I can claim to have had a small hand in instigating the legal complaint to the International Criminal Court by the Comoros Islands against the murders by Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmara. The Washington Post writes:
In a filing, lawyers from the Istanbul-based law firm Elmadag argued that the events that took place on the Mavi Marmari should be considered as having occurred on the territory of Comoros.
As though this were in any sense a matter of dispute. That crimes committed on any ship outside of territorial waters are under the jurisdiction of the flag state of the ship, is both customary international law of ancient standing and a fundamental provision of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Article 92:
Ships shall sail under the flag of one State only and, save in exceptional cases expressly provided for in international treaties or in this Convention, shall be subject to its exclusive jurisdiction on the high seas.
The Comoros Islands are a tiny state off the East coast of the continent. They are part of the disgraceful system where small or failed states lease out their shipping registers – often corruptly – to western companies who run them, enabling major shipping owners to evade safety, conditions, qualifications and pay regulations of more serious states. Liberia has been the most notorious example. The Comoros government therefore deserves huge congratulation for taking its flag state responsibility so seriously, and so bravely, in taking on Israel.
It is a responsibility Turkey deliberately shed just before the Mavi Marmara was attacked.
There is, in this regard, as I reported from my meetings with organisers and bereaved families of the Mavi Marmara in Izmir two years ago, something extremely disturbing about the case of the Mavi Marmara:
Shortly before sailing, the registration was switched from Turkey to the Comoros Islands. This exempted Turkey from the responsibility of jurisdiction. It also made discussion at NATO much easier for the US; if the Israelis had attacked in international waters a ship flying the flag of a NATO state, that would have been a much more difficult thing for the alliance to ignore.
It turns out that the change was made at the insistence of the Turkish Ministry of Transport. They carried out a number of inspections of the Mavi Marmara prior to the Gaza trip and made repeated demands for changes: mattresses and cushions had to have more modern, fire resistant foam. Internal walls had to be upgraded for fire resistance. Whatever changes were then made, the Ministry found new faults. In the end, the Ministry had said that the Mavi Marmara would be impounded unless it changed its registration, as it could not meet the safety requirements for a Turkish flagged ship.
The strange thing is that the Mavi Marmara had been Turkish flagged for years, and hade been running tourist cruises out of Istanbul. None of the faults the Ministry found resulted from any changes, yet none had apparently been a problem on past inspections. The family told me that, before the Mavi Marmara sailed, they had been in no doubt the Turkish government had been deliberately obstructive and had forced the change of flag.
Part of the Turkish state was insistent on giving the Mavi Marmara no protection. You have to ask the question, did these people know in advance the Mavi Marmara was to be attacked? The fatal shootings on board were mostly not random – they were targeted shots to the head of selected people. If Israel had planned this, how long in advance, where did they get their intelligence on who was aboard? If they had assistance from within the Turkish state, of course the Turkish state would want to ensure they did not have legal responsibility over the killings.
Let me be plain. I am not accusing the current government of Turkey. But they inherited a bureaucracy and political establishment riddled, especially at the most senior levels, with ultra-nationalists and relatives and connections of the Turkish military. The Turkish Foreign Office in particular is notoriously ultra and completely penetrated and corrupted by Israel. The Turkish government has had a most difficult job in changing the direction of the country without provoking violent nationalist reaction. That has been a process; and the result is that those apparently in power did not in reality get control of all the levers of power at once.
We are a long way yet from knowing the full truth about the Mavi Marmara: and Israel is not the only place to look.
O/T but ref Prof Hawking and the Israeli boycott from a Palestinian’s perspective.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/05/israel-hawking-and-the-pressing-question-of-boycott/
No-one is saying ” we can’t afford to buy your warships”, either, are they? But that is indisputably true. Now if the EU had pushed the surplus beet crop at Greece in the same way, do you think Greece would have accepted? Maybe you do. Anyway, some bailout they got for their pains! The EU will be going house-to-house for gold fillings next…
I think if you visit Greece or South Cyprus ( Kıbrıs…heh…) you’ll be able to confirm the paranoia, anyway. And confirm that a perceived external threat continues to make patriots of them all.
