Immediate Solidarity Actions Required

For more information go to the following web site: nonviolence.org.

Mordechai Vanunu was arrested this morning in his room at St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem, by a huge police force (about 30 armed officers). The pretext for his arrest: Vanunu violated the Draconian restrictions that were imposed on him when he was released from prison in April, by giving interviews to foreign media.

The attempt to silence Mordechai Vanunu on this of all days, is an attempt to bury Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal together with Yasser Arafat. While the world media and attention are focused on the burial of the Palestinian leader, the Israeli government is attempting to disappear the nuclear whistleblower, whose only crime is revealing the terrible truth that Israel is trying to hide: weapons of mass destruction that are concealed from Israeli citizens and from the world.

Mordechai Vanunu is expected to be brought to court on Friday morning, November 12. His supporters will demonstrate outside the courthouse. Details will be sent out later today.

Hania with picture of her husband Kamel: Hania and her children in the village of Abu Sifa. Her husband and their father, Kamel Hassen Khoumais, has been imprisoned since December 16, 2003. (Photo by Jane MacKay Wright)

The Abu Ghraib courts-martial of three U.S. soldiers is being moved from Iraq to Fort Hood, Texas. The first court-martial is for Spc. Charles Graner and is scheduled to begin Jan. 7, 2005. Sgt. Javal Davis and Spc. Sabrina Harman will also to be tried at Fort Hood. Graner’s lawyer has said the Garner and other military police officers were following orders from military intelligence officials and civilian contractors.

Looking back over the last fourteen years of US action in Iraq, we see that the US has effectively imprisoned the entire country, stripped its citizens of their dignity, their wealth, their health and education, and subjected them to a campaign of ongoing terror, without appeal and apparently without end.

The systemic abuse in the prison system is not only more evidence of what the cult of militarism does, but also as further proof that our government has brought upon the Iraqi people exactly what it has claimed to be liberating them from - terror, insecurity, tyranny. This is a fundamental betrayal of staggering magnitude, a betrayal not only of US trust and security - for surely we are ever more clearly and powerfully focused in the sights of people who would avenge themselves violently against the US - but also a betrayal of the Iraqi nation. Its citizens have been treated, not as people with an inalienable right to self-determination, but as objects in a high-stakes political and economic ruse.

Download PDF: CPT Report on Iraqi Detainees

Recently Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has Updated their Iraqi Detainee Website. CPT Iraq has done a thorough job of rechecking with the detainees listed on their detainee files. Some have been released and shared devastating testimony of their detention experience. We encourage new people to join the campaign on behalf of Iraqi detainees, and those already involved to re-energize their efforts.

New and updated information is now available on the site.

By Dahr Jamail

November 11, 2004

Today Abu Talat meets me and he is in a somber mood.

He’s down because last night after the curfew began at 9:30pm, US military helicopters were circling his neighborhood until 3am.

“How can we live like this,” he asks while holding up his hands, “We are trapped in our own country.”

He tells me, “You know Dahr, everyone is praying for God to take revenge on the Americans. Everyone!” He went on to tell me that even while people are praying in their homes, they are praying for God to take vengeance on the Americans for what they are doing in Falluja.

“Everyone I’ve talked to the last couple of nights, 80 or 90 people, is telling me they are doing this,” he says somberly.

Later that night Salam shows up with a wild look in his eyes, sweat beading on his forehead. “My friend has just been killed, and he was one of my best friends,” he tells me, “I can’t imagine that he is dead, really, but I guess it is ok.”

by Riverbend
from her blog Baghdad Burning
Riverbend is an Iraqi living in Baghdad. Juan Cole of Informed Comment has this to say about Riverbend, “the young woman computer systems analyst in Baghdad, Riverbend, who is in her views closer to the Iraqi opinion polls, especially with regard to Sunni Arabs, but who is not being feted in Washington, DC.

I’m not feeling well- it’s a combination of the change of weather and the decline in the situation. Eid is less than a week away but no one is feeling at all festive. We’re all worried about the situation in Falloojeh and surrounding regions. We’ve ceased worrying about the explosions in Baghdad and are now concerned with the people who have left their homes and valuables and are living off of the charity of others.

Allawi declared a “State of Emergency” a couple of days ago… A state of emergency now - because previous to this week, we Iraqis were living in an American made Utopia, as the world is well aware. So what does an “Emergency State” signify for Iraqis? Basically, it means we are now officially more prone to being detained, raided, and just generally abused by our new Iraqi forces and American ones. Today they declared a curfew on Baghdad after 10 p.m. but it hasn’t really made an impact because people have stopped leaving their houses after dark anyway.