C130 Plane Landings at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport — Questions have been raised over US aircraft operating from the airport.

Strange and unscheduled military planes from the US have in the last two months been making secretive night landings in Kenya, in what are feared as missions to move terror suspects from the country.

The night landings of US planes at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, carrying American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials have raised suspicion and controversy not only among local security agents, but also players in aviation.

The Prescott Support Group, which has been accused in other parts of the world of being involved in renditioning terror suspects, was allowed to operate in Kenya two months ago.

Documents in our possession show that the company was allowed to fly in and out in a Gazette notice dated June 20 for two years.

Prescott Support Group, which according to the American media, has links with the CIA, applied for renewal of their licence in May, even after the Kenya Association of Air Operators (KAAO) questioned their licence and mission.

Despite the concerns, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) went ahead and granted the two-year licence although ordinarily they should have sought clearance from the Department of Defence (DOD) because of their military aircraft……[MORE >>]

Popularity: 7% [?]

‘Water-Boarding’ Kenyan terror suspects and how they were flown out of Kenya

Writes: Ben Agina

Details on how 19 terror suspects arrested in Kenya, but removed from police custody by foreign security agents for interrogation can be revealed today.

Interrogation by the foreign agents — including US’ Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Britain’s MI6 — have been described as “most inhumane” and involved blindfolding suspects, shackling their feet and handcuffing them from the back.

   Arrest Bush - A War Criminal!
According to a report by a presidential committee exclusively obtained by The Standard, the case of one detainee, Amir Mohamed, stands out as an example how foreign agents could easily access and remove suspects from police custody in various stations.

Mohamed was taken out of his cell at Nairobi’s Kileleshwa Police Station by American agents in a US registered vehicle and taken to a local hotel for interrogation.

When contacted, Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua asked: “What is the report saying?”

After consulting the Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura, Dr Mutua said the Government had not received the final report.

However, Mutua said they were aware of the committee’s “rough draft” whose content not all members were agreed on.

He said the committee was asked to make the report more accurate.

“The committee is still refining it (report) to try and come up with a more accurate document,” he said.

The Presidential Special Action Committee appointed last year to address specific concerns of the Muslim community received reports that the foreign agents had direct access to prisoners without restraint.

The report was to be handed over to the President on March 31, but to date it is yet to be received at State House.

The committee received reports from the Muslim Human Rights Forum, which witnessed Mohamed being brought back to Kileleshwa from an interrogation session on February 5, last year, in a US Embassy vehicle.

The detainee confirmed to the human rights’ group that he was interrogated by FBI agents about possible links with Al–Qaeda training military camps in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Another detainee, Mohammad Ezzouek, said he was interrogated by British intelligence agents at Kileleshwa Police Station between February 3 and 5 last year.

The human rights’ group also reported that during a fact-finding mission to Kiunga, Lamu District, the residents reported seeing foreign security personnel together with Kenyan security forces in the hunt for people fleeing Somalia and seeking refuge in Kenya.

One Abdulmalik Mohamed, said to be a Kenyan citizen and suspected of being involved in the bombing of Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, was arrested in Kenya and handed to foreign agents who flew him to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after being held in custody in Mombasa and Nairobi.

The report quotes a statement by the US Department of Defence on March 26, 2006, indicating that Abdulmalik had admitted his involvement in terrorist attacks in Mombasa in 2002 and the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi in 1998.

One suspect who appeared before the committee, Fatma Ahmed Chande, a Tanzania national married to a Kenyan, narrated her ordeal as she and her husband, Salim Awadh Salim, were fleeing from Somalia.

“It was so chilly and drizzling. We were bundled into pick ups and driven to the runway. I saw very many people, including women, kneeling,” said Chande.

“The men were blindfolded and their hands handcuffed behind their backs and feet chained. I was led to the group of women and ordered to kneel, too,” said Chande.

She added: “An armed man came to me and pulled down my veil to uncover my face. Some of the detainees were crying loudly. The men had black hoods covering their heads. We knelt for some time, till our knees ached. We were taken to the plane, still blindfolded. I could, however, see through my veil as it was of light material. It was very scaring, cold and wet.”

According to the committee, Chande’s statement confirms the report by the human rights’ group that her husband, Salim, said to be Kenyan, was moved to Ethiopia, where he is still held.

