Firm founded by ex-Blackwater boss to operate in China’s Xinjiang province

February 5, 2019 1 Comment

Erik PrinceA security firm founded by Erik Prince, the former boss of the private military company Blackwater, has announced a deal with the Chinese state to operate a training facility in China’s largely Muslim Xinjiang province. In the months following the United States invasion of Iraq, Blackwater was hired by the Department of State to provide diplomatic security at several locations throughout the Middle Eastern country. By 2010, when the company was abruptly sold to a group of private investors, its tactics in Iraq had prompted international controversy. Prince went on to help found Frontier Services Group (FSG), another private security firm registered in Hong Kong. The company provides security training to personnel working for Chinese companies. Its specialization is training personnel of Chinese firms based abroad, mainly in regions of Africa.

The announcement of the new training center was posted on the FSG’s Chinese-language website. It said that one of FSG’s subsidiaries had struck an agreement to build and operate a “training center” at the Kashgar Caohu industrial park in the city of Kashgar, one of China’s westernmost cities, situated near the country’s border with Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. The city of 1 million people is located in the province of Xinjiang. In recent months, Beijing has been heavily criticized by several Western countries for allegedly carrying out mass detentions of Uighur Muslims, which make up about half of Xinjiang’s population. Uighurs are ethnically related to the peoples of Central Asia and speak a Turkic dialect. Some see the Chinese state as an occupier and advocate secession, often combined with calls to create an Islamic caliphate. China denies the allegations of mass detentions and claims that Uighurs are voluntarily enrolled in “educational and training facilities”, where they are de-radicalized through political and cultural instruction. Up to a million Uighurs are believed to have been enrolled in these facilities in the past year.

It is worth noting that the initial announcement of the Kashgar Caohu training center agreement between FSG and its Chinese client was eventually deleted from the company’s website. Late last week, an FSG spokesperson told several news agencies, including Reuters, that Prince was not involved in what was described in a statement as a “preliminary agreement” for a training center in Xinjiang. The spokesperson added that Prince probably had “no involvement whatsoever” in the agreement.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 5 February 2019 | Permalink

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Pakistan dismantled ‘major international spy network’, say media reports [updated]

February 1, 2019 Leave a comment

Pakistan Federal Investigation AgencyMedia reports in Pakistan claimed yesterday that “an international spying network” had been dismantled in the country following the arrests of at least five intelligence officials who were working for foreign interests. According to The News International, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper, the arrests were carried out earlier this week by the Federal Investigation Agency, the country’s primary counterintelligence agency. Those arrested were allegedly members of Pakistan’s intelligence and security forces, it said. They reportedly include a Pakistani official with diplomatic credentials who was serving in a Pakistani embassy “in a European capital”. [Update: by 1700 EST on Friday, the article on The News International website had been taken down; but an English-language summary of the article can still be found on this website].

The report did not specify the foreign intelligence agency for which the Pakistani officials were allegedly working. But it said that it belonged to one of “the world’s most powerful countries”. It added that the network had been “completely dismantled” following a counterintelligence operation that an unnamed source described to the paper as “remarkable”. As a result, the adversary spy network in Pakistan had been “crippled […] completely”, added The News International.

The conservative-leaning paper, which supports Pakistan’s new center-right Prime Minister Imran Khan, hinted that the alleged spy network may have been working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It said that the agency that was involved in running the spy ring had been allowed by the government of Pakistan to “roam free” inside Pakistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Its case officers had been allowed to recruit agents in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a region in the northwest of the country that is seen as a Taliban stronghold. The paper also protested against prior arrangements that permitted the foreign agency’s case officers to enter and leave Pakistan “with no scrutiny of their luggage”. It added that the government of Prime Minister Khan decided to move against this and other spy networks run by the foreign intelligence agency after it determined that these networks were “working for the interests of that agency in Pakistan and not for Pakistan’s national interests”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 01 February 2019 | Permalink

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Morton Sobell, convicted of conspiracy in the Rosenberg espionage case, dies at 101

January 31, 2019 1 Comment

Morton SobellMorton Sobell, an American radar engineer who in 1951 was convicted of conspiracy alongside Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in one of the Cold War’s most prominent espionage cases, has died at 101 years old. His death was announced yesterday by his son, Mark, who also said that his father died on December 26 last year at a nursing home, but that the family had not alerted the media.

