Vijfhonderdduizend euro zwijggeld heeft het ministerie van Defensie geboden aan ex-agent I.A. (42) van de militaire inlichtingendienst MIVD. Op geheime bandopnamen – in bezit van De Telegraaf – biedt mr. Marc Gazenbeek, directeur juridische zaken bij het ministerie van Defensie, duidelijk hoorbaar het ’ongelooflijk mooie’ geldbedrag aan, zoals hij zelf zegt.

In ruil moet de ex-agent alle juridische procedures staken tegen de ministeries van Defensie en van Buitenlandse Zaken. Bij de onderhandelingen tussen de ex-agent en Defensie waren ook landsadvocaat Eric Daalder aanwezig en I.A.’s advocaat Michael Ruperti.

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door Bart Olmer en Charles Sanders

vr 18 jan 2013, 05:30

Find this story at 18 Januar 2013

© 1996-2013 TMG Online Media B.V., Amsterdam.

Willi Voss started as a petty criminal in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley. Before long, though, he found himself helping the PLO, even playing a minor role in the 1972 Munich Olympics attack. He went on to become a valuable CIA informant, and has now written a book about his life in the shadows. By SPIEGEL Staff

In the summer of 1975, Willi Voss was left with few alternatives: prison, suicide or betrayal. He chose betrayal. After all, he had just been betrayed by the two men whom he had trusted, and whose struggle had forced him to lead a clandestine existence.

It was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s closest advisers who had used him and jeopardized his life: Abu Daoud, the mastermind behind the terror attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and Abu Iyad, head of the PLO intelligence service Razd.

Voss, a petty criminal from West Germany’s industrial Ruhr region, in cahoots with Palestinian leaders who were feared around the world? It took a number of coincidences and twists of fate in Voss’ life before he found himself in such a position, but here he was on a mission for the Palestinians — in a Mercedes-Benz, traveling from Beirut to Belgrade, together with his girlfriend Ellen, so it would all look like a vacation trip.

His job was to deliver the car, Iyad and Daoud had said. But they had neglected to mention that the Mercedes contained automatic weapons, a sniper rifle and explosives, which were hidden in a secret compartment and consisted of a number of packages, each weighing 20 kilos (44 pounds) — complete with fully assembled detonators made of mercury fulminate, a highly unstable substance. If Voss had gotten into an accident or hit a deep pothole, he, the car and his girlfriend would have been blown to pieces.

Voss only found out about his dangerous cargo when Romanian customs officials tore the vehicle apart. The only thing that saved the 31-year-old and his companion from ending up behind bars was the fact that the PLO maintained excellent ties with the Romanian regime. Romanian officials placed the two Germans in a car driven by a couple of pensioners from the Rhineland region, who were on their way back home to Germany after a vacation. Voss and his girlfriend hopped out in Belgrade. This was the end of the road for them — and, as Voss recalls today, the day when they had to make a fateful decision: prison, suicide or betrayal?

Becoming a Defector

Prison: In Germany there was a warrant for Voss’ arrest. A few years earlier, he had been taken into custody during a raid at the Munich home of a former SS officer who was in league with neo-Nazis. Investigators had secured weapons and explosives from the PLO along with plans for terror attacks and hostage-taking missions in Cologne and Vienna.

Suicide: Voss and his companion spent three days and nights in a tawdry hotel in Belgrade, where they continuously debated whether they should put an end to their lives. But they decided against this option as well.

That left only betrayal. Voss and his girlfriend went to the American embassy, demanded to speak to a diplomat and made the statements that would add yet another twist to his already eventful life: “I am an officer of Fatah. This is my wife. I’m in a position to make an interesting offer to your intelligence agency.”

Voss became a defector. He went from being an accomplice of Palestinian terrorists to a member of the US intelligence agency — from a handmaiden of terror to a CIA spy. As if his first life were not eventful enough, Voss opted for a second life: as a CIA spook with the codename “Ganymede,” named after the kidnapped lover of Zeus, the father of the gods in Greek mythology.

His career as an undercover agent took him from Milan and Madrid back to Beirut and the headquarters of the PLO intelligence service. “Ganymede” provided information and documents that helped thwart attacks in the Middle East and Europe. Duane Clarridge, the legendary and infamous founder of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, even gave him the mission of catching top terrorist Carlos, “The Jackal.”

Today, as he sits in a Berlin café and talks about his life, the gray-haired man clad in a black leather jacket appears at times bitingly ironic, at times shy and prone to depression — making it all the more difficult to reconcile him with the daredevil who lived through this lunacy.

‘Naked Fury’

Voss, who was called Pohl until he adopted the name of his first wife, often says: “That’s exactly how it was, but nobody believes it anyway” — as if he himself had trouble tying together all the loose ends of his life to create a coherent biography. He is 68 years old and wants to get one thing straight: He has never been a neo-Nazi, he insists. “I was a stray dog — one that had been kicked so often that it wanted to bite back, no matter how,” says Voss. “If I had met Andreas Baader at the time,” he contends, “I would have presumably ended up with the Red Army Faction.”

It’s a statement that only becomes plausible when one considers the other formative experiences of his life. He recounts that his childhood was marred by violence, sexual abuse and other humiliations. “As a child, I constantly faced situations in which I was completely powerless,” says Voss, “and that triggered a naked fury, utter shame and the feeling that I was the most worthless thing in the world.”

As a teenager, he sought to escape this world by joining a clique of young rowdies whose dares including stealing mopeds for joy rides. That got him a year in juvenile detention.

This could have led to a small, or even substantial, career as a criminal in the industrial Ruhr region. But in 1960, Voss met Udo Albrecht in prison, who later became a major figurehead in the German neo-Nazi scene. Albrecht fascinated his fellow prisoners with his dream of using mini submarines to smuggle in diamonds from the beaches of southwest Africa.

Yes, he actually believed this nonsense at the time, admits Voss. Politics didn’t come into the picture until later on, he says, when the two jailbirds met in another prison in 1968. This time Voss was doing time for breaking and entering. “Albrecht talked and acted then like an unabashed Nazi,” says Voss. But he says that this did nothing to diminish his friendship with the self-proclaimed leader of the “People’s Liberation Front of Germany.”