The committee received reports that on March 31, last year, heavily armed police officers cordoned off a residential area in Kongowea, Mombasa, and harassed everyone in sight as they sought terror suspects.

After the ordeal, the officers arrested two people and later released them without charges.

On the night of April 24-25, last year, heavily armed hooded ATPU personnel raided Guraya in Mombasa.

Again, they cordoned off the area and blocked the adjacent Jomo Kenyatta highway, and proceeded to break doors at homes and paraded residents, including children and the elderly, in the rain at 3am.

It was alleged that the police ransacked their homes and took away valuables and cash, arrested 11 residents, 10 of who were later released without charges, while one was deported to the Comoros.

The committee also heard from Noor Sheikh Hassan, also said to be a Kenyan citizen who, together with five others, was arrested in Liboi, a town on the Kenya-Somali border on January 6, last year, and transferred to Langata Police Station in Nairobi, where he was held in solitary confinement for 25 days.

He was denied access to a lawyer and family members and could not make any phone call.

As of today, none of the arrests have yielded any prosecution for crimes connected with terrorism.

The report adds that some of those arrested were later released without charges whereas others were prosecuted for minor immigration offences and deported.

“The rendition of the terror suspects is illegal under the Constitution and international law because it disregards judicial and administrative processes,” says the report.

Most Kenyan victims of “rendition” were arrested and detained, while others were abducted and denied legal representation.

The committee notes that rendition violates other human rights: For instance, victims of rendition have no opportunity to challenge their detention, or the arbitrary decision to transfer them to another country.

The Kenyan security agents have continued to defend themselves over the rendition, saying those taken to foreign countries were not Kenyans

The committee, however, claims to have received evidence of the rendition of at least 19 Kenyans to Ethiopia, Somalia and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Flight manifests made available to the committee show that in January and February last year, chartered planes left Nairobi with about 80 people on board to the Somali capital Mogadishu and the town of Baidoa. They were suspected to have links with Al-Qaeda.

The flights left at night, and the manifests appear to have omitted important details.

The 19 were Aden Sheikh Abdullahi, Saidi Shifa, Salam Ngama, Bashir Hussein Chirag Mohammed Sader, Said Hamisi Mohamed, Swaleh Ali Tunza, Hassan Shaban Mwazume, Hussein Ali Said, Tsuma Solomon Adam Ayila, Abdi Muhammed Abdillahi, Salim Awadh Salim, Abdulrashid Mohamed, Kasim Musa Mwarusi, Ali Musa Mwarusi, Abdallah Halifan Tondwe, Nasru Tuko, Mohammed Said Mohamed, Saqaawi Diin (all in Ethiopia) and Wahab Mohamed Abdulmalik (Guatanamo bay, Cuba).

Muslim Human Rights Forum reported to the committee that it had filed 34 applications at the High Court in Nairobi, while six others were filed in Mombasa.

Despite High Court orders in all the cases, the State defied, and only released two suspects, while the rest were moved to foreign jurisdictions.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This is an example of the CIA Meddling in African Affairs during the cold-war era
| Other CIA activities in Africa |

By Douglas Okwatch

Fresh details of a conspiracy that could have provided a motive for the assassination of Cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya have emerged ahead of the 39th year since his death.

Kenyatta
The CIA appears to have recruited the flamboyant minister and former trade unionist in a heavily funded “selective liberation” programme to isolate Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who the American spy agency labelled as “unsafe.”

Declassified information in an undated issue of Ramparts, an American political and literary magazine published in the 1960s and early 1970s, accessed by The Standard at the Kenya National Archives, shows an elaborate conspiracy by CIA to prop up Mboya and isolate Kenyatta.

Ramparts closed shop in 1975. Whether this scheme sowed seeds of suspicion and mistrust between Kenyatta and Mboya, who at the time of his assassination was the Economic Planning minister and Kamukunji MP, is a matter for further investigation.

The revelations come four months after Mboya’s widow, Pamela, wrote to Mr Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general who also chaired talks that ended political violence in Kenya early in the year, asking that the matter be investigated afresh by a truth commission.

“The assassination of my husband, like others after him, is a matter that has remained shrouded in mystery and speculation, and which has been avoided by successive regimes in this country,” she wrote.

Trail of Questions

In a telephone conversation with this writer last month, Mrs Mboya promised to “drop the bombshell” in an interview. But she later changed her mind. Her last word was that she would spill the beans at an “appropriate time.”