Sobell was born in New York’s Manhattan Island in 1917 and worked on radar tracking systems for defense contractors. During college, he and several of his friends, including fellow-engineer Julius Rosenberg, joined the United States Communist Party, partly in reaction to the Great Depression. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation began to arrest members of what the United States government claimed was a Soviet atomic spy ring led by Rosenberg, Sobell escaped with his family to Mexico, where he used a fake identity to evade the authorities. But he was dramatically abducted by a paramilitary force and surrendered to the FBI.

He was then tried alongside Rosenberg and his wife Ethel for conspiracy to commit acts of espionage. The Rosenbergs refused to cooperate with the FBI and were sentenced to death. Both were executed in 1953 and remain to this day the only American citizens to have been executed for espionage after the Civil War. Sobel was found guilty of the lesser charge of conspiracy and no evidence was presented in court that connected him to atomic espionage. He was therefore sentenced to 30 years in prison and served 18 of those, following a successful public-relations campaign organized by his wife, Hellen. He was released from prison in 1969 and continued to insist that he had never been a spy and had been wrongly convicted of conspiracy.

But in 2008, at the age of 91, Sobell spoke to The New York Times and publicly admitted for the first time that he had been a spy for the Soviet Union. He said that he had worked systematically to provide Moscow with information on weapons systems and other classified technologies. However, he had “never thought of it” as spying, he said. He also told The Times that he had developed a favorable impression of Soviet communism during the Great Depression, when he and many others saw the Soviet economic system as an antidote to crisis-ridden capitalism. “Now I know it was an illusion”, he told the paper.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 31 January 2019 | Permalink

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Hundreds of MI5 officers prepare for Brexit violence in Northern Ireland

January 29, 2019 1 Comment

New IRAThe British Security Service (MI5) has over 700 officers —more than 20 percent of its entire force— stationed in Northern Ireland, due to fears that the Brexit process might reignite the centuries-long sectarian conflict there. In 1922, nationalist rebels managed to dislodge Ireland from the British Empire. But six counties in Ireland’s north remained under British dominion, and today form the British territory of Northern Ireland. Irish nationalists have for decades engaged in an unsuccessful campaign —at times peaceful and at times violent— to unite these counties with the Republic of Ireland. Following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, nationalist and British loyalist groups in Northern Ireland terminated their armed operations and entered the political arena, effectively sharing power in the British territory. The integration of Ireland and Britain into the European Union helped in that process by effectively bringing to an end border checks between the two countries. Thus, pro-British loyalists continued to live under British rule, while nationalists have been able to cross from Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic and back without restrictions, as if the two states were effectively unified.

But this open-border regime is about to change once Britain leaves the European Union in March. Many fear that the reinstated border will remind nationalist communities in the North that the island of Ireland remains partitioned and will thus reignite secessionist sentiments. A few days ago, the London-based newspaper The Daily Mail cited an unnamed “counterterrorism source” who said that MI5, Britain’s primary counterterrorism agency, had stationed a fifth of its force in Northern Ireland. The agency is allegedly monitoring a number of dissident republican groups —a term used to describe armed groups of Irish nationalists who continue to reject the nationalist community’s majority view to endorse the Good Friday Agreement back in 1998. One such group —which is commonly seen as the most formidable in existence today— is the self-described New Irish Republican Army. The New IRA was formed in 2012 when dissident republican cells joined another dissident nationalist group, known as the Real IRA. The new formation is particularly strong in Northern Ireland’s extreme northwest, which includes urban centers like Derry. British security officials believe that the New IRA consists of about 40 hardcore members who are committed to an armed campaign against British rule in the North.

