Gaza conflict

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp.  This is The World.  A new report raises some serious questions about Israel’s military offensive in Gaza earlier this year.  The report contains testimony by Israeli soldiers who took part in the conflict, and it alleges that the Israeli army committed widespread abuses against Palestinian civilians.  The Israeli government says it takes such allegations seriously, but it also questions the veracity of the report published today.  The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

MATTHEW BELL:  The group behind the report on alleged Israeli military abuses in Gaza is called Breaking The Silence.  It’s collected anonymous testimony from about 25 veterans of the Gaza offensive, and it put out some of that testimony in short videos.  In this clip, an Israeli reserve sergeant describes the rules of engagement his unit was operating under.

AMIR:  “At any obstacle, any problem, we open fire and don’t ask questions.  Even if it’s firing in the dark, firing aimed at unknown target, firing when we don’t see, deterrent fire – no problem with any of that.  A vehicle that’s in the way – crush it; a building in the way – shoot at it.”

BELL:  A spokesman for the group Breaking The Silence has said that Israeli troops sent into Gaza were essentially told to shoot first and ask questions later.  He also said the soldiers’ testimony was taken anonymously to protect them as whistle blowers.  Mark Regev is a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister.  He told the BBC today that the soldiers’ claims in this report are not credible because they’re impossible to verify.

REGEV:  We don’t know whatsoever what their position was.  Were they involved directly or not so?  We don’t know how this information was gathered.  We don’t know what the credibility is to check this out or not to check this out. We have none of those references at all.  I mean, this doesn’t even make the most basic standards of tabloid journalism.

BELL:  Regev called on the report’s authors to verify their claims and then go public with them so they can be addressed in a serious way.  The allegations were serious enough, however, to draw a response from Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak.  He said Israel has one of the most ethical militaries in the world and it acts according to a high moral code.  Author and former Israeli soldier, Jeffrey Goldberg, agrees with Barak.  But he says asking tough questions about recent military operations is a vital part of Israeli life.

GOLDBERG:  Every neighborhood, every apartment bloc, every communal farm is sending people to war and they come back in 2 weeks or a month, 3 months, whenever – and they talk about what happened.  And because Israel is a very self-critical place, you will here in society incredibly detailed and informed criticism of the way in which particular wars or particular operations were waged.  It’s a check against military abuse.

BELL:  Goldberg agrees the latest allegations of abuses in Gaza, if they’re verified, should be taken seriously.  But he says they’re also a reminder of how Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians makes it difficult for the Jewish state to live up to its own moral expectations.

GOLDBERG:  No army can emerge unscathed from a military operation.  The choice is that commanders on the ground have to make are often choices between something untenable and something truly untenable.

BELL:  Goldberg says the actions of Hamas are largely what led to the death and destruction suffered by Palestinians in the Gaza War.    At the same time, he says, one of Israel’s greatest strengths is in its ability to engage in self-reflection.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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Professor Guiora’s article in Foreign Policy

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JEB SHARP: One tactic Israel has used against Hamas in Gaza is the targeted killing of militant leaders. That’s a tactic the United States has used too against suspected terrorists in other parts of the world. We’ve heard recently about CIA plans to conduct targeted killings of senior Al-Qaeda members. Those plans were never used before CIA director Leon Panetta cancelled them last month. Amos Guiora was a legal advisor to the Israeli defense commander in Gaza from 1994 to 1997. In that capacity he gave legal advice on targeted killings. He says there are several legal and moral complexities to consider.

AMOS GUIORA: The most important aspect of targeted killings to understand is what I call a four-part analysis which requires us to think about international law; questions of morality; how we gather intelligence; and also how we determine effectiveness. Because at the end of the day what we’re talking about is the dilemma of the decision maker that the decision maker being the commander. He needs advice but at the end of the day it’s his call. But there are critical issues that go into that decision making and in order to make the most reasoned and cautious decision the commander needs to understand the limits of power. He needs to respect the limits of power. But he also needs to understand that operational counter terrorism requires making those very difficult decisions.