Also O/T Ian Katz Dep Ed Guardian leaves to join BBC !?!
ian katz
@iankatz1000
Deputy Editor, The Guardian
London · guardian.co.uk/profile/iankatz
ian katz ian katz @iankatz1000 14m
…but will miss brilliant colleagues and friends at @guardian who have made last 23 years best fun you can have without breaking the law
ian katz ian katz @iankatz1000 14m
Thrilled to join talented team at @BBCNewsnight, one of most precious bits of British cultural landscape. Hope to make you stay up for it
As editor of Newsnight in fact.
16 May 2013
Ian Katz appointed Newsnight editor
Newsnight is BBC’s Two flagship news programme
The Guardian’s Ian Katz has been appointed editor of BBC Newsnight, replacing Peter Rippon who left the programme in the wake of the Jimmy Savile crisis.
Rippon was in charge of Newsnight when an investigation into child abuse by Jimmy Savile was dropped in late 2011.
Katz has worked at The Guardian since 1990 and is now its deputy editor.
Jamie Angus, Newsnight’s acting deputy editor, is the new editor of Radio 4’s Today programme.
Katz will take over at Newsnight in July from Karen O’Connor, who has been the BBC Two programme’s acting editor since November.
“I’m incredibly excited to be joining a programme I’ve watched and loved all my adult life,” said Katz.
“It’s had serious and well publicised problems over the last year but I’m looking forward to working with the hugely talented team to make it once again the world’s most intelligent, sophisticated and exciting news programme.”
The Jimmy Savile abuse scandal was revealed in an ITV documentary in October 2012.
Soon after it was revealed that Newsnight had begun an investigation into the late former BBC presenter, but had dropped it in the early stages.
After the publication of a blog post explaining his editorial decision to end the Savile investigation was found to have factual errors, Rippon was asked to “step aside” while an inquiry was held.
He has since taken up a new role developing the online BBC News archive.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/150359/father-of-mavi-marmara-victim-joins-turkish-pm-s-delegation-to-us.html
Which is greatly to Erdoğan’s credit.
Do you remember that travesty of a programme made by Jane Corbin of the BBC – Death in the Med – about the attack on the Mavi Marmara?
http://jfjfp.com/?p=16611
@Komodo
Erdoğan was sent to jail, and his backwards thinking and even creating a new constitution is starting to cause issues. This subject, I would have to say, I am particularly biased about. My spouse and my in-laws are all Turkish. All of them have issues when it comes to the current government – Erdoğan and the AKP.
Traditionally, the military has always been the protector of a secular government, but what was touted in the West as a ‘coup’ by the media, was in my opinion, the current governments way of protecting itself against their ouster. The government there is using Islam to keep some sort of appeasement with conservatives and to advance their agenda of Neo-Ottomanism. By throwing all the military leaders in jail, and some journalists, who protects Kemalism now? I’ve always seen Turkey as an example in the middle east of how to keep religion and government separate, and now it’s turning backwards.
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21571147-once-all-powerful-turkish-armed-forces-are-cowed-if-not-quite-impotent-erdogan-and-his
http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/number-imprisoned-journalists-turkey-nearly-doubles
Think you have to factor in the Pentagon earthquakes which got rid of the Ecevit government after the one in Izmet in 1999, and then got the Muslim-led one of Erdogan to work with the Zionists at home and abroad after the ones at Lake Van.
Space and undersea weapons are the ones of choice by Washington now.
“No-one is saying ” we can’t afford to buy your warships”, either, are they? ”
Of course not, which is the point; you are not going to say “no I can’t afford your kick-back string” when your entire future financial survival bail-out deal is dependent on ” the clear implication is that they will be more supportive if we do.”
April Showers: There’s an entire chapter on the programme ‘Panorama – Death in the Med’ in the book I linked to earlier. It concludes by accusing Jane Corbin of libelling the organisers, passengers and especially the victims.
@Trowbridge H. Ford
What’s your opinion about HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program)?
