USANDTHEM-"fight for the right to say it"

Amid mounting confusion over the shooting of a man in an anti-terrorist raid in London. The second suspect and brother of the man wounded has been questioned by police over who fired the shot.

Abul Koyair, 20, is being held at Paddington Green police station where his brother Abdul Kahar, 23, is also being detained, but doctors have decided he is too ill to be questioned after being treated for gunshot wounds to his shoulder.

Following todays interviews Solicitors for both men made statements to the press, both were adamant on behalf of their clients that reports the younger brother, Abul, was responsible for the shooting were groundless.

Mr. Julian Young, representing Abul Koyair, confirmed that three interviews with his client had been carried out by police.

He said: "The police are putting various matters to my client and the interviews have not been concluded and there is very little to say. It is gentle questioning, nobody is being offensive, nobody is being rude.

He insisted that his client continued to deny any involvement in terrorism and disputed reports that Mr Koyair was responsible for the shooting of his brother.

He said: "He is angry that this has happened to him but pleased police are doing their job. He denies the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. It is contrary to all his beliefs."

Kate Roxburgh, who represents Mr Kahar, said claims that her client had been shot by his brother were "absolute nonsense".

She said: "His brother was apparently standing a couple of stairs behind him.
"He was shot through the chest from the front. It is absolute nonsense. He's still in pain. He has not slept well. He is expected to make a full recovery but it is probably going to take many months.

"He is absolutely horrified and completely bewildered about how the police have come to this. He has had no involvement in this whatso-ever."

She added he was on strong painkillers and was unable to be questioned by police. Ms Roxburgh said: "He's very tired. He's feeling sick. He's not especially well, but he is keen to be interviewed and get this over with.

"He's still very bewildered and absolutely protesting his innocence, he has got no involvement in terrorism at all.

A prompt investigation into the shooting by the IPCC has been lauched, and police still admit to having found nothing suspicion during their 4 day search of the mens home and workplaces.

by Charley Reese, June 2006
Republished from Liberty Think

President Bush teared up on Memorial Day and said we must complete the mission in Iraq to honor the 18,000 wounded and 2,400-plus dead.

Well, I have a question. What is the mission?

Is it to overthrow Saddam Hussein? He's been overthrown and is awaiting execution by a kangaroo court we selected to do the hit.

Is it to allow the Iraqi people to hold elections? They've held three elections ? one for an interim government, one for a Constitution, and one for a permanent government, which is now in place except for two Cabinet positions.

Oh, I forgot that when the president was selling this war, he said the mission was to disarm Saddam because he had all those awful weapons of mass destruction. Well, of course, they didn't exist, and now the president doesn't talk about them.

But if the purpose was to install an elected government, why are we still there? Why are we spending half a billion dollars to build the world's largest embassy, one that dwarfs Saddam's palaces and that ticks off the Iraqi people? Why, after three years and billions of our tax dollars, do the Iraqi people lack electricity, clean water and sewers? They had all those things under Saddam until we destroyed them with our bombs and missiles.

And if we want the Iraqi army to handle security, why are its soldiers still driving around in Toyotas? Where are their armored personnel carriers, their tanks, their light machine guns and light artillery? Surely there is a lot of that stuff left over. Why doesn't the president stop spreading heifer dust? We take an 18-year-old kid, give him 18 weeks of training and ship him off to combat. Is this administration saying it takes five years to train an Iraqi lad?

I think the only real mission left is to wipe the egg off the president's face. The invasion of Iraq was unconstitutional. There was no declaration of war, just a namby-pamby, you-can-use-force-if-you-want-to resolution passed by those spineless mountebanks who inhabit Congress. It was illegal under international law, since Iraq had not attacked us or even threatened to attack us. Iraq was cooperating with the arms inspectors and telling the truth about the lack of weapons. That's why the U.N. Security Council refused to give the president the resolution he wanted as a cover for his war.

Most of all, though, it was flat stupid, as anybody who knows the Middle East could have told him. To use a favorite phrase of his father, when the prez ordered the invasion of Iraq, he stepped into deep doo-doo of the camel variety. I doubt if he knows how to get out of Iraq even if he wanted to, and I don't think he does. I think he intends to stay there indefinitely.

And if that's his intention, then he should tell the American people that their sons and daughters will continue to die or be maimed indefinitely. The Iraqis are a fierce people. No elf is going to sprinkle fairy dust on them and make them fall in love with us. Why should they? We destroyed their country and caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children just with the sanctions, not counting the thousands we've killed since then.

