In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were today (Friday) found guilty of war crimes.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.

The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

War crimes expert and lawyer Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law in America, was part of the prosecution team.

After the case he said: “This is the first conviction of these people anywhere in the world.”

“We tried three times to get Bush in Canada but were thwarted by the Canadian Government, then we scared Bush out of going to Switzerland. The Spanish attempt failed because of the government there and the same happened in Germany.”

Boyle then referenced the Nuremberg Charter which was used as the format for the tribunal when asked about the credibility of the initiative in Malaysia. He quoted: “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such a plan.”

The US is subject to customary international law and to the Principles of the Nuremberg Charter said Boyle who also believes the week-long trial was “almost certainly” being monitored closely by both Pentagon and White House officials.

Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar, who headed the prosecution said: “The tribunal was very careful to adhere scrupulously to the regulations drawn up by the Nuremberg courts and the International Criminal Courts”.

In response to questions about the difference between the Bush and Obama Administrations, he added: “If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture then US President Barak Obama is the President of extra judicial killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”

   »»» Sailan Muslim (Sri Lanka)

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Susann Bashir, a 41-year-old married mother, sued AT&T unit Southwestern Bell for what she said was a pattern of offensive and discriminatory conduct by her supervisors that began when she converted to Islam in 2005, six years after she started working for the company as a network technician.

After Bashir started wearing a religious head scarf known as a hijab, and attending Friday mosque services, her managers and co-workers called her names including “terrorist,” and told her she was going to hell, said her attorney Amy Coopman.

A manager repeatedly told her to remove her hijab, insulted her for wearing it, and once physically grabbed Bashir and tried to rip the hijab off her head, according to the suit.

   »»» Reuters

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A ban on Muslim face veils, such as the Arabic-style niqabs that leave the eyes uncovered and Afghan-style burqas that cover the face with a cloth grid, is less likely to go ahead after the government collapsed at the weekend.

The minority Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition’s alliance with Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) fell apart when they could not reach agreement on crucial budget cuts. An election has been called for September 12.   »»» Islamophobia Watch

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Tarek Mehanna, a bearded Islamist with fundamentalist beliefs, was convicted last year for conspiring to provide support to terrorists by downloading jihadi videos from the internet and translating Islamist documents that he found online.

Prosecutors portrayed Mehanna as a dedicated radical who tried, and failed, to get terrorist training in Yemen in 2004 and then devoted himself to promoting and spreading the violent views of radical Islam in America. Defence lawyers had insisted that Mehanna’s trip to Yemen was to find a religious school and that his radicalism has been greatly overstated. They say he was a family man, angry at American foreign policy, who considered himself an outspoken Islamic intellectual and saw the west’s treatment of Muslims as wrong.

However, regardless of which version of Mehanna’s beliefs was the truth, civil liberties groups say the Mehanna case is a huge setback to America’s freedom of speech and that he was essentially prosecuted for “thought crimes” that should be constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. “It is thought crime. We should be very concerned about this,” said Steve Downs, a New York state lawyer who works with various groups examining legal cases brought against Muslims in the decade since September 11.

Some observers believe that radical Muslims get different treatment to other extremist groups. Mehanna was convicted of supporting terrorism despite there being no proven active link between him and any terrorist or terrorist organisation, and his activities appeared to consist of spreading easily available material he found on the internet. There is no evidence he actively plotted to take any terrorist action in the US, but he now faces a possible life sentence in jail.

There is also another twist in the case. Mehanna has said that he was only prosecuted after he refused to become an FBI informant. He said he was approached by FBI agents in 2008 as he was about to take up a job in Saudi Arabia and told he would be prosecuted for his activities unless he agreed to become an informant.

His lawyers pointed out: “There was no evidence that Mehanna’s actions actually threatened United States security interests. There was no evidence that Mehanna provided any tangible material support such as funds or weapons to terrorist activity or to al-Qaida,” they said in a statement.   »»» guardian.co.uk

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“Other students come dressed up as hippies or goths and nobody says anything,” the girl, Khadija, told the French daily Le Parisien, “but I’m not even allowed to wear a gypsy skirt.”

“If I had come to school wearing a veil I would have understood their reaction,” says Khadija, who is a student at the Edmond-Rostand secondary school at Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône near Paris.

On Monday, Khadija was sent home from school for wearing a long skirt that according to the school conveyed religious values.

“It was a beautiful day, I wore a long skirt,” says Khadija, “the headmistress told me I was being provocative and sent me home.”

An official belonging to the local academic authority however denies Khadija was expelled from the school and says the skirt had only been “commented on”.

“She takes her veil off before entering the school, but it’s our role to make comments to pupils who wear provocative clothes. We do the same with a girl who comes to school with a bare belly,” said the unnamed official in an interview with Le Parisien.

In 2004, a ban on religious symbols in schools came into effect, meaning Muslims girls were no longer allowed to wear a veil in class.

Khadija however believes the school is not allowed to comment on her clothes and insists she will not shorten her skirts.   »»» The Local (France)

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Police did not disclose the contents of the note. Sura Alzaidy, a family friend, said it told the family to “go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.” The family is from Iraq.

El Cajon police Lt. Mark Coit said the family stated they had found a similar note earlier this month, however did not report it to authorities.

