The Daily Blog

Omar Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden Son: Sea Burial Demeaning, Killing ‘Criminal’: Report

A statement purporting to come from a son of Osama bin Laden denounced the al Qaeda leader’s killing as “criminal” and said his burial at sea had humiliated the family, an online monitoring service said.

The statement, attributed to Omar bin Laden, bin Laden’s fourth eldest son, said the al Qaeda chief’s children reserved the right to take legal action in the United States and internationally to “determine the true fate of our vanished father,” the SITE Intelligence Group said.

There was no independent confirmation of the authenticity of the letter, published on the website of Islamist ideologue Abu Walid al-Masri, although several specialists on militant propaganda said the text appeared genuine.

Omar bin Laden, who has been based in the Gulf in recent years, did not immediately respond to emailed and telephoned requests for comment.

The letter said, in part: “We hold the American President (Barack) Obama legally responsible to clarify the fate of our father, Osama bin Laden, for it is unacceptable, humanely and religiously, to dispose of a person with such importance and status among his people, by throwing his body into the sea in that way, which demeans and humiliates his family and his supporters and which challenges religious provisions and feelings of hundreds of millions of Muslims.”

The letter said the U.S. administration had offered no proof to back up its account of the mission. It alleged the goal of the raid had been to kill and not arrest, adding that afterwards the American commandos had “rushed to dispose of the body.”

Some Muslims have misgivings about how U.S. forces killed bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan on May 2 and disposed of his body in the ocean.

Questions have multiplied since the White House said the al Qaeda leader was unarmed when U.S. helicopter-borne commandos raided the villa where he was hiding in the city of Abbottabad.

Bin Laden’s swift burial at sea, in what many Muslims say was a violation of Islamic custom, has also stirred anger.

Barry Bonds perjury trial gets under way.

SAN FRANCISCO— Some loved Barry Bonds so much they can’t be impartial. Others already believe he’s guilty. A mother worried about the effect sports doping would have on her impressionable children. And so the laborious process of selecting a jury began Monday in the criminal case of USA v. Bonds.

More than three years after the all-time home run leader was charged with lying to a grand jury when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs, his trial got under way in San Francisco federal court. The judge and lawyers were attempting to winnow about 100 prospective jurors into 12 jurors and four alternates for a case that could take up to four weeks.

“It’s hard to make decisions about other people’s lives,” juror No. 9 told U.S. District Judge Susan Illston when asked if he could be impartial.

“It’s the hardest thing we do,” replied the judge, who has sealed the prospective jurors’ names until after the trial concludes.

“I haven’t done too good with (my life),” juror No. 9 concluded before sitting back down. He remained eligible for the jury, but 42 other people in the pool were dismissed from the case before the questioning began Monday.

Illston excused one juror because of a death in a family. A second person was dismissed because of his allegiance to the San Francisco Giants.

“I’m a Barry Bonds fan and I’m a huge SF Giants fan. It’s my life. I don’t know if I could judge Mr. Bonds after providing me with so much entertainment. It’s an intimate relationship,” prospective juror No. 22 wrote on a questionnaire he filled out on Thursday. “I don’t think I could find him guilty.”

No. 22 identified himself as age 35 and working at Target as an “in-stock team member.”

Illston also granted the request of both sides to dismiss 38 prospective jurors with perceived biases.

“My opinion is that steroids is ok to be used since these are the jobs of athletes,” prospective juror No. 29 stated in is questionnaire before being dismissed. “If a player must advance in his/her jobs, supplements should be able to be used.”

Illston said she expects to have just enough people to fill the jury. Most of those who remained told the judge they could stay impartial, though several with strong impressions of the case still remained in the jury pool, taking direct questions from the judge

“I would be reluctant to render a judgment against a great athlete like Bonds,” juror No. 24, a single, 61-year-old man living on disability payments, told Illston. “It would color my judgment.”

The judge thanked the man for his time, and he sat down to await a decision on whether he would remain on the jury.

One of the prospective jurors whom prosecutors want excused wrote on her questionnaire: “He is guilty. He lied. He has suffered enuf. There should have been some sort of settlement.” The prospective juror identified herself as 61 years old and holding a law degree.

Another juror identified herself as an administrative assistant with Google Inc.

