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.’

This article has been published today in The Independent, please read the whole article and then my response at the end. I have copied the whole thing and put it here on my blog because they would not let me upload it to their website.
so much for "right of reply" and "freedom of Speech".

Is Uday Hussein's 'double' really just an impostor?

Critics claim a new film telling the 'true' story of the man who protected Saddam's son from assassins is based on a web of lies

By Jerome Taylor

They say some stories are too good to be true – although that has never stopped Hollywood. The Devil's Double is the latest blockbuster to stretch the limits of the phrase "based on a true story". But who cares, if it tells the gory tale of one of the most brutal psychopaths of the late 20th century?

Released in cinemas later this month, the film recounts the knuckle-whitening autobiography of Latif Yahia, the supposed body double to Saddam Hussein's psychotic younger son, Uday.

The British actor Dominic Cooper plays both roles and has won critical acclaim for his portrayal of a man who raped and murdered his way through Baghdad's high society – and also that of the poor sap who had to pretend to be such a maniac to protect him from the bullets of any would-be assassin. In recent years, though, growing numbers of Uday's inner circle have cast doubt on whether the story could be feasible.

With a strikingly similar face to Uday – who was gunned down by American special forces alongside his brother Qusay in July 2003 – Mr Yahia first emerged in Europe in the early 1990s with a remarkable claim that generated headlines around the world.

He told intelligence agents that he had lived a life of servitude as Uday's body double – and had turned on his master when Uday tried to kill him because a girlfriend had become overly flirtatious. Memoirs and international fame quickly followed.

There is little doubt that the tale Mr Yahia tells is perfect for the silver screen. According to his book, blog and media interviews, he was born into a wealthy family with close ties to Saddam's Ba'athist regime. Part of Baghdad's élite, he went to the same school as Uday, where friends commented on how similar in appearance he was to the Iraqi dictator's sadistic youngest son.

In September 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war, he was called back from the frontlines and told to go to Saddam's Baghdad palace, he has said.

"My superior had a distinct look of concern on his face when I entered the room," Mr Yahia later wrote. "I was taken from the front to my appointment, as I waited, my mind racing, questioning, never in my wildest dreams had it occurred to me the true reason behind my summoning."

Uday had decided to make him a body double. When Mr Yahia politely refused he was put in prison for a week and tortured. Upon his release he was told that unless he agreed to become Uday's doppelgänger his family would be killed and his sisters raped.

After rounds of plastic surgery, the transformation was complete. Mr Yahia said that between 1987 and 1991 that he was witness to some of Uday's worst excesses – his prowls through Baghdad at night looking for women to rape, his drug abuse, violent outbursts and penchant for torture. He also claims to have survived 12 attempted assassinations.

Mr Yahia thought of escaping only after Uday, angry that a girlfriend had started to openly flirt with the doppelgänger, tried to shoot him. Mr Yahia claims he fled to Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and later to Austria with the help of the CIA.

Yet some of those who were in Uday's inner circle at the time have poured scorn on Mr Yahia's claims. Haytham Ajmaya, a 48-year-old Iraqi expat living in London, is one of them. He defected from Iraq in 1998 with the help of the British Government in exchange for information on Uday's inner circle, within which he had served for more than a decade. "Latif may have looked like Uday and talked like him but he was never Uday's body double," he told The Independent yesterday. "It's a real shame that Hollywood has decided to make a film based on rubbish rather than a film that is true to Iraq's history."

Mr Ajmaya claims that at most Mr Yahia was someone who used his close resemblance to Uday to secure money and girls in Iraq and was in fact arrested by police for doing just that. In January, a writer from The Sunday Times tracked down a further three members of Uday's inner circle who cast doubt on Mr Yahia's claim, as well as Saddam's plastic surgeon, who said no operation had been carried out on a body double.

My Yahia did not respond to The Independent's requests for comment yesterday but when confronted earlier this year about the remarks by Uday's former friends, he said: "I was Uday's double. Uday didn't have friends; he had pimps, drug dealers, hangers on, etc. Either I am psychic to know about inside palaces, bunkers and all the rest of the places... or I was actually there. I know the truth."

Toby Dodge, a historian at Queen Mary, University of London who specialises in modern Iraq and has interviewed members of Saddam's regime, says that separating fact from fiction in Ba'athist Iraq is notoriously difficult. "The regime had always been shrouded in mythology," he said yesterday.

Meanwhile, Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand-born director of The Devil's Shadow, remains unfazed by the allegations. "Biopics are not my favourite movies because they always try to steer too close to the facts," he writes. "But the truth doesn't set you free in movies. Truth layered with fiction sets you free."

