Baha Mousa death: army doctor 'ignored cries of tortured men'

Baha Mousa death: army doctor 'ignored cries of tortured men'

Dr Derek Keilloh faces allegations he helped cover up the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees. Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA

A British army doctor present at the death of hotel worker Baha Mousawas a criminal who ignored the cries of men who were being tortured, a tribunal has heard.

Dr Derek Keilloh is appearing before the medical practitioners tribunal service in Manchester, the judicial arm of the General Medical Council, accused of a cover-up over the death of Mousa, who was beaten to death by British soldiers in September 2003.

Keilloh claimed he only saw dried blood around the nose of the hotel receptionist, who had 93 separate injuries after being detained by soldiers from the 1st Battalion Queen's Lancashire Regiment.

On Wednesday, the tribunal heard from Ahmed al-Matairi, who waived his legal right to anonymity. Speaking through an interpreter, he described how he and staff from the Basra hotel he co-owned – including Baha Mousa – were detained and tortured by British soldiers.

Matairi said he was taken to see Keilloh after he had undergone days of beatings by soldiers who would kick him in the kidneys, legs and in the location of a hernia. He was in a "bad state" and "between life and death" when he was finally taken to the medical centre.

Naked from the waist down, he was handcuffed when Keilloh examined him, he said. He claimed the doctor warned soldiers not to hit him any more or he could die. "He just had a look at my hernia, leg, kidney and said to them don't hit me. He is a criminal. He should not be a doctor." He said the doctor's medical centre was near where the detainees were being tortured.

Matairi added: "He heard our cries and he didn't do anything. And he was not far from us for three days and he didn't do anything … He should have fulfilled his role as a doctor."

Mousa, 26, was hooded, handcuffed and beaten before he died, 36 hours after first being taken to the detention centre in Basra. His injuries included fractured ribs and a broken nose.

Keilloh, 37, who is from Aberdeen, supervised a failed resuscitation attempt of Mousa.

The tribunal has heard that a fellow medic, a corporal, remarked "Look at the state of him!" after Mousa was taken to the medical centre, but Keilloh – at the time a captain and battalion regimental medical officer – always maintained he did not see the catalogue of injuries.

Matairi said he had been suffering from kidney stones and a small hernia before he was detained but that the soldiers would "aim" kicks at his kidneys if they wanted him to fall to his knees. He said after days oftorture his hernia had swollen to five or six inches and his leg, below the knee, had also swollen up.

Matairi said despite his condition the doctor gave him no medication. "He didn't give me anything," he said.

When the doctor finished the examination he was taken back to the room where the other detainees were being kept and tortured, the tribunal heard. Describing his state before he went to see the doctor, he said: "I was finished. I was between life and death."

The hotel owner also described hearing Baha Mousa's final words. He said he was being kept in the room next door and was being tortured. He heard him say: "I am innocent. I am not a Baathist. My wife died six months ago. My children are going to become orphans. I am going to die."

Asked by Rebecca Poulet QC, counsel for the GMC, what his last words were, he responded: "Blood blood, I am going to die. My children are going to become orphans."

Matairi also described how soldiers aimed "karate kicks" at the prisoners and how they would laugh at them. He said the soldiers were trying to "degrade" and "humiliate" them.

The tribunal, which is expected to last for four weeks, continues.

Baha Mousa death: army doctor 'ignored cries of tortured men'

US cables back Guardian claims that Mexican presidential election frontrunner has been paying for favourable TV coverage






One US cable from 2009 claimed it was widely accepted that Televisa provided the then governor of Mexico State, Enrique Peña Nieto, with an extraordinary amount of coverage. Photograph: Reuters
US diplomats raised concerns that the frontrunner in Mexico's presidential election, Enrique Peña Nieto, was paying for favourable TV coverage as far back as 2009, according to state department cables released by WikiLeaks.

Allegations that coverage by the country's main television network was biased in favour of Peña Nieto have triggered a wave of student demonstrations in the runup to the election on 1 July. The claims are supported by documents seen by the Guardian, which also implicate other politicians in buying news and entertainment coverage.

