Carol Anne Grayson (Radical Sister) blog

17th January 2017

We, the undersigned organisations, representing Rohingya communities around the world, would like to express our deepest appreciation to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Government of Malaysia with Honourable Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for holding an Emergency Meeting of the OIC Foreign Ministers on Rohingya crisis on 19 January in Kuala Lumpur.

The longstanding Rohingya problem of ethnic, religious and political problem has been going on for over seven decades from 1942 Muslim Massacre in Arakan. Particularly the successive military regimes from 1962 have been making all out efforts to annihilate the Rohingya people from their ancestral homeland of Arakan, by means of frequent armed operations and oppressive laws under consistent state policies of discrimination, exclusion and extermination against them. In violation of the customary international law the military had enacted the world’s most oppressive Myanmar Citizenship Law of 1982 criminally depriving the Rohingya of their right to nationality as well as their human rights and freedom.

Due to mass atrocity crimes, more than half of the Rohingya population has had left the country. Those who are still in Arakan are being systematically destroyed since 1978. From June 2012 state-sponsored genocidal onslaughts occurred and reoccurred in Arakan and about 300,000 Rohingya were killed, drowned and missing in addition to large-scale destruction of their villages, mosques and madarassas and properties. More than 140,000 displaced Rohingya were herded to squalid semi-concentration camps while over 100,000 escaped persecution to take refuge in foreign countries.

From 9 October 2016, under the pretext of hunting down the assailants of the police outposts, the military, security forces and Buddhist Rakhine militias have been carrying mass atrocity crimes creating the Maungdaw district a “killing zone”, unobserved by the outside world due to sealing off the area in Northern Arakan. An estimated 500 people were killed or burned down; at least 300 women and girls were raped, unknown number of people arrested, about 2500 houses torched, valuables and properties looted and foodstuff destroyed forcing about 65,000 people to cross over to Bangladesh. These crimes are still on-going. State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been protecting the criminal military, is morally and officially responsible for the crimes against Rohingya that amount to genocide and crimes against humanity as per Articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998). The UN Human Rights Commission stated that violation of human rights of Rohingya may constitute crimes against humanity.

The Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD-led government has manifestly failed or is unwilling to conduct any credible investigation into atrocity crimes against Rohingya. Instead the government with the military is shamelessly denying any human rights violations against them. Thus the defenceless Rohingya continue to be subjected to crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. In the absence of national protection, the international community has a responsibility to intervene into Arakan in order to end the violations and protect the civilian population.

We therefore call upon the OIC and its member states to officially support the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry into the totality of the situation in Rakhine State, where most Rohingya live.

We further call upon the OIC to endeavour utmost for ensuring that the establishment of such a Commission is included in the Burma/Myanmar resolution at the next session of the Human Rights Council.

We believe that the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry is a crucial first step to start to address the cycle of discrimination, persecution and violence our people face. The Commission must investigate human rights violations which have taken place in order to establish the truth, investigate government laws and policies used against the Rohingya, and make recommendations to the government of Burma/Myanmar and the international community on how to address the situation, ensuring strict compliance with international law and human rights standards.

Our existence as a race is under threat. Failure to act now will prolong our suffering and create greater regional problems and insecurity in the future, and hence we look to you for help in our most desperate hour.

Signatories:

1. Arakan Rohingya National Organisation
2. Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK
3. British Rohingya Community in UK
4. Burmese Rohingya Community in Denmark
5. Burmese Rohingya Association Japan
6. Burmese Rohingya Community Australia
7. Burmese Rohingya Association in Queensland-Australia (BRAQA)
8. Canadian Burmese Rohingya Organisation
9. Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation in Malaysia (MERHROM)
10. Rohingya American Society
11. Rohingya Arakanese Refugee Committee
12. Rohingya Community in Germany
13. Rohingya Community in Switzerland
14. Rohingya Community in Finland
15. Rohingya Community in Italy
16. Rohingya Community in Sweden
17. Rohingya Organisation Norway
18. Rohingya Society Malaysia
19. Rohingya Society Netherlands

For more information, please contact:

Tun Khin (Mobile): +44 7888714866
Nay San Lwin(Mobile): +49 69 26022349
Ko Ko Lin (Mobile): +880 1726068413

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Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

The UK Supreme Court has today unanimously rejected the government’s attempts to prevent a case brought by victims of a British-American ‘rendition’ operation from being heard.

