Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list`

Washington: American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.

Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.

PTI

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Syrian Army, deserters clash: 12 dead

Nicosia: Twelve people were killed in clashes between soldiers and deserters in villages of Idlib province in northwest Syria Thursday, a human rights group said.

"Seven soldiers and five deserters or civilians were killed in the clashes in villages west of Jabal al-Zawiya," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that dozens of people were wounded.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, an anti-regime activist network, said soldiers and security forces raided the villages backed by tanks.

PTI

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Death toll in Syria rises to 2,900: UN

Geneva: The death toll in Syria has risen to more than 2,900 since pro-democracy protests began in March, the United Nations human rights office said on Thursday as activists warned that the country could descend into armed conflict.

"Based on our detailed list of individual names that we have been keeping, the total number of people killed in Syria since protests began now stands at more than 2,900," Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said.

The United Nations' previous death toll was 2,700 from the bloody crackdown by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which generally denies reports of human rights abuses and says it has no choice but to restore law and order.

Colville noted that the latest figure did not include those who have disappeared and whose fate is unknown.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council is to review Syria's record, part of its regular examination of all UN member states. The United States and other Western countries are expected to denounce what they say are atrocities by Syria.

The Geneva forum last month launched an international commission of inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity which a preliminary UN investigation said were being perpetrated by Syrian security forces.

Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian heading the new three-member investigation, was to meet a high-level Syrian delegation in Geneva this week to seek permission to enter the country. The team, which plans to gather testimony in the region, is due to issue a report by the end of November.

"Detention centres a nightmare" Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled Syrian activist, said on Thursday that more than 30,000 Syrians had been imprisoned since protests began, many in schools or soccer fields converted into detention centers.

"Mass killings continue," he told a discussion on torture in Syria. "Detention centers are a nightmare for Syrians now."

His businessman brother Yassin and four other members of his family are among those being detained, Ziadeh said.

His Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies had documented the deaths of 183 children at the hands of Syrian forces, many under torture, as well as 18 cases of rape in Homs, he said.

"Child of Syria," a film produced by the center and shown for the first time in Geneva, told the tale of Thamer al Sharei, a 15-year-old boy from the southern city of Deraa who disappeared during demonstrations on April 29.

His parents, interviewed after fleeing to Jordan, said they retrieved his battered body from a morgue, riddled with 11 bullet holes and a drill hole in his cheek, two months later.

"If it were not for the childhood scar on his forehead, I never would have recognized him," his father Mohammed says in the film. "They have taken torture to a new level."

"If they are doing this to children, what are they doing to grown-ups?," he asks.

Ibrahim al-Jahaman, identified as a former detainee at Bab Touma prison near Damascus at the time, says in the film: "I think he was in a semi-conscious state, I'm not sure he felt the blows he was getting."

Ziadeh said Syrian forces felt immune from any accountability. He voiced dismay at the U.N. Security Council's failure to condemn Syria, after China and Russia vetoed a European-drafted resolution on Tuesday.

It was important for the Security Council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes by Syrian forces, he said.

"Unfortunately this will encourage more people to radicalize as they see no hope of action by the international community," Ziadeh said.

Jeremie D. Smith, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, also warned of the situation deteriorating further in Syria if world powers failed to act.

"Syria is bound to become more destabilized, more radicalized, if there isn't any form of hope for these people."

Bureau Report

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Seven killed in Iraq attacks

Baghdad: Gun and bomb attacks in Baghdad and central Iraq have killed seven people, while a representative of the country's top Shiite cleric was wounded, officials said.

In the deadliest attack that took place yesterday, a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a car in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Utaifiyah was followed by a roadside bombing, killing five people and wounding 21 others, an interior ministry official said.

Four policemen were among those wounded in the attacks, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the east Baghdad district of Zafraniyah, a roadside bomb at a football pitch killed two young boys and wounded 13 others, according to a police official and a doctor at Zafraniyah hospital.

And in the town of Al-Qassim, gunmen wounded a representative of Iraq's top Shiite cleric as he was returning home from prayers on Wednesday evening.

Sheikh Karim al-Khalidi, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, was shot and seriously wounded in the centre of Al-Qassim, some 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of the Iraqi capital.

Sistani is Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric whose stature dwarfs that of any Shiite politician, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"Unknown gunmen attacked Sheikh Karim al-Khalidi in Al-Qassim," said an official in Sistani's office in the holy Shiite city of Najaf of southern Iraq.

The attack was the first assassination attempt on Khalidi, the official said, on condition of anonymity.

A medical official in Hilla, capital of Babil province of which Al-Qassim is part, said Khalidi was "in serious condition. He is still in the hospital as he was shot in the chest." PTI

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Blast hits Yemen`s main oil pipeline: Tribals

Sanaa: Yemen's main oil export pipeline was blown up Friday in the Wadi Obeida region, east of Sanaa, a local tribal chief said, ruling out an attack by al Qaeda.

"The pipeline was sabotaged at around 5 pm (1400 GMT) and the explosion hold the line and sparked a fire," said Sheikh Mohsen Mabkut bin Mayili, a tribal head in Marib province.

He said the attack was probably the work of tribesmen seeking concessions from the government, not al Qaeda. It was the sixth act of sabotage this year on the pipeline to Ras Issa terminal on the Red Sea, he said.

Some 125,000 barrels a day normally flow through the line, accounting for the bulk of Yemen's oil exports.

PTI

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