One cable, written shortly after US embassy officials were taken on a tour of Mexico State when Peña Nieto was governor, says: "It is widely accepted, for example, that the television monopoly Televisa backs the governor and provides him with an extraordinary amount of airtime and other kinds of coverage." The document, which dates from September 2009, was titled: "A look at Mexico State, Potemkin village style".

Another cable from the start of the same year emphasises the importance the then governor Peña Nieto was giving to securing convincing electoral victories for the Institutional Revolutionary party in his state in the upcoming midterm congressional elections that summer.

Peña Nieto, the cable says, "has launched significant public works projects in areas targeted for votes, and analysts and PRI party leaders alike have repeatedly expressed to [US political officers] their belief that he is paying media outlets under the table for favourable news coverage, as well as potentially financing pollsters to sway survey results".

The cables leaked from the US embassy in Mexico contain frequent mentions of the power that Televisa, and the other main commercial network, TV Azteca, exert over the country's political elite. The two networks control around 90% of free channels and are widely perceived to be political kingmakers.

This is particularly clear in cables dealing with a new communications law that privileged established interests and was approved by the legislature in the middle of the 2006 election campaign.

One cable dates from February 2006, shortly after the bill was approved by the lower house in just seven minutes with no debate, and before it had been voted on in the upper house.

"With the campaign season in full swing, no one seems to want to upset Televisa or Azteca (which also stands to gain much from the bill) for fear of losing prime advertising slots at good prices."

The cable surmises that it is "doubtful that any senator will want to risk their future political careers by rocking the boat at a time when all of the parties are deciding their political future". Similarly, the unnamed diplomat who wrote the cable assumed there was almost no chance that the then-president, Vicente Fox, would veto the law "and risk alienating Televisa".

Some legislators did make a stand after the bill was approved and a legal challenge was eventually mounted in the supreme court, where the most controversial parts were declared unconstitutional.

In what appeared to be a form of revenge by the political elite on the networks, the newly elected legislature approved an electoral reform in 2007 that banned all paid political propaganda during electoral periods and restricted it outside of them as well.

This, however, was not fulfilling its aim of releasing politics from media pressure, according to one WikiLeaks cable dated June 2009.

"At any rate, parties and candidates are skirting the restrictions," the cable says. "Journalists and their bosses have been more or less free to engage in the time-honoured Mexican electoral tradition of selling favourable print and broadcast coverage to candidates and parties."

WikiLeaks reveals US concerns over Televisa-Peña Nieto links in 2009

US cables back Guardian claims that Mexican presidential election frontrunner has been paying for favourable TV coverage






One US cable from 2009 claimed it was widely accepted that Televisa provided the then governor of Mexico State, Enrique Peña Nieto, with an extraordinary amount of coverage. Photograph: Reuters
US diplomats raised concerns that the frontrunner in Mexico's presidential election, Enrique Peña Nieto, was paying for favourable TV coverage as far back as 2009, according to state department cables released by WikiLeaks.

Allegations that coverage by the country's main television network was biased in favour of Peña Nieto have triggered a wave of student demonstrations in the runup to the election on 1 July. The claims are supported by documents seen by the Guardian, which also implicate other politicians in buying news and entertainment coverage.

One cable, written shortly after US embassy officials were taken on a tour of Mexico State when Peña Nieto was governor, says: "It is widely accepted, for example, that the television monopoly Televisa backs the governor and provides him with an extraordinary amount of airtime and other kinds of coverage." The document, which dates from September 2009, was titled: "A look at Mexico State, Potemkin village style".

Another cable from the start of the same year emphasises the importance the then governor Peña Nieto was giving to securing convincing electoral victories for the Institutional Revolutionary party in his state in the upcoming midterm congressional elections that summer.

Peña Nieto, the cable says, "has launched significant public works projects in areas targeted for votes, and analysts and PRI party leaders alike have repeatedly expressed to [US political officers] their belief that he is paying media outlets under the table for favourable news coverage, as well as potentially financing pollsters to sway survey results".

