Deborah Dupre -, Human Rights Examiner

Targeted Killings of non-mainstream reporters in Libya ordered: Attempts to bury truth

The Examiner learned in communications from human rights defenders and independent journalists throughout Monday that they were shaken with news of 1300 Libyans killed and 5000 wounded Saturday, plus, the U.S. allegedly ordered Targeted Killings of Voltaire Network reporters, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Thierry Meyssan, non-mainstream reporters in Libya covering the NATO war, while other independent reporters there are being fired upon and one, Mohammed Nabbous was killed Saturday according to ABC News.  In an interview with journalist Don DeBar on KPFA radio, he reported most mainstream "news" about Libya has been untrue, as alternative news sites heavily report but are increasingly persecuted according to their recent reports.

"The conflict in Libya has claimed the life of another journalist. A sniper shot Mohammed Nabbous, 28-year old resident of Benghazi and founder of its first independent TV news channel Libya Alhurra, on Saturday night," reported ABC's Mark Colvin on Monday. 

As Naboous was filming attacks in Benghazi, he was shot, soon after the regime said it was honouring a ceasefire, according to ABC.

"You may have heard Mohammed Nabbous on this program on Friday when he reported an attack on a power station outside Benghazi," Colvin wrote.

Within days of NATO bombings on Libya, Nabbous reportedly had a team of "citizen reporters," shooting video reports all around Benghazi that he was posting on his channel Libya Alhurra.

"He was also an important source for foreign networks like Al Jazeera, CNN and NPR who regularly interviewed him and rebroadcast his videos. We also relied on his video updates to confirm stories coming out of Benghazi," stated Colvin for ABC. 

The sense of despair expressed by Human Rights advocates and independent journalists from various points around the globe in communications to the Examiner on Monday as word spread about the recent NATO massacres on Libyans, unreported by mainstream news, and the targeting of independent reporters.

Monday, cheers reported in some corners were not heard from human rights workers when mainstream reported Tripoli had falling under what independent reporters say, has been falsely reported on mainstream news.

"What is needed right now is not despair on our part, but the dissemination of information, which NATO has decided is the most important battleground," stated independent journalist, WBAIX  radio announcer Don DeBar, formerly with NPR's WBAI.

DeBar told Dupré in communications early Tuesday that Nabbous, unlike painted by ABC, was  "clearly a U.S. agent."

"He founded Libya's version of al-Hurra," said DeBar.

According to Wikipedia "Alhurra (or al-Hurra) (Arabic: الحرّة‎, al-Ḥurrah [alˈħurra],[note] 'The free') is a United States-based satellite TV channel, sponsored by the U.S. government..."

"The station is forbidden from broadcasting itself within the U.S. under the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act concerning the broadcast of propaganda." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Nabbous and http://en.wikipedia.org/...)

DeBar elaborated on U.S. media propaganda when interviewed by Press TV on Monday, showing documented photographic samples:

"Now the Russians, who conduct satellite surveillance of planet Earth, because they have been prepared for 50 years for a nuclear strike from the United States, said that, on the specific dates that [Gadaffi] charges were delineated that [he] had attacked his people from the air, here are the photographs: there are no planes in the air, there were no aeral activities conducted whatsoever. (Watch: 'US liable for civilian deaths in Libya', Press TV, August 22, 2011)

"This has not made the media in the west at all - including on programs like Democracy Now! and Al Jazeera which is carried on progressive radio networks, if you can believe that, in the United States," he told Press TV.

DeBar wrote Tuesday, "Coverage of the situation in Libya over the past three days, while useless to anyone trying to understand what is actually happening in Libya, nevertheless provides an interesting peek into the modus operandi of the global media that has broad application for the decoding of its coverage of all of the issues that touch our lives." (See: "Media Wars - Many Mouths, One Voice: Libya Coverage Provides a Pee... Don DeBar, August 23, 2011)

Targeted Individual reporters for Targeted Killings

The Réseau Voltaire, (Voltaire Network), an international non-profit organisation independent news group, based in Paris, released a brief statement late on Monday about its two journalists in Libya targeted for killings. (Also see: "Obama targeted killings lawsuit spotlights American civilians," Dupré, D. Examiner, September 2, 2010)

"From the Rixos [Hotel], the order was given by so-called "journalists" from the U.S. to bring down Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Thierry Meyssan."

The statement was released in an short newsletter by Voltaire news group saying that the individuals who gave the orders "have been identified and their names will be released in due course."

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization, and Thierry Meyssan, is president and founder of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference.

