Monday, December 17, 2012

Prominent Lebanese Canadian branded "Special Global Terrorist" by US State Department

That should pretty much ensure that Michel Samaha never again sees the light of day.

Samaha is the consummate Lebanese political insider. He spent most of his career as a functionary in the right-wing of Lebanon's  Christian political establishment. The circumstances of his acquiring Canadian citizenship are unclear, but there are at least 50,000 Lebanese who hold dual Lebanese-Canadian citizenship.

The category of "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" is one of those uniquely American inventions that popped up post 9/11. Like "unlawful enemy combatants" it is a category invented to skirt traditional conceptions of human rights in America's war on terror.

Apparently being on the Special Global Terrorist List also puts you in an Orwellian version of God's waiting room. It is rumored that Obama's "kill list" considers anyone with the Global Terrorist designation as having made the short list.

Samaha should be safe from a drone strike for the foreseeable future. He was picked up by the Lebanese government last August and charged with plotting terror attacks at the behest of the Assad regime and hasn't been heard from since.

In the course of his career he was variously considered an asset of Israeli, American, Syrian, French and Canadian intelligence services

His new status as a "Global Terrorist," and a special one at that, should get him unlimited free travel between CIA "black" interrogation prisons around the world. 

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