THE NEWS
May 18, 2006 -- According to South African sources, South Africa is secretly cooperating with the Bush administration in facilitating rendition flights from Africa, including South Africa, to secret CIA prisons in North Africa, the Middle East, and other regions. The fact that South Africa, which, under President Nelson Mandela refused U.S. warships docking rights in the country, is now cooperating with the Bush administration is sending shock waves through South Africa and the African continent. Rashid Khalid, a Pakistani national, went missing seven months ago. According to current and former South African intelligence personnel, Khalid was abducted by South African security personnel and turned over to British special forces. It is now suspected that Khalid ended up in one of America's numerous gulags and may have been tortured and killed.

Khalid's family took the case to the Pretoria High Court. Last Sunday, a group of seven Pakistanis who showed up at the High Court to show support for Khalid's family were whisked off by South African Home Affairs agents. In addition, South African security police arrested a man named Yaseen Suliman, a fast food vendor who delivered food last week to Khalid's lawyers in the court building. When he returned home with one of the empty food containers, Suliman found it contained a Home Affairs Ministry file containing very sensitive information concerning the disappearance of Khalid. Suliman informed the Court that the file was in his possession but he was later charged with theft. Suliman made an official statement to the court about the incident, but his statement is being suppressed by the court and the government. The judge in the case ordered the "food container file" placed under court seal.



South African fast food container scandal: South Africa's role in U.S. extraordinary rendition prisoner apprehensions and flights exposed.

According to South African sources, recently fired National Intelligence Agency chief Billy Masetlha has charged that South African intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies are working closely with the CIA, MI6, and the private U.S. security firm Kroll. Informed South African observers claim that elements of the ruling African National Congress and the neo-con Democratic Alliance opposition are in lock step with neo-con operatives in the United States, Israel, and Britain.

WMR has obtained the details of the food container "brown file," now sealed by court order:

Law student and fast-food vendor Yaseen Suliman delivered food to lawyers at Pretoria High Court on May 10. He sat in on the case and listened for a while, whereafter he retrieved his empty food containers and went home. Next morning he discovered lawyers had deliberately or accidentally placed a brown folder labeled "Ismail Ebrahim Jeebhai" in the container. (Jeebhai is the name of the Muslim Moulana who was abducted with Khalid in November 2005 by men with foreign accents, and later released from South Africa's notorious Lindelani deportation camp.)

The folder contained correspondence between lawyers for Home Affairs and Foreign Ministry officials requesting the "urgent assistance" of South Africa Consular services in getting Pakistani officials to confirm that Rashid was deported on November 6,

It contained an e-mail dated February 16, 2006 from South Africa Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula's lawyer, Lee-Anne DeLaHunt, to Home Affairs civil servant Maggie Mahuma, saying that counsel for the minister, Advocate Vas Soni, had advised that they needed an unclassified letter from Pakistan dated subsequent to an earlier court order. DeLaHunt said Foreign Affairs advised that the formal request must be directed from their director general to South Africa's director-general of consular services, Mr D Naidoo, which would be followed up by the South African consular staff in Islamabad.

The folder also contained a request from South African acting Foreign Affairs director general P Nkambula, dated February 16, 2006, requesting Naidoo to urgently help procure such a letter, which should be unclassified as it would form part of court proceedings.

Finally, the folder also contained a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Imran Yaqub, director of operations of the National Crisis Management Cell of the Ministry of Interior in Islamabad, duly "signed" on 31 Jan 06, stating that Khalid Mehmood arrived in Pakistan subsequent to his November 6 deportation and was "with the exception of a skin ailment (eczema) in good health."

On May 16, Presiding Judge Justice Poswa ordered the Home Affairs Ministry to produce information on Khalid's deportation. The government indicated Khalid was deported to Pakistan but Poswa said it is "well known that, around the world, people were disappearing and then showing up in US detention camps," adding, "
the manner in which human beings disappear is of concern."

The Pretoria High Court has also ordered a halt in deportation proceedings against the seven Pakistanis detained at the High Court by security police.


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May 18, 2006 -- General Hayden's military conduct not brought up in his confirmation hearings for CIA Director. Gen. Michael Hayden's confirmation hearing today before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the second confirmation hearing where his personal conduct as NSA Director has not been addressed, the first being his confirmation hearing to be Deputy Director of National Intelligence. According to a former Air Force officer who worked for the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and CIA, Hayden was officially reported in 2001 to two Air Force Inspectors General for having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate female officer. According to the former Air Force intelligence officer, the alleged affair, which the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Air Force regulations would deem as "conduct unbecoming an officer," took place in 2001 at NSA's signals intelligence directorate in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina while Hayden was on a visit to the center. At the time, Hayden was NSA Director. According to the former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, two complaints were filed against Hayden with Col. James Worth of the U.S. Air Force Inspector General's office and Col. Dennis Lange of the 8th Air Force Inspector General's office. No action against Hayden was taken by either IG and the matter was quickly dropped. Last year, Army Gen. Kevin Byrnes, the four-star commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), was relieved of command for allegedly having an affair with a civilian woman. Byrnes was legally separated from his wife at the time. In reality, Byrnes was fired for disagreeing with the neocon clique of Donald Rumsfeld. Byrnes was charged with having an "inappropriate relationship" by the Pentagon. In 1997, Air Force General Joseph Ralston was forced to withdraw his nomination as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after he was charged with having an extramarital affair in the 1980s with a female CIA employee after he was legally separated from his wife. The right-wing were behind the operations against Generals Byrnes and Ralston. The right wingers seem to have a different opinion of misconduct when it comes to someone who is carrying the water for their neo-fascist total surveillance agenda.