Tag: algeria
Morning Joe: Why Scarborough Is So Angry (And So Wrong) About Algeria

Morning Joe: Why Scarborough Is So Angry (And So Wrong) About Algeria

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were kind enough to host a discussion of my new book, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton. But as the discussion got a bit hot, among the subjects that came up was Joe’s “inventive” theory about the Algerian government’s donation to Haitian relief via the Clinton Foundation in 2010, which he elaborated during the publicity rollout for Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash. After I departed the set this morning, Scarborough continued to vent his displeasure with me. The following excerpt from pages 435-426 may suggest why he was so irritated that he would attack me when I was no longer present to defend myself and my work — and it certainly shows why his verbal indictment of the  Clinton Foundation was so wrong:

Journalists who had paid only fleeting attention to the foundation’s work over more than a decade proclaimed their concern about its finances, transparency, and efficiency.

Commentators with very little knowledge of any of the foundation’s programs, still unable to distinguish the Clinton Global Initiative from the Clinton Health Access Initiative, confidently denounced the entire operation as dubious. Others glancingly recognized the good achieved by the foundation before moving on to denounce the Clintons’ “greed.” And media stars who had eagerly participated in Clinton Global Initiative events, broadcasting gushy interviews with Bill Clinton, suddenly voiced angry suspicions, unproven accusations, and inventive theories.

On April 27, for example, Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, held forth about a 2010 donation to the Clinton Foundation from the government of Algeria, which had been earmarked for Haiti relief. That donation mistakenly went unreported as a pass- through, because it never accrued to the foundation balance sheet.

But to Scarborough, who had conducted a very friendly interview with Clinton from a set at CGI in September 2010, the Algerian money smacked of corruption. He had a theory, too: Algeria’s government wanted to be taken off the State Department’s list of nations that support terrorism.

“I think it was Algeria, maybe, that had given a donation that went unreported at a time when they wanted to be taken off of the terror list in the State Department,” he mused. “They write the check, they get taken off the terror list. . . . At the same time, and then it goes un- reported by the Clinton Foundation. . . . Is there a quid pro quo there? I don’t know, that’s really hard to tell.” Scarborough continued in that vein for several minutes.

The facts were considerably less exciting. Algeria had never been on the State Department’s terror list, which only included four nations; in fact, the Algerian government routinely fought terrorists within its borders and had long been a valued ally of the United States against terrorist organizations operating in North Africa.

Not at all chastened by this blunder, however, Scarborough continued to savage the Clintons the following morning when he interviewed Peter Schweizer. Having once represented a Florida congressional district, Scarborough compared the Clintons unfavorably to several former congressional colleagues and a recent governor of Virginia who all had been convicted of bribery. The proven criminal behavior of the elected officials, he insisted, “pales in comparison to [what is in] this book.”

Much of the most damning material in Clinton Cash, however, turned out to be either factually inaccurate, melodramatically exaggerated, or both. Within weeks after publication, major media outlets reported significant errors discovered in its pages.

Algerians Vote; Ailing President Likely To Be Re-Elected

Algerians Vote; Ailing President Likely To Be Re-Elected

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — With a notable lack of enthusiasm, Algerians went to the polls Thursday in a presidential vote that the 77-year-old incumbent, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was considered likely to win despite his obviously failing health.

The tumult of the Arab Spring uprising three years ago largely bypassed this oil-rich North African nation, still exhausted by its sapping civil war in the 1990s, which Bouteflika helped bring to an end.

Discontent over high unemployment, a housing crunch and political stagnation is expressing itself mainly in the form of voter boycotts. Young voters dominate the electorate, but they were little seen at the polls as the balloting began amid tight security.

With Bouteflika’s near-incapacitation, a fourth-term victory for him would maintain a status quo under which proxies and proteges already manage the business of governance. But pre-election demonstrations against his continued rule could be a sign of turmoil to come, particularly if Algeria’s foreign reserves begin to dwindle, oil prices take a predicted drop and badly needed economic reforms are not enacted.

The president, who suffered a stroke last year, did virtually no campaigning, has made almost no public appearances for a year, and appeared dazed and unresponsive during a visit earlier this month by Secretary of State John F. Kerry. In the run-up to the election, he spent months away from the capital having medical treatment abroad.

Five rivals are challenging Bouteflika, and have pledged to raise an outcry if the vote appears fraudulent — a serious concern in every election since Bouteflika came to power in 1999. A low turnout could also make it hard for the Bouteflika camp to claim a popular mandate, even if he is the victor.

Photo: zinou ZEBAR via Flickr

U.S. Repatriates Once Resistant Guantanamo Detainee To Algeria

U.S. Repatriates Once Resistant Guantanamo Detainee To Algeria

By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald

The United States sent home to Algeria on Thursday a long-held Guantanamo captive who was cleared for return years ago but for a time sought resettlement elsewhere rather than repatriation to his civil-war-stricken homeland.

Ahmed Belbacha, 44, became the first prisoner released from the Pentagon detention center this year. The U.S. never charged him with a crime during 12 years in custody, but an Algerian court convicted him of terror-related charges in 2009 and issued a 20-year sentence while he as at Guantanamo.

Still, he returned voluntarily to see his elderly parents, said his attorney, Alka Pradhan of the Washington, D.C., branch of a London-based legal defense organization, Reprieve.

