Is Mas Selamat Kastari Still Alive? Friday, Feb 29 2008

Media Release: Questions that Wong Kan Seng must answer, Singapore Democrats, 29 Feb 2008

The shocking revelation by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng about the escape of ISA detainee Mr Mas Selamat Kastari does not pass the smell test. At the minimum, it raises troubling questions that require urgent answers:

One, were there breaches of physical security? The detainee could not have walked through walls. The Minister has not told the public whether Mr Kastari had dug a burrow, punched hole through the wall or cut the wire fencing surrounding the detention centre. If there were no such breaches, then did Mr Kastari push his way past the security personnel guarding the doorways and gates?

The time Mr Kastari took to go to the toilet is at most several minutes. How does one effect an escape in that short span of time? This apparently occurred at about 4 pm and just before his family visit which means that the officers on duty had to be on heightened alert. The situation becomes even more incredible when we are told that the detainee walks with a “distinct limp”.

Mr Wong Kang Seng expects us to believe that a detainee who could not walk properly got past able-bodied officers from the confines of a toilet, in broad daylight and without an escape route?

Two, where are the footages of security cameras? There are cameras mounted in all prison facilities precisely to prevent such situations. The Whitley Detention Centre is no exception. If the Elections Department has a CCTV camera and can produce video footages, surely Mr Wong can now produce footage of the moments that led to the detainee’s escape.

Cameras would have recorded Mr Kastari’s movements as well as movements of the police officers guarding him. They would also show Mr Kastari walking, running, jumping, or limping through the compounds of the Centre if he had escaped. The Government must show the people such footage.

Three, what are the officers’ accounts? So far we have only heard from the Minister. This is not sufficient. The ISD officers involved in the matter must now give their accounts in a public, independent inquiry whose panel should include the SDP.

In addition, officers handling Mr Kastari must give an account of the detainee’s condition in the months and weeks leading up to his escape. This is important to establish the detainee’s physical condition at the point of his breakout.

If the Government cannot satisfactorily answer the above questions and produce the video footage of Mr Kastari’s movements just prior to his escape, then the question of whether an escape had in fact taken place necessarily arises. The logical follow-up to this question then is: Is Mr Kastari still alive?

The media and Parliament have been derelict in their duties in not raising the above questions and grill Mr Wong on the matter. The kids’ gloves that journalists and MPs have been using to deal with this disturbing issue is revealing as it is instructive.

At the very least, the debacle calls into question the competence of the Home Affairs Minister and his cursory statement given in Parliament is woefully inadequate, negligent even. The SDP demands that the Minister comes out in the open immediately and answers our questions.

All this mystery surrounding this incredible gaffe must, however, not distract us from the fact that Mr Kastari has not been convicted of a crime with the Government having proven its case in a court of law. Singaporeans must remember that he ISA remains a tool of the PAP to serve its own political ends.

If we decry the ISA in detaining Singaporeans like Mr Chia Thye Poh, Ms Teo Soh Lung, and Mr Francis Seow and depriving these citizens of their right to defend themselves in an open and fair trial, then we must also extend that right to Mr Kastari and all other detainees currently incarcerated at the Whitley detention centre. Let the charges be made against these suspects, let the prisoners defend themselves, and let the evidence, if any, convict these persons.

Chee Soon Juan
Secretary-General
Singapore Democratic Party

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VIDEO: How to Break a Terrorist Thursday, Feb 28 2008

FPTV, 28 Feb 2008

How do you make a terrorist talk? Veteran FBI interrogator Jack Cloonan has broken some of al Qaeda’s toughest operatives. In this special interview with FP, he shares some of his methods for making a terrorist tell all.

In the first video below, Cloonan explains that there’s more than one way to make a terrorist cry:

But what about the worst of the worst? And what about a ticking time bomb? If a terrorist has information that could save innocent lives, isn’t it time to take the gloves off?

Watch Cloonan’s response:

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Singapore Terror Suspect’s Escape From Whitley Detention Centre Thursday, Feb 28 2008

Before going on to the AP report below, do also read what I wrote back in June 2007 in Taking It At Face Value And Keeping Quiet AND Singapore’s Guantanamo. Apart from what I’ve already written in these earlier posts, I guess what will be on everybody’s mind this time round is the question “How the hell did he do it?!”. To escape from a place where even truth cannot get out.

