Les ors de la monarchie

Les éditions Altera viennent de publier un ouvrage à la fois bien informé et amusant sur le coût de la politique en Espagne. Son auteur, Federico Quevedo (que son ennemi intime Federico Jimenez Losantos surnomme Ni-Ni, car « il n'est ni Federico ni Quevedo », a private joke que les hispanistes peuvent comprendre) a retrouvé dans les documents officiels ce que gagnent les hommes politiques de la péninsule. Rien à envier à leurs homologues français pourtant champions en la matière. On peut le commander ici.

Les fosses rouges

Dans l'Espagne de Zapatero, il est convenu que seuls les Nationalistes ont commis des crimes. Que la République, en réalité le Front populaire, est blanc comme l'agneau qui vient de naître. Le devoir de mémoire mis en place par le gouvernement se limite à la mise en scène de l'ouverture de fosses communes où seraient enterrées les victimes de la répression franquiste.

Or les résultats de ces recherches se révèlent frustrants. Le nombre de victimes oubliées des escadrons de la mort de la droite semble très faible, insignifiant par rapport aux mythes véhiculés par les associations doloristes et la presse de gauche (El Pais, Publico), les radios de gauche (la SER) ou les télévisions de gauche (toutes les grandes chaînes).

Le malaise devient palpable dans les milieux de la gauche et du gouvernement quand apparaissent des fosses liées aux crimes du Front populaire, comme par exemple celle où aurait pu être enterré le marxiste indépendant catalan Andreu Nin.

Le dernier cas en date est relaté par le quotidien conservateur ABC. Il s'agit de la fosse contenant les restes d'une quarantaine de soldats républicains fusillés sans jugement par un général socialiste pour avoir refusé de repartir au front reprendre la ville de Teruel libérée par les Nationalistes.

Pour la première fois, le gouvernement a accepté de verser 20 000 euros de subvention à une association qui cherche à retrouver la fosse pour exhumer les corps de ces malheureux.

El Gobierno subvenciona por primera vez la búsqueda de fusilados por la República


Tres sargentos, doce cabos, treinta soldados y un tambor de la 84ª Brigada Mixta del Ejército de la República fueron ejecutados en la madrugada del 20 de enero de 1938, en el pinar de Piedras Gordas (en la localidad turolense de Rubielos de Mora), doce días después de que su unidad hubiera rendido Teruel, la única capital de provincia conquistada por su bando en la Guerra Civil. Lucharon como héroes en el invierno más aterrador que se recuerda, pero no les sirvió de nada: una ráfaga de ametralladoras acabó con ellos y sepultó sus vidas y su memoria.

Esta semana el Ministerio de Presidencia ha aprobado una subvención de 20.000 euros, aún provisional, a la asociación creada por los familiares de dos de esos soldados para que se busque la fosa, la primera ayuda que se concede a víctimas de la propia República. Los trabajos empezarán a partir de septiembre en una superficie de 40.000 metros cuadrados y con la tecnología más avanzada, que aporta el geofísico Luis Avial: fotografía aérea con infrarrojos, georadar y gradiométro de protones.

En busca de familiares

En el proyecto participa también la Fundación Aranzadi, con su presidente Francisco Etxeberría que ha sido el responsable, entre otros proyectos, de exhumar los restos del cantante chileno Víctor Jara. Alvial, por su parte, ha detectado ya unas 70 fosas de la Guerra Civil.

«La gente no puede estar enterrada en las cunetas en un país de tradición de cementerios, da igual qué bando fuera el responsable», argumenta Avial. «La dificultad de esta fosa es que es un terreno enorme, las víctimas no eran del pueblo y las referencias son relativamente fiables, pero tenemos muchas posibilidades de encontrarla».

A esa esperanza se aferra Concha Esteban, nieta de Anacleto Esteban Mora, tambor de la 84ª Brigada Mixta, fusilado junto a los otros 45 soldados. Su padre, que aún vive, no llegó a conocerle. «Siempre me había conformado con que le pudiéramos hacer un pequeño homenaje, un monolito, una cruz, algo, pero si tenemos la oportunidad de exhumarlos y el resto está de acuerdo, sería un sueño». Ella y otra familia, la del soldado Victoriano Alegre Navarro, han promovido la asociación. Hasta ahora no han podido localizar a más parientes, como es su deseo. Su testimonio, llegado de boca de terceros, es desgarrador. Un compañero de su abuelo salvó la vida porque escapó ante una posible represalia. Él le ha contado las palabras del jovencísimo tambor negándose a huir. «¡No nos van a hacer nada. Son nuestros mandos, son de los nuestros. Tienen que entender que sólo pedimos lo que nos prometieron»! Pero no. A Anacleto y a otros 45 hombres les pagaron su lealtad con balas. El episodio es descrito con precisión y primor en el libro «Si me quieres escribir» (Debate) del periodista Pedro Corral y ese texto es el germen de la asociación creada por sus familiares y la razón de que el geofísico Avial se interese por la fosa.

