Direct from Latif Yahia Author of The Devil's Double: the Fake books you shouldn't buy

Since I wrote my first book in 1992, originally in Arabic and then translated to German. I have been trying to remove and stop certain publishers, especially American publishers namely Arcade publishing ( a bankrupt part of Time Warner) and now Skyhorse Publishing who bought the bankrupt Arcade publishing, from selling books that they attribute to me but that I have never given consent or authorisation to be published.

If you want to buy my books, then please go to www.arcanummediagroup.com or if you wish to buy the Kindle versions go to Amazon.

Robbed and ruined by a British court on the orders of the CIA... and we couldn't tell a soul: The chilling story of how secret justice cost a couple their £5m home - and £700m business

 By David Rose

PUBLISHED: 22:43 GMT, 7 April 2012 | UPDATED: 22:43 GMT, 7 April 2012 dailymail.

Silent ordeal: Margaret Bentham and her husband Stuart lost their £5m home

Despite the years of cruel reality, Margaret Bentham still seemed incredulous as she told her story, a story she once thought she could never share.
But with quiet dignity she summed up the ordeal she and her businessman husband Stuart, a former British Army officer, have endured at the hands of the CIA.
‘We were robbed of a business worth millions,’ she said. ‘We were plunged into financial ruin. But the worst thing was, not only were we deprived of justice, we couldn’t tell a soul.’
In an exclusive interview, Mrs Bentham told The Mail on Sunday how the CIA decided a civil court case about the Afghan mobile phone company he had helped to establish was too ‘sensitive’ to air in public.
It used draconian legal powers to shut down the case – so destroying not only the Benthams’ livelihood, but any prospect of redress after Mr Bentham alleged the company had been stolen from him.
‘We lost our £5 million flat in Belgravia,’ said Mrs Bentham, 50. ‘We’d had a thriving telecoms business in London employing 23 people, and we lost that too.
The gagging order imposed by a US court meant I couldn’t even tell our friends what was wrong or Stuart could have gone to prison. It was  absolutely Kafkaesque.’ Even now, Mr Bentham could be extradited and jailed if he gave an interview.
The Benthams’ nightmare was made possible by a US legal procedure known as the State Secrets Privilege.
But as Tory MP David Davis disclosed last month when he set out the Benthams’ story in the Commons, an alarmingly similar system will soon exist in Britain, if the Coalition’s  current Green Paper on Justice and Security becomes law.
The public part of the court judgment that destroyed Mr Bentham’s fortune is two words long: ‘Case dismissed.’ The reasons remain secret, while he is subject to an indefinite legal gag.
Such secret judgments have never been permitted in Britain. Under the Green Paper, they would become routine.

Last week, comments by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and a joint letter to MPs by Home Secretary Theresa May and Justice Secretary Ken Clarke together suggested that the Government is preparing a partial U-turn on the proposals.
In an apparent concession to critics, it may water down plans for secret inquests, and restrict secret hearings to a ‘tiny number’ involving national security. Unfortunately, that is exactly the category responsible for the Benthams’ ordeal.
‘The security services are still feeding Government Ministers with misleading claims to justify abhorrent and unjust proposals,’ Mr Davis said yesterday. ‘They are still seeking to bolster their collapsing argument  for undermining centuries of British judicial rights.’

Partners: Mr Bentham, left, Mr Bayat, centre, and Lord Michael, far right in Taliban-ruled Kabul in 1998

Even if the Green Paper is changed in the way suggested last week, he added, its proposed closed hearings, secret evidence and vetted ‘special advocates’ would allow security agencies to cover up incompetence and embarrassment by citing national security.

As Mr Davis revealed in the Commons, that is exactly what happened with the Benthams. In their case, the embarrassment could hardly have been greater: what the use of the State Secrets Privilege did was to conceal evidence of a massive CIA failure that stymied a real possibility of preventing the 9/11 attacks.

The background to the alleged fraud against Mr Bentham, 63, and his business partner Lord Michael Cecil, 52, a brother of the Marquess of Salisbury, goes back to 1998, when they went into business with Ehsanollah Bayat.
Mr Davis described him in the Commons as ‘a Kabul-born American citizen on friendly terms with the highest echelons of the Taliban government and particularly its leader, Mullah Omar’.

Mr Bayat had the connections to acquire the licence to build Afghanistan’s first mobile phone, internet and international call system – Mr Bentham and Lord Michael the business expertise.
But, as Mr Davis said, Mr Bayat had a secret: he was an informant for the FBI, the main US domestic counter- terrorism force. The link made an opening for Operation Foxden, a scheme the FBI planned to run jointly with the National Security Agency (NSA), the US electronic eavesdropping organisation.
The NSA offered $30 million and technical assistance, said Mr Davis. The plan was to build extra circuits into all the equipment installed, enabling the US to ‘record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan’ and ‘monitor the telephone gateways channelling international calls in and out of the country – gateways already being used by Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their associates, thanks to the satellite phones given by Mr Bayat to Taliban ministers as gifts’.

By the beginning of 2000, after all the main partners had made several visits to Afghanistan, the project was at an advanced stage, and could have been fully functional within months – 18 months or more before 9/11.

Osama bin Laden

Recently, Mr Bayat has claimed he never had connections with US security agencies or the pre-9/11 Taliban government. But Mrs Bentham said that in the Nineties he seemed to make no secret of such links.

‘I remember one time when we flew in to Newark, New Jersey, and Bayat met us off the plane,’ she said. ‘He was with two FBI agents. We went to their office. Then they took me to the station so I could go shopping in New York while they had their meeting.’

But just as the project seemed to be on the brink of coming to fruition, it was wrecked by what Mr Davis termed a ‘turf war’ between the FBI and NSA on one side, and the CIA, which wanted to control it.