@Alister
Is there anything in the book that explains why those murdered may have been targeted?
Alistair
I was thinking of downloading the book. But one of the reviewers says that not only is the writer anonymous, but the publishers are anonymous too.
“They may have their reasons. But then why not explain the reasons? Why not say whether they are one individual or more? Why not say that one or more of them were on the Mavi Marmara? Why not say something about their backgrounds that gives us more confidence that they know what they are talking about? Even the publisher appears not to exist.”
Do you know who they are? Or why there is not more known about them?
Spaulding, I think that HAARP is a very powerful weapon to modify the weather, especially changing tropical storms into cyclones and hurricanes, but it is nowhere as useful as satellite and submarine-based lasers- what have caused havoc in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and China, and in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and off Japan last year.
Posters wanting to confuse people generally mix up how they work, and what they have achieved.
Am now going through Jeff Herz’s book about Beams, and shall be writing about how they work in lasers in due course.
Kempe
16 May, 2013 – 1:00 pm
“Most reports of the incident state that many of the victims were shot from above, from helicopters, so they could hardly have been targetted.” [Sic]
Well if “most reports state that many of the victims were shot from above…” you can supply a few references can you not?
I know you won’t because your statement is not true is it?
“Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range”
“Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.”
“The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-results
April Showers
Sorry I posted my comment before reading your post.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-attack-autopsy-results
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.pdf
Should be enough to be getting on with.
As Indigo says is there any evidence those killed were high ranking or important IHH officials rather than just rank and file supporters who were in the wrong place?
Nine people died. Does shifting the country of registration really make any significant difference? Would the usually very secretive Israelis take the Turks into their confidence? Why would the Turks co-operate if they did? What was in it for them?
Trowbridge H Ford
I have just been to your website. Some of the stuff is OK, but there is more than a hint of pseudo-scientific drivel. It is even more important to use your critical faculties when you are being told something you are happy to believe. One way to undermine the truth is to stick it on the same page as a load of crap.
Well sleuthed Craig, what also must not be discounted is a collaborative effort of old connection going back to the late 1940’s, the close links between Turkish and Israeli Mafiosi, ever so often collaborating with military and secret service or foreign offices.
Both, the Ultra right wing grey wolfs and the PKK operate major drug operations and European markets via Turkey, they are in direct competition/confrontation with Russian Mafiosi and Albanian crime families, all vying for lucrative markets.
They would think nothing of threatening officials into making it hard for the MM to leave, make it appear as ‘something else’. Turkey has got form in hiding its most ardent criminals in Government, Ms. Ciller can vouch for that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susurluk_scandal
Dreoilin: Yes, there are two reviews, and the reviewers say they haven’t read the book, but demand to know who’s behind it. Zionist trolls methinks. I personally don’t think it’s reprehensible for the writer(s)/publishers to not broadcast where they can be found if they’re taking on the establishment over something like this. Look at what happens to whistleblowers, Occupy activists etc when those in power think they should be dealt with! The ‘reviewers’ – who don’t review the book – are trying to find out who’s publishing this evidence, so maybe that’s supportive of publisher anonymity. Or maybe they’re trying to put people like you off reading books like this!
@Dreoilin
I too just went to have a look and have the same questions; no information on search engines about said author or publisher. As one reviewer says that doesn’t necessarily mean anything but why the anonymity? Interested to see, though, what Amazon had written in the spiel it uses to sell …
“Alaithiran Ali is an investigative journalist, human rights campaigner and political activist, concerned with the rise of militarism in the West, its assault on the rule of law, and the propaganda lies that accompany its attendant human rights abuses”.
Do they know something we don’t? Doubt it. They’re just interested in non-taxable profit.
A must watch documentary trailer:
http://www.valentinosghost.com/
Kempe
16 May, 2013 – 6:21 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-attack-autopsy-results
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.pdf
“Should be enough to be getting on with.”
Those links do not back-up anything you said earlier; in fact they prove you wrong. Why have you refered to them? Playing games?
