Ten years ago, a horrific car accident grimly illuminated how Turkish state officials colluded with drug barons to traffic drugs into Europe and Britain. Adrian Gatton investigates how corruption has smoothed the path of heroin from Afghanistan into the UK.

Adrian Gatton – One fateful evening, on November 3, 1996, a black Mercedes 600 pulled away from a plush Izmir hotel, and travelled towards Istanbul. Turkeys roads are notoriously dangerous, and on the dark highway, near the town of Susurluk, the Mercedes smashed into an oncoming truck. Three of its four passengers died in the pile-up.

The black Mercedes 600: Assassins tools like pistols with silencers and machine guns, plus false diplomatic passports.

Photographs show blood-stained seats in a mangled wreck, the bonnet wrinkled-up and scorched by fire. Medics pulled out the bodies of an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli. In the boot they found an assassins tools: pistols with silencers and machine guns, plus false diplomatic passports.

When the accident hit the papers, it emerged that Catli, a heroin trafficker on Interpols wanted list, was carrying a diplomatic passport signed by none other than the Turkish Interior Minister himself.

Deep State
The Susurluk Incident became Turkeys Watergate, exposing the deep links between the Turkish state, terrorists and drug traffickers. It revealed what Turks call the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State the politicians, military officers and intelligence officials who worked with drug bosses to move drugs from Afghanistan into Europe.

It was like a flash of lightning,says Hugh Pope, a British writer on Turkish affairs who has lived in Istanbul since the 1980s. For a brief moment, it lit up everything that was really happening behind the stage.

We should remember Susurluk today, because it is an event which can help us to understand Britains current heroin addiction. Susurluk showed that many drug traffickers who helped create Britains heroin addiction boom were backed by the Turkish establishment.

For example, Abdullah Catli, who died in the accident, trafficked heroin to the UK with the aid of the Turkish embassy in London which issued him a passport under his alias Mehmet Ozbay. He also had a UK work permit. Huseyin Baybasin, another Turkish heroin kingpin now in jail in Holland, who after Susurluk went public with revelations about state corruption, later explained his role in his book Trial by Fire: I handled the drugs which came through the channel of the Turkish Consulate in England.But as he adds: I was with the Mafia but I was carrying this out with the same Mafia group in which the rulers of Turkey were part.

The British authorities are well aware of Turkeys role in the drugs trade. In a story I broke in The Guardian earlier this year, I explained how in the 1990s Baybasin told British Customs and Excise investigators about state collusion in the drugs trade. After initial meetings in London, according to a source, these two drug liaison officers whose names are known to Druglink later travelled regularly to Holland to meet Baybasin.

According to a witness statement given to an immigration case involving Baybasins family, Huseyin agreed to provide investigators with information about what he knew of the role of Turkish politicians and officials in the heroin trade. The contents of the discussions are not known in detail, but in a string of newspaper and TV interviews, he claimed he was assisted by Turkish officers working for NATO in Belgium. The government kept all doors open for us,he said. We could do as we pleased.

Politics
What has Britain done about it? Not enough, it would seem, given the scale of the heroin still hitting the UKs shores. Turkey is a NATO-member and a moderate Islamic country with a secular state. Discussions with such a vital ally about its heroin problem have been tricky. When, for example, in 1997, Tom Sackville, the then UK Home Office minister, accused the Turkish government of being neck-deep in the drugs trade, he got a stiff demarche from the Turkish embassy (Sackville was speaking off-the-cuff and not following government policy). Our Foreign Office, rather than backing the minister, vented its fury on his department for meddling in foreign affairs, according to a source familiar with the row.

Sackvilles foray aside, the British governments reluctance to publicly condemn Turkey has frustrated investigators. We got a rare public glimpse of this when, in 2001, Chris Harrison, a senior Customs officer in Manchester, told veteran crime reporter Martin Short in his TV series Godfathers, that Customs could not get at the Turkish kingpins because they are protectedat a high level.

Turkeys heroin trade remains a sensitive diplomatic issue and so the ultra-secretive new Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which has incorporated Customsinvestigators, is unlikely to be so frank in future (the press policy they have adopted is more akin to MI5s). However, SOCA officers I have spoken with off-the-record are still sceptical about Turkey. One told me how he was even spied upon while working on a big drugs operation in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, Turkey remains central to the UKs heroin problem. Since the 1970s, Turkey has accounted for between 75 and 90 per cent of all heroin in the UK,said Mark Galeotti, a former intelligence officer and expert on the Turkish mafia. The key traffickers are Turks, or criminals who operate along that route using Turkish contacts (the Turkish connection).

