Julian Assanger founder of Wikileaks alleged leads wild promiscuous lifestyle

The two women who say they were sexually assaulted by the WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange would never have complained to police if he had agreed to take an HIV test, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

WikiLeaks’s Swedish co-ordinator, who worked closely with Mr Assange for months, said in an exclusive interview that he repeatedly begged his boss to have the test, both to head off the possible police investigation and for Mr Assange’s own peace of mind, given his promiscuous sex life.

Allegations: Julian Assange is accused of rape by two women in Sweden

Celebrity support: Jemima Khan contributed to Mr Assange's £240,000 bail

‘The two women told me, that if he goes to the clinic for an HIV test, then we won’t go to the police,’ said Mr Assange’s colleague, who wishes to remain anonymous because he is a witness in the case brought by Swedish prosecutors, which led to Mr Assange spending nine days in Wandsworth Prison pending extradition.

‘I became the middleman in these negotiations,’ he added.

‘I felt that if Julian had agreed to have the HIV test, they would have dropped it. I told him, “Just do it, and anyway, it’s good for you, because you’re sleeping around”. A lot of women were extremely attracted to Julian, and after a few minutes, they offered themselves to him. From my perspective, they were like groupies with Mick Jagger, and he takes these opportunities.’


The WikiLeaks co-ordinator said he felt certain that the two women – who both allege that Mr Assange forced them to have intercourse during the same week in August without using a condom, against their express wishes – had nothing to do with any supposed American intelligence plot to discredit him, as he has frequently claimed.

‘The CIA is not behind this at all,’ he said. ‘Of course it is a golden opportunity for them. But from the beginning, it was personal.’

He said Mr Assange refused to take the test until it was too late, when all the Swedish clinics had closed for the weekend: ‘Julian said, “I don’t like it when people are blackmailing me, and they are blackmailing me by threatening to go to the police”.’

Mr Assange also told him that he had spoken to one of the alleged victims, known as ‘Ms W’, assuring him that ‘she is fine, she won’t go to the police’. The WikiLeaks co-ordinator knew from his own conversations with Ms W that she was not fine at all, but terrified she had been infected.

Mr Assange’s British lawyer, Mark Stephens, said his client had taken a test for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases at a later date, which showed he was not infected.

‘If it is true that all the women really wanted was for him to be tested, and that this would have stopped the case, then it is very disappointing that it has got so far,’ he said.

Today, The Mail on Sunday publishes unredacted details of the sexual-assault allegations against Mr Assange. They may well dismay his high-profile feminist supporters, such as the American writer Naomi Wolf, who has claimed he is a victim of the ‘international dating police’, and Jemima Khan, who offered to provide one of the sureties that led to his release last week on £240,000 bail.

Our investigation also reveals that:

* In the same week that Mr Assange had sex with Ms A and Ms W, he ended the relationship between a well-known American reporter and his girlfriend by blatantly attempting to seduce her during a dinner at a Stockholm restaurant. Having left the restaurant hand in hand with Mr Assange, the woman did not spend the night at the hotel where she had been sharing a bed with the American.

* Mr Assange has lied about aspects of his work. At a public meeting in London, he falsely claimed that the ‘Climategate’ emails from the University of East Anglia were first published by WikiLeaks. In fact, the emails were published by specialist climate websites in America and Canada – yet Mr Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics.

* A senior journalist who worked closely with Mr Assange at the Guardian, and helped broker the deal that saw the paper become one of a handful of media organisations around the world with privileged, early access to successive WikiLeaks documents, has refused to continue dealing with him. It is understood that staff at other organisations, including Der Spiegel in Germany and Al Jazeera television, have also grown unhappy with his methods. One reporter said: ‘He can be extremely dictatorial. I’ve seen this first-hand.’

* Mr Assange has been accused of dishonesty by key colleagues, including Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German computer specialist who was his closest collaborator for three years until he left WikiLeaks in September.

Mr Domscheit-Berg plans to publish a book about WikiLeaks early next year.

An advance copy of the publicity blurb states: ‘Not only he, but also other close colleagues could no longer put up with Assange’s high-handedness, dishonesty and grave mistakes, and got out.’

