Seventy four reputed members of an international gang called Armenian Power were arrested in a huge crackdown on organised crime on Wednesday.
Authorities said the group allegedly netted $20million through kidnapping, extortion, bank fraud and narcotics trafficking and that another 25 members are currently being hunted.
Among the accusations are that Armenian Power members, who are said to have ties with high-level crime figures in eastern Europe, put skimming devices at the cash registers in the discount 99 Cents Only stores and stole customers’ information to create fake credit card accounts.
Find him: FBI special agent John V. Gillies, holds up a photo of fugitive Armen Mkhitaryan, aka Ashot, during a news conference to announce the arrests of more than 70 members of the gang Armenian Power
Managers at stores alerted authorities when they learned of the scheme, which allegedly netted $2 million for the gang.
U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr said: ‘The indictments targeting Armenian Power provide a window into a group that appears willing to do anything to generate a profit.’
Glendale is the centre of the Armenian community in the U.S. but authorities also charged more than a dozen individuals from other states.
Facing charges: Mugshots released by the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force of some of the fugitives allegedly belonging to the largely Californian-based Armenian Power gang
Mr Birotte said some members of the gang are accused of bribing bank employees in Orange County to gather information that allowed them to take over accounts and steal at least $10 million. The group’s criminal enterprises in Los Angeles County netted another $10 million.
He added that the gang uses senior associates nicknamed ‘thieves in-law’ who help coordinate Armenian Power’s activities in America with actions by criminal groups in Russia, Georgia and Armenia.
Armenian Power is also broken down into cells with their own leaders, Mr Birotte said. Members have nicknames like ‘Capone,’ ‘Stomper,’ ‘Casper’ and ‘Thick Neck.’
In all, the crime group is believed to have more than 200 members.
Wanted: Alleged gang members Azizaga Salimov (left) and Armen Mkhitaryan
The group start as a street gang in East Hollywood, California, in the 1980s, identifying themselves with tattoos, graffiti and gang clothing, but the organization quickly became more concerned with racketeering than controlling ‘turf.’
Also known as AP-13, Armenian Power has close ties with the prison gang Mexican Mafia, which controls much of the narcotics distribution in California’s prisons, and has worked with African-American street gangs.
About 800 law enforcement officers were involved in the swoops on Wednesday, code-named ‘Operation Power Outage.’
The charges came after a two-year investigation by Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.
Mr Birotte said: ‘This is a significant step in disrupting this organization.
‘These types of criminal organizations – through the use of extortions, kidnappings and other violent acts – have demonstrated a willingness to prey upon members of their own community.’
In one alleged kidnapping, several Armenian Power members forced a man to pay ransom by taking him to an auto body shop belonging to a group member and then threatening him with violence.
In an alleged extortion scheme lasting months, the victim and his family were forced to make repeated payments under threats, authorities said.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said: ‘The department has undertaken the largest one-day takedown of La Cosa Nostra; a coordinated national effort against street gangs; and today, taken action against Armenian Power and others with ties to international organized crime.’
On the case: From left, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, FBI Assistant Director Steven Martinez and U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte
In an alleged extortion scheme lasting months, the victim and his family were forced to make repeated payments under threats, authorities said.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said: ‘The department has undertaken the largest one-day takedown of La Cosa Nostra; a coordinated national effort against street gangs; and today, taken action against Armenian Power and others with ties to international organized crime.’
John V. Gillies, special agent in charge of the FBI Miami field office, added: ‘This is the largest national take down of Eurasian organized crime.
‘Today’s significance is not just from the sheer number of arrests, but from disrupting their criminal influence in our community.’
Significant steps: Law enforcement officials Lanny Breuer (left) and Andre Birotte discuss Operation Power Outage
Egypt’s uprising discredits every western stereotype about Arabs*
John Pilger
An Egyptian protester waves a national flag as he sits on an electricity pole during demonstrations by thousands of anti-government supporters. Photograph: Getty Images.
Western leaders should be quaking in their boots.
The uprising in Egypt is our theatre of the possible. It is what people across the world have struggled for and their thought controllers have feared. Western commentators invariably misuse “we” and “us” to speak on behalf of those with power who see the rest of humanity as useful or expendable. The “we” and “us” are universal now. Tunisia came first, but the spectacle always promised to be Egyptian.