La 84ª Brigada Mixta, perteneciente a la 40.ª División republicana, sufrió la mayor masacre perpetrada entre sus propias filas por los mandos republicanos que ha podido documentarse, tan sólo doce días después de haber logrado para su bando la conquista de Teruel. Sus combatientes pasaron de héroes a traidores. «Como recompensa a su valerosa actuación la 84ª Brigada es retirada del frente y enviada a descansar a retaguardia, a la población turolense de Rubielos de Mora -narra Corral-. Pero a los dos días, Franco desencadena una ofensiva para intentar recobrar la ciudad. La 84ª Brigada recibe orden de suspender su permiso y marchar al frente. Dos batallones se insubordinan y se niegan a volver a primera línea. Los hombres sólo piden que se cumpla el permiso que se les ha prometido después de haber luchado en la ciudad de Teruel durante más de tres semanas, casa por casa, calle por calle, a veinte grados bajo cero, y tras sufrir más de un tercio de bajas». El jefe de la 40.ª División, el teniente coronel Andrés Nieto Carmona, del PSOE, que había sido alcalde de Mérida, ordena apresar a los insurrectos y fusilar a 46 de ellos, sin juicio previo, contraviniendo así las disposiciones sobre Justicia militar del Gobierno republicano. Sus cadáveres acabaron en una fosa excavada, se cree, la misma noche de la ejecución. La lista de muerte fue enviada por Corral al juez Garzón, en plena ebullición de Memoria Histórica, aunque nunca remitió una respuesta ni mostró interés por buscar esos restos.

La subvención aprobada esta semana es el primer paso para devolver la gloria que les fue escatimada. Se harán mapas en tres dimensiones y el georadar descubrirá cavidades, muros u otros elementos. «Un cuerpo enterrado emite una corriente eléctrica muy pequeña, una señal débil, de ahí la dificultad, pero seguro que los encontramos. Ellos son los olvidados de los olvidados», resume Luis Avial. Después habrá que plantearse si los exhuman o no, un proceso millonario que precisaría de otra subvención. Todos los protagonistas insisten en que no se busca ideologías, sino personas, que la Memoria Histórica es de todos y, por tanto, el dinero también es para todos.

La réalité du terrorisme islamique

Une attaque terroriste qui a frappé de stupeur le monde entier. Ce scénario peut se répéter à Paris, à Londres ou à New York, partout où l'on trouve des noyaux importants de populations musulmanes avec des secteurs radicaux.

Le quotidien populaire britannique Daily Mail publie ce matin une enquête dévoilant le contenu des écoutes faites aux terroristes musulmans ayant attaqué Bombay voici quelques mois en causant près de deux cents morts, dont de nombreuses personnes téues de sang froid.

A l'heure où Barack Hussein Obama en appelle au dialogue des civilisations avec l'islam, il n'est pas inintéressant de lire les dialogues entre les assassins et leurs donneur d'ordre.

Un article qui fait froid dans le dos.

Revealed: The chilling words of the Mumbai killers recorded during their murder spree This is Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, caught on film as he unleashed a devastating and indiscriminate attack in Mumbai that left 166 people dead. But this picture is not the most dramatic record of that day. During the raid, the Indian intelligence services intercepted mobile phone calls between Kasab, his terrorist comrades and a mysterious handler hundreds of miles away, who issued commands to shoot civilians without mercy. These shocking tapes reveal the sinister mind control used to turn young men into killing machines - and the casual, off-hand brutality of the men who masterminded the massacre


'Do you want them to keep the hostages or kill them?' asks Brother Wasi of someone else in the control room.
The person replies with a casual grunt, barely audible through the background babble of the news channels playing on a nearby television.
At the other end of the line, 500 miles away, Akasha, a 25-year-old Pakistani, is squatting on the floor inside a besieged building in the centre of Mumbai with a murdered rabbi's mobile phone in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other.
He knows with complete certainty that this will be his last night on Earth. For his mission to be a success, he must be killed.
The two women hostages are on a bed nearby, trussed up and blindfolded. Another gunman, Umer, is dozing.
Now Wasi comes back on the phone. His manner is warm and paternal - the kind of calm, commanding voice you instinctively trust.
Wasi: 'Listen up...'
Akasha: 'Yes sir.'
Akasha speaks in a gentle, dopey murmur. He sounds exhausted.
Wasi: 'Just shoot them now. Get rid of them. Because you could come under fire at any time and you'll only end up leaving them behind.'
Akasha: 'Everything's quiet here for now.'
Wasi: 'Shoot them in the back of the head.'
Akasha: 'Sure. Just as soon as we come under fire.'
Wasi: 'No. Don't wait any longer. You never know when you might come under attack.'
Akasha: 'Insh'Allah' (God willing).
Wasi: 'I'll stay on the line.'
There's silence for 15 seconds. No gunshots.
Akasha: 'Hello?'
Wasi: 'Do it. Do it. I'm listening. Do it.'
Akasha: 'What, shoot them?'
Wasi: 'Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head.'
Akasha: 'Umer is asleep. He hasn't been feeling too well.'
Wasi consults his associates in the control room, then comes back on the line.
Wasi: 'I'll call you back in half an hour. You can do it then.'


This conversation, remarkable for its off-hand cruelty, was intercepted by India's intelligence agencies at 8.40pm on Thursday, November 27 last year, two days into the three-day terrorist attack on Mumbai.
I first became aware of these wiretaps in January, when the Indian government released a dossier of evidence about the massacre. The dossier pointed an accusatory finger at Pakistan and included a few paragraphs of transcribed wiretaps as evidence.
At the time the thought of getting hold of the audio recordings themselves seemed fanciful. This was classified material, perhaps some of the most important wiretaps ever recorded by the Indian secret services.
Yet one morning four months later I returned to my hotel room in Mumbai looking over my shoulder and clutching an almost complete set of recordings. Soon the long-dead voices were playing through my headphones.


