Ahmed al-Shayea Teaches a Hard Lesson ... and We Thank Him for That

Typical of radical imams, they send others—not themselves—to die. Though he had committed to becoming a shahid (martyr), this young Sau'di didn't know the truck he drove was rigged to explode and it wasn't he who punched the detonator. He survived the attack, maimed for life.

"Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead."

http://patdollard.com/2007/07/28/there-is-no-jihad-we-are-just-instruments-of-death/

There is No Jihad. We Are Just Instruments of Death.

The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news, he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004.

Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.

At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency. The deprogramming, similar to efforts carried out in Egypt and Yemen, is built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists.

The kingdom still has a way to go in cracking the jihadist mind-set. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and Saudis make up nearly half of the foreign detainees held in Iraq, according to Mouwaffak al- Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser. They number hundreds, he said this month following a visit to Saudi Arabia. Dozens more are fighting alongside al-Qaida-inspired militants at a Palestinian camp in Lebanon.

Several hundred prisoners, as well as returnees from Guantanamo, are thought to have passed through the rehabilitation program.

Al-Shayea says his change of heart began when he was visited by a cleric at al-Ha’ir Prison in Riyadh following his repatriation from Iraq.

He says he put two questions to the cleric: Was the jihad for which he traveled to Iraq religiously sanctioned? And were the edicts inciting such action correct in saying the militants should not inform their parents or government of their intentions?

No and no, came the reply.

“I realized that all along I was wrong,” al-Shayea told The Associated Press in a two-hour interview at a Riyadh hotel before returning to an Interior Ministry compound that serves as a sort of halfway house for ex-jihadists rejoining Saudi society.

“There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death,” he said.

Saudi Arabia’s campaign against terrorism began in earnest after al- Qaida-linked militants struck three residential expatriate compounds in Riyadh in May 2003, killing 26 people.

The government says it cracked down on charities suspected of using donations to finance terrorism, banned mosques from holding unlicensed religious sessions and warned preachers against inciting youths to jihad. Officials as well as the government-guided media began to clearly and unequivocally refer to suicide bombings as terrorism.

The Interior Ministry sponsored programs on government-run TV stations showing repentant jihadists warning youths against joining al-Qaida and clergymen trying to correct misconceptions about jihad and dealing with non-Muslims. Al-Shayea has appeared on Al-Majd, a Saudi religious TV channel.

Three years ago it set up the prison program.

“The aim is to reform the youths, to listen to them and talk to them,” said Ahmed Jailan, one of the clerics. “We also try to instill a sense of hope in them by telling them they still have the chance to make up for what they lost if they follow true Islam.”

The prisoners later appear before a panel of judges who decide whether they can move from prison to the Interior Ministry compound, where activities include reading, civic and religious courses, sports and family visits. They get help finding jobs and wives, and after release they get free medical care, monthly stipends and sometimes cars.

At the time he was first approached to join the insurgency, al-Shayea was already becoming a devout Muslim in his ultraconservative town of Buraida. He grew a beard, prayed five times a day and stopped listening to Arabic love songs he used to enjoy. He was 19 and jobless.

Then he was contacted by a school friend whom he doesn’t identify.

“My friend started telling me about Iraq, how Muslims are getting killed there and how we should go there for jihad,” said al-Shayea. “He told me there were fatwas (edicts) and DVDs issued by Saudi and Iraqi clergymen that called for jihad.”

“We didn’t think of jihad as something that would lead to our death. It was a fight against occupiers,” said al-Shayea.

Finally the friend told him he was going to Iraq, and invited al- Shayea to join him.

He was told to shave his beard and pack Western clothes to avoid looking like a would-be jihadist. He got a passport and an airline ticket to Syria. And he managed to save $1,600—travel fees, he was told, that would go to smugglers, weapons training and al-Qaida’s coffers.

On a cool November night toward the end of the holy month of Ramadan, he donned a black T-shirt and jeans and told his parents he was going camping in the desert with his friends.

He and his friend flew to Syria, a favored transit point for Iraq- bound fighters because Syria doesn’t ask visiting Arabs for visas, and its 360-mile border with Iraq is thinly policed. A network of al-Qaida operatives sheltered him in Damascus, Aleppo and the border town of Abu-Kamal, and about two weeks later he and 23 other men were smuggled into Iraq.

