BRUSSELS .– While attempting to exploit the international information conference in Tunis for its own benefit and against Cuba, the organization Reporters sans frontiers (RSF) was charged in Paris with refusing to give any help whatsoever to a respected Iraqi journalist kidnapped by the CIA in Baghdad.
In an interview with Granma International, Iraqi labor leader Subi Thoma, currently exiled in France, affirmed that RSF has refused on several occasions to consider the dossier of the kidnapped reporter.
Thoma was participating in the "Axis for Peace" international conference organized by Red Voltaire.
"Since the occupation of my country by U.S. troops, dozens of Iraqi journalists have been killed and they have never said a word about it," Thoma emphasized.
"Others have been imprisoned and tortured. But the case of Abdul Jabbar Al Koubeissi is possibly the most significant," he added.
This Iraqi patriot, who spent 30 years in exile in Paris due to differences with the former government, returned to the country after the occupation when the new authorities, "affirming that democracy had been reestablished in Iraq, pretended that was space for a "free" press."
"We asked ourselves why we should remain in exile, if that freedom existed," the labor leader recalled.
"At that point, Al Koubeissi created a newspaper, the Call of the Nation and began to publish articles demanding the withdrawal of the occupation troops and the definitive liberation of the country."
But it appears that this did not fit into the George W. Bush’s troops’ concept of "freedom."
"On September 4th last year, his house was surrounded by armored vehicles, helicopters and hundreds of U.S. soldiers, who entered his house and took him prisoner."
Thoma recalled how Al Koubeissi’s brother immediately went to see the occupation army officer responsible for order in this area of Baghdad to inquire what had happened.
"This general told him: I can assure you that it wasn’t us who did that...the way you have described the operation, it must have been Negroponte’s troops.’ He was referring to Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad."
The Bush representative in Iraq and former UN ambassador is famous for the shameful role he played in Central America, where he was linked to a whole series of atrocities.
Koubeissi’s family is still in France. "He has two children aged 13 and 9 here. They have no news, no information, nothing."
Thoma, together with several friends in the Iraqi resistance, has formed a committee for the release of the imprisoned journalist. "In Paris, 15 lawyers have a signed a petition for his release."
As for the RSF, headed by CIA agent Robert Menard: "They don’t even want to see us," Thoma said.
"We have written them asking for a meeting. They told us to put together a dossier, obtain information from the Pentagon in Washington. Later they said that they would receive us, but that they had nothing to say to us. Still later, they told us that the person who had asked us for the dossier had left that we had to start over."
"We were surprised –this is an organization that should allegedly defend journalists. A significant case in an out of the ordinary situation," he commented later referring to the case of two French journalists on whose behalf the RSF unleashed a major campaign.
A campaign that was characterized by demonizing the Iraqi resistance.
"We didn’t ask them to hold a protest outside Notre-Dame-de-Paris, or outside the mayor’s office, or launch balloons or increase their media programs, as they did then," Thoma explained.
"We only asked them to find out from the U.S. authorities why a reporter was taken from his own home and is not allowed visits from any family members, nor an attorney."
The committee for the release of Al Koubeissi has appealed to the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d'Orsay, to no avail.
"We have alerted the Red Cross and various other organizations like the UN Commission for the disappeared. I wrote to the Pentagon, which replied with a brief note stating: "Regarding Mr. Al-Koubeissi; we assure you that we are in Iraq under a UN resolution asking us to maintain order and respect the Geneva Convention regarding political prisoners." Period. That is the only response that we have had from the U.S. government."
The Red Cross was finally was able to get mail through to him four months ago. We know that he is alive, but his message only came through the Red Cross representative. He said that he is in the airport –where there are U.S. prison facilities and he has asked for the intervention of a French attorney, given that he was exiled in France and has a son that was born here," Thoma concluded.
A few months ago, the lifelong secretary of RSF, Robert Ménard, admitted having received funds from the U.S. government through CIA agent Frank Calzón’s Center for a Free Cuba and from the National Endowment for Democracy.
This is not the first time that Robert Ménard has been exposed for collaborating with the U.S. authorities. In 2004, the family of Spanish photographer José Couso pointed out how RSF had tampered with a report on the death in Baghdad of the young reporter in the Palestine Hotel, fired on by an occupation army tank.
While the RSF was claiming to defend freedom of information in Tunis, it never misses an opportunity to aid the United States. Another example of that was evident in the same Information Summit when it supported the U.S. rejection of a proposal presented to the Summit to hand over control of the internet to the UN.