Despite the difficulties we had in obtaining the tapes, I immediately questioned whether they were genuine, as it's well known that the Indian government was keen to pin blame for the attack on Pakistan. I recognised in the recordings the voices of people I'd spoken to at length - a surviving hostage and an interpreter.
I also came across telephone interviews the terrorists had made with TV stations, which had been aired live during the seige, and the preceding off-air discussions with presenters and studio staff. This, combined with the sheer volume and complexity of the recordings - which include firefights, conversations with hostages, and hours of banal discussion about the practicalities of the terrorist operation, convinced me that the recordings were absolutely authentic.
Akasha and Umer had been under siege for nearly 24 hours on the upper floors of Nariman House, a Jewish study centre run by the orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch organisation in New York. The bodies of rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, who ran the centre, and his pregnant wife Rivka lay downstairs, next to those of two visiting Israeli rabbis. The hostages whose fate was being so casually discussed over the phone were an Israeli and a Mexican.
No one knows the true identity of the man known as Wasi - the puppetmaster. He is heard deferring to more senior figures in the control room, but it was he who cajoled, reassured and inspired the young gunmen forward minute by minute until they were killed. He is presumed to be a senior officer of Lashkar-e-Taiba ('Army Of The Righteous'), a militant group now considered to be a global threat on a par with Al-Qaeda.
When Wasi calls Akasha back at 9.20pm, his chief concern is ricochets. He reminds his neighbours in the control room that Ali, Soheb and Fahadullah - half the members of a six-man squad who've seized two hotels - have already been hit by their own bullets while executing hostages. He has a tip for Akasha.
Wasi: 'Stand the women up in a doorway so that when the bullet goes through their heads it then goes outside, instead of ricocheting back into your room.'
Akasha: 'OK.'
Wasi: 'Do one of them now, in the name of God. You've tied them up, right?'
Akasha: 'Yeah. I'll untie their feet.'
Wasi: 'Just stand them up. If they're tied up, leave them tied up.'
Akasha then raises another objection. He doesn't want to kill the two women in the room where he and Umer are sitting.
Wasi: 'It'll only take two shots. Do it in the room where you are now.'
Akasha: 'All right, yes.'
Wasi: 'Do it. Shoot them and shove them over to one side of the room.'
Akasha shuffles off somewhere but leaves the line open. Wasi holds the line for a full seven minutes. He calls Akasha's name a few times, then hangs up. In the next call, ten minutes later, Akasha seems more upbeat.
Akasha: 'Please don't be angry. I've rejigged things a bit and now...'
Wasi: 'Have you done the job yet or not?'
Akasha: 'We were just waiting for you to call back, so we could do it while you're on the phone.'
Wasi: 'Do it, in God's name.'
Akasha: 'Just a sec... hold the line...'
Akasha places the phone in his pocket. There is a lot of rustling (presumably Akasha crawling over to the hostages) followed by silence. Then a loud burst of gunfire. And then silence. More rustling, then Akasha is back. His voice has changed markedly. It's now a deep, eerie rasp.
Wasi: 'That was one of them, right?'
Akasha: 'Both.'


At 9pm on Wednesday, November 26 last year, ten gunmen arrived in Mumbai by boat, having sailed from Pakistan in a hijacked Indian trawler. As they came close to the city they switched into a dinghy and landed on a small beach close to the middle of south Mumbai, the wealthy downtown area, home to the city's tourist hotels, banks and government offices.
The gunmen split into pairs and headed for their targets. All of them carried heavy backpacks and were dressed in western-style clothes.
The first pair of gunmen stopped at the Leopold Cafe, a popular hangout for Western tourists. They chatted outside for a while, then embraced. They were still smiling as they tossed hand grenades and mowed down everyone in the cafe.

At the same time down the road at the Taj Palace and Tower, Mumbai's grandest hotel, the CCTV footage shows two backpackers strolling casually into the lobby. Each of them is weighed down with 8kg of high explosives, a Kalashnikov, a pistol, eight hand grenades, hundreds of bullets and enough dried fruit and nuts to last a couple of days.
After rubbing shoulders with the well-heeled guests for a few minutes, they go to work, gunning down guests and staff in the hotel hallways, before linking up with the gunmen from the Leopold Cafe, who had smashed their way in through a hotel side door.
By 1am on Thursday, the Indian intelligence services had locked on to the terrorists' mobile phones. The first few traces led them to VOIP internet numbers used by the handlers in Pakistan, which can't be traced in the same way a mobile or landline can.
From this point on, the Indian police listened in to the hours of conversation between the gunmen and their handlers. The recordings provide a picture of total control. The gunmen were not battle-hardened mujahideen fighters but vulnerable youngsters, groomed over a period of months to foster obedience and a lust for death, which the controllers were able continuously to reinforce by mobile phone calls.
The gunmen at the Taj, young Pakistanis from villages in the Punjab, had never set foot in a modern hotel before, let alone the vast suites on the upper floors of the Taj. By 1.04am on the Thursday, police had recorded their very first intercept...
Ali: 'There are so many lights, so many buttons... and lots of computers with 22in and 30in screens.'
Wasi: 'Computers? Haven't you burned them yet?'
Ali: 'We're just doing it. You'll be able to see the fire sometime soon.'
Wasi: 'We'd be able to see the fire if there were any flames. Where are the flames?
Ali: 'The entrance to this room is fantastic. The mirrors are really grand. The doors are massive too.'
Wasi urges him to throw grenades at the police and prepare a bucket of water and towels to use against tear gas. But the gunman keeps talking about the hotel.
Ali: 'It's fabulous. The windows are huge, but it feels very safe. There's a double kitchen at the front, a bathroom and a small shop. And mirrors everywhere.'
About 20 minutes later Wasi is concerned the gunmen have still not taken proper control of the hotel. He calls to ask what they have done and speaks to Ali.
Wasi: 'We told you to find an axe, did you not find one?'
Ali: 'No, we couldn't find an axe.'
Wasi: My brother, there will be an axe hanging next to each fire extinguisher in the hotel. On every floor in every corridor. Now you must start the fire. Nothing will happen until you start the fire. When people see the flames, it will cause fear outside.'
Ali: 'OK, we'll start the fire. The other brothers are nearly here now.'
Wasi: 'Throw grenades my brother. There's no harm in throwing a few grenades.'
Thirty minutes later the gunmen confirm that they have got the hotel under control.
Ali: 'They're massive rooms. Some of them are amazing. We burned some and cleared a few more.'
Wasi: 'Did you start a fire in the ones you cleared out?'
Ali: 'No, they're right next to each other. We'll set the fire on our way out. We don't want the fire to spread too quickly in case we can't get out.'
Wasi: 'No, burn everything as you go along. The bigger the fire, the more pressure you will bring to bear. We're watching it on TV. If you start the fire it will put pressure on the security forces. They won't come up.'
Ali: 'Listen. We don't even walk around our own houses as freely as we do here. We own the third, fourth and fifth floors, thanks be to God.'

