Charges dropped in Guantanamo terror trial

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon's senior judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges Thursday against an al-Qaida suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, upholding President Barack Obama's order to freeze military tribunals there.

The charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.

The legal move by Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, brings all cases into compliance with Obama's Jan. 22 executive order to halt terrorist court proceedings at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Crawford withdrew the charges against al-Nashiri. However, new charges can be brought again later, and al-Nashiri will remain in prison for the time being.

"It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantanamo," Morrell said late Thursday night.

The ruling also gives the White House time to review the legal cases of all 245 terror suspects held there and decide whether they should be prosecuted in the U.S. or released to other nations.

Obama was to meet with families of the USS Cole and 9/11 victims at the White House on Friday afternoon and may announce the move.

Seventeen U.S. sailors died on Oct. 12, 2000, when al-Qaida suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, as it sat in a Yemen port.

The Pentagon last summer charged al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian, with "organizing and directing" the bombing and planned to seek the death penalty in the case.

In his Jan. 22 order, Obama promised to shut down the Guantanamo prison within a year. The order also froze all Guantanamo detainee legal cases pending a three-month review as the Obama administration decides where — or whether — to prosecute the suspects who have been held there for years, most without charges.

Two military judges granted Obama's request for a delay in other cases.

But a third military judge, Army Col. James Pohl, defied Obama's order by scheduling a Feb. 9 arraignment for al-Nashiri at Guantanamo. That left the decision on whether to continue to Crawford, whose delay on announcing what she would do prompted widespread concern at the Pentagon that she would refuse to follow orders and allow the court process to continue.

Retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold, the commanding officer of the Cole when it was bombed in Yemen in October 2000, said he will be among family members of Cole and 9/11 victims who are meeting with Obama at the White House on Friday afternoon.

Groups representing victims' families were angered by Obama's order, charging they had waited too long already to see the alleged attackers brought to court.

"I was certainly disappointed with the decision to delay the military commissions process," Lippold, now a defense adviser to Military Families United, said in an interview Thursday night. "We have already waited eight years. Justice delayed is justice denied. We must allow the military commission process to go forward."

Crawford was appointed to her post in 2007 by then-President George W. Bush. She was in the news last month when she said interrogation methods used on one suspect at Guantanamo amounted to torture. The Bush administration had maintained it did not torture.

Last year, al-Nashiri said during a Guantanamo hearing that he confessed to helping plot the Cole bombing only because he was tortured by U.S. interrogators. The CIA has admitted he was among terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons.

Jordanian nurse disappears at Rafah border

A Jordanian nurse disappeared as he was entering the Rafah crossing border with Egypt, local daily The Jordan Times reported on Friday.

The nurse, identified as Salman Masaeed, was one of a group of Jordanian nurses who volunteered to work in Gaza to help treat thousands of Palestinians injured during a 22-day Israeli onslaught on Gaza, the press quoted a source who requested anonymity as saying.

It is believed that he was arrested by the Egyptian authorities, said the source, adding that Masaeed, however, remained behind his colleagues who had left for Egypt.

Meanwhile, Jordanian doctors dispatched by the Jordan Medical Association remained stranded on Rafah border on Thursday, reports said. They were trying to enter Gaza to join their colleagues volunteering in hospitals there.

Reports came out from time to time in the aftermath of the blistering Israeli offensive that Jordanian delegations were denied entry to Gaza at the Rafah border on humanitarian missions.

German City Of Munich Says It Will Accept Guantanamo Uighurs

BERLIN (AFP)--The German city of Munich, home to the biggest community of ethnic Uighurs outside China, has offered to host the 17 members of the Chinese minority held at Guantanamo Bay, authorities said Friday.

A city hall official confirmed a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily that the municipal council had supported a motion to this effect put forward by the Green party Thursday.

However the offer will need approval from the cross-party government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which is divided on the issue of taking inmates from Guantanamo after Washington closes the prison for terror suspects on Cuba.