“Everyone looks up to these athletes, including young kids and its sad they take drugs to do better. What are kids learning?” the 42-year-old wrote on her questionnaire. “I have young impressionable kids and they do sports. I would be distraught if they felt they had to take drugs to do well in any arena.”

Bonds, who played for San Francisco when he hit 73 homers in a season and when he broke Hank Aaron’s career home-run record, has pleaded not guilty to one count of obstruction and four charges of lying to a grand jury.

When he initially entered his plea in December 2007, he was met by thousands of media, fans and others as television helicopters hovered overhead. Much of that attention was missing on Monday. About a dozen photographers milled outside, but few fans were there to see Bonds walk into the federal courthouse in San Francisco dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and silver tie.

While Bonds sat with his star-studded legal team at the defense table, Jeff Novitzky, the federal agent who led the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, joined the prosecutors. Bonds is the biggest name to go to trial from the BALCO probe.

‘War on Drugs’ Gives Way to the Dangerous New Face of Narco-Politics.

A shotgun blast of news this year shredded what most Americans believe about what used to be called the “war on drugs” — that it was being fought to curb what were seen as simply criminal enterprises. Instead, it left us all facing the new dangers of narco-politics, whether it is cartels challenging governments and attacking social institutions, capitalizing on corruption, or involvement in the drug trade by terrorist groups.As a veteran California law enforcement officer told Politics Daily: “What we’re seeing in Mexico is cartels as new ‘state making’ agencies.”That’s politics, even if, as that street cop noted, it doesn’t sound like politics “in the sound byte sense.”A study by the private Center for a New American Security released in 2010 reported that ” … crime, terrorism and insurgency are interwoven in new and dangerous ways that threaten not just the welfare but also the security of societies in the Western Hemisphere … the capability to destabilize governments has made the cartels an insurgent threat as well as a criminal one.”A March report by our government’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) noted that the number of “foreign terrorist groups” involved in the global narcotics trade “jumped from 14 groups in 2003 to 18 in 2008.”Terrorists may “tax” smugglers of drugs, sometimes as a prelude to taking over the business — CRS, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the California street cop cite as an example Columbia’s FARC group, which formed in the 1960s with the goal of overthrowing the government and replacing it with a Marxist regime.The Taliban, which is not on the State Department terrorist list but is at war with the U.S. in Afghanistan, has alliances with narcotics traffickers, although al-Qaeda does not appear to sanction such connections, according to the CRS.By the end of 2010, narco-related violence will have accounted for nearly 30,000 murders in Mexico — everything from grisly beheadings to thug vs. thug gunfights, to raids by squads of cartel gunmen.Mexico’s Congress failed to act on President Felipe Calderon’s plan to squeeze the cartels by cracking down on money laundering and reorganizing local police forces so that they could better stand up to them. Mexico’s ordinary citizens are losing faith in their government. Cartel-fostered lawlessness has prompted ordinary Mexicans to resort to vigilantism to protect themselves from rapes and kidnappings including, in at least one instance, digging a trench around their town to prevent thugs from reaching it by going off-road in their SUVs.Cartels attack every element of “legitimate” society – cops, teachers, medical personnel. Cartels attack journalists, prompting El Diario, the leading paper of Juarez, Mexico, this September to publish an extraordinary Sunday front page “letter” to the cartels, saying: “Explain to us what you want from us. What are we supposed to publish or not publish, so we know what to abide by? You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city …”In a blood-soaked irony, many guns in cartel arsenals – including AK-47s and other assault rifles — come from the United States, according to a Washington Post investigation. They are often legally bought here and then smuggled across the border by gunrunners called hormigas (ants) even as cartel drug mules smuggle narcotics in the opposite direction. Efforts to regulate guns are hot-button political issues in the United States, and The Post article quotes Chris W. Cox of the multimillion-dollar lobbying group, the National Rifle Association, as saying: “To suggest that U.S. gun laws are somehow to blame for Mexican drug cartel violence is a sad fantasy.”Meanwhile, Mexican cartels — already key importers of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana to the U.S. – now dominate what was once our “homegrown” market in meth, the killer drug that began ravaging our heartland in the 1990’s.Economists talk about “contagion” — a political, cultural, or social force “infecting” a neighboring group. Contagion is an issue for the United States beyond the cartels’ core business of, say, providing the meth that destroys a teenager in Montana.

