country:hungary

  • Worsening conditions for refugees in Hungary

    On 15 June, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee released an update on the legislative changes in Hungary, stating that due to changes adopted on 13 June whereby people who are arrested within 8 km of either the Serbian-Hungarian or the Croatian-Hungarian border will be “escorted” to the external side of the border fence by the police, without having their protection needs assessed or being registered. “Hungary has authorised the automatic push-back of persons potentially in need of international protection from the territory of Hungary to the border area of Hungary and Serbia, where they will have to queue for several days or even weeks in order to be admitted to one of the few “transit zones” established as part of the border fence,” states the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.

    http://www.ecre.org/worsening-conditions-for-refugees-in-hungary
    #Hongrie #asile #migrations #réfugiés

  • Vigilantes Patrol Parts of Europe Where Few Migrants Set Foot

    BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The People’s Party-Our Slovakia, after months of stirring up fears about foreigners and Muslim migrants, decided to take action: This spring, the group’s leader proudly stood in front of the main railway station in #Zvolen, Slovakia, and announced that a new group of volunteers would begin patrolling passenger trains to keep the “decent citizens” of Slovakia safe from criminals and minorities.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/world/europe/vigilante-patrols-in-parts-of-europe-where-few-migrants-set-foot.html?ref=w
    #Slovaquie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #xénophobie #racisme #islamophobie #patrouilles #chasse_aux_migrants #anti-réfugiés #milices

    • Anti-migrant militias spring up in central Europe

      Czech and Slovenian authorities have voiced alarm over the emergence of armed anti-migrant militias in the two central European countries.

      The concerns come after revelations of a paramilitary base, with tanks and armoured personnel carriers, used by a biker gang with Kremlin ties in Slovakia.

      The Czech intelligence service, the BIS, voiced its worries about a group that calls itself the National Home Guard in a classified report seen by Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes.

      “Parts of this group have begun to adopt the concept of armed groups. Due to the fact that some of the members are strongly xenophobic, racist, and completely reject the orientations of Czech internal and foreign policy, they could pose a significant [security] risk,” the BIS report said.

      The home guard groups, which have up to 2,500 members in 90 national branches, patrol the streets of some small Czech towns, such as Nymburk, 50km west of Prague, looking for irregular migrants.

      They appear to have links with local police and have political support from National Democracy, a fringe far-right party.

      They also have ideological leaders, such as David Buchtel, a Czech academic and National Democracy member, who publishes leaflets saying that Nato plans to “occupy” the Czech Republic and force it to take in migrants.

      The Czech foreign ministry has said the groups pose a risk of violent protests, such as the recent anti-migrant riots in the town of Chemnitz, Germany.
      PRESENTED BY CECE

      Andor Sandor, the former chief of Czech military intelligence, the VZ, told Radio Prague, that even if it does not come to that, their day-to-day activities pose a threat to the Czech political landscape.

      “This could stem from the view, that the European Union is not able to manage the migration crisis. People who believe that neither the state nor Europe can manage this [crisis], will take matters into their own hands to protect their families and their property,” he said.

      The Czech worries surfaced a few days after a social media stunt by Andrej Sisko, a far-right politician, which caused alarm in Slovenia.

      Sisko posted a Facebook video of himself with a group of some 70 masked men armed with machine guns in the Slovenian countryside.

      The group, called the Stajerska Guard, was filmed taking an oath to secure public order in the country. It numbers several hundred people in total, the Reuters news agency said.

      “We are doing nothing wrong and we would be even interested in co-operating with the police,” Sisko said, in an echo of the Czech home guard’s modus operandi.

      His political party, the anti-migrant United Slovenia Movement, has also vowed to protect the county’s ethnic identity.

      Borut Pahor, the Slovenian president, said: “Slovenia is a safe country in which no unauthorised person needs or is allowed to ... illegally care for the security of the country and its borders”.

      The creation of the Stajerska Guard was “absolutely unacceptable” and it “needlessly stirs up fear and spreads hatred”, outgoing Slovenian prime minister Miro Cerar said.

      Earlier in July, Slovakia was also put an alert when journalists filmed a paramilitary compound in Dolna Krupa, a town some 50km north of Bratislava.

      The base, a former pig farm, is used by the Night Wolves, a biker gang and by two far-right militias called the Slovak Levies and NV Europa, the BBC reported at the time.

      It contained a shooting range and tanks and armoured personnel carriers that had been supplied by a military vehicle museum.

      The revelations were “disturbing” and the groups’ influence was “harmful, especially in spreading their opinions that strive to rewrite history”, a Slovak foreign ministry spokesman said.

      The Night Wolves gang has well known links to the Kremlin.

      The other paramilitary groups and their political supporters also repeat Russian propaganda lines on migrants and EU failures, but neither the Czech or Slovene authorities spoke of Russian involvement in their activities.

      The notion of a ’migrant invasion’ in central Europe is not borne out by facts.

      The Czech Republic took in 12 migrants from Greece and Italy under an EU scheme and granted asylum to just 145 people last year.

      Slovenia granted asylum to 152 people last year.

      Slovakia has boycotted the EU scheme, along with Hungary and Poland, and had juts 56 applications for asylum as of June this year.

      But the Czech intelligence assessment that the home guard group “completely [rejected] the orientations of Czech internal and foreign policy,” was also open to question.

      Czech prime minister Andrej Babis has vowed to join an anti-migrant political axis in Europe alongside Hungary and Italy’s far-right leaders.

      Meanwhile, anti-migrant rhetoric by leading politicians has become a mainstay in Slovakia and Slovenia, where the far-right Slovenian Democratic Party became the biggest one in June elections, but failed to find coalition partners to form a government.

      https://euobserver.com/justice/142739

      #Europe_centrale

  • Activist and poet #Sam_Berkson examines grassroots resistance to the social and political crisis in Hungary.