The consequence, as the agencies bickered in Washington, was that nothing happened for 20 months. By the time these bureaucratic obstacles had been cleared, it was too late.

A meeting to get the scheme going again, attended by Mr Bentham and Lord Michael, took place in New York in a hotel overlooking the World Trade Centre on September 8, 2001 – three days before the attacks.

Mr Davis commented: ‘Of course, we cannot say for certain that if US intelligence agencies had managed to tap the Afghan phone network sooner, we would have intercepted evidence in time to stop the 9/11 attacks, but it seems quite likely.’

After 9/11, the Taliban were toppled by US-led forces. Very soon after that, Lord Michael, Mr Bentham and their colleagues, working with Mr Bayat’s company Telephone Systems International (TSI), installed the very network that had been planned two years earlier. The Britons ordered and paid for most of the equipment and ran the project out of London.

Once operational in April 2002,  the firm became a licence to print money and is now said to be worth about £700 million.
The Mail on Sunday has copies of official US documents, signed by Mr Bayat in May 2002, stating that Mr Bentham and Lord Michael each were entitled to 15 per cent of the shares: their holdings, in other words, should now each be worth more than £100 million.

Instead, said Mrs Bentham, she and her husband are in straitened circumstances, and live in a rented house, dependent for holidays on hospitable friends.
‘We were living  a very comfortable life. And then it changed completely. We had no idea what we were dealing with, and the terrifying thing is what happened to us could happen to anyone.’

Home Secretary Theresa May and Justice Secretary Ken Clarke together suggested that the Government is preparing a partial U-turn on the proposals to hold more trials in secret

In the autumn of 2002, having offered to buy out Mr Bentham and Lord Michael for a ‘derisory’ sum that did not even cover the cost of the equipment they bought, Mr Bayat sued them for ‘deceit and  conspiracy’, and, simultaneously, simply denied they had any legal entitlement to shares in TSI.
They had copious documentation, and, their lawyers believed, a cast-iron case. But as Mr Davis told MPs, this was no ordinary commercial squabble: ‘The US intelligence agencies feared the consequences if the truth about their infighting emerged and they were determined to stop that truth from emerging.’
First, they offered Bayat $1 million for his legal fight – part of a more general plan to exclude British citizens and British agencies from the ongoing phone intelligence operation. Then, when the Britons’ lawyers refused to back down, ‘CIA officers threatened them, warning the whole case would be shut down if they continued’.
Finally, in November 2004, came the use of the State Secrets Privilege. The effect was not only to close down the case immediately, but  to expunge all trace from court records.
Lord Michael and Mr Bentham were subject to a gagging order so severe that when they tried to reopen the case in London, they were forbidden on pain of contempt of court from discussing any aspect of the intelligence background with their own lawyers.
Although there were hearings in London, which the Britons lost for technical legal reasons, the British courts had little idea of what had actually happened. ‘The State Secrets Privilege meant that the US agencies were restricting what could be said in court in England,’ Mrs Bentham said.
‘I couldn’t speak to friends, and I felt pretty sure our phone calls  and emails were being monitored. Meanwhile, legal fees meant we were facing a colossal drain on our cash. Imagine: you have to sell your home, but you can’t tell anyone why.
‘So we just stopped going out socially, because people would ask, “How are things?” and we couldn’t even begin to answer. It’s only now, after the parliamentary debate, that at last people know.’
The worst moment, she recalled, was when the State Secrets Privilege was deployed. ‘They showed the judge some kind of statement that we couldn’t see, and he shut down the case next day for reasons we weren’t allowed to read. And that’s the kind of thing that’s going to happen here if the Green Paper becomes law.’
Later, she said, the Benthams’ American lawyers asked a US judge whether their British lawyers could see the secret judgment and gagging order in strict confidentiality, so that at least they could advise them whether they should try to pursue the case in London. The judge refused. 
They also tried to get the State Secrets Privilege reversed in a  federal US appeals court. They lost again – and the appeal court’s 17-page decision is also strictly secret.
Mrs Bentham said: ‘The lesson is that the US legal system is perfectly willing to condone the theft of our assets. What gets me is that one of the main reasons the British Government has justified the Green Paper is to protect American secrets.’
At the end of the Commons debate, Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne gave the Benthams a glimmer of hope. He said the Prime Minister had been aware of their plight for months and would in due course respond to their representations.
Meanwhile, Mr Davis said the case highlighted a fundamental inequality between Britain and the US: that American agencies could apparently dictate what British citizens could talk about in British courts  – even the very use of the State Secrets Privilege which had enabled such secrecy in the first place.
‘It’s just not good enough to say that restricting the Green Paper proposals to national security cases will make them less obnoxious,’ Mr Davis said yesterday. ‘Once you let security trump the rule of law, injustice such as this is inevitable.’

How the American administration and the CIA created terrorists and mass-murderers

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Afghanistan in 1979:
This is what he said to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
"We know of their deep belief in God, and we are confident their struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours, you’ll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again. Because your cause is right and God is on your side"

Former British Foreign secretary, Robin Cook said:
"Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.'

Hilary Clinton admits that the American government created, supported and supplied the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 70's, these Mujahideen became Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Brotherhood of Islam. The very terrorists that they now fight in their "War on Terror".
Yes Mrs Clinton They created them and we pay the price.