All seven judges ruled that a claim brought by an anti-Gaddafi dissident and his wife – who was pregnant when the couple were kidnapped, abused and forcibly transferred to a Libyan prison in 2004 – should be heard.  Ministers had claimed that, because the operation was carried out jointly by MI6 and the CIA, it would be inappropriate for British courts to rule on activity which involved American officials – even if it involved kidnap, rendition and torture.

Today’s ruling comes just days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, who promised on the campaign trail to revive the George W Bush-era torture programme, bringing back waterboarding “and a hell of a lot worse.”

The rendition victims, Fatima Boudchar and Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, have offered to drop their claim in return for an apology and a token payment of £1 from each of the defendants – the UK Government and its agencies; Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary at the time; and Sir Mark Allen, a senior MI6 official who took credit for the operation in correspondence sent to Gaddafi’s spy chief Moussa Koussa. Sir Mark’s correspondence came to light in the wake of the fall of Gaddafi in 2011.

The UK Government has never acknowledged its role in the CIA’s rendition programme under President Bush – despite significant evidence of that role already being in the public domain. Unlike the US – where President Obama has admitted that “we tortured some folks,” and the Senate has published parts of a major report into CIA torture – there has been no public accountability in the UK.

In 2012, the British Government settled a similar claim relating to the kidnap and rendition to Libya of a family including four children aged twelve and under, but has consistently refused to apologise.  Ministers have instead spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal costs trying to prevent the Libyan rendition cases ever being heard – despite the victims in today’s case having offered to settle in return for an apology.

Commenting, Cori Crider, a lawyer for the rendition victims from human rights organisation Reprieve, said:

“In 72 hours, a would-be torturer will take the reins of Earth’s most powerful security state. So this case isn’t ‘just’ about history – the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“We enter the Trump era with not a soul held to account for Britain’s past role in rendition. No official has condemned Trump’s torture boasts. Our intelligence agencies may well be pressured to help America torture again.

“The government bought years of delay by wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on this appeal, when a simple apology would have closed the case. Theresa May should apologise to this family, draw a line in the sand against torture, and restore British honour once and for all.”

ENDS

Links

Reprieve website (International Human Rights Organization)

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

UK Supreme Court to decide Libyan renditions case on Thursday (Reprieve)

UK Supreme Court to decide Libyan renditions case on Tuesday (Reprieve)

UK was involved in Libyan torture flights and politicians knew, say British prosecutoes (Reprieve)

UK was involved in Libyan torture flights and politicians knew, say British prosecutors (Reprieve)

“Chagos: Britain, the CIA and Diego Garcia – Something fishy going on”

Chagos: Britain, the CIA and Diego Garcia – Something fishy going on?

Abdul Hakim Belhaj torture case against UK rejected (alleges rendition flight refuelled at Diego Garcia)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25464362

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

Alleged gunman arrested in Istanbul (image via Daily Sabah)

On Monday evening Twitter was awash with the first reports of the capture of a man suspected of killing 39 people and hospitalizing 69 others on New Years Day in an attack on the Reina nightclub in the Ortakoy district of Istanbul, see following link,

“Istanbul new year Reina nightclub attack ‘leaves 39 dead’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38481521

The Reina is situated on the shores of the Bosphorus. A policeman and security guard were among those killed. Partygoers both Turkish and foreigners were sprayed with bullets from a long barrelled gun in what appeared at that time to be an assault by a lone gunman. Some jumped into the water to try to escape. BBC reported, “citizens of Israel, France, Tunisia, Lebanon, India, Belgium, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were among the victims.”

Turkish media, Daily Sabah said last night, “the Uzbek attacker was caught in a Daesh terror cell in Esenyurt district of Istanbul after a weeks-long intense hunt conducted by the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MIT) and Istanbul police.”

Sky Newsdesk reported,

“Istanbul governor has named New Year’s Day nightclub attacker as Abdulgadir Masharipov who was born in Uzbekistan and trained in Afghanistan. Istanbul governor says Abdulgadir Masharipov admitted he carried out the nightclub attack and it is clear it was on behalf of Islamic State.”

