hebron cemetery shortly after Friday prayers with thousands attending the funeral, an AFP correspondent said. At the same time, several thousand people rallied in Gaza City, with protestors waving green Hamas flags and shouting: "The Palestinian Authority is collaborating with the Zionists" and "No to political arrests!" The release of the inmates came as Fatah and Hamas traded allegations of prisoner abuse. The two factions have been engaged in tit-for-tat arrests, often holding detainees without charges or trial. Relations between the two have been tense for years and resentment boiled over after Hamas won elections in 2006. A year later, Hamas routed Fatah in bloody fighting in Gaza, effectively splitting the Palestinian territories in two and confining Abbas's rule to the West Bank.

Citing deficit, Gates backs reducing US force

US military scales back ground forces for first time since 1990s but defense budget still far exceeds other countries.

Middle East Online

By Dan De Luce - WASHINGTON

Due to 'dire' fiscal pressures Citing "dire" fiscal pressures, Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday proposed deeper cuts than planned in US military programs, scaling back ground forces for the first time since the 1990s. Gates, in a compromise with the White House, said the 78 billion dollars in cuts and other measures would result in a slower pace of growth in defense budgets over the next five years, despite earlier plans to keep spending at a higher rate. The proposed cuts will require reducing the size of the Army and the Marine Corps in 2015-16, with the Army reducing its force by 27,000 troops and the Marines by 15-20,000, he told a news conference. The US Army and Marines have not faced reductions since the post-Cold War cuts in defense spending in the 1990s, and the size of the ground force -- unlike the Air Force and Navy -- has expanded since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The decision reflected the shifting political climate in Washington, with the spotlight on the government's deficit overshadowing a long-running focus on national security after 2001. The Pentagon chief said he would have preferred to avoid such cuts, "but this country's dire fiscal situation and the threat it poses to American influence and credibility around the world will only get worse unless the US government gets its finances in order." As a major portion of the US budget, "the Pentagon cannot presume to exempt itself from the scrutiny and pressure faced by the rest of our government" to scale back spending, he said. Some Republican leaders in Congress promptly criticized the proposed budget as a threat to the military's health, while some budget hawks have argued for much deeper cuts in defense spending. Gates said the Pentagon needed to steer a middle course without dramatic cuts, but insisted the bureaucracy had to change the way it operated. "This department simply cannot risk continuing down the same path -- where our investment priorities, bureaucratic habits, and lax attitudes towards costs are increasingly divorced from the real threats of today, the growing perils of tomorrow, and the nation's grim financial outlook," he said. Despite talk of fiscal constraints, the vast American defense budget still far exceeds other countries and comes as European allies face drastic cutbacks to core military programs. Gates had hoped to avoid any cuts that directly affected the fighting force but said the reductions in the Army and Marine Corps will not come until 2015 -- when Washington hopes Afghan forces will take over responsibility for their country's security. The Army is currently at 569,000 troops, after a temporary increase of an additional 22,000 troops, and the Marine Corps has about 202,000 personnel. The proposed defense budget for fiscal year 2012 will reach 553 billion dollars, growing at a modest rate of three percent, he said. But future budgets will gradually be scaled back to zero real growth in 2015 and 2016, Gates said. Gates, mindful of a growing push to rein in the country's deficit and national debt, has for months signaled plans to find tens of billions in savings in the defense budget with the aim of preserving key military programs. The department found 150 billion dollars in savings that were meant to be plowed back into the defense budget, but the White House demanded a cut of 78 billion in military spending over the next five years. The Pentagon used savings in overhead costs of 54 billion dollars to meet the White House request, but Gates still had to find an additional 24 billion. The additional savings were found by adjusting economic forecasts for budgets in coming years, streamlining plans for the F-35 fighter and cutting the Army and Marine Corps, he said. Gates confirmed that the cuts included cancelling an amphibious landing craft favored by the US Marine Corps, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which he said had been plagued by repeated delays and rising costs. Apart from cancelling the amphibious craft, Gates also proposed changes in the costly F-35 fighter jet program, putting the troubled Marine version of the aircraft on a two-year "probation" to resolve persistent technical problems. For more cost savings, Gates proposed streamlining the Defense Department's "sprawling intelligence apparatus," maintaining a freeze on hiring civilians for three years, eliminating more than 100 general and senior officer positions and scrapping nearly 400 internal reports.

Ex-CIA officer charged with defense leak on Iran

10-count indictment for source of book chapter that focused on CIA's efforts to disrupt Iran nuclear research.

