10/20/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I got Gareth Porter on the line.
He writes for Interpress Service.
He's the author of Perils of Dominance about the Vietnam War.
And you can find virtually everything he writes at original.antiwar.com/porter.
And but the article in question today is from truthout.org.
For truth dash, nice talking, truth dash out.org for truth app.
UN fact-finding mission says Israelis executed U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan.
Welcome to the show, Gareth.
Please correct my pronunciation of this poor young dead person.
It is Furkan Dogan, as I understand it, in terms of the Turkish pronunciation.
I mean, he's, of course, of Turkish descent.
As an American, probably Dogan is just fine.
Okay.
And so how was it that he was executed?
And who says so?
Well, this is a story that is based on the fact-finding mission report of the fact-finding mission of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights.
Now, this is a report that came out a few weeks ago.
And really, the bigger picture story is that the news media blacked out the fact that Furkan Dogan, an American citizen, 19-year-old, his father is a Turkish citizen, but he was born in the United States and is not a Turkish citizen, has no dual citizenship.
He's purely a U.S. citizen, was murdered on board the Mavi Marmara in execution style.
That is to say, he was lying on the deck of this ship, a part of the Gaza flotilla, trying to get humanitarian goods to the population of Gaza and politically to break the siege of Gaza.
He was lying on the deck, having been severely wounded, probably bleeding to death from four wounds, one to the head, one to the back, one to the leg and one to the foot.
And in that condition, he was shot at point-blank range in the face.
Clearly, and this is based on the medical forensic evidence, as well as the autopsy report, which was made available to the fact-finding mission by Turkish authorities.
This is, in other words, a story about really very convincing authoritative evidence of the execution-style killing of an American citizen by Israeli commandos, which the U.S. news media and really the world news media, commercial news media, simply blacked out.
They refused to cover it.
Yeah, well, you know, I think that whole Mavi Marmara incident was, you could do an entire college course as that, as a case study of the wonderful effectiveness of state propaganda over the minds of people.
I mean, they actually, Garrett, they created a reality where these, you know, human rights activists on their way to bring medical supplies and sacks of concrete to the Gaza Strip were Turkish terrorists.
They were in bed with Hezbollah.
They were in bed with Al-Qaeda.
They were going to invade and destroy Israel with sticks, except that the heroic IDF intervened.
And then look, when the IDF came to save the day, the horrible, terrible people beat them with sticks, those terrible stick-wielding human rights activists.
And they got away with this for two weeks.
And then the other side of the story began to leak.
And then they changed the subject.
That was it.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, this was, in fact, one of history's most brilliant tactical executions of propaganda to dominate the news coverage of the issue for weeks.
And of course, you know, part of this was that video that was issued by the IDF, which they parlayed into, you know, real news coverage.
I mean, this was a subject of news coverage for days on end.
And as a result of this, I think that, you know, you have the commercial news media of the United States feeling very sort of smug and secure in saying, oh, well, we don't have to cover this UN fact-finding mission.
After all, we all know the UN is biased against Israel.
That's the Israeli position.
But, you know, I must say that these people could not have seriously read the fact-finding mission report and continued to feel as smug as that idea conveys, because this is this is not a biased report.
This is not a report that is done by some hack of political figures from countries that are abusing their own citizens in terms of human rights.
The head of the three-person panel is not only a distinguished jurist, he was a member of the International Criminal Court and a former attorney general of the, I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the name of the Caribbean Republic, which he's a distinguished jurist of.
But in any case, the three members are all distinguished jurists, clearly qualified to carry out this sort of fact-finding mission, and they were accompanied, they took with them the specialists on both the forensic, medical forensics, as well as firearms, so that they could actually interpret the data that they were given by the Turkish medical specialists who had actually undertaken the autopsy, as well as medical forensic reports on the bodies of the victims.
Now, bear in mind, this is not only the U.S. citizen Furkan Doğan, but also five Turkish citizens who the report indicates, on the basis of the evidence that they were given, again, autopsy reports and medical forensics, were killed in execution style.
