Author Archives: Jimmy Burns

Guantánamo force-feeding claims spur calls for probe

Posted on February 18, 2009 in the Terror category

By Jimmy Burns in London and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington Published: October 7 2005 The Bush administration yesterday faced renewed calls for an independent inspection of its Guantánamo Bay detention facility following allegations that the US military was force feeding 20 detainees on hunger strike. Clive Stafford-Smith, a London-based lawyer acting on behalf of some of the detainees, said the prisoners were being fed through tubes in their noses. “To have my clients being restrained against their will, with a tube forced down their noses, after all they have been …

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An invasion planned as a military coup

Posted on February 18, 2009 in the Wars category

Published: April 1 2007 For a military operation which its commanders felt was blessed by God and the Virgin Mary, the conquest of ‘Las Malvinas’ by the Argentine junta got off to an inauspicious start. Around midday on 2 April 1982, the official raising of the blue and white national Argentine colours outside the Governor’s residence was interrupted when the flag got stuck halfway up the pole, snapped, and slid downwards. Two smaller flags – representing the Argentine navy and the 25th Infantry Regiment that had formed the main invasionary …

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To bomb or not to bomb, asks the IRA.

Posted on February 18, 2009 in the Northern Ireland category

Published: 25 June 1997 Sinn Fein may lose last excuse not to condemn violence. The word in west Belfast’s republican strongholds is that several “volunteers” have not been seen for days. Although some IRA activists continue to plot guerrilla tactics as they always have, an equal number – if not more – are engaged in one of the most critical internal debates in the republican movement since the run-up to the August 1994 ceasefire. At issue is whether the movement abandons once and for all its twin-track strategy of the …

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