Four Iraqi teenagers guided them to the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They saw Syrian border guards in the distance who fired in the air. “They didn’t try to stop us. We were already in Iraq,” al-Shayea said.

At al-Qaim, the men were split into two groups. Al-Shayea said his group of 12 met an al-Qaida leader who had direct links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida chief in Iraq who was later killed by a U.S. airstrike. He took the men’s money and gave each $100.

“Then he asked us a question: ‘Those who want to carry out martyrdom (suicide) attacks, raise your hands,’” said al-Shayea. “No one did.”

Al-Shayea’s group then spent a week at the Sunni fundamentalist stronghold of Rawa before al-Shayea and another Saudi man were taken to Ramadi and finally Baghdad.

Al-Shayea met his new “emir,” or leader, an Iraqi who told him his first assignment was to take a fuel tanker to a Baghdad neighborhood to be collected by others.

“I felt scared. I didn’t know Baghdad at all, and I also didn’t know how to drive heavy vehicles,” he said.

Also, he says, he was never told that the truck would contain 26 tons of butane gas, rigged to explode outside the Jordanian Embassy.

“That evening, we performed the last prayer of the day and had dinner—a dish of chicken and aubergines,” said al-Shayea. “The emir gave me a crude map of my route.”

Two al-Qaida militants drove with al-Shayea, but then jumped out 1,000 yards from where he was supposed to park the truck and fled in a waiting car.

“I felt something bad was about to happen,” he said.

The farther he drove, the more nervous he got until, 60 feet from the embassy, an explosion—believed triggered from afar—turned the back of the tanker into a fireball.

“I saw the fire and I started to scream and pray,” he said.

“I looked around me and I saw everything had melted. My hands had turned black. I jumped from the window and started running without thinking of what I was doing.”

The blast killed nine people.

Thinking he was an innocent victim and a Shiite by his fake ID card, passers-by took al-Shayea to a Shiite-run hospital. There he kept silent for several days until he finally told his doctors the truth.

The world’s first encounter with al-Shayea was on footage of his interrogation which was sent to Arab TV stations. Back in Buraida, his parents saw their son, face charred, head heavily bandaged, but alive. They were stunned. They had been notified he was dead and had held a wake for him.

Al-Shayea said he told his interrogators where to find a senior al- Zarqawi aide in Baghdad, revealed all he knew about al-Qaida, and denounced al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden as killers of innocents.

He says he hasn’t seen nor heard from the friend who accompanied him since they parted soon after entering Iraq.

Today his hair has grown back, he sports a thick black beard and he can move without difficulty. He credits the medical care he received, including 30 operations, at the hospital of U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison.

He says that when he was handed over to the Americans a couple of days after his interrogation at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, he was scared because he had heard about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

“But the care with which the American officers carried me down to the car when they came to take me made me relax,” said al-Shayea. “One spoke Arabic and tried to put me at ease.”

After almost six months of medical care and interrogations during which al-Shayea said he was treated well, he was visited by three Saudi officers.

“They told me they were there for my sake,” said al-Shayea. “They allowed me to write a letter to my parents.”

They also asked him if he would tell his story publicly. He says he replied that he would have volunteered to do so even if they hadn’t asked.

A couple of weeks later, in mid-2005, al-Shayea was flown home. His parents were at the airport. “I took my dad in my arms, crying, and kept asking for forgiveness,” he said.

He spent a couple of months in the hospital and then was moved to al- Ha’ir Jail where he says he was given a TV set, newspapers and plenty of food. He also read a lot of books. One of them—which he says he would never have imagined he would read—is the Arabic classic “One Thousand and One Nights.”

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Karzai Pardons a Child and Sends a Message

Gracen Commentary: It's likely Karzai will be widely criticized for this move, but we applaud it. It sends just the right message about a phenomenon that is all too common: Muslim parents send their children to a madrassah hoping they learn the tenets of a faith and the following occurs: (1) The child is isolated from the parents and all women (see forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jerrold Post on the impact of removing male children from female contact at an early age). (2) The madrassah refused the parents access to their own child, effectively kidnapping the boy. (3) An attempt was made to indoctrinate the boy, and when that failed he was threatened with death. (4) Typical of radicals, they used a child rather than being willing to die themselves (total cowards). Children are increasing used as proxies for adults in terrorist attacks or as human shields. (5) Karzai calls these people the enemies of Islam, and that is perfectly true. (6) Karzai nails Waziri tribesmen and Taliban for two crimes here: child abuse and making war on Afghanistan. And (7) Karzai forgives him, probably a controversial pardon, but because this kid is out front and apologizing, he deserves a pardon. It's also a message to the other children who might want to bail out of radical Islam—and a powerful message to parents to either get more involved in their children's education or get them out of madrassahs altogether. And then there is the matter of one child's redeemed life, in itself of inestimable value. So Gracen Intelligence applauds Hamid Karzai, and hopes he will start arresting radical Islamist imams and closing bad madrassash. However, with the mullahs controlling the Afghan judiciary (thanks to a repugnancy clause we allowed to happen), that's not likely to happen. Hint: Islamists always target the judiciary. It's the fastest, easiest way to control the population. — Morgaan Sinclair for Gracen Intelligence


