Drone Industry Event Highlights Effort To Rebrand Planes For Commercial Use
SIERRA VISTA, AZ - MARCH 07: Maintenence personel check a Predator drone operated by U.S. Office of Air and Marine (OAM), before its surveillance flight near the Mexican border on March 7, 2013 from Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
By Christina Wilkie Posted: 03/12/2013 10:10 pm EDT | Updated: 03/12/2013 10:36 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. drone industry next week will hold its second Washington-area conference in as many months in an ongoing campaign by makers of unmanned spy planes to shed their notorious association with extrajudicial assassinations and embrace profitable civilian uses.
The March 21 day-long conference [ http://www.cpe.vt.edu/auvsi/index.html ] is hosted by the drone industry's major trade group, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Billed as "A Washington Conversation on Unmanned Systems," organizers said the conference goal is to "highlight [non-military] unmanned vehicle uses and the impact of this emerging market."
Conference sessions will be largely devoted to civilian uses for drones, including the use of drones for "humanitarian assistance and stability operations" in war-torn regions, and drone deployment for "environmental monitoring."
The civilian drone market is growing fast, explained Jay McConville, who heads the DC chapter of Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. "Many new uses for unmanned systems are on the near horizon [and] it's vital that industry, academia, and government work together to maximize the benefit" of new technologies, he said.
As the drone industry tries to sell its softer side, it's difficult not to notice that many featured conference speakers [ http://www.cpe.vt.edu/auvsi/speakers.html ] have built their careers on the weapons side of the drone business.
McConville, the chapter president, oversees business development for Unmanned Integrated Systems at defense giant Lockheed Martin. Speaker David Bither is a business development specialist for the defense industry, and was formerly a partner at Mav6, a firm offering unconventional warfare solutions. Doug Brooks, scheduled to speak in the afternoon, leads a trade group for companies that provide private security forces [ http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-21/news/sns-rt-us-usa-arms-contractorsbre89k02b-20121020_1_private-security-firms-wars ] and ad hoc special operations in unstable regions. Other speakers have specialties that include video technology and jet propulsion, all for the war-fighting drone industry.
Drone trade groups like Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimated [ http://issuu.com/auvsi/docs/auvsi_economic_report/1 ] that with a boost from non-military products and government tax breaks, the unmanned vehicle industry may reach annual sales of more than $100 billion over the next decade.
What these sunny long-term forecasts fail to mention, however, is that in the short term, drone manufacturers face a daunting set of political and PR challenges [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/drone-industry-obama_n_2719087.html ]. These range from individual questions about privacy to high-level concerns about how weaponized drones are used in war.
On the public side, the Federal Aviation Administration is working to define drone regulations and whether rules should apply to the government's potential ability to watch citizens. The FAA initially planned to develop a framework for these rules by 2015, but a series of setbacks and public concerns [ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/03/12/what-is-the-drone-industry-really-worth/ ] have put the deadline in doubt.
On Capitol Hill Tuesday, President Barack Obama faced tough questions in a closed-door meeting [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/democrats-drone-policy_n_2862544.html ] with Democratic senators -- a rare instance of senators challenging a president of the same party. The senators' drone questions followed last week's nearly 13-hour filibuster, staged by Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) to block a vote on Obama's pick for director of Central Intelligence until the administration answered specific questions about the drone program.
"There is fear amongst the general public about what these systems are capable of," Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International spokeswoman Gretchen West acknowledged [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/drone-industry-obama_n_2719087.html ] in an interview with HuffPost's Preston Maddock in February. But West said that fear is misplaced, because the industry's actual plans, "don't agree with current public thinking."
A powerful video on war criminal Ntaganda, who just gave himself up to the U.S.
Posted by Max Fisher on March 18, 2013 at 3:13 pm
In the years since Rwandan national and former Congolese General* Bosco Ntaganda was indicted by the International Criminal Court, accused of committing horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Democratic Republic of Congo’s civil war in 2002 and 2003, he has acted more or less with impunity. He’s been accused of running his little corner of the Congo as a mafia-style fiefdom, participating in smuggling and the conflict minerals trade.
It’s difficult to fully capture Ntaganda’s hard-earned reputation for brutality, his role in some of Central Africa’s darkest moments, the legacy of horror he leaves behind. But this six-minute video, produced by Human Rights Watch, provides a helpful understanding of who he is, why he matters and what made him such a uniquely frightening figure.
