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GARETH PORTER: UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis “Executed” US Citizen Furkan Dogan
Asked by this writer whether the DOJ had received the autopsy report on Dogan, DOJ spokesperson Laura Sweeney refused to comment
By Gareth Porter via t r u t h o u t
Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was aboard the Mavi Marmara when he was killed by Israeli commandos. (Photo: freegazaorg; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)
The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.
The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.
The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being shot in his face.
The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is “tattooing around the wound in his face,” indicating that the shot was “delivered at point blank range.” The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that “the trajectory of the wound, 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.”
Based on both “forensic and firearm evidence,” the fact-finding panel concluded that Dogan’s killing and that of five Turkish citizens by the Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmari May 31 “can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions.” (See Report [.pdf] Page 38, Section 170)
The report confirmed what the Obama administration already knew from the autopsy report on Dogan, but the administration has remained silent about the killing of Dogan, which could be an extremely difficult political problem for the administration in its relations with Israel.
The Turkish government gave the autopsy report on Dogan to the US Embassy in July and it was then passed on to the Department of Justice, according to a US government source who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the administration’s policy of silence on the matter. The source said the purpose of obtaining the report was to determine whether an investigation of the killing by the Justice Department (DOJ) was appropriate.
Asked by this writer whether the DOJ had received the autopsy report on Dogan, DOJ spokesperson Laura Sweeney refused to comment.
The administration has not volunteered any comment on the fact-finding mission report and was not asked to do so by any news organization. In response to a query from Truthout, a State Department official, who could not speak on the record, read a statement that did not explicitly acknowledge the report’s conclusion about the Israeli executions.
The statement said the fact-finding mission’s report’s “tone and conclusions are unbalanced.” It went on to state, “We urge that this report not be used for actions that could disrupt direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine that are now underway or actions that would make it not possible for Israel and Turkey to move beyond the recent strains in their traditional strong relationship.”
Although the report’s revelations and conclusions about the killing of Dogan and the five other victims were widely reported in the Turkish media last week, not a single story on the report has appeared in US news media.
The administration has made it clear through its inaction and its explicit public posture that it has no intention of pressing the issue of the murder of a US citizen in cold blood by Israeli commandos.
On June 13, two weeks after the Mavi Marmara attack, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying that Israel “should be allowed to undertake an investigation into events that involve its national security” and that Israel’s military justice system “meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation.”
Another passenger whom forensic evidence shows was killed execution-style, according to the OHCHR report, is Ibrahim Bilgen, a 60-year-old Turkish citizen. Bilgen is believed by forensics experts to have been shot initially from the helicopter above the Mavi Marmara and then shot in the side of the head while lying seriously wounded.
The fact-finding mission was given forensic evidence that, after the initial shot in chest from above, Bilgen was shot in the head with a “soft baton round at such close proximity that an entire bean bag and its wadding penetrated the skull and lodged in the chest from above,” the mission concluded.
“Soft baton rounds” are supposed to be fired for nonlethal purposes at a distance and aimed only at the stomach, but are lethal when fired at the head, especially from close range.
The forensic evidence cited by the fact-finding mission on the killing of Dogan and five other passengers came from both the autopsy reports and pathology reports done by forensic personnel in Turkey and from interviews with those who wrote the reports. Experts in forensic pathology and firearms assisted the mission in interpreting that forensic evidence.
The account, provided by the OHCHR of the events on board the Mavi Marmara on its way to help break the economic siege of Gaza May 31 of this year, refutes the version of events aggressively pushed by the Israeli military and supports the testimony of passengers on board.
The report suggests that, from the beginning, Israeli policy viewed the Gaza flotilla as an opportunity to use lethal force against pro-Hamas activists. It quotes testimony by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak before the Israeli government’s Turkel Committee that specific orders were given by the Israeli government “to continue intelligence tracking of the flotilla organizers with an emphasis on the possibility that amongst the passengers in the flotilla there were terror elements who would attempt to harm Israeli forces.”
