A Magistrate Court in Kaduna Nigeria located opposite the Nigeria Defense Academy (NDA), under Chief Magistrate Rabi T. Oladoja, today in a highly controversial and biased ruling, charged DESERT HERALD Publisher, Malam Tukur Mamu for what it called “forgery and giving false information to mislead public servants”.

Prior to the ruling of today 15^th May, 2013 of the case being sponsored by the Yobe State Government through the office of the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) Babagoni Machina, it was first brought to the Chief Magistrate Court at Bauchi where Mamu was discharged base on the evidences before the Bauchi court. But in their determination to use state resources to cripple DESERT HERALD by all means and even though Mamu has secured an order of perpetual injunction restraining his arrest from High Court 1 in Bauchi due to the persistent threat, the Yobe Government masterminded another arrest using the Nigeria Police and was subsequently arraigned before a magistrate court at Ibrahim Taiwo Road in Kaduna under one Nasiru Lere Esq in October 2010. But the entire proceedings of the second court under Lere which was investigated by the Kaduna State judiciary after petitions from Tukur Mamu and the Protection Rights of Journalists of Africa (PRJA) had shown clear violation of judicial process, abuse of rights and glaring bias in favour of the prosecution. This prompted the transfer of the case to another Magistrate Court under Rabi T. Oladoja.

Today’s controversial ruling by Chief Magistrate Rabi T. Oladoja did not show any departure from the experiences the accused suffered at the court in Ibrahim Taiwo. The record of the court proceeding has woefully failed to establish the case of forgery and giving false information against Mamu, going by the exhibits tendered before the court by the prosecution. Chief Magistrate Oladoja relied only on the testimony of the prosecution witness, one Deputy Superintendent of Police Gashua, even though his testimony was discredited by his own submission during cross examination by counsel to Mamu, Barrister Sadau Garba to conclude on the charges of giving false information and forgery against the accused. Also, throughout the proceedings as acknowledged by the prosecution witness, DSP Gashua during cross examination admitted that he had not investigated the content of Tukur Mamu’s petition to the Inspector General of Police which he was ordered to investigate. Yet he proceeded to investigate publications of DESERT HERALD newspaper which was not part of his assignment. During the proceedings Chief Magistrate Oladoja refused the request of the counsel to the accused for the witness, DSP Gashua to produce the copy of the letter the police wrote to Yusuf Dantsofo Hospital in Kaduna to confirm the authenticity of the Excuse/Light Duty Certificate submitted by Mamu at the magistrate court in Bauchi, even though it is vital to the case and to prove his innocence.

The only exhibit in that regard submitted by the prosecution was the reply of the hospital and deliberately refused to submit the content of the first letter they wrote requesting the information which would have explain in details what the police actually requested for from the hospital. Chief Magistrate Oladoja therefore, used only the reply of the hospital and the claim of the witness to conclude that Mamu had committed forgery, even though the magistrate court in Bauchi where they first took Mamu to had cleared him of the official conspiracy.

What surprised keen observers at today’s ruling and according to one of the observers who prefers not to be mentioned is that the Kaduna State Director of Public Prosecution, Mr. G.B Kore who personally handles the matter and considering the outcome of the proceeding clearly had prior knowledge from what happened in the court and appears confidently aware of how the ruling would be. For the first time since the proceedings which receives unusual speed began, Kore the source reveal “has distributed money to selected journalists (according to the dictate at Yobe Government House) to come and cover the predictable outcome of Chief Magistrate Oladoja’s ruling. They were in court for the first time and at the end of the ruling Mr. Kore was not disappointed. He has done good job for his paymasters”, the source further revealed.