* – An earlier version of this post described Ntaganda as a “Rwandan general.” A number of readers, understandably, took this as implying that Ntaganda is a general in the Rwandan military. He is not; he is a Rwandan national who also served, presumably until he led a rebellion in April, as a general in the Congolese military. I regret causing any confusing.
Nek Muhammad, center, was a Pashtun militant who was killed in 2004, in the first C.I.A. drone strike in Pakistan. Kamran Wazir/Reuters
The C.I.A. has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. The New York Times
REMOTE Wana, in South Waziristan, where Pashtuns live independent of the Pakistani government’s authority and have given shelter to militants. John Moore/Getty Images
TARGET Mr. Muhammad, a Pashtun militant leader, reached a truce with the Pakistani military in April 2004. But the truce was a sham and two months later he was killed in a C.I.A. drone strike at Pakistan's behest. Kamran Wazir/Reuters
Tribesmen praying at Mr. Muhammad's grave days after his killing. Allah Noor Wazir/European Pressphoto Agency
SPY CHIEFS George J. Tenet, left, director of the C.I.A., and his deputy, John E. McLaughlin, are sworn in before the 9/11 panel in 2004. Alex Wong/Getty Images
"In Pakistan, things fall out of the sky all the time." PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, the Pakistani president whose government reached a deal with the C.I.A., allowing it to carry out secret drone strikes in Pakistan. T. Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency
By MARK MAZZETTI Published: April 6, 2013
Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed.
On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html ]’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.
Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound [ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/international/asia/19STAN.html ], severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.
That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.
The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.
Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases. But in recent months, calls for transparency from members of Congress and critics on both the right and left have put pressure on Mr. Obama and his new C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, to offer a fuller explanation of the goals and operation of the drone program, and of the agency’s role.
Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the C.I.A. and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of C.I.A. officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.
Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings.
Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the C.I.A. into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence.
As he puts it, “This is just not an intelligence mission.”
From Car Thief to Militant
By 2004, Mr. Muhammad had become the undisputed star of the tribal areas [ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/world/militant-s-defiance-puts-pakistan-s-resolve-in-doubt.html ], the fierce mountain lands populated by the Wazirs, Mehsuds and other Pashtun tribes who for decades had lived independent of the writ of the central government in Islamabad. A brash member of the Wazir tribe, Mr. Muhammad had raised an army to fight government troops and had forced the government into negotiations. He saw no cause for loyalty to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani military spy service that had given an earlier generation of Pashtuns support during the war against the Soviets.
Many Pakistanis in the tribal areas viewed with disdain the alliance that President Pervez Musharraf had forged with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They regarded the Pakistani military that had entered the tribal areas as no different from the Americans — who they believed had begun a war of aggression in Afghanistan [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html ], just as the Soviets had years earlier.
Born near Wana, the bustling market hub of South Waziristan, Mr. Muhammad spent his adolescent years as a petty car thief and shopkeeper in the city’s bazaar. He found his calling in 1993, around the age of 18, when he was recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and rose quickly through the group’s military hierarchy. He cut a striking figure on the battlefield with his long face and flowing jet black hair.
When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he seized an opportunity to host the Arab and Chechen fighters from Al Qaeda who crossed into Pakistan to escape the American bombing.
For Mr. Muhammad, it was partly a way to make money, but he also saw another use for the arriving fighters. With their help, over the next two years he launched a string of attacks on Pakistani military installations and on American firebases in Afghanistan.
C.I.A. officers in Islamabad urged Pakistani spies to lean on the Waziri tribesman to hand over the foreign fighters, but under Pashtun tribal customs that would be treachery. Reluctantly, Mr. Musharraf ordered his troops into the forbidding mountains to deliver rough justice to Mr. Muhammad and his fighters, hoping the operation might put a stop to the attacks on Pakistani soil, including two attempts on his life in December 2003.
But it was only the beginning. In March 2004, Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded Wana and its surrounding villages. Government troops shelled pickup trucks that were carrying civilians away from the fighting and destroyed the compounds of tribesmen suspected of harboring foreign fighters. The Pakistani commander declared the operation an unqualified success, but for Islamabad, it had not been worth the cost in casualties.