Questions also abound on whether the convicted assassin, Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, was actually executed. The testimony of the assassin’s own brother and anecdotal evidence that he has been seen by a retired military officer, among other claims, pile on the doubts of his execution.

Mboya
Secret letters, also declassified, further show that Mboya had a particularly tumultuous relationship with Mr Mbiyu Koinange, a minister and power broker of the Kenyatta presidency.

In one instance, Koinange wrote an emotional letter to Kenyatta to defend himself against allegations of disloyalty by Mboya.

“Sir, you know my loyalty to you personally, to our Kanu party; of my long loyalty to Kenya and latterly my loyalty to our new independent Council of Ministers.”

“My loyalty is beyond doubt, therefore, my Prime Minister. I frankly feel that there is no need for me to reply to Mr Mboya’s letter.”

“It is unfortunate, ill-timed, egoistic and, if I may say so, an irresponsible letter which is skilfully designed by one of my colleagues to endanger the good working spirit among us.”

Koinange was then Minister of State in the Office of the President and one of the most powerful figures in the Government. He died in September 1981.

The secret letters in our possession cover the period between 1961 and 1966. Desperate to extricate himself from the tag of traitor, Mboya, in a letter on March 11, 1961, pleaded with Kenyatta, who was languishing in a Lodwar jail: “I’d hate to appear a hero at your expense.”

He attached copies of various statements he had made in meetings with the Governor for Kenyatta’s perusal. The move appeared to capture his own internal consciousness that Kenyatta may have begun to perceive him as a threat.

The letters also reveal how the CIA used Kenyatta to finish Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, his Vice-President, politically by amending the Constitution to his office of all powers.

Traitor or nationalist?

Ramparts reported that: “The CIA programme in Kenya could be summed up as one of selective liberation. The chief beneficiary was Tom Mboya who, in 1953, became general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour.”

Koinange
Both a credible nationalist and an economic conservative, Mboya who was popularly known as ‘TJ’, was ideal for CIA’s purpose. The main nationalist hero and eventual chief of state, Kenyatta, was not considered “sufficiently safe” owing to his initial deep socialist leanings, the dossier said.

Ramparts quotes Mboya as saying: “Those proven codes of conduct in the African societies, which have over the ages conferred dignity on our people and afforded them security regardless of their station in life.

“I refer to the universal charity, which characterises our societies, and I refer to the African thought processes and cosmological ideas, which regard men, not as a social means, but as an end and entity in society.”

This powerful quote not only captures Mboya’s own prescription of African socialism, which endeared him to the West and made the CIA view his policy as safe, but it also paints the picture of an articulate, sophisticated and ambitious political thinker.

Soon after, Mboya joined the CIA jet set, travelling around the world from Oxford in the UK to Calcutta in India on funds from such conduits as the Africa Bureau and from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

ICFTU, which played a key role in Kenya’s independence through trade unionism, is an aggregation of international trade union secretariats set up in 1949 to counter an upsurge of left-wing trade unionism outside the communist bloc, according to Ramparts. The CIA allegedly funded operations at the time.

But when George Cabot Lodge, one of the directors of the ICFTU, made the statement (believed to have been in specific reference to Mboya at the time) that “the obscure trade unionist of today may well be the president or prime minister of tomorrow,” he left no doubt about Mboya’s personal ambitions and by extension the CIA’s scheme of things.

Initially, CIA’s natural strategy was to underwrite Mboya and his labour federation as a force against Kenyatta. But when tact changed in accordance with the world order and the CIA’s new priorities, it was agreed that Western labour groups stop funding Mboya.

An accommodation with Kenyatta was now thought necessary, particularly to ensure that he did not support rebels in Congo, and to get him to close ranks against the agitating Kenyan left.

But the die had been cast. The CIA, through its activities, had effectively propped up Mboya as a possible future President of Kenya. That threat was real during Kenyatta’s time and even at the dawn of the second decade of his leadership, according to Ramparts.

It was a strategy that the CIA would use again to the benefit of Kenyatta against Odinga – use the credibility of the appropriate militant to crush the rest. The CIA link, which Mboya vigorously fought to distance himself with, would be used later to fight him politically by branding him a traitor and a man who could not to be trusted. He wrote lengthy responses in his defence.