In what appears to be another controversial ruling and travesty of justice that might be contested by the accused person is the decision of the chief magistrate to read the ruling in the absence of counsel to DESERT HERALD publisher, Tukur Mamu. Mamu had earlier informed the court that his counsel couldn’t make it because of the abrupt and suspicious adjustment of the date of the proceedings by the chief magistrate and that he (Barr. Sadau Garba) is in Abuja on the same 15^th May, 2013 at a higher court for another matter. Mamu told the court that during the last proceedings it was agreed by documentation to resume on 16^th May, 2013 for the ruling but the chief magistrate decided to adjust the date backward without considering the engagement of all the counsels. When the chief magistrate said she had duly directed the court registrar to send hearing notice to Barr. Sadau, Mamu said his counsel did not receive any formal notice from the court, but that he was only verbally informed by the registrar on phone three days to the proceedings which will be difficult for him to cancel his Abuja matter.

Chief Magistrate Oladoja argued that Barr. Sadau is at liberty to send his juniors to hold his brief but Mamu told the court that if the whole DPP of Kaduna State is handling the matter himself he will not risk any junior counsel to stand his brief at that crucial stage of the proceeding and requested for an adjournment of even one day but the trial magistrate vehemently rejected his application and insisted that the ruling must go ahead. It is exactly one of the similar experiences the accuse suffered before the trial magistrate at Ibrahim Taiwo road and it was due to such instances of gross abuse of judicial process that the matter was transferred to Chief Magistrate Oladoja.

When the ruling was read by the trial Magistrate Oladoja, she asked Mamu whether he understood the charges against him, the DESERT HERALD publisher told the court on record that he is not a lawyer and that he understood only some part of the ruling and that that is why he insisted to have his counsel for interpretation and guidance. The matter was reluctantly adjourned to 27^th May, 2013 when Mamu insisted that he needs the presence of his counsel before he can answer the charges against him.

In his response after the controversial ruling Mamu told the press that  the “the corrupt officials of Yobe no matter the amount of money they will spend will insha Allah never succeed in getting a judgment through the back door. We are ready and very much committed to go up to the Supreme Court to defend our innocence. Even the people at the court can read the mind and direction of the trial judge. She was clearly biased throughout the entire proceedings. We no longer have confidence in her. We decided deliberately to only document the proceedings and not to report it on paper since the proceeding begun. We know what we are doing and thank God she has given us more than enough reasons to challenge her excesses. We will not allow any form of selfishness and greed to damage the good name of the judiciary. Thank God our dear mother and sister, Justice Alooma Muktar is taking up to the crusade of sanitizing the judiciary. For the judiciary to be sanitized certainly many judicial officers must be on trial. As journalists we will offer our contributions in the crusade”, Mamu said.

See the full text of the Press Release by the Protection Rights of Journalists of Africa (PRJA)

Persecution of Mr. Tukur Mamu:

 Nigerian Judiciary on a Trail Again!

(Tuesday May, 15  2013)

We have been following with keen interest the proceedings of the politically motivated case against our Senior African Consultant on Media, Mr. Tukur Mamu since the case was transferred to another court in Kaduna, Nigeria due to gross injustice and abuse of powers. It is unfortunate that the misconduct of the previous trial judge has manifested again at the chief magistrate court under trial magistrate Rabi Oladoja. Her ruling of today on a No case Submission forwarded by counsel to Mr. Mamu and considering her conduct during the last stages of the proceedings has confirmed that the judiciary in Nigeria is one institution that can be easily manipulated against the poor. As a professional journalist that contributed so much to the development of journalism in Nigeria and the continent of Africa as a whole which resulted to his recognition by PRJA as one of its consultants, PRJA will continue to do whatever that is humanly necessary to support our brother and colleague against the machinations of desperate political elite that believed money and political authority can do anything.

Certainly, PRJA no longer has confidence in the impartiality of the trial magistrate Mrs. Rabi T. Oladoja. Privileged information at our disposal and some of the evidences are clear that she has been receiving huge gratification through the Kaduna Sate Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) from the Yobe State Government to do the dirty job. We will submit the details of our findings to the head of the Nigeria’s apex court and we will demand full explanation. It is regrettable that few selfish judicial officers in Kaduna State value gratification as a means of compromise than their cherished profession. They are bent in destroying the good name of the Nigerian judiciary but we will continue to fight for the protection of the rights of every single journalist in Africa. We have already contacted the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) to take joint action on this embarrassing matter.