Mr. Obama, President of the United States of America welcomes the mass murderer Noori Al-Maliki to the Whitehouse and says without shame that Iraq is a safe, independent, sovereign state in which Al-Maliki is a Democratically elected leader.
Yes Mr. Obama, in Al-Maliki's democratic Iraq there are 138,000 in prison and an unknown amount in secret prisons, seven of which have been discovered recently. During the dictator Saddam Hussein's reign we had 14,800 prisoners -this information was found after the 2003 invasion-
Half of the number of prisoners held under Al-Maliki's democratic government have not been afforded legal aid, a court hearing or visitation by family members, in fact once they are handcuffed and removed from the family home or wherever they are arrested ,no other news is ever passed on the family of their whereabouts or legal standing. Under this "Democratic Government" that America supports, Iraq has no electricity, no clean water, no infrastructure, no justice and no human rights. Presently there are 3 million Iraqi refugees inside Iraq -mostly since the civil war from 2006 until now- something that is not reported in the western media as it would be evidence of Americas failure. 5 million Iraqi refugees outside of Iraq and over 1.5 million killed. There are 1 million widows.
A special thanks also to you Mr. President, for your presentation of Iraq as a gift to Iran on a golden plate.
The irony of the situation is that when America chooses to go to war with another country it uses "Human Rights violations" as it's first tool in the propaganda machine. Where are the Human rights in Iraq now?

A special thanks from me to your CIA, well done and thank you for having me put on the "terrorist watch list" in Ireland, it only goes to back-up my belief that if you are honest, speak out for your people and country, have a manner or dignity, you are a terrorist in the eyes of American foreign policy.  We all know that Ireland -the state not the people- will always believe what you tell it to, it is a state of America not Europe, and even if it were to try some independent thought you would keep it in line by threatening to send all the Irish illegal immigrants home, just like your predecessor Mr. Bush did when the Irish government didn't want to open Shannon airport to the US Military or rendition flights. If having dignity and manner, speaking out for my country, it's people, justice and human rights around the world makes me a "terrorist" in your eyes, well then sir, I will wear that title proudly.

Collapse of the Celtic Tiger

A look at how a former beacon of booming development and social prosperity has been plunged into economic desperation. Ireland has been one of the largest casualties in the global financial crisis, which began during the banking collapse of 2008 and has continued to impact markets and destabilise the developed world ever since. Following a government guarantee to underwrite the country’s six major banks shortly after the crisis broke, Ireland’s population of 4.5 million was shouldered with an enormous debt of €400bn ($515bn), proportionately the highest per capita commitment in the world. Yet with bank liabilities accounting for an eye watering 309 per cent of GDP, it quickly became apparent that Ireland would fail to find its own way out of the economic downturn. As a consequence, in 2010, the EU and IMF stepped in to offer Ireland a rescue package worth €85bn ($109bn) - then one of the largest bailouts in history. How different it had been only a couple of years earlier. Then the country was riding high, revelling in its reputation as the ‘Celtic Tiger’. With low interest rates, upwardly spiralling property values and seemingly inexhaustible lines of credit available from the banks, for a decade the Irish economy had seemed to be a pin-up for the new age of market deregulation. With money so easy to borrow and fantastic returns apparently offered by even the most speculative investments, property developers became the new heroes of the economy - lauded for their ability to magic profits out of thin air. According to one of them, Simon Kelly: “We didn’t think we were borrowing it, we thought our businesses were borrowing it for the purposes of owning buildings or building hotels or doing commercial activities, which we all did.” But it was not just the developers who were enjoying the boom; the country’s rapidly expanding middle classes felt richer too and enjoyed spending the money that seemed to flow so easily into their hands. With more consumers came more retail outlets, more hotels, more developments .... Of course, like all bubbles, it had to burst eventually. And when it did the liabilities of Irish banks were so huge they threatened to take the whole economy with them - hence the government’s decision to prop them up. The problem is that all this debt now has to be paid for, by higher taxes, reduced pensions and a shrinking public budget for things like social security, education, health and jobs. The EU and IMF loans required the Irish government to hack public spending to the bone - by €12bn ($15bn) over the next three years. That may not sound like a huge sum of money in these days when international financial commentators talk blithely of trillions and quadrillions of dollars, but for a small country, with a population of only 4.5 million it is a huge sum. And as the public sector has tightened its belt to meet these cuts, so the public sector has felt the pain too - businesses have closed, jobs have been lost and unemployment has soared. And inevitably the public mood has soured too. In 2011, the Fianna Fail ruling party was comprehensively crushed in a general election dominated by angry recriminations over who was responsible for the crisis. But the problems facing Ireland have not gone away and as the years of austerity and cutback stretch out ahead, increasing numbers of young people are emigrating overseas, something that earlier generations of the Irish had been forced to do but which during the boom years had never seemed necessary. Against this background, filmmaker Sinead O’Shea investigates how Ireland, once a beacon of booming development and social prosperity, could have reached such a point of economic desperation and asks whether the country can ever turn its fortunes around.

Unlucky Bastard, Teaser for the forthcoming Documentary

FIRST They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You, Then They Fight You, THEN YOU WIN.
The new teaser from the documentary Unlucky Bastard, Latif Yahia talk's about his life now, home life, family and his views on the world today.