While the Taj came under attack, a mile away a third pair of gunmen ran into the lobby of the Oberoi Trident, another famous five-star hotel, slaughtering diners in the restaurants and herding hostages towards the upper floors. A few minutes later a taxi pulled up outside Mumbai's main railway station, Victoria Terminus.
The car contained two more gunmen: Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab and Ismail Khan. They slaughtered 52 people before melting into the backstreets, murdering as they went.
Then, as they sped o in a hijacked Skoda, Mumbai police got their first break. Kasab and Ismail drove straight into a police road block. Ismail was shot dead but 20-year-old Kasab survived thanks to the heroism of Assistant Sub Inspector Tukaram Omble, 48.
He grabbed the barrel of Kasab's Kalashnikov and hung on to it as bullets tore into his chest. The manoeuvre, which cost Omble his life, bought the other policemen at the road block enough time to jump on Kasab and take him prisoner. It was a Lashkar gunman's worst nightmare: being taken alive (see box, previous page).
It caused concern among the controllers. The gunmen were supposed to die. To ensure no others were taken alive, the controllers started to impress on the gunmen the importance of dying. First, Wasi spoke to Fahadullah at the Oberoi hotel, who was sitting with his partner Abdul Rehman in a room on the 18th floor, watching the news coverage on TV. The intercept is timed at shortly after 1pm on Thursday.
Wasi: 'The manner of your death will instill fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers. Keep looking for a place to die. Keep moving.'
Fahadullah: 'Insh'Allah.'
Wasi: 'You're very close to heaven now. One way or another we've all got to go there. You will be remembered for what you've done here. Fight till the end. Stretch it out as long as possible.'
In the evening, Fahadullah and his partner, at Wasi's insistence, leave the room and are ambushed by Indian commandos. The next intercept is timed at 8.13pm. The whooshing sound of the hotel fire sprinklers can be heard.
Wasi: 'How are you my brother?'
Fahadullah (sounds weak): 'Praise God. Brother Abdul Rehman has passed away.
Wasi: 'Really? Is he near you?'
Fahadullah: 'Yeah, he's near me.
Wasi: 'May God accept his martyrdom.'
Fahadullah: 'The room is on fire, it's being shown on the TV. I'm sitting in the bathroom.'
Next time Wasi calls, he urges Fahadullah to go out and fight.
Wasi: 'Don't let them arrest you. Don't let them knock you out with a stun grenade. That would be very damaging. Fire one of your magazines, then grab the other one and move out. The success of your mission depends on your getting shot.'
Fahadullah: 'Yes, I know.'
Wasi: 'God is waiting for you. Stay on the line and keep the phone in your pocket. We like to know what's going on.'

These are the last words Wasi says to Fahadullah, who left the room and was eventually killed at dawn on Friday, just before Indian commandos staged a show of force with a helicopter landing on the roof of Nariman House.
There, too, Wasi had been trying to persuade Akasha to run outside and be shot dead.
Wasi: 'A stronghold can only last for as long as you can handle it. And now we're crossing that limit. What do you think?'
Akasha: 'Please God.'
Wasi: 'It's Friday today, so it's a good day to finish it.' Once the helicopter lands on the roof, Akasha and Umer suddenly find themselves under fire.
Wasi: 'Put the phone in your pocket and fire back.'
Two hours later, at 8.47am on Friday, Wasi finally gets the news he's been waiting for.
Akasha: 'I've been shot.'
Wasi: 'Sorry?'
Akasha: 'Pray for me.'
Wasi: 'Oh God. Where have you been hit?'
Akasha: 'My arm. And one in my leg.'
Wasi: 'May God protect you. Did you hit any of theirs?'
Akasha: 'Yeah, we shot a commando. Pray that God will accept my martyrdom.'
Wasi: 'Praise God, praise God.'
Akasha: 'Bye.'