As a reporter, I have felt this over the years. At Tahrir (“liberation”) Square in Cairo in 1970, the coffin of the great nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser bobbed on an ocean of people who, under him, had glimpsed freedom. One of them, a teacher, described the disgraced past as “grown men chasing cricket balls for the British at the Cairo Club”. The parable was for all Arabs and much of the world. Three years later, the Egyptian Third Army crossed the Suez Canal and overran Israel’s fortresses in Sinai. Returning from this battlefield to Cairo, I joined a million others in Liberation Square. Their restored respect was like a presence – until the United States rearmed the Israelis and beckoned defeat.
Thereafter, President Anwar Sadat became America’s man through the usual billion-dollar bribery and, for this, he was assassinated in 1981. Under his successor, Hosni Mubarak, dissenters came to Liberation Square at their peril. The latest US-Israeli project of Mubarak, routinely enriched by Washington’s bagmen, is the building of an underground wall behind which the Palestinians of Gaza are to be imprisoned for ever.
The grisly peacemaker
Today, the problem for the people in Liberation Square lies not in Egypt. On 5 February, the New York Times reported: “The Obama administration formally threw its weight behind a gradual transition in Egypt, backing attempts by the country’s vice-president, General Omar Suleiman, to broker a compromise with opposition groups . . . Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was important to support Mr Suleiman as he seeks to defuse street protests . . .”
Having rescued him from would-be assassins, Suleiman is, in effect, Mubarak’s bodyguard. His other distinction, documented in Jane Mayer’s investigative bookThe Dark Side, is as supervisor of US “rendition flights” to Egypt, where people are tortured by order of the CIA. When President Obama was asked in 2009 if he regarded Mubarak as authoritarian, his swift reply was “no”. He called him a peacemaker, echoing that other great liberal tribune, Tony Blair, to whom Mubarak is “a force for good”.
The grisly Suleiman is now the peacemaker and force for good, the man of “compromise” who will oversee the “gradual transition” and “diffuse the protests”. This attempt to suffocate the Egyptian revolt will depend on a substantial number of people, from businessmen to journalists to petty officials, who have provided the dictatorship’s apparatus. In one sense, they mirror those in the western liberal class who backed Obama’s “change you can believe in” and Blair’s equally bogus “political Cinemascope” (Henry Porter in the Guardian, 1995). No matter how different they appear, both groups are the domesticated backers and beneficiaries of the status quo.
In Britain, the BBC’s Today programme is their voice. Here, serious diversions from the status quo are known as “Lord knows what”. On 28 January the Washington correspondent Paul Adams declared, “The Americans are in a very difficult situation. They do want to see some kind of democratic reform but they are also conscious that they need strong leaders capable of making decisions. They regard President Mubarak as an absolute bulwark, a key strategic ally in the region.
“Egypt is the country, along with Israel, on which American Middle East diplomacy absolutely hinges. They don’t want to see anything that smacks of a chaotic handover to frankly Lord knows what.”
Fear of Lord-knows-what requires that the historical truth of US and British “diplomacy” as largely responsible for the suffering in the Middle East be suppressed or reversed. Forget the Balfour Declaration, which led to the imposition of expansionist Israel. Forget the secret Anglo-American sponsorship of jihadists as a “bulwark” against democratic control of oil. Forget the overthrow of democracy in Iran and the installation of the tyrant shah, and the slaughter and destruction in Iraq. Forget the US fighter jets, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and depleted uranium that are performance-tested on children in Gaza. And now, in the cause of preventing “chaos”, forget the denial of almost every basic civil liberty in Omar Suleiman’s contrite “new” regime in Cairo.
Overtaken by events
The uprising in Egypt has discredited every western media stereotype about the Arabs. The courage, determination, eloquence and grace of those in Liberation Square contrast with “our” specious fear-mongering, with its al-Qaeda and Iran bogeys and iron-clad assumptions of the “moral leadership of the west”. It is not surprising that the recent source of truth about the imperial abuse of the Middle East, WikiLeaks, is itself subjected to craven and petty abuse in those self-congratulating newspapers that set the limits of elite liberal debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps they are worried. Public awareness is rising and bypassing them.
In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To their victims, the resistance in Liberation Square must seem an inspiration. “We won’t stop,” said a young Egyptian woman on TV. “We won’t go home.” Try kettling a million people in the centre of London, bent on civil disobedience, and try imagining it could not happen.