Nearly 50 New IRA militants are currently serving sentences in the British and Irish prison systems, while several raids of New IRA members’ residences and other properties have unearthed weaponry —including fully automatic weapons— and explosives. But the group managed to detonate a car bomb in Derry on January 19 of this year. The bomb employed gas canisters and went off nearly 30 minutes after an unidentified man called a charity shop located nearby and issued a bomb warning. Police officers rushed to the scene and were there when the bomb exploded. There were no injuries, according to reports in local media.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 29 January 2019 | Permalink

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South African probe into murder of Rwandan ex-spy chief unearths new evidence

January 25, 2019 Leave a comment

Patrick KaregeyaA public inquest into the 2014 killing of a Rwandan dissident and former spy chief, who had been given political asylum in South Africa, has unearthed evidence showing that South African authorities believed the killers had close links to the government of Rwanda. It also appears that the South Africans chose not to prosecute the killers in order to protect their diplomatic ties with the Rwandan government. Patrick Karegeya was a leading member of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the armed wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was founded in 1987 in Uganda by Rwandan Tutsi refugees. In 1994, the RPA, led by Paul Kagame, took control of Rwanda, thus putting an end to the genocide of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Soon afterwards Karegeya was named Director General of External Intelligence in the RPA, which was renamed to Rwandan Defense Forces.

In 2004 however, after falling out with Kagame, who had become President of Rwanda in 2000, Karegeya was arrested, stripped of his rank of colonel, and served 18 months in prison for “insubordination and desertion”. He fled the country in 2007 and received political asylum in South Africa. In 2011, the Rwandan government issued an international arrest warrant for Karegeya, but South Africa refused to extradite him. His body was discovered on December 31, 2014, in a room at the Michelangelo Towers Hotel in Sandton, an affluent suburb of Johannesburg. He was 53.

Earlier this month, in response to pressures from Karegeya’s family and human rights groups, the government of South Africa began a formal inquest into the murder, in anticipation of launching a possible court case. Earlier this week, the magistrate in charge of the inquest, Mashiane Mathopa, made public a previously secret letter from the South African prosecutor’s office about Karegeya’s murder. In the letter, dated June 5, 2018, explains the prosecutor’s decision to “decline at this stage” to prosecute the murder. The decision rests on two arguments. The first argument is that the four men who were believed to have killed Karegeya had already “left South Africa and returned to Rwanda”. The second argument is that there were “close links […] between the suspects and the current Rwandan government”.

On Monday, Mathopa suggested that the South African authorities may have decided not to investigate Karegeya’s murder in order to “help repair” South Africa’s bilateral relations with Rwanda. He then halted the inquest and gave police officials two weeks to “explain their failure to prosecute” Karegeya’s alleged murderers. He also requested detailed information about the “steps, if any, [that] have been taken to arrest the four suspects […], since their whereabouts and their identity are known” to the authorities. Supporters of the inquest said earlier this week that Mathopa could potentially order a trial of the case, which might lead to a formal request made by South Africa for Rwanda to extradite the four men implicated in the case.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 25 January 2019 | Permalink

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CIA has maintained secret communication with North Korea for 10 years

January 22, 2019 4 Comments

Mike Pompeo North KoreaWith presidential approval, the United States Central Intelligence Agency has maintained a secret channel of communication with North Korea since at least 2009, according to The Wall Street Journal. Many were surprised in 2018, when the then CIA director Mike Pompeo made a sudden visit to Pyongyang to speak with senior North Korean officials. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the CIA channel with the North Koreans had been there since at least 2009 and Pompeo simply “re-energized it” after being instructed to do so by the White House.

The United States and North Korea have never had official diplomatic relations, nor have they ever maintained embassies at each other’s capitals. In rare instances, the North Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York has been utilized to pass messages from the White House to the communist country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No other systematic diplomatic activity between the two sides has ever been reported.

But an article published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday claims that an intelligence channel between the CIA and unspecified North Korean intelligence officials has been active —with some periods of dormancy— for at least a decade. The previously unreported channel has led to a number of public meetings, such as the 2014 visit to Pyongyang by James Clapper, the then US Director of National Intelligence, as well as an earlier visit to the North Korean capital by former US President Bill Clinton in 2009. But, says the paper citing “current and former US officials”, most of the contacts have been secret. They include several visits to North Korea by CIA official Joseph DeTrani before and after Clinton’s visit, as well as two trips to Pyongyang by CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, in 2012 and 2013. His successor, Avril Haines, also visited North Korea, says The Journal, but notes that the channel went “dormant late in the Obama administration”.