By Saturday morning, 60 hours after the first shots at the Leopold Cafe, the operation was over and nine gunmen lay dead. Only Kasab survived - he is currently on trial and faces the death penalty if found guilty. Across Mumbai 166 victims lay dead and 308 injured.
Lashkar-e-Taiba remains one of the most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. It has tens of thousands of recruits. The Pakistani government has yet to find its leaders and put them on trial. It is only a matter of time before the Lashkar handlers get back in their chairs at the control room.
There's a passage in the phone transcripts that is grimly prophetic. At Nariman House, Akasha was being briefed by his handler for an interview he was to give over the phone to an Indian TV channel.
'Give the government an ultimatum,' says a handler named Jindul, who was clearly the media consultant in the control room.
'Tell them that this is just the trailer. Just wait till you see the rest of the movie.'
Akasha takes notes for his interview.
'Let the government know...' he mutters as he writes, 'this is just the trailer.' But he doesn't seem to understand. Jindul explains impatiently:
'It's a small example. A preview.' Akasha eventually gets the metaphor: 'The rest of the film remains to be seen. Should I write that?'
'Tell them this is a small drop,' says Jindul, warming to his theme.
'Let them sit and watch what we do next.'
Dan Reed's 'Dispatches Special' on the terror attacks in Mumbai is on Channel 4, Tuesday at 9pm

THE POLICE INTERROGATION

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was the only terrorist to survive the Mumba iattack. His shocking confession to police reveals what drove him to commit mass murder
During my investigation into the attacks I also obtained the video of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab's confession. It's another remarkable piece of evidence, taken just after 1am on Thursday November 27. Three hours previously, the 21-year-old on the hospital bed was gunning down women and children.
As Kasab begins to speak, it's hard to see the mass murderer in him. There's no sign of the fanatic, the zealot. He curses his Pakistani handlers, calling them 'dogs' and immediately blames his father, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba 'uncles'.

Kasab talks to the police in the Nair Hospital, Mumbai, after his capture
Kasab: 'He made me do it,' he moans.
Police interrogator: 'Who made you?'
Kasab: 'Uncle.'
Interrogator: 'Which Uncle?'
Kasab: 'The one from Lashkar. They told me you'd beat me up, so before you do that I'm telling you the truth.'
Interrogator: 'What's your gang called?'
Kasab seems not to understand. Some of the other officers present chime in: 'Your organisation, your gang, your team?'
Kasab: 'Oh... It's Lashkar-e-Taiba.'
When asked about the massacre at the railway station, Kasab is equally direct.
Kasab: 'They told us we had to do this job.'
Interrogator: 'What do you mean by job?'
Kasab: 'I was supposed to kill people.'
Interrogator: 'Which people?'
Kasab: 'Whoever was there.'
Interrogator: 'What kind of people did they tell you to kill?'
Kasab: 'Just ordinary people, no one in particular.' Next, the policeman tries to figure out the terrorists' exit strategy.
Interrogator: 'After completing your job today, where were you going to go?'
Kasab: 'We were all going to die.'
Interrogator: 'How's that?'
Kasab: 'He told us we'd be going to heaven.'
Interrogator: 'How many people did you kill?'
Kasab: 'I don't know.'
Interrogator: 'OK, how many rounds did you fire?'
Kasab: 'Er... dunno. Two-and-a-half magazines.'
Interrogator: 'And how many people did you kill?'
Kasab: 'I don't know. I just kept firing and firing.'
Interrogator: 'And this job. What time was it supposed to finish?'
Kasab: 'They said as long as you're alive, keep killing, keep killing, the dogs.'
Kasab then starts to weep - or pretends to. It's hard to tell from the recording.
Kasab: 'I mean, those were human beings, man...'
Later, the policeman asks Kasab whether he had ever questioned his handler's instructions.
Kasab: 'I did ask... but he said, "These things have to be done if you're going to be a big man and get rewards." So I asked him if he'd done these things too, and he said yes, he had. So then I thought, well if he has done it, then I should do it too.'
Kasab recounts to the policeman his father's words when he took him to the Lashkar office.
Kasab: 'Look son, these people have a good life, they eat well, now you can too. These people earn lots of money and so will you. Then we won't be poor any more.'
Interrogator: 'Your father said that?'
Kasab: 'Yes, so I said, "All right then, fine, whatever."'
Somehow Kasab seems too quickthinking, too much of a live wire, to agree to die in order to earn his father a couple of thousand dollars. Yet the fact is, as he freely admits, and as we know from the phone intercepts, the Mumbai gunmen were ordered deliberately to go to their deaths. There was to be no other possible reward than heaven.
At one point during the interview, Kasab describes how the recruits are filtered down into a small group.
'The proper training - the one where they say, "Now this boy is ready to go" - that takes three months,' he says. 'After that, he's ready. He waits. Then they get him ready and say to him, "Off you go and die."'
Rakesh Maria, Mumbai's legendary police investigator, questioned Kasab later that day. Kasab told Maria that his handlers had seen how, once a fighter was martyred, his face would glow like the moon and a smell of roses would emanate from his dead body.
So once he had squeezed every drop of information out of him, Maria had Kasab taken to the morgue, where he was shown the bodies of his nine associates, charred by fire and mangled by bullets.
Kasab, says Maria, broke down and wept.

Dépenser à en mourir

Un goupe de libéraux américains a réalisé un petit film qui a le mérite de mettre en perspective les différents plans de relance et de secours aux banques.



Sommes nous plus vertueux ? A peine. Au Royaume-Uni, le gouvernement a dépensé davantage par habitant que Barack Hussein Obama (BHO). L'Europe continentale échappe aux pires excès, mais le gouvernement français poursuit un endettement chronique depuis bien plus longtemps.

La mort d'Ilan Halimi vue par le judaïsme américain

L'horrible meurtre d'Ilan Halimi entre les mains d'une bande de criminels que l'on hésite à qualifier encore d'être humains suscite relativement peu de commentaires en France. Le procès d'assises qui cherche à déterminer les différents degrés de responsabilités parmi une bande de jeunes gens issus de l'immigration afro-musulmane se déroule à huis clos, ce qui ne facilite pas le travail des journalistes.

Lois des travers des professionnels des médias français, toujours disposés à excuser un xénophobe ou un raciste dans la mesure où il est musulman ou originaire du continent africain, la journaliste américaine Pamela Geller, interrogée par Jamie Glazov de Front Page Magazine appelle un chat, un chat et enfonce les doigts où ça fait mal.