The Iraqis have many admirable traits, but I don't think forgiveness is one of them. Does the president remember what the Iraqi father told an American officer when the officer asked what compensation he would accept for his son, whom one of our soldiers had killed? He said, "Ten dead Americans."

And what has the president's blundering accomplished? He's converted an old enemy of Iran into a new ally of Iran. Did he hear the Iraqi prime minister when he said no attacks on Iran from Iraqi soil will be tolerated? Did the president hear him when he said Iran has a right to enrich uranium? The president has created gas lines in an oil-rich country. He's restarted inflation and the Cold War.

Perhaps we're the ones who should be tearing up. We have two more years of this guy, and he still believes that, except for a misspoke word now and then, he's done everything right. At least he's smart enough not to go hunting with Dick Cheney. That's our small consolation.

After his 1985-90 government left Peru "mired in guerrilla violence and economic chaos" Former President Alan Garcia has reportedly won back the office by defeating the populist ex-army officer endorsed by Venezuela's polarising president,Hugo Chavez.

"It was a surprising comeback for a man whose name had been equated with political disaster, and a rejection of a political upstart enthusiastically endorsed by Venezuela's anti-US president".

Garcia's lead of 55.5 per cent against 44.5 per cent for Ollanta Humala with 77.3 per cent of the vote counted appears conclusive, and was confirmed by the head of the Peruvian electoral agency, Magdalena Chu.

However, it is expected that the margin could shrink as Humala's support is strongest in rural areas where vote reporting is slower.

Unofficial partial counts by the polling firm Apoyo and the citizen watchdog group Transparencia had given the center- leftist Garcia more than 52 per cent of the vote.

Confidently, and before the first official results were announced, Garcia, 57, had thanked God and his supporters for what "appears to be a victory by the party of the people".

He believed his new mandate had sent an overwhelming message to President Hugo Chavez that Peruvians had rejected his "strategy of expansion of a militaristic, retrograde model he tried to impose in South America".

Humala, is deeply unpopular among upper-and middle-class Peruvians and has attacked the character of their established and naturally representative political parties as "corrupt and unresponsive to the needs of the poor".

Garcia, 57, built a winning strategy on a formidable campaigning machine which effectively turned the elections into a "referendum on the Chavez factor", depicting Humala as an "aspiring despot who would fall into lockstep with the Venezuelan's populist economics and Cuba-friendly anti-Americanism"

A story about Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, which appeared in last weekend's Sunday World, has been a discussion point for much of the week, while being greeted with widespread scepticism. The newspaper quoted a man who uses the name Martin Ingram and claims to be a former British army intelligence officer. He alleged that Sinn Féin's chief negotiator had been a British spy known as "Agent J118" in the 1990s. It was Ingram who first claimed that Freddie Scappaticci was the British spy known as "Stakeknife" and, while this claim is now widely accepted, few if any were prepared to countenance the suggestion that Mr McGuinness is anything other than an out-and-out republican.

Sinn Féin strongly refuted the allegations against Mr McGuinness, the MP for Mid Ulster. A spokesman said, "We have heard this all before. It is rubbish. It is all nonsense. Anybody with half a wit will treat it with the contempt is rightly deserves". It was Tuesday before Mr McGuinness bothered to comment and then he was quite dismissive, using the words "absolute hooey". He was "a million percent" certain that no evidence could be produced to back the allegation. The feeling in Sinn Féin appears to be that it is a DUP generated story aimed at making the re-establishment of a power-sharing executive more difficult. Gerry Adams also suggested the involvement of "old guard elements" within the security forces, trying to stall progress and perhaps hoping to have Mr McGuinness assassinated.

Mr McGuinness has blamed sections of the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists who, he said, want to wreck the Northern Irish peace process.

He said: "I don't have any illusions whatsoever that the people behind this are hoping that I will be killed."

Mr McGuinness, the IRA's second in command in Londonderry when British troops shot dead 13 civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday in 1972, was outraged by the allegations made by an operative who uses the pseudonym Martin Ingram.

"I was absolutely disgusted. I was very angry and I am still very angry. But the important thing is it hasn't worked," he told Irish State radio RTE. "The amount of support I have received from all over Ireland is absolutely incredible. My family has been hurt and they like me are angry about it, but there isn't anything we can do about it.

"I'm not accusing all of the DUP of being involved in this. I am accusing a certain element within the DUP who are doing their damnedest to prevent an agreement.There are people within the DUP who can't bring themselves to recognise that the future will be Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in the Office of First and Deputy First Minister."