Hooking Up with the Palestinians

Voss’ connection with the PLO began when he helped smuggle his buddy Albrecht out of prison in a container. The neo-Nazi slipped away to Jordan, where he hooked up with the Palestinians. When Daoud, the architect of the Munich massacre, asked him if he knew a reliable man in Germany, Albrecht recommended his prison pal from the Ruhr region.

Voss made himself useful. In Dortmund he purchased a number of Mercedes sedans for Daoud — and he established contact to a passport forger in his circle of acquaintances. Today, Voss believes that he was even involved in the preparations for the Munich attack. For a number of weeks, he says, he drove the leader of Black September, a terrorist group with ties to the PLO, “all across Germany, where he met with Palestinians in various cities.”

The Palestinians used him to handle other jobs, as well: “I was to hold a press conference in Vienna, in which I would comment on a mission that I would only find out about once it was successfully completed,” as the PLO chief of intelligence Iyad had told him. When Voss saw the images on TV, he realized that the “mission” was the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Instead of securing the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as the hostage-takers had demanded, it ended in a bloodbath: Nine Israeli hostages, five Palestinian terrorists and one German policeman died.

Six weeks later, Voss was arrested in Germany. He had machine guns and hand grenades that stemmed from the same source as the weapons used by the Palestinian hostage-takers in Munich. This marked the beginning of wild negotiations initiated by Voss’ lawyer Wilhelm Schöttler, who sent a letter with a “classified” offer to Federal Minister for Special Affairs Egon Bahr.

The offer was simple: Release Voss to allow for negotiations with Black September. The objective was to prevent further attacks on German soil. Today, it is known that high-ranking officials at the Foreign Ministry met with the lawyer, who was considered a right-wing radical, and discussed an ongoing series of demands until March 1974, when then-Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher decided to end the negotiations.

Looking for Carlos
Six days later, a court in Munich handed Voss a relatively mild prison sentence of 26 months for contravening the War Weapons Control Act.

In December of 1974, his sentence was suspended despite the fact that he was still under investigation on suspicion of being a member of Black September. In Feb. 1975, he slipped out of Germany and headed back to Beirut, where he was soon serving the Palestinian cause again — right up until that big turning point in his life when he drove a car packed with weapons and explosives to the Romanian border in the summer of 1975.

Even today, one can sense the enormous respect that CIA veterans still have for their former German agent. “I’ve often wondered if he made it,” says Terrence Douglas, “although we are trained to keep our distance and to forget everything after the job is done and move on.”

Douglas, codename “Gordon,” was Voss’ commanding officer at the CIA. He has a very high opinion of his operative “Ganymede”: “Willi was a very cool guy. He was creative and a bit crazy — we spent a very, very intense time together.”

It takes a healthy dose of courage to secretly photograph documents at the PLO intelligence service headquarters. “Ganymede” foiled attacks in Sweden and Israel, identified terror cells in diverse countries and supplied information on collaborations between the neo-Nazi Albrecht and his accomplices with Arafat’s Fatah. And, as if all that were not enough, Voss lived next door to top terrorist Abu Nidal.

Surprisingly, though, the CIA agents stationed in Belgrade and Zagreb who Voss first met were not particularly thrilled with the young German. “They thought he was too boring,” says Douglas with a laugh. “But they had no clue. They didn’t know about the Black September list of people to be released with the hostage-taking at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Sudan in March 1973.”

Refusing to Tell the Truth

Members of the terror organization had also sought the release of a German during their operation in Sudan: Willi Voss. “That was his reference,” says Douglas. “That’s the reason why we were excited by him.”

The CIA made sure that Voss no longer had to fear being arrested in Germany. “It was clear to him that he couldn’t continue with his previous lifestyle,” says Douglas. “He wanted to survive and someday be able to settle again undisturbed in Germany,” he recalls. “After all, he had a wife, and she had a 10-year-old kid. It was a package deal, I took care of them.”

“As always in such situations, we informed the CIA office in Bonn, and they arranged everything with the BND or the BKA, depending on the situation,” says spymaster Clarridge, referring to Germany’s foreign intelligence agency and domestic criminal investigation agency respectively. Only a few weeks after the first meeting, the German arrest warrant had been rescinded.

Today, German authorities still refuse to tell the truth about these events. In the wake of revelations published in a June 2012 SPIEGEL article on the Munich massacre, Bavarian state parliamentarians Susanna Tausendfreund and Sepp Dürr of the Green Party demanded that the state government reveal “what documents from what Bavarian government agencies responsible at the time (exist) … on Willi Voss.”

In late August 2012, the Bavarian Interior Ministry responded — and it had a surprise. Ministry officials said that Voss had submitted a plea for clemency, which had received a positive response. “The content of this plea for clemency,” they noted, however, was “classified.” This is demonstrably false. Voss has never submitted a plea for clemency.

On the Terrace of an Athens Hotel

In any case, the deal certainly paid off for the Americans: Voss didn’t disappoint them, even at risk of life and limb. In the fall of 1975, the Christian Phalange militia in Lebanon held him captive because they thought he was what he pretended to be — a German member of Black September.

For weeks, Voss endured torture and mock executions without blowing his cover. For the CIA, this was a recommendation for an even riskier job. When Voss was released, he was told to hunt down Carlos, “The Jackal,” who, as a terror mercenary employed by Libyan revolutionary leader Moammar Gadhafi, had stormed OPEC headquarters in Vienna, and was committing murders for Palestinian terror groups.

Voss traveled to Athens. On the terrace of a hotel with a view of the Acropolis, not only Douglas, but also Clarridge — who had specially flown in from Washington — were waiting to meet the daring German operative. In his memoirs, Clarridge described the meeting as follows: “Just hours before I had left headquarters at Langley on this trip, a very senior clandestine service officer asked to see me alone in his office on the seventh floor. He could be excruciatingly elliptical when he desired — and this was such an occasion. Referring to my meeting with this agent in Athens, he hinted that if the agent could set up Carlos to be taken by a security service, it would be a boon for mankind and worth a bonus. I recall ten thousand dollars being mentioned. If Carlos were killed in the process, so be it. I acknowledged that I understood and left for Athens.”