Allegations: Ms Wand, left, and Ms A are accusing Mr Assange of forcing them to have sex without using condoms

Up against it: Mr Assange arrives at Beccles police station as stipulated in his bail conditions

Broadway 'Spider-Man' stunt double falls to stage

The troubled Broadway musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" was plagued by its fourth accident since it began previews last month when an actor performing an aerial stunt fell about 30 feet, fire officials said.

Firefighters were called to the Foxwoods Theatre at about 10:45 p.m. Monday after the 31-year-old actor fell near the end of the latest preview performance. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with minor injuries, police said.

Police did not release the actor's name, but a performer in the show identified him as Christopher Tierney. The performer spoke on condition of anonymity because the performer was not authorized to speak publicly about the accident.

A nurse at Bellevue Hospital said that a Christopher Tierney was admitted and was in stable condition, but would not provide details.

Tierney is the show's main aerialist and performs stunts for the roles of Spider-Man, and the villains Meeks and Kraven.


The cable to Tierney's harness snapped during a scene in which Spider-Man rescues his love interest, Mary Jane, the performer said. It was unclear if Tierney was properly harnessed when the cable snapped. The performer said the show's actors are responsible for hooking themselves up to harnesses used for aerial stunts.




Mariana Leung, a fashion blogger wrote on the website NearSay.com that she witnessed the accident from the front row of the balcony.

"There was a scream," Leung wrote. "A voice yelled, `Someone call 911!' Then there was a silence. A minute later, the stage was still dark. Then there was an announcement that the show would be delayed. A few minutes later, a second announcement that the performance would not continue. The lights came up."

Leung said the "shocked audience" exited the theater slowly and many stayed to see if the actor was OK. She said he was carried out to the ambulance still in costume.

A spokesman for "Spider-Man," Rick Miramontez, said an announcement would be made later Tuesday regarding the refund/exchange policy for Monday night's aborted performance. There is no performance Tuesday night, which had always been scheduled as a dark night, Miramontez said.

Actress Natalie Mendoza, who plays Spider-Man's evil love interest Arachne and herself was injured during the show's first preview last month, posted a Twitter message asking people to pray for the actor.

"Please pray with me for my friend Chris, my superhero who quietly inspires me everyday with his spirit. A light in my heart went dim tonight."

Miramontez said the fall happened about seven minutes before the end of the performance, and the show was stopped.

"All signs were good as he was taken to the hospital for observation," Miramontez said.

Maria Somma, a spokeswoman for Actors' Equity, said the union was told about the accident shortly after it happened Monday night. "We are working in cooperation with the state and city Department of Labor on this situation," Somma said.

On Friday, the show's lead producer Michael Cohl delayed the show's official opening for the second time, pushing it back 27 days, from Jan. 11 to Feb. 7.

In a statement that day, Cohl said, "The creative team is implementing truly exciting changes throughout the preview process. Due to some unforeseeable setbacks, most notably the injury of a principal cast member, it has become clear that we need to give the team more time to fully execute their vision."

The $65 million musical was conceived by Tony Award-winning director and co-writer Julie Taymor and U2's Bono and The Edge, who wrote the music. More than eight years in the making, delays and money woes have plagued the show's launch. Three other accidents have injured actors, including one who had both his wrists broken while practicing an aerial stunt.

The show's massive costs — a 41-member cast, 18 orchestra members, complicated sets and 27 daring aerial stunts, including a battle between two characters over the audience — mean the 1,928-seat theater will have to virtually sell out every show for several years just to break even. The weekly running bill has been put as high as $1 million. (Tickets are priced from $67.50-$135 for weekday performances and $67.50-$140 for weekend performances.)

The first preview on Nov. 28 did not go well. The musical had to be halted five times because of technical glitches and Mendoza was hit in the head by a rope and suffered a concussion. Her injury would eventually keep her sidelined for two weeks.

The show — whose costs easily dwarf Broadway's last costliest show, the $25 million "Shrek The Musical" — may be about a comic-book hero, but it has now itself become easy fodder for comics.

Online, where parodies by "Saturday Night Live" and "Conan" poking fun of the musical's early technical problems had recently been eagerly passed around, the tone shifted Tuesday from jokey schadenfreude to mild outrage.

"Becoming a bit of a joke — a bad one — but a joke," wrote Dan Truong, a Toronto photographer, on Twitter.

An actor from TV's "Modern Family," Jesse Tyler Ferguson, used sarcasm to hint at the grisly nature of the accident-prone production.

