US missionaries charged with kidnap

Ten Americans accused of trying to take 33 children out of Haiti illegally in the aftermath of last month's earthquake, have been charged with child kidnapping and criminal association.

Jean Ferge Joseph, a Haitian deputy prosecutor, announced the charges on Thursday and told the five men and five women that their case was being sent to an investigative judge.

"That judge can free you but he can also continue to hold you for further proceedings," he told them at a hearing.

The Americans, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based church, appeared stunned and some shook their heads.

Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull, reporting from the capital Port-au-Prince, said the investigative judge would review the evidence himself and make a decision as to whether the 10 go to trial or be set free.

The judge could take three months to decide, our correspondent said, and the Americans could face sentences of up to 15 years in prison.

The 10 Americans were arrested last week on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic when they tried to cross with the busload of children they said were orphaned by the devastating January 12 quake.

Haitian authorities said the group lacked the authorisation needed to take the children out of Haiti.

After the Americans' arrest, evidence emerged that most of the children intercepted with them were not orphans.

Haitian police said some parents admitted to handing over their children to the church group in the belief the children would get an education and a better life.

'Let us help'

All 10 Americans, who ranged in age from 18 to 55, acknowledged under questioning from the prosecutor on Thursday that they had apparently committed a crime by seeking to take the children across the border without proper documents.
But they said they were unaware of that until after their arrest.

"We didn't know what we were doing was illegal. We did not have any intention to violate the law. But now we understand it's a crime," said Paul Robert Thompson, a pastor who led the group in prayer during a break in the session.

Laura Silsby, the group's spokeswoman, told the hearing: "We simply wanted to help the children. We petition the court not only for our freedom but also for our ability to continue to help."

She said her group was taking the children to a 45-room hotel it was converting to an orphanage in Cabarete in the Dominican Republic.

"We were going to house them there," she said of the beach resort. "They could stay there, go to school and live well and the parents could come and visit them."

The Americans, who have been in jail since last Friday, did not speak to a mob of reporters as they were taken back to police headquarters to await the judge's decision.

Sensitive case

The case could be diplomatically sensitive at a time when the US is leading a huge relief effort to help hundreds of thousands of Haitian quake victims, and as US aid groups pour millions of dollars of donations into Haiti.

The US state department has been at pains to avoid any impression it might be interfering in the matter.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, had on Wednesday said for the first time that Washington was "engaged in a discussion with the Haitian government about the appropriate disposition of their cases".

But PJ Crowley, a spokesman for the state department, on Thursday sought to play down Clinton's comments, saying: "I wouldn't read too much into that.

"I would put this in the context of asking for clarifications about ... what [Haitian judicial officials'] procedure would be … timeline, capacity to be able to pursue this case."

Clinton had also said on Wednesday that "it was unfortunate that, whatever the motivation, this group of Americans took matters into their own hands".

Haiti's overwhelmed government has tightened adoption procedures since the quake, saying it feared traffickers could try to take advantage of the disaster by spiriting away vulnerable children.

The authorisation of Jean-Max Bellerive, the prime minister, is now required for any child to be taken out of the country for adoption.

And Bellerive said the Americans' case was stealing attention from the plight of Haitians.

"I believe it's a distraction for the Haitian people because they are talking more now about 10 people than they are about one million people suffering in the streets," he said.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Muslim Gandhi

KABUL — Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was so close to India's peace icon Mahatma Gandhi as both shared vision and struggle, but unlike his friend, the Pashtun champion of non-violent struggle against the British rule has been almost forgotten by his people.

"He was a 6'5 giant of the human spirit, that is what attracted me to him," Canadian filmmaker Teri McLuhan told Reuters on Wednesday, February 3.

She recently tried to dust off the history of the man, nicknamed "Frontier Gandhi", and his role in India's independence.

She dedicated over 20 years to that task resulting in a prize-winning movie about the pacifist Muslim icon.

Born to relative privilege in the Pashtun tribal heartland that straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Khan turned down a career in the British army.

He his own force of thousands of troops, called the Khudai Khidmatgars, or servants of God, who were sworn to non-violence.

They were dressed in red to show they were willing to shed their own blood but not that of others.

Khan's supporters faced beatings, imprisonment and even castration from the British, but remained loyal to Khan and true to their oaths -- to serve God by serving humanity without violence.

In the late 1920's he formed an alliance with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress that lasted till the 1947 partition when India and Pakistan became independent states.

Frontier Gandhi

Khan came from a tribal tradition that prized honor and expected men to defend it at any cost, but he managed to redefine the meaning of bravery.

"For a man born into a warrior culture, to believe he could take on an Empire just by the strength of his beliefs...and to actually make his people believe the moment you become violent you become a stooge; boy, was that difficult," says M.J. Akbar, editor-in-chief of Indian newspaper The Asian Age.

The split of India and Pakistan marked the beginning of the decline of Khan's political influence, though not his popularity.

He opposed Pakistan independence, believing people of different faiths should live together.

His non-violent army fanned out to protect non-Muslims during chaos of communal violence over partition.