Before we forward our formal letter to the CJN we urge the Nigerian President Mr. Goodluck Jonathan to do more in protecting and promoting press freedom in Nigeria and to initiate a process that will punish corrupt judges.

Certainly, the ruling of today against Mr. Mamu cannot stand the test of time because PRJA believes that in the Nigerian judiciary there are still men and women of proven integrity that will never allow their honour and hard earned refutation to be compromise at whatever cost.

Signed:

Prof. John Nkunnu

Secretary General (PRJA)

Consultant wants CBN to enlighten rural dwellers on need to embrace banking

Banking

Lagos, May 15, 2013 (NAN) Mr Bayo Rotimi, the Chief Executive Officer of Quest Advisory Services Ltd., has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to sensitise rural dwellers to the need to embrace banking.

Rotimi, a financial expert, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Lagos that the educating rural dwellers on the importance of banking would facilitate the success of CBN’s financial inclusion policy.

He also urged banks operating in the hinterlands to educate the people on the relevance of banking.

Rotimi told NAN that most of the people who were not exposed to banking services could be found in the rural areas.

He said that some of the rural dwellers preferred to keep money under their pillows at home, adding that proper enlightenment would change their orientation.

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“Any bank that is established in the rural area must enlighten the indigenes of that area why it is important to keep money in the bank.
“If there is a fire your money will not get burnt and nobody will come to your bedroom and steal your money under your pillow.

“So, there must be great enlightenment in terms of radio, in terms of talking to the community leaders, and helping them to establish cooperatives where you can pass information across to trade groups.“

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Rotimi said that operating bank accounts would enable the people to have access to loans to fund their businesses.

He said that CBN would ensure that rural dwellers even in remote areas had access to banking services. (NAN)

The unit’s Commander, Mr Fatai Bakare, who gave the warning while speaking with newsmen in Itori, said that it was an offence for any driver to remain permanently on the fast lane.

He explained that the fast lane was meant for drivers to overtake other vehicles and return immediately after doing so.

He added further that the motorist could then move back to the slow or normal lane to continue with his journey.

Bakare, however, stressed that any driver caught violating that traffic rule risked prosecution by the corps.

“On the road, we have two lanes; there is one called fast and there is another one called slow.

“You are not expected to be caught on the fast lane except when you are overtaking and the moment you finish overtaking, you are to move over to the slow lane.

“And leave the fast lane open for any other person who wants to overtake so that the fast lane should be permanently open for others who want to overtake.

“But to our surprise, many motorists don’t even know the difference between fast and slow lane and that is why we shall continue to educate all road users.

“There is an offence if you are caught on the fast lane called Failure to Move Over (FMO).

“It is either for those driving permanently on the fast lane or those who are parked by our men but refused to do so.

“The sanction is fine for first offenders but if you are caught subsequently, you would be prosecuted, ” he stressed.

He noted that the FRSC would not relent in its efforts regarding the education and enlightenment of motorists on the rules of driving on the highways.

Bakare further disclosed that 30 offenders were arrested on Tuesday for various traffic violations during the unit’s special patrol conducted on the Abeokuta-Lagos expressway.

“The most prevalent offences are Tyre Violation (TYV), Seat belt Violation (SBV), Overloading Violation (OLV), Dangerous Driving (DGD) and then Failure to Move Over (FMO),” he said. (NAN)

Madu said this at the 1^st National Trade Compliance Summit organised by the ASCS in Lagos.

“Nowadays, international trade costs in Nigeria associated with transportation charges, documentation requirements and delay in clearance at national borders have become bottlenecks.

“It is expedient therefore for logistics organisations to educate themselves with trade compliance ethics so as to make trade faster and easier.

“The ethics of trade compliance is not really known by most import and export agencies and that is limiting easy movement of goods and services across borders, ’’Madu said.

He said that importers, exporters and licensed agents should comply with government initiatives and Customs Harmonised Commodity System Codes.