SHARP: The idea of a targeted killing is that one person is targeted but the reality is often that civilians get killed too. When you’re thinking about the issue of what makes a targeted killing legal how do you reconcile that with the fact that killing innocents is still wrong?

GUIORA: That’s an outstanding question. So first of all, international law talks about collateral damage. But it says that the commander must make every reasonable effort to minimize collateral damage which translates crassly and roughly into an understanding of the forefathers of international law that when you’re engaged in operational counter terrorism there’s always a chance that innocent civilians will be injured or killed. The requirement of the commander is obviously to minimize that. Nowhere does it say that there can be no loss of life amongst innocent civilians. That said it is clearly one of the considerations or calculations of making the decisions. You know the hit will be done in such a way that the person will be in that particular moment not surrounded by innocents. Obviously there clearly have been examples where the target killing has gone forward and as a result of which innocent civilians were killed and then that obviously raises important legal and moral questions.

SHARP: You are dealing with a military program aimed at stopping suicide bombings but here in the US now we’re talking about a CIA program targeting terrorists overseas. How are these situations different from each other?

GUIORA: Well I think if we think about the CIA program that the first question we would have to ask ourselves is whether or not it’s future preventive, predicated or retribution predicated. I would argue, without knowing all the facts of the CIA program, but I would suggest that if the plan was retribution based killing somebody for an act done in the past without any intelligence information suggesting future activity that kind of program would not meet my four-part test. On the other hand if the program was intended to prevent future acts of terrorism based on intelligence information that reliable, credible, viable, and valid then I would say that would meet international law standards. So the fundamental question which needs to be asked is whether or not the program is future based or past based.

SHARP: Why do you think CIA director Leon Panetta shut the American program down?

GUIORA: As far as I can tell from you know what one reads and what one hears because I think there was concern exactly on that issue was that past or future what kind of intelligence had been gathered and whether it really was preventive or more retribution based. And I think maybe, again based only what I’ve been able to read, that there was maybe concern as to whether or not congress had been fully kept abreast of the program which raises other equally significant questions in the American paradigm in terms of checks and balances and separation of powers in terms of when does the executive have to confer with the congress.

SHARP: Yeah that’s interesting that the controversy seems to focus on the secrecy of the program and yet there are all these larger issues to discuss. I mean what do you think is the main issue that should discussed in reference to this apparent program?

GUIORA: Well I think that almost eight years after 9/11 the time has come for the American public to begin – underline the word begin – having a serious discussion about what are America’s counter terrorism policies. I would suggest that eight years later we really haven’t had that discussion. We’ve had maybe discussions about tactics but I don’t think we’ve had the kind of sophisticated candid discussion about strategy and policy. And I think you’re absolutely right the response seems to be to cancel the program because congress wasn’t briefed or congress is upset because congress wasn’t briefed. That’s not the issue. And we’ve never really engaged in that very, very difficult discussion about what exactly are we trying to do and what are the limits of what we’re trying to do.

SHARP: Amos Guiora is a professor of law at the University of Utah. He served in the Israeli defense forces judge advocate general’s core for 19 years. Thanks so much for talking to us.

GUIORA: Thank you so much for having me.

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JEB SHARP: A few months back, we told you about a pirate party in Sweden.  We’re not talking about high-seas piracy.  This is the hi-tech variety.  Sweden’s pirate party is a political party.  It’s calling for the reform of intellectual property laws.  Not exactly a swash-buckling story.  But in April, four men in Stockholm were convicted of violating copyright law for running a file-sharing website.  Since then, Sweden’s Pirate Party has seen a surge in membership, and now other pirate parties are springing up across Europe and in the US.  Cyrus Farivar has this update.

CYRUS FARIVAR:  According to the Pirate Party, intellectual property laws written pre-internet are just out of date.

GLEN KERBEIN:  And once the Internet came around, when it became where each person’s browser created a new copy, that completely threw the system up into upheaval.