Governor Vasip Sahin told journalists, “The terrorist actually said that he did it.” Maharipov also operated under the name of Abu Muhammed Horasani according to officials.

The alleged gunman was arrested with 4 others according to Hurriyet. The detained man was described as an Islamic State militant of Uzbek nationality and was picked up along with 3 women and a man of Kyrgyz nationality. His 4 year old son was said to have been taken into “protective custody”. Other raids were also carried out.

Masharipov’s wife and family were reported as being previously arrested but his wife claimed not to know of his involvement with IS saying, “I learned about the attack from TV. I didn’t know that my husband was a Daesh terrorist, let alone a sympathizer,” according to media reports.

Photographs were circulated by the Turkish press in which Masharipov appeared cut and bruised with blood on his clothing.

The attack on the Reina was claimed by Islamic State who stated it was carried out “in continuation of the blessed operations that the Islamic State is conducting against Turkey, the protector of the cross”. Authorities now feel others may have had connections to the incident which may be far wider than one man.

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

Post via Islamic Emirate

Post via Islamic Emirate

It is with great sadness to have learnt that a famous scholar of the Islamic world, the head of Wifaqul Madaris al-Arabiya Pakistan and a renowned scholar of Hadith and Tafsir, Hazrat Mawlana Salimullah Khan Sahib (may Allah have mercy on him) passed away due to an ongoing illness, surely to Allah we belong and to Him is the return.

Sheikh Sahib (may Allah have mercy on him) has rendered unforgettable services in social and intellectual fields. He shall forever be remembered for his extensive services in the promotion and growth of religious Madaris (seminaries) and centers of learning.

The passing away of Sheikh Sahib (may Allah have mercy on him) is an irreparable loss for the entire Muslim world and specifically for the followers of knowledge, Dawah and Jihad.

In this time of great grief of to the passing away of Sheikh Sahib, the Islamic Emirate extends its condolences and shares in the loss with the religious centers and scholars of the Islamic world, and especially with his esteemed family as well as the teachers and students of the famous religious Madrasa Jamia Farouqia.

May Allah accept all the religious, intellectual and Jihadi services of Sheikh Sahib and may He shower the family, students and followers of Sheikh Sahib with his grace and blessings.

Spokesman of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

18/04/1438 Hijri Lunar

27/10/1395 Hijri Solar                    16/01/2017 Gregorian

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

TTP JA spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan 

11th January 2017

The target killers of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar successfully targeted the CTD personal Khalid shaikh in area of solider bazar police station Karachi.
By the grace of GOD Mujahideen remains secure.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar owned the responsibility of attack with the motive that our attacks will remain continue until sharia is not implemented as Pakistan law. INSHALLAH
Ehsan Ullah Ehsan
Spokesman TTP (Jamaat-ul-Ahrar)

End

11th January 2017

TTP JA’s tigers (mujahideen) target the Pakistani apostate Army post (yaqobi)with Heavy Arms in Mohmand agency Tehsil baizai at early in the morning today according to the information many soldiers killed Which was transferred by helicopter to hospital.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar owned the responsibility of attack with the motive that our attacks will remain continue until sharia is not implemented as Pakistan.INSHALLAH
Ehsan Ullah Ehsan
Spokesman TTP (Jamaat-ul-Ahrar)

End

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

Boris Johnson criticised for response to Bahrain executions

(Image via ALAMY)

International human rights organization Reprieve has criticised the response of the UK Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, to Bahrain’s execution this morning of three men .

The three men, Ali Al-Singace (21), Abbas Al-Samea (27) and Sami Mushaima (42), were executed by firing squad after being convicted on the basis of forced ‘confessions’.

A statement from the Foreign Secretary did not confirm whether the Government took steps to prevent the executions. The statement also did not address concerns, raised by Reprieve, over the risk of UK complicity in the executions and other abuses such as torture.

Mr Johnson said: “The UK is firmly opposed to the death penalty, and it is our longstanding position to oppose capital sentences in all circumstances. The Bahraini authorities are fully aware of our position and I have raised the issue with the Bahraini Government.”

