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By Matthew Russell Lee, Periscope, Patreon

UN GATE, Nov 25 – After the UN Security Council's failure to even issue elements to the press about the airstrike on the detention center in Libya back in July, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' typically empty statement while on a junket, on July 5 before Guterres' spokesperson Stephane Dujarric's UN Spokesperson's Office sent anything out his partner in censorship Al Jazeera reported a UNSC press statement. Banned Inner City Press noted it - then the French mission, not the president of the Council for July 5, tweeted it, echoed by France 24.

  Now on November 25 from the US, this: "Senior U.S. officials met with General Khalifa Haftar on November 24 to discuss steps to achieve a suspension of hostilities and a political resolution to the Libyan conflict. The delegation included Deputy National Security Advisor for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs Victoria Coates, Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy Matthew Zais, and USAFRICOM Deputy Director for Strategy, Engagement, and Programs Brigadier General Steven deMilliano.  The officials underscored the United States’ full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Libya and expressed serious concern over Russia’s exploitation of the conflict at the expense of the Libyan people.  These frank discussions build on recent talks with Tripoli-based officials aiming to establish a common basis for progress between the parties on the issues that divide them, in the context of moving toward a ceasefire.  These include concrete efforts to address militias and extremist elements, and the distribution of resources so they benefit all Libyans.  The United States urges the parties to seize this opportunity to build a secure and prosperous future for Libya."

Meanwhile unanswered are questions such as these, submitted in writing, including to Guterres' incoming Communicator Melissa Fleming: "August 13-3: On UN sex exploitation and cover up(s), as Inner City Press asked on August 9 without any response to day, This is a Press request that you immediately provide all if-asked and additional information about the new allegation of SEA announced at 12:01 pm today, apparently of SE by a Tanzanian "peacekeeper" in DR Congo - and also why previously published charges are no longer in the data to which UN Peacekeeping Conduct and Discipline points, including what if being done for these victims and any steps taken to avoid this constant repetition of abuse despite the SG's ostensible commitments. Again, are new allegations being buried elsewhere on the data page? Inner City Press is asking in writing because banned from the noon briefings and any follow up questions, now for more than a year. Today as before none of Inner City Press' written questions, including on Cameroon, have been answered. This is a request that you immediately confirm receipt of these questions." Again, as Dujarric's office closed on August 13, no answers, no response. This is the UN's cover up of UN sexual abuse, and it's now on Melissa Fleming as well. Inner City Press also asked, ".  August 13-6: Given that the SG's public schedules for August 2, August 5, August 6, August 7, August 8, August 9 and now August 13 are entirely blank, not even "all appointments internal" as before but just blank, given that Poland's Foreign Minister was not able to meet with the SG on August 3, nor Pakistan PR Maleeha Lodhi on August 7 (tweeting "As the SG is away"), please immediately state where the UNSG is, now and for the next three weeks, and at what cost to the public. Additionally, since public officials from Trump to de Blasio to Corey Johnson all disclose where they are, and given the UN system travel scandals at UNRWA, UN Women and previously UNEP, explain why Mr. Guterres' lack of transparency is not part of the problem. Given the Secretariat's communication failures, state when exactly Ms. Fleming takes over from Alison Smale, whether Ms. Fleming is still has stated on her profile at UNHCR (Chief Communications  @Refugees as of August 7) and if she is answering some/any of her e-mail there." Nothing. We will stay on this.

  On August 10 France called an emergency UN Security Council meeting. Inner City Press, still banned from entering the UN by Guterres now for 404 days went to check it out. There was no one in the $15 million mansion Guterres sometimes lives in, here (he's been missing for a week); Inner City Press cannot enter the UN (UN gate Periscope here), but there was only one person at 4:30 pm at the UNSC stakeout. Tweeted photo here.

   Now, with Guterres still on vacation he doesn't even have the class to admit, the names of the UN dead have emerged: a Libyan, a Jamaican and a Fijian: Hussein Elhader, Clive Peck and Seniloli Tabuatausole, respectively. Guterres still missing, corrupt, having just given a UN humanitarian job to the UAE so active in Yemen and wannabe in Libya: "The following is the text of a joint statement by the governments of France, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  Begin text:  The governments of France, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States welcome the announcement of a truce in Libya on the occasion of Eid el-Adha in response to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG) with the support of the Security Council (UNSC press statement on Libya of 11 August), and invite all parties to effectively cease hostilities across Libya. We stand ready to assist the UN Mission in monitoring the observance of the truce and address any attempt to break it." We call BS.

