Stories from 2002-07-20

"An unnamed official said: 'We don't know what he was up to, but he was coming from Indonesia, he had $12 million in bogus cheques ... he was born in Jordan and his family is from Chechnya.' " [more]

"The western press has made so much of the idea that, as the Taliban left Kabul, the liberated women threw off their blue shrouds. But in Kabul, almost all the young women are still wearing the burka. This is not through force of tradition. There was a custom of wearing the burka among some ethnic groups in Afghanistan, but not among educated women in the cities. I asked 20 or 30 women why they were still wearing it, and all gave the same answer. Fear." [more]

" 'I see this as a war crime; I see this as a crime against humanity,' said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat. 'It's a very alarming development.' B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, issued a statement saying that 'punishment of innocent persons will constitute an unerasable moral blight on the State of Israel' and that the policy would violate the Geneva Convention against both collective punishment and deportation." [more]

"Sarid also criticized US Security Advisor's remarks last week, where, in an interview with Israel's Channel 2, she welcomed the Israeli government's 'courageous decision to remove illegal settlements', pointing out that he is ready to provide the American administration with information proving that no such measures have taken place. 'I agree with you that the removal of settlements is a positive thing, but this is not what took place in the ground. I can assure you that some of these settlements-which [the Israeli government] said they have removed, did not exist at all', Sarid stressed in his letter." [more]

"U.S. Customs agents have arrested a Jordanian-born man who was allegedly carrying $12 million in false cashier's checks, alarming counterterrorism officials who said the suspect may have been trained in al Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan." [more]