A cease-fire was negotiated in April during a hastily arranged meeting in South Waziristan, during which a senior Pakistani commander hung a garland of bright flowers around Mr. Muhammad’s neck. The two men sat together and sipped tea as photographers and television cameras recorded the event.
Both sides spoke of peace, but there was little doubt who was negotiating from strength. Mr. Muhammad would later brag that the government had agreed to meet inside a religious madrasa rather than in a public location where tribal meetings are traditionally held. “I did not go to them; they came to my place,” he said. “That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.”
The peace arrangement propelled Mr. Muhammad to new fame, and the truce was soon exposed as a sham. He resumed attacks against Pakistani troops, and Mr. Musharraf ordered his army back on the offensive in South Waziristan.
Pakistani officials had, for several years, balked at the idea of allowing armed C.I.A. Predators to roam their skies. They considered drone flights a violation of sovereignty, and worried that they would invite further criticism of Mr. Musharraf as being Washington’s lackey. But Mr. Muhammad’s rise to power forced them to reconsider.
The C.I.A. had been monitoring the rise of Mr. Muhammad, but officials considered him to be more Pakistan’s problem than America’s. In Washington, officials were watching with growing alarm the gathering of Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas, and George J. Tenet [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/george_j_tenet/index.html ], the C.I.A. director, authorized officers in the agency’s Islamabad station to push Pakistani officials to allow armed drones. Negotiations were handled primarily by the Islamabad station.
As the battles raged in South Waziristan, the station chief in Islamabad paid a visit to Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the ISI chief, and made an offer: If the C.I.A. killed Mr. Muhammad, would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas?
In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India.
The ISI and the C.I.A. agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the C.I.A.’s covert action authority — meaning that the United States would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent.
Mr. Musharraf did not think that it would be difficult to keep up the ruse. As he told one C.I.A. officer: “In Pakistan, things fall out of the sky all the time.”
A New Direction
As the negotiations were taking place, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, had just finished a searing report about the abuse of detainees [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/politics/23cia.html ] in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons. The report kicked out the foundation upon which the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program had rested. It was perhaps the single most important reason for the C.I.A.’s shift from capturing to killing terrorism suspects.
The greatest impact of Mr. Helgerson’s report was felt at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, or CTC, which was at the vanguard of the agency’s global antiterrorism operation. The center had focused on capturing Qaeda operatives; questioning them in C.I.A. jails or outsourcing interrogations to the spy services of Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and other nations; and then using the information to hunt more terrorism suspects.
Mr. Helgerson raised questions about whether C.I.A. officers might face criminal prosecution for the interrogations carried out in the secret prisons, and he suggested that interrogation methods like waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the exploiting of the phobias of prisoners — like confining them in a small box with live bugs — violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
“The agency faces potentially serious long-term political and legal challenges as a result of the CTC detention and interrogation program,” the report concluded, given the brutality of the interrogation techniques and the “inability of the U.S. government to decide what it will ultimately do with the terrorists detained by the agency.”
The report was the beginning of the end for the program. The prisons would stay open for several more years, and new detainees were occasionally picked up and taken to secret sites, but at Langley, senior C.I.A. officers began looking for an endgame to the prison program. One C.I.A. operative told Mr. Helgerson’s team that officers from the agency might one day wind up on a “wanted list” and be tried for war crimes in an international court.
The ground had shifted, and counterterrorism officials began to rethink the strategy for the secret war. Armed drones, and targeted killings in general, offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation. Targeted killings were cheered by Republicans and Democrats alike, and using drones flown by pilots who were stationed thousands of miles away made the whole strategy seem risk-free.
Before long the C.I.A. would go from being the long-term jailer of America’s enemies to a military organization that erased them.
Not long before, the agency had been deeply ambivalent about drone warfare.
The Predator had been considered a blunt and unsophisticated killing tool, and many at the C.I.A. were glad that the agency had gotten out of the assassination business long ago. Three years before Mr. Muhammad’s death, and one year before the C.I.A. carried out its first targeted killing outside a war zone — in Yemen in 2002 — a debate raged over the legality and morality of using drones to kill suspected terrorists.