The idea that the passenger list would be seeded with terrorists determined to attack Israeli defense forces appears to have been a ploy to justify treating the operation as likely to require the use of military force against the passengers.
When details of the Israeli plan to forcibly take over the ships in the flotilla were published in the Israeli press on May 30, the passengers on board the Mavi Marmara realized that the Israelis might use deadly force against them. Some leaders of the IHH (the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Aid), which had purchased the ships for the mission, were advocating defending the boat against the Israeli boarding attempt, whereas other passengers advocated nonviolence only.
That led to efforts to create improvised weapons from railings and other equipment on the Mavi Marmara. However, the commission concluded that there was no evidence of any firearms having being taken aboard the ship, as charged by Israel.
The report notes that the Israeli military never communicated a request by radio to inspect the cargo on board any of the ships, apparently contradicting the official justification given by the Israeli government for the military attack on the Mavi Marmara and other ships of preventing any military contraband from reaching Gaza.
According to the OHCHR report, Israeli Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi testified to the Turkel Committee August 11 that the initial rules of engagement for the operation prohibited live fire except in life-threatening situations, but that that they were later modified to target protesters “deemed to be violent” in response to the resistance by passengers.
That decision apparently followed the passengers’ successful repulsion of an Israeli effort to board the ship from Zodiac boats.
The report confirms that, from the beginning of the operation, passengers were fired on by helicopters flying above the Mavi Marmara to drop commandos on the deck.
Contrary to Israeli claims that one or more Israeli troops were wounded by firearms, the report says no medical evidence of a gunshot wound to an Israeli soldier was found.
The OHCHR report confirms accounts from passengers on the Mavi Marmara that defenders subdued roughly ten Israeli commandos, took their weapons from them and threw them in the sea, except for one weapon hidden as evidence. The Israeli soldiers were briefly sequestered below and some were treated for wounds before being released by the defenders.
The OHCHR fact-finding mission will certainly be the most objective, thorough and in-depth inquiry into the events on board the Mavi Marmara and other ships in the flotilla of the four that have been announced.
The fact-finding mission was chaired by Judge Karl T. Hudson-Phillips, Q.C., retired judge of the International Criminal Court and former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago, and included Sir Desmond de Silva, Q.C. of the United Kingdom, former chief prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone and Ms. Mary Shanthi Dairiam of Malaysia, founding member of the board of directors of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific.
The mission interviewed 112 eyewitnesses to the Israeli attack in London, Geneva, Istanbul and Amman, Jordan. The Israeli government refused to cooperate with the fact-finding mission by making personnel involved in both planning and carrying out the attack available to be interviewed.
The Turkish governments announced its own investigation of the Israeli attack on August 10. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of a “Panel of Inquiry” on August 2, but its mandate was much more narrowly defined. It was given the mission to “receive and review the reports of the national investigations with the view to recommending ways of avoiding similar incidents in the future.”
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,” was published in 2006.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=52145
Posted by Debbie Menon on Sep 29 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Israel, Palestine, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Will our U.S. Government take action against Israel on this to protect an American Citizen rights and seek justice? I have one word for y’all… see “Rachel Corrie“.
We protect all U.S. citizens unless they are killed by Israel. I am sure Vice President O’Biden will run over there and apologize to Israel for having an American Citizen get “in the way” of their “peace” bullets.
the US Government and the Israeli government are controlled by the same forces upstream.
Israel is more and more proving that it’s is full of extremists. It’s a shame. This latest try at making a Jewish State has failed once again cause the Israeli people keep letting right-wing terrorists be in charge of the country.
I say it’s past time that the US stops giving any AID what so ever to Israel and let Israel “reap the benefits” that it has sowed over the years there. Let it DIE once again as a failed experiment. WHY can’t the stupid Jews there ever learn how to behave with their damn neighbors??
