On
Maxwell's Death, UN Staff Say de Mistura "Crony" Manlove
Aided Cover-Up
By
Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED
NATIONS, April 29 -- The UN's "implausible"
report on the
death in Kabul in October of Louis Maxwell has been met with
skepticism not only by diplomats, but also staff at the UN Mission in
Afghanistan, UNAMA. While the UN refused to release the text of the
report, or to name the members of the Board of Inquiry beyond the
head Andrew Hughes, former UN Police advisor now in Australia,
whistleblowers form UNAMA have contacted Inner City Press.
They
name as key
Board of Inquiry member one Richard White Manlove. He was the
security advisor in Iraq to Staffan de Mistura, who is now head of
UNAMA in Kabul. Sources say de Mistura played a role in Manlove being
put on the Board of Inquiry "to cover up anything damning, like
that Louis Maxwell was executed by Afghan National forces," a
well place source tells Inner City Press.
Manlove
previous
served, as a a security advisor, under Cypriot UN official Benon
Savan, later charged with corruption and living out of range of
extradition in Nicosia. Then he as at the P-4 level, then raised to
P-5.
Susana
Malcorra of the UN, when she refused Inner City Press'
request for the names of panel members, said they were not P-3 for
example, but rather, she nodded, D-1 and P-5. Could Manlove get a
promotion for what whisteblowing staff say is a cover up?
UN's Ban and de Mistura schmooze Karzai, Maxwell and
family not shown
Several
of the
sources, who initially complained to Inner City Press that Ban
Ki-moon personally was refusing to raise the issue of Maxwell's death
to the Afghan authorities, now point out that Ban Ki-moon's son in
law Siddharth Chatterjee was de Mistura's chief of staff in Iraq, at
the same time Manlove was de Mistura's security advisor. (It has
previously been speculated that by hiring Ban Ki-moon's son in law,
de Mistura helped his UN career, including being awarded the top job
in Afghanistan over candidates considered, including by the New York
Times, more qualified and willing to stand up to governments like
Hamid Karzai.)
Whether
this
connection, which the UNAMA whistleblowing staff say may show yet
more fingerprints from the third floor of the UN's North Lawn
building on the report about Kabul, is what these UN staff are saying
remains to be seen.
Inner
City Press
asked UN Spokesman Martin Nesirky on April 27 what Ban Ki-moon will
do, now that Afghanistan's Interior Ministry has rejected the UN's
findings, and complained that it has not been shown the full report:
Inner
City Press: I do have a follow-up on Sudan, but first I wanted to
ask you, following yesterday’s briefing by Ms. [Susana] Malcorra on
the Louis Maxwell report, the spokesman for the Afghan Interior
Ministry, Zemarai Bashiri, has said: “We do not accept this
report; we, in fact, reject it,” adding that “the findings have
not been fully shared with Afghan authorities”. Since the report
ends pretty inconclusively and seems to call on Afghanistan to
conduct its own investigation…
Spokesperson
Nesirky: Is that still from the spokesman or is this you?
Question:
No, no. Now I am turning it into a question. That is why I am
looking at you. So, now that Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry has
said they reject the report and have not been shown the whole thing,
first I want to ask you, does the UN agree that they have not been
shown the whole thing? Were they shown the entire report?
Spokesperson:
As I think Ms. Malcorra said yesterday, the findings were shared
with the Ministry of the Interior. Not the report itself, but the
findings.
Question:
Were they told, more or less, what we were told or more than we were
told yesterday?
Spokesperson:
I am not going to go into exactly how much, more or less, they were
told. But they were briefed in detail on the findings, as you know,
by the Deputy Special Representative for the Secretary-General on the
ground. And also, Mr. [Alain] Le Roy and Ms. Malcorra briefed the
Permanent Representative of Afghanistan here yesterday.
Question:
So now that the Interior Ministry, which is the ministry in charge,
says, “We reject the report”, what will the UN do to ensure that
Afghanistan actually investigates the death of Louis Maxwell? What
are the next steps?
Spokesperson:
Well, again, you heard what the next steps are. The
Secretary-General has been very clear on this and has said in the
statement that we put out yesterday a number of things. Amongst
them, that he takes this matter sufficiently seriously and that there
are some concrete steps that need to be taken, one of which is that
the Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, Gregory Starr,
will be going to Kabul to speak to the Afghan authorities. As you
also know, Mr. Le Roy, the Head of Peacekeeping Operations, and
Staffan de Mistura, the Special Representative in Kabul, will be
speaking to NATO officials -- all this with the aim of looking at
security, looking at what happened, and how to try to ensure that, in
the future, response could be even better.
Finally,
as you also know, the Secretary-General did urge the authorities in
Kabul to conduct an investigation. You also heard Ms. Malcorra say
here yesterday that if the Afghan authorities would wish that to be a
joint investigation with the United Nations, then the United Nations
would be open to that.
....The
Board of Inquiry report was, as Ms. Malcorra explained and as I have
explained as well, an internal management report that is required by
UN regulations, and such a report would be carried out to cover any
incident of this nature, and indeed many other incidents. That
report has now been finalized and, as you know, it has been shared
with those who need to know about the findings.
The
next steps that follow from that -- which the Secretary-General has
outlined and which Ms. Malcorra has also outlined -- involve being on
the ground; involve talking to different interlocutors -- whether it
is NATO, whether it is Afghanistan -- to look at, amongst other
things, security. Now, as you know, we wouldn’t want to go into
details on any new security measures. We don’t do that. But if it
is felt that there is the need to brief interlocutors, that will be
done. If there is felt the need to brief the media, that will be
done, too.
As
for the question of whether there will be some new report, I don’t
think it is envisaged at this stage that there would be some new
single document. Of course, there will be reporting coming out of
these meetings. How that is collated, I cannot tell you right now.
Question:
Since the Secretary-General seems to be calling on Afghanistan to
conduct either its own inquiry or [one] that the UN would help with,
what time frame does he expect that in, given that the Interior
Ministry has said: “We reject the report” which calls for it? At what
stage, if Afghanistan does not in fact conduct its own
inquiry? That is really what I was trying to get at. He has called
for it, but they seem to be rejecting that call. So, then what?
Spokesperson:
Well, in diplomacy you carry on speaking to people and that is what
is happening. Mr. Starr will be going quite shortly to Afghanistan.
And, of course, Mr. de Mistura and his Deputy are in constant
communication with the Afghan authorities, and the same also goes for
Mr. Le Roy. I cannot say exactly when, but clearly there is a
conversation that is going on pretty much as we speak with the Afghan
authorities. That is the way you handle these things.
Watch
this site.
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