A new generation of C.I.A. officers had ascended to leadership positions, having joined the agency after the 1975 Congressional committee led by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, which revealed extensive C.I.A. plots to kill foreign leaders, and President Gerald Ford’s subsequent ban on assassinations. The rise to power of this post-Church generation had a direct impact on the type of clandestine operations the C.I.A. chose to conduct.
The debate pitted a group of senior officers at the Counterterrorism Center against James L. Pavitt, the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, and others who worried about the repercussions of the agency’s getting back into assassinations. Mr. Tenet told the 9/11 commission that he was not sure that a spy agency should be flying armed drones.
John E. McLaughlin, then the C.I.A.’s deputy director, who the 9/11 commission reported had raised concerns about the C.I.A.’s being in charge of the Predator, said: “You can’t underestimate the cultural change that comes with gaining lethal authority.
“When people say to me, ‘It’s not a big deal,’ ” he said, “I say to them, ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’
“It is a big deal. You start thinking about things differently,” he added. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, these concerns about the use of the C.I.A. to kill were quickly swept side.
The Account at the Time
After Mr. Muhammad was killed, his dirt grave in South Waziristan became a site of pilgrimage. A Pakistani journalist, Zahid Hussain, visited it days after the drone strike and saw a makeshift sign displayed on the grave: “He lived and died like a true Pashtun.”
Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s top military spokesman, told reporters at the time that “Al Qaeda facilitator” Nek Muhammad and four other “militants” had been killed in a rocket attack by Pakistani troops.
Any suggestion that Mr. Muhammad was killed by the Americans, or with American assistance, he said, was “absolutely absurd.”
A pre-emptive ban is needed to halt the production of weapons capable of attacking targets without any human intervention, a new campaign has urged.
Jody Williams, from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, told the BBC such weapons, which do not yet exist, would be regarded as "repulsive".
But some scientists argue existing laws are sufficient to regulate their use, should they become a reality.
The UK government has said it has no plans to develop such technology.
Weapons with a degree of autonomy, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - commonly known as drones - are already widely used on the battlefield.
“ The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems” Jody Williams Campaigner
Such weapons are described as "human-in-the-loop" systems because they can only select targets and deliver lethal force with a human command.
But organisers of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots - a global effort being launched on Tuesday - say advances in robotic technology mean it is only a matter of time before fully autonomous "human-out-of-the-loop" systems - capable of firing on their own - are developed.
They argue that giving machines the power over who lives and dies in war would be an unacceptable application of technology, and would pose a fundamental challenge to international human rights and humanitarian laws.
Estimates vary over how long it could be before such weapons are available, but the group says a new treaty is needed to pre-emptively outlaw their development, production and use.
[ Embedded video 4:58 ] - Is a ban needed to prevent robots that can decide when to kill?
'Repulsive'
Campaign leader Ms Williams, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work in bringing about a ban on anti-personnel landmines, told BBC News: "As people learn about our campaign, they will flock to it.
"The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems. People don't want killer robots out there.
"Normal human beings find it repulsive."
But some experts have questioned the need for a ban, arguing instead for an open debate about the legal and ethical implications of such weapons.
“ The MoD currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention” Lord Astor Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence
Roboticist Professor Ronald Arkin, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, told the BBC: "The most important thing from my point of view is that we do not rush these systems into the battlefield.
"A moratorium as opposed to ban - where we say, 'we're not going to do this until we can do it right' - makes far more sense to me than simply crying out, 'ban the killer robots'.
"Why should we do that now?"
Recent statements by UK and US governments suggest a reluctance to take human beings fully "out-of-the-loop" in warfare.
In March, Lord Astor of Hever - the UK's parliamentary under secretary of state for defence - said the Ministry of Defence "currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention".
And a directive issued by the US Department of Defense in November 2012 stated that all weapons with a degree of autonomy "shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force".
US Navy launches first X-47B drone from aircraft carrier
As a drone the size of a fighter jet takes off from the deck of an American aircraft carrier for the first time, defence analyst James Lewis says unmanned crafts are "the future of warfare".
[original embed found on YT]
9:26AM BST 15 May 2013
Tuesday's test flight in the Atlantic could eventually pave the way for the US to launch unmanned aircraft from almost anywhere in the world.