Madu advised customs licensed agents to shun trade malpractices and embrace integrity.

He urged the relevant agencies to fish out quacks in the industry. (NAN)

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the Federal Government had released N500 million to the Plateau Government to distribute to the victims of the natural disaster.

However, a spokesman of the victims, Malam Abdulhamid Hussaini, told NAN in Jos that they were yet to be given the assistance.

Hussaini said the delay in distributing the aid was agitating the affected persons and had become a source of speculation among residents.

“We (victims) are yet to receive a kobo or measure of grain from the Plateau Government that collected the assistance on our behalf,” he said.

The spokesman said that the victims had been turned to destitute persons after they were displaced by the flood in 2012.

“We are now living from hand to mouth as all our belongings and our business capital as petty traders have been washed away by the floods.

“We are begging the state government to come to our rescue by distributing the grains and the financial assistance donated by the Federal Government.

“So far we have not collected any assistance from any government agency, but we have been hearing our colleagues in other states collecting the Federal Government financial and food stuff assistance.

Hussaini, who lost six children during the floods, lamented that the victims had been struggling to “keep body and soul moving” since then.

He said out of about 1,000 victims affected by the flood, very few of them were now living in decent accommodation with their families.

The spokesman said that the victims were ready to relocate when the government provided alternative plots for them.

Hussaini said some of the victims were compelled to build houses on water ways and currently lacked the financial capacity to purchase plots in safer places.

Reacting to the demands, the Executive Secretary of Plateau Emergency Relief Agency (PLSEMA), Alhaji Alhassan Barde, said government was computing the number of victims before the funds would be released to them.

Barde said government had evacuated the food stuff to local government areas for distribution to victims and had directed the affected councils to distribute same to the victims.

He said the agency was not aware that the Jos North Local Government victims were yet to benefit from the aid.

The scribe said that the funds would be distributed to the victims after a comprehensive census of all the beneficiaries and government buildings that were destroyed.

He appealed to them to be patient as the government was working to release the funds without further delay. (NAN)

Mrs Dupe Atoki, the new Director-General of the CPC, stated this on Wednesday while addressing the management staff of the agency in Abuja.

Atoki, who assumed duty on Wednesday, emphasised that the organisation must properly project itself as a relevant tool for the country’s economic development through efficient execution of its mandate.

She declared her commitment to adequate protection of the rights of Nigerian consumers, urging the agency’s management and workforce to cooperate with her to achieve the mandate.

While acknowledging the achievements of her predecessors, she observed that more of the council’s potential should be brought out to further justify its relevance as an organisation focusing on the disadvantaged.

“My focal point is to ensure that Nigerian consumers are protected to ensure that the ordinary person on the street knows his or her rights.

“We will also sensitise them to know when those rights are being abused and where to report to.

“We have a lot to do in defining our priorities. We can identify areas that affect the generality of the common man. We don’t have the luxury of time.

“I have four years to spend and by the end, I want to show that the council is able to deliver appropriately through its mandate.’’

The new CPC boss, whose appointment was announced on May 9, is a legal practitioner who served and represented Nigeria in various capacities, locally and internationally.

Meanwhile, a statement signed by Mr Obimuyiwa Abiodun, the CPC Deputy Director, Public Relations, stated that Atoki was a member of the National Human Rights Commission.

It added that she was also a member of the Federal Government’s Presidential Committee on review of several laws.

The new CPC director general also worked with the African Union in different capacities, including legal consultant in the drafting of legal instruments.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Atoki succeeds Mr Emmanuel Amlai, who functioned in acting capacity, following the expiration of the two-term tenure of Mrs Ify Umenyi in February. (NAN)

Every national newspaper carries front page pictures of film star following news of her having had a double mastectomy

By Roy Greenslade
The media response to Angelina Jolie’s announcement about having had a double mastectomy illustrated yet again the power of celebrity.Her picture was very predictably on every national newspaper front page in Britain (though not in the United States, and not even on page one of the New York Times on the day it ran her op-ed article about the operation).