Ses propos sont souvent excessifs et injustes, mais comment rester de marbre en écoutant le détail du martyre du jeune homme, de l'indifférence de la police et de la complicité des habitants de la cité ?

France’s Private Concentration Camp


Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog Atlas Shrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye'or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories -- notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Front Page Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications.

FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Geller: Thank you for having me Jamie.

You’ve been following the trial of the torture and murder of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in Paris. Tell us about the case and the trial.

Geller: The death of Ilan Halimi can only be described as an unspeakable horror, and yet typical of the increasing Islamic Jew-hatred and violence against the Jews. A group calling itself the Muslim Barbarians targeted Jewish men for torture and murder. Their first attempts to kidnap a Jew were unsuccessful, despite the lure of a beautiful girl. Ilan Halimi was not so lucky. He did not escape the Islamic homemade concentration camp the Muslim Barbarians had set up.

The banality of evil lived in that apartment building. Apartment dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan's screams and cries of torture over a period of three weeks, and yet did not call the cops. The screams must have been loud because the torture was especially atrocious: the thugs cut bits of flesh off the young man. They cut his fingers and ears. They burned him with acid. They poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Not only did those in the building not go to the police -- they did nothing at all. Worse, many took part in the tortures.

So systemic is the Jew hatred in France that it impeded rescuing Ilan or securing his release. Halimi's family said that throughout Ilan's entire captivity, the French police refused to move on any of the evidence that pointed to an anti-Semitic motive. Instead, the police conducted a routine kidnap investigation (which invariably involves ransom, not death). The police refused to pursue the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that, according to newspaper accounts, "in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background".

The family begged the police to listen to torturous phone calls from the kidnappers and acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish. Clearly, had the police not acted in judeophobic fashion, they would have recognized that Ilan's life was in terrible danger and taken urgent action. But law enforcement was not the only guilty party. The government refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic motives behind the torture and killing a full week after the Halimi turned up mutilated and dead.

This was not new, of course. In 2003, Sebastian Sellam, a popular disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club called Queen known as DJ Lam C (a reverse play on his surname) was on his way to work when in an underground parking lot, a Muslim neighbor slit Sellam’s throat twice. His face was completely mutilated with a carving fork. Even his eyes were gouged out.

It has taken three years to bring this case to trial and even now, they are hiding their dirty little secrets behind closed doors.

FP: How come this trial is not receiving any attention or coverage?

Geller: The French would like this ugly little business to go away. Like Al Dura. Like
their sordid national behavior when the Nazis occupied France.

The latest outrage in the closed (more like hidden) trial of the "Muslim barbarian" ringleader Fofana and his 26 accomplices (it was more like 50) in the savage torture and murder of Ilan Halimi is suspension of the trial, with no indication of when it will begin again. Why isn't Youssouf Fofana, in a glass box like Eichmann at Nuremberg, chained like the wild animal that he is?

In a shocking display of proud Islamic Jew hatred (consistent with the most sacred teachings of the Koran), the brutal Halimi murder trial was suspended after the defendant spewed vile invectives and threw his "Arab shoes" across the courtroom at the jury. Throwing shoes at someone is a powerful insult in the Arab world.

According to a prosecution lawyer, Fofana's shoe throwing occurred during the presentation o f evidence by doctors who examined Halimi's body.

It is not clear when the hearing would be resumed. The trial is being conducted behind closed doors, with no press or public allowed, at the request of two of the defendants who were minors at the time of the killing. The trial is closed at the request of barbarians so evil, so savage that it defies the normal mind. And yet the vichy French acquiesced to the Muslim nazis and are hiding their pathetic attempt at justice behind closed doors.

The silence in the media and across the world is a crime against humanity. Imagine, if you will, the unthinkable, the impossible -- if Ilan had been a Muslim and his attackers had been Jews. Stop laughing -- I know it is impossible, but that's not my point. This is damning proof of the Jew hatred that is running wild across the world. Israel shuts a light off in Gaza and the world wants to eliminate her. Imagine if Ilan had been black and his attackers had been white. Stop and think about it.

FP: So let’s dig a bit deeper here: why did the police turn a blind eye to the evidence indicating that Islamic anti-Semitism was behind the kidnapping? Why is the French government, law enforcement and the media now covering up why this horrifying crime was committed? Better to let a Jew get tortured and killed than to point to the truth about what Islam teaches and what many Muslims believe and are ready to act upon, yes? This is Jew-Hate and a surrender to Islam simultaneously, yes?

Geller: Yes, exactly. This is a strain of anti-Semitism in Europe that has never been eradicated. There is never any discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism, and it is fundamental to Islamic teachings. This refusal to acknowledge the obvious gives tacit approval to incitement to violence. It is unsafe to walk about many European cities with any identifying Jewish apparel or accessories on. Is that what Europe learned from World War II? Is that the lesson that Europe took away from the holocaust?

The lesson that Europe had decided to avail itself of in the aftermath of Auschwitz was not that evil is bad and that they behaved like monsters, but rather that everything was caused by nationalism -- and therefore, what they really needed to do was have a European Union that would obviate their need for nationalism, so that they could become this transnational gobbletygook. They'd all get together and therefore they wouldn't have another Auschwitz.

But really the lesson should have been that they were evil and they had to be good. And that is the lesson they still have to learn. You have to be able and willing to make moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil, and that is something the Europeans refuse to do.

They are constantly having memorials to dead Jews, while condemning Israel for every act of self defense, no matter how benign it is, in the defense of innocent Jewish citizens.