Voss’ job was to find out where the Jackal was staying. But “Ganymede” lost his nerve this time. “Abu Daoud had told me that Carlos had a place in Damascus, not far from his own apartment,” Voss recalls today. “If something had happened to him, the people at the PLO intelligence service would have automatically suspected me. I found that too risky.”

‘CIA Beats Nazi’

In retrospect, his CIA contact Douglas was extremely happy about this decision. On December 6, 2012, after meeting with SPIEGEL, he sent an e-mail to his former agent: “I was delighted to hear that you are ageing gracefully — the alternative would have been unthinkable for me. … Let me say, I hold you in deep respect for your courage, quickness, wry humor, dedication and trustworthiness.” Douglas had written a book before he found out that Voss had survived his adventurous life. It’s a novel about a “plot in the Middle East” entitled: “Ganymede”.

Voss is also writing books; his third life. He specializes in crime thrillers and screenplays, having completed some 30 works since the late 1970s. But the author has never dared to tackle the most thrilling material of all — his complete life story.

Now, he’s telling the story for the first time. The German title of his book is “UnterGrund” (“Under Ground”) and, according to the preface, readers should not expect “a written confession seeking forgiveness.” Instead, he notes that “this is an account of events that, for security reasons, I thought I would have to keep secret forever.” Voss intends to save his honor and provide an explanation for his actions. In order to report on the 1972 Munich massacre, last spring SPIEGEL had applied for the release of classified files and written two articles mentioning Voss’ role in the attack. Afterwards, at least in the author’s eyes, his reputation was in tatters.

…

BY KARIN ASSMANN, FELIX BOHR, GUNTHER LATSCH and KLAUS WIEGREFE

01/02/2013 06:07 PM

Find this story at 2 January 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

A German far-right militant, whose animosity against Jews led him to aid Palestinians kill Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich massacre, says he was later recruited by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Willi Pohl, also known as Willi Voss, 68, was arrested by German authorities a few weeks after Palestinian terrorist group Black September stormed the Olympic village in Munich and took hostage 11 Israeli athletes. All of them were eventually killed by their captors during a botched escape attempt at the nearby Fürstenfeldbruck airport. Voss, who was a known neo-Nazi activist at the time, was charged with possession of weapons and providing logistical support to the Black September militants. However, after his sentence was suspended, Voss managed to secretly emigrate to Beirut, Lebanon, where he was recruited as an agent of Jihaz el-Razd, the intelligence service of the Fatah, the main group in the Palestine Liberation Organization. But in 1975, while on a PLO mission in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, he decided to switch sides. He made the decision after discovering that the car he and his girlfriend were transporting on behalf of the PLO from Beirut to Belgrade contained weapons and highly unstable explosives. He says that the PLO had apparently failed to mention the existence of the hidden items when they asked him to transport the car to Europe. According to Voss’ new book, which has just been published in Germany under the title UnterGrund (Underground), the guns and explosives were discovered by customs officers in Romania (then Rumania); but because at that time the communist country was an ally of the PLO, Voss and his girlfriend were allowed to travel to Belgrade, minus the car and the weapons. Once in the Yugoslav capital, they made the decision to walk in the US embassy, identify themselves as agents of the Jihaz el-Razd and offer their services to Washington. In an interview with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, published this week, Voss claims he was recruited by the CIA and given the operational codename GANYMEDE. The interview in Der Spiegel includes confirmation of Voss’ CIA role by his intelligence handler CIA officer Terrence Douglas. Douglas says he instructed Voss to return to the service of the PLO and Black September, which was a separate group, and provide the US with information about the activities of leading Palestinian militants from various factions, including Abu Daoud, Abu Nidal, and Abu Jihad, who led the Jihaz el-Razd.

…

January 4, 2013 by intelNews 5 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 4 January 2013

Explicit warnings that a terrorist attack might take place at the 1972 Munich Olympics were ignored by German officials, according to previously classified documents seen by SPIEGEL. The new details also reveal efforts to cover up the extent of their failure to stop the brutal murders of Israeli athletes.

It is no secret that the German authorities’ handling of the massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics was characterized by bumbling and cover-ups. But new documents seen by SPIEGEL reveal that officials concealed even more — and more blatant — errors than previously thought. Indeed, there were even several warnings prior to the Games that an attack was imminent.

ANZEIGE

Previously classified documents from investigative officials, embassy dispatches, and cabinet protocols released to SPIEGEL by the Chancellery, Foreign Office and state and federal intelligence agencies have revealed the lengths to which officials went to hide their mistakes.

In the attack on Sept. 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 members of Israel’s Olympic delegation, along with one German police officer. Five of the eight terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist group called “Black September” were also killed during the botched rescue attempt by German police at the Fürstenfeldbruck military airport, where the hostages were being held in two helicopters.

‘No Self-Criticism’

Already on Sept. 7, just one day after the memorial ceremony for the victims took place in Munich’s Olympic Stadium, a Foreign Ministry official told a special sitting of the federal cabinet what would ultimately become the maxim for both Bavarian and West German officials. “Mutual incriminations must be avoided,” a protocol for the meeting reads. “Also, no self-criticism.”

Just how closely this advice was followed can be seen in documentation from both the federal government and the Bavarian state government, which falsely described the “precision” with which the terrorists carried out their attack. In reality, officials knew that the “Black September” members were actually so poorly prepared that they even had trouble finding hotel rooms in Munich before their attack.

On the day of the attack, the Palestinians were even known to have gone right past the Israelis’ apartments in the Olympic village, encountering athletes from Hong Kong on an upper level of the building instead. An “analytic evaluation” of the attack by the Munich criminal police later explicitly determined that the terrorists had “conducted no precise reconnaissance” ahead of time.

But none of these details were revealed to the public. The fact that Bavarian state prosecutors in Munich were pursuing an investigation against police president Manfred Schreiber and his chief of operation on suspicion of negligent manslaughter also wasn’t mentioned in the document.

Clear Warnings

Concrete warnings of a potential attack also went unmentioned, despite the fact that they were so clear that their dismissal remains difficult to comprehend. On Aug. 14, 1972, a German embassy officer in Beirut heard that “an incident would be staged by from the Palestinian side during the Olympic Games in Munich.” Four days later, the Foreign Office forwarded the warning to the state intelligence agency in Bavaria, along with the recommendation to “take all possible available security measures” against such an attack.

