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Category: Europe

Police in crisis after jury rejects £10m terror case

Sean O’Neill, Security Editor

Police and prosecutors were locked in crisis meetings last night after what they believed to be the strongest terrorism case ever presented to a court was rejected by a jury.

At the end of a £10 million investigation and trial lasting more than two years, jurors were unable to decide whether or not a group of British Muslims were part of a plot to blow transatlantic airliners out of the sky.

The outcome of the case – which featured al-Qaeda-style martyrdom videos made by six defendants – will be seen as a severe blow to Britain’s anti-terrorist effort.

Three men were convicted of conspiracy to murder, but the jury was deadlocked on the central allegation, that terrorists planned to use liquid bombs to destroy aircraft en route from Heathrow to cities in the United States and Canada.

The jury’s indecision in the face of a detailed Crown case raises questions about the public perception of the terror threat that could undermine government attempts to introduce further security legislation.

The Crown Prosecution Service indicated that it was likely to seek the retrial of seven men in an attempt to prove that there was a plan to attack aircraft and kill thousands of people.

The discovery of the plot, in August 2006, led to a global security clamp-down at airports that paralysed international travel.The alert resulted in restrictions on carrying liquids in cabin baggage that remain in force and are unlikely to be relaxed.

Retrials are being sought even though the jury at Woolwich Crown Court convicted three of the eight defendants of conspiracy to murder.

Prosecutors met to discuss their options amid concern that the jury could not decide on a separate charge specifying that airliners had been the targets of that conspiracy.

The jurors also failed to reach verdicts on serious terrorist charges against four other men, who had recorded al-Qaeda-style suicide videos and admitted charges of conspiring to cause a public nuisance.

Another defendant, described in court as a shadowy figure with terrorist connections, was acquitted of all charges and cannot be retried.

The jurors deliberated for 52 hours, but their discussions were disrupted by a two-week holiday, frequent sickness breaks and other commitments.

Scotland Yard refrained from comment last night, but the senior officers of their disappointment over the outcome of the case.

Andy Hayman, former assistant commissioner for special operations, said: “This was one of our strongest cases – there will have to be an intensive debrief. But now is not the time for that, now is the time to prepare for retrials.”

A CPS spokesman said: “The jury found there was a conspiracy to murder involving at least three men but failed to reach a verdict on whether the ambit of the conspiracy to murder included the allegation that they intended to detonate IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on transatlantic airliners in relation to seven of the men. It is therefore incorrect to say that the jury rejected the airline bomb plot.”

The men convicted of conspiracy to murder were Ahmed Abdulla Ali and Tanvir Hussain, both 27 and from Walthamstow, northeast London, and Assad Sarwar, 28, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The four men on whom the jury failed to reach verdicts were Ibrahim Savant, 27, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30.

Mohammed Gulzar, 27, from Birmingham, was acquitted on charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiring to murder by blowing up aircraft. He had vigorously denied any involvement. The Crown had alleged that Mr Gulzar, who arrived in Britain using a false name during July 2006, was a key figure in the alleged airline plot but the jury rejected that case.

Home Office sources said that Mr Gulzar would be the subject of a control order and it is expected that he will be questioned by police in connection with a serious criminal offence committed in Birmingham in 2002. Another key figure in the plot, Rashid Rauf, is on the run in Pakistan after escaping from custody.

Four further trials related to the alleged airline plot are pending.

Source: business.timesonline.co.uk, September 9, 2008

September 11, 2008
Greece in urgent need of 1 bln m3 of natural gas: BHMA

11 September 2008 | 15:04 | FOCUS News Agency

Athens. Greece finds itself in an urgent need of 1 billion cubic meters of gas, Greek BHMA newspaper writes.
The newspaper states that Turkey turns to be the big obstacle for the natural gas supply from Azerbaijan to Greece. According to diplomatic sources, the recent visit of Greece’s Minister of Development Christos Folias to Baku assured that Azerbaijan is ready to sell 3 billion cubic meters of gas by 2010 but pointed at the difficulties caused by Ankara. The key that opens the gas.

Source: www.focus-fen.net, 11 September 2008

September 11, 2008
Turkey’s THY submits bid for Bosnian airlines

Temel Kotil, the director general of the Turkish Airlines (THY), said that the bid would be concluded within two weeks.

Wednesday, 10 September 2008

Turkey’s national airline company has submitted a bid for the airline company of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a senior executive of the company said on Wednesday.

Temel Kotil, the director general of the Turkish Airlines (THY), said that the bid would be concluded within two weeks.

“We will be a partner to a European company and it will be a good beginning,” Kotil told a press conference in Hamburg, Germany.