Clean-up
Without doubt, there have been efforts to clean-up. International pressure after Susurluk brought some reforms, especially in money laundering regulations. And the Foreign Office funds, via the UNODC, the Turkish International Academy against Drugs and Organised Crime.

And since the late 1990s, the police and Customs, sometimes with Turkish assistance, have busted one trafficker after another from the Turkish connection. Here is a short roll-call: the Arif family of the Old Kent Road in London is largely eliminated, Liverpudlian kingpin Curtis Warren is in jail in Holland, Jimmy the HitmanKaragozlu was jailed, Ahmed and Amir Haghighat-Khou are in jail, the Kubilay family are out of action, and Ali Tore recently got 26 years. Other kingpins once mysteriously based here, such as Nurettin Guven and Alathin Cakici, have gone.

But as soon as one Turkish drug baron is jailed, another seems to take his place. Is Turkey just a victim of geography, as some experts claim, stuck between Afghanistan and Europe, or are the problems highlighted by Susurluk still cause for concern?

There wont be another Susurluk says Hugh Pope, who argues that Susurluk forced Turkey into a virtuous cycleof reform and soul-searching.

Others, like Turkeys former spy chief, Mehmet Eymur, would disagree. He moved to Washington and, by 2000, from that safe haven dished the dirt on the officials and politicians who escaped punishment for Susurluk. „Unfortunately,“ Eymur said at that time, „in Turkey, one scandal ends only to be followed by another.“

His criticisms are echoed by Professor Frank Bovenkerk, of Utrecht University, whose book on the Turkish mafia is forthcoming in the UK. He told Druglink: In Turkey now, [scandals like Susurluk] are so well-known, they dont even bother to cover it up any more.

If those remarks seem intemperate, they are nothing compared to those of a former FBI whistle-blower. According to Sibel Edmonds, who was a translator at the FBI, the Deep State continues to exist in Turkey. Her claims are the most sensational since Susurluk.

Legacy
Edmonds, who speaks Turkish, Farsi and Azeri, was hired by the FBI after 9/11 to translate phone-taps. She was in the front-line of the War on Terror, a war where terrorism, organised crime and drug-trafficking closely intersect. Headphones on, from her desk she had, as it were, her ear pressed to the wall of a lot of clandestine activity involving Turkey. When asked by Druglink whether the Deep State still operates in Turkey, she said: Of course it does. Its more powerful than ever.

Edmonds, who gave evidence to the 9/11 commission based on her experience, was fired by the FBI after she accused colleagues of corruption involving Turkey. She is a celebrated whistle-blower in America. But she is bound by a draconian gag order. She cant say a lot, but anyone interested in Susurluks legacy should listen carefully to what she does say. She questioned how drug trafficking can stop when it is so vital to the Turkish economy: The sums of money are huge. If it stopped it would cause an economic crash.

Dr Ertan Bese, of the Turkish National Police Academy, wrote in his 2004 doctoral thesis on Turkish organised crime, that the underworld economy of Turkey is worth $60bn, amounting to a massive 25 per cent of Turkeys national income. A huge proportion of this figure is derived from heroin trafficking.

Edmonds has testified, in secret, to how she discussed hearing Turkish consular officials in the USA apparently discussing drug deals. She told Druglink: In Turkey everything is run by the military. These activities cannot take place without the permission of the military and the permission of Turkish intelligence.

Until the gag-order on Sibel Edmonds is somehow lifted, we will be unable to explore her claims. However, they do raise concerns that the legacy of Susurluk is still with us and that combating the heroin trade is not so much a matter of police work as politics. But Turkeys crucial value to the British and US governments at a time of crisis in Iraq and Iran means the political will is not there. Meanwhile, Britains heroin addiction will continue. For us, at least, that is the legacy of Susurluk.

This article was first published @ Druglink Magazine
Adrian Gatton Weblog

Marjorie Cohn – In one of the most severe blows the Bush administration has dealt to our constitutional democracy, the Pentagon attacked the lawyers who have volunteered to represent the Guantánamo detainees.