Karzai pardons 'suicide bomb' boy

President Karzai said that Rafiqullah was not to blame

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned a 14-year-old boy caught wearing a suicide vest on his way to assassinate a provincial governor.

Rafiqullah had crossed the border from Pakistan and intended to kill Arsala Jamal, governor of Khost province.

Mr Karzai said Rafiqullah had been deceived by the "enemy of Islam" while attending a religious school.

Pardoning him at the presidential palace, Mr Karzai said: "I forgive him and I wish him the best of luck."

Suicide videos

The president said: "Today we are faced with a fearful and terrifying truth, and that truth is the sending of a Muslim child to carry out a suicide attack.

"[His parents] sent him to study at a madrassa (religious school). The enemy of Islam deceived him."

You are now free and forgiven by the people of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai

Rafiqullah's father, Matiullah, said he had been unaware of his son's actions and agreed the boy had been deceived by teachers.

He said when he had asked about his son he was not given an answer.

"I am very happy to have my son back," said Mr Matiullah, who is from South Waziristan.

Rafiqullah said: "I am very happy that I am pardoned and released."

Rafiqullah said he was trained to drive a car and shown suicide attack videos at the madrassa in Pakistan.

He crossed the border and was met by a man who gave him a suicide vest. Rafiqullah said he did not want to carry out the attack but the man threatened to kill him.

He was caught last month wearing the vest on a motorbike in the city of Khost.

Militants have launched a number of suicide attacks against Afghan, Nato and US-led forces over the past two years.

A number of would-be attackers held in recent weeks have been teenagers.

Afghanistan has urged Pakistan to do more to prevent militants from crossing the border to carry out attacks.

In a message to Pakistan, Mr Karzai called for "better relationships, not cheating the children and encouraging them into terrorism and suicide".

With thanks to the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6899608.stm

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The Muttawa Take Another Hit (Yes!)

The Crisis of the Wahhabi Regime

Surprising developments in Saudi Arabia.
by Stephen Schwartz and Irfan al-Alawi
07/16/2007, Volume 012, Issue 41
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/854vamro.asp