"I'm torn between wanting to see `Spiderman' on Broadway and not wanting to see someone literally die doing musical theater," he said.

TV personality Dave Holmes said if "Spider-man" makes it out of previews, "it will be the leading cause of death in the state of New York."

The reactions to the cast's apparent physical peril suggested the musical may have more than opening kinks to work out if it to continue. "I'm going to see Spiderman and I'm scared," said Kathleen Nolan of New York.

Still, a trickle of ticket-buyers appeared at the Foxwoods box office Tuesday morning. The accident did not stop Yumeho Asai, 20, of Gifu, Japan, from buying a ticket. She is studying musical theater herself. "I'm just so interested in the technical aspects," she said.

Justin Waldman, 17, of Toronto, hadn't heard about the show's accidents, but said it wouldn't affect buying a ticket.

"I like Spider-Man and I like U2, so I think the combination of the two would be a good mix," he said.

WikiLeaks' Assange complains he's victim of leaks

It has come to this: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is complaining that someone leaked a Swedish police report on his alleged sexual offenses.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Times, Assange complained about reporting in the rival newspaper The Guardian, which is one of several publications that has been helping WikiLeaks edit its trove of secret U.S. diplomatic files in exchange for an early look at them.

The Guardian published details Saturday of the Swedish police report in which two women accuse Assange of rape, based on what it described as "unauthorized access" to prosecutors' files. Assange claimed the newspaper was "selectively publishing" parts of it, and questioned the timing of the leak, saying it was given to the paper a day before his bail hearing last week.





"The leak of the police report to The Guardian was clearly designed to undermine my bail application. It was timed to come up on the desk of the judge that morning," Assange was quoted as saying in Tuesday's paper. "Someone in authority clearly intended to keep Julian in prison, and shopped (the report) around to other newspapers as well."

Assange, who is contesting a Swedish extradition bid, was freed on bail last week under strict conditions including that he stay at the home of a supporter in southern England, wear an electronic tag, observe a curfew and post a bond of 200,000 pounds ($310,000). He faces his next court hearing Jan. 11.

Swedish officials want to question Assange about allegations stemming from separate encounters with two women in Sweden over the summer. The women have accused Assange of sexual crimes including rape, molestation and unlawful coercion. Assange denies the allegations, which his lawyers say stem from a dispute over "consensual but unprotected sex." He has not been charged.

The Times quoted Assange as saying there is "very suggestive evidence" that the two women were motivated by revenge, money and police pressure.

In an editorial, The Guardian defended its coverage, saying it "is unusual for a sex-offense case to be presented outside of the judicial process in such a manner, but then it is unheard of for a defendant, his legal team and supporters to so vehemently and publicly attack women at the heart of a rape case."

Swedish Director of Prosecution Marianne Ny said she did not know how The Guardian obtained its information.

"We don't know exactly what material the Guardian has received," Ny said in a statement.

"The Swedish protection of sources mean we don't have the right to investigate the source, and therefore we don't know how the Guardian got this information."

In a BBC interview aired Tuesday, Assange said he believed the women behind the allegations "found out that they were mutual lovers of mine and they had unprotected sex and they got into a tizzy about whether there was a possibility of sexually transmitted diseases."

The women's lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, has said they went through similar experiences with Assange and decided to go to the police together to seek advice on what to do. A policewoman who heard their accounts decided that Assange had probably committed a sex crime of some kind and passed the case to a prosecutor.

Borgstrom has criticized Assange for suggesting that the allegations are part of a smear campaign against him and WikiLeaks, which has begun to release what it says are more than a quarter-million leaked U.S. embassy cables, infuriating the United States and governments around the world. Borgstrom says the case has nothing to do with Assange's website or any wider conspiracy against it.

Asked by the Times whether he is promiscuous, Assange replied: "I am not promiscuous. I just really like women."

He said WikiLeaks had received "tremendous" public support, even when he was in jail.

"I was handed a card by one of my black prison guards. It said, 'I only have two heroes in the world: Dr. (Martin Luther) King, and you,'" he told the newspaper. "That is representative of 50 percent of people."

Assange didn't immediately return calls Tuesday seeking comment.

Fears of dummy bomb runs by 'terror scouts' at regional airports

Alerts: Counter-terror officials fear regional airports are being targeted for dummy runs by would-be terrorists


Security officials have tested security at regional airports amid fears terror scouts have been staging dummy runs, it emerged today.