Ironically, there were no alleged terrorists connected with 9/11 there until Bush recently transferred 14 men from his secret CIA prisons to Guantánamo.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson threatened corporate lawyers who agree to defend the men and boys imprisoned there. Flashing a list of corporations that use law firms doing this pro bono work, Stimson declared, „Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.“

In 1770, John Adams defended nine British soldiers including a captain who stood accused of killing five Americans. No other lawyer would defend them. Adams thought no one in a free country should be denied the right to a fair trial and the right to counsel. He was subjected to scorn and ridicule and claimed to have lost half his law practice as a result of his efforts.

Adams later said his representation of those British soldiers was „one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.“

Federal Judge Green, who has handled the many habeas corpus petitions filed by the Guantánamo detainees, expressed appreciation for the lawyers: „I do want to say we are very grateful for those attorneys who have accepted pro bono appointments. That is a service to the country, a service to the parties. No matter what position you take on this, it is a grand service.“

More than 750 men and boys have been held like animals in cages during the last five years at Guantánamo. Many were picked up by warlords and sold to the U.S. military for bounty. None has been tried for any crime. Very few even have any criminal charges against them.

Ironically, there were no alleged terrorists connected with 9/11 there until Bush recently transferred 14 men from his secret CIA prisons to Guantánamo. Meanwhile, hundreds of detainees languish in custody, aided by 500 courageous lawyers from 120 firms who have volunteered countless hours to represent them.

Under the Military Commissions Act Bush just rammed through Congress, the Guantánamo prisoners could be held for the rest of their lives without ever seeing a judge. Those who decide that death could not be worse than life at Gitmo have participated in a hunger strike.

Rather than subject the Bush administration to embarrassment when prisoners die in U.S. custody, military guards force feed them. Thick plastic tubes are forced down their throats with no anesthesia. Tubes are not sterilized before being reused on other prisoners. The UN Human Rights Commission called the force-feeding „torture.“ Many prisoners also report being tortured during interrogations.

Guantánamo has become the symbol of U.S. hypocrisy. While fighting the „war on terror“ and attacking other countries for their human rights abuses, the officials in the Bush administration have become war criminals. Torture and cruel or inhuman treatment are punishable as war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act.

The Supreme Court held in Rasul v. Bush that the Guantánamo prison is under U.S. jurisdiction, so prisoners there are entitled to the protections of the Constitution. The Sixth Amendment mandates that every person charged with a crime has the right to be defended by an attorney. The government is forbidden by the Fifth Amendment from denying any „person“ — U.S. citizen or not — due process of law. The presumption of innocence is enshrined in our legal system.

Bush’s attack on lawyers is the latest assault on our civil liberties, which now includes warrantless surveillance of our phone calls and email, and most recently, our U.S. Mail. Although Bush says he’s spying on the terrorists, those who criticize his policies, including his illegal and immoral war on Iraq, are also invariably in his cross hairs.

All Americans should heed the words of Martin Niemoller: „First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me.“

George W. Bush must immediately renounce Stimson’s threats and relieve him of his duties. A country that would sacrifice its own values under the guise of protecting them has no moral authority in this world.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Her book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published in June.


Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law

Marie Tessier – It’s been 45 years since the U.S. military put one of its own to death. What’s the likely penalty for the defendants in the rape, torture and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Al-Janabi and her family in Iraq?

Marie Tessier, an expert on violence against women, finds a record of lenience in the case of members of the Army charged in the death of Afghan detainees but also notes the 90-year sentence conferred on one member of the Army who confessed to his role in the Al-Janabi case. And as the remaining defendants in that case turn on one another, she details earlier instances where such finger pointing has resulted in watered down penalties. Tessier’s update on the possible results of the Al-Janabi prosecution continues WMC’s series and organizing campaign focusing on the crime and its implications for the military and U.S. foreign policy.

Read all @ the Woman’s Media Center

Gary W. Potter – The savings and loan scandal of the 1980s has been depicted in a myriad of ways. To some, it is „the greatest … scandal in American history“ (Thomas, 1991: 30). To others it is the single greatest case of fraud in the history of crime (Seattle Times, June 11, 1991).