You said:
“Most reports of the incident state that many of the victims were shot from above…”
The links you give prove what you said to be a lie.
‘Since the Ergenekon investigation began five years ago, hundreds of people, including academics, journalists and social activists have been placed under lengthy pre-trial detention.’
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-turkey-army-idINBRE85S0C620120629
Gotta love that. Round up voices of dissent, and make sure no one of credibility investigates…
Any examples, MarkU, about what is true, and what is crap, according to you?
Without them, you claims are just more crap too.
And btw, codshit.com is not my site, nor is any other, as I have none. Sites just post what they find of mine that they find interesting.
“Look at what happens to whistleblowers …. Or maybe they’re trying to put people like you off reading books like this!”
Maybe they are but I’ve already read the accounts of the Irish who were on board, so I have a pretty good idea of how it all panned out. The charges the FCO made against Craig didn’t put me off reading his book. Of course, I knew who he was, and that helped. I’m not in the habit of reading anonymous accounts of contentious matters like the attack on the Mavi Marmara – contentious because Israel lied about it, and the MSM repeated their lies before the accounts of the victims could be published.
I take it from your reply that you don’t know who the author(s) are either.
alistair
16 May, 2013 – 6:26 pm
“Dreoilin: Yes, there are two reviews, and the reviewers say they haven’t read the book, but demand to know who’s behind it.”
“Zionist trolls methinks.”
I doubt it Alistair.
One of the reviewers for the book is Paul Larudee.
See what the Zionist web site Israellycool says about him.
http://www.israellycool.com/2006/06/06/the-loathsome-paul-larudee/
See also:
http://www.israellycool.com/2012/12/30/freeing-india-of-paul-larudee/
Off topic. An Afghan friend of mine was killed in Kabul today in another act of senseless violence. He was walking to work and was killed when a VBIED..Vehicle Bourne Improvised Explosive Device, in other words a car bomb, detonated behind an American military convoy, killing 2 American soldiers and several contractors, as well as 2 children on their way to school and several other innocent people just going about thier daily business. 26 other people are in hospital, 9 not expected to survive. I heard the explosion from my house here in Kabul at 8.10 this morning and got a call at 10am from his brother to inform me that he was a casualty. I was prevented initially from entering District 8, the area of the explosion, by American soldiers..probably because they were making sure there was not going to be another bomb about to go off. After 5 minuites of arguments at the top of my voice with a brainless GI, they let me through. Utter carnage and devastation. At 8pm this evening we were able to recover his body and make sure the family had him back to perform the rites as per his faith. Reading some of the above comments and being a follower of Craig’s blog I realise how little some of the commentators know about the real world, especially viewed from an armchair in a safe country. Israel and Turkey in a conspiracy theory, probably, but at the moment, here in Afghanistan, my heart weeps.
Zio-BBC 6 0-Clock News go large on Syria and chemical weapons -Yawn! The hole these serial liars and propaganda merchants are digging for themselves will be their final resting place.
Spraying shit from a TV-Screen, as The Jam once put it.
Jeremy Bowen was in the studio like some nodding dog after a whipping. Does anyone out there still think he’s one of the good guys? All his reports seem to toe an establishment line; his anger, a while back, over the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Concentration Camps’s detainees, seemed to me more in connection with his not being allowed in to give us the Israeli ‘surgical strikes’ claptrap from nearer the scene, rather than justifiable outrage at the slaughter dished out to the helpless by these vicious Israeli psychopaths.
As the Turkish and Israeli military are effectively one organisation, with Israel in the driving seat of this strange and lop-sided alliance, is Israel then a de facto NATO member?
BD & S should expand to quarantine and blockade till these Zionist scum are rooted out.
The world cannot move on from this impasse till Israel is dealt a knockout punch.
That time draws ever closer, place your bets ladies and gents, How long has Israel left?
Duqu, 11.09am
Thanks for posting that. I had heard of this before, but I don’t think most readers here took it in.
Can you please post some links that show Anna Ardin and Niklas Svensson’s involvement in the Gaza Flotilla?
Thanks.