الصفقة السرية القذرة بين إدارة اوباما و نظام المجرم البشير

WOLF ASKS TREASURY TO REVOKE LICENSE GRANTED TO U.S. LAWYER

ALLOWING HIM TO REPRESENT GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN



Washington, D.C. (December 15, 2011) – Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) today asked the Treasury Department to revoke the license granted to a U.S. lawyer to represent the Government of Sudan in Washington, saying that he is violating the law by lobbying Congress.



Wolf pointed to a letter he received from the lawyer yesterday detailing why sanctions against Sudan should be lifted. The lawyer, Bart Fisher, also called Wolf’s office. Wolf did not solicit the letter or the call.



“I never requested information from Mr. Fisher,” Wolf wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. “And yet yesterday, he called my chief of staff. And, in his letter he tries to convince me, as a Member of Congress, that the current sanctions regime should be altered. If that’s not lobbying, I don’t know what is.”



Wolf added that the license should have never been granted in the first place.

The complete text of Wolf’s letter is attached.



Wolf also spoke on the House floor on the issues for the second time this week. Below are his remarks:



Mr. Speaker, I was pleased this morning that The Washington Post did a story on a shameful development here in Washington, namely that Bart Fisher, a Washington lawyer, was granted a license by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at Treasury to represent the genocidal government of Sudan. I submit a copy of the Post article for the Record.



The Sudanese people have long been brutalized, marginalized and terrorized by their own government. And yet, unbelievably, it seems this same regime has been afforded the privilege of legal representation in Washington by the Obama Administration. According to a news report earlier this week in Africa Intelligence, Mr. Fisher was hired with the express purpose of trying “to lift American sanctions against it.”



In documentation posted on the Department of Justice Web site, it appears that Mr. Fisher was granted a license by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at Treasury to provide this representation and that he plans to engage in political activities, among them, “Representations (including petitions)…to U.S. government agencies regarding sanctions…”



I am appalled that this has been permitted and can’t help but wonder if Mr. Fisher’s political contributions were a factor. The administration should reverse this approval.



Martin Luther King famously said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” What must the people of Sudan be thinking at this particular juncture when the administration struggles to find its voice on their behalf, while at the same time seemingly empowering the voice of their oppressors.



Bashir’s crimes are well-known and documented. This is the same man that is accused by the International Criminal Court of five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture, extermination and two counts of war crimes.



I have been to Sudan five times, including in July 2004 when Senator Sam Brownback and I were the first congressional delegation to go to Darfur. We spoke with women who had been raped just days earlier. The Arab janjaweed militias, armed by Khartoum, told these women that they wanted to make “lighter skinned babies.”



In addition to horrific human rights abuses and crimes committed by Bashir and his National Congress Party (NCP), Sudan remains on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. It is well known that the same people currently in control in Khartoum gave safe haven to Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s. Moreover, Khartoum was a revolving door for Hamas and other designated terrorist groups.



But Bashir’s crimes are not merely a thing of the past. At a recent Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing on the crisis in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states in Sudan, former Member of Congress and President of United to End Genocide, Tom Andrews, spoke about his experiences while visiting the region. He said that there were reports of, “Sudanese armed forces and their allied militias going door to door targeting people based upon their religion, and based upon the color of their skin.”



A recent delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom visited Sudan and met with refugees in Yida camp. They returned with similar reports. All of the pastors with whom they spoke said they fled Southern Kordofan after learning that the Sudanese military was undertaking house searches for Christians and SPLM-North supporters.



We stand just blocks from a museum that cries out “Never Again.” Meanwhile, it appears that this administration is complicit in allowing a genocidal government to have an advocate in Washington. The people that have the authority and the power to stop this from happening are President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Geithner, Adam Szubin, the head of OFAC and David Cohen, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at Treasury. History will be their judge if they fail to act.