Two suspect packages have reportedly been spotted in the last three months which appeared to be like improvised bombs.

One hidden in a box inside a bag of hand luggage had a BlackBerry attached to a baby's bottle with a charging cable thought to be simulating a detonator.

The second - spotted at the same airport some weeks later - also contained a mobile phone and detonator, according to The Guardian.

Both 'devices' were examined by bomb disposal experts and found to be harmless, meaning no passengers were charged.



Counter-terrorism officials apparently believe that airports are being 'periodically tested' in a bid to hunt out any weaknesses that could be exploited.

One Whitehall source said airports out of London were a greater concern because they are perceived to have less stringent security measures.

'Periodically they [suspected terrorists] are seeing how the system works, that the security systems are being tested,' the source told The Guardian.

BAA, which owns Heathrow and Stansted, has urged the Government to make security procedures less predictable.

It is trialling 'behavioural detection', where staff are trained to pick out any passengers behaving strangely.

Fears have been heightened after the alert at East Midlands Airport last month, when an ink bomb wired up to a mobile phone was found on a freight flight.

Al Qaeda planners believed the plane would have been over the Atlantic to America when it was primed to go off but it had to make an unscheduled stop off to refuel.

The counter-terror battle to prevent 9/11 style attacks is becoming ever more difficult as terrorists become more sophisticated.

But earlier this month, the Government revealed the ban on carrying liquids in hand luggage at UK airports was to be eased and could go completely by 2013.

Passengers have been restricted to carrying just 100ml of liquid in their hand luggage following a failed plot to blow up transatlantic jets in 2006.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he planned to make the system more flexible, starting with aerosols, gels and liquids.

A Department of Transport spokesman said: 'The UK adopts a multi-layered approach to aviation security, combining technology, intelligence and other techniques to give us one of the strictest regimes in the world. This is kept under constant review based on the latest developing threats.'

WikiLeaks: UN chief offered Mugabe deal to step down

File photo of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe attending the third European Union-Africa summit in Tripoli November 29, 2010


Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan offered Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe a deal to step down and live in a safe haven, but the veteran leader rejected the offer, according to US documents obtained by WikiLeaks.

A confidential document dated September 2000 showed that a source from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party told US officials in Harare the party had been told that Annan, the former UN Secretary General Annan, had made the offer to Mugabe during a UN summit in New York.

The source said the MDC did not know the details of the deal, reported to it by a businessman, but that it likely guaranteed Mugabe a financial package from Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and a safe haven, the cable showed.




“Kofi Annan, in the recent meeting in New York during the Millennium summit, offered Mugabe a deal to step down,” according to the document.

“The opposition party heard that Mugabe turned down the offer the following day after discussing it with the first lady.”

A spokeswoman for Annan declined to comment.

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 and although there has been talk of several plans to ease him from office in the last decade, the 86-year-old has rejected the idea, saying he would never live in exile.

According to another confidential US cable published by WikiLeaks dated October 2009, a senior MDC official suggested that the US should contribute to a fund to buy off security service chiefs.

Elton Mangoma, a senior member in the MDC and minister in the unity government, told US officials that the military men were frustrating reform and did not want to leave office fearing that they had not made enough money and could be prosecuted.

“Mangoma asked for consideration of US contribution to a ‘trust fund’ that could be used to negotiate the service chiefs’ retirement. He said he planned to approach the UK and Germany with the same request,” the documents said.

The service chiefs have in the past publicly backed Mugabe during elections, saying they would not acknowledge a leader who had not fought in the independence war, a reference to Tsvangirai.

Police arrest 12 men in anti-terrorism raids

Police officers stand in an alleyway between two house being searched in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, on December 20, 2010


Twelve men were arrested across Britain yesterday in counter-terrorism raids described by a senior police officer as essential to protect the public from the threat of an attack.

John Yates, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said the men were held on suspicion of the “commission, preparation, or instigation of an act of terrorism in the UK.”
He described the operation to arrest the men as significant, but refused to give details of the allegations against them.

The BBC said in an unsourced report that the arrests were linked to an investigation into al Qaeda-inspired attacks within Britain. The inquiry was led by the MI5 domestic security agency and the suspected plot was in its early stages, it said. Police would not comment on the report.