We are the 99%

Are we finally now getting the message that the world goes to war not for Human rights or democracy, but to protect the wealth and investments of big business and big banks.
With all the speeches given by Obama, Sarkowzy and Cameron over the past weeks and months about Gaddafi and his brutal regime, can we not for the last time see beyond the political manoeuvrings and lies about protecting people and understand that the only thing that these world leaders are protecting is

themselves. Saddam Hussein wanted to start trading his oil in Euros, Gaddafi wanted to create a new currency to rival the dollar and the euro and possibly shift the worlds power from the west to Africa and the Middle-east, how threatening is that to the powers that be in the west?!  Very, is the answer.
What is the worst thing that you can do for your country?  Make it debt free! Be self sufficient, just like Syria. Syria at this moment in time owes nothing to no one. I guarantee that if Bashar Al Assad is toppled, within one year Syria as a nation will owe billions!
I do not support dictatorships unlike the US, UK and France in some cases, but none of these countries ever have a problem with the dictator that they support and install until he decides to do something that threatens their interest, even if it has the interest of the dictators own country at heart. And do not be fooled, just as they  support one dictator they build and support his opposition too, that way they always have their fingers in the pie and the next guy always will take a small slice of the cake just to get the chair.
The biggest example is Iraq, Saddam was built by the CIA it's a well known fact, he was their friend during the Iran/Iraq war and up until he invaded Kuwait, then they started crying Human rights etc, why? He had control of not only his oil fields but now Kuwaits also. He was allowed to remain in power because his petrol would be sold cheaply in the "oil for food program" and America would hold the money, Once he decided to go to euros instead of Dollars he signed his death warrant.
What was Saddam finally replaced with? Americans, British, French, Europeans and Canadians, people who had sworn allegiance to another country and would therefore do as that country asked of them in order to retain the 'privileges' afforded to them by holding that nations passport. We had one Saddam Hussein now we have hundreds, none care for the country they govern or the people, except of course at election times when they go around with envelopes and make people promise to vote for them before handing it over. Some use blankets to buy votes, ask yourself this, how impoverished or ignorant of the power of your vote do you have to be in order to trade it for a blanket?
It is all very well sitting watching TV thinking to yourself, 'God that's terrible' but not doing or really even saying anything about it because well, you think it doesn't affect you. But eventually it will and does now just in ways that you don't notice or understand yet.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, how long do you think it will be until these people who are pushed, push back. 

 

Uday Hussein's body double

 As the body double for Saddam Hussein's son, Latif Yahia suffered several assassination attempts. Having escaped to Offaly, the controversial figure is now seriously at odds with his adopted country.

This article was first published on 26th of April 2007 in HOT PRESS, the journalist Jason O'Toole is one of the handful of Irish journalists that I have found to be fair and balanced. The rest all write for their editors or owners political agenda.
I am posting this so that you can read what I was saying four years ago about Ireland and ask "what has changed?" The answer is nothing, the government has changed but the civil service stays the same, same shit different ass, as they say. The system is still corrupt, Government, Garda (Irish police) and justice system ask any Irish person and they will tell you the same. So after all my years trying, I have finally found a lawyer with enough balls to bring the state of Ireland to the European court, I have said many times over the years that Ireland doesn't have an European government, it has an Iraqi one just with Blond hair and Blue eyes.
As you may or may not be aware I lodged my third and last application for Irish citizenship in September 2007, it is now September 2011 and I have yet to receive a decision on my case. In the past four years I have written over 105 emails and letters to the various Ministers for Justice and their office asking for status updates and any other news as to the progression or processing of my case, the answer is standard " your case is being processed" so no matter which political party the Minister for justice belongs to or how New he is to the job the response to my case is the same. Nothing. I wonder how long they can process it for?   According to the Dept of Justice website the average processing time is 23 months, but then I'm anything but average!

By: Jason O'Toole, 26 Apr 2007

The former body double of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son, Uday, is now living in (of all places) Offaly. Latif Yahia’s account of his time serving as the dictator’s son’s double would make a Hollywood screenwriter salivate.

Indeed, the 42-year-old recently sold the rights to his two autobiographies, I Was Saddam’s Son and The Devil’s Double, to the film company Pâté, with pre-production work already underway on what will certainly make for a fascinating insight into the demi-monde of Saddam’s regime.

Latif came to notice as a possible double, or ‘Fidai’ as they are referred to in Iraq, when he first met Uday in school.

He insists that he only agreed, reluctantly, to undertake what was a deadly dangerous role when the regime’s cronies arrested him and threatened to rape his younger sisters. Latif suffered several assassination attempts and was shot 11 times, with the last bullet lodged in his right shoulder coming from the gun of Uday himself. He states categorically that Uday – who he describes as “pure evil” – murdered his father.

Perhaps there’s an even better film in how Latif managed to abscond from Saddam’s clutches to a suburban housing estate in Daingean, County Offaly. He tells it like this.

Aided by the CIA, he was transported to Austria. Placed in a refugee camp there, he became incensed by conditions and took a policeman hostage to negotiate better living conditions. He alleges that the CIA then kept him incarcerated illegally for 10 months, as they attempted to pump him for confidential information about Saddam. Later, in Norway, Latif was so upset by the conditions in another refugee camp that he threatened to burn the place down.

Eventually, Latif, who has a PhD in international law, opted to come here. He relished the thought, he says, of settling down and living a mundane life in rural Ireland. But this dream has since been shattered by, he alleges, sinister CIA agents who vowed to crush him for refusing to co-operate and become a spy. 

Since he rejected their offer, Latif says that his request for Irish citizenship was rejected – despite the fact that his is married to a Dublin woman, with whom he has a child.

Recently, a fabricated story alleging that he was an international arms dealer appeared in the tabloid press, and he successfully sued one Sunday paper for printing this story. Latif is adamant that both situations can be traced back to his refusal to cooperate with the CIA.

Throughout our conversation, he speaks passionately. You can sense that he is volatile, and much of what he says may be deemed to have the ring of the fantasiscal about it. But that may be a misreading. Latif Yahia has some deadly serious things to say… 

He admits to arriving in Ireland under a bogus passport…

“I was in Austria with my real name and I had two assassination attempts. I went to London and I had an assassination attempt. At this time, Saddam was still strong,” he says. “In the end, I found out that my ex-partner was passing on information to the intelligence service. I left her and I came here and applied under a false name – not because I am doing fraud, not because I want to do something wrong, just so nobody knows where Latif Yahia is. Just to disappear. Because there was no Iraqi embassy here. I am safe here.” 