* Title of the Print edition
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. “John Pilger,” wrote Harold Pinter, “unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him.”
Qutb was hanged in 1966 by the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser after the customary torture. He had been the intellectual leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and a man of copious literary output. One of his efforts was called “Our Struggle with the Jews.” It is a work of unabashed, breathtakingly stupid anti-Semitism, one of the reasons the New York Review of Books recently characterized Qutb’s views”as extreme as Hitler’s.” About all this, the Economist is oddly, ominously and unforgivably silent.
This is both puzzling and troublesome. After all, it’s not as if Qutb was some minor figure. He is, as a secondary headline on the Economist review says, “the father of Islamic fundamentalism,” and it is impossible to read anything about him that does not attest to his immense contemporary importance. Nor was Qutb’s anti-Semitism some sort of juvenile madness, expressed in the hormonal certainty of youth and later recanted as both certainty and hairline receded. It was, instead, the creation of his middle age and was published in the early 1950s. In other words, his essay is a post-Holocaust work, written in full knowledge of what anti-Semitism had just accomplished. The mass murder of Europe’s Jews didn’t give him the slightest pause. Qutb was undaunted.
But so, apparently, are some others who write about him. In his recent and well-received book, “The Arabs,” Eugene Rogan of Oxford University gives Qutb his due “as one of the most influential Islamic reformers of the [20th] century” but does not mention his anti-Semitism or, for that matter, his raging hatred of America. Like the Sept. 11 terrorists, Qutb spent some time in America — Greeley, Colo.; Washington, D.C.; and Palo Alto, Calif. — learning to loathe Americans. He was particularly revolted by its overly sexualized women. Imagine if he had been to New York!
The Economist’s review is stunning in its omission. Can it be that a mere 65 years after the fires of Auschwitz were banked, anti-Semitism has been relegated to a trivial, personal matter, like a preference for blondes — something not worth mentioning? Yet, Qutb is not like Richard Wagner, whose anti-Semitism was repellent but did not in the least affect his music. Qutb’s Jew-hatred was not incidental to his work. While not quite central, it has nevertheless proved important, having been adopted along with his other ideas by Hamas. Qutb blames Jews for almost everything: “atheistic materialism,” “animalistic sexuality,” “the destruction of the family” and, of course, an incessant war against Islam itself.
Obviously, this is no minor matter. Critics of Israel frequently accuse it of racism in its treatment of Palestinians. Sometimes, the charge is apt. But there is nothing in the Israeli media or popular culture that even approaches what is openly, and with official sanction, said in the Arab world about Jews. The message is an echo of Nazi racism, and the prescription, stated or merely implied, is the same.
The Economist and Rogan are insufficient in themselves to constitute a movement. Yet I cannot quite suppress the feeling that the need to demonize Israel is so great that the immense moral failings of some of its enemies have to be swept under the carpet. As Jacob Weisberg pointed out recently in Slate, the “boycott Israel” movement is oddly unbalanced — so much fury directed at Israel, so little at countries like China or Venezuela. Can it be that the French philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch was prescient when he suggested years ago that anti-Zionism “gives us the permission and even the right and even the duty to be anti-Semitic in the name of democracy”? The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, a demarcation I have always acknowledged, is becoming increasingly blurred.
Because the Economist’s book reviews are unsigned, it’s impossible to know — and the Economist would not say — who’s at fault here. So the magazine itself is accountable not just for bad taste or unfathomable ignorance but for disregarding its own vow, published on its first page, “to take part in a severe contest between intelligence . . . and an unworthy timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” During the week of July 15, it didn’t just lose the contest — it never even showed up for it.
On February 2, 2011, Robert Satloff, J. Scott Carpenter, Dina Guirguis, and David Schenker addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute. The following is an edited version of Dr. Satloff’s opening remarks and responses to questions; a summary of the other presentations will be published separately.
Watch this event at C-Span.org
As the situation in Egypt continues to unfold, U.S. policy has evolved with breathtaking speed. Just last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the Mubarak regime was stable, but by Tuesday evening, President Obama was making the remarkable statement that Egypt’s transition needs to begin “now.” This is not only the most serious foreign policy challenge to this U.S. administration, but also one in a list of unforeseen and improbable challenges. Unlike scenarios involving, for example, a North Korean provocation against the South or even a catastrophic terrorist attack — for which the United States plans and prepares — the swift demise of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, along with the virtual disappearance of the ruling National Democratic Party and the potential fall of a regime that has been a pillar of U.S. standing in the Middle East for thirty-five years, is an unimagined challenge.