FARIVAR:  That’s Glenn Kerbein.  He’s co-administrator of the Pirate Party of the  United States.  He points out that the entire Internet is based on copying stuff.  Each time you load a web page, your computer is, in fact, copying a set of files from another computer.  You could argue that digital copying is so seamless that nearly everyone could become a “pirate” by virtue of the technology.  At least, that’s what pirate parties across Europe are saying – and they’re in many countries.

KERBEIN:  Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden – there was one in Ukraine, and one in Russia – Austria, Switzerland.

FARIVAR:  Kerbein forgot to mention the Czech Pirate Party and the Estonian Pirate Party.  Both were founded last month.  And now there’s one in Switzerland.  Christian Reisen is one of the founders.  He says Swiss intellectual property laws are relatively relaxed, but there’s pressure to make them more restrictive.

CHRISTIAN REISEN:  We’re allowed to download music and moves as much as we want, so long as it’s for private use.  So that means it’s completely legal to download the biggest movie that just came out in cinema.  As long as you disable your upload, you can download as much as you want for private use.  Now they want to block that, so we’re fighting against that and at the same time trying to open it up even more.

FARIVAR:  For pirate parties, that includes calling for shorter copyright terms, the elimination of patents and broader online privacy rights.  So far, the European Pirate Parties don’t have much political power.  But last month, a German member of Parliament left the Social Democrats and joined the Pirate Party.  And the Swedish Pirate Party did well enough in the recent European Union parliamentary elections to secure one of the country’s seats.  Eddan Katz is with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a tech law advocacy group.  He says the European style of government makes a single-issue party viable.

EDDAN KATZ:  Often in Europe and in places where there’s a more parliamentary system, where there are multiple parties that can be represented in the governing body, a group can focus on a particular issues – a political party can surround itself over a narrower set of issues and still be a representative of a lot of people.

FARIVAR:  The Pirate Party of the United States probably faces a harder time.  At this point, it doesn’t have any official candidates.  But Glenn Kerbein says that the party is making an endorsement.  It’s supporting a 24-year-old computer engineer running for Congress in Tennessee in 2010.   For The World, I’m Cyrus Farivar.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World. It’s been more than a month since Iran’s presidential election provoked massive anti-government demonstrations. But opposition supporters aren’t just targeting the government. Some of them are now boycotting the cell phone giant Nokia. They accuse it of collaborating with Iran’s authorities. Specifically they say Nokia and the firm Siemens sold Iran electronic monitoring systems that the government used to eavesdrop of on dissidents’ cell phones. Tehran-based correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan wrote about the story in today’s Guardian newspaper. How wide spread is this boycott in Iran?

SAEED KAMALI DEHGHAN: Well I have talked to some wholesalers of the Nokia handsets in Tehran and they confirmed that they receive half a demand in comparison with before. So it seems that people are just not happy with having Nokia anymore after the revelation that the Nokia Siemens network has sold a monitoring system to the Iranian regime.

SHARP: What is Nokia saying?

DEHGHAN: Well Nokia they themselves refuse to comment on the specific issue. They said that they’re not going to comment about [INAUDIBLE] and the other hand I could manage to talk to a spokesman from the Nokia Siemens network. They were saying that monitoring system was a part of the network itself. But on the other hand you know the Iranian protestors think that the monitoring system was separate from the network.

SHARP: So let me just see if I have that clear. The protestors feel as if Nokia could have sold a phone system that didn’t have this capability to monitor but Nokia itself says no it’s just part of the package. This is standard.

DEHGHAN: Yes that is correct.

SHARP: We’ve been talking about Nokia but I understand the boycott has spread to other targets. What other companies are being singled out?

DEHGHAN: Well there are some governmental companies, the companies who have given advertisement to the state-run T.V. Well people don’t feel happy anymore saying the companies [INAUDIBLE] on T.V. So somehow I can say there’s a boycott inside Iran to the companies who are continuing to give [INAUDIBLE] advertisements to the state on T.V. So in these terms the T.V. in Iran is confronting an economy crisis because they don’t have any income in terms of advertisements. And the Iranian people have decided to boycott SMS and not using it anymore.

