Human rights group: Israel violated laws of war in fatal house bombing in Gaza conflict

JERUSALEM - A leading human rights group on Friday accused Israel of violating the laws of war when it killed 12 civilians in an airstrike during its recent conflict with Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Israel's army countered that Palestinian militants were to blame for hiding in civilian buildings.

Israel launched its air assault on Gaza last month to try to stop frequent rocket barrages at southern Israel. The conflict ended after eight days with an Egyptian-brokered truce.

During the fighting in mid-November, the Israeli air force attacked the home of the Daloo family in Gaza City, killing 10 family members — including women and children — and two other civilians.

A military spokesman initially said it was targeting a senior member of the Hamas armed wing, whom he identified as Yahia Abayah, but the military later announced the airstrike had killed Mohammed Daloo, calling him a Hamas militant.

Human Rights Watch said neither Abayah nor Daloo were listed as killed on the websites of Hamas and Islamic Jihad's militant wings, which posts the names of its fighters killed in conflict.

The rights group said Daloo's police commander said Daloo was a low-ranking civilian police officer serving in a unit that protects Gaza government figures and visiting officials, and was not a member of an armed group.

"Even if (the police officer) was a legitimate military target under the laws of war, the likelihood that the attack on a civilian home would have killed large numbers of civilians made it unlawfully disproportionate," the Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The group called on Israel to explain why it targeted a home full of civilians.

In a statement on Friday, Israel's army said the Daloo home was a hideout for a senior Hamas militant involved in rocket attacks. It did not name the militant.

The army said it worked to minimize noncombatant casualties, making phone calls to Gaza residents warning them of airstrikes in the area, dropping leaflets from warplanes instructing them to get away from Hamas operatives and broadcasting warning messages on the radio.

It said it targeted only those sites associated with militant activity, based on Israeli intelligence collected for months. Civilians were never a target, it said.

"While the loss of life on both sides is regrettable, responsibility ultimately lies with terror operatives who render the civilian population a human shield by using civilian buildings as hideouts or weapon depots," the army statement said.

In a separate incident, a fight broke out between Thursday between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron, the military said. The incident was unusual because of the longstanding security co-ordination between Palestinian police and Israel's army.

Hebron is divided into Israeli and Palestinian-controlled sections. More than 600 Jews, among the most hard-line in the West Bank, live there in heavily guarded enclaves in the middle of the city of about 170,000 Palestinians. There is nearly constant tension between the two sides.

According to Israeli media, Palestinian policemen tried to block Israeli soldiers from entering a part of Hebron, and when Israeli soldiers objected, the two sides began pushing each other.

The army said 250 Palestinians gathered and threw rocks toward the Israeli soldiers, who responded with what the army called "riot dispersal means," not live fire.

US: 200 teens have been detained in Afghan war

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.

The U.S. State Department characterized the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating U.S. compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The U.S. military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield," the report said.

A few are still confined at the Detention Facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said. "Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, distributed this week.

Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the U.S. report said.

If the average age is 16, "This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by U.S. forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday.

"I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram," said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees.

"I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan," Foster said Friday. "There are other children whose parents have said these children are under 18 at the time of their capture, and the U.S. doesn't allow the detainees or their families to contest their age."

Dakwar also criticized the length of detention, a year on average, according to the U.S. report.

"This is an extraordinarily unacceptably long period of time that exposes children in detention to greater risk of physical and mental abuse, especially if they are denied access to the protections guaranteed to them under international law," Dakwar said.

The U.S. State Department was called for comment on the criticism, and a representative said they were seeking an officer to reply.

The previous American report four years ago provided a snapshot of the focus of the U.S. military's effort in the endgame of the Bush presidency after years of warfare and anti-terrorism campaigns. In 2008, the U.S. said it held about 500 juveniles in Iraqi detention centers and then had only about 10 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. A total of some 2,500 youths had been detained, almost all in Iraq, from 2002 through 2008 under the Bush administration.

Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 in part on winding down active U.S. involvement in the Iraq War, and shifting the military focus to Afghanistan. The latest figures on under-18 detainees reflect the redeployment of U.S. efforts to Afghanistan.