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Singapore Terror Suspect Escapes by Gillian Wong, 28 Feb 2008

SINGAPORE (AP) — The suspected local leader of a Southeast Asian terrorist network, who allegedly plotted to crash a plane into Singapore’s airport, escaped Wednesday from a detention center, authorities said.

Mas Selamat Kastari, said to be commander of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant group’s Singapore arm, was allegedly involved in plans about seven years ago to attack Singapore targets including the U.S. Embassy, the American Club and government buildings.

“Mas Selamat was the leader of the Singapore (Jemaah Islamiyah) network. He walks with a limp and is presently at large,” the Home Affairs Ministry said in a statement. “Extensive police resources have been deployed to track him down.”

It did not say how he escaped.

Several riot police trucks were parked along main roads near the Whitley Road Detention Center, from which Mas Selamat escaped. Dozens of police officers checked passing cars.

Singapore, a close ally of the United States, was named as an al-Qaida target in a transcript from alleged al-Qaida operative Khalid Sheikh Mohamed’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, held last year at the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The ministry said Mas Selamat also plotted to hijack an airplane and crash it into Singapore’s main airport, Changi, in retaliation for the country’s arrest and detention of some of his fellow Jemaah Islamiyah members in a crackdown on the militant group’s operatives here. The alleged schemes were never carried out.

Mas Selamat left Singapore in December 2001 following the arrests of nearly 40 other suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members.

The ministry’s Web site said Indonesian authorities detained him in February 2003 on charges related to possession of falsified identification documents. They deported him to Singapore in February 2006, the ministry said.

Mas Selamat has since been held in custody under Singapore’s Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.

Since 2002, Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for a series of terror attacks that killed more than 250 people, most of them in Indonesia. Scores of its suspected operatives have been arrested across Southeast Asia since 2000.

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Malaysia Needs A Strong Opposition; S’pore Govt Is A Glorified City Council Wednesday, Feb 27 2008

Malaysia needs a strong Opposition, The Age, 27 Feb 2008

by Michael Backman

SHOULD Malaysians bother to vote? The corollary of this question is: does the Malaysian Government deserve to be re-elected? The answer to the second question is no.

In the past few years, the Malaysian Government has presided over an extraordinary number of scandals that are appalling by any standards: the trade minister’s allocation of car import permits to friends, relatives and supporters; the billion-dollar fraud at the Port Klang Free Trade Zone; the outrageous and much-flaunted wealth of ruling party politician Zakaria Md Deros; the claims that a High Court judge allowed the lawyer representing a rich businessman to write for him his judgement in a defamation lawsuit; an immensely rich chief minister in Sarawak state who is allowed to rule as if it were his; and so on.

The Malaysian Government richly deserves to pay for all of this at the ballot box.

So the next question is: should the Malaysian Opposition be elected to office? Again, the answer is no.

The Opposition is a shambolic assortment of the disaffected rather than a competent, alternative government. In no way is it ready to govern.

All these questions are pertinent because Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has called elections for March 8.

Elections are fought tenaciously in Malaysia as if the South-East Asian country is a fully fledged democracy. But it isn’t. It is democratic in that elections are held, but they are not fair. The ruling coalition has been in power in one form or another since independence 50 years ago. One reason for this longevity is that there are legal and institutional biases that favour the Government.

Malaysian electorates are severely malapportioned. The smallest electorates are rural; the largest are metropolitan. The largest have about six times the number of registered voters as the smallest. This means that the votes of those in the smallest seats count for many times those in the larger seats.

This sort of bias meant, for example, that in the last general elections held in 2004, the ruling coalition won 198 or 91% of the parliamentary seats with just 64% of the votes cast. The Opposition won only 21 seats or 9.6% of the seats compared with 36% of the popular vote.

Had the Parliament reflected voters’ actual voting intentions, there would have been 79 rather than 21 Opposition members elected.

Outright fraud is another way in which Malaysians are cheated when they vote. Tens of thousands of dead people are believed to have voted in the 2004 elections. Exit polling is difficult, but it is assumed that these voters overwhelmingly favoured the Government. Credit must be given when it is due — the Government did eventually remove hundreds of thousands of deceased voters from the electoral roles. But the damage had been done.