The cables leaked from the US embassy in Mexico contain frequent mentions of the power that Televisa, and the other main commercial network, TV Azteca, exert over the country's political elite. The two networks control around 90% of free channels and are widely perceived to be political kingmakers.

This is particularly clear in cables dealing with a new communications law that privileged established interests and was approved by the legislature in the middle of the 2006 election campaign.

One cable dates from February 2006, shortly after the bill was approved by the lower house in just seven minutes with no debate, and before it had been voted on in the upper house.

"With the campaign season in full swing, no one seems to want to upset Televisa or Azteca (which also stands to gain much from the bill) for fear of losing prime advertising slots at good prices."

The cable surmises that it is "doubtful that any senator will want to risk their future political careers by rocking the boat at a time when all of the parties are deciding their political future". Similarly, the unnamed diplomat who wrote the cable assumed there was almost no chance that the then-president, Vicente Fox, would veto the law "and risk alienating Televisa".

Some legislators did make a stand after the bill was approved and a legal challenge was eventually mounted in the supreme court, where the most controversial parts were declared unconstitutional.

In what appeared to be a form of revenge by the political elite on the networks, the newly elected legislature approved an electoral reform in 2007 that banned all paid political propaganda during electoral periods and restricted it outside of them as well.

This, however, was not fulfilling its aim of releasing politics from media pressure, according to one WikiLeaks cable dated June 2009.

"At any rate, parties and candidates are skirting the restrictions," the cable says. "Journalists and their bosses have been more or less free to engage in the time-honoured Mexican electoral tradition of selling favourable print and broadcast coverage to candidates and parties."

Hugo Chávez launches re-election bid in front of thousands of supporters

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez waves to supporters before registering in the National Electoral Centre. Photograph: Leo Ramirez/AFP/Getty Images

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez switched from battling cancer to fighting a re-election campaign on Monday as he formally declared his candidacy in typically ebullient style with an open-top parade through a sea of supporters and a ten minutes singing performance.

Blowing kisses and waving vigorously to the crowd as they chanted political slogans and get-well wishes, the former paratroop commander made his way to the National Electorate Office where he registered for the 7 October elections.

Amid rumours that his cancer is so far advanced that he may not survive until voting day, all eyes were on Chávez's physical well-being but the charismatic leader surprised many of his doubters by walking the short distance from his open-top truck to the registration desk.

If there was any variation from the usual public appearances of the three-time incumbant, it was that he remained closely flanked by aides rather than reaching out to the masses who are at the centre of his socialist programme.

Nonetheless hundreds of thousands of red-shirted supporters, including the flag waving-urban militia, turned out to see him speak. Some chanted "Ooh-Ah! Chávez's isn't going away!" and waved flags.

Chávez has scaled down his usually energetic schedule of rallies and TV appearance in the past year, during which he has undergone surgery on three occasions to remove tumors from his pelvic region.

He spent most of last month in Cuba for radiation treatment. Although his precise diagnosis is treated as a state secret, the president said at the weekend that recent tests showed his treatment was going well.

He was in good voice on Monday, when he followed up on his registration parade with a TV appearance which went for more than two hours and included ten-minutes of singing "joropo" folk-songs and the anthem of the armed forces. He also accused the opposition - which he has nicknamed the "Majunches" (or 'Insipid Ones') - of trying to sell the country's too cheaply to multinationals.

Health concerns do not appear to have dented his popularity. Polls put him ahead of his rival, Henrique Capriles, a 39 year-old lawyer who highlighted his own physical fitness on Sunday by walking and jogging 10km during a large rally of his supporters.

"At many levels, Chávez is battling himself," says Professor Miguel Tinker-Salas, a historian and expert in Venezuela at Pomona College in Los Angeles.

"Many polls, including some from the opposition sectors have him winning the election. The campaign will test whether or not Chávez has overcome the illness that has plagued him for the past year. If he is able to mount an active campaign similar to past years it will be difficult for Capriles to defeat him."

In his appearance on Monday, Chávez belied rumours that he is no longer able to walk due to metastasis. But concerns persist - and not just at street level.

