Israel Matzav

Abu Bluff: 'No more sex scandals'

Confronted with incontrovertible evidence that Rafiq Husseini, one of his top aides, disparaged him and Yasser Arafat and attempted to obtain sexual favors from a woman in the context of his work, 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has fired Husseini, but has also ordered the PA security services to destroy all material implicating Palestinians in sexual and moral offenses, including videotapes and audio recordings, to ensure that the problem never happens again.

The PA president also instructed his security forces to refrain from “violating or intruding into the privacy” of Palestinians.

Husseini and senior Abbas aides initially claimed that the videotape had been “fabricated” and that [PA anti-corruption investigator Fahmi] Shabaneh was a “collaborator” with Israel.

However, the commission of inquiry, which Abbas established after the sex tape was broadcast on Channel 10, did not find any evidence of Israeli involvement in the scandal.

In fact, the three-man commission held Shabaneh’s former boss, Tawfik Tirawi, responsible and recommended that he be kept out of any official position in the PA.

The commission found that Tirawi, then commander of the General Intelligence Service, had authorized the secret filming of Husseini.

Tirawi, who today is head of the Palestinian “Military Academy,” claimed in recent weeks that he knew nothing about the sex scandal, accusing Shabaneh of “collaboration” with Israel.

The commission’s findings are seen as a victory for Shabaneh, who has insisted all along that the videotape was authentic and that he had acted on instructions from Tirawi.

If any of you has a connection to the House or Senate Foreign Affairs or Appropriations Committees, please urge them to invite Shebaneh (who was not able to testify before Abu Bluff's 'commission of inquiry' for reasons explained in the article) to come to Washington to testify. I'm sure they would be very interested to hear what he has to say about how the PA spends its American assistance money.

I wonder how many tapes Shebaneh has of Abu Bluff. Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:01 AM