Yates said it was right to launch the raids, particularly because Britain is on the second highest state of alert for an attack. The threat level stands at “severe,” meaning an attack is highly likely.
“With the current threat level at severe and with the information we had, I believe that today’s arrests were absolutely necessary in order to keep the public safe,” Yates said. “This operation has used significant resources from the country’s counter-terrorism network.”




The suspects, aged between 17 and 28, were mostly British, but also included a small number of Bangladeshis, the BBC said.

The 12 men were due to be questioned over the next few days. Five of them are from the Welsh capital, Cardiff; four are from Stoke-on-Trent in central England and three are from London.
A senior Iraqi official had said last week that he believed al Qaeda was planning attacks in the United States, Britain and Europe around Christmas, one year after a failed attempt to bomb a US-bound airliner.
British police and security services have investigated dozens of suspected plots and arrested hundreds of suspects since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Jonathan Evans, head of the MI5 security service, said in a rare speech last year that his biggest task was tackling al Qaeda-inspired militants. He highlighted a growing threat from militants in Yemen and Somalia.
Four suicide bombers killed 52 people on three trains and a bus in London in July 2005.

North Korea backs down over South Korean drill

Policemen and a soldier lead people to an air raid bunker on Yeonpyeong Island on December 20, 2010. South Korean marines have ordered residents of Yeonpyeong island to move to air raid bunkers in anticipation of a live-fire drill yesterday.


North Korea stepped back from confrontation over “reckless” military drills by the South yesterday and reportedly issued a new offer on nuclear inspections, drawing a cautious response from Seoul and Washington.

Air-raid bunkers on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong shook during South Korea’s live-fire artillery exercise, which went on for more than 90 minutes.

But the North Korean guns that had shelled the island after a similar drill last month stayed silent, bringing a measure of relief in a crisis that raised fears of war along one of the world’s most heavily fortified frontiers.

“The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation,” the official KCNA news agency said, quoting a communique from the North’s Korean People’s Army Supreme Command that called the drills a “childish play with fire.”




The UN Security Council remained deadlocked in its efforts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, but North Korea’s refraining from retaliation and the nuclear offer reportedly made to US trouble-shooter Bill Richardson offered some breathing space.

Richardson, speaking to CNN from Pyongyang, said he sensed a greater flexibility among North Korean officials.

“Their tone was more positive, as if they realised they’d gone into the precipice with their very negative actions,” said Richardson, who has had extensive past contacts with North Korea.

“They seemed to realise that they had maybe gone too far and now was a time to reach out,” Richardson said, according to a transcript released by CNN.

But others remained worried.

“The situation is very tense,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow. “There can be no optimism in this situation.”

The United States said North Korea’s decision not to retaliate simply showed it was behaving “the way countries are supposed to act.” It reacted cautiously to word of the nuclear offer, saying it would wait for concrete evidence of North Korea’s intentions.

“We’ve seen a string of broken promises by North Korea going back many, many years,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “We’ll be guided by what North Korea does, not by what North Korea says it might do under certain circumstances.”

South Korean financial markets took the day’s events in their stride, recovering from early falls, but international investors remained concerned, with the cost of insuring South Korean sovereign debt for five years rising 10 per cent.

The mercurial North had threatened it would strike back if its neighbour went ahead with the live-fire exercise.

On November 23, North Korean artillery shelled Yeonpyeong, close to the disputed maritime border off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, and killed four people in the worst attack on South Korean territory since the Korean war ended in 1953.

“It’s a perfectly natural thing for a sovereign nation and a divided country to conduct military exercises to defend its territory in the face of military conflict,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said in a statement.

Yesterday’s artillery exercise came hours after a UN Security Council meeting on the crisis ended in an impasse, with Russia and China resisting an explicit condemnation of North Korea for last month’s attack.

Another Security Council meeting planned for yesterday was scrapped as diplomats assessed their positions.

But amid the gloom, New Mexico Governor Richardson, visiting Pyongyang to try to ease tensions, won agreement from North Korea to allow UN nuclear inspectors to return, according to CNN, which has a team travelling with him.

Pyongyang “agreed to allow International Atomic Energy Agency personnel to return to a nuclear facility in the country and agreed to negotiate the sale of 12,000 ... fuel rods and ship them to an outside country, presumably to South Korea,” CNN said, quoting correspondent Wolf Blitzer in Pyongyang.

Richardson said the offer might pave the way for the resumption of the so-called “6-party” talks on nuclear disarmament which also involve the United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea — although Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have been cool to this idea.