“He wants to go home and spend time with his parents,” said Pradhan.

“What happens once he returns will depend on the Algerian government and any agreements between them and the United States,” she added. “But our hope is that he will be now finally be allowed to freely return to his family.”

The transfer, conducted overnight, reduced the prisoner population to 154, according to a Pentagon statement, which cast it as another incremental step toward President Barack Obama’s ambition of closing the U.S. Navy base prison in southeast Cuba.

The military disclosed the transfer hours before Marine Gen. John F. Kelly was due to testify at the Senate Armed Services Committee on his budget request for the U.S. Southern Command. Kelly has oversight of the prison from Southcom, the Pentagon’s outpost in Doral.

A Department of Defense statement said Congress was notified of the plan to send Belbacha home.

As Belbacha’s attorneys tell it, he fled to France in 1999. It was a time when Islamic extremists were trying to topple the secular government and he was facing a recall to military service and working for Sonatrach, the government oil company.

He spent two years in the United Kingdom, worked at a hotel while seeking asylum, then took time out to study in Pakistan in June 2001. At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks he was at an Algerian guesthouse in Afghanistan and, as Pradhan tells it, “he was sold for bounty while he was trying to travel back to Islamabad” in Pakistan.

His 2006 Guantanamo profile, provided to McClatchy Newspapers by the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks organization, concluded he trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and joined with the Armed Islamic Group, called GIA, whose violence he supposedly fled in his native Algeria.

Belbacha took part in the prison’s widespread hunger strike last year and was among those whom the Justice Department said were tube fed by Navy medics.

He had been approved for return, with security arrangements, since 2007, before Obama took office, according to his lawyers.

In November, he wrote his lawyers that he was ready to go home. He had received letters from family members describing an improved situation in the once civil-war-wracked north African nation. Also, the United States sent home some other Algerians who resisted repatriation from Guantanamo to brief investigations and then release for possible trial.

“I feel completely at ease and tranquil, thank God,” he wrote, according to the lawyer. “I think about returning the day before yesterday. I think about going back in the shortest time possible.”

The Pentagon’s point man on closing the prison camps, Paul Lewis, issued a statement calling the transfer “another step forward in our effort to reduce the population and close the detention facility responsibly.” He credited the work of the office of his counterpart at the State Department.

Amnesty International, one of the prison’s most long-running and most vocal critics, urged the Obama administration to pick up the pace of detainee releases.

“President Obama is running out of time on Guantanamo and his legacy is at stake,” said Zeke Johnson, director of the U.S. branch’s Security & Human Rights Program. “Each detainee should either be fairly tried in civilian court, or be released to a country that will respect his human rights.”

The transfer left two Algerians at the detention center in Cuba, both designated by the Obama administration in 2009 for possible war crimes trial at the same time as a task force once again cleared Belbacha for release.

AFP Photo/Chantal Valery

Lone Survivor Found As Scores Killed In Algeria Plane Crash

Lone Survivor Found As Scores Killed In Algeria Plane Crash

Algiers (AFP) – A military aircraft carrying 103 people crashed in Algeria’s mountainous northeast Tuesday, with a sole survivor found from one of the country’s deadliest air disasters, security and emergency officials said.

The C-130 Hercules aircraft, which crashed in the Oum El Bouaghi region, was carrying 99 passengers — soldiers and their families — as well as four crew members, a security source told AFP.

“We have found a survivor and the search continues,” emergency services official Colonel Farid Nechad told public radio, without giving further details.

The emergency services have so far recovered 71 bodies from the crash site, public radio reported.

A security source had said earlier that all on board had perished.

There was no immediate word on the condition of the lone survivor.

The plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in the deep south to the city of Constantine, 200 miles east of the capital, and lost contact with the control tower just as it was beginning its descent.

The aircraft slammed into Mount Fertas in the Oum El Bouaghi region at around midday, state media quoted army spokesman Colonel Bouguern as saying.

Preliminary reports indicated that poor weather was to blame, with heavy snow and strong winds sweeping the region in recent days, the APS news agency reported.

Military and civilian personnel were deployed for a search and rescue operation, with hospitals in Constantine and nearby Ain M’Lila placed on alert in case there were any survivors, the independent El Watan newspaper reported.

Tamanrasset, in the far south of Algeria, near the border with Mali, is the main base for the country’s southern military operations.

Extra troops and equipment have been stationed there in recent months as part of efforts to beef up surveillance of Algeria’s frontiers with Mali and Libya, following a deadly hostage-taking by Islamist militants at a desert gas plant in January last year.

The city lies 930 miles from Constantine, and was the site of the last major plane crash in Algeria, in March 2003.

In that disaster, an Air Algerie passenger plane crashed on takeoff, after one of its engines caught fire, killing all but one of 103 people aboard, among them several French nationals.

The sole survivor, a young Algerian soldier, was left in a critical condition.

In December 2012, two military jets conducting routine training operations collided in mid air near Tlemcen, in the northwest, killing the pilots of both planes.

A month earlier, a twin-turboprop CASA C-295 military transport aircraft, which was transporting a cargo of paper for the printing of banknotes in Algeria, crashed in southern France.

The plane was carrying five soldiers and a representative of the Algerian central bank, none of whom survived.

AFP Photo/Mario Goldman