Security agencies didn’t even register warnings that appeared in the press. On Sept. 2, three days ahead of the deadly hostage-taking, the Italian publication Gente wrote that terrorists from Black September were planning a “sensational act during the Olympic Games.” Only later — two days after the bloodbath in Munich — was the warning put on record through a tip-off from the Hamburg criminal police.

…

Released: July 23, 2012 | 12:20 PM

Find this story at 23 July 2012

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012

Both countries claim drones will be used for surveillance, but experts warn of future skirmishes in region’s airspace

The row between China and Japan over the disputed islands – called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan – has escalated recently. Photograph: AP

Drones have taken centre stage in an escalating arms race between China and Japan as they struggle to assert their dominance over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

China is rapidly expanding its nascent drone programme, while Japan has begun preparations to purchase an advanced model from the US. Both sides claim the drones will be used for surveillance, but experts warn the possibility of future drone skirmishes in the region’s airspace is “very high”.

Tensions over the islands – called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan – have ratcheted up in past weeks. Chinese surveillance planes flew near the islands four times in the second half of December, according to Chinese state media, but were chased away each time by Japanese F-15 fighter jets. Neither side has shown any signs of backing down.

Japan’s new conservative administration of Shinzo Abe has placed a priority on countering the perceived Chinese threat to the Senkakus since it won a landslide victory in last month’s general election. Soon after becoming prime minister, Abe ordered a review of Japan’s 2011-16 mid-term defence programme, apparently to speed up the acquisition of between one and three US drones.

Under Abe, a nationalist who wants a bigger international role for the armed forces, Japan is expected to increase defence spending for the first time in 11 years in 2013. The extra cash will be used to increase the number of military personnel and upgrade equipment. The country’s deputy foreign minister, Akitaka Saiki, summoned the Chinese ambassador to Japan on Tuesday to discuss recent “incursions” of Chinese ships into the disputed territory.

China appears unbowed. “Japan has continued to ignore our warnings that their vessels and aircraft have infringed our sovereignty,” top-level marine surveillance official Sun Shuxian said in an interview posted to the State Oceanic Administration’s website, according to Reuters. “This behaviour may result in the further escalation of the situation at sea and has prompted China to pay great attention and vigilance.”

China announced late last month that the People’s Liberation Army was preparing to test-fly a domestically developed drone, which analysts say is likely a clone of the US’s carrier-based X-47B. “Key attack technologies will be tested,” reported the state-owned China Daily, without disclosing further details.

Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canadian-based Kanwa Defence Review, said China might be attempting to develop drones that can perform reconnaissance missions as far away as Guam, where the US is building a military presence as part of its “Asia Pivot” strategy.

China unveiled eight new models in November at an annual air show on the southern coastal city Zhuhai, photographs of which appeared prominently in the state-owned press. Yet the images may better indicate China’s ambitions than its abilities, according to Chang: “We’ve seen these planes on the ground only — if they work or not, that’s difficult to explain.”

Japanese media reports said the defence ministry hopes to introduce Global Hawk unmanned aircraft near the disputed islands by 2015 at the earliest in an attempt to counter Beijing’s increasingly assertive naval activity in the area.

Chinese surveillance vessels have made repeated intrusions into Japanese waters since the government in Tokyo in effect nationalised the Senkakus in the summer, sparking riots in Chinese cities and damaging trade ties between Asia’s two biggest economies.

The need for Japan to improve its surveillance capability was underlined late last year when Japanese radar failed to pick up a low-flying Chinese aircraft as it flew over the islands.

The Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed defence ministry official as saying the drones would be used “to counter China’s growing assertiveness at sea, especially when it comes to the Senkaku islands”.

China’s defence budget has exploded over the past decade, from about £12.4bn in 2002 to almost £75bn in 2011, and its military spending could surpass the US’s by 2035. The country’s first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Soviet model called the Liaoning, completed its first sea trials in August.

A 2012 report by the Pentagon acknowledged long-standing rumours that China was developing a new generation of stealth drones, called Anjian, or Dark Sword, whose capabilities could surpass those of the US’s fleet.

China’s state media reported in October that the country would build 11 drone bases along the coastline by 2015. “Over disputed islands, such as the Diaoyu Islands, we do not lag behind in terms of the number of patrol vessels or the frequency of patrolling,” said Senior Colonel Du Wenlong, according to China Radio International. “The problem lies in our surveillance capabilities.”

…

Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing and Justin McCurry in Tokyo
The Guardian, Wednesday 9 January 2013

Find this story at 9 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Though publicly the administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say.

More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries still object to such measures.

But since the first targeted killing by the United States in 2002, two administrations have taken the position that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they are found.

Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.

In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “The Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my successors for some time to come.”

The president expressed wariness of the powerful temptation drones pose to policy makers. “There’s a remoteness to it that makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,” he said.

Despite public remarks by Mr. Obama and his aides on the legal basis for targeted killing, the program remains officially classified. In court, fighting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times seeking secret legal opinions on targeted killings, the government has refused even to acknowledge the existence of the drone program in Pakistan.

But by many accounts, there has been a significant shift in the nature of the targets. In the early years, most strikes were aimed at ranking leaders of Al Qaeda thought to be plotting to attack the United States. That is the purpose Mr. Obama has emphasized, saying in a CNN interview in September that drones were used to prevent “an operational plot against the United States” and counter “terrorist networks that target the United States.”

But for at least two years in Pakistan, partly because of the C.I.A.’s success in decimating Al Qaeda’s top ranks, most strikes have been directed at militants whose main battle is with the Pakistani authorities or who fight with the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, some strikes apparently launched by the United States killed militants who were preparing to attack Yemeni military forces. Some of those killed were wearing suicide vests, according to Yemeni news reports.

“Unless they were about to get on a flight to New York to conduct an attack, they were not an imminent threat to the United States,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is a critic of the strikes. “We don’t say that we’re the counterinsurgency air force of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but we are.”

Then there is the matter of strikes against people whose identities are unknown. In an online video chat in January, Mr. Obama spoke of the strikes in Pakistan as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” But for several years, first in Pakistan and later in Yemen, in addition to “personality strikes” against named terrorists, the C.I.A. and the military have carried out “signature strikes” against groups of suspected, unknown militants.