They were already incapacitated, lying on the deck, and unable to resist in any way.
All right.
Now, a couple of things I want to read out of this article here, Gareth.
The fact-finding mission, you write, was chaired by Judge Carl T. Hudson Phillips, QC, retired judge of the International Criminal Court and former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago.
Yes, I'm sorry.
I apologize to Trinidad and Tobago for forgetting.
And included Sir Desmond de Silva, QC of the United Kingdom, former chief prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Miss Mary Shanti Dhiriam of Malaysia, founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia-Pacific.
So, in other words, this is not the Syrians and the Libyans and the Iranians got to chair some UN panel and level some false accusations.
These are all that.
And that's an important point.
I wanted to get that footnote out there.
And then I'm rewinding back up to the top of the article here, where you quote directly from the report here.
The report says Dogen had apparently been, quote, lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious state for some time, end quote, before being shot in his face.
The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is, quote, tattooing around the wound in his face, end quote, there indicating that the shot was, quote, delivered at point blank range.
The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that, quote, the trajectory of the wound from top, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back.
And this is a 19-year-old American citizen in international waters armed with a video camera.
That's right.
He was, according to a number of witnesses on board the Mavi Marmara, he was, in fact, videotaping with a handheld small video camera on the top deck when he was hit, obviously, from above by a fire from the helicopter.
And obviously, at that point, then seriously wounded.
He was hit in the back of the head by the shot from the helicopter from above.
Now, this, of course, brings us to an important point, which I guess we'll have to deal with in the next segment about the sequence of events between the Israelis and the Mavi Marmara crew.
All right.
Gareth Porter.
The article is at truth-out.org.
Fact-finding mission says Israelis executed U.S. citizen Furkan Doan.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
We're at antiwar.com/radio, chaosradioaustin.org, lrn.fm, anomalyradio.com, and who knows where else?
I don't know.
Radio waves here, there, and other places, too.
Boy, speaking of media cover-ups and blackouts, did they really convince you that McVeigh did that Oklahoma bombing himself?
Oh, it turns out, after the biggest manhunt in the history of the FBI, there is no John Doe, too.
OK, now go eat OJ.
Good boy.
All right.
Well, Roger Charles will be on the show to talk about that tomorrow, along with Stephen Salisbury, who will be here to talk about the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, Barack Obama's surveillance state.
It's like George Bush's, but worse.
But right now we're talking with Gareth Porter, and, uh, we're talking about the IDF's execution at point-blank range of a 19-year-old American citizen, humanitarian aid worker on the high seas, in international waters.
And, uh, here now, Gareth, um, before I let you get back to your very important point that you were making when the, uh, heartbreak so rudely interrupted us, I wanted to read to you this, uh, direct quote from Hillary Clinton about the IDF killing this American citizen.
Quote.
Yeah, that was it.
That was it right there.
Very good.
Sorry for the dead air.
You were going to surprise me there with a quote from Hillary Clinton.
I was thinking, hmm, I don't know anything about this.
Yeah, no, she's only the Secretary of State of the most powerful empire in the history of all of governments that have ever existed.
The biggest one, the most powerful one ever.
And she apparently has nothing to say about this.
She has nothing to say.
The Obama administration has nothing to say.
And of course, this is a, uh, a very clear exhibition of the craven cowardice of this administration in the face of anything that has to do with Israeli, uh, violence, uh, crimes and so forth.
The, the administration, uh, simply does not want to be in a position of criticizing, uh, the Israelis for anything other than the, uh, in, in the mildest manner, of course, the settlement, which, uh, obviously stand in the way of any possible progress in, uh, the two, uh, in the, uh, the negotiations between the Israeli, uh, government and, uh, the Palestinians.
So, uh, as a result, what we have here is the United States government essentially, uh, giving the back of its hand to Furkan Doğan's father, Ahmet Doğan, who is, uh, again, a Turkish citizen, uh, according to, uh, the standard, uh, diplomatic U.S. practice, if not the law, uh, the State Department, uh, Consular Services Department, uh, is, is supposed to provide full information, any information that it has on the death of an American citizen to the, uh, next of kin.