This says something about the difference between British and American journalism. (Discuss). It also raises the question of whether celebrity power is merely a media construct, and therefore foisted on the public, or whether the public responds to it positively without the need of prompting. (Discuss also).

What cannot be in any doubt is that serious matters often achieve a widespread public reaction when celebrities get involved.Indeed, Jolie’s visit in March 2013 to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to campaign against rape in conflict zones was a case in point.

To use the appropriate cliche, it “raised awareness” of the crime across the world, because of the attendant publicity, which subsequently led to news features about the systematic use of rape.

Jolie was accompanied by the foreign secretary William Hague. If he had gone alone, I doubt that there would have been a picture of him, let alone much coverage.

That’s the reality. It’s why Jolie is a UN goodwill ambassador, and an active one going back many years. I was in the Lebanon in December 2004 when she arrived to spend time with refugees and UN staff, including one of my friends. He spoke admiringly of the way she conducted herself and the genuine interest she showed.Her trip to the DRC was followed by the deployment of officials to war zones to help build evidence of rapes, so demonstrating that an obsession with celebrity can and does have positive results.

Remember Jamie Oliver’s 2005 involvement in a campaign to improve children’s diets by making a a series of TV programmes aimed at enhancing the nutritional value of school dinners?

Such interventions often create national conversations about issues that otherwise pass under the media’s radar or, like mass rape, go under-reported. The same tends to happen when a celebrity suffers from a health scare, as in Jolie’s case. In 2005, the singer Kylie Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer and it made front page news across the world.

The result was a “raising of awareness”, as Minogue herself reported at the time on her website. She wrote: “Being breast aware plays a major role in early detection so I was especially pleased to hear that younger women are being more proactive with breast examination and talking to their doctors.”

So it was no surprise that Minogue greeted Jolie’s news by tweeting to her 1.7m followers: “#angelinajolie thank you for sharing your story and helping women around the world.”A celebrity tragedy can have a similar effect. When reality TV star Jade Goody was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2008, many thousands more British women applied to have smear tests. That continued in the following year after her death.

According to a study published in the Journal of Medical Screening, the number of women diagnosed with cervical cancer increased by 14% around the time of her death.

Similarly, the death of singer Amy Winehouse in 2011 from alcohol poisoning was followed by more people taking treatment for substance abuse and entering addiction clinics.

We may wish to deny the validity of celebrity, as I tend to do, but as one of my City University London students wrote in her assignment essay a month ago: “It is an inescapable truth that more people will read a story if it has a celebrity angle.”

Watch out for more, much more, on breast cancer in the coming days and weeks. Yes, and more on Jolie, of course. Today’s coverage is merely the beginning.

Their parents and grandparents were evicted 65 years ago, when Israel was created. Now they are coming back

By Harriet Sherwood in Iqrit
On a breezy hilltop in sight of the Lebanese border, a village last populated 65 years ago is being reclaimed from the dead for the living. Vegetables and herbs have been planted amid the rubble; a couple of donkeys graze on spring grass; traditional food is cooked and eaten in a makeshift structure next to the Church of Our Lady, where mass is celebrated for up to 200 worshippers on the first Saturday of every month.

This is Iqrit, a Palestinian Christian village in northern Galilee, whose inhabitants left in the bitter war that followed the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, and who have never been permitted to return to their land and razed homes.

But in recent months, a group of young men, grandsons of Iqrit’s original residents, have moved back in an attempt to reclaim and rebuild the village.

And as Palestinians commemorate on Wednesday the Nakba, or catastrophe, of the loss of their land to Israel 65 years ago, work is being completed on a proposal for around 500 homes to be built on the site for the descendants of Iqrit’s inhabitants, 90% of whom wish to return to the village. The plan is expected to be published in September.

What is unusual about this demand for the “right of return” is that the villagers and their descendants are Israeli citizens, mostly living in the area, rather than refugees in Palestine and in the diaspora.