Also at the last elections, thousands of Malaysians who turned up on polling day found that the electorates in which they were registered had been changed without their permission or knowledge. Thousands of voters were shifted into Opposition-held or marginal electorates. Absurdly, even family members living in the same house discovered that they had been registered in different electorates. Most Malaysians do vote for the ruling coalition, so the effect of this was to swamp the votes for the Opposition.

Multiple voting is another problem. Indelible ink is used to mark voters when they vote, but it is not compulsory.

Next month’s election is being held a year early. Why? One reason is because Anwar Ibrahim, who was deputy prime minister until he was charged and convicted of corruption and sodomy in the late 1990s, will only be eligible to stand for election after April 8 because of the convictions. The sodomy convictions were overturned because of uncertainty about the dates on which the alleged acts were supposed to have occurred, but the corruption verdict stood.

Anwar is unfit to hold public office, regardless of the Government’s manoeuvring against him. The sodomy issue is irrelevant. The serious charges against him are the corruption charges, which relate to Anwar asking the police to heavy two witnesses into withdrawing their statements against him. On this, Anwar was convicted with irrefutable evidence.

That the deputy prime minister of any country should do such a thing is unforgivable and yet Anwar has his backers, mostly in the Western media.

Most Malaysians found his criticisms of their Government shortly after he was removed from office to be transparently opportunistic, given that he had been a senior minister in the Government for 15 years. But while Anwar is more popular outside Malaysia than inside, he is still a rallying figure for the discontented.

So what should Malaysians do? Firstly, in a country where voting is not compulsory, they should vote. There’s no point complaining on internet blogs but not bothering to vote.

Given the Opposition’s unpreparedness to govern, the Malaysian Government is best returned. But it does deserve a good, hard kick. Even more, it needs a significant and strong Opposition to help it govern better. It needs greater accountability and scrutiny, which a strong Opposition in Parliament will help provide. That is what good governments everywhere have and need.

Of course, tiny Singapore is an exception but Singapore is a country in name only. The reality is that the Singapore Government is a glorified city council.

Malaysia, on the other hand, is a diverse and complex country that wants to be modern. It needs to be governed like one.

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U.S. Treasury Slaps Sanctions On Asia World Co Ltd & 10 Singapore-Based Companies Tuesday, Feb 26 2008

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration, tightening pressure on Myanmar over human rights abuses, on Monday announced more economic sanctions against businesses and individuals linked to the country’s military leaders.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it was banning Americans from doing business with Asia World Co Ltd, a Myanmar company controlled by Steven Law and his father, Lo Hsing Han, who it said was a big figure in the international heroin trade.

The Treasury described both men as “financial operatives” of the Myanmar regime.

It was the fourth set of sanctions under an executive order issued last year in response to Myanmar’s military crackdown against protesters and included a freeze on any assets the firms and individuals may have under U.S. jurisdiction.

Myanmar’s junta in September crushed the biggest pro-democracy protests in nearly 20 years, killing at least 20 people, according to Human Rights Watch. Western governments say the toll may be much higher.

“The situation in Burma remains deplorable,” U.S. President George W. Bush said in a statement, and called for concerted international pressure on Myanmar to achieve a “genuine transition to democracy.”

“The regime has rejected calls from its own people and the international community to begin a genuine dialogue with the opposition and ethnic minority groups. Arrests and secret trials of peaceful political activists continue,” Bush said.

The Treasury said Law and his father, Lo, had a history of illicit activities that supported the Myanmar junta. It called Lo as the “Godfather of Heroin” who has been one of the world’s top traffickers of the drug since the early 1970s.

In 1992, Lo founded Asia World Co Ltd. a company that has received numerous lucrative government concessions, including construction of ports, highways and government facilities, the Treasury said.

Law now serves as managing director of the company, and the sanctions were extended to his wife, Cecelia Ng. The Treasury also blacklisted 10 Singapore-based companies owned by Ng, including property firm Golden Aaron Pte Ltd.

The Treasury designated two hotel chains owned by Myanmar tycoon Tay Za, who was blacklisted in an earlier round of financial sanctions, the Aureum Palace Hotels and Resorts and Myanmar Treasure Resorts

The sanctions have drawn a less than enthusiastic public reaction from Myanmar’s southeast Asian neighbors, including Singapore, a key financial center in the region. Impoverished Laos and Cambodia have denounced the U.S. moves.