“Maybe now is the time for the six-party countries to reach out to North Korea and say, ‘OK, let’s get down to business,’” he said on CNN’s “The Situation Room” show.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm any agreement and therefore could not evaluate it. The State Department sounded sceptical, underscoring that Richardson was on a private trip and had not formally briefed US officials on what occurred.

“If North Korea wants to re-engage with the IAEA, wants to reintroduce inspectors into its facilities, that certainly would be a positive step,” Crowley said. “The key is following through and implementing that decision.”

Richardson was visiting in an unofficial capacity, the traditional means of communication between the two sides, and it was unclear whether the reported agreement meant real progress, particularly given Pyongyang’s poor record of honouring deals.

North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. It expelled inspectors in April 2009 after ripping up a previous disarmament-for-aid agreement. Last month Pyongyang unveiled major technical progress in uranium enrichment.

“Pyongyang is still using the same playbook: pursue provocative behaviour, threaten the international community and then come up with some conciliatory gesture,” said Nicholas Szechenyi, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said North Korea’s reported advances with uranium could make visits to its existing Yongbyon nuclear facility less informative about the true state of its nuclear programme.

“Returning IAEA inspectors to only Yongbyon really is a case of inspecting the barn after the horses have left,” he said.

Tension ahead of the military drills hit Korean markets when they opened yesterday, but shares recouped most of their losses to close down just 0.3 per cent, while the won ended local trade higher against the dollar.

Both sides have said they will use force to defend what they say is their territory off the west coast, raising fears the standoff could quickly spiral out of control.

Diplomats at the UN Security Council said plans for another session on Korean tensions yesterday had been scrapped with China’s envoys still awaiting word from Beijing.

Russia had called Sunday’s emergency Security Council meeting to try to prevent an escalation, but major powers failed to agree on a draft statement because of differences over whether to lay the blame on Pyongyang.

Waste in US Afghan aid seen at billions of dollars

File photo of a US. soldier from 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion during an early morning patrol in Zhari district in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan on November 22, 2010.


Waste and fraud in US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said yesterday.

Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of US assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach “well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars.”

“There are no controls in place sufficient enough to ensure taxpayers’ money is used for the (intended) purpose,” said Fields, whose independent office was created in 2008 to energize oversight of what US auditors have described as a giant, poorly coordinated aid effort that has sunk some US$56 billion (RM180 billion) into Afghanistan since 2002.

Of that sum, some US$29 billion has gone to building up Afghanistan’s nascent security forces, many of whose members cannot read and are just learning to shoot.




Another US$16 billion has gone to trying to develop this poor country, where life expectancy is just 45 years and only 28 per cent of people are literate, and to strengthening governance, said Fields, a retired Marine Corps major general.

Experts believe it will take years to build an effective government that can provide basic services in Afghanistan, where corruption and the lack a functional justice system have driven many villagers into the arms of the Taliban.

Efforts to bolster Afghanistan’s weak central government and in many cases its dysfunctional local leadership took centre stage last week when a White House review of the nine-year-old war reported some military success but cautioned there was more to be done on improving governance and curbing corruption.

President Barack Obama is under pressure to show results in Afghanistan in the first half of 2011 so he can start bringing US troops home in July.

US and Nato partners hope Afghan forces will be able to take control by the end of 2014 as the West looks to curtail its involvement after nine years that at the present level of effort costs US taxpayers at least US$113 billion a year.

More than 700 foreign troops have been killed in 2010, the most violent year since the Taliban was toppled in 2001. Afghan casualties are far higher.

US reconstruction activities are a major component in an even bigger outside assistance effort involving dozens of donor countries and hundreds of aid groups large and small.

Field’s office, known as Sigar, described in a report issued this fall a ‘confusing labyrinth’ of agencies and contractors in that aid effort.

Stockholm bomber.CCTV video shows how close killer came to murdering hundreds of festive shoppers

Dramatic footage of what are thought to be the final moments of the Swedish suicide bomber has emerged, showing how he was moments from killing and injuring hundreds of Christmas shoppers.

The film, from a CCTV camera only yards from where British-educated Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly detonated his home-made device, shows a man wearing a backpack walking down one of Stockholm’s busiest shopping streets surrounded by dozens of members of the public.

