Daily archives: October 13, 2007

Raising Money For Amnesty

 in Other by | View Comments

I am off this afternoon to speak to the annual conference of Action by Christians Against Torture (ACAT) in Bristol. Meantime a nice little report of the Malvern meeting for Amnesty International, which hopefully raised them quite a bit of money.

Amnesty event a great success

SACKED ambassador Craig Murray’s visit to Malvern was a great success, with about 600 people crowding into the Forum to hear him speak.

http://www.malverngazette.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1745984.mostviewed.amnesty_event_a_great_success.php

Interestingly, I always get bigger audiences where people are sold tickets (£10 at Malvern, I think) than when the meeting is free. I think this is perhaps because of the incentive for the organising group to publicise.

View with comments

Islamic Jihad Union

 in Uzbekistan by | View Comments

I have posted previously on the so-called Islamic Jihad Union, which appears to be a creation of the Uzbek Security Services and the CIA, and the extraordinary claims that it was responsible for a plot to blow up a US airbase as well as bars and nightclubs in Germany.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/09/islamic_jihad_u.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1595387,00.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/09/the_mysterious.html#comments

A recent ARD documentary further unpicked this story. For example German prosecutors have said that the group bought bomb-making equipment (tape, batteries and a watch) from a garage store. The documentary makers contacted the store, who checked their till receipts and found that they had sold none of those items on the given day.

We now have vital confirmation that the only link between the three alleged terrorists and the “Islamic Jihad Union” is an allegation from the CIA. Thanks to the excellent Moon of Alabama for picking up on this vital interview:

The leader of the Islamic terror research group of Germany’s internal intelligence service, Benno Koepfer, thinks the above is wrong. There is no IJU. Here is an interview published today in the German daily TAZ (my slightly shortened translation):

TAZ: Were the three bomb-builders backed by the Islamic Jihad Union?

BK: I doubt that these three were working on orders by some fixed organization named Islamic Jihad Union.

TAZ: The IJU claimed responsibility for the actions of those three.

BK: There are many indication that such claims on Internet sites were done by some free loaders. There was only public information in these claims.

TAZ: What about the supposed 2004 assaults by the group in Uzbekistan?

BK: Uzbekistan does not have a free press. It is hard to verify what really happened in Uzbekistan.

TAZ: Where is the origin of the earlier assumption that the bomb builders are related to the IJU?

BK: Those were informations from U.S. intelligence services.

TAZ: Could the IJU be an invention of western intelligence services?

BK: I will not speculate about that.

TAZ: Can you voice these doubts without problems?

BK: Yes. It is important to tell the public that there are such doubts. If it would surface three years from now that IJU never existed, it would be more troublesome for the intelligence services.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/10/lets-bury-the-i.html#more

View with comments