Some analysts see it as the natural result of the ethos of greed promulgated by the Reagan administration (Simon and Eitzen, 1993: 50). And to some it was a premeditated conspiracy to move covert funds out of the country for use by the U.S. Intelligence Agency (Bainerman, 1992: 275). All of these depictions of the S & L scandal contain elements of truth.

But to a large degree, the savings and loan scandal was simply business as usual. What was unusual about it was not that it happened, or who was involved, but that it was so blatant and coarse a criminal act that exposure became inevitable. But with its exposure, three basic but usually ignored „truths“ about organized crime were once again demonstrated with startlingly clarity:

There is precious little difference between those people who society designates as respectable and law abiding and those people society castigates as hoodlums and thugs.

The world of corporate finance and corporate capital is as criminogenic and probably more criminogenic than any poverty-wracked slum neighborhood.

The distinctions drawn between business, politics, and organized crime are at best artificial and in reality irrelevant. Rather than being dysfunctions, corporate crime, white-collar crime, organized crime, and political corruption are mainstays of American political-economic life.

It is not our intent to discuss the unethical and even illegal business practices of the failed savings and loans and their governmental collaborators. The outlandish salaries paid by S & L executives to themselves, the subsidies to the thrifts from Congress which rewarded incompetence and fraud, the land „flips“ which resulted in real estate being sold back and forth in an endless „kiting“ scheme, and the political manipulation designed to delay the scandal until after the 1988 presidential elections are all immensely interesting and important.

But they are subjects for others‘ inquiries. Our interest is in the savings and loans as living, breathing organisms that fused criminal corporations, organized crime, and the CIA into a single entity that served the interests of the political and economic elite in America. Let us begin by quickly summarizing the most blatant examples of collaboration between financial institutions, the mob, and the intelligence community.

First National Bank of Maryland
For two years, 1983-1985, the First National Bank of Maryland was used by Associated Traders, a CIA proprietary company, to make payments for covert operations. Associated traders used its accounts at First National to supply $23 million in arms for covert operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, and Nicaragua (Bainerman, 1992; 276-277; Covert Action 35, 1990).

The links between the First National Bank of Maryland and the CIA were exposed in a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court by Robert Maxwell, a high-ranking bank officer. Maxwell charged in that suit that he had been asked to commit crimes on behalf of the CIA.

Specifically, he charged that he was asked to conceal Associated Traders‘ business activities, which by law he was required to specify on all letters of credit. Maxwell alleged that he had been physically threatened and forced to leave his job after asking that his superiors supply him with a letter stating that the activities he was being asked to engage in were legal. In responding to Maxwell’s lawsuit, attorneys for the bank state that „a relationship between First National and the CIA and Associated Traders was classified information which could neither be confirmed nor denied (Bainerman, 1992: 276-277; Washington Business Journal, February 5, 1990).

Palmer National Bank
The Washington, D.C.-based Palmer National Bank was founded in 1983 on the basis of a $2.8 million loan from Herman K. Beebe to Harvey D. McLean, Jr. McLean was a Shreveport Louisiana businessman who owned Paris (Texas) Savings and Loan. Herman Beebe played a key role in the savings and loan scandal. Houston Post reporter Pete Brewton linked Beebe to a dozen failed S & L’s, and Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo, in their investigation of the S & L fiasco, called Beebe’s banks „potentially the most powerful and corrupt banking network ever seen in the U.S.“ Altogether, Herman Beebe controlled, directly or indirectly, at least 55 banks and 29 S & L’s in eight states. What is particularly interesting about Beebe’s participation in these banks and savings and loans is his unique background. Herman Beebe had served nine months in federal prison for bank fraud and had impeccable credentials as a financier for New Orleans-based organized crime figures, including Vincent and Carlos Marcello (Bainerman, 1992: 277-278; Brewton, 1993: 170- 179).

Harvey McLean’s partner in the Palmer National Bank was Stefan Halper. Halper had served as George Bush’s foreign policy director during the 1980 presidential primaries. During the general election campaign, Halper was in charge of a highly secretive operations center, consisting of Halper and several ex- CIA operatives who kept close tabs on Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy activities, particularly Carter’s attempt to free U.S. hostages in Iran. Halper was later linked both to the „Debategate“ scandal, in which it is alleged that Carter’s briefing papers for his debates with Ronald Reagan were stolen, and with „The October Surprise,“ in which it is alleged that representatives of the Reagan campaign tried to thwart U.S. efforts to free the Iranian hostages until after the presidential election. Halper also set up a legal defense fund for Oliver North.