    On 15 March, a national holiday commemorating the revolution of 1848, some 50,000 people pressed into the rain-soaked square in front of Parliament to listen to speeches, sing together and shout for the removal of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The teachers, who had led the protest, set out their demands and promised a national one-hour strike, which would be repeated and extended if their demands were not met. They invited the rest of the country to join them.

    http://www.irr.org.uk/news/fight-or-flight-in-the-face-of-hungarys-new-fascism/?platform=hootsuite
    #résistance #Hongrie

  • For The First Time, A Team Of Refugees Will Compete At The Olympics

    In an Olympic first, 10 members of an unusual team will be competing at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro: a squad made up entirely of refugees.

    https://espminetwork.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/gettyimages-524133038-a0bb71b353be95639181a674bc52d585
    https://espminetwork.com/2016/06/07/for-posting-19
    #jeux_olympiques #réfugiés #asile #migrations #post-national #post-nationalisme #sport

  • La Commission adopte son premier rapport sur les progrès réalisés dans la lutte contre la traite des êtres humains

    La Commission européenne fait aujourd’hui rapport sur les progrès réalisés dans la lutte contre la traite des êtres humains. Ce rapport présente les tendances et défis en matière de lutte contre la traite des êtres humains, examine les avancées réalisées et met en évidence des défis essentiels que l’Union européenne et ses États membres doivent relever en priorité. En dépit de ces avancées, les États membres de l’Union doivent intensifier leurs efforts pour combattre efficacement ce phénomène.

    http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1757_fr.htm
    #traite #trafic_d'êtres_humains

    • Europe’s migration crisis is being used by criminal gangs to force more people into sex work and other types of slavery, according to an EU report on human trafficking. Children have become a preferred target for traffickers, the report warns, amid growing concern over the fate of unaccompanied child refugees who have disappeared from official view since arriving in Europe.Almost 96,000 unaccompanied children claimed asylum in Europe in 2015, about one-fifth of the total number of child refugees.

      “Organised crime groups choose to traffic children as they are easy to recruit and quick to replace, they can also keep under their control child victims relatively cheaply and discreetly,” according to an EU working document .

      Key trends noted in the report include:

      There were 15 846 ‘registered victims’ (both identified and presumed) of trafficking in the EU
      Trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is still the most widespread form, followed by labour exploitation. The rest were registered as victims of trafficking for other forms of exploitation.
      Over three quarters of the registered victims were women.
      At least 15 % of the registered victims were children.
      65 % of registered victims were EU citizens.
      The top five EU countries of citizenship for registered victims in 2013-2014 were Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Poland. These are the same countries as for the years 2010-2012.
      The top five non-EU countries of citizenship were Nigeria, China, Albania, Vietnam and Morocco. 13

      http://www.migrantsrights.org.uk/news/2016/criminal-gangs-exploiting-eu-migration-crisis-says-report

    • Addressing severe exploitation: a critical view of awareness and transparency initiatives

      Awareness and transparency initiatives are thought to be vital tools in the fight against labour exploitation and ’trafficking’. This guest series looks at several such projects and asks, do they work?

      https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/pt/letizia-palumbo/addressing-severe-exploitation-critical-view-of-awareness-and-transpa
      #esclavage #néo-esclavage #esclavage_moderne

  • Reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop (09.05.2016) :

    According to Hungarian language news sources (http://index.hu/kulfold/2016/05/09/tudon_lottek_egy_menekulo_menekultet_a_szlovak-magyar_hatarnal), a 26-year old Syrian woman was shot this morning on the Hungarian-Slovakian border by the Slovakian authorities.

    A 26-year-old Syrian was shot this morning on the Slovakian-Hungarian border. She was being smuggled in a car through the Vamosszabadi-Medve crossing. Vamosszabadi is also the location of one of the three open refugee camps in Hungary.

    There were four cars, and close to Nagymegyer the Slovak customs authorities decided to stop the cars. Three of them stopped, and it turned out that they are carrying “illegal immigrants” (wording by the Slovak authorities). The driver of the fourth car decided not to stop and speeded instead. The customs authorities reacted with warning shots in the air, but when the driver did not care they shot at the car. The woman in the car was hit as well, and an ambulance had to be called. She was shot in the back and brought to the Dunajská Streda-hospital and operated, and now her situation is stable. All the people who were being transported have been handed over to the Ministry of the Interior.

    At the same time, there is a huge traffic jam on the Hungarian-Austrian border as cars are being checked.

    We’ll react to this soon as Migszol and share more info when we have it - but this is clearly a result tight border controls on the Austrian borders and the changes in the Austrian asylum policy.

    #Hongrie #mourir_aux_frontières #asile #frontières #assassinat #décès #Slovaquie

  • Week April 28th - May 5th 2016 - Hungarian Situation update

    One of the ways we at MigSzol think we can influence the current situation is through documentation. Many might think that since the events of last year, the situation has calmed down and there is no longer anything happening in Hungary. This is far from the truth. Many people are still passing through Hungary every day and recently the importance of Hungary as a transit country has been increasing again. Every week there are many things happening at both the Serbian and the Austrian borders and the situation is often changing quickly. And even though most of the camps are full (and often overcrowded again), there is very little information about the conditions there available.

    http://www.migszol.com/blog/week-april-28th-may-5th-2016-hungarian-situation-update
    #Hongrie #asile #migrations #réfugiés

  • #Hungary considering resuming #Dublin transfers to #Greece.