In that context, President Obama and his advisors generally deserve high marks. Although the administration has, at times, been off balance in its statements, it has now defined a policy and is incrementally seeing it through. This is an evolving situation, the course of which the United States is able to affect only on the margins. Still, the administration has adopted a policy that can only be described as bold — and risky. At its core is a reliance on the Egyptian military to perform its national duty and remove Mubarak from power. More likely than not, Obama’s “transition” statement was based on intelligence and the analytical conclusion that senior Egyptian military leaders were already on the precipice of taking steps against Mubarak.
Should Mubarak Stay or Go?
That question appears to have now been answered with thundering clarity: in the eyes of the administration, it seems that he should go. For U.S. policy — and for Egyptians at large — there is no future for Mubarak. There is a question of timing, however. Mubarak has asked for eight more months, and President Obama’s Tuesday statement stopped just short of saying he needed to resign immediately, leaving some room for ambiguity. Yet to Middle Easterners, the imagery of Mubarak and Obama appearing on television just moments after each other — one saying “September” and the other saying “now” — projected a clear message. The result is that every day Mubarak stays in office is a rebuke to Obama. Indeed, Mubarak may decide to stay a bit longer just to make the point that Obama could not push him out.
What Is the Military’s Role?
This is the key variable in the equation. The most important observation is that — despite billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, thousands of military exchanges, and dozens of joint exercises — there are large parts of the Egyptian military about which the United States knows very little. Still, up until the news of violence, the military was viewed as the most respected institution in the country and not necessarily complicit in the regime’s excesses. It is therefore the institution most likely to trigger change.
At the moment, the military is undergoing a tug-of-war for its soul. On the one hand, Mubarak has named a triumvirate of leaders from various services — intelligence, army, air force — to bring them and the armed forces closer to him and make them full partners in the effort to extend his rule. On the other hand, the military has (at least until the violence) refused to fire on citizens, a fact reflected in Obama’s heady compliments on Tuesday. In effect, Mubarak and Obama are each appealing to the military, one asking them “to stay the course” and the other urging them “to do the right thing” by removing Mubarak and beginning the transition. Military leaders are in a bind, but they must decide which route to take soon, because every day of inaction implicates them with the regime. And for President Obama, every day that passes without change further erodes an already weakened U.S. image.
Should the United States Suspend Aid?
Some have argued for suspending all U.S. aid to Egypt immediately. Although their objective is understandable, their prescription is incorrect. Again, the most likely agent of peaceful change at the moment — the institution most likely to trigger transition — is the military. The United States should therefore remain in contact with this institution in order to influence it, to the extent possible. The idea that Washington gains influence by cutting off assistance simply does not translate into Arabic. The administration is correct to maintain its current posture, continuing economic and military assistance to Egypt until it has greater clarity on the ground. A time may come, if the military decides fully to side with Mubarak or shoot protesters, when Washington can decide whether to suspend aid, but for now it should maintain the limited leverage and influence it has.
What Does Transition Mean in Practice?
Transition surely means something different to new Egyptian vice president Omar Suleiman than it does to opposition figures such as Mohamed ElBaradei or the head of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). It is difficult to envision a nonregime figure — that is, someone who is neither a member of the national security establishment nor a proregime public figure (e.g., Arab League secretary-general Amr Mousa) — emerging as a transitional leader. Most likely, such a leader will come from the triumvirate of military figures Mubarak has named. Once a decision is finally made, many oppositionists may in fact breathe a sigh of relief after so much attention has been focused on the question of whether Mubarak will step down. If the new leadership shows itself to be serious about implementing constitutional, legal, and administrative changes to permit free and fair elections, this may suffice.
The Bigger Picture
Trite as it may sound, the events in Egypt are a true earthquake for U.S. posture in the Middle East. Even before this week’s events, the United States was on a losing streak: Lebanon went from Hariri to Hizballah, Syria broke out from years of U.S.-imposed isolation, Muqtada al-Sadr got back in the saddle in Iraq, and the “peace process” — which Obama proclaimed a top priority — has remained dismally stuck in neutral for two years. The administration’s few victories, such as broad support for Iran sanctions, do not stack up.