Upon becoming CIA director following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, Mike Pompeo was briefed about the secret channel’s existence and decided to resume it, with Trump’s agreement. That led to his eventual visit to North Korea along with Andrew Kim, who at the time headed the CIA’s Korea Mission Center. Eventually, this channel of communication facilitated the high-level summit between President Trump and Supreme leader Kim Jong-un in June 2018 in Singapore. The Wall Street Journal said it reached out to the CIA, the Department of State and the White House about this story, but received no responses. The North Korean mission in the United Nations in New York also declined to comment.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 January 2019 | Permalink

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‘Illusion of safety’ blamed for deaths of four US service members in Syria

January 21, 2019 4 Comments

Manbij SyriaThe “illusion of safety” has been blamed for the death of four American service members in northern Syria last week, after a suicide bomber attacked a restaurant, killing at least 19 people and wounding countless others. The deadly attack happened in Manbij, a small Kurdish-majority town near the Syrian-Turkish border, which American forces previously viewed as an oasis of security in the war-torn country. American troops fought alongside a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters who in 2016 took control of Manbij from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Since then, American forces have remained in the area —mostly to prevent a military invasion by Washington’s ally Turkey, which views the Kurds as terrorists and has threatened to destroy their armed forces.

The relative stability of Manbij was violently disrupted last Wednesday, when a man detonated a suicide vest inside the Palace of the Princes restaurant in downtown Manbij. Until that moment, United States forces had lost just two members during the Syrian Civil War. Four more Americans died in Wednesday’s blast, including two service members, a military contractor and a civilian intelligence officer working for the Pentagon. Three other Americans were wounded and were airlifted out of the country. In an insightful article published last week, The New York Times quoted a US Special Forces member who wondered whether the US troops in northern Syria have “developed a false sense of security” in what remains a dangerous conflict zone. “The illusion of safety”, said the anonymous commentator, had caused the behavior of American service members in Manbij to fall into predictable routines. That became a vulnerability that the Islamic State was able to exploit, he said.

The Sunni militant group targeted the Palace of the Princes, one of the most popular eateries for Americans in Manbij. The Times quoted locals who said that American troops appeared to eat there nearly every time they patrolled the city, “often many times a week”. They would even park their military vehicles outside the restaurant while dining there, they said. The paper commented that many US troops had “grown complacent and should have varied their […] routes or increased their operational security” while on patrol. Unfortunately, however, their presence —and lack of adequate security— was noticed by the Islamic State, which targeted them on Wednesday.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 January 2019 | Permalink

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Trial witness claims ‘El Chapo’ gave Mexico’s ex-president $100 million bribe

January 17, 2019 Leave a comment

Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ GuzmánA high-profile witness has told the trial of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in New York that the accused bribed the then President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, with $100 million in order to stay out of prison. Guzmán, the leader of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested in February 2014 in Mexico. In January 2017, he was extradited to the United States, where he faces a litany charges ranging from conspiracy to import and distribute drugs to money-laundering and homicide. His trial began at the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York, last November.

All of last Tuesday was taken up by the testimony of Alex Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian former drug lord from Medellin who, until his arrest in 2012, was one of Guzmán’s closest collaborators. Villa told the court that Peña Nieto employed mediators to reach out to the Sinaloa cartel soon after he was elected president in 2012. He alleged that the mediators offered to strike a bargain with Guzmán, according to which he would stay out of prison in return for a $250 million bribe. The bribe would be shared between Peña Nieto and his closest government aides and advisors, said Villa. In return, the Mexican president would call off a national manhunt to capture the Sinaloa cartel leader. Following prolonged negotiations, Guzmán agreed to pay Peña Nieto $100 million, said Villa, in order to secure his freedom.

