The Inequitable Distribution of Wealth in America Depicted

British Terror Suspects Quietly Stripped of Citizenship… Then Killed by Drones

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/british-terror-suspects-quietly-stripped-of-citizenship-then-killed-by-drones-8513858.html

The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.

Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.

They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed or “rendered” without any onus on the British Government to intervene.

At least five of those deprived of their UK nationality by the Coalition were born in Britain, and one man had lived in the country for almost 50 years. Those affected have their passports cancelled, and lose their right to enter the UK – making it very difficult to appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision. Last night the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Simon Hughes said he was writing to Ms May to call for an urgent review into how the law was being implemented.

The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the present situation “smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary”.

Ian Macdonald QC, the president of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, described the citizenship orders as “sinister”.

“They’re using executive powers and I think they’re using them quite wrongly,” he said. “It’s not open government; it’s closed, and it needs to be exposed.”

Laws were passed in 2002 enabling the Home Secretary to remove the citizenship of any dual nationals who had done something “seriously prejudicial” to the UK, but the power had rarely been used before the current government took office.

The Bureau’s investigation has established the identities of all but four of the 21 British passport holders who have lost their citizenship, and their subsequent fates. Only two have successfully appealed – one of whom has since been extradited to the US.

In many cases those involved cannot be named because of ongoing legal action. The Bureau has also found evidence that government officials act when people are out of the country – on two occasions while on holiday – before cancelling passports and revoking citizenships.

Those targeted include Bilal al-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese citizen who came to the UK as a baby and grew up in London, but left for Somalia in 2009 with his close friend the British-born Mohamed Sakr, who also held Egyptian nationality.

Both had been the subject of extensive surveillance by British intelligence, with the security services concerned they were involved in terrorist activities.

Once in Somalia, the two reportedly became involved with al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group with links to al-Qa’ida. Mr Berjawi was said to have risen to a senior position in the organisation, with Mr Sakr his “right-hand man”.

In 2010, Theresa May stripped both men of their British nationalities and they soon became targets in an ultimately lethal US manhunt.

In June 2011 Mr Berjawi was wounded in the first known US drone strike in Somalia and last year he was killed by a drone strike – within hours of calling his wife in London to congratulate her on the birth of their first son.

His family have claimed that US forces were able to pinpoint his location by monitoring the call he made to his wife in the UK. Mr Sakr, too, was killed in a US airstrike in February 2012, although his British origins have not been revealed until now.

Mr Sakr’s former UK solicitor said there appeared to be a link between the Home Secretary removing citizenships and subsequent US actions.

“It appears that the process of deprivation of citizenship made it easier for the US to then designate Mr Sakr as an enemy combatant, to whom the UK owes no responsibility whatsoever,” Saghir Hussain said.

Mr Macdonald added that depriving people of their citizenship “means that the British government can completely wash their hands if the security services give information to the Americans who use their drones to track someone and kill them.”

The campaign group CagePrisoners is in touch with many families of those affected. Its executive director Asim Qureshi said the Bureau’s findings were deeply troubling for Britons from an ethnic minority background.

“We all feel just as British as everybody else, and yet just because our parents came from another country, we can be subjected to an arbitrary process where we are no longer members of this country any more,” he said.

“I think that’s extremely dangerous because it will speak to people’s fears about how they’re viewed by their own government, especially when they come from certain areas of the world.”

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said that, while he accepted there were often real security concerns, he was worried that those who were innocent of Home Office charges against them and were trying to appeal risked finding themselves in a “political and constitutional limbo”.

“There was clearly always a risk when the law was changed seven years ago that the executive could act to take citizenship away in circumstances that were more frequent or more extensive than those envisaged by ministers at the time,” he said.

“I’m concerned at the growing number of people who appear to have lost their right to citizenship. I plan to write to the Home Secretary and the Home Affairs Select Committee to ask for their assessment of the situation, and for a review of whether the act is working as intended.”

Ms Peirce, a leading immigration defence lawyer, said, “British citizens are being banished from their own country, being stripped of a core part of their identity yet without a single word of explanation of why they have been singled out and dubbed a risk,” she said.