For now, a sober assessment of the Egypt situation leads one to conclude that it is neither the disaster some fear nor the dawn of a new day that some hope. Both outcomes are possible. On the plus side, the protests have been largely anti-Mubarak but not anti-America or anti-peace. Of course, that could change. And on the negative side, the absence of opposition leadership could open avenues for more radical elements to fill the void.
Accordingly, concern about the Muslim Brotherhood’s potential emergence is warranted. The MB is not, as some suggest, simply an Egyptian version of the March of Dimes; it is a fundamentally political organization that seeks to reorder Egyptian (and broader Muslim) society in an Islamist fashion. Tactically, the group will exploit whatever opportunities it is offered; it has renounced its most ambitious goals and violent means only as a result of regime compulsion, not by free choice.
Although the United States should do nothing to advocate for the MB’s inclusion in Egypt’s future political set-up, neither should it operate under the assumption that the group’s ascension to power is inevitable, given the country’s broad range of political alternatives. In fact, such an assumption is very dangerous and could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As for concerns about Egypt’s regional posture, some changes are surely in order. America’s pillar is gone — for the time being, there is no Arab state willing and able to project power more or less in concert with the United States. Some will say that this has not been the case with Egypt for some time; yet, although Cairo’s influence has indeed waned, no other Arab state could ever come close to Egypt even on its bad days. Cairo’s pillar status can be rejuvenated if the transition leads to a new government that both has popular support and sees value in continued strategic partnership with the United States — a difficult but not impossible configuration. But that will take a long time.
Israel-Egypt Relations
On the Arab-Israeli front, prognosticating about a post-Mubarak government’s view is pure speculation. Certain assessments are worthwhile, however. First, Cairo is unlikely to abrogate the Israel-Egypt peace treaty; Egypt’s national security is too bound up in it. It is likely that an Egypt looking to maximize its own interests will maintain relations with Israel.
Beyond the treaty itself, Mubarak presided over such a cold peace with Israel that there are only a few things that could change. In the near term, gas sales to Israel and continued operation of the Qualifying Industrial Zones are variables. If a new government in Cairo bases its stance purely on Egyptian interests, both would remain unchanged. Currently, however, one of the few items on which virtually of Egypt’s fractious opposition parties agree is the cessation of gas sales to Israel.
The biggest area of change would most likely be Gaza. As a partner with Israel in maintaining tight control of the territory, Cairo has put much effort into protecting the border. Although the government is likely to continue playing some role in preventing the import and export of weapons, many Egyptians want to end the perception that their country is helping to impede normal economic life in Gaza. Accordingly, devising a new border policy that is not based on Egypt’s active participation is a high priority.
In the meantime, Israel is unlikely to take risks on other fronts when its southern front has just become an uncertainty for the first time in thirty years. More likely, Israel will wait to assess the impact of these events on its national security once the dust has cleared in Cairo. While wisely eschewing commentary on Egypt’s domestic situation, Israel certainly has reason to loudly declare its interest that any successor government in Egypt fulfill its international obligations, such as maintaining the peace treaty. Indeed, this requirement should be the international community’s policy as well.
The new visitor to New York is often struck by three big impressions: the people are friendlier than we’ve been led to believe, the streets really do look like the films, and the choice of car to serve as the standard taxi appears to have been made by a carefree madman with shares in Ford.
The Stretch Crown Victoria is an enormous barge of a thing with very little room in the back for passengers and only moderate boot space, inaccessible to most passengers trying to board in heavy Manhattan traffic. Its 4.6 litre V8 sucks in a gallon of fuel for every 18 miles of travel – comparable to a Jaguar XKR sport coupe – and its small, low back doors make it difficult to get in if you use a stick, never mind a wheelchair.
Ford is finally drawing production of the Crown Vic to a close this year, so New York has been running a competition to find a successor. Two other models – The Ford Escape hybrid 4×4 and the Toyota Sienna MPV – are already in use. The rather odd choice of a 4×4 for a city taxi is justified by its hybrid drive and slightly better fuel economy, and the Sienna allows easier access.
Neither of these would be an iconic design statement though, and councils of big cities do love an iconic design statement, so the competition entries have been whittled down to three contenders: adapted versions of the Ford Transit Connect and Nissan Public, and the all-new Karsan V1.