In November 1948, six months after the state of Israel was declared, the new Israeli army arrived at Iqrit to tell the villagers they must leave because the area was dangerous. Most of the 490 inhabitants were transferred to a nearby village, taking only basic necessities, in the belief they would be gone for two weeks. But the area was declared a military zone and the villagers were forbidden from returning.

The people of Iqrit took their case to Israel’s newly constituted supreme court, which ruled in July 1951 that their evacuation was illegal and they must be permitted to return to the village. But on Christmas Eve of that year, Israeli soldiers demolished the village, leaving only the church and the cemetery intact. Later, the village land was taken for state use.

Since then, the villagers have fought a legal battle that ended 10 years ago with a final supreme court ruling rejecting their demand to be allowed to reclaim their land. The original villagers and their descendants – now around 1,500 people scattered across northern Israel – are allowed only to hold services in the church and bury their dead in the cemetery. “We are refugees in our own country,” said Nemi Ashkar of the Iqrit community association.

Last summer, around a dozen young men decided to take matters into their own hands. “At the moment Iqrit people have the right to return only in a coffin, but we want to live here,” said Walaa Sbaid, 26, a schoolteacher in Haifa, 40 miles away.

The group planted young saplings and built a chicken coop, which Sbaid said the Israeli authorities had demolished. “They are making the chickens refugees, too,” he said, adding that the two donkeys had also been threatened with eviction.

The group consists of university students, factory and restaurant workers, and teachers. “Of course, it would be more comfortable to sip espresso in a coffee shop in Haifa, but we have a belief in our right to live here,” said Sbaid.

The Iqrit community association says it has been offered support by Israeli politicians on both the right and left, and from Israeli artists and intellectuals. Father Souhail Khoury, the priest of the church, says he grew up listening to his parents reminisce about their lost land. “We are all in different villages and towns now, but this is the place where we still meet every month as a family,” he said. “This is the place we call home.”

Anti-Assad fighter appears to eat internal organ of dead government soldier in horrific footage

By Ian Black and Martin Chulov

Horrific video footage of a Syrian rebel commander eating the heart or lung of a dead government fighter has aroused furious international controversy, fuelling an already heated debate over western support for the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The grisly film had been circulating for several days, attracting extensive comment on social media networks such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. But in the face of an often vicious propaganda war between the government and rebels, early doubts about the film’s authenticity faded when the perpetrator, named as Khaled al-Hamad, admitted that he had mutilated the corpse of an unnamed soldier as an act of revenge.

“We opened his cell phone and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he [the dead soldier] was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there,” Hamad told the Time news website.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), an independent monitor, said: “The figure in the video cuts the heart and liver out of the body and uses sectarian language to insult Alawites [Assad's minority sect]. At the end of the video [the man] is filmed putting the corpse’s heart into his mouth, as if he is taking a bite out of it.”

Hamad, also known as Abu Sakkar, said he also had video footage of himself using a saw to cut a Shabiha government militiaman into “small and large pieces”.

Yasser Taha, a fellow fighter, told the Guardian an unnamed female relative of Abu Sakkar had been raped and killed by government soldiers. Time said he had in fact eaten the dead man’s lung, not his liver or heart.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), the main western and Arab-backed anti-Assad political grouping, quickly condemned the incident as a crime and pledged to bring the perpetrator to justice.

Atrocities have been reported since the start of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, but few images have been as repulsive as this one. Film of prisoners apparently being buried alive turned out to have been faked, but other shocking footage proved genuine.

“It is not enough for Syria’s opposition to condemn such behaviour or blame it on violence by the government,” said Nadim Houry of HRW. “The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such abuses.”

The SOC said: “Such an act contradicts the morals of the Syrian people as well as the values and principles of the Free Syrian Army. The FSA has been [fighting] and continues to fight for the dignity of every Syrian striving for freedom.

“The FSA is a national army above all, formed to defend civilians and deliver the Syrian people from the mentality of revenge and crime. It completely rejects the ill-treatment of the wounded and the disfigurement of the dead.”