Long accustomed to abusing their power with impunity, the Saudi mutawiyin or "religious police" (more on that misleading translation in a moment) suddenly find themselves on the defensive. Increasingly challenged by critics, they felt compelled early this year to go through the motions of announcing a "modernization": Warrants would be required for searches, the use of force for moral violations would be banned. In practice, however, nothing changed. And when, this spring, two Saudi men died in custody, events took an unprecedented turn: Controversy erupted in the Saudi media; several mutawiyin members were dragged into court; and the boldest reformers called for dismantling altogether this hated institution. But to make the story intelligible, it is necessary to begin at the beginning--with the uniqueness of Saudi Arabia. In addition to being the only state named after its rulers, and having no constitution except the Koran, this is the homeland of the radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism, the official sect of the kingdom, is a patched-together, relatively recent expression of the faith of Muhammad, and the Wahhabi institutions that support the Saudi order often seem amorphous and opaque. Given the general absence of transparency in the kingdom, this should come as no surprise. But there is no Wahhabi institution more difficult to define than the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Founded in the 1920s, when the Saudi state came into being, as an enforcer of collective morals, this body of at least 10,000 individuals is known to Saudi and other Muslims as the mutawiyin, or "devotees." Although often described in Western media as the "religious police," the mutawiyin have little in common with a police force--they wear no uniform and receive no salary--and are better described as an Islamofascist militia, something akin to the Nazi and Communist rank-and-file party members in lands ruled by those movements. Their mission includes ideological indoctrination in the dangers of "imitating the West" (such as watching television), but they mainly enforce Wahhabi standards of behavior in public. Their constant and degrading interference with ordinary people has brought about growing discontent. If judicial scrutiny is imposed on the mutawiyin, Saudi Arabia will undergo a profound change in its social life. A kind of adjunct to the tens of thousands of state-subsidized clerics, the mutawiyin are a pillar of Wahhabism in the kingdom. They prowl the streets of the main Saudi cities day and night. Jeddah, the commercial capital on the Red Sea, is the notable exception: Local residents claim to have run the mutawiyin out of town. Elsewhere, however, they seek out people they suspect of violating the Wahhabi code of conduct. If a woman walks outside her home in the full body covering known as the abaya but allows a fold of cloth to slip, exposing her ankle or face, the mutawiyin may scold her or strike her. If they suspect that an unrelated man and woman are meeting in public places, the patrollers may detain and harass them, insulting the female for alleged lewdness, and beating the male. If people keep walking when the call to prayer is heard and do not rush into the nearest mosque, the mutawiyin may swarm and assault them for impiety. Given the Islamic ban on intoxication, if the militia are informed that alcoholic drinks or drugs are being used in a private home, they may raid the house and beat and even kill people. If Muslim pilgrims violate the Wahhabi understanding of monotheism by praying at the shrine of Muhammad in Medina, they are likely to be taken aside and roughed up and, if they are foreign, deported. Until now, the mutawiyin have not been called to account for their sometimes drastic deeds. They have no professional standards or training. They are free to assault people and then shove them on their way, making no record of the encounter, having carried out no official arrest, and making no provision for any hearing or further punishment, although offenses deemed particularly grave--alleged adultery, say--may land the suspect before a sharia court. Members enter the mutawiyin from the kingdom's strictest schools and mosques. They are not paid, but are assigned to regular patrols. They wear no identifying uniform except a red-checkered headscarf. They travel in unmarked cars. Instead of a firearm, they carry an asaa, a long stick resembling a riding crop. But they have offices and detention centers, and both the chief Islamic cleric in the kingdom, grand mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik, and interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz (notorious for asserting that 9/11 was the handiwork of Israel), say the mutawiyin are supported by the state. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has a chief, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith, and has lately appointed public-relations representatives, still unpaid. The mutawiyin have benefited from the secrecy surrounding their internal functioning, and their "surprise" tactics help them maintain an atmosphere of intimidation. Their defenders claim the mutawiyin follow a prece dent in the strictest school of Sunni sharia, identified with the 9th-century jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal, whose followers organized patrols for "prevention of sin." But such patrols remained a marginal phenomenon in Islamic history, often condemned, until the emergence of the Saudi state in the 20th century. The Mutawiyin in Court On July 1, three Saudi judges began a court inquiry into the death last month of a Saudi citizen, Ahmed Al-Bulawi, 50, who had been detained by the mutawiyin in the northwestern town of Tabuk. On July 2, however, four members of the religious militia accused of responsibility for the death, and whose trial had already been postponed once, were released on bail; the previous Friday, mosques in Tabuk had broadcast sermons calling on local Muslims to defend the accused. Al-Bulawi's case represents a microcosm of the mutawiyin's history. His alleged crime consisted of inviting a Moroccan woman who was not his relative and was unchaperoned by another male into his car. His relatives demand that those who caused his