Last week, the veteran US journalist Dan Rather, said a presidential aide had told him Chávez was suffering from metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive cancer that had "entered the end stage" which meant he would only have a couple of months to live.

This was only partially contradicted by Eva Gollinger, a staunch Chávez supporter and editor of the English version of Correo del Orinoco who wrote in response: "Chávez has cancer and he is battling hard against it, with the same strength that he has used to propel a nation forward, and very often, against insurmountable obstacles, but president Chávez is not 'out of the game' as Dan Rather implies morosely".

The firebrand leader - who changed the constitution in 2003 to abolish term limits - is now in a position where his mere existence is enough to confound opponents, but he will have to show stronger signs of recovery to quash questions about his fitness to lead for the next six years.

"There is no doubt that Chávez is the most competitive candidate, and that without him the continuity of his socialist project is at risk, but winning the elections (without a clear diagnosis of his health) only extends the uncertainty the country is living in," says John Magdaleno, a political analyst in Caracas.

"The key mystery is why there is no talk about a Plan B in the government," says Javier Corrales, professor of Political Science at Amherst University.

"That is what's unusual. They are postponing, rather than solving, the possibility of chaos within the leadership."

Greek crisis: social enterprise is one answer to economic strife

A sustainable project to recycle forest biomass for heating is among new ideas that can turn community interest into profit

Forest fires, common in Greece, would be reduced by a scheme to recycle biomass as well as providing fuel for homes. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

Good ideas? Greece, when you look, really isn't short of them, and people are starting to do something about them.

Ioannis Lagos is an avuncular fiftysomething accountant from the small mountain village of Stemnitsa in the Arcadia region. The village, like many of those in the region, is surrounded by forest. The forest, as forests do in Greece, catch fire, and have done a lot in recent summers.

The main reason the fires spread so fast is the quantity of fallen trees, branches and brushwood on the forest floor.

At the same time, Lagos and some of his friends, volunteer firefighters from Mainalo mountain, have worked out that it now costs roughly €3,500 a year to keep the average Arcadian household warm with heating oil, which is set to hit €1.40 a litre this winter.

Suppose you collected all that forest floor biomass from the 40,000 acres of forest belonging to the commune, turned it into wood pellets – less than half the price of heating oil for the same output – and sold them to local people at slightly less than the average market price? You would be easing the forest fire problem, helping citizens of Arcadia to heat their homes more cheaply (the wood-burning stove they would need would pay for itself within a year) – and you could even pay the salaries of the local unemployed people who did the work.

I won't go into the detail, but Lagos is an accountant and there is a solid business plan: the project is in profit if it sells 2,000 tonnes of pellets; it is targeting a market share of less than 1.5% of the region's households.

By 2017 it should be selling 6,000 tonnes, sustainably sourced from the local forest, and showing a handsome return on investment.

It is, in short, a near-perfect social enterprise, or community interest company: an entrepreneurial activity focusing on social good, financial reinvestment, and sustainability.

More familiar overseas, it's a very new concept in Greece.

"We've only just got the law to allow it," says Fiori Zafeiropoulou, an academic specialising in social entrepreneurship at universities in Greece and Britain who helped the government draw the law up. "Until now, you couldn't combine a social objective with profit; from this month, you can."

Lagos's project, called We Protect the Forest, came second at a recent Athens event, StartUpLive, organised to identify promising social enterprises. The winner was IncludAbility, which aims to fund disability awareness programmes in schools and the workplace by selling consultancy services to companies keen to improve their accessibility to people with disabilities, or as part of corporate responsibility programmes. It also aims to launch a website where people can exchange information on how welcoming and accessible places like shops and restaurants are.

"This really isn't an area that's had much attention in Greece," says Vassilis Kalyvas, one of the project's founders, who has been doing one part of the work voluntarily in Greek schools for several years. "There's EU legislation, but it's not implemented. Disability in Greece is synonymous with incapability, negativity. We need to do far more to facilitate the inclusion of people with disabilities in all areas of Greek life."