Because the teen detainees were not charged with any crime, "a detainee would generally not be provided legal assistance." They were allowed to attend open hearings and defend themselves, and a personal advocate was assigned to each detainee, the report said.

"These are basically sham proceedings," Foster said. "The personal representatives don't do anything different for the child detainees than they do for the adults, which is nothing."

The report added that "the purpose of detention is not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield."

It cited a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court case, Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, as establishing that "the law of armed conflict permits the United States to detain belligerents until the end of hostilities without charging such individuals with crimes, because they are not being held as criminals facing future criminal trial."

The U.S. military is fighting irregular forces — al-Qaida, the Taliban, and an array of similar shadowy insurgent or terrorist groups. So it is not clear when "hostilities" would ever formally end, since there is no declaration of war and no enemy government to defeat. Only the United States can decide when it deems a conflict to be over, in those circumstances.

Foster said that the teens seized are not in uniform or even typically taken in combat.

"We're not talking about battlefield captures, we're talking about people who are living at home, and four or five brothers might be taken together. It might take them a year or more to figure out that one of them was younger than 18, to determine the identities of these kids," she said.

In January, the State Department will send a delegation to Geneva to present the report to the U.N.'s Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to answer any further questions the U.N. committee members may have.

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Shadowy donor behind record 'super' PAC checks

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer in Tennessee who is mysteriously linked to millions of dollars incampaign contributions steered to congressional candidates doubled his investments in the weeks before Election Day and quietly funneled $6.8 million more to a prominent tea party group, according to new financial statements filed with the government.

William Rose of Knoxville previously told The Associated Press that his business was a "family secret" and he was not obligated to disclose the origin of what now amounts to more than $12 million that he routed through two companies he recently created. Rose did not immediately return phone calls from the AP on Friday. He previously complained that phone calls and emails from reporters were irritating.

The money went to the tea party's most prominent "super" political committee, FreedomWorks for America, which spent it on high-profile congressional races. The $12 million accounted for most of the $20 million the group raised this year.

FreedomWorks did not respond to requests from the AP for an explanation, although CEO Matt Kibbe told Mother Jones magazine Friday, "I don't know about these (donations). It's the first time I've heard." When AP asked FreedomWorks weeks ago to explain the source of Rose's earlier contributions, a spokesman for the group declined to discuss the money and said his group adheres to the law in disclosing information about donors.

The contributions are a glaring example of the murkiness surrounding who is giving money to politicians in modern elections, shaped by new federal rules allowing unlimited and anonymous donations. The law has allowed wealthy executives, corporations and other organizations to establish shell companies and mail drops to disguise the source of the money they give to political groups and politicians. But the mysterious donations linked to Rose by far eclipse any suspicious amounts paid to support the campaigns of President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.

Rose made the latest $6.8 million in contributions even as the AP and Knoxville News Sentinel were jointly investigating $5.2 million in suspicious donations traced to one of the two companies during October. That company, Specialty Group Inc., filed incorporation papers in September less than one week before it gave FreedomWorks several contributions worth between $125,000 and $1.5 million each. Specialty Group appeared to have no website describing its products or services. It was registered to a suburban Knoxville home.

Rose last week renamed the company Specialty Investments Group Inc. That firm and Kingston Pike Development Corp. — which Rose also registered and owns — were used to steer the latest $6.8 million in contributions to FreedomWorks. Among other amounts, FreedomWorks spent more than $1.8 million of the money on Connie Mack's unsuccessful Senate campaign in Florida and a similar amount opposing Tammy Duckworth, who was elected to Congress in Illinois.

Financial statements that FreedomWorks filed with the Federal Election Commission did not cite any business address for Kingston Pike, but business records indicate that Rose registered the company one day after he created Specialty Group.

Under U.S. law, corporations can give unlimited sums of money to outside groups supporting candidates, but not if their sole purpose is to make campaign contributions.

Rose said in a statement last month that he formed Specialty Group to buy, sell, develop and invest in a variety of real estate ventures and investments. He declined interview requests from the AP over three weeks and complained in his statement that reporters had contacted his ex-wife and business colleagues. He also disputed any characterization that his company was "shadowy."