Originally that term was used to suggest the specific “signature” of a known high-level terrorist, such as his vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance, young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the greatest conflict inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.

Many people inside and outside the government have argued for far greater candor about all of the strikes, saying excessive secrecy has prevented public debate in Congress or a full explanation of their rationale. Experts say the strikes are deeply unpopular both in Pakistan and Yemen, in part because of allegations of large numbers of civilian casualties, which American officials say are exaggerated.

…

November 24, 2012
By SCOTT SHANE

Find this story at 24 November 2012

© 2013 The New York Times Company

(Washington, DC) – Governments should pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. These future weapons, sometimes called “killer robots,” would be able to choose and fire on targets without human intervention.

The 50-page report, “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” outlines concerns about these fully autonomous weapons, which would inherently lack human qualities that provide legal and non-legal checks on the killing of civilians. In addition, the obstacles to holding anyone accountable for harm caused by the weapons would weaken the law’s power to deter future violations.

“Giving machines the power to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield would take technology too far,” said Steve Goose, Arms Division director at Human Rights Watch. “Human control of robotic warfare is essential to minimizing civilian deaths and injuries.”

“Losing Humanity” is the first major publication about fully autonomous weapons by a nongovernmental organization and is based on extensive research into the law, technology, and ethics of these proposed weapons. It is jointly published by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic.

Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Clinic called for an international treaty that would absolutely prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons. They also called on individual nations to pass laws and adopt policies as important measures to prevent development, production, and use of such weapons at the domestic level.

Fully autonomous weapons do not yet exist, and major powers, including the United States, have not made a decision to deploy them. But high-tech militaries are developing or have already deployed precursors that illustrate the push toward greater autonomy for machines on the battlefield. The United States is a leader in this technological development. Several other countries – including China, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom – have also been involved. Many experts predict that full autonomy for weapons could be achieved in 20 to 30 years, and some think even sooner.

“It is essential to stop the development of killer robots before they show up in national arsenals,” Goose said. “As countries become more invested in this technology, it will become harder to persuade them to give it up.”

Fully autonomous weapons could not meet the requirements of international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch and the Harvard clinic said. They would be unable to distinguish adequately between soldiers and civilians on the battlefield or apply the human judgment necessary to evaluate the proportionality of an attack – whether civilian harm outweighs military advantage.

These robots would also undermine non-legal checks on the killing of civilians. Fully autonomous weapons could not show human compassion for their victims, and autocrats could abuse them by directing them against their own people. While replacing human troops with machines could save military lives, it could also make going to war easier, which would shift the burden of armed conflict onto civilians.

Finally, the use of fully autonomous weapons would create an accountability gap. Trying to hold the commander, programmer, or manufacturer legally responsible for a robot’s actions presents significant challenges. The lack of accountability would undercut the ability to deter violations of international law and to provide victims meaningful retributive justice.

While most militaries maintain that for the immediate future humans will retain some oversight over the actions of weaponized robots, the effectiveness of that oversight is questionable, Human Rights Watch and the Harvard clinic said. Moreover, military statements have left the door open to full autonomy in the future.

“Action is needed now, before killer robots cross the line from science fiction to feasibility,” Goose said.

November 19, 2012

Find this story at 19 November 2012

© Copyright 2012, Human Rights Watch

Forget Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and all the other secret little warzones. The real center of the U.S. drone campaign is in plain sight — on the hot and open battlefield of Afghanistan.

The American military has launched 333 drone strikes this year in Afghanistan. That’s not only the highest total ever, according to U.S. Air Force statistics. It’s essentially the same number of robotic attacks in Pakistan since the CIA-led campaign there began nearly eight years ago. In the last 30 days, there have been three reported strikes in Yemen. In Afghanistan, that’s just an average day’s worth of remotely piloted attacks. And the increased strikes come as the rest of the war in Afghanistan is slowing down.

The secret drone campaigns have drawn the most scrutiny because of the legal, geopolitical, and ethical questions they raise. But it’s worth remembering that the rise of the flying robots is largely occurring in the open, on an acknowledged battlefield where the targets are largely unquestioned and the attending issues aren’t nearly as fraught.

“The difference between the Afghan operation and the ones operations in Pakistan and elsewhere come down to the fundamental differences between open military campaigns and covert campaigns run by the intelligence community. It shapes everything from the level of transparency to the command and control to the rules of engagements to the process and consequences if an air strike goes wrong,” e-mails Peter W. Singer, who runs the Brookings Institution’s 21st Century Defense Initiative. (Full disclosure: I have a non-resident fellowship there.) “This is why the military side has been far less controversial, and thus why many have pushed for it to play a greater role as the strikes slowly morphed from isolated, covert events into a regularized air war.”

The military has 61 Predator and Reaper “combat air patrols,” each with three or four robotic planes. The CIA’s inventory is believed to be just a fraction of that: 30 to 35 drones total, although there is thought to be some overlap between the military and intelligence agency fleets. The Washington Post reported last month that the CIA is looking for another 10 drones as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become more and more central to the agency’s worldwide counterterror campaign.

In Pakistan, those drones are flown with a wink and a nod, to avoid the perception of violating national sovereignty. In Yemen, the robots go after men just because they fit a profile of what the U.S. believes a terrorist to be. In both countries, people are considered legitimate targets if they happen to be male and young and in the wrong place at the wrong time. The White House keeps a “matrix” on who merits robotic death. Congress (outside of the intelligence committees) largely learns about the programs through the papers.

None of these statements is true about the drone war in Afghanistan, where strikes are ordered by a local commander, overseen by military lawyers, conducted with the (sometimes reluctant) blessing of the Kabul government, and used almost entirely to help troops under fire. The UAVs aren’t flown to dodge issues of sovereignty or to avoid traditional military assets. They’re used because they work better — staying in the sky longer than traditional aircraft and employing more advanced sensors to make sure the targets they hit are legit.

Figures on the air war in Afghanistan, supplied by the U.S. military.