One of Mr. North’s Contra Plains, a C-123. Now a Restaurant

During the Iran-Contra Affair, Palmer National was the bank of record for the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, a front group run by Oliver North and Carl „Spitz“ Channell, which was used to send money and weapons to the contras.

Indian Springs Bank:
Another bank with clear connections to the CIA was the Indian Springs Bank of Kansas City, Kansas (Bainerman, 1992: 279-280; Brewton, 1993: 197-200). The fourth largest stockholder in Indian Springs was Iranian expatriate Farhad Azima, who was also the owner of an air charter company called Global International Air. The Indian Springs bank had made several unsecured loans to Global International Air, totaling $600,000 in violation of the bank’s $349,00 borrower limit. In 1983 Global International filed for bankruptcy, and Indian Springs followed suit in 1984. The president of Indiana Springs was killed in 1983 in a car fire that started in the vehicle’s back seat and was regarded by law enforcement officials as of suspicious origins.

Global International Air was part of Oliver North’s logistical network which shipped arms for the U.S. government on several occasions, including a shipment of 23 tons of TOW missiles to Iran by Race Aviation, another company owned by Azima. Pete Brewton, in his investigation of the Indian Springs bank collapse was told that FBI had not followed up on Indian Springs because the CIA informed them that Azima was „off limits“ (Houston Post, February 8, 1990). Similarly the assistant U.S. Attorney handling the Indian Springs investigation was told to „back off from a key figure in the collapse because he had ties to the CIA.“

Azima did indeed have ties to the CIA. His relationship with the agency goes back to the late 1970s when he supplied air and logistical support to EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport and Services Corporation), a company owned by former CIA agents Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, and Richard Secord. EATSCO was prominently involved in the activities of former CIA agent Edwin Wilson, who shipped arms illegally to Libya. Azima was also closely tied to the Republican party. He had contributed $81,000 to the Reagan campaign.

Global International also had other unsavory connections. In 1981, Global International made a payment to organized crime figure Anthony Russo, a convicted felon with a record that included conspiracy, bribery, and prostitution charges. Russo was the lawyer of Kansas City organized crime figures, an employee of Indian Springs, and a member of the board of Global International. Russo later explained that the money had been used to escort Liberian dictator Samuel Doe on a „goodwill trip“ to the U.S.

Global International’s planes based in Miami were maintained by Southern Air Transport, another CIA proprietary company. According to Franck Van Geyso, an employee of Global International, pilots for Global International ferried arms into South and Central America and returned to Florida with drugs. Indian Springs also made a loan of $400,000 to Morris Shenker, owner of the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, former attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, and close associate of Nick Civella and other Kansas City organized crime figures. At the time the loan to Shenker was made, he, Civella, and other Kansas City mobsters were under indictment for skimming $280,000 from Las Vegas‘ Tropicana Casino.

Vision Banc Savings
In March, 1986, Robert L. Corson purchased the Kleberg County Savings and Loan of Kingsville, Texas, for $6 million, and changed its name to Vision Banc Savings (Bainerman, 1992: 280-281; Brewton, 1993: 333-351). Harris County, Texas, judge Jon Lindsey vouched for Corson’s character in order to gain permission from state regulators for the bank purchase. Lindsey was the chairman of the Bush campaign in 1988 in Harris County and later received a $10,000 campaign contribution and a free trip to Las Vegas from Corson (Houston Post, February 11, 1990).

Corson was well-known to federal law enforcement agents as a „known money launderer“ and a „mule for the agency,“ meaning that he moved large amounts of cash from country to country. When Corson purchased Vision Banc, it had assets in excess of $70 million. Within four months it was bankrupt. Vision Banc engaged in a number of questionable deals under Corson leadership, but none more so that its $20 million loan to Miami Lawyer Lawrence Freeman to finance a real estate deal (Houston Post, February 4, 1990). Freeman was a convicted money launderer who had cleaned dirty money for Jack Devoe’s Bahamas-to-Florida cocaine smuggling syndicate and for Santo Trafficante’s Florida- based organized crime syndicate. Freeman was a law partner of CIA-operative and Bay of Pigs paymaster Paul Helliwell. Corson, in a separate Florida real estate venture costing $200 million, was indicted on a series of charges.