Social Democrat Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is in favor of taking in some freed prisoners while Christian Democrat Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaueble is against.

The case of the Uighurs arrested in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo for the past seven years is exceptional.

All have been cleared of terrorist activity but Washington has declined to repatriate them to China for fear they would be persecuted or tortured.

Beijing has demanded the return of the 17, who it says were part of a U.N.- listed terror group seeking an independent homeland in the Uighur-populated Xinjiang region.

Lawyers for three of them have filed applications for refugee status in Canada, prompting a warning from Beijing Thursday.

"We have expressed our position many times about those Chinese terrorists detained in Guantanamo. We are opposed to any country accepting those people," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing.

"We hope the parties concerned can resolve conveniently this issue according to the international laws and regulations".

Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, form the largest ethnic group in northwest China's Xinjiang region that borders Central Asia. Some hope for independence from China.

Israel Releases Lebanese Gaza Boat Activists

By SANA ABDALLAH

AMMAN -- After seizing a Lebanese boat carrying activists, journalists and tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Israeli authorities expelled the Lebanese passengers by sending them back to their country.

The first Lebanese ship that sought to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza ignored Israeli navy vessels and warning shots that tried to steer the boat away from nearing the shores of the Gaza Strip.

When the boat insisted on reaching its destination shortly after midnight Thursday, Israeli soldiers stormed the Togolese-flagged ship, Tali, reportedly beat up some of the passengers, bound them, and towed the vessel to an Israeli military port in Ashdod.

The boat, with 18 crew and passengers, was carrying 60 tons of medical supplies, food, books and toys for Gaza, which has been living under a paralyzing Western-backed Israeli blockade since Hamas seized control of the narrow strip in June 2007.

Organized by the Lebanese group, End the Blockade of Gaza, the boat – dubbed "Brotherhood Ship" to connote solidarity with the Palestinians – originally set sail from the northern port of Tripoli on Tuesday toward Cyprus, where the supplies were transferred to another ship before heading toward Gaza.

The Lebanese authorities said the boat was thoroughly searched before sailing from Tripoli and again searched in Cyprus to confirm it was transporting only humanitarian aid.

Nevertheless, the Israeli military cited "security concerns" for intercepting the solidarity ship and later admitted it was not carrying any weapons. Israel said it would send the aid to Gaza.

However, the seizure of the Brotherhood in international waters raised a political storm, with Lebanon and the Arab League strongly condemning the move as "an illegal act of piracy" and declared its passengers as prisoners or hostages.

Passengers onboard said the boat was in Egyptian waters when the Israelis intercepted it, but this was not independently confirmed.

Israel declared Gaza's coastal territory a closed military zone when it launched a massive war on the strip on Dec. 27, an offensive that last 23 days and left more than 1,300 Palestinians killed, most of them civilians. Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians died in combat and from Palestinian militant rocket fire.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said it was "no surprise for Israel to perpetrate such an action as it has been accustomed to ignoring international resolutions and values."

Arab League representative at the United Nations, Yahya Mahmassani, asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to quickly intervene and demanded an international condemnation. "The world community should condemn this act of piracy committed by Israel," he said.

Aboard the Brotherhood were Lebanese reporters and cameramen from the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel and pan-Arab nationalist Lebanese Al-Jadeed TV (New TV), in addition to Lebanese activists.

Also onboard was the former Greek Catholic archbishop of Jerusalem, Monsignor Hilarion Capucci, who was deported from Jerusalem in the mid-1970s after serving time in an Israeli prison for affiliation with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Capucci, 84, was not among those who were handed over to U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon early Friday, and was expected to be expelled to Syria through the Golan Heights, along with other Syrians who were on the boat.

Upon her arrival in the Lebanese southern town of Naqoura, Al-Jazeera reporter Salam Khodr said that after firing bullets at the boat, 30 Israeli soldiers stormed it, beat up some of the passengers, blindfolded them and bound their hands before interrogating them.