The U.S. military is now launching more drone strikes — an average of 33 per month — than at any moment in the 11 years of the Afghan conflict. It’s a major escalation from just last year, when the monthly average was 24.5. And it’s happening while the rest of the American war effort is winding down: There are 34,000 fewer American troops than there were in early 2011; U.S. casualties are down 40 percent from 2010′s toll; militant attacks are off by about a quarter; civilian deaths have declined a bit from their awful peak.

Even the air war is shrinking. Overall surveillance sorties are down, from an average of 3,183 per month last year to 2,954 in 2012. (Drones flew 860 of those sorties in 2011, and now fly 761 per month today.) Missions in which U.S. aircraft fire their weapons have declined, too. That used to happen 450 times per month on average in 2011. This year, the monthly total dropped to 360.

…

By Noah Shachtman11.09.124:00 AM

Find this story at 11 September 2012

Wired.com © 2013 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.

A classified file released by the FBI shows how the agency tracked Marilyn Monroe’s suspected ties to communism in 1956.

The agency documented an anonymous phone call to the New York Daily News that year warning that playwright Arthur Miller was a communist and Monroe had ‘drifted into the communist orbit’ after her marriage to him earlier that year.

The file is just one piece of the puzzle about what the FBI knew about the actress when she died in August 1962.

The Associated Press waging an ongoing campaign to have more of the FBI documents released by the agency, coinciding with the 50th anniversary Monroe’s death.

Being watched: Marilyn Monroe and her husband, playwright Arthur Miller were both suspected of communist activities by the FBI

The redacted document reveals that on July 11, 1956, the agency got a tip that an anonymous male caller phoned the Daily News to report that the actress’s company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, was ‘filled with communists’ and that money from the company was being used to finance communist activities.

The caller said Miller’s marriage to Monroe during a Jewish ceremony less than a months earlier was a ‘coverup.’

Miller, the man said, ‘was still a member of the CP (communist party) and was their cultural front man.’

The FBI has long made portions of its documents about Monroe public, but most of them are heavily redacted.

Surveillance: This FBI file documented an anonymous call to the New York Daily News. It’s unknown how the agency found out about it

However, the FBI claims it has lost its files on the actress and cannot release them.

Finding out precisely when the records were moved – as the FBI says has happened – required the filing of yet another, still-pending Freedom of Information Act request.

The most recent version of the files is publicly available on the bureau’s website, The Vault, which periodically posts FBI records on celebrities, government officials, spies and criminals.

The AP appealed the FBI’s continued censorship of its Monroe files, noting the agency has not given ‘any legal or factual analysis of the foreseeable harm that might result from the release of the full records.’

Marilyn Monroe is seen here with Jean Pierre Piquet, manager of Continental Hilton Hotel. The FBI has released a new version of files it kept on Monroe that reveal the names of some of her acquaintances who had drawn concern from the FBI

The star’s death was ruled likely drug overdose, but questions still remain about the FBI’s role in her life

Monroe’s star power and fears she might be recruited by the Communist Party during the tenure of longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover led to reports being taken on her activities and relationships, including her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller.

Monroe’s file begins in 1955 and mostly focuses on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. The file continues up until the months before her death, and also includes several news stories and references to Norman Mailer’s biography of the actress, which focused on questions about whether Monroe was killed by the government.

…

By Daily Mail Reporter and Associated Press

PUBLISHED: 06:03 GMT, 28 December 2012 | UPDATED: 11:08 GMT, 28 December 2012

Find this story at 28 December 2012

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Erst 50 Jahre nach ihrem Tod gibt es unzensierte Einblicke darüber, wie sehr die US-Bundespolizei Marilyn Monroe († 36) im Visier hatte. Aufgetauchte FBI-Akten beweisen, dass sie damals wegen ihrer angeblichen Kontakte zu Kommunisten unter Beobachtung stand. Wider Erwarten bringen die Dokumente keine neuen Erkenntnisse über die Todesumstände des Filmstars.

Bereits im Sommer hatte die Nachrichtenagentur AP versucht, sich Einblick in die FBI-Akten über Marilyn Monroe zu verschaffen. Anlass war ihr 50. Todestag am 5. August 2012. Die Unterlagen über die Ermittlungen waren in den Monaten vor dem Tod des Filmstars verschwunden. Das FBI erklärte, die über Monroe angelegten Akten seien nicht mehr in ihrem Besitz. Ebenso wenig waren sie im Nationalarchiv der USA auffindbar. Erst jetzt gelang es, an die Akten zu kommen.

Ihre Akte beginnt 1955, in dem Jahr, als sie mit der berühmten U-Bahn-Szene aus „Das verflixte 7. Jahr“ für Wirbel sorgte. Das FBI beobachtete Marilyn Monroe mehrere Jahre lang. Grund: Ihre Verbindungen zu Sympathisanten der kommunistischen Ideologie. Die meisten Dokumente der Bundespolizei betreffen eine Reise von Monroe nach Mexiko im Jahr 1962.

Sie besuchte dort den Links-Aktivisten Frederick Vanderbilt Field († 94), der von seiner wohlhabenden Familie wegen seiner linken Ansichten enterbt wurde. Laut den Informanten des FBI’s seien die beiden geradezu ineinander vernarrt gewesen.

Das Treffen zwischen Vanderbilt Field und Monroe habe Sorge in ihrem engsten Umfeld ausgelöst. „Die Situation hat für Bestürzung bei Monroes Entourage gesorgt und ebenso unter der Gruppe von amerikanischen Kommunisten in Mexiko,“ heißt es in den Akten.

…

29.12.2012 – 13:15 Uhr

Find this story at 29 December 2012

© Copyright BILD digital 2011

A federal judge has refused to recuse herself from the closely watched trial of jailed computer hacker Jeremy Hammond, an alleged member of the group “Anonymous” charged with hacking into the computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor and turning over some five million emails to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Hammond’s lawyers had asked Federal Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself because her husband worked for a client of Stratfor, and himself had his email hacked. Hammond’s supporters say the Stratfor documents shed light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. He has been held without bail or trial for more than nine months. We speak with Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, about Hammond’s case. [includes rush transcript]

Find this story at 27 December 2012

El servicio secreto de Mohamed VI es, tras el ruso, el que más agentes pierde en el Viejo Continente
Yassin Mansouri, compañero de estudios del rey, dirige lo dirige desde 2005

Bagdad A., marroquí, de 59 años, se movía con soltura en el seno de la inmigración magrebí en Alemania. Recopilaba “informaciones sobre manifestaciones organizadas por grupos de oposición”, según la fiscalía federal germana. En 2007 se ofreció a los servicios secretos de su país alegando que poseía “una amplia red de contactos” en el seno de la comunidad marroquí. Le contrataron. Cinco años después, el 7 de diciembre, la fiscalía de Karlsruhe le imputó por “actividades por cuenta de servicios secretos extranjeros”.