Ilan Halimi best demonstrates the horror of this lack of humanity. But certainly the "death to Jews" rallies that spread like a cancer across the Europe (and major US cities) during the Gaza defensive in January is certainly a gross demonstration of this evil.

FP: What are your own personal thoughts on this case?

Geller: It is an indescribable horror. Unimaginable. It demonstrates the free hand Jew hatred is given. It was not just the Muslims that reveled in the torture of this young Jewish man; it was law enforcement's response (or lack of it), and the circus-like atmosphere of the trial. It is a stunning indictment of French society. Flagrant and unabashed hatred.

FP: What can ordinary citizens do to try to bring some kind of justice to this horrifying crime and to expose the shameless, hateful and cowardly behavior of French authorities and the media etc?

Geller: Speak up! Write, call, email, fax media and elected officials. Burke was right when he said all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Speak up! Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (channeling Ayn Rand here).

FP: What do we get from the reality that this happened, as you relate, in an apartment building where myriad dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan's screams and cries of torture and did not only did nothing but came to participate? This wasn’t a secret between three people. Dozens and dozens of people knew about this, and supported and engaged in it. What does it tell us?

Could it possibly have something to do with the Islamic theological teaching about not only the importance of hating and killing Jews, but also that a Muslim will go to heaven if he kills a Jew?

Hmmm I wonder.

The liberal and leftist milieus cannot accept what it tells us of course, but they know there would never be a reverse situation (i.e. an apartment building full of Jews who hear a Muslim screaming from being tortured and they support it and participate in it, etc.). And if this did happen, which it wouldn’t, imagine the media being completely silent about it.

Geller: This is the terrible truth about Islam, well documented in Dr. Andrew Bostom's encyclopedic tome, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. The Islamic dehumanization of the Jews mirrors what the Nazis did during the Hlocaust. I find it troubling in all of my research and personal dealings it is difficult to find devout Muslims (any Muslims that are not apostates) who are not hostile to Israel. It speaks volumes. And of course, none of this would be possible if the Left were not aligning itself with political Islam. But this is consistent with the modus operandi of the left. Historically they align themselves with the totalitarian ideology du jour.

FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Florence Rey retrouve la liberté

Florence Rey à son procès.

Florence Rey, condamnée en 1998 à 20 ans de réclusion criminelle à la suite d’une fusillade qui avait fait cinq morts dont trois policiers, en 1994 à Paris, a été libérée en mai. Elle est donc resté environ quinze ans derrière les barreaux.

Florence Rey avait été impliquée, avec son compagnon Audrey Maupin, dans une fusillade au cours de laquelle trois policiers et un chauffeur de taxi avaient été tués le 4 octobre 1994 à Paris. (Lire le récit de cette nuit sanglante dans un article paru en 1994 dans Libération)

Audry Maupin avait également trouvé la mort dans cette action, qui avait suscité une très vive émotion en France en raison de la jeunesse et de la personnalité du couple, des étudiants en rupture de ban. Elle était âgée de 19 et lui de 23 ans au moment des faits.

Florence Rey avait été reconnue coauteur du meurtre d’un des policiers tués et complice de ceux des trois autres victimes.

Aujourd'hui âgée de 34 ans, la jeune femme, qui a passé quinze ans en prison, est «transformée», selon France Info. Grâce au soutien de sa mère, elle a poursuivi des études universitaires d'histoire-géographie et fait beaucoup de sport.

Pas un mot de condamnation dans la presse pour l'idéologie anarchiste qui a justifié a priori pour ceux marginaux le recours à la violence. Imaginons un instant que ces deux jeunes gens aient professé des idées politiques différentes, il est difficile d'imaginer des journalistes aussi indulgents. La presse, et Libération en tête, aurait réclamé des peines exemplaires et l'interdiction des mouvements politiques partageant la même idéologie du couple.

Il est frappant de constater qu'à chaque fois que des hommes et des femmes partageant l'idéologie majoritaire des journalistes sont pris la main dans le sac, empêtrés dans des turpitudes diverses, la presse se révèle d'une grande indulgence. Le dernier exemple en date étant celui de Daniel Cohn Bendit.

Florence Rey, ayant sur la conscience la mort de cinq personnes, est sortie de prison après avoir purgé une quinzaine d'années de sa peine. Je ne puis m'empêcher de penser à un autre cas dont j'ai eu connaissance par le mail d'un lecteur, celui de Michel Lajoye. Ce jeune marginal xénophobe a posé une bombe dans un café arabe de la banlieue de Rouen. Cet attentat n'a fait ni victimes, ni dégâts, ni blessés, même si l'intention de son auteur était probablement autre. Mais ce jeune homme a fait plus de vingt ans de prison.

De même, Carlos est en prison pour encore longtemps car il ne se contente pas d'afficher des opinions de gauche bien comme il faut qui le rendraient sympathique aux yeux des journalistes de Canal + et de Libération.

Quoi qu'il en soit, je me réjouis de la sortie de prison de Florence Rey. Les personnes condamnées pour avoir eu recours à la violence politique ne se comparent en rien avec les criminels de droit commun. Comme des prisonniers de guerre, ils sont parfaitement réinsérables dans la société.

A condition qu'ils acceptent que la guerre est finie pour eux.

Origines de l'insularité britannique

L'insularité britannique ne naît pas de la géographie, elle trouve son origine dans les choix personnels d'Henri VIII qui pour satisfaire un égo démesuré a choisi de rompre avec Rome. Contrairement à ce que l'histoire officielle anglaise répète depuis le XVIe siècle, le protestantisme n'étaient en rien un mouvement populaire, il a été imposé du haut en bas de la société britannique avec les tristes conséquences que l'on sait.