This is not the first time that a witness in the trial of Guzmán has alleged that the Sinaloa cartel leader bribed senior Mexican government officials, including police and military leaders. However, it is the most sensational allegation to have emerged the trial so far, and —if true— points out that even the highest echelons of the Mexican state have succumbed to the moneyed power of the drug cartels. Last November, when Guzmán’s trial began, his lawyers hinted that claims of corruption would be aired against the highest levels of the Mexican government, including two of its recent presidents, which they called “completely corrupt”. At the time, Peña Nieto’s office issued a statement condemning the allegations and saying that the former president had never received bribes from anyone.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 17 January 2019 | Permalink

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FBI releases new information on alleged Iranian deep-cover spies

January 15, 2019 1 Comment

MEK supporters CaliforniaThe United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has charged two men of Iranian descent, who were arrested in California, of operating as deep-cover spies for Iran. Documents filed in a federal court in Washington, DC, name the men as Majid Ghorbani, 59, and Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, 38. Both have American citizenship and were arrested by the FBI in August, following a year-long counterintelligence investigation. The Los Angeles Times reports that Ghorbani is believed to have immigrated to the US from Iran in 1995. For the past two decades he has worked as a waiter at an upscale Persian restaurant in Santa Ana. Doostdar was born in the southern Californian city of Long Beach, but eventually moved with his family to Canada, and later to Iran, where he grew up. But he kept his US citizenship and made regular trips to America. It is believed that he planned to eventually move with his family to California.

According to the FBI, the two men were tasked by Iranian intelligence with carrying out surveillance on Jewish religious, cultural and political facilities in the US. They were also tasked with conducting surveillance and compiling reports of diplomatic and other facilities connected to the state of Israel. Another part of their mission, said the FBI, was collecting information on the activities and individual members of Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a militant group that has roots in radical Islam and Marxism. The MEK initially supported the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but later withdrew its support, accusing the government of Ayatollah Khomeini of “fascism”. It continued its operations in exile, mainly from Iraq, where its armed members were trained by the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Arab leftist groups. Until 2009, the European Union and the US officially considered the MEK a terrorist organization. But the group’s sworn hatred against the government in Iran brought it close to Washington after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. By 2006, the US military was openly collaborating with MEK forces in Iraq, and in 2012 the group was dropped from the US Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Today the group enjoys open protection from the EU and the US.

Documents filed in court by the FBI state that the two men were secretly recorded during a year-long counterintelligence operation, as they traveled throughout the US to observe MEK rallies and gather intelligence or Israeli diplomatic facilities. Locations visited by the two men allegedly include Chicago, New York and Washington, as well as several cities in the American West Coast. During those visits, they would compile reports that, according to the FBI, were meant to “enable an intelligence or military unit find [and] neutralize a threat”. The men also traveled back to Iran through third countries, bringing back written operational instructions from their Iranian intelligence handlers, according to the FBI documents. IntelNews wrote about the arrest of the two men in August. However, this is the first concrete information released by the FBI about their identities and activities. They are both accused of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government —a technical term for deep-cover espionage.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 January 2019 | Permalink

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Huawei fires Chinese employee arrested in Poland for spying

January 14, 2019 2 Comments

Huawei PolandThe Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has fired one of its employees who was arrested last week in Poland on charges of spying for China, saying that his actions had “no relation to the company”. The man, identified in media reports as Wang Weijing, was arrested last Tuesday by Polish counterintelligence officers who conducted searches of Huawei’s offices in Warsaw and seized electronic hardware and documents. Wang reportedly learned Polish at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. In 2006, he was posted by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Chinese consulate in Gdansk, Poland’s largest Baltic Sea port city. In 2011, he left the Foreign Service and joined Huawei, which employed him at its offices in Poland.

Reports from Poland said that Wang was arrested alongside a Polish national, who was identified in media reports only as Piotr D. He is believed to be a mid-level executive of Orange, a French multinational telecommunications carrier who is Huawei’s main domestic partner in Poland. Polish media also reported that, prior to joining Orange, Piotr D. was an upper-level manager in an unnamed Polish intelligence agency. Piotr D.’s house was searched by security officers on Tuesday, along with Wang’s house. The two arrests came six weeks after Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada. Meng, who is also the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was reportedly detained on December 1 in Vancouver at the request of the United States. Washington says it has evidence that Meng “tried to evade the American embargo against Iran”.