Bagdad A. es el cuarto marroquí detenido por espionaje en Alemania desde 2011. Todos se consagraban a informar sobre las actividades de sus 230.000 compatriotas allí residentes, excepto Mohamed B., de 56 años, apresado en febrero en Berlín, y que se dedicaba a vigilar a los miembros del Frente Polisario. Cobró por ello 22.800 euros, según la fiscalía.

De todos los agentes marroquíes caídos estos últimos años en Europa, el que hizo más ruido fue, en 2008, Redouane Lemhaouli, de 42 años, un policía de origen marroquí que tenía acceso a las bases de datos del Ministerio del Interior de los Países Bajos. De ahí sacó información sobre “actuaciones contra el rey de Marruecos”, “terrorismo” y “tráfico de armas”, para comunicársela a los espías que, con cobertura diplomática, le habían reclutado.

El caso de Re, el apodo que habían puesto sus compañeros al policía, ha sido el que más repercusión tuvo porque el agente llegó a codearse con la princesa Máxima, esposa del príncipe Orange, y con un miembro del Gobierno holandés. Se sentó a su lado, en primera fila, durante una ceremonia en la que 57 chavales inmigrantes, muchos de ellos de origen marroquí, recibieron diplomas que les habilitaban para trabajar como personal de tierra en el aeropuerto de Rotterdam. Re les había formado.

Meses después, el policía fue expulsado del cuerpo y condenado a 240 horas de trabajos sociales. El que era entonces ministro de Exteriores holandés, Maxime Verhagen, envió una carta a los diputados lamentando “la intervención de sectores o servicios para influir a los ciudadanos de origen marroquí”.

Los agentes marroquíes sufren traspiés en la Europa del norte, pero se mueven con más libertad en la del sur

En total, desde 2008 han trascendido 10 detenciones y procesamientos de agentes o expulsiones de diplomáticos de Marruecos en Europa —Mauritania echó también a un undécimo confidente el año pasado—, un número solo superado por Rusia, que en los últimos cinco años perdió a 31 espías en el Viejo Continente.

Los 11 agentes marroquíes trabajaban para la Dirección General de Estudios y Documentación (DGED), el servicio de espionaje exterior de Yassin Mansouri, de 50 años, el primer civil que lo dirige. Es el único servicio de inteligencia que formalmente depende del palacio real de Marruecos y se ha convertido en algo más que un servicio secreto. Es un instrumento de la diplomacia marroquí. La personalidad de su jefe lo explica.

Mansouri forma parte del círculo de estrechos colaboradores del rey Mohamed VI, con el que estudió en el colegio real. Es además el único entre los íntimos del monarca que no ha sido salpicado por un escándalo económico o político.

Su travesía del desierto

acabó poco después

de la entronización

de Mohamed VI

Su lealtad al futuro rey le provocó incluso, en 1997, ser apartado del puesto que desempeñaba en el Ministerio del Interior por su titular, Driss Basri. Sospechaba que le espiaba por cuenta del príncipe heredero, al que él sí vigilaba por encargo de su padre, Hassan II. Mansouri fue, sin embargo, el único de los amigos de juventud del príncipe que cayó bien a Basri. Ensalzó ante Hassan II su capacidad de trabajo y el rey le envió en 1992 a EE UU para que le formase el FBI.

Nacido en Beejad, en el centro del país, hijo de un alem (sabio del islam), Mansouri recibió una educación religiosa, algo trastornada por las amistades izquierdistas de su hermano, hasta que se le ofreció plaza en el colegio real. Aún hoy día sigue siendo un hombre piadoso que intenta rezar con frecuencia, que no bebe alcohol, ni fuma, ni hace ostentación.

Su travesía del desierto acabó tras la entronización de Mohamed VI, que en 1999 le nombró director de la MAP, la agencia de prensa oficial, desde donde regresó en 2003, esta vez por la puerta grande, a Interior. Durante dos años estuvo al frente de la más importante dirección general del ministerio del que Basri ya había sido expulsado. De ahí dio el salto al espionaje y a la diplomacia discreta.

Mansouri formó, por ejemplo, parte de la delegación marroquí que acudió a Nueva York en 2007 a presentar al secretario general de la ONU la oferta de autonomía para el Sáhara; se sentó varias veces a negociar con el Polisario y se entrevistó en secreto en París, en 2007, con la ministra israelí de Exteriores, Tzipi Livn. En 2008 recibió en Rabat al secretario de Estado adjunto norteamericano, David Welsh, al que expresó su preocupación por la fragilidad del régimen tunecino y la “codicia” de su dictador Ben Ali, según revelaron posteriormente los cables de Wikileaks. Tres años después, Ben Ali fue derrocado. Mansouri fue de los pocos que acertaron en su pronóstico sobre Túnez..

La DGED se ha dedicado, desde su creación en 1973, a vigilar a los exiliados enemigos de la monarquía alauí, antes izquierdistas y ahora más bien islamistas y a los independentistas saharauis. Pero a medida que la emigración marroquí ha ido creciendo también se esfuerza en supervisarla para que no germine en ella el extremismo, para que sea leal al trono.

En España, Marruecos ha elaborado “una estrategia de gran magnitud”, señalaba en mayo de 2011 un informe del Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) enviado por su director, el general Félix Sanz, a tres ministros. “Su objetivo es extender su influencia e incrementar el control sobre las colonias marroquíes utilizando la excusa de la religión”, añadía. Esta supervisión la ejerce, según el CNI, “a través de su embajada y consulados (…), personal afín”, es decir, agentes de la DGED con cobertura diplomática y confidentes reclutados sobre el terreno. También colabora la Fundación Hassan II, que preside la princesa Lalla Meryem, hermana de Mohamed VI, cuyo presupuesto no está sometido al control del Parlamento.