The X-47B is the first drone designed to take off and land on a carrier, meaning the US military would not need permission from other countries to use their bases.
The move to expand the capabilities of the nation's drones comes amid growing criticism of America's use of Predators and Reapers to gather intelligence and carry out lethal missile attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.
"The big public display is to build support for this program, to make sure that we follow through on it and that we're willing to spend the money," said defence analyst James Lewis, who is senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"If Congress pulls the plug on this it will set the Navy back a decade." Related Articles
While the X-47B isn't intended for operational use, it will help Navy officials develop future carrier-based drones.
The next critical test for the tailless plane will come this summer, when it attempts to land on a moving aircraft carrier, one of the most difficult tasks for pilots.
.. to "Pentagon’s Mad Scientists Want to Launch Killer Drones From Small Warships .. near bottom of yours .. bit ..
It’s currently experimenting with a 62.1-foot span, batwing-shaped prototype, called the X-47B [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/navy-killer-drone/], which the Navy expects to launch the X-47B off a carrier deck at sea for the first time by May."
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U.S. military unveil latest weapon ... a ray beam that makes the enemy feel 'quite hot'
* The nonlethal weapon, which can be mounted on a military vehicle, is primarily designed for crowd control * Weapon has been tested on more than 11,000 people, and in just two of those cases, it caused second-degree burns
By Jill Reilly
PUBLISHED: 20:35 GMT, 11 March 2012 | UPDATED: 18:23 GMT, 12 March 2012
The US military have unveiled their infamous non-lethal weapon - an electromagnetic beam of fierce heat.
When the Active Denial System (ADS) is activated, it beams a high-frequency electromagnetic ray beam at a target up to one thousand metres (0.6 miles) away.
Mounted on a military vehicle for crowd control, the waves create a heat so uncomfortable the natural response is to flee.
Turn up the heat: Two versions of US Marine Corps trucks are seen carrying the Active Denial System - the non-lethal weapon uses directed energy and projects a beam of man-sized millimeter waves
[...]
Statistics: When the weapon was tested on more than 11,000 people, it only caused second-degree burns on two people
Robert Seldon Lady, Ex-CIA Station Chief, Arrested In Panama
By FRANCES D'EMILIO 07/18/13 03:27 PM ET EDT AP
[hidden inside: This image, cited by the Washington Post as a surveillance photo of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (also known as Abu Omar), was found on a disk in the home of the head CIA official in Milan, believed to be Robert Seldon Lady. (Corriere della Sera/Wikipedia)]
ROME -- A former CIA base chief in Italy who was convicted in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a street in Milan has been detained in Panama, the Italian justice ministry said Thursday.
However, Panamanian Security Minister Jose Raul Molino told The Associated Press in Panama City that he was unaware of Robert Seldon Lady's detention, and the press office of the National Police – which works with Interpol, the international police agency – said it had no information about the case.
The CIA said it had no immediate comment.
Lady, the former Milan CIA official, was sentenced by an Italian appeals court in Milan earlier this year in the extraordinary rendition case to nine years in prison after being tried in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping of the Muslim cleric.
The trials of Lady, 59, now retired from the CIA, and two other Americans in the case brought the first convictions anywhere in the world against agents involved in the agency's extraordinary rendition program, a practice alleged to have led to torture.
The ministry said it didn't immediately have details on when or where in Panama the detention of Lady, who was born in Honduras, took place. Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, who reportedly signed the request for Lady's detention, was away on a visit to Lithuania.
Italy and Panama have no extradition treaty, Italian diplomats said, so being detained in Panama wouldn't necessarily result in Lady's return to Italy, which he left a few years after the abduction, early into the Italian investigation.
The terror suspect, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was abducted in February 2003, transferred to U.S. military bases, first in Italy, then in Germany, before being flown to Egypt.
The cleric alleged he was tortured in Egypt. He was later released.
The previous Italian government had said that extradition could only be sought for Lady, since it can only be requested for people who have been sentenced to more than four years in prison.
A 2006 amnesty in Italy shaves three years off all sentences meted out by Italian courts, meaning if Lady is brought back to Italy, he would face six years in prison.