Alleges he was beaten up by a Gardaí

“There is no justice in this country,” he states. “If I do this to you (shows photograph of his badly beaten face), what happens to you, do you go to court? I was beaten up by a Garda. They (the Gardaí) wrote to the Department of Justice, saying, ‘(We) believe that Latif Yahia is a terrorist.’ To cover themselves. I wrote and complained to the Commissioner of Police and he is not going to trust Latif Yahia, a foreign piece of shit who came in hunger from his country. But I am not hungry. My father was the third (richest) millionaire in Iraq. I come for political reasons. They think each one coming to this country is hungry, and is coming to take the Irish money. In the end, after two months, I received a letter from the head commissioner, saying I was harassing the Gardaí.

Why would the Gardaí pick on him?

“This Garda, I don’t want to mention his name, was the boyfriend of my ex and one day I came down and I saw him with my ex, and they did this job to me (points to photograph). He holds me and she puts a glass in my face. I get 46 or 47 stitches. You can see the scar on my face. After that I went to the Garda to make a complaint, but they didn’t want to take it. They said, ‘You are going to lose your citizenship.’ They used exactly these words: ‘We are going to fuck you. We are going to deport you back to where you came from if you open your mouth.’ I am not the kind of person to take a threat. I fought Saddam Hussein.” 

On plans to leave Ireland…

Michael McDowell the Saddam Hussein of Ireland

“I applied for citizenship in 2001. I was the longest case in this country to be processed. In the end they make an excuse, after five years of waiting, because I started talking in the media. Michael McDowell – I call him Michael McFool – will refuse citizenship even if you have a parking ticket. I don’t even have a parking ticket. I am not staying in this country. I 

left my country because I couldn’t find justice, and I came into another Iraq! Michael McDowell is the biggest racist in this country. I have been refused citizenship in this country which, I am sorry to say, is a shame on Ireland. There are four European countries that all offer me citizenship. I am leaving to go to Germany for a couple of reasons. I have a son there and I think Germany is a country of law, no no matter what colour you are.” 

On Shannon Airport…

“America doesn’t need Shannon,” he argues, “but they want to show the world that there is a lot of countries supporting them. I am taking these words straight out of a big politician in this country, who is my friend for eight years. He told me when he met George Bush, Bush threatened him and said: ‘We have 24,000 Irish persons living in the US that don’t have green cards. We can deport them back to Ireland.’”

Ireland is now a legitimate target in the eyes of Islamic extremists…

“Ireland is not neutral,” he says. “Ireland is one of the big targets. Irish people are going to have a hard time, like the American people. If you go to Shannon, I don’t think you will see one Irish civilian there, it is an American base. Even if Islamic extremists don’t attack Shannon, Ireland is still going to be targeted – by even America! They are going to make something to blame on Islamic terrorists. The have got to do something to make believe that Islamic terrorists are coming to Ireland.”

Iran has suicide bombers, or “sleepers”, living in Ireland.

“A long time ago Iran trained suicide bombers to come into the West,” he states. “Since 1988, the Iranians have been building themselves up in the West. They send over refugees, which are the intelligence service for Islamic jihad. They have been told to claim asylum and get citizenship in these countries. There are a lot of them in Ireland. They are going to harm Irish citizens. They are going to blow up any part of Ireland that can hurt the Irish and damage the economy of Ireland. They are going to put a bad name on Ireland to not bring any more investors.” 

He informed the Special Branch about the possibility of attacks within Ireland. 

“I told the Special Branch that something is going on in this country,” he recounts. “They didn’t believe it, they said I was talking bullshit. I talked to the Special Branch, you know what his answer to me was? ‘I don’t give a fuck. In eight months time, I’m retired.’ I don’t want to see this country harmed, because this country is a beautiful country. I am Irish more than the Irish!”

On the CIA operating in Ireland

“The CIA have a small prison in Shannon,” he claims. “This is how they exchange the prisoners to Guantanamo Bay. A lot of innocent people have been exchanged through Shannon. The Special Branch don’t have a clue. Any intelligent Irish person realises that Ireland is a state of America. Last December, the CIA contacted me and said, ‘Look, Latif, we can give you citizenship in Ireland. We control a lot of things here. We can make you happy and a multimillionaire again. Or, we can,’ – they said exactly these words – ‘we are going to fuck you and fuck your mother.’ I tell them, ‘I don’t work for you and fuck Bush. And get out of this house.’ After three weeks, I received a letter from Michael McFool and he refused my citizenship. Before that they had sent me a letter saying don’t contact this office until the middle of 2008 – three weeks after kicking out the CIA, I got the letter.”

He is calling on the Irish government to stop the usage of Shannon by the American military and to apologise to the Arab world. Only this, he says, will prevent the deaths of innocent Irish citizens.

“There is no chance,” he observes, “that Ireland would have been targeted (if Shannon was not used by American military). Now, when you say Ireland, the Arab world thinks, ‘American arse, or American state’. This is the picture now. If they close Shannon (to the US army), they still have time to apologise and make this country become neutral again. I don’t think the government here have a clue about what is going on. Plus, they don’t care about Irish people, they care about their pockets. They don’t care about the next generation.” 

On allegations of him being an international arms dealer…

“One of the articles said I was a weapons dealer,” he laughs. “I don’t think a weapons dealer would live my life. Weapon dealers have six/seven citizenships around the world. If I am a weapons dealer, how come I don’t have any citizenship?”