    The Hungarian Office for Immigration and Nationality has recently issued decisions ordering the transfer of asylum seekers to Greece under the Dublin III Regulation. ECRE member Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) has expressed concern regarding these developments and called on Hungary to continue the suspension of transfers to Greece.

    http://ecre.org/component/content/article/70-weekly-bulletin-articles/1480-hungary-to-resume-transfers-of-asylum-seekers-under-dublin-regulation-to-
    #Hongrie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #renvois #Dublin #Grèce

  • Finland : Supreme Administrative Court rules against Dublin III returns to Hungary due to ‘systemic flaws’ in asylum procedures and reception conditions

    In decision KHO: 2016: 53 of 20 April 2016, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland has ruled that there are systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and reception conditions for asylum applicants in Hungary within the meaning of Article 3(2) of the Dublin III Regulation (DRIII). This ruling sets a precedent and therefore must be followed by lower courts in Finland.

    http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8e3ebd297b1510becc6d6d690&id=1157501766#Finland
    #Dublin #renvoi #Hongrie #Finlande #asile #migrations #réfugiés

  • Dispatches : Asylum Seekers Stuck Outside Transit Zones in Hungary

    When I spoke to 27-year old “Khadiya” from Syria, three-months pregnant and travelling with her husband and two children, aged five and three, she had been waiting outside for three days to enter the transit zone in #Roszke, Hungary, to register as asylum seekers in Hungary.


    https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/node_embed/public/multimedia_images_2016/2016-03-hungary-eca-refugees-transit-zone.jpg?itok=a2qTEx8u
    https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/04/dispatches-asylum-seekers-stuck-outside-transit-zones-hungary
    #Hongrie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #fermeture_des_frontières

  • Édifiant. Quand un nazi devient un tueur du Mossad

    The Strange Case of a Nazi Who Became an Israeli Hitman
    Otto Skorzeny, one of the Mossad’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s favorites.

    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.711115

    On September 11, 1962, a German scientist vanished. The basic facts were simple: Heinz Krug had been at his office, and he never came home.

    The only other salient detail known to police in Munich was that Krug commuted to Cairo frequently. He was one of dozens of Nazi rocket experts who had been hired by Egypt to develop advanced weapons for that country.

    HaBoker, a now defunct Israeli newspaper, surprisingly claimed to have the explanation: The Egyptians kidnapped Krug to prevent him from doing business with Israel.

    But that somewhat clumsy leak was an attempt by Israel to divert investigators from digging too deeply into the case — not that they ever would have found the 49-year-old scientist.

    We can now report — based on interviews with former Mossad officers and with Israelis who have access to the Mossad’s archived secrets from half a century ago — that Krug was murdered as part of an Israeli espionage plot to intimidate the German scientists working for Egypt.
    Moreover, the most astounding revelation is the Mossad agent who fired the fatal gunshots: Otto Skorzeny, one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s personal favorites among the party’s commando leaders. The Führer, in fact, awarded Skorzeny the army’s most prestigious medal, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, for leading the rescue operation that plucked his friend Benito Mussolini out from the hands of his captors.
    But that was then. By 1962, according to our sources — who spoke only on the promise that they not be identified — Skorzeny had a different employer. The story of how that came to be is one of the most important untold tales in the archives of the Mossad, the agency whose full name, translated from Hebrew, is “The Institute for Intelligence and Special Missions.”
    Key to understanding the story is that the Mossad had made stopping German scientists then working on Egypt’s rocket program one of its top priorities. For several months before his death, in fact, Krug, along with other Germans who were working in Egypt’s rocket-building industry, had received threatening messages. When in Germany, they got phone calls in the middle of the night, telling them to quit the Egyptian program. When in Egypt, some were sent letter bombs — and several people were injured by the explosions.

    Krug, as it happens, was near the top of the Mossad’s target list.

    During the war that ended 17 years earlier, Krug was part of a team of superstars at Peenemünde, the military test range on the coast of the Baltic Sea, where top German scientists toiled in the service of Hitler and the Third Reich. The team, led by Wernher von Braun, was proud to have engineered the rockets for the Blitz that nearly defeated England. Its wider ambitions included missiles that could fly a lot farther, with greater accuracy and more destructive power.

    According to Mossad research, a decade after the war ended, von Braun invited Krug and other former colleagues to join him in America. Von Braun, his war record practically expunged, was leading a missile development program for the United States. He even became one of the fathers of the NASA space exploration program. Krug opted for another, seemingly more lucrative option: joining other scientists from the Peenemünde group — led by the German professor Wolfgang Pilz, whom he greatly admired — in Egypt. They would set up a secret strategic missile program for that Arab country.

    In the Israelis’ view, Krug had to know that Israel, the country where so many Holocaust survivors had found refuge, was the intended target of his new masters’ military capabilities. A committed Nazi would see this as an opportunity to continue the ghastly mission of exterminating the Jewish people.

    The threatening notes and phone calls, however, were driving Krug crazy. He and his colleagues knew that the threats were from Israelis. It was obvious. In 1960, Israeli agents had kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief administrators of the Holocaust, in far-off Argentina. The Israelis astonishingly smuggled the Nazi to Jerusalem, where he was put on trial. Eichmann was hanged on May 31, 1962.

    It was reasonable for Krug to feel that a Mossad noose might be tightening around his neck, too. That was why he summoned help: a Nazi hero who was considered the best of the best in Hitler’s heyday.
    On the day he vanished, according to our new information from reliable sources, Krug left his office to meet Skorzeny, the man he felt would be his savior.

    Skorzeny, then 54 years old, was quite simply a legend. A dashing, innovative military man who grew up in Austria — famous for a long scar on the left side of his face, the result of his overly exuberant swordplay while fencing as a youth— he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS. Thanks to Skorzeny’s exploits as a guerrilla commander, Hitler recognized that he had a man who would go above and beyond, and stop at nothing, to complete a mission.

    The colonel’s feats during the war inspired Germans and the grudging respect of Germany’s enemies. American and British military intelligence labeled Skorzeny “the most dangerous man in Europe.”

    Krug contacted Skorzeny in the hope that the great hero — then living in Spain — could create a strategy to keep the scientists safe.

    The two men were in Krug’s white Mercedes, driving north out of Munich, and Skorzeny said that as a first step he had arranged for three bodyguards. He said they were in a car directly behind and would accompany them to a safe place in a forest for a chat. Krug was murdered, then and there, without so much as a formal indictment or death sentence. The man who pulled the trigger was none other than the famous Nazi war hero. Israel’s espionage agency had managed to turn Otto Skorzeny into a secret agent for the Jewish state.