Nonetheless, Adam Szubin director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets control, said some governments in the region were quietly cooperating.

“It’s incumbent on financial institutions and governments to take steps to keep dirty money out of their banks and their financial systems. We see indeed financial institutions and governments taking those steps, sometimes not in the public view,” Szubin told reporters.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by David Storey)

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Read the 1998 report titled The Burma-Singapore Axis: Globalizing the Heroin Trade

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Burmese Activists Call for Beijing Olympics Boycott Tuesday, Feb 26 2008

By SAW YAN NAING, The Irrawaddy, 25 Feb 2008

The 88 Generation Students group on Monday called for an international boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, including a boycott of products sold by Olympic sponsors, according to group leaders.

The Rangoon-based activist group released a statement urging international activists to launch campaigns to boycott the Beijing Olympics and to pressure the Chinese government to stop its unqualified support of the Burmese military government.

“In response to China’s bankrolling of the military junta that rules the country with guns and threats, we call for each and every citizen around the world not to watch the Olympic ceremonies on television,” said the statement.

Tun Myint Aung, a member of the 88 Generation Students group, told The Irrawaddy from his hiding place, “We [the Burmese people] lack democracy and human rights. So, to help our struggle for democracy in Burma, we want people around the world to cooperate with us and boycott the Chinese Olympics.”

The group called for a boycott of Olympic merchandise, and products from China and its Olympics sponsors during the time of the Olympic games.

The statement added, “We urge people of conscience throughout the world—including the hundreds of thousands of Burmese in dozens of countries—to pledge to not watch or support in any way the Beijing Olympics.”

The Burmese junta remains in power partly because of China’s support, said the statement.

China is a major trade partner, arms supplier and defender of the junta in the international arena, especially in the United Nations Security Council.

The group called on the Chinese government to pressure the Burmese regime for democratic change by using its influence over the junta.

A Web site located at www.beijingolympicsboycott.com cites 10 reasons to boycott the Beijing Olympics, including China’s involvement in Darfur and its human rights record.

Beijing, however, has repeatedly denounced efforts to link the Olympics and politics, saying it is playing a positive role and that it is wrong to criticize it for what is happening in other countries.

Recently, well-known film director Steven Spielberg withdrew as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics because of China’s policy over Darfur.

China will open the Beijing Olympics on August 8, 2008, the date of the 20th anniversary of Burma’s 1988 uprising, in which an estimated 3,000 people were killed following the regime’s refusal to honor the results of a democratic election.

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CASE Gets To Do It Again While SDP Gets Rejected Saturday, Feb 23 2008

CASE to hold protest walk on same weekend as SDP, Singapore Democrats, 22 Feb 2008

Even as the police reject the SDP’s application for a protest rally on 15 Mar 08, the Consumer Association of Singapore (CASE) has announced that it will stage a march the following day on 16 Mar.

Like the SDP’s event, CASE’s walk is held in conjunction with the World Consumer Rights Day. The event, announced on its website will “promote the basic rights of all consumers.” The protest march, with Minister for Health Khaw Boon Wan as the guest-of-honour, “will bring together over 5,000 consumers.”

The venue will be at Merchant Loop (behind Liang Court) and will take place from 7-11 am. Last year it was held outside Parliament House beside the Singapore River.

Photo of CASE March in 2007. Read about Singapore’s One Country, Two Systems Part 1 & Part 2 from the blog of artist formerly known as “Singaporean filmmaker under police investigation”

But while Singaporeans are labouring under a slew of price hikes which has brought the inflation rate to a crippling 25-year high of 5.6 percent (see following story), CASE is “campaigning to stop the marketing of junk food to children.” Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

And if the organisers were serious about what they were doing instead of performing their usual wayang, they would protest outside a MacDonald’s or KFC restaurant instead of doing it behind Liang Court.

Still, it is not easy getting together 5,000 people for a march. So how does CASE do it? Free goodie bags, of course. And, for good measure, participants “stand to win attractive prizes at the lucky draw.”