Ce matin, dans les colonnes de The Independent, Paul Valley répond à la question : « Que se serait-il passé si Henry VIII avait puy obtenir de Rome son divorce ? »

The Big Question: What would have happened if Henry VIII had obtained his divorce?

Why are we asking this now?

Because the Vatican has just announced that it will market 200 facsimile copies of the elaborately decorated parchment from 1530, which bore an appeal by English peers to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon.

The document is key, historians said, to understanding the formation of the English national character. It marks, said Professor David Starkey in Rome yesterday, the most important event in English history. "This is the moment at which England ceases to be a normal European Catholic country and goes off on this strange path," he said, "that leads it to the Atlantic, to the New World, to Protestantism, to Euro-scepticism."

Why did Henry want a divorce in the first place?

It wasn't a divorce, it was an annulment. To cement an alliance with Europe's most powerful country, Spain, Henry's father, Henry VII, had arranged a marriage between Henry's elder brother Arthur and the daughter of the Spanish monarchs, Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon. When Arthur died she was married off to Henry.

But by the end of the 1520s, Henry's wife, Catherine of Aragon, was in her forties and he was desperate for a son to secure the Tudor dynasty.

Henry applied to the Pope for an annulment of the marriage, on the grounds that it was not lawful in those days for someone to marry his brother's widow. Technically that was correct. And royal annulments had happened before: Louis XII of France had been granted one in 1499. But, by then, Catherine's nephew had become the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and he did not want to see his aunt humiliated. So the Pope dilly-dallied.

What happened?

Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn and by 1533 she was pregnant. He married her in secret. Meanwhile he had pushed through Parliament a series of Acts cutting back papal power and influence in England. Several months after the wedding he got the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer to unilaterally declare his first marriage invalid. Anne Boleyn was crowned queen a week later. A year later the Pope declared that Henry's second marriage was invalid.

Henry declared that the Pope no longer had authority in England and in 1534, Parliament passed an act that stated that Henry VIII was now the Head of "The Church of England". The Pope responded by excommunicating Henry. The king passed the Act of Supremacy. Those who would not swear allegiance to him as head of the Church were executed for treason. Then followed the Dissolution of the Monasteries, under which all the lands and possessions of Britain's religious orders were purloined by the king and his apparatchiks.

Wouldn't the reformation have happened anyway?

That was the myth peddled by the English establishment for centuries. The propaganda was that a corrupt and decaying Catholicism was replaced by a more morally pure and progressive Protestantism. But historians now challenge that view. They are led by Cambridge University's Eamon Duffy whose scholarly masterpiece, The Stripping of the Altars, was a meticulous study of the accounts, wills, primers, memoirs, rood screens, stained glass, joke-books and graffiti of the period.

What did this book show?

It showed beyond doubt that medieval Catholicism was in fact flourishing and much loved by the ordinary English people for whom it offered social and spiritual sustenance. Luther's Protestant reformation had taken no root.

"Very few people were remotely interested in ideas from Germany," said David Starkey. But "because Protestantism won and because history is written by the winners, the Protestant account of the Reformation triumphed". The Reformation in England was imposed from the top.

How was the Reformation imposed?

By a fierce centralist onslaught by the King and a small group of brutal, greedy, self-serving henchmen out for loot. Protestantism was imposed – through coercion, spying and disenfranchisement – by a cadre of political opportunists during just three decades of Henry's and then his daughter Elizabeth's reign.

Public resistance to Elizabeth's dismantling of the Catholic parish system persisted until the 1570s. And some Catholic customs and loyalties lingered until the beginning of the 17th century. However, by then, as Professor Duffy put it, England's Catholic inheritance became for the English people "a distant world, impossible for them to look back on as their own".

Wouldn't Protestantism have flourished anyway?

Probably not. Henry had persecuted English Protestants until the row over the annulment. But once his estrangement from Rome was clear, Protestants flooded into England. There was a big influx from France after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 when a large group of wealthy and prominent Huguenots were slaughtered in Catholic Paris. There was also a steady wave of Protestant from the Low Countries after Spain began to assert its rule there. So Protestantism was a foreign import.

How did the move towards Protestantism manifest itself?

In 1536 Henry gave permission for an English translation of the Bible to be published in England, which was a very non-Catholic act for Rome was still hiding behind its Latin. Henry continued to regard himself to be a Catholic but by doing this he began to move the Church in the direction of Protestantism. From that point onward, the Church of England claimed itself to be both Catholic and Reformed (as distinct from just Protestant) a character which many proclaim to be its continuing compromising genius to this day. It was to be 100 years before the Protestants really showed their strength – by cutting off the head of the king in the Civil War.

Were it not for the annulment, as John Stuart Mill put it in his essay On Liberty, this country would almost certainly have followed the example of the majority of the Continent. "In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire," Mill wrote, "Protestantism was rooted out; and mostly likely would have been so in England, had Queen Mary [Henry VIII's first daughter] lived, or Queen Elizabeth died."

How would things have been different if England had remained Catholic?

"My offices might be in Rome and I might be writing in Latin," quipped Paul Handley, the editor of the Church Times, the leading Anglican newspaper, yesterday. "And what would have happened to the bolshy individualistic Englishman on which we base all our historical mythology?"

It would have been a unique Catholicism though, not fervent like the Mediterranean kind, but not separatist like the Catholism of France which is the product of a guillotine-crazed Revolution and a secularising Enlightenment. We might just be irreligious Catholics instead of irreligious Protestants. But the world may have lost something rather special.