    After Krug was shot, the three Israelis poured acid on his body, waited awhile and then buried what was left in a hole they had dug beforehand. They covered the makeshift grave with lime, so that search dogs — and wild animals — would never pick up the scent of human remains.

    The troika that coordinated this extrajudicial execution was led by a future prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Shamir, who was then head of the Mossad’s special operations unit. One of the others was Zvi “Peter” Malkin, who had tackled Eichmann in Argentina and in later life would enter the art world as a New York-based painter. Supervising from a distance was Yosef “Joe” Raanan, who was the secret agency’s senior officer in Germany. All three had lost large numbers of family members among the 6 million Jews murdered by the cruel, continent-wide genocide that Eichmann had managed.
    Israel’s motivation in working with a man such as Skorzeny was clear: to get as close as possible to Nazis who were helping Egypt plot a new Holocaust.

    The Mossad’s playbook for protecting Israel and the Jewish people has no preordained rules or limits. The agency’s spies have evaded the legal systems in a host of countries for the purpose of liquidating Israel’s enemies: Palestinian terrorists, Iranian scientists, and even a Canadian arms inventor named Gerald Bull, who worked for Saddam Hussein until bullets ended his career in Brussels in 1990. Mossad agents in Lillehammer, Norway, even killed a Moroccan waiter in the mistaken belief that he was the mastermind behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the terrorist group known as Black September. Ahmed Bouchikhi was shot down in 1973 as he left a movie theatre with his pregnant wife. The Israeli government later paid compensation to her without officially admitting wrongdoing. The botched mission delayed further Mossad assassinations, but it did not end them.

    To get to unexpected places on these improbable missions, the Mossad has sometimes found itself working with unsavory partners. When short-term alliances could help, the Israelis were willing to dance with the proverbial devil, if that is what seemed necessary.

    But why did Skorzeny work with the Mossad?

    He was born in Vienna in June 1908, to a middle-class family proud of its military service for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From an early age he seemed fearless, bold and talented at weaving false, complex tales that deceived people in myriad ways. These were essential requirements for a commando officer at war, and certainly valuable qualities for the Mossad.

    He joined Austria’s branch of the Nazi Party in 1931, when he was 23, served in its armed militia, the SA, and enthusiastically worshipped Hitler. The führer was elected chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then seized Austria in 1938. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and World War II broke out, Skorzeny left his construction firm and volunteered — not for the regular army, the Wehrmacht, but for the Leibstandarte SS Panzer division that served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard force.

    Skorzeny, in a memoir written after the war was over, told of his years of SS service as though they were almost bloodless travels in occupied Poland, Holland and France. His activities could not have been as innocuous as his book made them seem. He took part in battles in Russia and Poland, and certainly the Israelis believed it was very likely that he was involved in exterminating Jews. The Waffen-SS, after all, was not the regular army; it was the military arm of the Nazi Party and its genocidal plan.
    His most famous and daring mission was in September 1943: leading commandos who flew engineless gliders to reach an Italian mountaintop resort to rescue Hitler’s friend and ally, the recently ousted Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and spirit him away under harrowing conditions.

    This was the escapade that earned Skorzeny his promotion to lieutenant colonel — and operational control of Hitler’s SS Special Forces. Hitler also rewarded him with several hours of face-to-face conversation, along with the coveted Knight’s Cross. But it was far from his only coup.

    In September 1944, when Hungary’s dictator, Admiral Miklos Horthy, a Nazi ally, was on the verge of suing for peace with Russia as Axis fortunes plunged, Skorzeny led a contingent of Special Forces into Budapest to kidnap Horthy and replace his government with the more hard-line Fascist Arrow Cross regime. That regime, in turn, went on to kill or to deport to concentration camps tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews who had managed to survive the war up to that point.

    Also in 1944, Skorzeny handpicked 150 soldiers, including some who spoke fair to excellent English in a bold plan to fend off the Allies after they landed in Normandy on D-Day in June. With the Allies advancing through France, Skorzeny dressed his men in captured U.S. uniforms, and procured captured American tanks for them to use in attacking and confusing Allied troops from behind their own lines.

    The bold deception — including the act of stealing U.S. soldiers’ property — plunged Skorzeny into two years of interrogation, imprisonment and trial after the war ended. Eventually, Allied military judges acquitted him in 1947. Once again, the world’s newspapers headlined him as Europe’s most dangerous man. He enjoyed the fame, and published his memoirs in various editions and many languages, including the 1957 book “Skorzeny’s Special Missions: The Autobiography of Hitler’s Commando Ace,” published by Greenhill Books. He spun some tall-tale hyperbole in the books, and definitely downplayed his contacts with the most bloodthirsty Nazi leaders. When telling of his many conversations with Hitler, he described the dictator as a caring and attentive military strategist.

    There was much that Skorzeny did not reveal, including how he escaped from the American military authorities who held him for a third year after his acquittal. Prosecutors were considering more charges against him in the Nuremberg tribunals, but during one transfer he was able to escape — reputedly with the help of former SS soldiers wearing American military police uniforms.

    Skorzeny’s escape was also rumored to have been assisted by the CIA’s predecessor agency, the Office of Special Services, for which he did some work after the war. It is certainly notable that he was allowed to settle in Spain — a paradise for Nazi war veterans, with protection from the pro-Western Fascist, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In the years that followed he did some advisory work for President Juan Peron in Argentina and for Egypt’s government. It was during this period that Skorzeny became friendly with the Egyptian officers who were running the missile program and employing German experts.
    In Israel, a Mossad planning team started to work on where it could be best to find and kill Skorzeny. But the head of the agency, Isser Harel, had a bolder plan: Instead of killing him, snare him.