The lead Italian prosecutor on the case, Armando Spataro, said Interpol had issued a request for Lady's arrest, reflecting Italy's determination to have him extradited. ___
AP correspondents Juan Zamorano in Panama City and Adam Goldman in Washington contributed to this report.
21 members of Tucson Air Guard unit indicted on fraud charges
Capitol Media Services file photo by Howard Fischer, 2013
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne
3 hours ago • By Darren DaRonco Arizona Daily Star
A colonel and 20 other members of an Arizona Air National Guard unit based in Tucson have been indicted on charges they defrauded the government of $1.4 million intended for deployed military members.
Attorney General Tom Horne announced that the Guard members — current or former members of the 214th Reconnaissance Group — will face charges stemming from an 18-month investigation that concluded eight officers and 13 enlisted personnel falsified records.
The 214th operates Predator drones in Iraq and Afghanistan from Tucson.
The only defendant identified so far is the former commander of the 214th, who is alleged to have overseen the fraud, Horne said.
Horne said Col. Gregg Davies provided assistance by using his position “to circumvent” the measures intended to prevent unauthorized temporary duty entitlements when military members are neither deployed nor away for training from their home.
Davies was fired in November 2009 for his alleged involvement in the forged documents.
The rank and names of the others indicted won’t be released until their arraignment in Pima County Superior Court on Friday. None of the accused have been arrested.
Brig. Gen. Michael McGuire, director of the Arizona Department of Emergency Affairs, said he could not provide specifics because there is an ongoing investigation.
He did confirm eight of those indicted are currently with the Arizona Air National Guard. He said he doesn’t know the status of the others.
The indictments come four years after an Air Force audit revealed the guardsmen provided phony addresses to receive additional benefits.
Many of those accused are alleged to have received more than $100,000 by claiming they lived outside the Tucson area while on federal active-duty status at various times between November 2007 and September 2010, officials said.
“Some of these men and women received benefits in excess of four and five-times their salaries in temporary duty entitlements,” Horne said in a news release. “Conversely, our brave men and women overseas were making pennies on the dollar compared to what this group was receiving while still going home to their families each night.”
An attorney representing Davies said the colonel has served his country with dignity for more than 31 years, and Davies believes he will be exonerated.
“In light of his history of distinguished service, this indictment is both disappointing and bewildering,” said Lee Stein, the attorney representing Davies.
“We have not had an opportunity to review the indictment yet, so we are unable to comment on the substance, but Col. Davies believes in this country and has confidence that justice will prevail,” Stein said.
In addition to the Attorney General’s Office, the FBI, Air Force, Arizona National Guard and Air National Guard participated in the investigation.
“I welcome the efforts of these agencies to provide an accurate view of the facts of the circumstances that has led to these indictments,” McGuire said. “We fully support the legal process.”
Horne said his office got involved in the probe after the FBI asked him to intervene when the case only involved two guardsmen, and the federal prosecutor’s office declined to pursue charges.
Assistant Attorney General Mike Jette said the state investigation uncovered a much larger problem.
“It began with two suspects who were involved with some … shenanigans,” Jette said. “When the investigation came to our office, I asked the (FBI) agent to dig further into it and interview some people. All of a sudden it ballooned into a 21-defendant indictment.”
Jette would not say if more guardsmen could be facing charges.
The guardsmen face charges ranging from conspiracy and conducting an illegal enterprise to money laundering and fraud, Jette said.
The charges carry sentences of up to 12½ years in prison.
Contact reporter Darren DaRonco at 573-4243 or daronco@azstarnet.com. Follow on twitter @DarrenDaRonco
The 214th Reconnaissance Group (214 RG) is a unit of the Arizona Air National Guard 162d Fighter Wing, stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona. If activated to federal service, the Group is gained by the United States Air Force Air Combat Command.
[...]