   So Inner City Press covered the vapid meeting by UNTV - nearly identical speeches, mostly by deputy ambassadors including in the case of France. Afterward at the stakeout only one ambassador, Russia's deputy, spoke. In response to a softball question from a state media he said, It was in the open, draw you own conclusions. And that was it. During the meeting Guterres robo-tweeted about another country, another one of his trips.

  The day after the meeting, this from the Security Council as a unanimous press statement: "The Members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the attack on a UN Convoy on 10 August 2019 in Benghazi. Those behind the attack should be identified and held accountable.  The Members of the Security Council expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims, and wished a speedy and full recovery to those who were injured.  The Members of the Security Council reaffirmed the messages set out in the Council’s press statement of 5 August 2019, including their full support for the Special Representative’s leadership.   The Members of the Security Council welcomed and expressed full support for the truce between the parties over Eid al-Adha. This truce should be accompanied by confidence-building measures between the parties, with the aim of ensuring this truce can turn into a lasting ceasefire. Lasting peace and stability in Libya, including an end to the worsening humanitarian crisis, will come only through a political solution and the parties should engage without delay under the auspices of the UN."

  From July, more detail on one of the victims: a Bangladesh national has been killed while another went missing in the airstrike at a detention centre for migrants near the Libyan capital of Tripoli early Wednesday.  ASM Ashraful Islam, labour counsellor of the Bangladesh Embassy in Libya, only identified the deceased as Shahjalal from Madaripur.  ''The body will be sent to Bangladesh as soon as possible after necessary formalities,'' he said.   Meanwhile, the news of death and missing spread a curtain of gloom at Dakkhin Khagchhara village of Mostofapur union in Madaripur sadar upazila.  The family of the deceased said they came to know about the death by Shahjalal's cousin Jewel Kazi who along with Shahidul Islam, brother-in-law of Shahjalal, was also staying at the detention centre during the air strike.  Jewel talked to the family over mobile phone on Thursday afternoon.  The family said Jewel was also injured in the strike and was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Libya. Jewel reported that Shahidul was missing after the airstrike.  Also Read- UN: At least 44 killed as air strike hits Libya migrant detention centre  Shahjalal Kazi, father of a 7-year-old daughter, Jewel and Shahidul left Bangladesh for Italy in May by paying an amount of Tk12 lakh each to a local broker named Nasir Shikder. They, however, were detained by Libyan authorities and kept in a migration detention centre later on.  Shahidul’s brother Azizul Islam demanded the broker Nasir be punished for endangering the lives of his brother and two others, saying: “We have not been able to contact them ever since they left. Nasir had been telling us for the past few days that Shahidul has reached Italy, and if we pay him Tk2 lakh more, he will find a way for us to contact him.  “Nasir has been asking for more money from all three of our families. He needs to be questioned by the law enforcement agency,” he added.  But there is an accountability in this filed, nor in Guterres' UN.
 
  Guterres claims he has a zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment, but continues to reward UN officials who are charged with harassment. Inner City Press previously reported on Guterres promoting his official Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond of Chile, after sexual harassment in his own 38th floor office, to "Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary."   

   Now Inner City Press, banned from the UN by Guterres for 362 days, had  exclusively reported on another reward being fulled in Guterres' world of double-speak, harassment and hypocrisy, see below.

  Guterres' is a hypocrisy without borders. Today after flying to the UAE he has issued this, ending with countries on which hydrocarbon rich UAE is causing civilian death (Sudan, Libya, Yemen) - " The Secretary-General held separate meetings today with H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces; H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Arab Emirates; and H.E. Mr. Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future of the United Arab Emirates.     The Secretary-General expressed his appreciation to the United Arab Emirates for hosting the Climate Preparatory Meeting and for its strong support in mobilizing international action on climate change ahead of the Climate Action Summit in New York in September.     The Secretary-General also recognized the country’s efforts to invest in renewable energy, particularly solar energy.     They also discussed the tensions in the Gulf, as well as those in Libya, Yemen and Sudan." Hypocrisy without borders.

