UN
Confirms to ICP Report Into DRC Deaths
Goes July 31 to UN
Security's Drennan,
No Q&A Yet
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive series
UNITED NATIONS,
May 22 – Amid the belated
focus into the murder of UN
experts Michael Sharp and
Zaida Catalan, unprotected by
the UN in the DR Congo, the UN
Department of Safety and
Security's alleged burying of
reports should not itself be
covered up. After Inner City
Press exclusively
reported that UN Department of
Safety and Security's top
officer Peter Drennan -- to
whom the Board of Inquiry
report on Sharp and Catalan
would be filed on July 31 --
ordered that a similar BoI
report into earlier UN deaths
in Garowe, Somalia and a
security report on UNESCO
chief Irina Bokova be “buried”
last year due to the personal
political implications for
Drennan if Bokova instead of
Antonio Guterres became UN
Secretary General, the UN's
response was to attack the
leak. On May 22 Inner City
Press asked UN Spokesman
Stephane Dujarric, UN
transcript here:
Inner City Press: on the Board
of Inquiry (BOI) report into
the death of Michael Sharp and
Zaida Catalán, can you confirm
that it's… it's due 31 July
and will go to Mr. [Peter]
Drennan? Can you say
whether the Board of Inquiry
report into Garoowe, Somalia,
which took place before that
has, in fact, been concluded
and if it will be made
public? And I want to
ask again what I asked Farhan
[Haq] on Friday, whether Mr.
Drennan, given issues that
have arisen about his own
staff representative saying
that reports have been buried,
whether he can do some kind of
a press conference.
Spokesman: I don't have
anything for you on Mr.
Drennan on the second part of
your question. On the
first part, the particular BOI
on the DRC [Democratic
Republic of the Congo] will be
done by the end of July.
Last week
the UN said, "The Department
is deeply concerned about the
leaking to the media of
confidential information
concerning matters of
security. The leaking of
confidential security
information is irresponsible
and may well create additional
security risks to the UN." This
Note to Correspondents was
tellingly not put on the UN's
website unlike other Notes to
Correspondents, but was sent
to all correspondents resident
at the UN, and was treated, or
excused or ignored, unlike
identical statements this year
from Washington. The UN's
failure to respond to the
substance is indicative of why
today's UN is failing; the
various coverage is why the UN
has not yet been held
accountable, and foreseeably
will not be in these cases,
absent increased scrutiny of
the UN. Inner City Press
published more, here
and below: that the UN
Board of Inquiry (BOI) report
into the killing of its own
staff in Garowe, Somalia was
also buried, and the informed
opinion that "former SG, Ban
ki Moon, was at the top of the
accountability framework; and
will no longer be held to
account for decisions at that
time. So, hopefully, the
results of the BOI will be
made public." So what will
"new" Secretary General
Antonio Guterres do? The claim
there was no withholding is
belied not only by Mike
Croll's allegation (below),
but the March 16, 2017 email
by Mary J. Mone, UNESCO's
Deputy of Chief, Safety,
Security and Transport
Section: "in relation to the
Observation Report - which we
have not yet received - would
you be kind enough to share
the status on this please."
This was copied to, among
others, Mick Brown and Michael
McNulty (audio
here.) This was many
months after it had been
prepared - and buried,
according to Mike Croll. Mr.
Croll had come to the UN after
being head of Security for
Catherine Ashton of the EU;
most recently he questioned
Nicola Sturgeon during her
visit to the UN, chiding
her for seeking to break the
United Kingdom at the United
Nations. It is Croll who's
said to charge Drennan with
burying the report - both,
then, should appear at press
conference(s).
On May 19, Inner
City Press asked Guterres'
deputy spokesman Farhan Haq
about it, UN transcript here:
Inner City Press: yesterday,
I'd asked about a memorandum
in the Department of Safety
and Security (DSS) alleging,
among other things, that a
report… safety report
regarding Irina Bokova had
been, quote, buried, and this
is an allegation by the staff
union within DSS. They
also… so my question is, I
still… rather than getting a
substantive answer to the
issues raised in the memo,
which is that Peter Drennan,
for personal, political
reasons buried the memo.
I saw the note to
correspondents that talked
about leaks are unsafe.
I want to… first of all, I
want to know how does…
Deputy Spokesman: That's
not all that it said. It
said that the information…
that memo that we put out, the
note mentioned that UNESCO
[United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural
Organization] and its security
had been fully informed, and,
indeed, that was the
appropriate thing to do, since
they are the people who are
her security.
Inner City Press: Maybe you've
seen the memo, because now
I've published the entire
memo. And what the memo
states is that this is the
staff union of DSS saying, for
example, that a Board of
Inquiry report about the death
of UN staff in Garoowe,
Somalia, was never made
public, and they've requested
that it be made public.