Fraud scandal
A 2009 investigation found that two dozen group members had fraudulently collected $1.1 million in living expenses from the government over several years. In response, Colonel Gregg Davies was removed from command of the group on 23 November 2009 by Arizona Air National Guard commander Brigadier General Michael Colangelo. A state inspector general investigation later concluded that Davies' relief constituted "retaliation", but declined to reinstate him into the Guard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/214th_Reconnaissance_Group#Fraud_scandal
Court Releases Large Parts of Memo Approving Killing of American in Yemen
Anwar al-Awlaki in 2010. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Targeting Anwar al-Awlaki Was Legal, Justice Department Said
By CHARLIE SAVAGE JUNE 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — Lifting a veil of official secrecy from President Obama’s decision to authorize the killing of an American citizen without a trial, a federal appeals court on Monday publicly released large portions of a Justice Department memo [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/23/us/23awlaki-memo.html (the complete appeals court ruling, scribd-style, including the complete as-now redacted memo with newly un-redacted portions highlighted)] that deemed it lawful to target Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric accused of becoming a terrorist.
The Obama administration completed the memo in July 2010, more than a year before the September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Mr. Awlaki along with another American near him, Samir Khan, who officials have said was not specifically targeted. The memo was released in response to lawsuits filed by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr. Obama’s decision to authorize the military and the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill Mr. Awlaki was an extraordinary step that created an important precedent for executive power, civil liberties and the rule of law.
Intelligence officials had concluded that Mr. Awlaki was an operational terrorist leader who had gone overseas, become part of Al Qaeda or an associated force, and was “engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks” on Americans. His capture was not feasible, the memo said. Working from that premise, David Barron, then the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that it would be lawful for the government to kill Mr. Awlaki, notwithstanding federal statutes against murdering Americans overseas and protections in the Constitution against unreasonable seizures and depriving someone of life without due process of law.
“We do not believe al-Awlaki’s citizenship provides a basis for concluding that he is immune from a use of force abroad” as otherwise congressionally authorized to use against Al Qaeda, Mr. Barron wrote, addressing the memo to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
Mr. Barron, who signed the memo, was assisted by Martin Lederman, another attorney in the office. Mr. Lederman has since returned to teaching law at Georgetown University, and Mr. Barron was confirmed last month to a federal appeals court in Boston.
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, who had opposed Mr. Barron’s confirmation but supported [ http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=4262 ] it after the administration promised to release the document, called the release “a victory for government transparency.” He said he would continue to press, however, for additional disclosures to related questions, like “how much evidence the government requires in order to make an American a legitimate target.”
An 11-page section at the front of the memo was redacted. It compiled the evidence to support the intelligence community’s assertion that Mr. Awlaki was not merely a propagandist but an operational terrorist.
But on Monday the appeals court issued a new public version of a ruling it made in April that the memo must be made public, and it included passages that had been redacted. Among those passages were instructions from the court to make related Office of Legal Counsel memos available to a Federal District Court judge for review and possible release.
The Justice Department’s memo from July 2010 makes reference to an earlier memo, also written by Mr. Barron, that focused largely on constitutional issues in targeting Mr. Awlaki. The Times has reported [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/middleeast/anwar-al-awlaki-a-us-citizen-in-americas-cross-hairs.html (first item in the post to which this is a reply)] that after the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, to which Mr. Awlaki was linked, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman swiftly wrote a short memo approving the targeting of Mr. Awlaki if he was located.
The longer memo argues that the killing of a wartime enemy by the military would qualify for a “public authority” exception to the foreign murder statute. A section about the possibility that the C.I.A., a civilian agency, might carry out the killing appears to invoke similar reasoning but is heavily redacted; one portion also argues that it would not be a war crime for the agency to carry out the killing.
Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., called the release of the memo “an overdue but nonetheless crucial step toward transparency.” He added: “There are few questions more important than the question of when the government has the authority to kill its own citizens. This memo’s release will allow the public to better understand the scope and implications of the authority the government is claiming.”
“The substantial overlap in the legal analyses in the two documents fully establishes that the government may no longer validly claim that the legal analysis in the memorandum is a secret,” Judge Jon O. Newman wrote, in another previously redacted passage of the ruling.
The memo also addresses arguments [ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1332096 ] by some scholars of international law that for legal purposes there is no armed conflict in Yemen. It argues that wartime legal authority to target enemies extends to Yemen given the circumstances of Al Qaeda activities there.
Mr. Barron cited and expressed disagreement with the work of Mary Ellen O’Connell, a University of Notre Dame law professor who has argued that Yemen was not an armed conflict zone. On Monday, Ms. O’Connell criticized the brevity with which Mr. Barron addressed her argument as “astonishing” given the issue’s importance as a “linchpin” of his legal rationale.
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