As for the SDP’s application for a permit, Minister for Home Affairs Mr Wong Kan Seng has refused to respond to our appeal even though we have written to him twice in the past week.

Stay tuned.

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Singapore Government Ministers To Cost Taxpayers 15% More Friday, Feb 15 2008

Cartoon by sei-ji rakugaki of My sketchbook

SINGAPORE, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Singapore government ministers and other political appointees, the world’s best paid, will cost taxpayers another 15 percent in the coming financial year starting April, according to the city-state’s budget on Friday.

The state will spend S$66.5 million on political appointments, up from S$58.1 million in the current fiscal year to March – which was also 27 percent up on 2006/2007.

The government announced two rounds of pay hikes for ministers last year, raising Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s annual pay to S$3.76 million – at least five times that of U.S. President George W. Bush.

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SDP Website – A Case Of Information Sabotage? Tuesday, Feb 12 2008

SDP website problems: Systems error or mischief-making?, Singapore Democrats, 12 Feb 2008

We reported yesterday that visitors to this website were automatically re-directed to an “Insurance” blog. We were unsure as to the cause of the problem and left it open to the possibility of a genuine computer-network anomaly.

However, deliberate mischief-making seems increasingly likely. Yesterday evening the Insurance blog popped up again, only this time the title read “SDP”.

A singular message was posted on the blog with titles that changed every time the blog was accessed such as “Interested in sdp?”, “Here are some my favorite sites about sdp”, and “The collection of sites about sdp”.

Below the title was the message: “Particulary (sic) I like the first site but other sites are informative as well, so if you have interest in sdp you should check all those links. I hope you’ll like them.” This was followed by a few comments.

While we would like to refrain from being alarmist, we are also reminded that PAP MP, Ms Denise Phua, had said in the aftermath of the last elections that the Government would have to “manage the Internet.” Minister Ng Eng Hen was subsequently reported to have sent PAP members to respond to its critics.

There is little doubt that the PAP is trying to ameliorate the overwhelming negative sentiment against it in cyberspace. The question is whether it tries to do this under disguise or in more blatant ways. The answer is probably both.

In this regard, we call on our supporters and friends on the Internet to be extra vigilant and to jealously guard the only space that we have left in Singapore where information and discussion can flow without obfuscation and censorship by PAP gate-keepers.

Previously, the SDP has been held hostage by the mainstream media. We depended on them to disseminate our news. But they have censored our information with a vengeance – and still do. A quick comparison with what is going on in this website with what has been reported in the newspapers and TV tells you the whole story.

Not only that, the newspapers have repeatedly refused to give us the right of reply when they write reports about us that contain half-truths and outright lies.

But with the Internet, the equation has altered. We now use this website not only to provide information about the party and our platforms, but also to build-capacity and organise our activities.

This website is, with few exceptions, updated on a daily basis. We have made use of new technology to make our communication with our fellow Singaporeans more effective and will continue to look to improve on this.

In fact, we are in the process of enhancing the capabilities of this website to further spread our message of democracy and political reform in Singapore. We will announce the changes in the coming weeks.

The one thing that cannot be said about the Singapore Democrats is that we come alive only during election time and hibernate during the interim.

Given all this, however, it would be surprising if we also did not attract attention from mischief-makers in cyberspace, especially those of the autocratic kind.

These encounters, and there have been a few, only proves to us that the SDP is pushing in the right direction and that we need to crank up a notch in our fight for justice and freedom in Singapore. In the meantime, we will monitor the present problem and rectify it.

We therefore ask you, our cyber-supporters, to help us spread the word about this website and to encourage your family and friends to visit us here.

Democracy, onward march!

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{FOI}-The CIA Operation That Should Have Prevented The Iraq War Tuesday, Feb 5 2008

This 2006 video is from Vanity Fair

The CIA operation that should have prevented the Iraq war, AFP, 5 Feb 2008

AMMAN (AFP) — When Saad Tawfiq watched Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on February 5 2003 he shed bitter tears as he realised he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing.

As one of Saddam Hussein’s most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes in 1995 — and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that.

And yet here was the then US secretary of state — Tawfiq’s television was able to received international news through a link pirated from Saddam’s spies next door — waving a vial of white powder and telling the UN Security Council a story about Iraqi germ labs.