Now they can get what they did to this poor young American…. They should get the same treatment that The State of Is real gave to him.
Israel HAS shown that They have NO DESIRE at all to live in peace with anyone except themselves. How NAZI of them. Yes, i said it. i equated the Jewish State with Nazism cause of how they seem to treat anyone who isn’t Jewish, just like the Nazi’s did to anyone who wasn’t a Nazi back in the 30′s and 1940′s in Europe.
I wonder how much money the US would save if they stopped all trade with Israel?
The US Governent took no action when Israel attacked the USS Liberty and killed our U.S. Sailors and it did nothing when Israel murdered U.S. Citizen Rachel Corrie; when it bulldozed her down in cold blood. So why would any American Citizen expect justice when it comes to Israeli crimes?
The Zionists have our Congress, Executive branch, and even mainstream media in check mate. It’s been that way for many many years….nothing new.
Memo to My Fellow Americans: Go back to your slave work, pay your $ 10 billion tribute to Israel and don’t forget that while your daugthers’s school is closing due to lack of funds, Israel is out killing your sons using your hard earned money. Say it loud “Z-K-A” (Zionists Kick A$$!), Say it again! “Z-K-A”, now you got it!
…And the US government did nothing when Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, was imprisoned by IDF.
Her words:
“I’ve been subjected to Israeli piracy, I was subjected to Israeli kidnapping, and I spent seven days in an Israeli prison only because I wanted the children of Gaza to be able to have coloring books, and crayons, and art paper. And to have a normal kind of school year like everyone else has for their children.” — Cynthia McKinney
Watch the video here:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/72/900/Former_Congresswoman_Cynthia_Mckinney:_I_was_Subjected_to_Israeli_Kidnapping.html
Here’s Hon. Cynthia McKinney,speaking from an Israeli prison:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zVJXnTJxuA
The US government did nothing.
Listen to Norman Finkelstein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB_CKL5h2_8
What do you expect decent Israeli people to do? The governments are hardening their positions as they march their societies to war. Clusterfuck alert.
“What do you expect decent Israeli people to do?”
Erm…shut down the Knesset until the law is certain to be observed? Examine and repudiate all title deeds to Palestinian land and arrest the title holders*? Act like human beings instead of very misguided and malprogrammed ‘chosen ones’ driven to psychosis by millennia of evil leaders? Quit draing the lifeblood of every country you infiltrate at the highest level?
And that’s just for starters. You might one day realise that bulldozing both people and olive trees is an affront to humanity at large and THAT’s why you are becoming hated throughout the world.
–
*You may be surprised to find that behind all the fake front companies, these so-called ‘deeds’ all belong to one family and their close associates…
[...] If this issue interests you, please read more atKen O’Keefe’s Gaza Flotilla Articles. He was on the Gaza Flotilla and was personally attacked by the commandos. He is a U.S. Marine, Colleague, and friend. Also, read about the American Citizen who was excuted on the ship by Israeli commandos: UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis “Executed” US Citizen Furkan Dogan [...]
Ken on BBC’s Hardtalk
Jun 25, 2010
An articulate and angry Kenneth O’Keefe, in a pretty intense interview, with BBC. He was on the MV Mavi Marmara ship carrying aid to Gaza, when Israeli commandos raided the ship, killing nine peace activists onboard and wounding several. Kenneth claims he helped disarm the Israeli commandos. He starts of at the very outset by stating, “Palestinians are killed everyday by Israelis and we never hear about it in the Media.” A classic BBC HARDTALK, every bit worth watching.
http://edwardrynearson.wordpress.com/ken-okeefe-bbc-hardtalk/
So now we can say we are pandering to the JEWS !! If nothing is done about this,
and this kid was doing nothing wrong, then there you haver it. SCREW THE JEWS..
SCREW ISRAEL…AND SCREW THEIR SO-CALLED ALLIANCE WITH THE USA !! Let Iran have at them !!