Families are sometimes affected by the Home Secretary’s decisions. Parents may have to choose whether their British children remain in the UK, or join their father in exile abroad.

In a case known only as L1, a Sudanese-British man took his four British children on holiday to Sudan, along with his wife, who had limited leave to remain in the UK. Four days after his departure, Theresa May decided to strip him of his citizenship.

With their father excluded from the UK and their mother’s lack of permanent right to remain, the order effectively blocks the children from growing up in Britain. At the time of the order the children were aged between eight and 13 months.

The judge, despite recognising their right to be brought up in Britain, ruled that the grounds on which their father’s citizenship was revoked “outweighed” the rights of the children.

Mr Justice Mitting, sitting in the semi-secret Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac), said: “We accept it is unlikely to be in the best interests of the appellant’s children that he should be deprived of his British citizenship…

“They are British citizens, with a right of abode in the UK.

“They are of an age when that right cannot, in practice, be enjoyed if both of their parents cannot return to the United Kingdom.”

Yet he added that Theresa May was “unlikely to have made that decision without substantial and plausible grounds”.

In another case, a man born in Newcastle in 1963 and three of his London-born sons all lost their citizenship two years ago while in Pakistan.

An expert witness told Siac that those in the family’s situation may be at risk from the country’s government agencies and militant groups. Yet Siac recently ruled that the UK “owed no obligation” to those at risk of “any subsequent act of the Pakistani state or of non-state actors [militant groups] in Pakistan”.

The mother, herself a naturalised British citizen, now wants to return here in the interests of her youngest son, who has developmental needs. Although 15, he is said to be “dependent upon [his mother and father] for emotional and practical support”.

His mother claimed he “has no hope of education in Pakistan’. But the mother has diabetes and mobility problems that mean she “does not feel able to return on her own, with or without [her son].”

Mr Justice Mitting ruled that the deprivation of citizenship of the family’s father had “undoubtedly had an impact on the private and family life of his wife and youngest son, both of whom remain British citizens”. But he added that the father posed such a threat to national security that the “unavoidable incidental impact” on his wife and youngest son was “justifiable”, and dismissed the appeal.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Citizenship is a privilege not a right. The Home Secretary has the power to remove citizenship from individuals where she considers it is conducive to the public good. An individual subject to deprivation can appeal to the courts.”

She added: “We don’t routinely comment on individual deprivation cases.”

Asked whether intelligence was provided to foreign governments, she said: “We don’t comment on intelligence issues. Drone strikes are a matter for the states concerned.”

Mahdi Hashi: From Camden care worker to US prisoner

Mahdi Hashi, a former care worker from Camden in north London, was well known to Britain’s security services – in fact they tried to recruit him when he was 19.

Now 23, Mr Hashi is in a high-security US prison having been secretly “rendered” from the African state of Djibouti last year.

Mr Hashi claims that before being sent to the US on charges of working with the terrorist group al-Shabaab he witnessed torture in an African prison, before being handed over to the CIA and forced to sign a confession.

Despite Mr Hashi being brought up in the UK, the British Government has washed its hands of him, having stripped him of his citizenship shortly before he disappeared in Somalia last summer.

His UK family say that when they lost contact with their son they approached the Foreign Office for help. But they were told by officials that they could not provide assistance because the Home Secretary had issued an order depriving him of his British citizenship.

It was only five months later, when he re-appeared in the US, that they were able to contact him again. The family’s lawyer, Saghir Hussain, said at the time: “The UK Government has a lot of explaining to do. What role did it play in getting him kidnapped, held in secret detention and renditioned to the US?”

The case has led to allegations that Britain may have conspired with the US to strip Mr Hashi of his citizenship knowing he would be arrested in Africa. They have no further obligations towards him and can avoid potentially embarrassing questions about his treatment before his rendition.

The case is all the more bizarre as Mr Hashi gave an interview to The Independent in 2009 when he alleged that MI5 had attempted to recruit him. He claimed that on a previous trip to Africa he was held for 16 hours in a cell at Djibouti airport, and that when he was returned to the UK he was met by an MI5 agent who told him his terror-suspect status would remain until he agreed to work for the Security Service. He alleges he was to be given the job of informing on his friends by encouraging them to talk about jihad.