Middle East Online

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author refused to reveal his sources WASHINGTON - A former CIA officer was arrested Thursday on charges of leaking classified intelligence about another country's covert weapons program to a reporter, the Justice Department said. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, 43, was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri on a 10-count indictment which includes charges of revealing national defense information and mail fraud. Sterling is alleged to have stolen classified documents, and first made his disclosures in early 2003 in connection with a "possible newspaper story" and subsequently for a book published by the same reporter in January 2006, the department said in a statement. Although the Justice Department did not name the country or the "national newspaper" reporter by name, the dates and the details of the case suggested it may be related to James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times. Risen was subpoenaed in April and asked to appear before a grand jury in May to reveal his sources for a chapter in the book that focused on the CIA's efforts to disrupt alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," refused to comply. The Justice Department said Sterling's alleged actions may have been in retaliation for the CIA refusing to settle a claim of racial discrimination that he had brought against the agency. The indictment alleges that in February and March 2003, Sterling telephoned the author's home and emailed him a newspaper article about the weapons capabilities of the country, identified only as "Country A" by the department. The two men remained in touch, and then the "indictment alleges that in January 2006, the author published a book which contained classified information about the program and the human asset," the statement said. Sterling, who is also a lawyer, also allegedly obstructed justice by deleting an email he had sent the book's author about the country's weapons capabilities, the indictment said. He faces up to 10 years in prison for the unauthorized disclosure and retention of national defense information charges, another 20 years for mail fraud, 10 years for unauthorized conveyance of government property and 20 years for obstruction of justice. Each charge also carries a maximum fine of 250,000 dollars or twice the associated loss or gain. "The indictment unsealed today alleges that Jeffrey Sterling violated his oath to protect classified information and then obstructed an investigation into his actions," Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a statement. "Through his alleged actions, Sterling placed at risk our national security and the life of an individual working on a classified mission."

Critics say US airport scanners 'erode rights'

Body scans and enhanced security pat-downs at US airports seen as eating away at Americans' freedoms.

Middle East Online

By Karin Zeitvogel - WASHINGTON

'If you don't want to be seen naked, you can get ... felt up instead' Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Thursday said the body scans and enhanced security pat-downs at US airports are eating away at Americans' freedoms and called the agency that conducts them a "basketcase." "The TSA is a basketcase, collectively," Nader said at the first US conference on controversial new security measures that are being rolled out at airports around the United States. These include X-ray scanners that produce a graphic image of a person's naked body, genitalia and all, and body searches including a frisk of the private parts of travelers who refuse to go through the scanners. Some travelers have complained that the scanners are too revealing, while others, including a pilot, have said they felt violated after being frisked by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent. Passengers and airline crewmembers have told stories about being asked to remove prosthetic breasts or having their urine-collection bag burst during a pat-down, and parents have said their toddlers were invasively searched by TSA agents. The TSA security strategy was to have a knee-jerk reaction to failed terror attacks, said Nader. "You have the shoe bomber, we take off our shoes. "You have the Christmas bomber headed for Detroit who failed, so now we have these new scanner machines," he said, referring to a young Nigerian who tried unsuccessfully to detonate explosives sewn into his underpants as his US-bound flight was about to land on Christmas Day, 2009. Next thing American travelers know, they will be subjected to body cavity searches, he said. "What's happening is, we are incrementally losing our freedoms," Nader said. That view was shared by most of the other speakers at the conference, which was organized by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and had the double-entendre name "The Stripping of Freedom." "The TSA wants to use machines to see us naked before we get on an airplane," said Wes Benedict, head of the Libertarian Party. "But if you don't want to be seen naked, you can get patted down like a criminal and felt up instead," he said, agreeing with Nader that the new security measures "trample on our rights and waste our money." Congressman Rush Holt said that making everyone go through the scanners goes against a "central tenet of our society and our government, that we do not regard people with suspicion first." Michael Roberts, a US pilot who last year refused to be patted down by the TSA, said the scanners were another example of the government meddling in Americans' private lives. He and James Babb, co-founder of a grassroots movement that called for travelers to boycott body scans on the busiest travel day of the year -- the day before Thanksgiving -- called for the TSA to be abolished and for travelers' security to be put in the hands of the free market. But amid the voices saying that the new security measures were violating Americans' constitutional right to privacy and calling for the TSA's heads, a lone voice came out with a different reason for why the agency should change the way it screens travelers. Simply put, scanners don't work, said international security expert Edward Luttwak. In a test conducted in Europe, German prison guards were instructed to sneak explosives past three different scanners, including the full-body X-ray machine currently causing such a furore in the United States, Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, said. "They did it with such ease that the Air Travel Association, IATA, said there is no case for scanners," said Luttwak. The better solution would be to use data that is available to the travel industry to identify and separate frequent fliers and other travelers who are unlikely to be terrorist wannabes from travelers who, for whatever reason, arouse suspicion. Then, only screen suspect travelers. "The guy who has traveled 50 times in the last 50 weeks without blowing up an airplane is unlikely to become a terrorist the 51st time," said Luttwak. This sort of screening method is already used successfully at airports around the world, Luttwak said. If the TSA were to switch to it, they would not only save travelers a lot of time and headaches, but would also reduce the security risk that has been created at US departure terminals by long, slow-moving lines of passengers waiting to clear security.