Hill Financial Savings
Vision Banc was not the only financial institution involved in Freeman’s Florida land deals. Hill Financial Savings of Red Hill, Pennsylvania, put in an additional $80 million (Brewton, 1993: 346-348) . The Florida land deals were only one of a series of bad investments by Hill Financial which led to collapse. The failure of Hill Financial, alone, cost the U.S. treasury $1.9 billion.

Sunshine State Bank
The cast of characters surrounding the Sunshine State Bank of Miami also included spies, White House operatives, and organized criminals (Bainermann, 1992: 281; Brewton, 1993: 310- 312, 320-323). The owner of the Sunshine State Bank, Ray Corona, was convicted in 1987 of racketeering, conspiracy, and mail fraud. Corona purchased Sunshine in 1978 with $1.1 million in drug trafficking profits supplied by Jose Antonio „Tony“ Fernandez, who was subsequently indicted on charges of smuggling 1.5 million pounds of marijuana into the U.S.

Among Corona’s customers and business associates were Leonard Pelullo, Steve Samos, and Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya. Pelullo was a well-known associate of organized crime figures in Philadelphia, who had attempted to use S & L money to broker a major purchase of an Atlantic City Casino as a mob frontman. Pelullo was charged with fraud for his activities at American Savings in California. Steve Samos was a convicted drug trafficker who helped Corona to set up Sunshine State Bank as a drug money laundry. Samos also helped set up front companies that funneled money and weapons to the Contras. Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya was a veteran CIA operative who had played a key role in the Bay of Pigs of invasion. He also had a long career as a money launderer in the Caribbean and in Texas on behalf of both the CIA and major drug trafficking syndicates.

Mario Renda, Lender to the Mob
Mario Renda was a Long Island money broker who brokered deposits to various savings and loans in return for their agreement to loan money to phony companies (Brewton, 1993: 45-47; 188-190; Pizzo et al. 1989: 466-471). Renda and his associates received finders fees of 2 to 6 percent on the loans, most of which went to individuals with strong organized crime connections who subsequently defaulted on them. Renda brokered deals to 160 Savings and Loans throughout the country, 104 of which eventually failed. Renda was convicted of $16 million from an S & L and for tax fraud.

Renda also served CIA and National Security Council interests as a money broker helping arrange for the laundering of drug money through various savings and loans on behalf of the CIA. He then obtained loans from the same S & L’s, which were funneled to the Contras. An organized crime-related stockbroker, a drug pilot, and Renda were all convicted in the drug money laundering case.

Full-Service Banking: All told at least twenty-two of the failed S & L’s can be tied to joint money laundering ventures by the CIA and organized crime figures (Glassman, 1990: 16-21; Farnham, 1990: 90-108; Weinberg, 1990: 33; Pizzo, et al., 1989: 466-471). If the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s reveal anything, they demonstrate what has often been stated as a maxim in organized crime research: that corruption linking government, business, and syndicates is the reality of the day-to-day organization of crime. Investigations of organized crime in the United States, Europe, and Asia have all uncovered organized crime networks operating with virtual immunity from law enforcement and prosecution.

Chambliss‘ study of organized crime in Seattle exposed a syndicate that involved participation by a former governor of the state, the county prosecutor, the police chief, the sheriff, at least 50 law enforcement officers, leading business people, including contractors, realtors, banks, and corporation executives, and, of course, a supporting cast of drug pushers, pimps, gamblers, and racketeers (Chambliss, 1978). The Chambliss study is not the exception but the rule. Other sociological inquires in Detroit, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York have all revealed similar patterns (Albini, 1971; Block, 1984; Block and Chambliss, 1981; Block and Scarpitti,1985; Jenkins and Potter, 1989; 1986; Potter and Jenkins, 1985; Potter, 1994). As Chambliss comments:

In the everyday language of the police, the press, and popular opinion, „organized crime“ refers to a tightly knit group of people, usually alien and often Italian, that run a crime business structured along the lines of feudal relationships. This conception bears little relationship to the reality of organized crime today. Nonetheless, criminologists have discovered the existence of organizations whose activities focus on the smuggling of illegal commodities into and out of countries (cocaine out of Colombia and into the United States and guns and arms out of the United States and into the Middle East, for example); other organizations, sometimes employing some of the same people, are organized to provide services such as gambling, prostitution, illegal dumping of toxic wastes, arson, usury, and occasionally murder. These organizations typically cut across ethnic and cultural lines, are run like businesses, and consist of networks of people including police, politicians, and ordinary citizens investing in illegal enterprises for a high return on their money.