"The business of Specialty Group is my family secret, a secret that will be kept — as allowed by applicable law — for at least another 50 years," Rose said in his statement.

FreedomWorks is among the most prominent organizations supporting the conservative tea party and was headed for years by former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Armey recently left the group in exchange for $8 million in payouts over 20 years from an outside benefactor, Richard J. Stephenson, according to a confidential agreement obtained by the AP. Stephenson is a prominent fundraiser and founder and chairman of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

The source of the money linked to Rose is unclear. Rose identified himself as Specialty Group's chief executive, president and general counsel, but there was no evidence that the company or Rose could afford to give away $12 million. County register records indicate a William S. Rose Jr. listed at one of Rose's former addresses owes $69,881 in federal back taxes, which a county official said Friday hasn't yet been settled. Property tax records show Rose's current home is appraised at $634,000.

Armey, in a previous interview with the AP, said he didn't know Rose and wasn't aware of where Specialty Group's donations may have originated.

The Supreme Court cleared the roles of super PACs in legal cases that included its landmark Citizens United ruling, which greatly expanded the limits and sources of money in politics. But even justices who supported increased giving — which the court has equated with free speech — said that citizens deserve to know who was behind money given to politicians.

"I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better," Justice Antonin Scalia said in July. "That's what the First Amendment is all about, so long as the people know where the speech is coming from."

Determining who is behind the money hasn't always been easy to determine.

One company dissolved In summer 2011 shortly after giving $1 million to a super PAC supporting Romney. It turned out to have been formed by Ed Conard, a Romney supporter who once worked with the former Massachusetts governor at the private equity firm Bain Capital.

Months later, a $400,000 gift from a limited liability partnership was traced to a fund connected with Boston-based Hellman Jordan Management. The firm eventually acknowledged that a married couple who had raised money for Romney had received the $400,000 as part of an unspecified investment disbursement and instructed Hellman Jordan to give it the super PAC supporting Romney.

"This is the huge issue," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is well known in Congress for trying to expand campaign-finance disclosure laws. "Transparency leads to more accountability, and the voters have the right to know who is spending gobs of money to influence their vote."

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Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org

FBI says Alaska man killed people for fun

This undated photo provided by the FBI shows bottles of Drano found inside a plastic bag in Eagle River, Alaska, just north of Anchorage. The FBI says confessed Alaska serial killer Israel Keyes, who targeted people across the country, told authorities he planned to strike again in the state if he had gotten away with the murder of an 18-year-old Anchorage barista. (AP Photo/FBI)

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by the Anchorage Police Department shows Anchorage, Alaska, barrista, Samantha Koenig, 18, is pictured. Investigators say Israel Keyes, found dead Sunday, Dec. 2, of an apparent suicide in an Anchorage, Alaska jail, was not only suspected of killing Koenig but may be linked to seven other possible slayings around the country, including the Curriers, of Essex, Vt.. The bodies of the Curriers have never been found. They were last seen leaving their jobs on June 8, 2011. Anchorage police chief Mark Mew said Keyes confessed to killing Koenig, as well as killing Bill and Lorraine Currier. Keyes, 34, also indicated he killed four others in Washington state and one person in New York state, but didn't give the victims' names, authorities said. (AP Photo/Anchorage Police Department)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Confessed serial killer Israel Keyesadmitted he enjoyed killing people, but couldn't or wouldn't giveinvestigators a more meaningful answer when quizzed why he did it.

"There were just times, a couple of times, where we would try to get a why," said Anchorage Police officer Jeff Bell, who helped interrogate Keyes for hours.

"He would have this term, he would say, 'A lot of people ask why, and I would be, like, why not?'" Bell said.

Keyes confessed to killing eight people across the United States, but alluded to additional murders, FBI Special Agent Jolene Goeden and Bell told The Associated Press.

"Based on some of the things he told us, and some of the conversations we had with him, we believe the number is less than 12," Goeden said. "We don't know for sure. He's the only one who could have ultimately answered that."

They may never know the true number.

Keyes slit his wrist and strangled himself with bedding Sunday at the Anchorage Correctional Facility. He was facing a March trial on federal murder charges in the kidnapping and death of an 18-year-oldSamantha Koenig, who was abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand Feb. 1.