On censorship in Ireland…

“My new book is not available in Ireland,” he complains. “It sold 24,000 copies around the world, but it is ‘banned’ in Ireland because I talk about the CIA. I am writing something against America and the CIA. When I say America, I mean American government and foreign policy. They don’t want it read here. This is why, I say to you, the Irish media wasn’t fair to me, because I think the government controls the papers here. I was never humiliated by the media, except here (in Ireland). I would be absolutely shocked if this interview is published accurately.” 

On Osama Bin Laden.

“After September 11, one newspaper wrote a small article on the front page that the double of Saddam’s son is the right hand of Bin Laden in Ireland!” he recalls. “I don’t know how they come up with that! Bin Laden, he drink Guinness? I never met Bin Laden. I don’t believe (in) Bin Laden. Bin Laden is the son of America. I don’t believe (in) Al Qaeda. If a freedom fighter in Iraq hits an American (solider) he is a freedom fighter. To hit any civilian is a terrorist. This is what I want to pass to the media but they don’t want to listen.”

Corruption in Ireland...

“The Irish government say this is a free country, but I don’t think Ireland is a free country,” he says. “At Christmas, somebody called me from the Department of Justice, and he said to me, ‘You hand me €50,000 and you have your citizenship, because we deal with these things here. I can write the report to give you citizenship, or I can write the report that you never get it.’ If you go to the Gardaí (about this), the Gardaí is full of corruption. Where do you go?” 

On Latif Yahai, peacemaker…

“In the Irish media, they never talk about Latif Yahai as a peacemaker,” he says bitterly. “I have a title and I am recognised by the United Nation as an ambassador of peace. The last peace mission I did was a 5,800 walk from Jerusalem to Tripoli, in 32 days. The UN was behind that. With the last tsunami in Asia, I helped; why do they not mention that? I donated money and I donated medication. I never did fundraising, (it was) always my money. With all my books, I never put a cent in my pocket. This (new) book, the profits go to the children’s hospital here. Not one paper has mentioned my peace missions, not one paper.”

On Saddam Hussein…

“I met Saddam nearly once a week for four-and-a-half years,” he discloses. “He was a great President and suitable for the Iraqi people because, look at America, they can’t even control a small area of Iraq now. I am not pro-Saddam. I fight for 15 years against his government, but I never had a problem with Saddam Hussein as a person. I met him, I sit with him, we even exchanged jokes. He was a funny guy. I tell him joke about what the people say outside about him, and he laughing. Plus, he was very religious, but the people here don’t know that. He would pray. The problem was the people around Saddam fed him with false information. It is exactly like Michael McFool. The people around him – the Gardaí, the Special Branch – feed him with wrong information. The problem with Saddam was that he trusted the people around him. I was against his regime…”

On Saddam’s son, Uday.

“Absolutely evil,” he spits. “Uday tortured me. He shaved off all my moustache and eyebrows with his own hands. This is how I left Iraq. When I left Iraq, he shot me himself in my right shoulder. I had 11 assassination attempts. I have a couple of bullets in my body. He killed my father. They poisoned him. I can’t forget or forgive myself (about that).”

George Bush Jr and war crimes…

“He is a murderer and he must be brought to justice,” he argues. “He must be hanged. I am against the death penalty because I am a member of Amnesty International. But I want to see George Bush hanged in the same place as Saddam Hussein.

How his mother was refused asylum in Ireland.

“I paid $22,000 to smuggle my mother and my niece and nephew out of Iraq, to Ireland,” he confesses. “They were refused straightaway as asylum seekers. I don’t know who gets asylum here if my mother doesn’t! Again – Michael McFool. After two weeks – this was one-and-a-half year ago – they refused her, before even the immigration Gardaí do their investigation. She was refused and we went to a tribunal and the tribunal says, ‘Who’ll prove this is your mother?’ Do you think I would bring a 67-years-old woman and two children and pretend they are my family? They sent me for a DNA test. I paid (for it) from my own pocket in Blackrock Clinic and the result came in 99.7 she is my mother. Nobody is educated in the civil service. They sent me a letter asking why isn’t the DNA 100%! I showed it to my solicitor and he laughed. Is anybody 100% in this world? In an Irish court, 99.4 is acceptable. This is why I am leaving, because there is no chance here for my mother to stay. A tribunal should give you an answer within a maximum of eight weeks, but this is seven months I am waiting. I call them and they make excuses.” 

Plans for legal action against Irish state. 

“I am bringing Ireland, as a state, to the European Court,” he announces. “I have two files against the state of Ireland – human rights and about my case. Because I can’t get justice here, I think I will get it in the European Court. The government here are the losers, I am moving.”

Why he is being discriminated against in Ireland. 

“If I say tomorrow that I agree with Michael McDowell,” he believes, “and Ireland must open Shannon for America because they are going to liberate Iraq, and if I say George Bush is a great man and Tony Blair is doing a great job – if I say all this, I guarantee you next week I get Irish citizenship – if not an American passport. If I shut my mouth I get everything. My problem is that I won’t shut my mouth. This world is not for honest people anymore.”

Latif Yahai’s latest book, The Black Hole, is available from
www.acanum-publishing.com

You Must read the whole article to understand it fully.

By: Latif Yahia
Click here for Full article allegations of Ed Ceasar and Eoin Butler, The two "Freelance"  journalists

I feel like Popeye.. I've taken all I can stand, I can stand no more!

Joanna Cunningham

Of course I don't have spontaneously erupting muscles and I won't be beating anyone, at least not literally, but possibly metaphorically. As I have come to acknowledge over the years the Pen is much mightier that the sword, and indeed for many years now the pen has been my weapon of choice.

 My reference to Popeye? Well, that has everything to do with the perception by some people that my silence about a certain subject and period of my personal life, is somehow a weakness or a by-product of guilt. Well it's not, my silence was actually an attempt to give my Son Charles Latif Yahia (obviously I didn't pick the Charles part and he is probably better known as Charlie Cunningham in his neighbourhood) a quiet and relatively normal life with his mother Joanna Cunningham.