The UK Foreign Office has spent over £5 million in aid money on reforming Bahrain’s human rights record since protests swept the Gulf kingdom in 2011. Reprieve has gathered information that suggests the assistance programme failed to protect the three men from torture.

Documents obtained by Reprieve, and reported in the Observer today, reveal that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons helped plan inspections of custody facilities in Bahrain; including the police station where all three men were tortured. Their abuse continued after inspections took place. The six-page inspection report failed to mention their allegations of torture.

The FCO has also funded a UK state-owned body, NI-CO, to train two oversight institutions in Bahrain, an Ombudsman and a Special Investigations Unit. Both bodies rejected Mr al-Samea’s complaint about his torture, without conducting a proper investigation.

The three men are the first people executed in Bahrain since 2010, and the first Bahrainis executed since 1996.

There are now concerns about two other men on Bahrain’s death row who are also at imminent risk of execution, Mohammed Ramadan and Husain Moosa. Both say they were tortured into providing false confessions at the same police station as the three men who were executed today.

Commenting, Maya Foa, a director of international human rights group Reprieve, said:

“The UK is one of Bahrain’s biggest backers – last year Boris Johnson’s Department oversaw £2m of support to the Kingdom’s prisons and wider criminal justice system. Unfortunately, the Bahraini bodies trained by the UK repeatedly failed to properly investigate appalling torture allegations lodged by the men who were executed today. Given this fact – and the grave miscarriages of justice that have taken place today – the Foreign Secretary’s statement is woefully inadequate. It fails even to confirm whether HMG had opposed the imminent executions during recent high level meetings with Bahraini officials.

“The Government should immediately suspend its involvement with Bahrain’s criminal justice system and Ministry of Interior, and make clear to the Kingdom’s leaders that the UK unequivocally condemns its actions.”

ENDS

Links

Reprieve website (International Human Rights Organization)

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

The UK Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday (17^th Jan at 9.45am) if a Libyan family can sue Jack Straw, a former MI6 officer, and the government over Britain’s role in their rendition to Colonel Gaddafi’s torture chambers in 2004.

UK government lawyers claim that the case cannot be heard in a British court because it would damage relations with the United States.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his then-pregnant wife, Fatima Boudchar, were rendered to Libya in a joint MI6-CIA operation.

If the Supreme Court rules in the family’s favour, then a civil claim against former foreign secretary Jack Straw and the intelligence agencies will proceed.

The Belhaj family have asked for an apology and a token £1 payment from each of the defendants.

The UK government has already settled a related claim out of court by paying compensation to another family who were rendered to Libya in the same conspiracy just weeks after Belhaj and Boudchar. The al-Saadi family included four children, aged 12 and under.

The cases came to light after the fall of Tripoli in 2011, when faxes from MI6’s then counter-terrorism director Sir Mark Allen describing the rendition flights were found in Libya’s intelligence headquarters.

Sir Mark was investigated by Scotland Yard for his role in the abductions, and a legal challenge to the Crown Prosecution Service’s refusal to charge him is ongoing.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, seemed to suggest earlier this year that the Metropolitan Police had recommended that Sir Mark should be charged.

The mayor told the London Assembly “The Metropolitan police submitted a comprehensive file of evidence (in excess of 28,000 pages) to the Crown Prosecution Service seeking to demonstrate that the conduct of a British official amounted to misconduct in public office.”

The Supreme Court decision will come just days before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to bring back “a hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding.

Commenting, Cori Crider, a lawyer for the Belhaj family at international human rights organization Reprieve, said:

“The Belhaj family have had to fight for half a decade just for the basic right to British justice. This was perhaps the most shameful chapter of Britain’s part in the War on Terror: top MI6 officers helped abduct a pregnant woman and four children and sent them to Gaddafi’s torture chambers. The Government could have closed this sad chapter years ago—all it had to do was apologise. Instead MI6 has fought bitterly to dodge any trial of their role in CIA torture. All this has meant is that today, in the Trump era, MI6 officers risk getting sucked into American lawbreaking and barbarism all over again. We look forward to learning the results from the Supreme Court.”