SHARP: So SMS being texting. People are not texting.

DEHGHAN: Yeah exactly. People are not texting anymore because they think that would affect the government their communication service with a decrease in the income they receive from texting. But the government needs money from SMS texting and people are not using it anymore.

SHARP: Do you think economic boycotts are now the most viable strategy for opponents of Iran’s regime?

DEHGHAM: Well it can be effective but the Iranian economy is mostly based on the oil price and the Iranian protestors inside Iran cannot do many, many important or effective things about the oil price. But at least it will show to the government how people are angry. There are lots of people inside Iran who are not happy with the situation and are continuing their protest in underground. You know they cannot go to the streets so they have shifted the protests from the streets to the underground and to the other new ways.

SHARP: Thanks very much. Tehran-based correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes for the British newspaper The Guardian. He joined us from London. Thanks again.

DEHGHAN: Thanks.

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JEB SHARP: Lebanon has been rocked by an espionage scandal.  The country has accused dozens of its own citizens of spying for Israel.  The World’s Aaron Schachter has the story.

AARON SCHACHTER:  Lebanon began announcing the arrests almost three months ago.  Since then, at least 60 people have been detained and 100 others taken in on suspicion of espionage.  Lebanese authorities say some suspects were caught with hi-tech spying equipment, like cameras hidden in crutches and backpacks.  In one case, they claim a suspect planted hidden GPS devices in cars sold to Hezbollah operatives.  According to the allegations, the spies were providing Israel with information about the Shiite militant group, including its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.  Israel hasn’t commented on the issue, but last week the UN Security Council said that if the Israeli espionage allegations are confirmed, they would constitute a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty.   Those arrested include everyone from high-level military personnel to hometown heroes.  Soha Homsi sits in the garden planted by her brother, Ziad, in the village of Saadnayel.  Ziad was arrested in May, two weeks before the Lebanese elections.   Homsi maintains her brother hates Israel; he fought against them in the 1970s and ‘80s.  He’s also a pillar of the community in Saadnayel and a die-hard supporter of a pro-Western, anti-Syrian political party.  Homsi gestures at their modest home and asks whether it looks like her brother got tens of thousands of dollars from Israel, as is alleged.  Soha Homsi says people here would doubt their wives or kids before suspecting Ziad Homsi of spying.  But, she says, his enemies have resorted to tricks before.

SOHA HOMSI:  “This kind of tactic happened with Ziad in ’93 when the Syrians were here.  They convicted him of drugs felony.  It happened exactly before the elections as well.  It’s becoming something casual for the Lebanese authorities to accuse people of being traitors.”

SCHACHTER:  But in another garden in a Shiite village down the road, Abu Abbas tells a different story.  “I’m a friend of Ziad Homsi,” Abu Abbas says, “but I believe 100 percent in his guilt.  Well-placed friends of mine in the security services told me the facts.”   “And if it weren’t true,” Abu Abbas asks, “why would the Lebanese government still hold him?  And why hasn’t the Sunni leadership, who Ziad was close to, proclaimed his innocence?”  Abu Abbas says he believes Ziad Homsi, a Sunni, fell into what he calls “the pit of sectarianism”, thinking that if he helped take down Hezbollah he’d be helping Lebanon.   But perhaps what’s amazed people here most about the spy allegations are their lack of sectarianism. It’s an equal opportunity scandal.  Those arrested span Lebanon’s 3 main religious groups:  Christian, Sunni and Shiite.   This is Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah calling for the Death Penalty for “agents who assisted Israel.”  Nasrallah has lived literally underground for more than a year, fearing an Israeli assassination attempt.  In the past, Israel has allied with some Lebanese Christians, but right now, no one here is pointing fingers at any one particular religious group.   Israel is accused of spying on Hezbollah and its institutions, not Lebanon itself.   But Sami Baroudi, a political science professor at Lebanese American University, says many here don’t make that distinction.