Eoin Butler The "Journalist"

Sensationalist title, little substance, typical tabloid

So why is it that this subject is now appearing on my blog? Well, as the opening line says, I can take no more! The above article appeared in The Sunday World yesterday penned by Niamh O'Connor, a journalist that I don't believe that I have met with personally but who likes writing pieces about me, generally for the above mentioned piece of tat and always with the aid of Ms. Joanna Cunningham, ex- whatever and God Forgive Me, mother of my child Charlie.

The combination of the three always reads the same way, Devil's Double - Con Man- life of hell, you get the picture. Nothing new there then? Why the blog? you say. Because for these past ten years I haven't seen Charlie, he was three the last time that I saw him, he will become a teenager this November, I have missed out on so much of his life it causes me real pain, but less pain than having to deal with his mother. Generally if I were to read this blog let alone her accusations in what passes for a newspaper in Ireland, I would probably just say "Ah, sour grapes, EX- etc, etc" But has no-one ever asked why this guy,

John Cashin

Me, Latif Yahia who went up against Saddam Hussein while he was still in power, talks openly about the CIA and government corruption walked away from his son after fighting for nearly two years in the Irish Family courts, just for access? No, because everyone wants to paint Joanna as the victim, but it was I who left the courts with the five year safety order against her and what she calls a "war wound" after I supposedly gave her a "hammering"when really she was in a drug and alcohol fuelled rage. Sorry, I forgot that Joanna doesn't consider hash, pills or cocaine to be drugs, Heroin on the other hand, no that is drugs because several members of her family were addicts so she saw the devastation first hand, everything else is just recreational. It would give me great pleasure to believe that she had "turned her life around" and that her work with special needs children as she claims in The Sunday World has brought her the fulfilment that she needed, one of the last times we spoke in 2002 she was doing a course to become a journalist, maybe that's where she met Niamh O'Connor.

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham in Spain 2003

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham 2009

When I look back on where and how Joanna and I met it reads like a Black Comedy, Iraqi exile desperate to change his life in 1997 lands in Dublin, Ireland, after forty days and forty nights holed up in his Hotel decides to experience Dublin nightlife, is directed to a nightclub called Rumours (unbeknownst to him the running joke in the city is that if you don't have a broken bottle going in, they hand you one at the door!) and unlike every other Capital city in the world Dublin's Inner City is NOT the "IN" place to live. Dressed in Armani, their eyes met across the crowded room, he thought it was love at first sight, she smelled GRAVY. Whirlwind romance, and it all went downhill rapidly from there, Joanna came from a tight-knit community in Dublin's City Centre an area called Summerhill, what I had mistaken for an "Irish Accent" was in fact "thick Dublin" although she was well able to change according to her surroundings, but bring her within a five mile radius of the Northside and "How a' ya luv" and "Jeawsus" was never far from her lips. It truly was a case of lovely until she opened her mouth. But that was the least of her problems.

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham With their Daughter Shawn.

A brief bio of Joanna's life as told to me by her, usually when she was drunk, runs like this, at the age of ten she was raped by one of her Mother's many boyfriends, she and her brothers and sisters were taken into care, her mother was a drinker and also used substances and at one point was imprisoned but it was never clear for what. She and the rest of her brothers and sisters were returned to her mother when she was 14 and she became involved with her mother's then Toy-boy, a guy called John Cashin, she and John ran away together and lived in a flat near Summerhill (in the 14 years that I have lived in Ireland, this area has NEVER had a good name) she became pregnant with a daughter for John, the relationship became abusive and she left him, but kept in contact as he was 'the father of her child". Or maybe it was their mutual love of dressing up (see photos) that kept them linked. All that I know is that after helping her fight John Cashin for two years in family court and spending the best part of 8,000 Irish pounds at the time, the day that she finally won full custody of her daughter, was the same day that I arrived home to find them both in my bed. That's the kind of woman she is.

When Joanna drank she was liable to do anything, one evening when we were on speaking terms and she had let me take Charlie out for the day, I returned with him, she had been drinking and decided to tell me a funny story; On a night out with friends she took a taxi home, on finding that she had no money , she told me " I couldn't pay cash, so I gave him a Blow-job instead, ha!' there was no shame, no embarrassment. It was this willingness to operate "payment in kind" that started her relationship with Sergeant Smith of Coolock Garda Station, we had bought a house in the area because she wanted to be close to her mother and again I had no idea about the area until it was too late. Sergeant Smith was Joanna's trump card, if I caught her smoking hash in the house, he was called, if she was drunk and wanted a fight he was called. Even after she had me barred from the house without my knowledge, he would accompany her to the family court to stop me seeing Charlie. Always the two things she used against me were, my book " I was Saddam's Son" and "He's going to run away with my child to Iraq!" I found the family courts in Ireland to be particularly Xenophobic in the early 2000's. When Sergeant smith couldn't go with her John Cashin would oblige.

Latif Yahia in Dublin 11th of April 2001

She also claimed to be a member of the IRA and at one point sent two men to me giving me "Two days to leave the country".

On the 11th of April 2001 I came downstairs because I heard Charlie crying, as I descended the stairs into the haze of hash smoke I asked Joanna what the hell she was doing? She knew that Charlie was asthmatic and that I had no time for drugs of any kind, at this point she had ploughed through 6 large cans of Budweiser and a bottle of wine, in the article she says she hit me with a mug, it was a pint glass. To this day and three surgeries later, I still pull bits of glass out of my face, a lifetime reminder. In the past ten years since the pint glass, I have tried and failed repeatedly for her to be charged with assault, anyone that has experience with the system here in Ireland knows that you have to get a Garda to take a statement before a charge can be brought. No Garda would take a statement from me in Coolock Station, when I finally did find one, he was transferred and the statement went with him. I filed a complaint to the Garda Ombudsman, the finding, my complaint was "vexatious".

