UN Palestine Expert Richard Falk: 9/11 doubts “taint legitimacy of U.S. government”
Geneva, November 11, 2008 - UN Watch, an independent human rights monitoring organization based in Geneva, today called on UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights commissioner Navi Pillay to condemn a United Nations official for endorsing conspiracy theories regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In a new article published this week in a Scottish student newspaper, entitled “9/11: More than meets the eye”, Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council investigator of “Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law”, expressed unqualified support for the 9/11 conspiracy movement, pointing to “doubts surrounding the true character of the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks.”
Human rights activists expressed concerns over the potential damage of Falk’s remarks. “The very credibility of the UN mission to preserve international peace and security is at stake,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer. “The UN can’t claim to oppose Al Qaeda terrorists while its officials seek to deny their most ghastly crimes.”
Dominated by Arab states, the 47-nation UN rights council appointed Falk to the only mandate that is immune from regular review, with Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and other member states voicing strong support for his work.
“How tragic that in the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN’s representative figures have gone from luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt to loonies like Richard Falk.” said Neuer.
“Falk’s biased mandate, radical politics, and crackpot views are a microcosm of what has become of the UN’s highest human rights body, where the world’s worst abusers divert attention from their crimes, attacking Israel in 80 percent of the resolutions,” said Neuer. “Innocent victims are being slaughtered in Congo, yet the council just eliminated its scrutiny of that country, saying it wasn’t needed.”
Elaborating on previous remarks on the topic, Falk referred to the collapse of one of the World Trade Center buildings, endorsing one of the more popular 9/11 conspiracy theories. “Any close student of 9/11 is aware of the many serious discrepancies between the official version of what took place and the actual happenings on that fateful day in 2001.”
“It is not paranoid under such circumstances to assume that the established elites of the American governmental structure have something to hide, and much to explain.” Falk wrote that we need “answers to the most difficult questions,” and expressed hopes of “an alternate version of the events that clears up to what degree, if at all, the attacks resulted from incompetence, deliberate inaction, and outright complicity.”
According to Falk, “the real explanation” for the alleged suppression of his views is “a widely shared fear of what sinister forces might lay beneath the unturned stones of a full and honest investigation of 9/11.”
“The persisting inability to resolve this fundamental controversy about 9/11 subtly taints the legitimacy of the American government,” said the UN official.
The European Union has in the past expressed opposition to the one-sided focus of Falk’s mandate. When he appeared on October 23 before the UN in New York, however, the EU urged Israel to cooperate with his investigations.
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