Iran has neither the military might to project force against Israel nor the intent to do so. Defensively they have a strong position, offensively, forget it.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Rivero and SteveScott, larnhr. larnhr said: GARETH PORTER: UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis “Executed” US Citizen Furkan Dogan http://bit.ly/9WMNej [...]
the turkish flotila is of no interest
this un thing is composed of “countries” like congo cuba yeman etc
with the worst human rights record in the world
these “countries” have no morale ground
as such these are bombastic worthless statements with
no practical value
All Jews are criminals, usurers, thieves and murderers – Period. Disgusting that this criminals find a safe heaven in the US. I blame the Nazis for doing such a bad job. With the Jews around we will never enjoy our lives again.
Comments like the three above are designed to inflame.
You holocaust[tm] types must feel quite at home employing the twisted logic of people like Emanuel & Regev.
No doubt there’ll be a load more giyus.org nonsense on here before long. You can smell it a cyber-mile off. This is not only ironic but quite sick too when you consider that most posters on here have fought your battles for you and been shot at for the privilege! Even people who died aboard the US Liberty have relatives watching your every move.
So let’s get this straight. Most Jewish people who understand the issue want nothing to do with Zionism, period. Look to apprehend the shadowy forms that hide behind their (in most cases Khazars) enmantled Judaism – they are not your friends. They are no-ones friends; they transcend all boundaries; to them you are all expendable when the time comes to finalise their power grab over the entire planet. Beavering away to defend Israel with your paid-for twisted PR is an irrelevancy, a mere transient holding pattern in their diabolical desire for world mastery.
reported in the Turkish media last week, not a single story on the report has appeared in US news media
has it occurred that turkish news are of no interest to american
people who are concerened with their daily lives the economy
and safety (being exposed to muslim terror)
Here’s another, shade more subtle except for the naughty lie in brackets, anyway.
Try this for a dose of reality outside of the ZOGosphere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18TRLG8Gwqs
and this for what Truth is up against in the States:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE
No wonder Israel is walking all over the US if this represents the norm!
“(being exposed to muslim terror)”
Correction: being exposed to Zionist false flag terror blamed on Muslims.
Check your local U.S. Dept. of Justice District website…the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) resides there…read, “The Ugly Truth About The ADL”…organized crime racketeers, nothing but a bunch of low-life drug-dealers…don’t expect the DOJ to clean-up it’s act anytime soon…unless the dope promoters are thrown out on their proverbial asses.
Lets examine what exactly is the so called “United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)”
Its a body comprising of human right champions such as
Angola
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Djibouti
Gabon
Ghana
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Mauritania
Mauritius
Nigeria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
China
Jordan
Kyrgyzstan
Malaysia
Maldives
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Uganda
Zambia
a group of worst dictatorships with the worst human rights record in the world
who dont have any morale standing not to mention lecturing democracies
As such this whole OHCHR is a waste of time and money
the costs of keeping good for nothing delegates from these poor
countries could have saved lives of thousands starving to death in their own countries
the cost of keeping a Bangaladesh one year in Geneve with staff and luxuries
could have provided food for 15 000 babies who die from hunger
this is hyporacy at its best
no wonder the west doesnt want a part in this farce
Yes, the UNHCR has a pattern of singling out Israel for condemnation while ignoring the far worse abuses by its many Muslim and Third World member states. But the inquiry into the flotilla raid wasn’t headed by Muammar Gaddafi. It was headed by a former International Criminal Court judge from Trinidad and Tobago, who was joined by a British war crimes prosecutor and a women’s rights activist from Malaysia.
They interviewed 112 activists, medical personnel and crew members in Geneva, London, Istanbul and Amman; they took written testimony from others on board, and they viewed the extremely limited live footage and photographs that weren’t confiscated by Israeli authorities.
The report makes horrific reading. It leaves you demoralized.