This is my response to the article:

To the Writer of this article, firstly I find the fact that you have written that Uday was the "Younger" son of Saddam Hussein hilarious, secondly you haven't even been able to get the title of the film right it is "The Devil's Double" not The Devil's Shadow unless Lee Tamahori was working on another movie with Dominic Cooper. Getting these two well known and important facts wrong, leads me to believe that you either did NO research, or just collated information and old articles that you found on the net.
You quote Haytham Ajmaya as a source in Uday's inner circle, a man who in the Sunday Times article admits to have being a Pimp for Uday , but says that just because he brought women to a man that he knew was Sadistic and violent and has sold himself to Britain as you openly say in your article, is trustworthy. You might find the Arabic meaning of his name Ajmaya (Iranian Woman) interesting. As for your other or should I say Ed Caesar's sources, I have tackled their credibility in a blog that I wrote last April you may find it on my website.
Any man that can sell women, then sell himself and his country can sell anything and anybody even if it is false, the British government have been paying Ajmaya for years and have made him a British citizen, (as far as I have seen over the past 20 years the West loves these kind of people) who is paying him now for this supposed information? If Haytham Ajmaya or any of the others that are relied upon had anything to say before, they didn't, my book was first published in 1994, I have written others, I have a blog, a website, why is it just now that they come out of the woodwork? Because there is a movie? Well then, since they were so close to Uday why didn't they get their story told? Maybe because the powers that be know the blood that is on their hands? What kind of story would they tell? Maybe they could tell how they brought women to Uday knowing full well what he did with them, or how they themselves murdered and raped girls.
As for Haytham's assertion that I was just impersonating Uday to get girls and make money, that at one time Uday found out and just laughed. Well, Iraq would have been a much nicer place if Uday had been so easy going! Does Haytham also assert that all the girls that came forward as rape victims of Uday are liars?, the football players?, the athletes that he tortured?, or is it personal?
As for Saddam's plastic surgeon, well he stitched the Hymens of the girls and did plastic surgeries on the wounds that they incurred if they survived a night in Uday's arms, he admitted it in one of his TV interviews, (he omitted to mention the hymens) Ask any ordinary Iraqi, they know he was fired from his position and prohibited from practicing medicine, once Saddam found out, which is why he returned to painting.
Am I surprised that The Independent has written an article like this about me? No. Why? because I included the owner of the Independent, Tony O'Reilly in one of my blogs recently, I really don't think that you can call the Independent, Independent.
I am not in hiding like my accusers, I have clean hands and am not afraid of the spotlight, unlike Haytham Ajmaya or Dhafir Mohamed Jabir.
As I have learned over the years from dealing with the Intelligence agencies, never trust information you pay for, because to keep the money coming they have to keep giving you information, in the end they make it up to keep the money rolling in.
As the Middle East is having it's uprising so it will spread across the world, because although the West has the illusion of Democracy, people understand more and more each day that they are being fed mis-information and the ideology of the newspaper owners, Murdoch himself has openly said, No political party could attain power if he and his media empire were not behind them. The same is true of Tony O'Reilly in Ireland, just ask Fianna Gael political party in 1997.
Was I contacted for a comment by the Independent? Yes my agent was, but knowing who they work for etc, I don't give comments or interviews to papers I can wipe my arse with. The same is true for The Sunday Times.
This reaction or comment may not be published under the original article on the Independent's website, so I am copying the article and my response and putting it all on my blog, because I'm a man not a coward like the Journalist and the Independent's owner, we will all see how long newspapers like these last, I think not so long.

My article last April: Click the Link

http://latifyahia2006.blogspot.com/2011/04/pass-me-spinach-font-face-font-family.html

http://latifyahia2006.blogspot.com/2011/07/bigger-they-are.html

The Bigger they are…..

By: Latif Yahia

It may take decades or even a lifetime to build an empire, but it seems relatively easy to tear one down. Or at least that appears to be the case with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. ranked number 13 on Forbes most powerful people in the world list, it looks as the days go by that more and more high ranking politicians and policemen will be dragged into Murdoch’s phone hacking scandal, both in the UK and America, there are now calls to see if any of the victims of 9/11’s phones were hacked. Are we surprised?

Rupert Murdoch??

Not really, to do business on the scale that Rupert Murdoch was doing it, there had to be people “on the take”, but do not be fooled into believing that he was handing them the brown envelopes personally, well, maybe a few, but the rest were passed on from those who were sanctioned to do so or saw it as a way of doing their job to the fullness of their ability. Yes Murdoch is corrupt, but he would not be the first or the last to use money to his advantage.

There are several ways of attaining information, it can be given freely, it can be bought or it can be stolen. Thankfully we have not yet come across the fourth, torture, but that’s not to say that any newspaper, magazine etc. has not used information that came from a torture subject, known or unknown.

At the moment the world may be vilifying Murdoch but he is not alone and not the first of his kind, if he ran a country we would call him a Dictator but because he runs a company we call him (until very recently) a Success.

He very possibly never wrote a Manifesto like Saddam or stood and gave a rousing speech to his workers about the strength of the country (News corp. operates on three continents) but with so many assets he has as many workers as a medium sized country and they all want to keep their leader happy, sorry, I mean keep their jobs.