But had the CIA sowed enough seeds of wrath between Mboya and the political establishment in Kenya to provide someone with enough reason to kill him?

REFERENCES:

1. Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya’s murder & the return of one-party State
2. Ready or Not - TIME
3. Setback for Tom - TIME

Popularity: 11% [?]

As McCain’s gaffes pile up, he can only flail and wail at Obama’s shining performance abroad

John McCain will turn 72 the day after Sen. Barack Obama accepts his party’s nomination for president at the age of 47.

McCain’s 72 years are clearly on display.

In the last three weeks a seemingly forgetful and confused McCain has “gaffed” numerous times — ironically, on foreign affairs — which he touts as his area of expertise.

Obama has had his share of mis-statements and gaffes, but they have been sparse and much less pronounced when compared to McCain’s “surge” train of gaffe on top of gaffe.

Either McCain is becoming senile or he is a serial-liar and/or his campaign strategists are utterly incompetent.

Or is he just another Bob Dole — about to fall off a stage?

McCain’s Double-Talk Express

Senator John McCain has become a Gaffe Machine since hitting the campaign trail last year. Here is a regularly updated Master List of McCain gaffes.

Also recently the DNC has released its own list for McCain — what it calls McCain’s “Top 10 mis-statements and outright deceptions.”

1. McCain doesn’t even know who is in charge in Iran.

2. Iraq/Iran, Sunni/Shia: McCain doesn’t know the difference.

3. McCain still thinks Czechoslovakia (which split into two countries in 1993) exists.

4. McCain wrongly claimed that Baghdad was mostly normal.

5. McCain called Baghdad market safe.

6. McCain can’t even remember how little he knows about the economy.

7. McCain falsely claimed he never requested pork.

8. McCain falsely claimed that tax cuts increased government revenues.

9. McCain’s claim to be untainted by special interest money is false.

10. McCain wrongly claimed he never supported amnesty.

Let’s be serious — the man is old, and is probably already in the early stages of senility.

So, how bad is this? I like the way Michael Weiss sums it up:

…..depending on your perspective. Either (ha!) he’s a doddering old fool who might be president, or (shit) he’s a doddering old fool who might be president. The availability of his many flubs and missteps on the Internet, a medium with which he doesn’t even pretend to be acquainted, haven’t helped combat McCain’s image as a sufferer from Early Onset Reagan Mind Mush….[MORE >>]

P/S — Ronald Reagan, the Republican hero — a serial liar with a Heart of Darkness was senile in the second half of his presidency, but Republicans will never admit that…LOL!

REFERENCES:

1. Is McCain’s Age Showing? Tongues Wag Over Flubs
2. All Hail ‘McBama’
3. “The guy gets it,” the Jordanian official said after dinner with Obama. “Sharp, aware and a very good listener. He doesn’t seem stuck in preconceived positions. He said he would get straight to the Palestinian issue as soon as he becomes president.” — Read Maureen Dowd’s: Is ‘The One’ Cocky or Commander in Chiefy?

Popularity: 9% [?]

HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe returns to Zimbabwe on Wednesday under pressure from fellow African leaders to form a national unity government in the wake of his re-election in a violent poll ruled unfair by monitors.

   ENLARGE IMAGE

An African Union summit in Egypt, attended by Mugabe, approved a resolution calling for him to negotiate with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from the run-off election because of violence against his supporters.

The resolution fell short of the tougher statement wanted by some African countries, but it was an unprecedented rebuff to Mugabe, previously feted as a liberation hero. …[ MORE >> ]

Mugabe Loses His Cool In Cairo

….meanwhile, US President George W. Bush, on June 26, 2008 at the White House in Washington, DC, said he had directed that sanctions be drawn up against the “illegitimate” government of Zimbabwe after a run-off vote boycotted by the opposition.

What?

George Bush has No Business sanctioning Mugabe….for he is as illegitimate, and a worse criminal than the man he condemning.

Both have stolen elections and have “killed” their own people. For Bush — add another 600, 000 innocent Iraqi’s at the behest of 500LB bombs and sadistic U.S soldiers.

Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom was a mission of Murder, Rape and Torture, featuring “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses,” by the U.S Military personnel.

So, G.W. Bush please shut up!

You too belong in JAIL!

REFERENCE: The Criminal “High Cabal” — The American “High Cabal” adopted criminality as their primary strategy when they seized control of the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Popularity: 17% [?]