Over the weekend, Poland’s Internal Affairs Minister, Joachim Brudzinski, said that the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization —of which Poland is a member— should develop a joint position on whether to continue to allow Huawei to operate in Europe. But his call was reportedly met with a lukewarm response from government and private-sector leaders. Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was concerned about Wang’s arrest and urged Warsaw to treat him “with fairness”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 14 January 2019 | Permalink

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Shiite militias ‘acting like mafia gangs’ in Iraq’s former ISIS-held areas

January 11, 2019 2 Comments

Popular Mobilization ForcesThe Shiite militias that fought in the war against the Islamic State are now “engaged in mafia-like practices” in former Islamic State strongholds, enraging Iraqi Sunnis and sparking fears of another Islamist insurgency, according to a leading article in The Washington Post.  In 2014, the meteoric rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria —ISIS, later renamed Islamic State— was largely aided by Sunni Arabs’ belief that they were second-class citizens in a Shiite-dominated Iraq. Popular support for the Islamic State among Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority took the Iraqi government by surprise and almost enabled the militant group to conquer Baghdad in 2015. Today, after the destruction of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security and intelligence services have returned to Sunni-majority regions that were once ruled by ISIS.

But there signs that about 50 Shiite militias, which were supported by the Iraqi state throughout the war against ISIS, are now becoming highly autonomous armed gangs that are undermining the central government in Baghdad. These militias —many of which are politically aligned with Iran— are essentially armed wings of Shiite political parties that control more than a quarter of the seats in the Iraqi parliament. In 2014, the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government attempted to utilize the power of the militias by uniting them under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). PMF troops participated in every major front of the war against ISIS and today are an officially recognized military force with rank and salary structures that are equivalent to those of the Iraqi military and police. Technically, the PMF operate under the command of the Iraqi prime minister. In reality, however, the militias that make up the PMF are led by their respective Shiite commanders, many of whom are ideologically allied to Tehran.

The PMF militias are today in control of much of Sunni-dominated Western Iraq, which they helped retake from ISIS. According to Washington Post correspondents Tamer el-Ghobashy and Mustafa Salim, the militias are now using their newfound territorial power to make large sums of money. Various PMF militias operate countless checkpoints across Western Iraq, on roads between cities or —increasingly— within cities such as Mosul, imposing toll fees on supply trucks and even on individual motorists. The two Washington Post correspondents warn that these militia members are beginning to exhibit “mafia-like” behavior, establishing protection rackets and kidnapping motorists at night in order to release them for a fee paid by their families.

Additionally, PMF commanders make arbitrary decisions about which of the nearly 2 million Iraqi Sunnis, who were displaced in refugee camps due to the war, are allowed to return to their homes. Many of these homes and land that used to belong to Iraqi Sunnis are now being expropriated by PMF commanders, who claim that their previous owners collaborated with ISIS, often without evidence. This practice, say el-Ghobashy and Salim, is rapidly altering the demographic balance between Sunnis and Shiites throughout Western Iraq. The two authors forewarn that these mafia-like practices by the PMF are “fostering local resentments […] and revive the kind of Sunni grievances that underpinned the Islamic State’s dramatic rise three years ago”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 January 2019 | Permalink

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Law advocacy center sues CIA for access to Jamal Khashoggi files

January 10, 2019 Leave a comment

Jamal KhashoggiAn international law center based in New York is suing the United States Central Intelligence Agency for access to classified files relating to the death of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi government adviser who became critical of the Kingdom’s style of governance. He moved to the United States and began to criticize Saudi Arabia from the pages of The Washington Post. He was killed on October 2 by a 15-member Saudi hit-squad while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in order to be issued a certificate of divorce from his former wife in Saudi Arabia. After several weeks of vehemently denying any role in Khashoggi’s killing, the Saudi government eventually admitted that he was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

A few weeks after the murder, it was reported that British and American intelligence agencies were aware of efforts by the Saudi government to detain or otherwise silence Khashoggi, and that they had even warned Riyadh against such a move. In November, the CIA was reported to have concluded that Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, had personally ordered Khashoggi’s murder. After its intelligence committee was briefed by the CIA on the matter, the US Senate unanimously condemned bin Salman and the government of Saudi Arabia, and called on the White House to impose sanctions on the oil kingdom. However, US President Donald Trump appears to have rejected the CIA’s conclusion and has refused to condemn the Saudi government over Khashoggi’s murder.