Also recognised at the event was Women on Top, which has set up a mentoring network where Greek women can find appropriate mentors for support and advice in their careers. The scheme's Facebook group has 300 members and 13 mentoring pairs already formed; it hopes to fund a full-service website by organising paid-for seminars, selling advertising targeting women, and perhaps charging a small annual subscription to mentorees.

Greece's new law is a good one, says Zafeiropoulou: up to 35% of a company incorporated as a social enterprise can be redistributed, but only to employees on the payroll, and 60% must be reinvested. It's also backed by a government social fund, with a limited amount of money now available for Greek "social co-operatives". She hopes it will lead to more projects like these. Gathered at Loft2Work, a co-working space in central Athens with a strong focus on social business, all agreed that it is simplistic – not to say untrue – that there is "no sense of community" in Greece. It is just that it rather got forgotten. Projects like these fit Greece's current needs, and its mood.

"There are really very healthy cells, micro-environments in Greece that are doing well and working and really achieving good things," says Vassilis. "This is what has to happen in Greece now. We're fed up waiting for the state to act, fed up with waiting for the top to do it. It has to come from the tail, now. We have to do it ourselves."

• Jon Henley is in Greece telling real people's stories. Please contact him if you have suggestions for people he could see or places he could go, or send him your personal story (not too long, please …). He will post as much as he can on the blog

Afghanistan shelves plans for ambassador accused of fraud

Mohammad Daud Yaar, accused by Afghan family in US of defrauding them, had been chosen as ambassador in London

Mohammad Daud Yaar, the director of economic affairs at the foreign ministry in Kabul, was chosen as ambassador in London

Afghanistan has quietly shelved plans to send a man accused of fraud in the US to head its embassy in Britain.

Mohammad Daud Yaar, director of economic affairs at the foreign ministry in Kabul, had been chosen for the high-profile job, with confirmation expected to be little more than a formality. But last week the Guardian reported that an Afghan immigrant family in California had accused Yaar of defrauding them. In 2010 they obtained a civil court judgment against him. Yaar admits to owing the family $100,000 but says he intends to pay them back.

In the wake of the fraud claims, a government spokesman in Kabul had said his nomination was "proceeding as normal". But sources now say that, although Daud's contacts may protect his longer-term hopes of an ambassadorial posting, his candidacy for London is on hold.

Yaar is a long-standing and close friend of Mahmoud Karzai, the influential brother of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. Yaar lived with another Karzai brother, Ahmed Wali, in Chicago in the late 1980s and 90s. He had been expected to arrive in London shortly.

It is understood the decision to pull the plug on his nomination came last Friday after Karzai and several senior ministers returned from a summit of regional leaders in Beijing.

The British embassy in Kabul said it did not comment on ambassadorial appointments until they were confirmed.

UK foreign secretary William Hague, visiting Kabul for an international conference on Afghanistan's future, also declined to comment, but said on Wednesday he was not concerned that Kabul had gone months without appointing an ambassador.

Yaar's imminent appointment had followed a year in which London lay vacant as Kabul struggled to find a consensus candidate for what is considered one of the most prestigious diplomatic posts. There are now likely to be further delays. "Embassies do continue to operate without ambassadors for extended periods of time, but obviously we will welcome an Afghan ambassador in due course," Hague told a news conference.

Sources outside Afghanistan say Yaar secured the UK job after intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by Mahmoud Karzai, whose business activities in the US are also being investigated. Yaar spent about 20 years in the US, where he worked as a part-time professor and also built up an extensive property portfolio.

He returned to Kabul in 2009 after the civil action. The plaintiffs, two Afghan-born brothers, Jamal and Ajmal Staneckzai, claim Yaar "tricked, defrauded and deceived" them over the 2001 purchase of a house in Fresno, California. Yaar insisted the case, from California's superior court in Contra Costa, was a business deal gone wrong. He vehemently denied fraud.

"If I had committed fraud, why did they settle?" he told the Guardian last week in his office in a low-rise building inside the sprawling grounds of the Afghan foreign ministry. "It was a business agreement and the other side backed off [from their side of the deal] and went to the courts. They couldn't prove anything."