Kotil said that THY was also interested in the Austrian airline company.

Talking about the targets of the Turkish Airlines, Kotil said THY would start flying to new destinations and announced that the number of THY fleet would climb to 123 aircraft by the end of this year.

Kotil also said that THY aimed to carry 23.5 million passengers in 2008, and expressed belief to surpass this figure in 2009.

“We had a profit of 11.4 percent last year, and we believe we can also climb over this figure in 2009,” he said.

Kotil said Turkey was a transit country in aviation due to its geographical location, and therefore THY’s transit growth was around 42 percent, which he defined as a significant figure.

The director general also said that the company gained a great deal of its revenues from its foreign offices, and forecast this year’s revenue from foreign offices around 3 billion USD.

AA

Source: www.worldbulletin.net

September 11, 2008
Boris keeps Turks waiting

Syed Hamad Ali

Published 10 September 2008

Ankara’s man in London explains why his country’s place is at the heart of Europe and how after all that talk of Turkish roots Boris still hasn’t found time to meet him

Did you know Boris Johnson’s great grandfather was a liberal Turkish journalist called Ali Kemal alive during the dying days of the Ottoman empire? Well of course you did. London’s new Tory mayor banged on about his roots a fair bit during this year’s election campaign.

But the centuries old ties between Turkey and the UK go much deeper than Johnson’s ancestry. Just ask Turkey’s ambassador to the UK, Mehmet Yiğit Alpogan: “Turkey’s membership of the European Union is one of the projects that the Turkish public opinion pay attention to and in that respect the support that Great Britain gives to Turkey is very much welcomed and appreciated.”

So has he actually met Johnson? “I am waiting for that appointment to happen,” says Alpogan, who seemed just a tiny bit disappointed a request to London’s mayor has yet to be taken up.

“I know that he is a very busy person and it will be my pleasure to be able to meet him, get together with him, and talk about many things including this past life.” A suitably diplomatic take on the whole matter.

But if he does feel let down Alpogan can perhaps take some heart from the UK government’s strong support of Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union. An attitude which contrasts sharply with the more reserved reaction of some of the other EU states such as France and Austria.

“Turkey’s place is in Europe,” says Alpogan. “There is no question about this.” And the current UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, agrees. In a Telegraph article last year he expressed his approval of Turkey’s accession, highlighting among others the pressing energy benefits: “Turkey is an increasingly important transit route for oil and natural gas, with 10 per cent of the world’s oil flowing through the Bosporus.”

The Foreign Secretary’s predecessor, Jack Straw, had gone even further and had equated membership as a means towards deflecting a “clash of civilisations”.

Boris Johnson, too, has spoken in favour of Turkey’s accession to the EU. “We would be crazy to reject Turkey,” wrote Boris Johnson in his book ‘The Dream of Rome’, “which is not only the former heartland of the Roman empire but also, I see, one of the leading suppliers of British fridges.”

Indeed the UK is the second largest export market for Turkey. For the UK investor also, Turkey is important.

Yet the question of Turkey’s EU membership is controversial. Polls indicate many citizens across Europe do not approve the move.

The situation is not helped by opposition from French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his alternative offers of a Mediterranean Union or a referendum over EU accession.

“If the Europeans say that European Union is a Christian club they are thereby making a discrimination,” says Alpogan. “They are committing a grave mistake. Of course Turkey wouldn’t have a place in such a European Union. But I don’t think that the European public opinion thinks this way … we hope that this understanding will continue to prevail and the European Union will be a place where the alliance of civilisations will be represented.”

One of the apparent reasons citizens of European states fear Turkish membership of the EU is the prospect of mass immigration.

The ambassador points, however, towards other countries in Europe whose migrants returned to their home countries sometime after joining the EU, such as the Spanish, Greeks and now the Polish.

“For a short while it might be true,” admits Alpogan. “But with the investment, economic activity and other developments that come with EU membership, soon these people would go back – at least that is what the history of the European Union shows us and that is how it is proven.”

Maybe, but that argument may fall on deaf ears in a Europe already brimming with debates over whether immigration has gone too far in this corner of the globe.

Yet there is one more twist to this whole accession debate. Who is to gain more from this membership, Europe or Turkey? A quick look at Turkey on the world’s map shows just why this nation of 80 million is considered so crucial. Yes it is about trade and access to energy but it is also about regional influence.

Turkey is the bridge between Europe and Asia.

And the ambassador is quick to highlight the “geo-strategic” and “geographical” benefits that lie in store for the European Union were Turkey to become a member.