Now the Open Society Justice Initiative, a New York-based foundation specializing in national security and human rights, has filed a lawsuit against the CIA over the Khashoggi case. The lawsuit also names the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as defendants. The 17-page complaint, filed in a New York court on Wednesday, calls for the “immediate release” of all records in possession of these government agencies about Khashoggi’s murder under the US Freedom of Information Act. It calls these records “imperative for the public to properly and timely evaluate Congressional and Executive responses to Mr. Khashoggi’s killing”.

The Justice Initiative is one of the programs of the Open Society Foundations, the international civil-society advocacy group founded by Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist George Soros. Since its establishment in 2003, the Justice Initiative has filed over 100 national and international lawsuits relating to national security, most notably regarding the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, which the agency launched following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 10 January 2019 | Permalink

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Holland says Iranian spies assassinated two men on Dutch soil

January 9, 2019 2 Comments

Dutch Police HagueAuthorities in Holland have officially accused Iran of ordering the contract murders of two men on Dutch soil in 2015 and 2017, one of them just a block away from the Dutch foreign ministry’s headquarters. The announcement illuminates the reason behind the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from Holland last year, which the authorities did not explain at the time.

The first of the two assassinations happened on December 15, 2015, in Almere, a coastal town located 25 miles east of Amsterdam. The victim was Mohammad-Reza Kolahi, a 56-year-old electrician who was wanted in Iran for allegedly planting a bomb in 1981. The bomb targeted the headquarters of the ruling Islamic Republican Party, killing more than 70, and is often referred to as the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in Iran’s history. Kolahi, a member of a Marxist-Islamist group calling itself the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), fled the country and was sentenced to death in absentia. He eventually married a Dutch national and acquired Dutch citizenship, changing his name to Ali Motamed. He was reportedly shot in the head at point-blank range by two assailants dressed in all black. Nearly two years later, on November 9, 2017, Ahmad Mola Nissi was also shot in the head in broad daylight by two assailants. The murder took place in the middle of the street in downtown Hague, site of Holland’s parliament and a host of international institutions. Nissi, 52, was a co-founder of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), a secessionist group that seeks an independent Arab homeland in the oil-rich southwestern regions of Iran. Tehran has claimed for decades that both groups, MEK and ASMLA, have been supported by Iraq, Israel, the United States and the European Union.

On Tuesday, Holland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stef Blok, informed the Dutch parliament that the country’s intelligence services had provided “strong evidence” that the Islamic Republic was involved in the assassinations of Kolahi and Nissi. He added that both men were Dutch citizens and that their murders on Dutch soil were “hostile actions” that directly violated Dutch sovereignty. He also revealed that the expulsions of two Iranian diplomats from Holland in June of last year were in direct response to the evidence unearthed by the Dutch intelligence services about the two murders. IntelNews readers will recall that the Dutch Foreign Ministry did not explain the reason for the expulsions when these were announced last summer. Also on Tuesday, the European Union announced the imposition of financial sanctions against two individuals associated with Iranian military intelligence, reportedly in response to Holland’s announcement.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 09 January 2019 | Research credit: M.K. | Permalink

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American held on espionage charges in Russia has three other citizenships

January 5, 2019 Leave a comment

Paul WhelanAn American former Marine, who faces espionage charges in Russia, is a citizen of at least three other countries, namely Canada, Britain and the Republic of Ireland, according to reports. Paul Whelan, 48, was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on December 28 at the Metropol, a five-star hotel in downtown Moscow. News of Whelan’s arrest first emerged on January 3 in a report from Rosbalt, a Moscow-based news agency that known to be close to the Russian security services. He was reportedly indicted on Thursday and is now facing between 10 to 20 years in prison for espionage. His trial is not expected to take place until March.