The man appears to rummage inside his coat, possibly trying to detonate the bomb. He then quickly changes direction, walking back through the shoppers and down a quiet side street.



Hidden threat: The man walks amid shoppers


Suspicious: He turns towards a side street

Panic: Shoppers scatter from the blast on the left

Four minutes later a huge explosion erupts from the same side street, tearing across the left side of the screen and sending passers-by running amid billowing grey smoke.

Abdulwahab, 28, killed himself and injured two members of the public. Had he successfully detonated the device earlier, police believe he could have killed or injured hundreds of innocent shoppers.

Peter Jonsson, a security expert and former employee of the Swedish intelligence service Saepo, said: ‘The footage shows a very focused individual, walking on a very deliberate line who was not out for Christmas shopping.


It looks as if his equipment malfunctions in the crowd and he went back to the quiet side street to go and check on it. Obviously he would not do this on an open street where people would panic.

‘In the footage it looks like he is doing something with his left hand in front of the jacket.

‘With his right hand side, just before he cuts the corner, you can see an antenna and that could be the walkie-talkie that was pictured on the floor after the explosion – he was either talking to an accomplice, or this may have been rigged to ¬detonate the bombs.’

Mr Jonsson revealed security teams were attempting to estimate the height of the man in the video to compare it to Abdulwahab.

He said that although others had speculated that the bomber might have had second thoughts and tried to stop the device, the position of the body after the explosion suggested otherwise.

‘It was on its back, leading to the conclusion that he was facing a wall when the device exploded,’ he said.

‘It looks like he was trying to face away from the crowds and fix the equipment at this time.’

Investigators from Saepo have added to speculation that the bomb could have malfunctioned before it went off – forcing Abdulwahab to try to fix the device.

Saepo security chief Jan Garton said: ‘Our current picture of the final movements of the bomber was that he had trouble exploding the device and was therefore moving back and forth close to the street where he was found.’

Abdulwahab was born in Iraq but raised in Sweden from the age of ten until he took up a university course in Luton around 2001.

While in the UK, he became increasingly radicalised and was thrown out of an Islamic centre for his extremist views.

He returned to Sweden in the past few weeks and last Saturday carried out the attack, setting off a car bomb shortly before blowing himself up.

The CCTV footage was released as it was claimed Scotland Yard was investigating a link between Abdulwahab and radical preacher Abu Hamza, who used to operate from the notorious Finsbury Park mosque in north London.

Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported that the Met – whose officers raided Abdulwahab’s house in Luton last week – were looking into the link with Hamza, 52, who is serving a seven-year sentence for incitement to murder and racial hatred.

Swedish investigators refused to give any more details of the link and last night Scotland Yard declined to comment.

Meanwhile Abdulwahab’s father-in-law, Ali Thwany, yesterday released a statement saying he was glad his son-in-law was dead. And he denied rumours that his daughter Mona, 28, knew of the suicide plan.

Mr Thwany said Mona had been suspicious about her husband’s radical views and frequent foreign trips but had been too frightened to speak out. In an email to the Swedish media, Mr Thwany said: ‘We feel no sorrow. We are not sad over his death.

‘On the contrary. I view his departure as the door to freedom for my daughter. Now she can be free from the brainwash of terrorism. She has told me that she deeply regretted that she has been silent all the time.’

Suspicious: Suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly's wife, Mona, was concerned about his extremist views

Confusion: Smoke billows out over the crowds

Night flight curbs on ice-bound Heathrow lifted

An Aegean Airlines Airbus A321 passenger jet comes in to land as a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 taxis at Heathrow airport on December 20, 2010.

Britain said yesterday it was relaxing night flying restrictions at London’s Heathrow airport for the next four days to help it clear a backlog of flights hit by severe icy and snowy weather.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said operating hours at the airport would be extended until 1 a.m. and arrivals for repatriation flights would be allowed throughout the night.

The airport, operated by Spanish-owned BAA, told passengers not to turn up at its terminals one and three because of overcrowding yesterday.

“The immediate focus at Heathrow must be maximising the number of flights with the available infrastructure,” Hammond told parliament.

“In order to do this I have agreed with BAA this morning the relaxation of restrictions on night flights for the next four days,” Hammond added.

British Airways, the largest operator out of Heathrow, said the airport would only be using one of its two runways today — as yesterday — meaning the airport would be operating at significantly reduced capacity.