He also wasn't going to stop. Authorities said he have weapons caches or body disposal kits stashed across the country.

One such disposal kit was found north of Anchorage. It included a shovel, plastic bags and bottles of Drano, which he told authorities would speed the decomposition of bodies.

A murder kit found in upstate New York had weapon parts, a silencer, ligatures, ammunition and garbage bags.

Keyes said other murder kits are hidden in Washington state, Wyoming, Texas and, investigators believe, somewhere in the Southwest, possibly Arizona.

Goeden and Bell conducted up to 40 hours of interviews with Keyes after his March arrest in Texas. During that time, Keyes confessed to killing Koenig, along with Bill and Lorraine Currier in Vermont, and five other people — although details for those victims were scarce.

The interviews also revealed Keyes' motivation, which was simple, Goeden and Bell said.

"He enjoyed it. He liked what he was doing," Goeden said. "He talked about getting a rush out of it, the adrenalin, the excitement out of it."

Keyes also liked seeing coverage of his crimes in the media, and he appeared to get a thrill out of talking about some of them with investigators, Goeden and Bell said.

His crimes started small with burglaries and thefts — until the urge escalated to murder.

Bell said Keyes told investigators the first violent crime he committed was a sexual assault in Oregon, in which he let the victim go.

"He planned on killing her but didn't," Bell said.

Keyes said the rape occurred sometime between 1996 and 1998 along the Deshutes River near Maupin, Ore., after he got the girl away from her friends. The girl was between the ages of 14 and 18, and would be in her late 20s or 30s now. No police reports were filed, and the FBI is seeking more information on the crime.

Of the five other murders Keyes confessed to, four were in Washington state and one occurred on the East Coast, with the body disposed of in New York.

In the case of the Curriers, authorities say Keyes flew from Alaska to Chicago on June 2, 2011, rented a car and drove almost 1,000 miles to Essex, Vt.

There, he carried out a "blitz" style attack on the Curriers' home, bound the couple and took them to an abandoned house. Bill Currier was shot, and his wife was sexually assaulted and strangled.

Keyes immediately returned to Alaska, and followed the case on his computer by monitoring Vermont media. The couple's bodies were never found after the house was demolished and taken to a landfill.

Leaving the area shortly after a murder was a familiar tactic for Keyes. After he abducted Koenig, he took her to a shed at his Anchorage home, sexually assaulted her and strangled her.

Keyes then left the next day for a two-week cruise, storing Koenig's body in the shed. Upon his return, he dismembered the body and disposed of it in a lake north of Anchorage. He was later arrested in Texas after using Koenig's debit card.

Koenig was his only known victim in Alaska. Goeden and Bell said he never explained why his broke his own rule of never killing anyone in the town where he lived because it's easier to be connected to such a killing.

The only mistake Keyes said he made was letting his rental car be photographed by an ATM when withdrawing money in Texas.

Unlike his earlier killings, the deaths of the Curriers and Koenig received a lot of news coverage.

"He was feeding off the media attention in the end," Bell said.

That wasn't the only change. His time between murders was growing shorter.

"He talked about that time period in between crimes, that over the last few years, that became quicker," Goeden said.

During their interviews, Keyes was willing to talk about the Koenig and Currier killings since he knew authorities had evidence against him.

"It was chilling to listen to him. He was clearly reliving it to a degree, and I think he enjoyed talking about it," Bell said of the Koenig and Currier deaths. But in the other cases, Keyes wasn't as forthcoming because he knew investigators had little on them.

Keyes, a construction contractor, told investigators that they knew him better than anyone, and that this was the first time he'd ever spoken about what he called his double life.

"A couple of times, he would kind of chuckle, tell us how weird it was to be talking about this," Bell said.

Even though he was talking to investigators, Keyes didn't want his name made public in any of the other investigations, especially the Curriers, because of the fallout of publicity. He threatened to withhold information if his name got out.

"If there was nobody else that he was concerned about, I think he wanted his story out there. He wanted people to know what he did," Goeden said. "What he was worried about is the impact that was going to have on the people that cared about him and were close to him."