    Mossad officials had known for some time that to target the German scientists, they needed an inside man in the target group. In effect, the Mossad needed a Nazi.

    The Israelis would never find a Nazi they could trust, but they saw a Nazi they could count on: someone thorough and determined, with a record of success in executing innovative plans, and skilled at keeping secrets. The seemingly bizarre decision to recruit Skorzeny came with some personal pain, because the task was entrusted to Raanan, who was also born in Vienna and had barely escaped the Holocaust. As an Austrian Jew, his name was originally Kurt Weisman. After the Nazis took over in 1938, he was sent — at age 16 — to British-ruled Palestine. His mother and younger brother stayed in Europe and perished.

    Like many Jews in Palestine, Kurt Weisman joined the British military looking for a chance to strike back at Germany. He served in the Royal Air Force. After the creation of Israel in 1948, he followed the trend of taking on a Hebrew name, and as Joe Raanan he was among the first pilots in the new nation’s tiny air force. The young man rapidly became an airbase commander and later the air force’s intelligence chief.

    Raanan’s unique résumé, including some work he did for the RAF in psychological warfare, attracted the attention of Harel, who signed him up for the Mossad in 1957. A few years later, Raanan was sent to Germany to direct the secret agency’s operations there — with a special focus on the German scientists in Egypt. Thus it was Raanan who had to devise and command an operation to establish contact with Skorzeny, the famous Nazi commando.

    The Israeli spy found it difficult to get over his reluctance, but when ordered, he assembled a team that traveled to Spain for “pre-action intelligence.” Its members observed Skorzeny, his home, his workplace and his daily routines. The team included a German woman in her late 20s who was not a trained, full-time Mossad agent but a “helper.” Known by the Hebrew label “saayanit” (or “saayan” if a male), this team member was like an extra in a grandly theatrical movie, playing whatever role might be required. A saayanit would often pose as the girlfriend of an undercover Mossad combatant.

    Internal Mossad reports later gave her name as Anke and described her as pretty, vivacious and truly flirtatious. That would be perfect for the job at hand — a couples game.

    One evening in the early months of 1962, the affluent and ruggedly handsome — though scarred — Skorzeny was in a luxurious bar in Madrid with his significantly younger wife, Ilse von Finckenstein. Her own Nazi credentials were impeccable; she was the niece of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s talented finance minister.

    They had a few cocktails and were relaxing, when the bartender introduced them to a German-speaking couple he had been serving. The woman was pretty and in her late 20s, and her escort was a well-dressed man of around 40. They were German tourists, they said, but they also told a distressing story: that they had just survived a harrowing street robbery.

    They spoke perfect German, of course, the man with a bit of an Austrian accent, like Skorzeny’s. They gave their false names, but in reality they were, respectively, a Mossad agent whose name must still be kept secret and his “helper,” Anke.

    There were more drinks, then somewhat flamboyant flirting, and soon Skorzeny’s wife invited the young couple, who had lost everything — money, passports and luggage — to stay the night at their sumptuous villa. There was just something irresistible about the newcomers. A sense of sexual intimacy between the two couples was in the air. After the four entered the house, however, at a crucial moment when the playful flirting reached the point where it seemed time to pair off, Skorzeny — the charming host — pulled a gun on the young couple and declared: “I know who you are, and I know why you’re here. You are Mossad, and you’ve come to kill me.”

    The young couple did not even flinch. The man said: “You are half-right. We are from Mossad, but if we had come to kill you, you would have been dead weeks ago.”

    “Or maybe,” Skorzeny said, “I would rather just kill you.”

    Anke spoke up. “If you kill us, the ones who come next won’t bother to have a drink with you, You won’t even see their faces before they blow out your brains. Our offer to you is just for you to help us.”

    After a long minute that felt like an hour, Skorzeny did not lower his gun, but he asked: “What kind of help? You need something done?” The Mossad officer — who even now is not being named by colleagues — told Skorzeny that Israel needed information and would pay him handsomely.

    Hitler’s favorite commando paused for a few moments to think, and then surprised the Israeli by saying: “Money doesn’t interest me. I have enough.”

    The Mossad man was further surprised to hear Skorzeny name something that he did want: “I need for Wiesenthal to remove my name from his list.” Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Vienna-based Nazi-hunter, had Skorzeny listed as a war criminal, but now the accused was insisting he had not committed any crimes.

    The Israeli did not believe any senior Nazi officer’s claim of innocence, but recruiting an agent for an espionage mission calls for well-timed lies and deception. “Okay,” he said, “that will be done. We’ll take care of that.”

    Skorzeny finally lowered his weapon, and the two men shook hands. The Mossad man concealed his disgust.

    “I knew that the whole story about you being robbed was bogus,” Skorzeny said, with the boastful smile of a fellow intelligence professional. “Just a cover story.”

    The next step to draw him in was to bring him to Israel. His Mossad handler, Raanan, secretly arranged a flight to Tel Aviv, where Skorzeny was introduced to Harel. The Nazi was questioned and also received more specific instructions and guidelines. During this visit, Skorzeny was taken to Yad Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem dedicated to the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Nazi was silent and seemed respectful. There was a strange moment there when a war survivor pointed to Skorzeny and singled him out by name as “a war criminal.”

    Raanan, as skilled an actor as any spy must be, smiled at the Jewish man and softly said: “No, you’re mistaken. He’s a relative of mine and himself is a Holocaust survivor.”

    Naturally, many in Israeli intelligence wondered if the famous soldier for Germany had genuinely — and so easily — been recruited. Did he really care so much about his image that he demanded to be removed from a list of war criminals? Skorzeny indicated that being on the list meant he was a target for assassination. By cooperating with the Mossad, he was buying life insurance.

    The new agent seemed to prove his full reliability. As requested by the Israelis, he flew to Egypt and compiled a detailed list of German scientists and their addresses.