Prueba del interés de la DGED por la religión fue la intervención de Mansouri, en noviembre de 2008, ante un nutrido grupo de imanes, procedentes de España e Italia, e invitados a Marraquech por el Ministerio de Asuntos Islámicos. Un año antes, Mansouri viajó a Mallorca para reunirse con el que era entonces su homólogo español, Alberto Saiz, y advertirle de que estaba “jugando con fuego” al fomentar en Ceuta el auge de los tablig, una corriente islámica de origen indio, en detrimento del islam malekita que impera en Marruecos.

…

Ignacio Cembrero Madrid 14 DIC 2012 – 20:47 CET

Find this story at 14 December 2012

© EDICIONES EL PAÍS, S.L.

Die Bundesanwaltschaft hat am 8. November 2012 vor dem Staatsschutzsenat des Kammergerichts in Berlin gegen

den 59-jährigen deutschen und marokkanischen Staatsangehörigen Bagdad A.

Anklage wegen geheimdienstlicher Agententätigkeit (§ 99 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 StGB) erhoben.

Dem Angeschuldigten wird in der nunmehr zugestellten Anklageschrift vorgeworfen, von Mai 2007 bis Ende Februar 2012 für den marokkanischen Nachrichtendienst Informationen über in Deutschland lebende Oppositionelle beschafft zu haben.

In der Anklageschrift ist im Wesentlichen folgender Sachverhalt dargelegt:

Der Angeschuldigte verfügt über ein weit verzweigtes Netz von Kontakten zu den in Deutschland lebenden Marokkanern. Im Jahr 2007 erklärte er sich gegenüber dem marokkanischen Auslandsgeheimdienst bereit, seine Kontakte zu nutzen, um Informationen über marokkanische Oppositionelle in Deutschland zu beschaffen. Bis Ende Februar 2012 stand er ununterbrochen in Kontakt zu seinen nachrichtendienstlichen Auftraggebern und unterrichtete sie über seine Erkenntnisse aus der marokkanischen Gemeinschaft. Insbesondere berichtete er seinen Führungsfunktionären von Demonstrationen oppositioneller Gruppierungen.

07.12.2012 – 34/2012

Find this story at 7 December 2012

Karlsruhe (ots) – Nr. 16

Die Bundesanwaltschaft hat am 9. Mai 2012 vor dem Staatsschutzsenat des Kammergerichts in Berlin gegen

den 47-jährigen deutschen und marokkanischen Staatsangehörigen Mohammed B.

Anklage wegen geheimdienstlicher Agententätigkeit (§ 99 Abs. 1 Nr. 1, 2 StGB) und Urkundenfälschung (§ 267 StGB) erhoben.

Dem Angeschuldigten wird in der nunmehr zugestellten Anklageschrift vorgeworfen, ab Januar 2011 Informationen über in Deutschland lebende Marokkaner an den marokkanischen Nachrichtendienst weitergegeben zu haben.

Im Einzelnen wird in der Anklageschrift von folgendem Sachverhalt ausgegangen:

Der Angeschuldigte hat für seine nachrichtendienstlichen Auftraggeber vor allem marokkanische Oppositionelle und Anhänger der “Frente Polisario”, einer Befreiungsbewegung für die Westsahara, ausgespäht. So berichtete er seinen Führungsoffizieren etwa über eine Veranstaltung mit einem Repräsentanten der “Frente Polisario” in Berlin. Zudem veranlasste er, dass Informationen über die in Berlin ansässige “Projektgruppe Westsahara” zusammengetragen und an seine Auftraggeber weitergeleitet wurden. Außerdem berichtete er seinen Auftraggebern über die Haltung eines Gelehrten und eines Botschaftsangehörigen zur marokkanischen Staatsführung.

Für seine Dienste erhielt der Angeschuldigte im Jahr 2011 einen Agentenlohn von 22.800 Euro. Um die Herkunft des Geldes zu verschleiern, stellte der Angeschuldigte Rechnungen über angebliche Werbeveranstaltungen für die staatliche marokkanische Fluggesellschaft aus.

Der Angeschuldigte wurde am 15. Februar 2012 aufgrund eines Haftbefehls des Ermittlungsrichters des Bundesgerichtshof vom 14. Februar 2012 festgenommen (vgl. Pressemitteilung Nr. 5/2012 vom 15. Februar 2012) und befand sich bis 5. Juni 2012 in Untersuchungshaft. Der Haftbefehl war am 4. Juni 2012 außer Vollzug gesetzt worden, nachdem der Angeschuldigte den Tatvorwurf der geheimdienstlichen Agententätigkeit eingeräumt hatte.

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof (GBA)
Frauke Köhler
Staatsanwältin
Brauerstr. 30
76137 Karlsruhe
Telefon: +49 (0)721 8191-410
E-Mail: pressestelle@gba.bund.de
http://www.generalbundesanwalt.de/

12.06.2012 | 14:25 Uhr

Find this story at 12 June 2012

Die Bundesanwaltschaft hat einen mutmaßlichen Spion Marokkos festnehmen lassen. Der Mann soll marokkanische Aktivisten an den Geheimdienst seines Landes verraten haben.

Eine Truppe der Westsahara-Rebellenbewegung Frente Polisario, deren Anhänger der mutmaßliche Spion verraten haben soll.

Die Bundesanwaltschaft hat in Berlin einen 56-jährigen Marokkaner wegen mutmaßlicher Spionage festnehmen lassen. Er sei dringend verdächtig, Informationen über in Deutschland lebende Landsleute an den marokkanischen Geheimdienst weitergegeben zu haben. Ein Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs ordnete Untersuchungshaft an.

Dem Festgenommenen wird geheimdienstliche Agententätigkeit vorgeworfen. Insbesondere soll er Informationen über Anhänger der Widerstandsbewegung für die Westsahara, Frente Polisario, beschafft haben. Die Rebellenbewegung kämpft mit Unterstützung Algeriens für die vollständige Unabhängigkeit der Westsahara. Die Region war früher eine spanische Kolonie, die nach ihrer Unabhängigkeit im Jahr 1975 von Marokko annektiert wurde.

…

15.02.2012 – 18:30 Uhr

Find this story at 15 February 2012

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