The Ford can still only manage 19mpg, the Nissan still barely has room for three people in the back and the Karsan only existed in design form.
That is, until now. A prototype went on display at the New York garage of the Classic Car Club, and looks as though it’s a clear winner on the ingenuity of design, at least.
The floor is flat and an automatic ramp is fitted as standard to allow easy access, the sign on top is digital to make it easier to see whether the cab is for hire and which way the passengers are about to get out of, there are four seats including one that faces the rear and folds up when it’s not needed, there’s room for luggage in the cab so there’s no need to open the boot just because you have a couple of suitcases and the transparent roof allows passengers to gaze at the skyscrapers in wonder.
As Karsan is a Turkish company and Turkey is yet to establish itself as one of the great auto-making countries there might be some scepticism about their claims to ruggedness and reliability. Ford have the advantage of being the home team and Nissan have three factories in the US, making them a slightly patriotic choice, if not exactly true blue.
The survey is now closed, so the choice is up to the city officials. If they can’t make up their minds, I hear that London Taxis International are always looking for new markets for their TX4.
APA-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)The United States government on Monday opened the largest of its embassies in sub-Saharan Africa in the Ethiopian capital,Addis Ababa, a hub for diplomatic activities in Africa.
The new embassy was officially opened in the presence of the visiting US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, as well as Ethiopian and African Union (AU) Commission officials.
“The official ribbon cutting ceremony marks the end of a two and a half year building project that added approximately $16 million to the Ethiopian economy and employs in excess of 1,200 Ethiopian workers,” said the embassy.
The new building consolidates in one facility the US embassy to Ethiopia and the US Mission to the African Union.
The US embassy to Ethiopia now has all resident US government agencies under one roof. Previously, US government agencies operated in separate buildings and in four different locations around the city of Addis Ababa.
“The location of these agencies into the new building will enhance daily coordination on various diplomatic and development activities in Ethiopia,” said the embassy.
The building, currently the largest US chancery in Sub-Saharan Africa, employs the latest green technology and includes architectural features drawing on Ethiopian historical styles,” said the embassy.
The building is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified facility with energy efficient design employed throughout.
The exterior design subtly incorporates stone features from Ethiopian architectural monuments in Axum and Lalibela.
The US ambassador to Ethiopia, Donald Booth affirmed that the building “is a symbol of the cooperation and friendship that the United States enjoys with this extraordinary country.”
“This new state-of-the-art chancery building will better serve the US Mission in Ethiopia and support the continuation of productive and strong relations with Ethiopia and the African Union in the years to come,” added the ambassador.
, 01/31/11
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United States Dedicates New Embassy Compound in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Media Note
Washington, DC
In an important symbol of America’s commitment to an enduring friendship with Ethiopia, as well as our bilateral relationships with the Government of Ethiopia and the African Union, Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg dedicated the new U.S. Embassy facility in Ethiopia today. Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and African Union Deputy Chairman Erastus Mwencha attended the ribbon cutting ceremony, as well as Deputy Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, Lydia Muniz; U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, Donald E. Booth; and U.S. Ambassador to the African Union, Michael E. Battle.
The dedication of the New Embassy Compound (NEC) in Addis Ababa marks the 77th diplomatic facility to be completed by the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) since the 1999 enactment of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act. In the last twelve years, OBO has moved more than 22,000 people into safer facilities. OBO has built 30 new facilities in Africa and has an additional seven projects in design or construction on the continent.
The New Embassy Compound, located just below Entoto Mountain and overlooking Addis Ababa, was designed to maintain much of the plant and wildlife that has existed on the site for many years. The building design integrates green building techniques and was one of the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) registered facilities in Ethiopia.
The multi-building complex provides more than approximately 1,000 U.S. embassy direct hire and locally employed staff, including the U.S. Mission to the African Union, with more than 19,000 square meters of working space.
B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham, Alabama, under a design/build contract, constructed the NEC; the architectural firm of Page Southerland Page of Arlington, Virginia designed the facility. The total approximate cost of the project, which generated jobs in both the United States and Ethiopia, is $157 million. The new facility was completed in August 2010, with, at times, more than 1,200 workers involved in the construction.
For further information, please contact Christine Foushee at [email protected]