    Skorzeny also provided the names of many front companies in Europe that were procuring and shipping components for Egypt’s military projects. These included Heinz Krug’s company, Intra, in Munich.

    Raanan continued to be the project manager of the whole operation aimed against the German scientists. But he assigned the task of staying in contact with Skorzeny to two of his most effective operatives: Rafi Eitan and Avraham Ahituv.

    Eitan was one of the most amazing characters in Israeli intelligence. He earned the nickname “Mr. Kidnap” for his role in abducting Eichmann and other men wanted by Israeli security agencies. Eitan also helped Israel acquire materials for its secret nuclear program. He would go on to earn infamy in the 1980s by running Jonathan Pollard as an American Jewish spy in the United States government.

    Surprisingly flamboyant after a life in the shadows, in 2006, at age 79, Eitan became a Member of Parliament as head of a political party representing senior citizens.

    “Yes, I met and ran Skorzeny,” Eitan confirmed to us recently. Like other Mossad veterans, he refused to go on the record with more details.

    Ahituv, who was born in Germany in 1930, was similarly involved in a wide array of Israeli clandestine operations all around the globe. From 1974 to 1980 he was head of the domestic security service, Shin Bet, which also guarded many secrets and often conducted joint projects with the Mossad.

    The Mossad agents did try to persuade Wiesenthal to remove Skorzeny from his list of war criminals, but the Nazi hunter refused. The Mossad, with typical chutzpah, instead forged a letter — supposedly to Skorzeny from Wiesenthal— declaring that his name had been cleared.

    Skorzeny continued to surprise the Israelis with his level of cooperation. During a trip to Egypt, he even mailed exploding packages; one Israeli-made bomb killed five Egyptians in the military rocket site Factory 333, where German scientists worked.

    The campaign of intimidation was largely successful, with most of the Germans leaving Egypt. Israel stopped the violence and threats, however, when one team was arrested in Switzerland while putting verbal pressure on a scientist’s family. A Mossad man and an Austrian scientist who was working for Israel were put on trial. Luckily, the Swiss judge sympathized with Israel’s fear of Egypt’s rocket program. The two men were convicted of making threats, but they were immediately set free.

    Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, however, concluded that all of this being out in public was disastrous to Israel’s image — and specifically could upset a deal he had arranged with West Germany to sell weapons to Israel.

    Harel submitted a letter of resignation, and to his shock, Ben-Gurion accepted it. The new Mossad director, commander of military intelligence Gen. Meir Amit, moved the agency away from chasing or intimidating Nazis.

    Amit did activate Skorzeny at least once more, however. The spymaster wanted to explore the possibility of secret peace negotiations, so he asked Israel’s on-the-payroll Nazi to arrange a meeting with a senior Egyptian official. Nothing ever came of it.

    Skorzeny never explained his precise reasons for helping Israel. His autobiography does not contain the word “Israel,” or even “Jew.” It is true that he sought and got the life insurance. The Mossad did not assassinate him.

    He also had a very strong streak of adventurism, and the notion of doing secret work with fascinating spies — even if they were Jewish — must have been a magnet for the man whose innovative escapades had earned him the Iron Cross medal from Hitler. Skorzeny was the kind of man who would feel most youthful and alive through killing and fear.

    It is possible that regret and atonement also played a role. The Mossad’s psychological analysts doubted it, but Skorzeny may have genuinely felt sorry for his actions during World War II.

    He may have been motivated by a combination of all these factors, and perhaps even others. But Otto Skorzeny took this secret to his grave. He died of cancer, at age 67, in Madrid in July 1975.

    He had two funerals, one in a chapel in Spain’s capital and the other to bury his cremated remains in the Skorzeny family plot in Vienna. Both services were attended by dozens of German military veterans and wives, who did not hesitate to give the one-armed Nazi salute and sing some of Hitler’s favorite songs. Fourteen of Skorzeny’s medals, many featuring a boldly black swastika, were prominently paraded in the funeral processions.

    There was one man at the service in Madrid who was known to no one in the crowd, but out of habit he still made sure to hide his face as much as he could. That was Joe Raanan, who by then had become a successful businessman in Israel.

    The Mossad did not send Raanan to Skorzeny’s funeral; he decided to attend on his own, and at his own expense. This was a personal tribute from one Austrian-born warrior to another, and from an old spy handler to the best, but most loathsome, agent he ever ran.

    Dan Raviv, a CBS News correspondent based in Washington, and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman are co-authors of five books about Israel’s espionage and security agencies, including “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars” (Levant Books, 2014). Contact them at feedback@forward.com

    For more stories, go to www.forward.com. Sign up for the Forward’s daily newsletter at http://forward.com/newsletter/signup

    The Forward

    Haaretz Contributor

    #Israel #Mossad #Nazi #Egypte #Histoire #Allemagne #Hitman

  • AIDA Report Serbia : Transit for many, asylum for a handful

    AIDA has published a new country report on Serbia, written by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. Serbia is the 19th European country to join AIDA.

    The report details the workings of the Serbian asylum system, set out by the Law on Asylum of 2007 and relevant legislation. While legislation is deemed to be generally in line with international standards, its poor implementation accounts for deficiencies in the procedure and treatment of asylum seekers.

    Throughout the summer, there was a significant rise in the number of persons “expressing the intention to seek asylum” in Serbia. This status requires prospective applicants to report to one of the five Asylum Centres in the country within 72 hours, with a view to undergoing registration and submitting their asylum application. Out of 577,995 intentions to seek asylum expressed in 2015, only 583 resulted in submitted applications.

    However, in September 2015, Serbia introduced a special legal status for persons transiting through the country with the intention of travelling on to other countries. These people were issued with “certificates for migrants coming from countries where their lives are in danger”. This measure has visibly led to a decrease in the number of persons expressing the intention to seek asylum in Serbia, as only 475 such intentions were expressed in the course of January 2016.