  Colin Stewart is accused of sexual harassment, covered up by Guterres official to protect yet another official - and Steward is about to have his UN contract extended at head of MINURSO, another of Guterres' failing peacekeeping missions. There is pushback by some UN staff and whistleblowers, but these people under Guterres are ignored and retaliated against.    

  While Stewart was Political Director at the UN Office in Addis Ababa the serious charge arose. In typical UN fashion a cover up began. But the charge gathered force and was soon seen as being inconvenient for Stewart's immediate supervisor Haile Menkerios.  

That's when the real cover-up team got active, including Kyoko Shiotani who Inner City Press has previously shown to have gotten her husband an entirely unmerited paid UN job on the UN website while serving as chief of staff to UN Political Affairs boss Rosemary DiCarlo.   

  More on Patreon, here: it's even worse than it looks...

  When Inner City Press, after receiving no answers to its questions from Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric, ran its exclusives about the all-in-the-family website contract to John van Rosendaal, it was twice roughed up by Guterres UN Security Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins and five others who refused to give their names. It has now been banned from any entry of the UN for 361 days, with its written questions unanswered by Dujarric.

Also involved in the sexual harassment cover up: Nathalie Ndongo-Seh, then Menkerios' chief of staff, and Fatemeh Ziai. Guterres' UN is totally corrupt, answers to questions and roughs up and bans the Press which asks.   

  Now there are voices inside the UN, sources of banned Inner City Press, outraged that the absent and bloated Secretary General Antonio Guterres is about to reward another harasser while spending public money to cultivate a false image of himself to try to get a second term. L'affaire Colin Stewart is another test. Guterres has already failed enough tests to be fired or worse. And this one? Watch this site.

   Downtown at the SDNY courthouse which Inner City Press now covers daily, Vivian Wang, who as money manager for convicted UN briber Ng Lap Seng's South South News made payments to disgraced President of the UN General Assembly John Ashe, was given a time served sentence on June 26 by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge George B. Daniels.

   Wang's lawyers at Goodwin Proctor, in a heavily redacted sentencing submission, stated that her deceased husband Forest Cao "was 57 years old adn had no known health problems of medical conditions. No autopsy was performed."

 It also says, as to UN President of the General Assembly John Ashe, that while awaiting trial on UN bribery charges "his death was reported as the result of a 'weightlifting accident' after a barbell apparently crushed his throat."

  After the sentencing, Inner City Press with covered the Ng Lap Seng trial before SDNY Judge Vernon Broderick daily asked Wang's lawyer Derek A. Cohen if he was implying that Forest Cao and John Ashe were killed, and why he had so heavily redacted this sentencing submission.

 "It speaks for itself," Cohen said by the elevators. Likewise the Assistant U.S. Attorney on the case Daniel C. Richenthal declined Inner City Press' question about who beyond Ng Lap Seng Ms. Wang had cooperated against.

 Judge Daniels did not preside over the trial of Ng Lap Seng. He accepted the government's recommendation of time served with very little inquiry.

  He said as if by rote that corruption of the UN is a serious matter. But if so, why should a person who paid bribes in the UN get such a light sentence with little public showing of the benefit of their cooperation?

   Corruption has continued at the UN since the prosecution of Ng Lap Seng, resulting in his four year prison sentence. A second, separately prosecution was brought against Patrick Ho of CEFC China Energy, an entity which also tried to buy the oil company of Lisbon-based Gulbenkian Foundation which employed current UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as a compensated board member.

  Neither in the Ho nor Ng Lap Seng cases where any of the UN Secretariat officials implicated in the bribery schemes prosecuted.

  This laxity can be contrasted with another SDNY proceeding a mere hour later, in which Judge P. Kevin Castel looked behind the U.S. Attorney's Office's 5k1.1 cooperation letters and imposed jail time on the four siblings, the Seggermans, who evaded taxes. That underlying case was USA v. Little, 12-cr-647 (Castel). This bifurcated case is USA v. Wang, 16-cr-495 (Daniels).

 Vivi Wang helped bribe the UN, and on June 26 she got a time served sentence for undefined cooperation. Judge Castel looked behind the government's 5K1.1 letter but Judge Daniels did not. And the UN continues corrupt. Inner City Press will have more, much more, on this.

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