In the case of Furkan Doğan, however, I can tell you based on, uh, having talked with someone who is close to, uh, Ahmet Doğan, his father, uh, that the, uh, U.S. Embassy tried to tell him that they were unable to give him any information because, uh, and, and this I, I offer with, um, just the greatest chagrin, uh, because Furkan Doğan did not give permission before he was killed to do that.
Now that, of course, is a complete lie, an absolute flat lie, uh, because...
They're protecting the poor dead kid's privacy.
Yeah, there's, there's no such, there's no such rule of any kind.
Hey, vote Democrat!
They're way better than the Republicans, at least.
You know, gotta, everybody go vote Democrat!
Well, so anyway, the point is that, uh, after I, uh, sent a message to this contact, uh, who knows, uh, Furkan Doğan's father, and, and, and gave the official documentation on the State Department website saying what they're supposed to do, uh, they confronted the, uh, U.S. Embassy and the Embassy backed down and promised that they would provide full information.
Whether, uh, they are going to deliver on that is, of course, another question.
Yeah, and now you called the Department of Justice about this too, right?
And they told you what?
Well, the Department of Justice, uh, I was told by an official in the administration who, uh, is in a good position to know what happened, that the, uh, U.S. Embassy obtained the, uh, autopsy report on Furkan Doğan's death, uh, as well, I presume, uh, although it wasn't specifically mentioned, uh, as well as the forensic, medical forensic reports, uh, you know, from the Turkish government, and the information was passed on to the Department of Justice, which is supposed to then make a determination as to whether this information, uh, is, uh, the basis for, uh, a U.S. independent investigation of the, of the killing.
Um, of course, we, we now know that the, the information does justify an independent U.S. investigation, but in fact, nothing was done, nothing was ever said, and of course, the Department of Justice refused to comment on my query about this.
Wow, that's absolutely amazing.
Now, did I give you a chance to make the important point that, yes, well, what I was going to say is that this report not only, uh, documents the, uh, the, the execution-style nature of the killing of Furkan Doğan and five Turkish citizens, but also provides, I think, some very, uh, useful, uh, important information about the sequence of events, uh, as they occurred on the day, on May 31st.
Uh, we know that, from this report, that the Israeli government had initially had rules of engagement that forbade the use of lethal force unless the lives of, uh, the IDF members were in danger.
However, these rules of engagement were changed after the IDF attempted to, to, to abord the, the Mavi Marmara by attaching, uh, a, uh, uh, attaching, uh, ropes or, or some, some attachments from a, uh, Zodiac boat, that is a rubber, uh, raft, uh, and the, uh, the people on board the Mavi Marmara, uh, refused to allow them to do that.
They basically detached the ropes, and they could not aboard the Mavi Marmara from the Zodiac boat.
At that point, according to testimony that has been given, uh, by Israeli officials themselves, they decided to change the rules of engagement to allow the IDF to, uh, use lethal force against any passenger whom they deemed to be violent, who was deemed to be violent.
In other words, they were given complete freedom to decide who they wanted to kill.
There would be no accountability, obviously, for this.
Uh, this was clearly understanding.
And so, uh, at that point, the next thing that happened was they dropped, uh, commandos from the helicopters, and as they were coming down on the ropes from the helicopters, they fired on, uh, people on the deck of the Mavi Marmara, Mavi Marmara, of course, including Perkin Duan himself.
And this is when you begin to get the, uh, reactions from, uh, the passengers using the handmade, uh, items of weapons that they created on board, uh, after they had heard the news that the, uh, the Israelis intended to use force against them.
Well, um, I don't know what to even ask.
Uh, will there ever be accountability for anything, I guess, short answer?
Probably not.
All right.
Well, great journalism as always, Gareth.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me again.
Everybody, that's the heroic Gareth Porter, Interpress Service, Antiwar.com, Truthout.org, UN fact-finding mission says Israelis executed U.S. citizen Furkan Dov.