SAMI BAROUDI:  While some groups in Lebanon have some question marks about the weapons of Hezbollah, there is absolutely no divisions in Lebanon that Hezbollah is Lebanese group and that its members are entitled to all the protection that all Lebanese citizens are entitled to.

SCHACHTER:  Analysts here say the arrests reflect a revitalized effort by Lebanon’s various security agencies, and a newfound cooperation between the state and Hezbollah’s own security apparatus.   Ironically, the arrests of the alleged Israeli spies may have been aided by the United States.  The US has provided Lebanon with about $400 million dollars worth of training and sophisticated new technology over the past few years, in an attempt to give the army an edge over Hezbollah, which the US considers a terrorist group.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, in Beirut.

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Inside the Taliban

Taliban insurgency

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. Pakistan is now a crucial battleground in the fight against Islamist extremism and it’s not just American officials saying that. So does a new audio statement allegedly voiced by AL-Qaeda’s second in command. Pakistan is in the middle of a war against Al-Qaeda’s allies – the Taliban. This week we’re airing a series or reports on the Taliban movement. Our series is a partnership between The World and the international news site globalpost.com. Today Charles Sennott explores how Pakistan has turned against a movement it once supported.

CHARLES SENNOTT: There is a drumbeat of war behind the news coverage of Pakistan’s ongoing offensive against the Taliban.

TV ANCHOR SOUND CLIP: The army is to stay in the Swat Valley indefinitely as 1,305 terrorists and 105 security personnel have been killed in operations so far.

SENNOTT: This offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley and in Waziristan has caused a wave of more than two million internally displaced people and a rising anger within the populous. Video footage of Taliban soldiers beating a girl in Swat caused wide spread revolution. On June 7 one new story in particular grabbed the country’s attention.

TV ANCHOR SOUND CLIP: Our top story this afternoon. Two great policemen have laid down their lives to prevent a suicide bomber from making…

SENNOTT: The story of the policemen who accepted martyrdom as the news broadcasters put it serves as modern parable for Pakistan. Two officers save their colleagues who were kneeling to pray while a Taliban suicide bomber tried to enter and kill them in the name of God. In an Islamabad hospital I visited one of the injured officers, Mohamed Tariq, who lay recovering from shrapnel wounds. The two officers who stopped the bomber were his good friends.

MOHAMED TARIQ: [SPEAKING URDU]

TRANSLATOR: These people have nothing to do with Islam. Killing other Muslims, that’s not Islam. Muslims don’t do this. They don’t make orphans.

SENNOTT: Tariq vowed to get right back to work in his police unit, Rescue 15, which has been active in counter terrorism.

TARIQ: [SPEAKING URDU]

TRANSLATOR: I’m not afraid. None of us are afraid by all of this and I’ll go back to the Rescue 15 as soon as I’m better.

SENNOTT: This story captured a collective resolve against the Taliban. To veteran journalist Rahimullah Yusefzai this is a marked change from the anti-American sentiment that he believes undercut Pakistan’s efforts against the militants.

RAHIMULLAH YUSEFZAI: They got popular public support this time. It’s very different. That is a big tide you know. This is actually; they have turned the corner in that sense. But for the first time the Pakistani public, in large numbers, the majority, is supporting the military operation. Most of the political parties are supporting the military operation. So I think this is something which is going to be very effective.

SENNOTT: There’s a profound dialogue underway across Pakistan about the Taliban. The country openly supported the movement when it emerged 1994. A relationship of expediency, also shared by the United States. But when the Taliban provided refuge to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in 1996 the US soon imposed sanctions and sought to isolate the regime. But not Pakistan. After the US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks the Taliban was pushed across the border. US military officials said it was given cover by the Pakistani military and allowed to reconstitute itself. And in the last few years a new Pakistani Taliban was born – one that was widely supported until now. The turn against the Taliban was highlighted at this recent conference in Islamabad. Pakistan’s top religious scholars, veteran government officials, and a high ranking general all gathered here. They are the religious and military elite that for some 15 years supported the Afghan Taliban. Now this group was publicly speaking out against the Pakistani Taliban.

