Did you know there was a U.N. report about the Mavi Marmara?

I wouldn't know, if I only got my news from U.S. newspapers and television stations. This is why I have Scott Horton on my blog roll.

News That’s Unfit to Print: UN Report on the Flotilla Deaths

By Scott Horton

This report has been widely circulated and discussed among international law experts who trade notes about its interpretation of the San Remo Manual and the various theories advanced by Israel to advance its blockade, and it has gotten intense attention in the press in Europe and in Turkey. But it has drawn remarkably little attention from the press in the United States. Even the New York Times, whose editorial pages previously included dueling columns about the significance of Doğan’s death and the flotilla incident, has not even mentioned the report’s existence, notwithstanding the fact that it deals with the death of an American citizen. Why might that be?

The circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution. Furkan Doğan and İbrahim Bilgen were shot at near range while the victims were lying injured on the top deck. Cevdet Kiliçlar, Cengiz Akyüz, Cengiz Songür and Çetin Topçuoğlu were shot on the bridge deck while not participating in activities that represented a threat to any Israeli soldier. In these instances and possibly other killings on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces carried out extra- legal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law, specifically article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

P.S. Via Glenn Greenwald, I see the Washington Post's Column Lynch wrote about the report. Needless to say, Lynch's article is full of U.S. and Israeli attacks on the report's authors.

P.P.S. Just as I'd like everyone to read about this report, I'd like everyone (or every person who lives in this country) to watch this video:


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