Ian Traynor

'Terrorised' writers lament state's assault on free speech

Ian Traynor — 2005-12-16T13:36:00Z

Istanbul

Ertugrul Kurkcu has been hauled before the judges for saying the wrong thing so many times that he has almost lost count. "Six or seven trials, always acquitted, but I did get a 10-month jail sentence from a military court for translating a Human Rights Watch report," says the veteran leftwing Turkish dissident.

He took one case to the European Court of Human Rights last year. The case was annulled and the Turkish government paid him €5,000 compensation.

Mr Kurkcu's problem is that he keeps colliding with the country's notion of "Turkishness", and that spells danger for writers, historians and novelists, who bring the wrath of the establishment down on their heads every time they are deemed to have belittled it. (...)

[page 23 | International]

- / Guardian

Ukraine Court Considers Disputed Election as Eastern Region Threatens to Break Away

Nina Khrushcheva, Askold Krushelnycky, Robert Parry, Ian Traynor — 2004-11-30T04:28:00Z

Political tensions in Ukraine are increasing as the country's Supreme Court considers claims of fraud in the recent presidential elections that are straining relations between Russia and the West and are threatening to break the country apart. We go to Kiev to get a report and we speak with New School University professor Nina Khrushcheva, granddaughter of former Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev. We also speak with London Guardian reporter Ian Traynor who raises questions about U.S. complicity in the dispute and investigative reporter Robert Parry about the media's coverage of presidential elections in Ukraine and the U.S. - / Democracy Now!

US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev

Ian Traynor — 2004-11-26T15:15:00Z

With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory - whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.

Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again.

But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. (...) [page 17 | International]

- / Guardian

Politicians get a global vote of no confidence

Ian Traynor — 2004-11-19T12:53:00Z

The world is becoming a much more dangerous place led by politicians who are too incompetent, dishonest and untrustworthy to deal with the challenges, according to an ambitious survey of global opinion released yesterday.

In a massive vote of no-confidence in political elites worldwide, the poll of 50,000 people in more than 60 countries found that almost two out of three people considered their leaders to be dishonest while just over half saw them as unethical. (...) [page 20 | International]

- / Guardian

Milosevic lawyers ask to be dismissed

Ian Traynor — 2004-10-28T13:26:00Z

in Zagreb

Europe's most important trial was thrown into uncertainty yesterday when the two British lawyers defending Slobodan Milosevic against 66 war crimes charges tendered their resignations. (...) [page 17 | International]

- / Guardian

Nuclear materials from Iraq 'missing'

Ian Traynor — 2004-10-13T13:51:00Z

in Zagreb

Equipment which could be used in an illicit nuclear bomb programme has disappeared from previously monitored sites in Iraq, and radioactively contaminated items from there have been found abroad, the International Atomic Energy Agency has told the UN. (...) [page 14 | International]

In 1683 Turkey was the invader. In 2004 some of Europe still sees it that way

Ian Traynor — 2004-09-22T11:44:00Z

in Vienna

Sipping red wine on a hillside terrace high above Vienna, Helmut pointed to the Polish church next door, convinced that the epic drama played out here in 1683 still spoke to central Europeans after all the centuries. [page 17 | International]

Defiant Iran starts uranium processing

Ian Traynor — 2004-09-22T11:36:00Z

Iran announced yesterday that it had resumed producing a uranium gas for enrichment as a nuclear fuel, three days after the International Atomic Energy Agency told it to freeze all operations connected with uranium enrichment or face possible retaliation. (...) [page 15 | International] -

Milosevic refusal to take medicine puts trial at risk

Ian Traynor — 2004-09-02T14:19:00Z

in the Hague

Slobodan Milosevic is refusing to take the medicine prescribed for his high blood pressure by UN doctors at his cell, jeopardising his trial for war crimes in what prosecutors said yesterday was a calculated attempt to delay the trial still further.

Two independent and confidential medical reports also found that Mr Milosevic, unknown to those treating him, was taking another, unprescribed drug. They concluded he was not fit to conduct his own defence. (...) [page 2 | News]

Iran says it will resume uranium processing

Ian Traynor — 2004-09-02T14:19:00Z

Iran has told UN nuclear inspectors that it is about to process dozens of tonnes of raw uranium into the gas which centrifuges can turn into nuclear bomb material, a disclosure certain to reinforce US arguments that Tehran has embarked on a secret atomic weapons programme.

A confidential report by Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, supplied to diplomats yesterday and obtained by the Guardian, says that Iran has recently told his inspectors that in "August/September" it would convert 37 tonnes of crude uranium into uranium hexafluoride - the gas spun at high speed through cascades of large centrifuges to be enriched, either to low levels for use as nuclear power station fuel, or to high levels for weapons purposes. (...) [page 17 | International]

Everyone to blame but me, says Milosevic

Ian Traynor — 2004-09-01T13:22:00Z

in the Hague

Slobodan Milosevic yesterday launched his defence as the first European head of state accused of genocide by blaming everyone but the Serbs and himself for the bloodbath of Yugoslavia's disintegration.

In a four-hour speech at the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague 30 months into his trial on 66 counts of war crimes, Mr Milosevic turned the tribunal dock into a soapbox as he raced through more than 100 years of Serbian history, a narrative that consistently had the Germans and the Vatican in the starring roles as the bad guys in the unending plots to destroy the Serbs. (...) [page 2 | News]

US in talks on European missile defence site

Ian Traynor — 2004-07-13T17:45:41Z

in Warsaw

The US administration is negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic over its missile defence programme, with a view to positioning the biggest missile defence site outside the US in central Europe.

Polish officials confirmed that talks have been going on with Washington for eight months and made clear that Poland was keen to take part in the project, which is supposed to shield the US and its allies from long-range ballistic missile attacks. (...) [page 9 | International]

Austrian bishop derides orgy claims

Ian Traynor — 2004-07-13T17:41:01Z

The powerful Austrian Catholic church was plunged into its second big sex scandal in a decade yesterday when a seminary run by arch-conservatives was alleged to be the site of orgies among young priests and their teachers.

The seminary in St Pölten, west of Vienna, comes under the authority of the conservative Bishop Kurt Krenn. (...) [page 9 | International]

Tide turns on the 'flood of migrants'

Audrey Gillan, Lee Glendinning, Ian Traynor — 2004-07-07T12:14:13Z

Special report

Henryk Borkowski stepped off the coach at Warsaw's western bus station after the 27-hour journey from London, embittered and traumatised by his stay in Britain.

A little over two months ago, he had made the opposite journey, drawn by the promise of work after Poland's accession to the European Union meant he could legally be employed in this country. Instead, he spent almost 10 weeks living rough as his dream of saving for his own petrol station back home became a nightmare of survival strategies among London's immigrant underclass.

He is not alone. More than half of the Poles who have travelled to Britain to work since May 1 have returned home, the Guardian has learned, after being confronted by slave-labour wages, exorbitant living costs and organised criminals who fleeced them for passports and savings. (...) [pages 1 and 2| News]

Judge Richard May

Illtyd Harrington, Geoffrey Nice, Ian Traynor — 2004-07-02T10:51:02Z

Richard George May, lawyer and politician, born November 12 1938; died July 1 2004

Judge Richard May, an outstanding English legal scholar and barrister, who presided over the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague for the past two years, has died aged 65 after resigning due to illness earlier this year.

Knighted in the Queen's honours list last month, Sir Richard played a central role in the coming of age of the International War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, drafting the court's rulebook and drawing on the tribunal's experience to advise on the establishment of the fledgling permanent International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague. (...) [ page 31 | Obituaries]