Then there’s Turkey’s relationship with Central Asian, through a shared Turkic cultural and linguistic heritage with many of those countries, may potentially prove to be the most useful one for Europe in the future given the region being a major fuel reserve for the world.

But, of course, most European visitors to Turkey go there for one purpose – their holidays.

According to the ambassador two million British tourists head to Turkey each year and the figures are on the rise at the rate of 10-20 percent. “We have already 20,000 British families who have come and settled in Turkey or have a second home in Turkey,” says Alpogan. “Of course we are very glad to have them there and they are another strong link between the two countries.”

Indeed although he may not have found the time to meet with the Turkish ambassador, Boris Johnson, just a fortnight after winning the election for mayor in May, disappeared off to the south western coast of Turkey for a break with his family.

The trip did not go un-noticed by the local media, with the Turkish Daily News reporting that the London mayor’s ancestral ties with their country and Islam would “hopefully be beneficial for Turkey and certainly his choice of holiday destination can only be seen as advantageous for Turkish tourism.”

Perhaps. Although it may be that it has the reverse effect. Only time will tell.

Source: www.newstatesman.com, 10 September 2008

September 11, 2008
NAVAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SOUTH OSSETIAN CRISIS

By John C. K. Daly

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Last month’s confrontation between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia had a maritime dimension that continues to expand. Russia deployed elements of its Black Sea fleet to Georgia’s coast during its military operations and subsequently sank several Georgian naval vessels in Poti. During the clash Russia dispatched 10 vessels from Sevastopol to the Georgian coast.

Following the conflict, the United States determined to send humanitarian relief to Georgia but found its efforts constrained by the 1936 Montreux Convention. Now Moscow, clearly irritated by Washington’s intrusion into what it regards as its southern maritime frontier, has announced that it is deploying significant naval forces next month to the Caribbean for joint naval exercises with Venezuela. Kremlin spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters, “Before the end of the year, as part of a long-distance expedition, we plan a visit to Venezuela by a Russian navy flotilla” (Izvestia, September 8).

The Caribbean deployment is not insignificant, as it includes the guided missile cruiser Peter Velikii, the largest surface vessel constructed by the Russian Federation since the collapse of the USSR, along with the anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko (El Universal, September 8). Venezuelan Rear Admiral Salbatore Cammarata Bastidas said, “This is of great importance because it is the first time it is being done [in the Americas].” For Caracas, next month’s deployment is a timely riposte to the American administration’s announcement earlier this year that it was reactivating its Fourth Fleet, last deployed in southern hemisphere waters during World War Two.

In the aftermath of the South Ossetian confrontation, when the U.S. decided to dispatch humanitarian aid by sea to Georgia, it found its initial efforts constrained by the 1936 Montreux Convention, whose 29 articles limit the number of foreign warships that non-Black Sea powers can send through the Turkish Straits to no more than nine vessels with a total of 45,000 aggregate tons. Moreover, they could remain there for no longer than three weeks. The United States had initially considered dispatching the hospital ships USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, both converted oil tankers, but as each displaced 69,360 tons, they fell outside the Montreux convention limits. While Washington chafed under the restrictions, there was little it could do.

Last month NATO dispatched four ships from its Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 to the Black Sea for an exercise scheduled last October. The flotilla included Spain’s SPS Almirante Don Juan de Borbon, Germany’s FGS Luebeck, Poland’s ORP General Kazimierz Pulaski, and the USS Taylor. On August 22 the USS McFaul guided-missile destroyer loaded with humanitarian aid passed the Bosporus headed for Georgia with supplies such as blankets, hygiene kits and baby food, to be followed two days later by the USCGC Dallas cutter passing the Dardanelles. The USS Mount Whitney was also dispatched into the Black Sea with humanitarian aid, which it offloaded in Poti (Stars and Stripes, September 2).

Before the Montreux Convention was negotiated, both Turkey and Russia had suffered from foreign naval intervention through the Turkish Straits during and after World War One. The Gallipoli campaign was preceded by a joint Anglo-French maritime effort in March 1915 to force the Dardanelles, and the Royal Navy subsequently occupied Constantinople after the war and dispatched vessels into the Black Sea to assist anti-Bolshevik forces.

The Montreux Convention was intended to replace the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which had demilitarized the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Given their recent experience, both the Soviet Union and the Turkish Republic were interested in limiting foreign warships in the Black Sea; and for Ankara, the Montreux Convention was the first international agreement that fully acknowledged its sovereignty and position as successor to the “sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire. Britain, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Japan, Turkey, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia ratified the Montreux Convention, which formally recognized Turkish sovereignty over the Turkish Straits. Given that Britain at the time was the predominant naval power in the Mediterranean, the United States was so uninterested in the diplomatic conference that produced the convention that it did not even send an observer to the negotiations.