In Ireland as opposed to many other European countries the Police (Gardai) are trained for six months at the Police Academy and are then sent out to "learn on the job",e.g. slap on the handcuffs ask questions later.

I was very pleased to hear that Ireland had it's first "mixed race" recruit a few years ago, but Ireland's police force still doesn't have enough "colour" for my liking.

Knowing Joanna's background I find it deeply disturbing that she should say that I threatened to rape her daughter, having suffered through that ordeal herself as a young girl. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love children and would never hurt them, they are the only innocence and purity left in this world and to hurt a child is the greatest evil possible. Also, Uday had threatened to rape my sisters if I did not comply to be his Fidai, why would I use the same threat? I hated him and everything about him.

She also says that I have made the past 12 years of her life hell, well, I haven't seen her in the best part of ten, I really don't want to either and the last time we spoke was when she drunk called me telling me "Any man would be proud to have Charlie as his son, but what can I do, I told him you were DEAD, Bastard!"

It was one of her milder calls. I had two hundred and fifty missed calls one day and was constantly receiving fast food deliveries that I never ordered.

I understand why The Sunday World and The Sunday Times have interviewed her, she certainly makes sensational accusations and of course the accusations being her words not theirs saves them from lawsuits like the one that I filed and won against The Sunday World in 2006.

The Victory headline, Tony O'Reilly the owner of Independent News Media who owns the Sunday World among other titles, puts the right envelope in the right hands as usual.

Again Joanna was in the background of that story also. Yes, I lost on appeal, after Michael Mc Dowell the then Minister for Justice in Ireland had changed laws pertinent to my case, I was provided with a Criminal Judge to try my case not a Libel Judge as in the case that I had won and instead of the case being an appeal the Criminal Judge decided to try it as a new case, using surprise, surprise, the new laws. All in a court in the middle of nowhere with only one journalist allowed, guess which paper she wrote for? One in four of Ireland's Judges are corrupt, in fact the whole judicial system is incestuous, you can't get in unless you have family or friends in the right places and most of the cases are won and lost on the golf course.

As for Joanna's assertion that I only wanted a passport, if that were the case I would have taken the one they offered me in 2002, but I didn't ever want her to say the I got it through her, so I rejected it and now I don't want to be Irish, the Irish government are cowards, they can't face any problem head on and it doesn't matter which party they belong to they all operate the same way, without true love for the country or the people of Ireland.

Joanna Cunningham, Click the Link ►► Makeover Your Mum Finalists!!

Let me say this very clearly, after four years of waiting on an answer for my third Citizenship application the Irish government can SHOVE IT UP THEIR ARSE!

John Cashin and Joanna Cunningham in my Home 2001, Joanna tried to tell the court that these photos were taken before my relationship with her, further photographs proved to the Judge that these were taken while my son was present in the house. the Judge the called her a liar.

Joanna Cunningham

Everything is related, a few weeks ago I applied for my Freedom of Information Act from the Department of inJustice in Ireland, well, it must have scared someone because since then the smear campaign has started and Joanna has been wheeled in to discredit me. A few years ago an unknown Irish journalist wrote an article about me in a subscription magazine, he now works for the Irish Times and interviewed Joanna for his own blog, he then passed her information to Ed Caesar of The Sunday Times who added to her paid story by interviewing Uday's pimps whom also got paid for their participation, a story which has been paraphrased in Niamh O'Connors piece in The Sunday World. Their goal? Screw Latif Yahia, Sell newspapers and make a name for yourself. But as Oscar Wilde once famously said "There is only one thing worse than being talked about, not being talked about."

John Cashin

Whatever the future holds, I am sure that I have not heard the last from Joanna but then she has not really heard the last from me either, for a few years now I have held off the publication of my book about Ireland and of course my relationship with her, I had hoped that I would be able to end it on a happy note. I now see that as an impossibility, "Forty shades of Conspiracy" will be available at Christmas, don't expect to find it in Irish Bookstores.

Joanna Cunningham

John Cashin

As for my son Charlie, well, I love him dearly, I always have and remember him everyday. We talk about him from the days when he could be with us and look forward to the day when we can see him again. I made the decision in 2003 to stop fighting for him and to wait the long wait for the day when he is ready to find me. When he does, I have plenty of photos and videos for him to watch. He can then decide for himself what kind of Father I was.

Joanna Cunningham

I would at this point like to thank my wife Karen for her patience and dedication throughout the past ten years, she witnessed not all but a lot of Joanna's behaviour and was a rock of sense and comfort. I am also so grateful to have two wonderful children, they are a great source of joy to me. For all the bad that I have seen in my life I am now in the happiest place that I have ever been.

The following photographs are a small illustration of the environment that I know my son was raised in, I can only hope that he has not been left psychologically scarred. My apologies if anyone finds this material offensive, my intent is to shine light on my accuser and to silence any further attacks on me. It was not my intent to go public as such, but I cannot sit idly by as people lie about me.

John Cashin

Unfortunately the Irish family courts in 2000/2002 favoured the Mother in every situation.

To all those Fathers that have been separated from their children, don't lose hope, not every Father is bad and not every Mother is good. There must be some justice in the world.

A word to any other publication that may have been interested in interviewing Ms. Cunningham, if this is the only level of person that you can find to interview to try and discredit me, then please go ahead because for every lie she tells about me I have three pieces of truth about her.