ENDS

Links

Reprieve website (International Human Rights Organization)

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

The 3 men executed in Bahrain (Image via AP) Left to right, Sami Mushaima, Ali al-Singace and Abbas al-Samea were killed by firing squad

Three men were executed by firing squad in Bahrain this morning (15^th) according to the Attorney General.

The three men executed were Ali Al-Singace (21), Abbas Al-Samea (27) and Sami Mushaima (42).

Commenting, Maya Foa, a director of international human rights group Reprieve, said:

“It is nothing short of an outrage – and a disgraceful breach of international law – that Bahrain has gone ahead with these executions. The death sentences handed to Ali, Sami and Abbas were based on ‘confessions’ extracted through torture, and the trial an utter sham.

“It would be shameful if the UK continued to support Bahrain’s security apparatus and Ministry of Interior in the face of such terrible abuses. The British Government must urgently review its close relations with the Kingdom, and make clear that it condemns these appalling crimes.”

“The execution of these torture victims was made possible by various actors in Bahrain’s criminal justice system, and the UK is providing assistance to all of them. In the last four years, the UK government has paid more than 5 million pounds to train Bahraini police officers, prosecutors, judges, prison guards in the death row prison where these men were held, and a supposedly ‘independent’ torture watchdog which declared one of these men was lying about his torture allegations without ever conducting a medical examination.”

The three men are the first people executed in Bahrain since 2010, and the first Bahrainis executed since 1996.

The execution came less than a week after Bahrain’s highest court upheld their death sentence on Monday 9 January 2017.

There are now concerns about two other men on Bahrain’s death row who are also at imminent risk of execution, Mohammed Ramadan and Husain Moosa. Both say they were tortured into providing false confessions at the same police station as the three men who were executed today.

Torture

The executions went ahead despite serious concerns that their convictions were based on evidence obtained under torture.

A UN Special Rapporteur, Dr Agnes Callamard, has called them “extrajudicial killings”.

During his police interrogation, Mr Mushaima was beaten, electrocuted and sexually assaulted. Although he was illiterate, he was forced to sign a document that he could not read.

Mr al-Samea, a school teacher, was also tortured during his interrogation, including electric shocks to his genitals and suspending him from the ceiling. He was sentenced to death even though his school provided an alibi letter.

The third man, Ali al-Singace, was just a teenager when he was convicted in absentia. His mother says he was also tortured into making a false confession after police arrested him.

Their families were summoned to Bahrain’s Jau prison on Saturday for their final visit, although jail authorities refused to tell them that this was what was happening. They describe being surrounded by over 50 police officers and heightened security procedures at Jau.

UK complicity

The UK Foreign Office has spent over £5 million in aid money on reforming Bahrain’s human rights record since protests swept the Gulf kingdom in 2011.

However, Reprieve has evidence that this aid program failed to protect the three men from torture and execution, and actually contributed to their abuse.

Documents obtained by Reprive, and reported in the Observer today, reveal that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons helped plan inspections of custody facilities in Bahrain, including the CID station where all three men were tortured (both before and after the inspection.) The six-page inspection report failed to mention their allegations of torture.

Bahrain’s police has received repeated training from the UK’s College of Policing, which refuses to publish full details about its work.

Hundreds of prison guards at the death row jail where the executed men were detained have been trained by a Stormont-owned body, Northern Ireland Co-operation Overseas (NI-CO).

NI-CO also trained two oversight institutions in Bahrain, an Ombudsman and a Special Investigations Unit, which rejected Mr al-Samea’s torture complaint without conducting a proper investigation.

ENDS

Links

Reprieve website (International Human Rights Organization)

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.

Image via BBC

Post via Islamic Emirate

KUNDUZ, Jan. 12 – U.S aggressors’ warplanes and helicopter gunships Wednesday pounded Buz-e-Kandahari, a village on the outskirts of Kunduz city, the provincial capital of the province with the same name, destroying several houses, according to Al-Emarah News reports.

The airstrikes and the enemy mortar shelling had already forced the villagers into homelessness and moving out of this village.

The latest airstrikes further contributed to the move of the civilians out of the village, making their lives a misery, it further said, adding that a villager suffered life-threatening wounds in the airstrikes.

End

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.