Madoff’s Surviving Son Faces Long List of Woes.

(Dec. 13) — His brother has hanged himself. His father is serving a 150-year prison sentence for perpetuating the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. For Andrew Madoff, life just keeps getting worse.

The surviving son of admitted swindler Bernard Madoff is the focus of a federal criminal probe, along with other family members. He also faces more than 1,000 civil suits filed by investors and separate actions filed by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee recovering assets for the victims.

He has not spoken publicly since Saturday, when his 46-year-old brother, Mark Madoff, was found dead. The elder son had hanged himself with a dog leash while his 2-year-old son slept in their Manhattan apartment. Friends said Mark had become increasingly depressed over recent media reports alleging that he and his brother helped their father bilk clients of billions.In a last e-mail to his wife, Mark wrote that their family “would be better off without ‘this’ hanging over them all, forever,” the New York Daily News quoted a source as saying.

Mark’s suicide does nothing to impede the legal process. “The litigation will take its course, and the death of Mark Madoff will not impact that fact,” trustee attorney David Sheehan told The New York Times.
The brothers have not been criminally charged. Both were high-ranking employees of the family’s wealth management firm. They turned their dad in to federal agents two years ago after the patriarch admitted his entire enterprise was “one big lie.”

Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts last year and was sentenced to 150 years at a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina. He most likely will not be allowed to attend Mark’s funeral.

The sons have consistently claimed they knew nothing of their father’s schemes. But other employees and the court trustee have said otherwise, accusing both of withdrawing millions in unearned compensation.Andrew, who lives in Manhattan with fiancee Catherine Hooper, has battled lymphoma and now bikes more than 100 miles per week. He never seemed to be as troubled as Mark by the ever-growing scandal surrounding his family. Last year, Andrew got into a street fight in New York City after being yelled at by a former Madoff employee, the New York Post reported.

Neither brother has spoken to his parents in two years, according to several news reports. Last year, their mother, Ruth Madoff, was ordered to report expenses of more than $100 to trustee Picard, who is trying to locate and liquidate assets to reimburse deceived customers, The Associated Press reported.

On his LinkedIn page, Andrew is listed as director of operations for Black Umbrella LLC, a private disaster management firm.

The company was founded by his fiancee and sells preparedness packages for natural or man-made disasters — including losing everything. In an October interview with the Times, Andrew said he hoped his own disaster wouldn’t taint his future wife’s business opportunities.

“I think that what happened to me illustrated to me how important it is to be prepared for unexpected events,” Andrew Madoff said. “I’m just another example.”

Dave Meggett, Former NFL Star, Sentenced to 30 Years in Rape Case.

Former NFL star Dave Meggett was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Wednesday after being convicted of criminal sexual misconduct and burglary in a South Carolina court, according to multiple reports.

The charges were brought up in the aftermath of a January 2009 encounter between Meggett, 42, and a college student at her house in North Charleston, S.C. Meggett did not take the stand in the trial, and his lawyer, Beattie Butler of the Charleston County Public Defender’s Office, indicated that he would appeal. Butler contested that Meggett and the student had consensual sex, then had an argument later in the night in question.

Meggett starred as a running back and kick returner with the New York Giants for six seasons, New England Patriots for three seasons and New York Jets for one season between 1989 and 1998. At one point he was the NFL’s career leader in punt return yardage, amassing 3,708 yards, currently good for second-most of all-time. He earned a trip to the Pro Bowl in his rookie season, helped the Giants to a win in Super Bowl XXV and returned to the Super Bowl with the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI. Meggett has faced a long a history of allegations of sex crimes dating back to the end of his career. In 1998, he was arrested in Toronto after authorities said he allegedly assaulted an escort worker after a three-way sexual encounter. He also resigned from his job as parks and recreation director in Robersonville, N.C., in 2006 after being accused of sexually assaulting his former girlfriend, an accusation that led to him being convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery and given two years’ probation.

Meggett still faces charges in a September 2008 incident in which a teenager told police she met Meggett through a mutual friend and he forced her to have sex at a South Carolina home after inviting her to breakfast, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C.