The video is a blow to faltering western efforts to raise and mentor a credible opposition force to fight for democracy, in the event that the Assad regime falls.

International revulsion seems likely to affect discussions in western capitals about supporting the FSA. Britain and France have been seeking to amend or drop the EU arms embargo on Syria. The Obama administration has signalled that it may start openly supplying the rebels but has not done so yet. The CIA has reportedly been co-ordinating arms deliveries by anti-Assad Gulf states.

Opposition supporters complained that one savage act was getting massive global media coverage while the death of an estimated 80,000 people was being tolerated by the international community.

“This distressing incident is one example of warfare gone completely askew, but it clearly doesn’t represent the Syrian opposition at large,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey of the European Council for Foreign Relations in London. “It doesn’t compare in scale with massacres and atrocities committed by the Syrian regime. But it does play into fears about where the conflict is going and whether arming the rebels is the right approach.”

Sakkar was a well-known member of the Farouq Brigades, a unit that rose from the ruins of the Baba Amr suburb of Homs and became one of the rebels’ best resourced fighting forces.

During the first 18 months of the war, the Farouq Brigades were seen as a cohesive militia with mainstream leanings, which could credibly fight under the banner of the FSA. Then and now, the FSA has struggled to assemble a command-and-control structure to control the large numbers of rebel-aligned groups, which mostly answer to local leaders.

“It highlights the fact that we are not talking about a centrally controlled and well-organised rebel force,” Barnes-Dacey said. “These are rebels fighting in distinct areas according to their own needs and ambitions. Some are driven by a thirst for revenge, criminalisation, sectarianism … These are the array of forces that have been unleashed in Syria today.”

Farouq became established in Idlib, where it was backed by Qatar and at times Saudi Arabia. Late last year, Sakkar formed a splinter group, which he called the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade.

For the last six months this small unit has joined the fray in Qusayr, which borders Lebanon and is seen as a strategic crossroads by regime and rebels.

Sakkar’s sectarian rhetoric has hardened considerably lately, and he has often been recorded denouncing Alawites and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia that is heavily involved in battles near Homs.

Hamad told Time that Syria’s revolution started peacefully. “They [the Alawites] were the ones who killed our children in Baba Amr and raped our women,” he said. Then, referring to the recent massacre of Sunni villagers in Bayda, near Baniyas – attributed by rebels to the regime – he added: “They were the ones who slaughtered the children and women in Bayda. We didn’t start it; they started it.”

Swearing to avenge every death, he said: “Our slogan is, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

American ambassador summoned to Russia’s foreign ministry to face claims that US diplomat Ryan Fogle worked as spy

By Miriam Elder

The US ambassador to Moscow has been summoned to Russia’s foreign ministry to face claims that an American diplomat who was arrested on Tuesday had been working as a spy.

Russia has said it will expel the US diplomat after claiming he was arrested while trying to recruit a Russian agent for the CIA, in an elaborate raid that revealed the American was carrying a bizarre arsenal of suspected spying equipment.

Ryan Fogle, the third secretary at the US embassy in Moscow, was paraded in footage aired on state-run television after being detained late on Monday night by officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

He was declared persona non grata by the foreign ministry on Tuesday and ordered to leave the country immediately.

“A classic spy arsenal was discovered, as well as a large sum of money that doesn’t just expose a foreign agent caught red-handed, but also raises serious questions for the American side,” the ministry said. “Such provocative actions in the spirit of the cold war in no way help to strengthen mutual trust.”

Michael McFaul, the US ambassador, entered the foreign ministry’s building in central Moscow on Wednesday morning and left half an hour later without saying a word to journalists waiting outside the compound.

The ambassador, who took office in January 2012, previously provoked the ire of Russian officials when one of his first acts was to invite a group of opposition activists and rights advocates to the embassy. Later, he alleged that Russia had offered money to the leader of Kyrgyzstan for removing a US base from its soil.