Yaar said he was planning to pay off the remainder of the money he owed as soon as he could afford it, but his home in California was in negative equity and his small government salary in Kabul did not leave room for savings. He stressed: "My intention was to help these guys to solve their housing problem."

But one of his alleged victims told the Guardian Yaar was not a fit person to become UK ambassador, let alone hold responsibility in Kabul for big financial issues. Jamal Staneckzai said he had wanted to buy a home for his elderly parents, Ghani and Amani, who fled Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation.

Unable to get a mortgage, he and four other families from the close-knit Afghan community in California turned to Yaar for help. Yaar bought a property in 2001 on their behalf, but registered it in his own name. The Staneckzais made regular mortgage payments, with several family friends providing the initial deposit as a loan, he said.

In 2005 the Staneckzais were finally able to get a mortgage. When they asked Yaar to transfer the property to them he refused and sold it to them for $358,900, promising to refund the net proceeds.

Yaar never refunded the money, Staneckzai alleges. "I was a part-time student at university back in 2001, which is why I couldn't get a loan. We regarded Yaar as a close and respected uncle. He told us, 'You guys will pay the mortgage costs and I will transfer everything back to you". Instead he took every dollar from us. He took our equity."

Lenin's sojourn as curio corpse may be over

Displayed body of Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, who died in 1924, should be buried, says Vladimir Medinsky. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/AP

When the minister Yuri Khariyakin told the Soviet parliament in 1989 that Lenin had expressed a wish to be buried alongside his mother in St Petersburg and that his embalmed body should be removed from the Red Square mausoleum, he encountered incredulity and anger.

Lenin's niece, Olga Ulyanova, even made a public statement to the effect that it was bare-faced lie her uncle had ever wanted to be interred with his mother.

Ever since the Soviet Union began to break apart there have been repeated attempts to put the founding father of Russian communism six feet under. But no political leader has yet dared to take the step many Russians regard as sacrilege.

So, Lenin lies to this day, looking more waxy with each passing year, in the constructivist red marble mausoleum in Moscow beneath the Kremlin's walls, an object of curiosity for tourists whom humourless guards forbid from speaking above a whisper or putting their hands in their pockets.

But the return of Vladimir Putin for a third term as president of Russia in May, could pave the way for Lenin's removal.

This week, Russia's new culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, re-ignited the controversy when he told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that Lenin should be buried.

"A body should be interred in the earth," Medinsky said who added that he was in favour of making it a state occasion. "I would observe all the appropriate ceremonies. As [Lenin] was a senior public figure the funeral should happen with all fitting state rituals, distinctions and a military salute in a suitable place."

With this observation, Medinsky was drawing a comparison with the treatment of Stalin, whose embalmed corpse was spirited away from its place beside Lenin one night in 1961 on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev and buried by the Kremlin's walls.

The famous mausoleum where Soviet leaders stood to review military parades, should stay, said Medinsky. "It must remain," he said. "It would be possible to turn it into a museum of Soviet history that would be very well visited and could have expensive tickets."

But the comments created such a furore that Medinsky had to clarify his position.

"It remains exclusively my personal opinion as a citizen," the culture minister, whose appointment Putin approved last month, later wrote on his blog.

While some parts of society, including the Orthodox church, support the idea of a burial, others are vigorously opposed.

The Communist party, Russia's second most popular political party, is particularly outspoken on the issue, which some suggest could be resolved by a referendum.

"Discussions about removal and re-burial have are simply provocative," Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the Communist party, said in 2009. "Any attempt to vulgarise or re-write the Soviet period and diminish the memory of Lenin … is an attempt to undermine the integrity of the Russian federation."

But many Communists are ageing and Medinsky's comments on the subject show that support may be growing for Lenin's final burial.

An April opinion poll suggested that 56% of Russians were in favour of removing the corpse, compared to 46% six years ago.

The head of Russia's National Bookmakers' Association, Oleg Zhuravsky, told the Izvestia newspaper this week that bets on Lenin being laid to rest in 2013 were becoming more and more frequent.