She charged that soldiers kicked 60-year-old Hani Suleiman Lebanese coordinator of the campaign, Hani Suleiman, in the chest and back although they were told the man had heart problems.

"One female soldier said to us, 'You should have thought about his health condition before you attempted to come and break the siege on Gaza,'" Khodr recounted on Al-Jazeera.

Al-Jadeed TV said the soldiers broke then confiscated the camera equipment onboard.

Israel denied using violence or having fired at the boat, whose fate remains unknown.

But Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday made it clear that Israel will no longer tolerate attempts to breach the blockade on Gaza, saying that the seizure of the Brotherhood ship was to prove that "things will be done differently" from now on, since "the equation has now changed" in the aftermath of the 23-day war.

The international, non-violent Free Gaza Movement – a group of Western, Palestinian and Israeli human rights activists – was the first to launch the concept of seeking to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza by sailing boats from Cyprus to the strip without Israeli permission for the first time since 1967.

In August 2008, the organization sent the first boat carrying activists and humanitarian aid to Gaza "to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy, and its support for continued Israeli occupation," according to the movement's Web site, www.freegaza.org.

Lebanese activists emulated the move by organizing the Brotherhood ship. Aid coordinator of the Lebanese End the Blockade on Gaza, Maen Bashour, said the Israeli "hijacking" of the boat will not deter the Lebanese from sending more vessels to Gaza.

Commentators say the saga of the Brotherhood ship may have ended with the release of its passengers, but the continued blockade on the impoverished Gaza Strip is expected to draw more solidarity boats to sail the Mediterranean waters to try to defy the Israeli blockade.

Philippines will give away efficient bulbs

MANILA, Philippines, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- The Philippine government is planning to give away millions of energy-saving lightbulbs to try to save money on electricity.

An estimated $100 million will be saved each year if residents and businesses replace their traditional lightbulbs with new compact fluorescent bulbs that the government is handing out, Xinhua reports.

The government was given a 25-year, $31.1 million loan by the Asian Development Bank for the project.

The "CFL distribution program is like building 'virtual' power stations," said Sohail Hasnie, senior energy specialist in ADB's Southeast Asia Department.

Residents can turn in their incandescent bulbs and receive a compact fluorescent lamp. Individual savings are estimated at $8.50 a year for the next seven to 10 years.

The loan also includes funds for the government to retrofit all of its office buildings and public lighting with efficient lighting options. It also provides state-owned Philippine National Oil Co. with $7.5 million to establish an energy service company to extend financial and technical support to companies that want to reduce energy consumption.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Energy_Resources/2009/02/06/Philippines_will_give_away_efficient_bulbs/UPI-41721233945409/.

Scotland seeks title of green job capital

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Scotland's Finance Secretary John Swinney pledged to create at least 16,000 renewable-energy-related jobs in Scotland over the next 10 years.

The new goal is part of the nation's larger efforts to avoid recession and be more energy efficient, Scotland on Sunday reports.

Scotland should have at least one-tenth of the estimated 160,000 renewable energy jobs that will be generated in Britain over the next 10 years, Swinney said.

"We are in the most difficult economic climate for a generation and need to pursue every possible opportunity we have to create wealth," he said. "We are laying the foundations for economic success by investing in a greener deal for Scotland."

The nation generates one-fifth of its electricity demand from renewable sources, and Scotland is home to 25 percent of Europe's wave and tidal energy potential.

Two suns found in distant planetary system

SEOUL, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- South Korean researchers say they've discovered a planetary system that has two suns.

Lee Jae-woo and Kim Seung-ri of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and Kim Chun-hwui of Chungbuk National University said the planetary system, which they've named HW Vir has had the two suns since its birth, unlike other planetary systems in which a second sun was drawn by gravitational attraction, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Friday.

The report, published in the Astronomical Journal, said the HW Vir planetary system lies about 59 billion light-years from Earth.