Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Galloway documents forged. posted by Richard Seymour
Socialist Worker has this scoop:The central document used against George Galloway this week by the senate committee in Washington is a forgery. Investigation by Socialist Worker shows that evidence crucial to the alleged case against the Respect MP is a fake, created after the fall of Baghdad in 2003.
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Most of the accusations hurled against George Galloway by Norm Coleman’s senate committee on investigations this week were based on testimony which was supposedly freely given by former Saddam Hussein regime officials who are now held by US forces.
In many cases they are not even named.
But there is one piece of evidence that at first glance seems persuasive. It is in the findings of the Duelfer Report — the conclusions of the Iraq Survey Group headed by Charles Duelfer which last year admitted Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
The senate committee’s document says, “According to the evidence in the Duelfer Report, the Hussein regime granted Galloway six oil allocations totalling 20 million barrels of oil”.
In the section of the Duelfer Report on “Regime finance and procurement", there is an annex (Annex B) of “Known oil voucher recipients”.
According to Duelfer, “This annex contains the 13 secret lists maintained by Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan al-Jizrawi and the Minister for Oil, Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi. A high-level Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) official provided the Iraq Survey Group with both English and Arabic versions of these lists on 16 June 2004. The lists reproduced here are the original SOMO translations in English."
The list has hundreds of names of individuals and corporations many of which, according to Duelfer, acted legally in dealing in Iraqi oil under the UN Oil for Food programme.
The first mention of George Galloway is contract M/09/23. This alleges that 1.014 million barrels of oil were allocated to “Mr Fawwaz Zurayqat - Mr George Galloway -Aredio Petroleum (French)”.
Look closely at the entry
The typeface (font) used for “Mr George Galloway” is different to the rest of the line. Indeed the only time the font is used in the entire document is for George Galloway entries.
"Mr George Galloway” does not line up with the rest of the words in the entry, it is at an angle to the other words.
The spacings between “Mr George Galloway” and the rest of the words are inconsistent.
The dash after the words “Mr George Galloway” touches the following word.
The words “Mr George Galloway” are at a different density (lighter) than the rest of the line.
The most likely explanation is that the words “Mr George Galloway” have been imported after the list was prepared, perhaps stuck on and then photocopied to produce the list in the Duelfer Report.
Elsewhere the Duelfer Report revisits this same contract note and, citing an internal Iraqi document, says the allocation was to “Fawaz Zuraiqat — Mariam’s Appeal”.
More: David Traynier has extracted this image of the Galloway reference from this page of the Duelfer report.
This is supposed to represent the entry on which Galloway was directly given money by Hussein's regime. If it doesn't look dodgy enough in itself, compare it to the rest of the entries. The format is different and the spacing is different.