The Russian media is now reporting that Washington is negotiating with Georgia and Turkey to establish a naval base at one of Georgia’s Black sea ports in Batumi or Poti, but Ankara is reportedly carefully assessing its position in order to avoid further political tension with Moscow (Gruziya Online, September 7). In a replay of a dispute earlier this year, Russia has temporarily blocked the shipment of Turkish produce into Russia, citing sanitary concerns; and the dispute, which has cost Turkey an estimated $500 million in lost trade, has triggered speculation in the Turkish media that Russia is trying to punish Turkey for allowing U.S. warships to transit the Bosporus (Hurriyet, September 8).

For those with a sense of history, a factor behind the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was Washington’s deployment of Atlas IRBMs in Italy and Turkey, which, in the wake of the confrontation, Washington quietly agreed to remove, as the development of ballistic missile submarines, the final component of Washington’s nuclear triad, obviated the need for forward basing of nuclear missiles off Russia’s southern shore. Forty years later, Turkey, sea power, and the Caribbean as subplots in rising U.S.-Russian tensions seem as interconnected as ever.

September 10, 2008
Turkish Cypriot leader optimistic about reunification

ELITSA VUCHEVA

Today @ 17:27 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat on Wednesday (10 September) expressed optimism about the in-depth talks on the reunification of Cyprus formally due to start tomorrow, saying he hoped that a solution for the divided island can be found at the latest by June next year.

“All the elements of the Cyprus problem are known, so it is possible to solve [it] by the end of this year,” says Mr Talat (Photo: European Commission)

“My vision was to finish the negotiations by the end of this year and I believe it is possible,” Mr Talat said at a conference organised by the Brussels-based European Policy Centre think-tank.

“All the elements of the Cyprus problem are known, so it is possible to solve [it]” by the end of 2008, or at the latest, “before the election of the European Parliament, meaning June 2009.”

“Hopefully, we will do it,” he added.

Cyprus – an EU member since 2004 – has been independent since 1960 and divided since a Turkish invasion of the island’s northern part in 1974, triggered by a Greek-inspired coup.

Currently Northern Cyprus – or the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – is only recognised internationally by Turkey.

The Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders last week launched formal talks on reunifying their island, and good personal relations between them have prompted high expectations regarding the outcome.

In-depth UN-mediated negotiations on power-sharing are to start tomorrow, but although Mr Talat has on several occasions expressed hopes that a deal could be reached by the end of the year, his Greek Cypriot counterpart has refused to commit to a timeframe.

The EU’s role

Mr Talat said the EU could also contribute to these talks and play a role for their positive outcome, as “ending this problem would contribute to the very meaning of the EU and European integration.”

“We need technical assistance from the EU … to prepare a durable settlement within the European system,” he underlined.

“Of course we cannot ask for political assistance, since the EU does not have – as the United Nations – a huge accumulated knowledge regarding the Cyprus problem.”

“[Additionally], Greek Cypriots are members of the EU and Turkish Cypriots are out, so the EU cannot be impartial. This is a matter of fact. [But] we need technical assistance from the EU,” Mr Talat said.

Turkish Cypriots are also hoping the EU can “encourage Greek Cypriots towards a solution, because there are actually very few incentives for [them] to solve the problem.”

After they joined the EU, “they lost their incentives,” unlike Turkish Cypriots, who need the solution “deadlily,” the Turkish Cypriot leader pointed out.

Negotiations on the table need to be ‘off the air’

From the Turkish Cypriot point of view, any kind of agreement – possibly setting out a substantially decentralised state – should reflect the fact that “Cyprus is the home of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots” and highlight the “political equality” between them as a “crucial” point.

It should also include safeguards that “neither side can claim jurisdiction over the other” and be put to separate but simultaneous referendums in the two parts of the island.

For his part, Demetris Christofias, the Greek Cypriot leader, would prefer to have a more centralised federation, worried that substantial autonomy for the north could leave the door open to partition.

But Mr Talat expressed confidence that through negotiations, they “will be able to succeed in really bridging the different views and solving the problems.”

He also appealed to his Greek Cypriot counterpart to be more moderate in his comments to the media, insisting that what is still a matter of negotiations should be discussed privately.

“Exchange of views or negotiations through media is an impossible task … I know that leftists speak too much, so they may not be able to stop talking,” he said jokingly referring to Mr Christofias – currently the only communist president of an EU member state.

“But please, try. Don’t put your views through the media,” he added.

September 10, 2008