MUSSARAT AHMEDZEB: I see them as bullies. They don’t know the meaning of Islam.

SENNOTT: Mussarat Ahmedzeb is the daughter-in-law of the last Wali of Swat, a kind of religious monarch who once controlled the area and implemented Islamic law. She now runs an institute for war widows of which there are many in the Sway Valley these days.

AHMEDZAB: They’re just a bunch of few people want to just blow themselves up trying to bring terror. That’s not Islam for God’s sake.

SENNOTT: Another more surprising critic at the conference was Qazi Hussein Ahmed, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. He has long been a part of a theological establishment in Pakistan that backed the Afghan Taliban. But he is now deeply critical of the Pakistani version of that movement.

QAZI HUSSEIN AHMED: The Taliban do not have the guidance of great Islamic thinkers and scholars. They are mainly village imams. And they have not a well thought framework of an Islamic state.

SENNOTT: Other religious scholars have gone further and launched the Save Pakistan Movement to counter what they see as the warped ideology of the Taliban in Pakistan. So why has a conservative religious establishment turned against the Talibanor the splintered fractions that profess to be the Taliban?

IMRAN KHAN: There’s total confusion in Pakistan. No one understands what Taliban is.

SENNOTT: Imran Khan is a former Playboy cricket star turned political leader and conservative Muslim. He speaks of the confusion over how to deal with multiple Talibans. Islamists who did not lay down their arms in Swat as agreed but fought their way towards Islamabad and are now threatening the integrity of the Islamic state.

KHAN: I’m afraid this is just going to go on and on and I don’t think Pakistan can go on like this much longer. The danger for our country is going to collapse. We are going to be what happened to Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

SENNOTT: These are ominous words and a hint that the Pakistani elite is now doing some serious soul searching about the kind of Islamic state that Pakistan should be. Sitting under thunder clouds in the garden of his Islamabad home Pervez Hoodbhoy, a secular intellectual, suggests Pakistan has failed to see the gathering storm while the country has been taken over by a Saudi-style puritanical Islam. Hoodbhoy blames the Punjabi religious and military elite for courting the rural Pashtun Taliban at first for self-serving geo-political reasons and then out of a lazy anti-Americanism. Finally he says the country has woken up.

PERVEZ HOODBHOY: It’s very interesting to see how this change came about. There were hundreds of girl’s schools which had been bombed in Swat. Nobody seemed to care. There were beheadings. Nobody seemed to care. And then finally the government gave in and said alright we will cave into the Taliban demands and we will sign the peace deal with them and now Shariat will be imposed. And then the Taliban just lost their marbles. They made such a disastrous mistake.

SENNOTT: The mistake he says was when a Pakistani Taliban leader, Sufi Mohammed, went on television rejecting the constitution and democracy as anti-Islamic. It became clear the Pakistani Taliban could not be appeased and was no longer just a tool of leverage in Afghanistan but an existential threat to the country.

HOODBHOY: Now that was going just a bit too far. Sufi Mohammed just lost the whole support for the Taliban across Pakistan and that’s the time that the army finally mustered up the courage, the public support as well, for moving against the Taliban.

SENNOTT: But the military offensive has come at a huge price. Two million refugees living in cramped conditions here on the edge Peshawar can attest to that. And patience is running out. Welder Jad Mohammed Khan, here with his wife and five children blames the government for their plight, not the Taliban.

JAD MOHAMMED KHAN: [SPEAKING URDU]

TRANSLATOR: The government was badly prepared and the problems we were facing have just doubled since we came down here. The only thing that’s happening is that the hatred between people is growing out here. People are getting very frustrated out here and angry at the government.

