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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (11218)	11/22/2001 11:37:20 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

U.S. Death Penalty Stops Spain Extraditing Suspects dailynews.yahoo.com MADRID (Reuters) - Spain cannot extradite suspected Islamic extremists to the United States while the death penalty is in force there, judicial sources said on Thursday. Eight suspected members of a radical Spanish Islamic group were detained in Spain last week, accused of involvement in the September 11 hijacked aircraft attacks on the United States. High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon said in a committal order that the men, mostly Spanish citizens of Arab origin, had links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group. The United States accuses bin Laden of masterminding the attacks on New York and Washington that killed thousands. The arrested men have denied the charges, judicial sources said. At an informal meeting in Madrid on Wednesday involving a representative of the U.S. ambassador, two officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and two Spanish justice officials, the U.S. was told that extradition was not possible, the sources said. ``The U.S. officials came away from the meeting with the clear message that under Spanish law Spain could not extradite suspects to a country which enforces the death penalty,'' they said. The death penalty was abolished in Spain with the introduction of the constitution in 1978 three years after the death of dictator General Francisco Franco. A total of 85 people were executed in the U.S. last year and more than 60 have been executed so far this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (11218)	11/23/2001 12:12:56 AM
From: axial	Respond to of 281500

Hi, Hawk - Y'know, the theory has its attractions, not least of which is that is does have historical precedent. Heck, (and I'm saying this tongue-in-cheek) you could even postulate a view where certain people in the US were warned, but decided not to act in order to create the right atmosphere for a vigorous global anti-terrorism campaign: one in which the deaths of US soldiers would finally become acceptable. My point is that there's no limit to how far this kind of thinking can take you. You end up, like a dog chasing his tail, pursuing ever greater circles of conspiracy. Pretty soon, everybody looks like "them". One day, they find you strangling the meter reader, and it's off, to the rubber room. We differ from Islamic fundamentalists (indeed, most fundamentalists) in one way especially, among many: on the question of epistemological uncertainty. We accept the fact that we can never know the whole truth, about anything. We accept the concept of the limits of our knowledge. Many (but not all) Islamic fundamentalists believe they have heard The Word. And like all True Believers, there is no doubt, and no mercy in their judgements. Most of us intuitively recognize our inability to see, and know all, about anything. Our perception is, at best, an approximation of reality, almost a question of probabilities. So, Hawk, I would assign a lower probability to your theory, than I would to simple acceptance of the obvious facts, at their face value. I can't say you're wrong, but I haven't seen anything like enough evidence to say you're right. Simply put, what you say is possible. Personally, I assign it a much lower probability than you. Best regards, Jim

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (11218)	11/23/2001 11:13:54 AM
From: arun gera	Respond to of 281500

The event was all over the news being recorded from all camera angles. You did not need 5 guys in a moving company to record the proof. (By chance, two of my house moves in New Jersey were done by Israeli immigrants from Jersey city). Their only crime was probably that they looked middle-eastern and were laughing. But, not everyone reacts to a tragedy with a complete somber face. I think this case is another one of racial profiling gone bad. There were incidents in New Jersey after Sep 11 where neighbours complained about suspicious "middle eastern looking" neighbours who were having parties. Turned out that it were just Indians/pakistanis who had some guests over. >>Now, why Israeli Jews would show elation over the attack is a mystery, unless they were agents tasked with recording the event>> The five, who worked for a New Jersey moving company, said that they were arrested in a security sweep, after neighbors reported them to the authorities when they heard them speaking Hebrew and thought it was Arabic and that they were somehow tied to the terror attack. >>

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (11218)	11/23/2001 11:57:51 AM
From: ratan lal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

They were smiling Jim... No law against smiling. But if you are caught smiling AND u happen to have overstayed your visa, you are dead meat. What would they have done if a regular citizen was caught smiling? Trumped up some charge? Or issued another executive order to make the smilers life miserable? Bin Laden may have achieved more than he hoped for. The new executive order now makes all presidential communications previledged even after 12 years. Reagans records were scheduled to be released in Jan. 2001. Now someone will have to go to court for years to get that info released. People are afraid to fly or vacation in crowded places like Las Vegas. The world economy is suffering. Globalization has slowed down to a crawl and so on.... How long before we go back to pre 911 way of life?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (11218)	11/24/2001 1:25:30 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

And we know the Israelis DID warn the CIA that a group of some 200 operatives in the US were preparing an attack. Given the difficulty we seem to be having in providing conclusive evidence from our own sources showing the preparation for this attack, it would seem they had an agent on the inside. Hawk, from what I've read in the Israeli papers, al Quaeda was a particularly tough conspiracy to penetrate, because the inside ring was kept to very close old associates, so the levels that you could penetrate were levels that were unlikely to know specifics. So, while your hunch is plausible, it doesn't necessarily imply that the Mossad had specific information. Or even if they did, sharing it might have cost them their agents' lives. And of course, your hunch could be wrong. About the Israeli movers, I have heard two separate and irreconcilable stories. The first is the one you describe, "smiling on rooftops". The second comes from their families, which says they weren't on rooftops, they were in a white cargo van on the George Washington Bridge on Sept 11, and were basically arrested for being young muscular Middle Eastern guys with boxcutters in a van on the George Washington Bridge on September 11th. Remember the rumors of a "van with explosives" on the George Washington Bridge on September 11th?