death be executed. Local authorities claim that Al-Bulawi died of natural causes, although the lawyer for his family told the media that the victim's remains showed he had been beaten in the face and head. The official medical report has not been released. For what it's worth, the unnamed Moroccan woman has revealed that Al-Bulawi formerly worked as her driver. A little before Al-Bulawi's death, in May, Salman Al-Huraisi, aged 28, died in mutawiyin hands in Riyadh. His home had been raided by militia members looking for alcohol and drugs. The Saudi daily al-Watan (The Nation) reported on June 28 that a lawyer for Al-Huraisi's family had been denied access to a medical report on the fatality, but that Al-Huraisi had died after blows to the eye and head. Some 18 mutawiyin participated in the raid on Al-Huraisi's home, and one of them is now due for trial. Local authorities initially sought to absolve the mutawiyin in the case by throwing a blanket of equivocation over them. Representatives of the governor of Riyadh claimed that the as-yet-unidentified individual accused of the killing was not on patrol when the victim died. The pro-al-Qaeda media enterprise Al-Sahat (The Battlefields) praised this attempt to deflect blame from the mutawiyin as appropriately protecting the militia's status. But some Arabic media insist Al-Huraisi's assailant was a leader of the mutawiyin. As in the past, vagueness about how the mutawiyin operate enables their alleged misconduct. Finally, a 50-year-old Saudi woman known as Umm Faisal ("mother of Faisal"--her full name is undisclosed) has filed suit against the mutawiyin for an incident in 2003 when she, her daughter, and a foreign maid were verbally and physically harassed while waiting in a car for her two sons. The three women were charged with public immorality, in line with Wahhabi teaching that the presence of women in cars amounts to solicitation of prostitution. On July 3, the complaint of Umm Faisal became the first ever civil action in which a representative of the mutawiyin was summoned to court, although, again, the trial was postponed, this time until September. With all this, the kingdom is atwitter about the mutawiyin. It is proof of the entrenched totalitarianism of Saudi society that such small steps as the charging of four militia members for Al-Bulawi's death and the court appearance of a militia member in the Umm Faisal matter are seen by ordinary Saudis as significant developments, potentially heralding a new epoch in the kingdom's life. Naturally, the defenders of the Wahhabi order are intent on the mutawiyin's survival. Prince Nayef has publicly reaffirmed his support, though not loudly enough for Al-Sahat, which complains that the all-male Shura Council appointed by the king has failed to open more mutawiyin centers and authorize payment of members. The Shura Council seems to walk a fine line between popular disaffection with the mutawiyin and extremist pressure; it also rejected reform proposals that the mutawiyin wear uniforms and include female personnel. Predictably protective of the institution is the Wahhabi establishment. On June 21, the newspaper Al-Madina reported that the grand mufti had denounced "unfair" media criticism of the religious militia and called for repression of the critics. The grand mufti is a descendant of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703-1792), originator of the Wahhabi sect. His position has been hereditary since the Al-Wahhab family contracted a permanent alliance with the Saud clan, who leave religious affairs to the Wahhabi offspring while keeping the reins of state power for themselves. Amid these investigations and declamations, other sporadic and confusing measures have been proposed to ameliorate public dissatisfaction with the mutawiyin. When the case of Al-Bulawi first came to light, it was announced that 380 members of the militia would be trained in "interpersonal skills," surely one of the most bizarre statements yet from the Saudi authorities. The mutawiyin further promised to create a review process for their members' practices. At the same time, however, they rejected questions about their activities put forward by Saudi human rights activists. Moreover, recent examples of outrageous behavior by the mutawiyin abound. At the beginning of June, a certain Fahd Al-Bishi of Riyadh complained to the media that the militia had crashed their vehicle into his family car and harassed him on his daughter's wedding day because they suspected his son of drinking or traveling in the company of women unrelated to him. In March, the mutawiyin burst into Prince Salman Hospital in Riyadh and fought with security personnel while ostensibly chasing a drug dealer. A few days before that, the mutawiyin had been taught a lesson in the restive Eastern Province, whose large Shia Muslim population is subject to continual discrimination. A patrol detained a man who was listening to music, a prime offense in Wahhabi eyes. After the individual was released, he returned with several friends and beat up the mutawiyin. Indeed, by early this year, criticism of the institution had become so frequent that the militia refrained from its usual practice of violently interrupting the Riyadh International Book Fair, which opened in February, to search for banned literature. Many Saudis saw this as another small, positive step by the circle around King Abdullah, who is at odds with Prince Nayef, and is widely believed to seek a break with the past. Throughout this chronicle one sees the contradictory symptoms of a deepening, as yet hidden crisis of the Saudi regime. The state defends the mutawiyin while promising change, but not too much change. People speak out more candidly, but a primitive institution like the mutawiyin continues to get away with shocking acts. Trials are promised, and begin, and then are put off, under the sinister gaze of Nayef. Precisely how events will unfold is impossible to foretell, but it is not too much to say that if the mutawiyin are ever finally held to answer for their long career of oppression, the entire Wahhabi establishment may begin to crumble. Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Irfan al-Alawi is a close observer of Saudi affairs based in the United Kingdom.

© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

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Australia Sounds Terrorism Alert for Indonesia

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22039852-661,00.html

Australia Sees Imminent Attack in Bali & Indonesia from Increased Chatter on Abu Dujana Arrest

Ian McPhedran

July 09, 2007 12:00am

AUSTRALIANS have been told to stay away from Indonesia because of an imminent terrorist attack against Western interests in Bali or Jakarta.

Security agencies detected a sudden rise in "chatter" between known terrorist groups late on Saturday night.

The chatter, picked up by Australian electronic intercepts, indicated an attack - linked to the recent arrest of Jemaah Islamiah leader Abu Dujana - was to take place.

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Howard warning: Visa system overhaul

Holiday snap: Terror suspect's Sydney link

Britain: 15-year war on radicals

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"These attacks could take place at any time and could be imminent," the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned.

"Australians should consider this information carefully when considering travel to Indonesia."

Australia's electronic spying agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, closely monitors phone calls and radio traffic inside Indonesia.

Australian Federal Police agents in Indonesia have access to the intercepts and other material.

It is understood Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer was shocked when he saw the latest intelligence material and decided to go public, despite potential damage to relations with Indonesia.

Indonesia always complains when Australians are warned to avoid their country, but after the two Bali bombings and attacks in Jakarta the Government is taking no chances.

Mr Downer chose his words carefully to avoid upsetting Jakarta, but the material intercepted on Saturday was so specific that he announced the warning himself.

"We . . . remain very concerned about the possibility of terrorist attacks and that those terrorist attacks could be imminent," he said.

"I think there is a bit of a sense in the community, as we look at this issue of terrorism more broadly, that in the case of Indonesia it's gone away.

"I don't want Australians to be complacent because there hasn't been an attack for a while."

The latest intercepts supported intelligence gathered by AFP working closely with Indonesian counter-terrorist police, and Australian spies from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service working there as diplomats.

Likely targets are the dozens of Western hotels, bars, nightclubs or tourist spots in Bali or Jakarta.

Major hotels in Bali said late yesterday they had yet to be informed by police of any increased security threat or of any need to upgrade security.

But most say that since the 2002 bombing, they have upgraded their general security to meet international standards.

While the travel advice has technically not been upgraded, the Government wants people to cancel travel plans.

And it has warned Australians in Indonesia to exercise extreme caution and avoid places frequented by Westerners.

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Serbia Sidelines Roma Rights Campaign

Commentary: We didn't expect Serbia's so-called new emphasis on human rights of all its minorities to last. We are still waiting for Serbia to deal with the vicious anti-Semitism in the actions and on the websites of the so-called Serbian Defense League. And we iterate that under no circumstances should Serbia be allowed to control the people of Kosovo, whom they tried to exterminate. -- Morgaan Sinclair for Gracen Intelligence
__________________________________________________________________

Serbia Sidelines Roma Rights Campaign
http://www.birn.eu.com/en/91/10/3478/

03 07 2007 ‘Decade of Roma Inclusion’ inspires much talk but little action.

By Daliborka Mucibabic in Belgrade

In a Roma settlement on the outskirts of Belgrade, yards from the luxurious Hyatt Hotel, a cardboard shack of about 10 square metres, housing three beds and a stove, is home to a Roma family of four.

One-year-old Zorica Azemovic sleeps in an improvised hammock that stretches across the flea-infested room.

Her father, Miroslav, has barely slept for months, fearing a repetition of the drama when a rat almost bit off his daughter’s ear.

“It was about 10.30pm and Zorica started crying,” he said. “I jumped out of my bed and saw her bloodied ear. She was in hospital for a week and I’ve been awake ever since.”

Rat attacks on children are a routine ordeal for the 200 or so families living in the settlement, close to Belgrade’s main motorway.

Most of the Roma living there have moved to Belgrade from the impoverished southern town of Leskovac and other areas in the south.

“A day’s work in Leskovac is enough to buy you a sack of potatoes or beans, while you can earn up to 2,000 dinars [25 euro] in Belgrade by collecting and selling scrap cardboard; that’s quite an income,” Miroslav said.

The grim living conditions that the Azemovic family puts up with are the norm for many Roma families in Serbia.

Two years ago, Serbia’s Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, signed Serbia up to a regional programme aimed at improving the position of Roma throughout Central and South-east Europe.

The other countries involved in the programme are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia and Montenegro.

However, governments have taken only token steps so far to live up to the words contained in the declaration, “A Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015.”

Most Roma in Serbia have never heard of the document and know nothing about how they might benefit from it.

“I don’t know what my rights are nor who to talk to,” Azemovic said.