    Serbia has offered limited protection to those fleeing persecution or serious harm so far. Since the establishment of the Asylum Office in 2008, only 48 persons have been granted international protection; 30 of those were recognised in 2015. International protection has been granted mainly to Syrian, Libyan and Ukrainian nationals. The report also mentions barriers to access to the protection, including denial of access to the procedure for asylum seekers returned from Hungary.

    http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/styles/news_main/public/news-images/flag_map_of_serbia.png?itok=5vH2zqZL

    http://www.asylumineurope.org/news/18-03-2016/aida-report-serbia-transit-many-asylum-handful

    #Serbie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #procédure_d'asile

  • How Birds Spot a Fraud and Choose the Right Gender for a Mate - Facts So Romantic
    http://nautil.us/blog/how-birds-spot-a-fraud-and-choose-the-right-gender-for-a-mate

    Humans have marvelous powers of recognition. No one’s surprised when parents identify their child in a crowd by a glimpse of her face or echo of her voice. But we aren’t unique in this regard. Other creatures have evolved impressive powers of discrimination. Take birds. “Their recognition system is really quite remarkable,” says Mark Hauber, director of the animal behavior and conservation program at Hunter College. “It has to be. You have to find food, you have to escape from your enemies, and you have to make sure you don’t mate with your parents.” Calling someone “bird brain,” in short, is misguided. Here are three birds with stunning abilities of recognition. Great Reed WarblersA great reed warbler in Valley of Springs Region, Israel.WikicommonsIn Hungary, great reed warblers nest by (...)

  • No-man’s land: life on the Serbia-Hungary border, a briefing on the current crisis

    One well-trodden route travelled by refugees towards central Europe takes them through Macedonia to Serbia and towards Hungary, where they then hope to make it to northern Europe. The journey is life threatening. It is punctuated by moments of risk and uncertainty; the deadly Aegean Sea crossing, exploitation by the border police, illegal detention and interference from non-state actors such as smugglers, robbers and disgruntled locals.

    http://rightsinexile.tumblr.com/post/128142507027/no-mans-land-life-on-the-serbia-hungary-border
    #Serbie #asile #migrations #réfugiés

  • Welcome to the Launch of Refugees Deeply | Refugees Deeply
    http://www.refugeesdeeply.org
    http://www.refugeesdeeply.org/articles/2016/03/9504/launch-refugees-deeply


    https://vimeo.com/158978865

    An estimated 59.5 million people were displaced worldwide at the end of 2014, surpassing the refugees of World War II. It is a statistic that has made headlines across the world.

    The summer months of 2015 brought influxes of asylum seekers to European shores that made the “Arab Spring” migration of 2011 appear modest. 2016 looks poised to break all records, with more than 100,000 people entering Europe over the first two months. At least 21 times more people entered Greece this January than in the same period last year.

    The statistics are staggering. The images of those arriving echo desperation. Yet, the international community’s response has been underwhelming.

    The reasons for this accelerating global displacement are many, mixed and intrinsically linked – from conflict and climate change to state-induced economic deprivation and statelessness.

    With Syria entering a sixth year of conflict today, its civilians constitute the largest refugee population after Palestinians. But this is not to say that the Afghans who preceded Syrians as the largest displaced group are in a better place. Afghanistan, now deemed a “post-conflict” country by the same nations that have waged brutal wars on its soil, offers little safety to those who fled persecution.

    Millions more do not qualify as refugees under U.N. conventions, yet they are fleeing bleak futures and desperate lives.

    Illegal, irregular or clandestine, migrant, refugee or asylum seeker – without confining the term “refugee” to narrow margins, Refugees Deeply will present the conditions that are causing tens of millions of people across the globe to cross borders by land and water and driving others to leave their homes and become displaced inside their countries.

    From Asia Pacific to Central America to the camps of Kenya to the borders of Hungary – we will explore the distinct but related contexts of displacement.

    The media’s current migration narrative, which is dominated by the Mediterranean crossings, implies that a majority of refugees across the world are constantly on the move. In fact, they are not. Most are stuck, trapped by warehousing policies that restrict their movement and prevent them from making a living.

    While some are in camps, many move to urban centers. Close to 60 percent of refugees live in cities, according to the Overseas Development Institute. Istanbul alone is currently home to at least 400,000 Syrian refugees.

    The world is in urgent need of coherent principles and practices to aid and address the displaced. Conventions that were created to cope with massive displacement in the aftermath of World War II are proving woefully inadequate in addressing today’s more diverse migration. Governments are struggling to formulate effective foreign or domestic polices and this, coupled with proliferating smuggling networks, has created a powder keg.

  • How migration flows are changing

    Migration from the Middle East and Africa to Europe has various drivers, but the conflicts in this part of the world accounts for the greater part of the flows. Eighty-five percent of those who arrived in Europe through the Mediterranean since 1 January are from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. These are among the deadliest conflicts surrounding Europe.

    http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_how_migration_flows_are_changing
    #routes_migratoires #itinéraires_migratoires #asile #migrations #réfugiés

    • Szeged 2008 was my first Drupalcon. 500 Drupal contributors and users in a small university town in Hungary. Everyone I met truly cared about making Drupal an awesome project and was contributing time and effort in any way they could. Several years later and Drupalcon have grown. 2000+ attendees in Barcelona this year, 2300+ in Amsterdam last year. But, as the community has grown, so has the commercial influence. With sales pitches as prevalent as learning sessions on the schedule.

      One thing I noticed this year was that several sessions concluded, or included, a call for donations or funding to accelerate a particular module or project’s development. The precedent was set in the starting session of the conference when the Drupal Association made an announcement about the Drupal 8 accelerate funding programme. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. If this is what it takes to get Drupal 8 finished in today’s conditions, then that’s great. But, look at it as an indicator of how the community has changed, when compared to the sessions at Szeged seven years earlier. You would not have seen a call for quarter of a million dollar funding back then. Everyone was there because they loved it, not because they were being paid.