SENNOTT: The risk for the government of Pakistan is that the longer this offensive goes on against the Taliban the more likely it is to lose the vital support of the people. For The World this is Charles Sennott, Islamabad.

SHARP: Our series on the Taliban continues tomorrow with the story of a girl’s school in Afghanistan that symbolizes the challenges facing those who take on the Taliban.

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Geo Quiz archive

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp. This is The World. Our next two stories share one theme – the father-son relationship. In a few minutes we’ll hear from a man in Italy who thinks music offers an opportunity to connect with his son. First though we turn to Australia where a father whose son was missing just got some excellent news. The son British backpacker Jamie Neale was found a few hours ago. He’d been lost in the Australian bush for almost two weeks. Many involved in the search had almost given up hope. Australian police were just about to officially call off the search for the 19 year old and the young man’s father, Richard Cass, was getting ready to fly back to his home in England because he believed his son was dead. The BBC’s correspondent Nick Bryant spoke to Cass soon after he was reunited with his son.

RICHARD CASS: I was three hours away from flying home. I’d accepted I wasn’t going to see my son again. Then I had the good news come through on a recorded message. I was up there you know. My boy’s been found.

NICK BRYANT: You jumped on a helicopter, you came straight here, you met Jamie…

CASS: I met Jamie.

BRYANT: What do you say?

CASS: Well my main thing is I need to thank the people of Australia for what they’ve done for my boy and I’m so glad to see Jamie. I can’t even remember my first words. I know I had a go at him about how stupid he’d been. He’s supposed to be an intelligent boy. He’s supposed have his father’s brains but… It was like a training film in how to get lost in the bush. Leave your phone behind you. The only teenager in the world who’d leave his phone behind. Not take a beacon with him and he actually brought a space blanket to Australia and left it Perth before he flew over to Sydney. So you know he was a bit tearful when I had a go at him. “No please don’t have a go at me.” But you know he knows we love him to bits and we’re so glad to get him back.

BRYANT: And once you’ve given him a good telling off you realize he’s actually in remarkable shape.

CASS: Yeah. I knew that as long as he hadn’t fallen off a cliff and dashed out his brains he would survive. He’s like me. He doesn’t mind the cold. He could run to the Antarctic in his underpants and not feel the cold. So the cold was the least of my problems. Everybody else was telling me oh he’s going to freeze out there. But I was saying not my Jamie. One of his schoolmates at home said if anyone can get out of this it’s Jamie because he reads books. It’s about the only kid left in England I think that does read books. And well that’s come true now. You know.

BRYANT: And you’d given up hope. You’d…

CASS: Honestly I’d given up. I committed a terrible sin. I’ll probably get banned from Australia. I took a chisel out to ruin [INAUDIBLE] rocks where he was last seen. I chiseled his name. I put born, date of birth. I put the date he’d gone missing. I didn’t want people to think that maybe he’d put it there so I put my son after that and that was meant as a kind of memorial to him.

BRYANT: And you buried a rose as well.

CASS: Yeah a red rose. Just you know a bit of England lying in a foreign field sort of thing you know. But at the same time I felt he’s surrounded by such beautiful scenes here. I mean I’m going to dye and be left in a cemetery on North Circular Road with fumes going all over me but he had this magnificent backdrop of the Blue Mountains with Lire birds pecking over his grave. That was what comforted me.

BRYANT: And how did he survive?

CASS: He survived by eating what he could which turned out to be some sort of seeds and [INAUDIBLE].

BRYANT: Bit of bush tucker.

CASS: That’s the one, yeah.

BRYANT: What’s going to happen now?

CASS: I’m not sure whether he’s going to come back with me to London. I’m hoping to fly back this weekend and go back…

BRYANT: Because no doubt his mom wants to see him.

CASS: Oh his mom will definitely want to see him, yeah.

SHARP: That was Richard Cass speaking with the BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney Australia. Mr. Cass’s son Jamie was missing for almost two weeks until he was found earlier today.

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