Poor living conditions, a lack of health care and no education are the main problems the declaration is supposed to tackle.

In 2006, the Serbian government duly passed action plans aimed at improving Roma education, health care, housing and employment, allocating special funds for their implementation. The Health Ministry allocated 60 million dinars or 750,000 euros, to Roma health care, for example.

Ljuan Koka, head of the government’s secretariat for implementing the Roma Strategy plan within the Department for Human and Minority Rights, said they had made most progress over education, while efforts to lower unemployment within the community had fallen well short of the target.

“We have been able to set up working groups in various ministries and what we want to do now is to get a clear picture of who’s spending the money and how,” Koka said.

“We don’t have a political agenda, as our project is mainly financed by the OSCE mission in Serbia, while the government has given us the premises to work in,” Koka went on.

Koka admitted the position of Serbia’s Roma community remained far worse than that of the general population. Child mortality among Roma was four times higher the rate among the majority population.

Average life expectancy is only 47, compared to an average of 75 in Serbia as a whole.

Very few Serbs grow up totally illiterate, while among Roma, Koka said, “More than 75 per cent are essentially illiterate; a meagre 0.3 per cent have degrees of any kind”.

These disadvantages impact on their project prospects. Only around 27 per cent of adult Roma are economically active as opposed to almost 70 per cent of the mainstream population.

Apart from illiteracy, lack of documents is a major problem, as this prevents Roma from gaining access to local services.

Many Roma are not even registered as legal residents and have no identification cards, health records and passports.

It also means no one has a clear idea of the size of their community. While the Roma population in Serbia officially stands at 108,000 it is widely believed the real number ranges from 450,000 to 800,000.

In spite of their size, politically, they remain a marginal force. It was only at this January’s elections that candidates representing Serbia’s biggest ethnic minority won two seats in parliament for the first time. These were Rajko Djuric, head of Serbia’s Roma Union, and Srdjan Sajn, leader of the Roma Party.

Djuric said the prevalent anti-Roma sentiment in Serbia reflected the general climate of racism in the country. He blamed the community’s plight on a lack of political will for and said the government still treated Roma problems as a second-class issue.

“The future is bleak for all of us unless Serbia becomes a more democratic society and takes a decisive step to curb right-wing extremism,” Djuric said.

Sajn maintains that if progress is to be made towards meeting goals by the 2015 target date, an effort needs to be made in setting up an institutional framework for the campaign, assembling competent staff and building a non-government sector capable of addressing the problem

“The current funds are being misspent as many people have joined the Roma integration project for their own personal benefit,” Sajn complained.

During the run-up to the January elections, Sajn’s Roma Party promised to provide 500 apartments for the neediest families, find jobs for 10,000 people and allocate 50 million dinars from the state budget to aid Roma students and teachers.

“We have to see concrete results this year and we will only support the government if it clearly defines the measures it intends to take in that direction,” Sajn said.

Koka said the election of two Roma deputies was a step forward but would not resolve their problems alone. “One or two deputies can’t change anything, while they can easily cancel each other out if they end up supporting rival camps in parliament,” he pointed out.

Bozidar Jaksic, a sociologist, said the position of the Roma community was made more difficult by the fact that, like other ethnic groups in Serbia, they tended to rally only behind narrowly defined “ethnic” issues.

“Their diverse culture is their greatest wealth and not a handicap,” Jaksic said.

Jaksic said he saw the integration formula as a cliché, bearing in mind that Roma had lived in the region for centuries; what they needed was not “integration” but emancipation.

“The sole purpose of the integration story is to turn the Roma into something they are not,” he went on.

As the legal successor of the former Serbia-Montenegro state union, Serbia has inherited the old state’s international human rights commitments, which include its obligations to the Roma community.

Serbia is also a member of the European Human Rights and Civil Liberties Convention on protecting national minorities and the European Charter on minority and regional languages.

While in theory these commitments and Serbia’s constitution guarantee Roma rights, in practice, according to Roma journalist Dragoljub Ackovic, discrimination is alive and well and even getting worse.

In some ways, he went on, the position of Roma had markedly deteriorated.

“We even had our own newspaper until 1935 while now we no longer have our own media outlet,” he noted.

The Serbian broadcasting agency had recently banned the Roma Amaro Dom television and Krlo e Romego radio stations, he went on.

Although Roma groups protested to the justice minister, the broadcasting agency insisted the stations did not fulfill basic technical and staffing criteria for the renewal of their licenses.