Keyes will be buried Sunday in Washington state.

Egypt: military warns of 'disastrous consequences'

Associated Press/Nasser Nasser - An Egyptian passes riot policemen guarding a gate of the presidential palace under a banner with a defaced picture of president Mohammed Morsi and Arabic that reads "the people want to bring down the regime," at the protests site, in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012. Egypt's military has warned of 'disastrous consequences' if the political crisis gripping the country is not resolved through dialogue. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

An Egyptian protester carries a poster with a picture of president Mohammed Morsi and Arabic that reads "wanted for justice, escaped from the Natroun valley prison in January 29, 2011, Reward, a box of oil and two eggs" during an anti-Morsi protest near the presidential palace, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Dec. 7, 2012. Egypt's political crisis spiraled deeper into bitterness and recrimination Friday as thousands of Islamist backers of the president vowed vengeance at a funeral for men killed in bloody clashes earlier this week and large crowds of the president's opponents marched on his palace to increase pressure after he rejected their demands. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Vendors provide demonstrators with food and drink outside the presidential palace, after tens of thousands marched on the presidential palace pushing past barbed wire fences installed by the army, in Cairo, Egypt. during the early hours of Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012. Egypt postponed early voting on a contentious draft constitution, and aides to President Mohammed Morsi floated the possibility of canceling the whole referendum in the first signs Friday that the Islamic leader is finally yielding to days of protests and deadly street clashes. (AP Photo/Hussein Tallal)

Egyptian protesters gather outside the presidential palace after they broke through a barbed wire barricade that was keeping them from getting closer to the presidential palace, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Dec. 7, 2012. Egypt's political crisis spiraled deeper into bitterness and recrimination Friday as thousands of Islamist backers of the president vowed vengeance at a funeral for men killed in bloody clashes earlier this week and large crowds of the president's opponents marched on his palace to increase pressure after he rejected their demands. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's military warned Saturday of 'disastrous consequences' if the crisis that sent tens of thousands of protesters back into the streets is not resolved, signaling the army's return to an increasingly polarized and violent political scene.

The military said serious dialogue is the "best and only" way to overcome the nation's deepening conflict over a disputed draft constitution hurriedly adopted by Islamist allies of President Mohammed Morsi, and recent decrees granting himself near-absolute powers.

"Anything other than that (dialogue) will force us into a dark tunnel with disastrous consequences; something which we won't allow," the statement said.

Failing to reach a consensus, "is in the interest of neither side. The nation as a whole will pay the price," it added. The statement was read by an unnamed military official on state television.

Egypt's once all-powerful military, which temporarily took over governing the country after the revolution that ousted autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, has largely been sidelined since handing over power to Morsi weeks after his election.

But it has begun asserting itself again, with soldiers sealing off the presidential palace with tanks and barbed wire, as rival protests and street battles between Morsi's supporters and his opponents turned increasingly violent.

The statement said the military "realizes its national responsibility in protecting the nation's higher interests" and state institutions.

At least six civilians have been killed and several offices of the president's Muslim Brotherhood set on fire since the crisis began on Nov. 22. The two sides also have staged a number of sit-ins around state institutions, including the presidential palace where some of the most violent clashes occurred.

Images of the military's elite Republican Guards unit surrounding the area around the palace showed one of the most high-profile troop deployment since the army handed over power to Morsi on June 30.

A sit-in by Morsi's opponents around the palace continued Saturday, with protesters setting up roadblocks with tanks behind them amid reports that the president's supporters planned rival protests. By midday Saturday, TV footage showed the military setting up a new wall of cement blocks around the palace.

Tensions have escalated since Morsi issued new decrees granting himself and an Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly immunity from oversight by the judiciary. The president's allies then rushed through a constitution and he announced a Dec. 15 nationwide referendum on the charter.

Morsi has called for a national dialogue and scheduled a meeting on Saturday, but opponents say he must first cancel the referendum on the draft constitution and rescind his recent decrees.

Only veteran liberal opposition politician Ayman Nour attended the meeting with Morsi on Saturday. The other eight delegates were Islamists.

The president has insisted his decrees were meant to protect the country's transition to democracy from former regime figures trying to derail it.