Gary W. Potter, Professor in the Department of Police Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. Potter emphasized criminal justice in his doctoral work in Community Systems Planning and Development at the Pennsylvania State University. In addition to writing several book reviews and many articles in refereed journals on the subjects of drug law, organized crime and pornography, Potter is the author of The Porn Merchants and co-author of The City and the Syndicate: Organizing Crime in Philadelphia. Additionally, Potter is a referee for the American Journal of Criminal Justice and the American Journal of Police.

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Bern – «Angesichts der zusehends leistungs- und aussagekräftigeren bildgebenden Verfahren in der Hirnforschung» sagt Ulrich Weder, Leitender Staatsanwalt im Kanton Zürich, «ist eine Diskussion über die damit verbundenen straf- und datenschutzrechtlichen Aspekte notwendig.» TA-SWISS, das Zentrum für Technologiefolgen-Abschätzung, organisierte dazu am 22. November 2006 eine Tagung an der Zürcher Hochschule Winterthur. Fachleute aus den Bereichen Strafrecht, Justizvollzug und Datenschutz diskutieren die Potenziale und Grenzen des Neuroimagings, das heisst der Untersuchung des Gehirns mit bildgebenden Verfahren.

Neuroimaging erlaubt, den Aufbau und das Funktionieren des Gehirns an lebenden Personen zu untersuchen. Weil das menschliche Gehirn mehr ist als ein gewöhnliches Organ, interessieren sich nicht nur Ärzte dafür. Auch Psychologinnen, Ökonomen und Juristinnen versuchen das Geheimnis des Gehirns zu ergründen.

Hirnbilder künftig in der Gerichtspraxis?
Neuroimaging wird heute in der Grundlagenforschung, der biomedizinischen Forschung und Diagnose sowie bei der Therapie von Erkrankungen des Gehirns genutzt. Zudem untersuchen Forscher die kognitiven Leistungen. Sie setzen Neuroimaging auch in der forensischen psychologischen Forschung ein. Dabei geht es um folgende Fragen: Welche Modelle erklären kriminelles Verhalten am besten? Lassen sich auf die Hirnaktivität abgestützte Lügendetektoren entwickeln? Inwieweit lassen sich bei Straftätern abweichende Hirnfunktionen vorfinden? Die Möglichkeiten der neuen Technik könnten künftig auch Eingang finden in die Gerichtspraxis und die Therapie.

Datenschutz beachten
Durch Neuroimaging können besonders schützenswerte persönliche Daten generiert werden, die eventuell Rückschlüsse auf Hirnkrankheiten oder -funktions-störungen, auf Persönlichkeitsmerkmale oder normabweichendes Verhalten ermöglichen können. Bärbel Hüsing, Mitautorin der TA-SWISS Studie «Impact Assessment of Neuroimaging», betont: «Man muss besondere Sorgfalt walten lassen, zu welchem Zweck, durch wen und unter welchen Bedingungen solche Daten erhoben, ausgewertet und genutzt werden dürfen.»

Diskussion auf aktuellstem Stand
Neben den Autorinnen der TA-SWISS Studie Bärbel Hüsing vom Fraunhofer Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung in Karlsruhe und Brigitte Tag, Professorin für Strafrecht an der Universität Zürich wirkten an der Tagung vom 22. November 2006 in Winterthur weiter mit: Bruno Baeriswyl, Datenschutzbeauftragter des Kantons Zürich, Frank Urbaniok, Chefarzt und Leiter des Psychiatrisch-Psychologischen Dienstes im Justizvollzug des Kantons Zürich, Ulrich Weder, Leitender Staatsanwalt, Kanton Zürich sowie Nationalrat Daniel Vischer, Präsident der Kommission für Rechtsfragen des Nationalrates.