The daughter who found her mother said that her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron. She said her mother had dismissed the previous note, found outside the house, thinking it was a child’s prank.   »»» UTSanDiego.com

UPDATE: The victim has since died, and police have opened a homicide investigation.

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“The French government does not want any extremist preachers entering its territory,” Henri Guaino, a special advisor and speech writer to Sarkozy, told French Radio J.

Al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar, is one of the most widely respected Sunni Muslim clerics in the Arab world and a household name in the Middle East thanks to his regular appearances on the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel.   »»»  swissinfo.ch

France has just suffered an appalling terrorist attack by an alienated young Muslim who claimed to be inspired by al-Qaeda. And the French government responds … by banning the Muslim world’s most prominent and influential opponent of al-Qaeda from entering the country.

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“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 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.   »»» guardian.co.uk

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The Qur’an commands Muslims to defend all places of worship – churches, synagogues, temples, cloisters, etc – even with their own lives. Far from sanctioning any destruction, our faith instructs us to protect places of worship of all religions.

In fact, Islam goes even further. Muslims have also been made to promise to defend followers of other faiths from unjust and cruel attacks. In 628, the Prophet Muhammad delivered the Charter of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai. This charter protected the human rights of all Christians and remains a guide for all Muslim states’ relations with non-Muslim minorities. In this charter, the Prophet Muhammad made a declaration that nullifies the Saudi Mufti’s call to destroy all churches. The charter, still preserved in Mt. Sinai today, states: “None of their churches or other places of worship will be desolated, destroyed or demolished. No material of their churches will be used for building mosques or houses for the Muslims. Any Muslim doing so will be regarded as disobedient to God and His Prophet.”

For those Muslims who may assert that this charter does not apply today, they need not look any further than Muhammad’s first words of the charter: “I have caused this document to be written for Christians of the East and the West, for those who live near, and for those of distant lands, for the Christians living at present and for those who would come after, for those Christians who are known to us and for those as well whom we do not know.” The charter concludes, “Let this document be not disobeyed till the Judgment Day.”

   »»» The Washington Post

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The laws – due to come into force on 30 April – will apply to statutory declarations and affidavits and cover anything that conceals a person’s face, including motorcycle helmets, masks, veils, burqas or niqabs.

Aziza Abdel-Halim, the president of the Muslim Women’s National Network of Australia, said the change would not have an impact on the community.

“The majority will accept it,” she said, adding that it is a requirement in many Muslim countries.”   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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“We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons — quite the opposite,” he said. He added that on the basis of a religious decree by Ayatollah Khamenei, “the production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin.”

Mr. Salehi said the existence of nearly 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world posed “the gravest threat” to sustainable international security.    »»» NYTimes.com

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A joint investigation by senior Afghan and US military officials has concluded that although mistakes were made when troops at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, had burned copies of the Qur’an and other religious literature along with piles of waste paper, there was no intent to desecrate the Islamic religious texts

But a different panel appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to investigate the incident, has concluded that the burning of the holy books was deliberate.

Maulvi Khaliq Dad, a senior Afghan religious leader on the panel, said US troops told Afghans at the base that the religious materials pulled from a detention centre library were to be stored, but were then sent for incineration.

“They are claiming that it was not intentional. Our investigative team says it was intentional,” Dad said.

After the panel presented its findings, Afghanistan’s top religious leaders demanded on Friday that those involved be put on public trial and be punished, a position that Karzai backs.   »»» guardian.co.uk

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That’s been the line from Barack Obama, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan General John Allen to calm the furor caused by the burning of the Qur’an near an American military base north of Kabul.

To Muslims, the Qur’an, the words of God, and the Messenger who conveyed them are not abstract matters.

Such is their devotion to the holy book that they are rarely far from it, physically or in spirit. They give it pride of place in homes. Most kiss it before and after every reading. They instinctively reach for it on both happy and sad occasions, for blessings or comfort. Many commit all its 86,430 Arabic words to memory — a feat with no parallel in other religions or in the secular realm.

To desecrate the Scripture or to insult the Prophet is to scar the soul of a Muslim. This is especially so when done by non-Muslims whose motives are suspect and who may, in fact, be acting out of malice, like the Florida pastor who burnt a copy of the Qur’an last year.

In 2008, George W. Bush apologized after a U.S. serviceman in Iraq shot a Qur’an in target practice. In 2005, a military investigation confirmed four cases of the desecration of the Qur’an at Guantanamo Bay, as a tool of punishment against prisoners.

This is what seems to have transpired in Afghanistan as well. The Qur’ans came from a detention facility, where the detainees were deemed to have been using the books to send secret messages. Even if they were, why couldn’t the books have been removed rather than consigned to trash?

Gen. Allen has ordered every NATO soldier to immediately undergo a sensitivity session in “the proper handling of religious materials.” Shocking, isn’t it, that after a decade in Afghanistan, foreigners still don’t have a clue about what is or is not acceptable to the locals and, more pragmatically, what might backfire on the mission?

There has also been the desecration of the dead, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In 2010, some Americans posed with corpses of Afghan civilians gunned down by rogue soldiers. This year, a video emerged of Marines in combat gear urinating on three Afghan corpses.

Afghans also know that some of the scandalous tactics of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were used in Afghan detention camps.   »»» thestar.com (Canada)

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