But Pakistan's eventual leaders mistrusted him because of his stance which cost him a lot.

He spent around one out of every three days of his life in jail, and much of that time was done not under the British but the Pakistani government.

He was also kept out of the media in his new homeland and increasingly forgotten.

In 1987 he became the first person not holding the citizenship of India to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award.

Khan spent much of his time in Afghanistan, pushing the importance of education and urging a country traumatized by decades of war to believe in non-violence.

He was buried in the Afghan city of Jalalabad when he died in 1988.

McLuhan hopes her movie, which won the Best Documentary award in the Middle East International Film Festival last year, would help break much of stereotypes about Islam and Muslims.

"The growing stereotype of Islam did not help my project," McLuhan said.

"This story shatters that stereotype which makes some people very uncomfortable," she added.

"Definitely 9/11 was a facilitator as it thrust this part of the world into many more people's consciousness, and made the message of non-violence more urgent."

US Mulls “Targeted Killing” of Americans

CAIRO – Following the failed Christmas terror plot on a US plane, the Obama administration is mulling a “targeted killing” policy of Americans involved in terror schemes overseas, reported the Washington Post on Thursday, February 4.

"We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee late Wednesday.

“If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that."

The Post has earlier reported that President Barack Obama had embraced predecessor George W. Bush's policy of authorizing the killing of Americans involved in terror plots overseas.

It said the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command have three Americans on their lists of specific people targeted for killing or capture.

The move follows reports hinting that a Yemen-based American imam, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was involved in the botched plot by a young Nigerian to blow up a US-bound plane on Christmas Eve.

Aulaqi was also reportedly said to have links to an Army major who shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood military base in November.

US counter-terror officials have warned that Americans could be recruited by Qaeda militants in Yemen to launch attacks against the US.

"We don't know how many additional Americans he's gotten to," a senior counter-terror official told The Daily News, referring to Aulaqi.

"There was nothing specific any of them were alluding to. But we certainly have indications that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has a variety of plans to strike the United States."

Muting Critics

The American spy chief denied that the new strategy aims to silence critics of Washington.

"We don't target people for free speech,” Blair said, in response to a question by the Committee’s top Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra about the standards of judging whether the suspect has "crossed the line" from denouncing US policy into recruiting terrorists or coordinating attacks on US targets.

“We target them for taking action that threatens Americans.”

Under the Bush administration, critics of the US policies were barred from entering the country, chiefly Swiss-based Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan.

The Republican lawmaker, however, did not buy the “targeted killing” policy would go in the right way, citing a 2001 incident in which Peru's air force shot down a plane carrying US missionaries, killing a woman and her seven-month-old daughter, after the aircraft was misidentified as a drug-smuggler.

"We were careless and we were reckless,” Blair replied.

“And I want to make sure that this committee does everything that it can and within its power that it does not allow the community to be reckless and careless again.

"While I'm in charge, we will not be careless and reckless," he pledged.

Police Monitor Radicals on UK Campus

LONDON – British police have deployed Special Branch officers in universities to monitor the radicalization of students, stirring a storm of controversy.

"We have identified universities for whom the risk is greater and they have to work closely with Special Branch," Higher Education Minister David Lammy told the BBC on Thursday, February 4.

"And so I think it is a partnership between leadership at universities and the police."

Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British police forces.

A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence and conducts investigations to protect the State from perceived threats of subversion, particularly terrorism, and other extremist activity.

"We do not recognize a caricature of a significant risk across Britain," Lammy indicated.

"But we do recognize that threat levels have been raised and that this is an extremely serious issue and that there are particular institutions - and those institutions are aware of this because we have brought it to their attention - where the risk is greater," he maintained.

"Those institutions are working very closely with the police and are working closely with Special Branch and those institutions are present on campus."

Some linked the move to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit, US, last December.

He was a student at the University College London (UCL), where he read mechanical engineering between September 2005 and June 2008.

But British concerns about campus extremism go years earlier.

In 2006, the government issued guidelines for university staff on how to combat the threat of violent extremists on campuses.

Overblown

The decision to send Special Branch officers to universities to monitor radicalization drew mixed reactions.

Prof Malcolm Grant, Provost of UCL, said universities had a responsibility to work closely with security services but "not as policemen".

"I would not ever want anybody to believe that we can be the bulwark against terrorism," he noted.

"I'm deeply concerned that there's an assumption that simply by installing simple measures of preventing, shall we say, radical speakers from coming onto campus, we're going to make a ha'p'orth of difference to this issue.

"Now let's be real about this. The influences on young minds are many and various."

Qasim Rafiq, of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis), criticized the new measures.

"There is no evidence or no substantial evidence to suggest there is a radicalization of extremism taking place on campus, as people have suggested."

He warned that students were more likely to be radicalized by watching the bombs fall on Iraq.

A recent study by a team of Cambridge researchers downplayed fears that British campuses were becoming extremism hotbeds.

The study, based on detailed interviews with students in London, Cambridge and Bradford, concluded that fears of campus extremism were very much "exaggerated" and Muslim students are more likely to join Amnesty International than Al-Qaeda.