Mohamed Sakr: The British car valet killed by a drone strike

In February last year, international agencies in Africa reported that “four foreign Islamist militants” had been killed in a drone strike south of Somalia’s capital, a day after the country’s Prime Minister called for foreign air strikes against the terror group al-Shabaab.

At the time a senior Western intelligence officer was quoted as saying that a “very senior Egyptian was killed” in the raid, along with three Kenyans and a Somali.

That was technically true – but in reality the Egyptian had not even been born in the country for which he held a passport. It would have been more accurate to describe him as a British terror suspect who once ran a car valeting business in London.

The Bureau has established that the victim of the February air strike was Mohamed Sakr, who was born and brought up in the UK before having his citizenship revoked in September 2010 by the Home Secretary, Theresa May.

Sakr appears to have come to the attention of UK intelligence officials after he visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Dubai in 2007. He was then repeatedly targeted by counter-terrorism officers over a two-year period, according to reports.

It was this, it is alleged, that drove Sakr out of the country; he left Britain in late 2009 for Somalia.

The law allowing the Home Secretary to remove citizenship was in place when Sakr left the UK, but it was not until after the Coalition came to power that it was used in his case.

We May Need to Brace Ourselves for Some of What’s Ahead

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez was a fighter. The former paratroop commander and fiery populist waged continual battle for his socialist ideals and outsmarted his rivals time and again, defeating a coup attempt, winning re-election three times and using his country's vast oil wealth to his political advantage.

A self-described "subversive," Chavez fashioned himself after the 19th Century independence leaderSimon Bolivar and renamed his country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

He called himself a "humble soldier" in a battle for socialism and against U.S. hegemony. He thrived on confrontation with Washington and his political opponents at home, and used those conflicts to rally his followers.

Almost the only adversary it seemed he couldn't beat was cancer. He died Tuesday in Caracas at 4:25 local time after his prolonged illness. He was 58.

During more than 14 years in office, his leftist politics and grandiose style polarized Venezuelans. The barrel-chested leader electrified crowds with his booming voice, and won admiration among the poor with government social programs and a folksy, nationalistic style.

His opponents seethed at the larger-than-life character who demonized them on television and ordered the expropriation of farms and businesses. Many in the middle class cringed at his bombast and complained about rising crime, soaring inflation and government economic controls.

Chavez used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that included state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country's economy.

Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world

Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, frequently speaking for hours and breaking into song or philosophical discourse. He often wore the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. He had donned the same uniform in 1992 while leading an ill-fated coup attempt that first landed him in jail and then launched his political career.

The rest of the world watched as the country with the world's biggest proven oil reserves took a turn to the left under its unconventional leader, who considered himself above all else a revolutionary.

"I'm still a subversive," the president told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview, recalling his days as a rebel soldier. "I think the entire world has to be subverted."

Chavez was a master communicator and savvy political strategist, and managed to turn his struggle against cancer into a rallying cry, until the illness finally defeated him.

From the start, he billed himself as the heir of Bolivar, who led much of South America to independence. He often spoke beneath a portrait of Bolivar and presented replicas of the liberator's sword to allies. He built a soaring mausoleum in Caracas to house the remains of "El Libertador."

Chavez also was inspired by his mentor Fidel Castro and took on the Cuban leader's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after the ailing Castro turned over the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006. Like Castro, Chavez vilified U.S.-style capitalism while forming alliances throughout Latin America and with distant powers such as Russia, China and Iran.

Supporters eagerly raised Chavez to the pantheon of revolutionary legends ranging from Castro to Argentine-born rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."

In the battles Chavez waged at home and abroad, he captivated his base by championing his country's poor.

"This is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path," Chavez told his backers in 2011. "The path is this: socialism."

On television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," scold his aides, tell jokes, reminisce about his childhood, lecture Venezuelans on socialism and make sudden announcements, such as expelling the U.S. ambassador or ordering tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia.

Chavez carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's address.

At a summit in 2007, he repeatedly called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist, prompting Spain's King Juan Carlos to snap, "Why don't you shut up?"

Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands with allies who dominated the congress and justices who controlled the Supreme Court.

"El Comandante," as he was known, insisted Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied charges that he sought to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. His government forced the opposition-aligned television channel, RCTV, off the air by refusing to renew its license.

While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and private sectors changed little during his presidency.

Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.

"Chavez masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ... and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President."

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of a schoolteacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was also a schoolteacher who met her husband at age 16.

Hugo and his older brother Adan grew up with their grandmother, Rosa Ines, in a home with a dirt floor, mud walls and a roof made of palm fronds.

Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the U.S. major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep honing his baseball skills in the capital.

But between his army duties and drills, the young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.

Chavez burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. When the coup collapsed, Chavez was allowed to make a televised statement in which he declared that his movement had failed "for now." The speech, and those two defiant words, launched his career, searing his image into the memory of Venezuelans.

Two years later, he and other coup prisoners were released from prison, and President Rafael Caldera dropped the charges against them.

After organizing a new party, Chavez ran for president in 1998, pledging to clean up Venezuela's entrenched corruption and shatter its traditional two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote.

After he took office on Feb. 2, 1999, Chavez called for a new constitution, and an assembly filled with his allies drafted the document. Among various changes, it lengthened presidential terms from five years to six and changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

By 2000, his increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who voted for him, and the next several years saw bold attempts by opponents to dislodge him from power.

In 2002, he survived a short-lived coup, which began after large anti-Chavez street protests ended in shootings and bloodshed. Dissident military officers detained the president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists amid massive protests by his supporters.

Chavez emerged a stronger president.

He defeated an opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry and fired thousands of state oil company employees.

The coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government, which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who briefly replaced him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S., and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government. Despite the souring relationship, Chavez kept selling the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States.

By 2005, Chavez was espousing a new, vaguely defined "21st-century socialism." Yet the agenda didn't involve a sudden overhaul to the country's economic order, and some businesspeople continued to prosper. Those with lucrative ties to the government came to be known as the "Bolivarian bourgeoisie."

After easily winning re-election in 2006, Chavez began calling for a "multi-polar world" free of U.S. domination, part of an expanded international agenda. He boosted oil shipments to China, set up joint factories with Iran to produce tractors and cars, and sealed arms deals with Russia for assault rifles, helicopters and fighter jets. He focused on building alliances throughout Latin America and injected new energy into the region's left. Allies were elected in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and other countries.

Chavez also cemented relationships with island countries in the Caribbean by selling them oil on preferential terms while severing ties with Israel, supporting the Palestinian cause and backing Iran's right to a nuclear energy program.

All the while, Chavez emphasized that it was necessary to prepare for any potential conflict with the "empire," his term for the United States.

He told the AP in 2007 that he loved the movie "Gladiator."

"It's confronting the empire, and confronting evil. ... And you end up relating to that gladiator," Chavez said as he drove across Venezuela's southern plains.

He said he felt a deep connection to those plains where he grew up, and that when died he hoped to be buried in the savanna.

"A man from the plains, from these great open spaces ... tends to be a nomad, tends not to see barriers. What you see is the horizon," Chavez said.

Running a revolution ultimately left little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before he ran for office. His daughters Maria and Rosa often appeared at his side at official events and during his trips. He had one son, Hugo Rafael Chavez.

After he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011, he acknowledged that he had recklessly neglected his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night.

Even as he appeared with head shaved while undergoing chemotherapy, he never revealed the exact location of tumors that were removed from his pelvic region, or the exact type of cancer.

Chavez exerted himself for one final election campaign in 2012 after saying tests showed he was cancer-free, and defeated younger challenger Henrique Capriles. With another six-year term in hand, he promised to keep pressing for revolutionary changes.

But two months later, he went to Cuba for a fourth cancer-related surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.

After a 10-week absence, the government announced that Chavez had returned to Venezuela and was being treated at a military hospital in Caracas. He was never seen again in public.

In his final years, Chavez frequently said Venezuela was well on its way toward socialism, and at least in his mind, there was no turning back.

His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man phenomenon. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his chosen successor.

Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.