      Mais en fait il souligne que robustesse, professionnalisme, standardisation, orienté objet et PHP moderne... C’est bien mais c’est moins geek et plus industriel. Moins convivial éventuellement.

  • Closure of Balkan refugee route deepens rifts in the EU - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/16/refu-f16.html

    Closure of Balkan refugee route deepens rifts in the EU
    By Martin Kreickenbaum
    16 February 2016

    Diplomatic tensions between the EU member states are intensifying in the run-up to the meeting of heads of state and governments this week. The issue of what measures can better seal off Europe against refugees is further inflaming these conflicts.

    While the countries of the “Visegrad Group,” consisting of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, together with Austria, are insisting on the complete closure and militarization of the Macedonian-Greek border in order to strand refugees in Greece. Germany, France and Italy, above all, reject such a step, which would mean the de facto exclusion of Greece from the Schengen Area.

    #réfugiés #migrations #asile #balkans

  • ECRE Case Law Fact Sheet: Prevention of Dublin Transfers to Hungary

    This fact sheet is devoted to jurisprudence preventing transfers under Regulation 604/2013 (Dublin III Regulation) to Hungary. Its scope is limited to case law from European Union Member States supported by policy and non-governmental material to illustrate the grounds on which the judiciary are suspending transfers to Hungary. In light of the substantial amount of case law on the topic, the note in no way purports to be a fully comprehensive review of Member State practice, nonetheless the jurisprudence included serves as a unique tool for practitioners to consult and use in their own respective litigation. It is to be seen against the backdrop of the Commission’s infringement proceedings against Hungary and the new systematic monitoring process outlined in the European Agenda on Migration, as well as several cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights and an urgent preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union lodged by Debrecen Administrative and Labour Court in the context of asylum law. The note therefore provides a further layer of examination and analysis, one which is jurisprudential in nature and which should be borne in mind when evaluating the adherence of Hungary to European and international legal obligations.

    http://www.asylumlawdatabase.eu/en/content/ecre-case-law-fact-sheet-prevention-dublin-transfers-hungary
    #Hongrie #asile #migrations #Dublin #renvoi #expulsion #réfugiés

  • Europe Gives Greece 6 Weeks to Stop Migrant Flow | GreekReporter.com
    http://greece.greekreporter.com/2016/01/25/europe-gives-greece-6-weeks-to-stop-migrant-flow

    Europe is about to warn Greece that it has six weeks to stop migrants crossing from Turkey or it will be forced out of the Schengen zone for two years, says a London Times report.
    Germany, Austria, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark will warn on Monday that Greece has six weeks to stop migrants crossing from Turkey or it will be “quarantined” outside the borderless Schengen zone.
    European Commission on Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos has repeatedly stated that European Union law does not allow for a country to be forced out of the Schengen zone.
    “If the Athens government does not finally do more to secure the external borders then one must openly discuss Greece’s temporary exclusion from the Schengen zone,” Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Austria’s interior minister, told Welt am Sonntag last week. “It is a myth that the Greco-Turkish border cannot be controlled.” Northern European countries have expressed similar sentiments on the issue.
    A meeting of European interior ministers will discuss plans for Greece to be sealed off for two years behind a new EU external border in the Balkans.
    According to the report, there is a plan B discussed for the EU’s passport-free Schengen area. The plan says that Europe’s external border would become Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary, staffed by EU border guards with powers to turn back migrants heading to Germany or Sweden.
    Asylum seekers not prepared to stay in Slovenia, Croatia or Hungary to be processed would be pushed back to Greece and Turkey. With the help of armed EU border guards, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is building a three-meter razor-wire fence along its border with Greece.
    “The easiest plan is to put Greece in sealed quarantine,” an EU diplomat told The Times.
    In order to expedite processing migrants who make it through the Balkans, Germany is discussing setting up registration centers along the frontier with Austria to speed up the repatriation of non-qualifying asylum seekers.

  • Daily chart: More neighbours make more fences | The Economist
    http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/09/daily-chart-10?fsrc=email_to_a_friend

    EUROPE will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War. This year’s refugee crisis, combined with Ukraine’s ongoing conflict with Russia, has seen governments plan and construct border walls and security fences across Mediterranean and eastern Europe. On September 15th, Hungary completed a fence along its border with Serbia, a major point of entry for refugees making their way into the European Union (EU) this year. Within hours, over 60 people were arrested for attempting to scale it. Hungary’s is the latest in a ring of anti-migrant fences along the southern fringes of the EU’s visa-free Schengen zone. In the mid-1990s, Spain fenced off its Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, followed in 2012 by fences on Greece’s and Bulgaria’s borders with Turkey. In the last few days reports have circulated on social media that Romania will build defences too. Ukraine began sealing off its border with Russia last year. This year the Baltic states announced they are following suit. That would leave Belarus’s as the only unsealed border between the Baltic and the Black sea.

    #frontières #murs #cartographie #sémiologie

  • More neighbours make more fences

    EUROPE will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War. This year’s refugee crisis, combined with Ukraine’s ongoing conflict with Russia, has seen governments plan and construct border walls and security fences across Mediterranean and eastern Europe. On September 15th, Hungary completed a fence along its border with Serbia, a major point of entry for refugees making their way into the European Union (EU) this year. Within hours, over 60 people were arrested for attempting to scale it. Hungary’s is the latest in a ring of anti-migrant fences along the southern fringes of the EU’s visa-free Schengen zone. In the mid-1990s, Spain fenced off its Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, followed in 2012 by fences on Greece’s and Bulgaria’s borders with Turkey. In the last few days reports have circulated on social media that Romania will build defences too. Ukraine began sealing off its border with Russia last year. This year the Baltic states announced they are following suit. That would leave Belarus’s as the only unsealed border between the Baltic and the Black sea.

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/09/daily-chart-10?fsrc=rss
    #cartographie #visualisation #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières

    cc @daphne @marty @albertocampiphoto