“When I saw Colin Powell I started crying. Immediately. I knew I had tried and lost,” Tawfiq told AFP five years later in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Now in his fifties, a round-faced man with a small moustache and lively eyes behind delicate spectacles, Tawfiq described how the CIA set up an elaborate operation to recruit Iraqi weapons scientists and then ignored the results.

From the end of 2002 the US spy agency had sources inside Iraq’s weapons plants telling them clearly what the whole world now knows — that Saddam had ended efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Nevertheless in March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded Iraq to disarm Saddam of this non-existent arsenal and in the process triggered the effective collapse of the Iraqi state, plunging it into chaos and bringing thousands of deaths.

Saad Tawfiq’s role in this drama began in June 2002 with calls from his sister Sawsan, a doctor who lives with her husband Ali in Moreland Hills, a pleasant suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid-western United States.

“Our Abu Mahmuds are putting pressure on me,” she told him, using the nickname they shared for Saad’s secret police minder as a makeshift code for the US intelligent agent who had contacted her, “Chris.”

“Chris was very nice, very polite,” Sawsan, a small energetic woman, told AFP. Chris wanted Sawsan’s help to discover the status of Saddam’s weapons programme, and in particular his efforts to build a nuclear bomb.

She joined one of the most successful attempts by the CIA to penetrate Saddam’s Iraq, a programme dreamt up by agency veteran Charlie Allen to target Iraqi weapons technicians through their relatives.

The scientists were well known to the UN weapons inspectors who had been keeping tabs on Iraq’s arms plants since 1991, and the Americans were able to draw up a list of 30 who had relatives in the United States.

The American relatives were to be sent to Iraq and ask about weapons.

“I was nervous, and we even discussed with Ali what to do if something happened to me,” Sawsan said. “It was a very emotional visit back home, because I had not been there for years and I had not seen my brother for years.”

Sawsan was right to be nervous. Saddam’s notorious secret police dealt with spies mercilessly. She was taking a risk with her life and that of her brother, but was determined to help rid her original homeland of a tyrant.

The CIA provided her with a detailed questionnaire about Iraq’s weapons programmes. Fearing she would forget it, Sawsan disguised it in sketches and crosswords in a kind of homemade code.

Tawfiq picked his sister up from Baghdad airport on September 9, 2002. Her homecoming was emotional, but the pair had work to do. They met secretly at night in the family garden and took walks together in the city.

The weapons engineer was astonished by the CIA’s questions, which he thought showed the depths of the agency’s ignorance about events in his country.

“I went crazy. The questions were dumb. She was telling me: ‘They know you have a programme,’ and I was saying: ‘There is nothing. Tell them there is nothing, absolutely nothing. They have left us with nothing’,” Tawfiq said.

“She was taking notes. There were 20 major questions, and to all of them the answer was: ‘No, no, no…’ I kept swearing on the grave of my mother.”

According to Tawfiq, Saddam Hussein gave the order to dismantle Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programmes in 1995, after his brother-in-law and arms chief Hussein Kamel defected and briefed the UN inspectors.

“I was Saddam’s scientist,” Tawfiq declared, with an ironic smile. “In 1991 if you exposed something you were killed. In 1995 if you hid something you were killed!”

Sawsan dutifully gathered this information and returned to the United States to pass it on to her handlers. But the CIA was unimpressed.

“Saad told me there was nothing left,” she told AFP. “That everything had been either destroyed or dismantled by the UN and the regime has abandoned its nuclear programme. And he begged me to explain all that back in the States.

“I went back and I reported what he had told me in full detail. I even went personally to Washington. In the beginning they listened to me but then they told me that my brother was lying,” she said.

Of course Tawfiq and other colleagues approached by the CIA were telling the truth, as the United States would discover after it had launched a bloody war that has cost tens of thousands of lives.

Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia at the time of the operation to question Tawfiq, said weapons scientists had not been ignored, but had been contradicted by other sources.

“To the extent that the debriefings did not have more of an effect in Washington, it probably was not because the effort came too late but instead because there were other indications that seemed to contradict what the individuals were saying, and that suggested Iraqi unconventional weapons programmes were continuing,” he told AFP.

But as Saddam’s scientist lamented five years later: “You don’t have to destroy a country for that.”

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