For members who've been around awhile, I saw something while looking around for possible topics for the editorial by The Third Estate Sunday Review. (We all hurry around the web to try to find a topic and then we pitch them while the group chooses which topic they want to go with.) (Read their editorial, by the way.)
An article (by Scott Shane) in the New York Times on December 15 contained the following:
Mr. Kalugin speaks from unusually direct experience. In 1978, he passed along orders directing Soviet agents to supply the Bulgarian secret service with a spring-loaded umbrella that was later used to deliver a dose of the poison ricin, killing the Bulgarian dissident Georgi I. Markov in London.
The article was entitled "Poison's Use as Political Tool: Ukraine Is Not Exceptional" and we addressed it in two entries that day, "Questions while reading today's New York Times" and "Judith Regan, Zeller's writing for the Times; Oleg Kalugin; Georgi I. Markov; Democracy Now!; Daily Howler."
The Sunday Times of London reports a development in the assassination of Georgi I. Markov. From Jack Hamilton and Tom Walker's "Dane named as umbrella killer:"
It remains one of Britain's most famous unsolved murders -- made all the more notorious by the James Bond nature of the killing. The murder weapon was an umbrella, partly developed by the Soviet KGB, which fired a pellet the size of a pinhead, containing the poison ricin.
Last week, in a serialisation containing leaks of secret service files in the Bulgarian daily newspaper, Dnevnik, the identity of Markov's killer was finally revealed.
He was named as Francesco Giullino, a Dane of Italian origin who travelled Europe in a caravan pretending to be an antiques salesman: in fact, he was a Bulgarian secret agent.
The documents, uncovered during six years of research by Hristo Hristov, a Sofia-based investigative journalist, reveal how the Communist-era Durzhavna Sigurnost (DS), the Bulgarian equivalent of the KGB, had ordered Giullino to "neutralise" Markov.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
NYT: "even American documents indicated that much of the evidence on Mr. Kurnaz actually seemed ... to exonerate him" (Richard Bernstein)
We're highlighting only one article in this entry because it's an important one (Lynda, Eli, Rob, Kara, Maria, Susan, Zach and Ben all e-mailed on it). From Richard Bernstein's "One Muslim's Odyssey to Guantanamo" in this morning's New York Times:
About two months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the Pakistani police picked up Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Muslim from Germany who was traveling by bus near the city of Peshawar.
The police turned Mr. Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born in Germany, over to the American military in Pakistan, who in turn transferred him to Afghanistan, and he was held as a terrorist suspect.
[. . .]
Though no link to Mr. Atta was ever found, Mr. Kurnaz was sent to the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been held for about three years now as an enemy combatant, specifically accused of being a member or ally of Al Qaeda or its terrorist network. The evidence against him is that, while he was traveling in Pakistan, he was the guest of a militant Islamic group said to have supported terrorist acts against the United States.
In addition, Mr. Kurnaz was known to have intended to travel to Pakistan with a close friend, Selcuk Bilgin, another Turkish citizen from Bremen. And Mr. Bilgin, according to an American military tribunal's findings on Mr. Kurnaz, later carried out a suicide bombing.
But in recent months, as details of the charges against Mr. Kurnaz have come to be known, German officials here in Bremen who have investigated both Mr. Kurnaz and Mr. Bilgin have reacted to the American conclusions about Mr. Kurnaz with astonished incredulity.
The most striking element in the picture is that, contrary to the American assumption about Mr. Bilgin having carried out a suicide bombing, the Germans say that claim is demonstrably false.
"He lives here," Uwe Picard, the Bremen criminal prosecutor who carried out the German investigation into Mr. Bilgin, said in an interview in his office here. "He is still alive."
Moreover, even American documents indicated that much of the evidence on Mr. Kurnaz actually seemed more to exonerate him than to incriminate him. The decision of the three-member Guantanamo tribunal that found Mr. Kurnaz to be an enemy combatant last September refers to classified material in his file and indicates that that is where the reputed links to Al Qaeda would be documented.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
About two months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the Pakistani police picked up Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Muslim from Germany who was traveling by bus near the city of Peshawar.
The police turned Mr. Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born in Germany, over to the American military in Pakistan, who in turn transferred him to Afghanistan, and he was held as a terrorist suspect.
[. . .]
Though no link to Mr. Atta was ever found, Mr. Kurnaz was sent to the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been held for about three years now as an enemy combatant, specifically accused of being a member or ally of Al Qaeda or its terrorist network. The evidence against him is that, while he was traveling in Pakistan, he was the guest of a militant Islamic group said to have supported terrorist acts against the United States.
In addition, Mr. Kurnaz was known to have intended to travel to Pakistan with a close friend, Selcuk Bilgin, another Turkish citizen from Bremen. And Mr. Bilgin, according to an American military tribunal's findings on Mr. Kurnaz, later carried out a suicide bombing.
But in recent months, as details of the charges against Mr. Kurnaz have come to be known, German officials here in Bremen who have investigated both Mr. Kurnaz and Mr. Bilgin have reacted to the American conclusions about Mr. Kurnaz with astonished incredulity.
The most striking element in the picture is that, contrary to the American assumption about Mr. Bilgin having carried out a suicide bombing, the Germans say that claim is demonstrably false.
"He lives here," Uwe Picard, the Bremen criminal prosecutor who carried out the German investigation into Mr. Bilgin, said in an interview in his office here. "He is still alive."
Moreover, even American documents indicated that much of the evidence on Mr. Kurnaz actually seemed more to exonerate him than to incriminate him. The decision of the three-member Guantanamo tribunal that found Mr. Kurnaz to be an enemy combatant last September refers to classified material in his file and indicates that that is where the reputed links to Al Qaeda would be documented.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
NYT: Bully Boy "said most of the tax cuts ... In fact, most -- 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent" (David Cay Johnston)
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