Fogle was said to be carrying two wigs, three pairs of glasses, a compass and map of Moscow, as well as a knife, lighter, stacks of €500 notes and his US embassy ID.

Russia Today, an English-language TV channel run by the Kremlin, also revealed the contents of an alleged letter addressed to the Russian recruit.

It begins: “Dear friend, This is a down-payment from someone who is very impressed with your professionalism and who would greatly appreciate your co-operation in the future.” It goes on to offer $100,000 “to discuss your experience, expertise and co-operation” as well as $1m “for long-term co-operation”.

It then instructs the recruit on how to open a Gmail account, before signing off with “your friends”. The letter, wigs, and immediate release of footage of the raid to state-run television like Russia Today elicited widespread confusion.

The scandal comes at an awkward time in US-Russia relations. On one hand, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly blamed the US for fomenting discontent with his government, with officials going so far as to accuse the state department of funding opposition protesters. On the other, Moscow and Washington have been seeking to strengthen co-operation after the attack on the Boston Marathon, suspected to have been carried out by two men with roots in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus region.

It also comes less than a week after John Kerry, the US secretary of state, visited Moscow to help end the war in Syria. He was accompanied by Robert Mueller, the FBI director, who held a rare meeting with his Russian counterpart.

In Washington, a state department spokesman said: “We can confirm that an officer at our US embassy in Moscow was briefly detained and was released.” It declined to comment further. The foreign ministry summoned the US ambassador, Michael McFaul, for a meeting on Wednesday.

In the video released by the FSB, a plainclothes officer, his face distorted for the camera, is shown taking a grey cap and blond wig off Fogle’s head, before marching him to a car. Fogle is then shown seated, stone-faced, inside an FSB questioning site with three unidentified Americans, as a Russian official accuses him of trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer involved in anti-terrorism efforts in the North Caucasus.

“At first, we didn’t believe this could happen, because you very well know that lately the FSB has been actively helping the investigation of the Boston bombs,” the official says. He goes on to lecture the group about US-Russia relations, and aims to increase co-operation following telephone talks between Putin and US President Barack Obama.

“Understandings were reached about co-operation,” the Russian says. “And on this background, when relations are being strengthened between the countries, an American diplomat commits a government crime against the Russian Federation.”

In a rare statement, the FSB said Fogle’s alleged attempt to recruit a Russian agent was not unique. “Lately, American intelligence has made multiple attempts to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement organs and special agencies, which have been detected and monitored by FSB counter-intelligence,” it said.

The US has been at pains to reconstruct the six months that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, accused of carrying out the Boston bombing and subsequently killed in a shootout with police, spent in Dagestan, a volatile republic in Russia’s south in 2012.

In 2011, Russia had warned the FBI about Tsarnaev but, according to US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal, refused to respond to requests for information.

The bizarre details of the raid to capture Fogle recalled the “spy rock” scandal of 2006, when Russia said it had caught British spies “red-handed” using a fake rock able to transmit classified data. Britain initially laughed off the scandal as absurd, but early last year, Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to then prime minister Tony Blair, admitted it was true. He called the incident “embarrassing”.

“They had us bang to rights,” he said.

The Fogle scandal comes three years after the US broke up a sleeper cell of 10 Russian spies and expelled them via a dramatic swap at Vienna airport. The ring’s most famous spy, Anna Chapman, has gone on to have a successful career as a TV host and Kremlin cheerleader at home.

It was unclear whether the US would respond with a tit-for-tat expulsion, coming as the scandal does amid concerted US, UK and Israeli efforts to convince Russia to drop support for Bashar al-Assad. Last week, Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, agreed to call a conference aimed at helping end the war.

Putin was meeting Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in the southern city of Sochi when news of the spy scandal broke.

Russian officials tried to downplay the scandal, including Alexey Pushkov, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee and one of government’s loudest US critics. “The spy scandal around the American diplomat will be, I think, fleeting,” Pushkov tweeted. “And it won’t bother the Lavrov-Kerry negotiations. But it won’t help the atmosphere.”