Both Nazemroaya and Meyssan are entrenched in Hotel Rixos, the Voltaire news group reported in a written statement.

The targeted killing threats of the independent journalists highlight President Obama's signed Executive Order that the Center for Constitutional Rights defined as "an extrajudicial killing policy under which names are added to CIA and military 'kill lists' through a secret executive process and stay there for months at a time.

This policy 'is plainly not limited to imminent threats" the Center for Constitutional Rights had said in September 2010.

"After the attacks of September 11, the Pentagon began a shift away from its late Cold War–era 'two-war strategy,' premised on maintaining the ability to conduct two major military operations simultaneously, and began to focus instead on irregular warfare against individuals and groups." (Emphasis added; Sharon Weinberger, Black Ops: Secret Military Technology in the Age of Terrorism, August 3, 2010)

Weinberger furthers, "The head of U.S. Special Operations Command talks about 'high-tech manhunting,' while Air Force officials describe plans to compress the 'kill chain.'" (Dupré, September 2, 2010)

An interview conducted early Monday morning with Voltaire's Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya showed him in hiding, and trapped in Tripoli. (See embedded Youtube.)

"I'm confined in a place where I can't move," cleary unnerved and appearing to be in a very small space as he spoke, Nazemroaya said.

He described, partially in graphic details, some of the traumatizing events he has seen including massacres by NATO and the children.

"There have been massive, -- atrocious, -- criminal bombings" against the Libyan people he emphatically reported.

"I didn't sleep the other night because the bombings would not stop." 

He asked how mainstream reporters can be reporting on what is happening out on the streets when they are in the hotel with him.

The Réseau, (Voltaire Network), according to Wkipedia:

"... systematically attacked the Bush and Sharon administrations. According to the Réseau, the United States are a "hyperpower", a term forged by former minister Hubert Védrine, and all international relations are strongly dependent on the attitude of the concerned nations toward the USA. Thus, any analysis quickly comes back to the USA which they accuse of trying to establish a "new world order", which was the exact formulation that George H.W. Bush used on September 11, 1990 in front of Congress on the 49th anniversary of the Pentagon´s groundbreaking.

In an email, WBAIX radio's Don DeBar, who has remained in regular communications with several independent reporters in Libya, covered Libya there on the ground in 2009, and then, the covered the war on Libyans since its onset, concurred with Nazemroaya about mainstream journalists there.

"Most reporting is being done from inside or near the journalists' hotels," DeBar stated.

"Outside the primary location, snipers have fired at - and in one case, shot - non-mainstream journalists."

According to DeBar, only reporters "embedded with the invaders" have been permitted to shoot footage outdoors.

Libya's media has had its power cut off, so is off the air he said.

In his August 23 report, DeBar wrote:

"The manufacture of events in Libya has been underway since the lead-up to the US-led invasion, including the narrative that enabled the UN resolutions 1970 and 1973 - prominent among these were the claim that the Libyan government was conducting an aerial war against protestors, countered by satellite evidence from the Russian military showing no such attacks took place, and the claim that African mercenaries were firing on protestors, which was both untrue and provoked racist killings of Libyans with African features and skin by rebel gangs." 

Early Monday morning, when KPFA's Davey D interviewed DeBar about the real on-the-ground situation in Tripoli, DeBar said the war on Libya was peddled as a popular uprising, but Libyans, unlike Americans, have no reason to rebel against their government. (See: Don DeBar, "LIBYA: The Real Deal" Youtube.)

"Unlike Americans," he said, "everyone in Libya owns their own home, a human right -- as well as free education, free health care comparable to the U.S. hospitals, affordable and widely available food - unlike Americans have," he said.

DeBar said on Press TV:

"The people of Libya, by the way, went from being the poorest people on the planet in 1969, by every objective measure, to having the highest standard of living in Africa, and one of the highest standards of living in the Muslim world - housing is owned by the people, free of any mortgages, everyone. It is a human right there under the law - and the entire education system and free healthcare." (Press TV Transcript)

In Tripoli, "relentless NATO bombings resumed around 10:20 Monday morning against certain objectives that independent reporters say is a massacre," according to Voltaire.

The fighting also resumed around the Rixos Hotel where some Libyan leaders along with the foreign journalists are entrenched.

DeBar said he has been told by some journalists stuck in the hotel, who have been able to call around the city to the many residents they know personally:

 "The invaders have been largely turned back. They arrived under severe aerial attacks across the city, including strafing of civilians intended to clear the streets for the invasion.

"They were supplemented with troop landings from NATO naval vessels in the port. This was apparently the source of many of the Qatari personnel."