According to Rosbalt, the FSB arrested Whelan in his hotel room while he was meeting with a Russian citizen who allegedly handed him a USB drive containing a list that included “the names of all employees of a [Russian] security agency”. However, Whelan’s family claim that the former Marine arrived in Moscow on December 22 to attend the wedding of an American friend who married a Russian woman. Whelan served two tours in Iraq with the United States Marines and was reportedly discharged for bad conduct. At the time of his arrest last month, he was the director of global security for BorgWarner, a Michigan-based manufacturer of spare parts for cars. He is believed to have visited Russia regularly since 2006, and is thought to have a basic command of the Russian language. He is currently being held in solitary confinement in Moscow’s Lefortovo detention center.

At the time of his arrest, Whelan was identified as an American citizen. On Friday, however, the Associated Press reported that he also has United Kingdom citizenship because he was born to British parents. Additionally, he is now believed to hold Canadian citizenship as well, because he was born in Canada. He then acquired American citizenship after arriving in the US with his parents as a child. It is not known how he acquired Irish citizenship, but the Irish government confirmed it on Friday. Also on Friday, the Washington-based National Public Radio said that embassies of at least four Western countries —the US, Britain, Ireland and Canada— were working to gain consular access to Whelan. On Thursday, the former Marine was visited in prison by Jon Huntsman, America’s ambassador to Russia. Meanwhile, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said London was “extremely worried” about Whelan’s fate and warned Moscow “not to try to use [him] as a diplomatic pawn”, possibly by exchanging him with Russians arrested for espionage in the West.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 05 January 2019 | Permalink

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North Korean ambassador to Rome missing since November, says Seoul

January 4, 2019 Leave a comment

Jo Song-gilThe acting ambassador of North Korea to Italy has been missing for two months and there are reports that he may be under the protection of a Western country. Jo Song-gil (pictured), 48, a career diplomat who is fluent in Italian, French and English, presented his diplomatic credentials to the Italian government in May of 2015. In October 2017, he became his country’s acting ambassador after Italian authorities expelled Ambassador Mun Jong-nam from the country. The expulsion came in response to North Korea’s nuclear test in September of that year, when Pyongyang announced the detonation of a hydrogen bomb that could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Jo is believed to be from a high-ranking family of officials and diplomats with a long history in the ruling Workers Party of Korea. His father is a retired diplomat and his wife’s father, Lee Do-seop, spent many years as Pyongyang’s envoy in Hong Kong and Thailand. It is believed that Jo had been permitted to take his wife and children with him to Rome, a privilege that is bestowed only to the most loyal of North Korean government official. Sources in the Italian government were quoted by British media on Thursday saying that Pyongyang had notified Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in October that Jo would be replaced in December. On Thursday, however, Kim Min-ki, a South Korean member of parliament, told reporters in Seoul that Jo had been missing since November. Kim added that he and a group of other parliamentarians had been briefed on the mater by officials from the National Intelligence Service, South Korean’s primary external intelligence agency. He went on to say that Jo’s wife and children were believed to have vanished with him and that South Korean authorities had not made contact with them since their disappearance.

Meanwhile, South Korean press reports stated on Thursday that Jo and his family “were in a safe place” under the protection of the Italian government, while they negotiated their defection. But Italian officials told the BBC that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had “no record of an asylum request made by Jo” or other members of his family. Citing an anonymous “diplomatic source”, the Seoul-based JoongAng Ilbo said that the former ambassador and his wife were in the process of negotiating their defection to a Western country, along with an offer of political asylum. The paper did not name the country, but said that the missing family did not intend to remain in Italy. IntelNews regulars will recall the last defection of a senior North Korean diplomat in August 2016, when Thae Yong-ho, second-in-command at the North Korean embassy in London, defected to South Korea with his family.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 January 2019 | Permalink

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