And they've made similar
requests about other
documents, and they say that
DSS is putting staff at risk
by keeping these reports
secret. So, the question
was never whether they told
Bokova. Right in the
memo, it says the staff union
acknowledges that Bokova
herself was told. What
they're saying is that these
documents, by being kept
secret for, they say,
personal, political reasons,
put staff at risk. And
that is what I'm asking a
substantive response on, not a
statement against… against
leaks.
Deputy Spokesman: The
substantive… no, no, we gave…
that wasn't a statement
against leaks. Again…
Inner City Press: It said
leaks.
Deputy Spokesman: There
was a sentence at the end
which mentioned the problem of
leaking security data, the
effect it may have on our
security. Beyond that,
the larger part of that note,
as you know, because you'll
have seen the full note, and
it's not very long, was about
how the information was
shared. And the point
was that the Department of
Safety and Security shared the
information with Irina
Bokova's security, which is to
say UNESCO security. And
that was the appropriate
course of action. So
that is a substantive
response, and it is a denial
of the idea that the report
was buried.
The
idea, according to the memo,
from from not-junior UN
official Mike Croll; more
soon. Guterres holdover
spokesman, who passed without
comment the windowless focus
booth he has confined the
Press to, did not seek to
distinguish any part of these
leaks- instead, he only sought
to evict and still restrict
Inner City Press, see
Paragraphs 9-10, here.
Why did the UN, as if by
coincidence, search Inner City
Press' lone remaining
workspace on May 18? The only
solution is restoration to the
stolen S-303. Also cc-ed here
is Michael "Mick" Brown,
supervisor of Deputy McNulty
who evicted and broken Inner
City Press' computer, and who
excused surveillance of Inner
City Press and UNCA assaults
on it. Inner City Press asked
Guterres' holdover spokesman
Stephane Dujarric about it,
and hours later he emailed all
correspondents an attack on
"leaks" - "In response to a
question asked at the noon
briefing about a DSS
assessment concerning Irina
Bokova, the Spokesman has the
following to say: The
allegation that security
information was 'buried' is
strongly denied. The relevant
information has been provided
to Ms Bokova, the Director
General of UNESCO, in the
appropriate manner. In
addition the substance of the
report was prepared in
conjunction with the UNESCO
security staff and as a result
UNESCO security staff, who are
responsible for the safety and
security of Ms Bokova and
UNESCO, were fully aware of
the report's contents. The
Department is deeply concerned
about the leaking to the media
of confidential information
concerning matters of
security. The leaking of
confidential security
information is irresponsible
and may well create additional
security risks to the UN."
Whistleblowers - different
whistleblowers - within the
Department of Safety and
Security say that the claimed
concern about Bokova is a
pretext. What has roiled
feathers in DSS is the
assertion that Under Secretary
General Drennan moved to bury
the report for his personal
political reasons in case
Bokova became Secretary
General. We'll have more on
this.
Fearing
retaliation, the UN's Kenneth
Rosario two months ago wrote
to Drennan to formally notify
him of the charge of burying
the security report, citing
the deadly consequence of such
UN burying in the cases of the
Canal Hotel in Baghdad and
later in Algiers. Rosario
noted that even in those
cases, no one alleged that the
reports were suppressed by a
head of Department like
Drennan.
The documents
cited specific and credible
death threats against Bokova,
the UN system's top ranking
official in France, and the
letter bomb attack on the
International Monetary Fund /
World Bank office, ascribing
it to the Greek anarchist
group Conspiracy of Fire Cells
or SPF.
Exclusive:
UN Security's Drennan Also “Buried”
Report on Somalia, & Bokova, As
UN Condemns Leak to Inner Ci...
by Matthew
Russell Lee on Scribd
Exclusive:
UN Security's Drennan “Buried”
Report on Threats Against Bokova,
Documents Indicate by Matthew
Russell Lee on Scribd
Rosario's fear of
retaliation was and is
well-founded: for example, the
UN fired Swedish official
Anders Kompass after he blew
the whistle on peacekeepers'
sexual abuse of children in
the Central African Republic.
More recently Francis Gurry of
the UN's World Intellectual
Property Organization has been
accused of retaliation; here
is Inner City Press' story on
WIPO's North Korea business,
including a response from US
Ambassador Nikki Haley to
Inner City Press' May 16
question on the matter. UN DSS
itself was involved in the no
due process eviction of
Inner City Press and targeting
of it since to hinder
its investigative reporting in
the UN. Audio
here. But the reporting
will continue: watch this
site.
***
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