Like all good dictators he has passed the crown onto his son and heir, the next natural successor, after all he didn’t work this hard for it to go to some elected fool! And his devoted workers all know what is expected of them, which is why all of his newspapers, magazines and TV stations take the same line, not necessarily because he told them to, but because they know what pleases him and again they want to keep their jobs and prove how good they are. That reminds me of someone else I once knew.

Don’t think that Rupert Murdoch is the exception to the rule, he is the rule.

Take Tony O’Reilly for example, once maligned by the likes of Conrad Black (who has also fallen off his pedestal) and Murdoch, he has an uncomfortable monopoly on the Irish media as he has a large stake in all but two of the National papers, a fact that rarely sees him criticized but famously helped him to swing the general election in 1997 from the prevailing party (Fianna Gael) to the opposition with the headline “ Payback time” and why? Because O’Reilly had personally demanded reform of the libel laws, a ban on below cost selling by British newspapers and exclusive MMDS licenses (a wireless cable TV system) and his demands were rejected. Tony O’Reilly in Ireland??

The government report of the meeting with his representatives said they were told “We will mount a full frontal assault on you, as a government, in the elections”, O’Reilly’s representatives’ version of the same meeting simply says “We said that they would lose INP (Independent Newspaper Group, now International News and Media) as friends and would mean any future administration would have a large bill to pay”.

Fianna Fail the opposing party who had a more sympathetic ear to O’Reilly won that election and stayed in power for another 12 years.

Sir Anthony (Tony) O’Reilly, has stakes in newspapers on three continents, not to mention the controversial oil and gas deals with Exxon for the licenses to blocks in the Porcupine Basin some 200Km of the West Coast of Ireland, which have now been portioned off to Chrysaor to develop, but still leaving his company Providence Resources formerly Atlantic Resources with a 30% share in whatever gets pumped out.

O’Reilly campaigned between 1987 and 1992 to have the tax rate, royalties and licensing with regard to oil and gas exploration and production lowered, although they were already substantially lower than those prevalent across much of the world.

Mike Cunningham former director of Statoil Exploration Ireland has said “No other country in the world has given such favorable terms as Ireland”, it is projected that if any of the blocks are produced, that the Irish State may receive as little or less than 7% of the estimated 20 Billion that the blocks are potentially worth.

But why share when you are of the belief that it is a “simplistic public notion that Irish oil and minerals belonged to the Irish people at large.”

Sir Anthony, as he has insisted that he is called, is known for his support of Irish Charities, Opera and the Arts and has acquired an art collection that he is obviously very proud of, since he has had a catalogue printed at a reported cost of 125,000 euros for 500 copies one of which has been reportedly sent to the Queen of England another to the President of Ireland.

Sir Anthony did indeed consult the Irish Government before accepting his Knighthood / Knight Bachelor in 2001 for “services to Northern Ireland’, as an Irishman cannot constitutionally accept any award or title bestowed upon him by a foreign country without getting their consent, but after 1997, who is going to say NO to Tony?

As one of Ireland’s six Billionaires, (although his status may have fallen over the years) he is in the majority of the five that do not pay tax to Ireland. Having said that there are wonderful comments made in the Irish press about him, how “ if you cut him, his blood runs green”. Tony is now in his 70’s and has done as all Emperor’s/dictator’s do, handed everything over to his son Gavin.

If you want to control a country or should I say countries, then you must have control of the media. We may elect our politicians but it is the media men who control what is and is not said about them, they are the puppet-masters. We only see and hear what they want us to, or at least that was the case.

With the birth of the internet the game changed, people like Murdoch, O’Reilly and Berlusconi were slow to recognize the power that the internet has, the fact that less and less people are buying newspapers and more and more are not only getting their news from the internet but from the blogosphere, where articles like this are unhindered by the journalistic need to please. Here, on the internet we are free enough to write without editor-ship, I don’t know how many times I have been interviewed by journalists who at the time of the interview are understanding of my position and clear on my views only to read the story in the paper or magazine and find that I have been “Screwed royally” because their Editor didn’t like the first draft or it didn’t fall in line with their “paper’s policy” meaning their owner’s policy.

Will there be a “phone hacking scandal” in Ireland? Maybe, but probably not, not because there was, or is no corruption in the system, but because if they were to openly investigate it would mean a revolution “French Style” because 80% of all the police and politicians would have to go.

When one man has enough power to have his newspaper, even a local one, write against the Shell to Sea campaign in County Mayo, Ireland, as opined by a columnist

“Shell has been scandalously remiss in not employing someone to bump off a few of these fellows” as “The rule of law has to be enforced, by apparently harsh measures if need be.”

This also tracks back to Tony’s own interests in Oil and Gas exploration.

If you are interested in Shell to Sea they have a website and are organizing a large protest on Friday 29^th July 2011 as Shell are starting to build their on land phase.

www.shelltosea.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.