“All our effort to get air time on Belgrade state television have also been fruitless,” Ackovic continued.

Now the community’s hopes are increasingly pinned on the EU, which Serbia hopes eventually to join.

Countries aspiring to join the European club have to incorporate an anti-discrimination law into their constitutions.

Late last year, a draft bill was presented to the Serbian parliament though it still has not been passed.

Daliborka Mucibanic is a freelance reporter from Belgrade. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.

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Finally (Hopefully) the Muttawiyyah Get Some Grief

Saudi Religious Police Face Backlash

Jul 1 01:58 PM US/Eastern By DONNA ABU-NASR Associated Press Writer

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - As the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two bearded men dragged the driver from the wheel and took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour, bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a darkened street.

The women at first thought they had been kidnapped by terrorists. The two men however, said they were religious police.

It might have gone down as just one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the senior of three women, did something that is believed unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court.

On Monday, four years after the incident, the latest chapter of the legal battle being waged by this 50-year-old mother of five reopens before Riyadh's Grievances Court, which handles damages suits for abuses by government and public figures.

The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes on top of two cases involving the death in religious police custody of two Saudi men—one arrested for allegedly consuming alcohol, another for being alone with a woman not of his family.

A trial opened Monday against three religious police officers and a fourth man in the death of Ahmed al-Bulaiwi, the man detained for being alone with a woman. Relatives demanded the death penalty against the defendants.

Taken together, the cases threaten to undermine the authority of the force's employer, the powerful, independent body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Since the commission's creation more than six decades ago, there has been no known public legal action taken against its members despite complaints they occasionally overstep their boundaries. The public view has tended to be that whatever their faults, they are acting in Islam's name to defend morality.

But things may be changing.

The National Society for Human Rights, a nongovernment body, has issued a report which, according to the daily Arab News, levels a string of allegations at the religious police: abusive language, unsubstantiated accusations, humiliation of people during interrogation, beatings, unnecessary body searches, forced entry into private homes and coerced confessions.

The report, as well as the extensive coverage the cases have received and editorials calling for the commission's reform, suggest the government may act to regulate the force.

Another setback for the commission came in the appointed Consultative Council, the nearest thing to a parliament in Saudi Arabia. It rejected proposals to build more commission centers and give its members a 20 percent salary raise. While the council's actions are not binding, they reflect a general desire to curb the religious police's power.

"Society has developed and the relationship of other governmental bodies with the people has developed and become more human," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist. "Yet the commission has not changed."

"Society in principle doesn't reject the commission," he added. "But the commission's problem is that it doesn't have a proper job description."

Several media outlets have conducted informal surveys asking Saudis whether the commission should be dissolved. Some have said yes. While the polls may be unscientific, simply asking the question is significant.

Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the commission's head, dismissed the polls, saying the commission is "one of the oldest governmental agencies ... and not a cooperative that can be eliminated because of individual mistakes," according to the Al-Jazira newspaper.

The Saudi government is reluctant to tamper with its religious establishments for fear of angering conservatives and weakening its credentials as custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines. The conservative impulse has lately been illustrated by a request from 14 faculty members of King Saud University's medical school to ban male students from treating women and vice versa, on the grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic.

But there are signs the commission is acting to limit the damage to the religious police's reputation. It now has a spokesman and a legal department to guide its members.

Umm Faisal—her full name is withheld in reports on the case—says she, her 21-year-old daughter and her Indonesian maid went to pick up her two teenage sons from the amusement park in the family's new Chevrolet Caprice.

"I kept asking the men, 'Are you terrorists?' They finally said they were members of the commission," she said. "When I asked what they wanted, they called me names, including adulteress."

Umm Faisal said the men drove so fast and badly that smoke came out of the car.

The men stopped the car, called their friends and asked them to pick them up. The women, who don't know how to drive (and can't anyway, under Saudi law), were left to the mercies of passers-by.

Umm Faisal headed to the police to lodge a complaint. "When questioned, the commission members claimed we were indecently covered," because her daughter's veil didn't cover her eyes, she said.

In early 2004 she filed suit at Riyadh's General Court, but says several judges pressed her to drop it and late last year the case was dismissed.

She then turned to the Grievances Court, which fined one official $540 for mistreating the women and acquitted the other.

Umm Faisal isn't satisfied, and her appeal opens before the court on Monday.

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