MISCELLANEOUS NEWS REPORTS 2002 -- misc_digest_2002.txt

    * Associated Press: http://www.ap.org/
    * BBC (UK): http://news.bbc.co.uk/
    * CNN: http://www.cnn.com/
    * Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
    * Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/
    * San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/news/
    * Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp
    * Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/
    * CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/
    * The Gaurdian (UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
    * The Observer (UK): http://www.observer.co.uk/
    * The Times (UK): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

================================================================================


LA Times:

December 22, 2002


MANY HELD AT GUANTANAMO NOT LIKELY TERRORISTS

* Dozens of detainees pose no real threat, but U.S. policies make it nearly
impossible to get names off lists. There’s also fear of freeing "21st hijacker."

By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The United States is holding dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
who have no meaningful connection to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and were sent to
the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in
Afghanistan who had recommended them for release, according to military sources
with direct knowledge of the matter.

At least 59 detainees -- nearly 10% of the prison population at the U.S. Navy
base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- were deemed to be of no intelligence value after
repeated interrogations in Afghanistan. All were placed on "recommended for
repatriation" lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, a
facility intended to hold the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects.

Dozens of the detainees are Afghan and Pakistani nationals described in
classified intelligence reports as farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers.
Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the
collapse of the ruling Afghan regime.

None of the 59 met U.S. screening criteria for determining which prisoners
should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, military sources said. But all were
transferred anyway, sources said, for reasons that continue to baffle and
frustrate intelligence officers nearly a year after the first group of detainees
arrived at the facility.

"There are a lot of guilty [people] in there," said one officer, "but there's a
lot of farmers in there too."

The sources' accounts point to a previously undisclosed struggle within the
military over the handling of the detainees. Even senior commanders were said to
be troubled by the problems.

Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, the operational commander at Guantanamo Bay until
October, traveled to Afghanistan in the spring to complain that too many "Mickey
Mouse" detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility, sources said.

One senior Army officer described Dunlavey's visit as a "fact-finding" mission.
But another who met with Dunlavey said the general's purpose was more direct:
"He came over to chew us out," the officer said. Dunlavey, an Army reservist,
declined to comment.

The sources blamed a host of problems, including flawed screening guidelines,
policies that made it almost impossible to take prisoners off Guantanamo flight
manifests and a pervasive fear of letting a valuable prisoner go free by
mistake.

"No one wanted to be the guy who released the 21st hijacker," one officer said.

While that concern remains a legitimate one, the fact that dozens of the
detainees are still in custody a year or more after their capture has become a
source of deep concern to military officers engaged in the war on terrorism
around the globe.

Many fear that detaining innocents, and providing no legal mechanism for appeal,
can only breed distrust and animosity toward the U.S. -- not only in the home
countries and governments of the prisoners but also among the inmates.

"We're basically condemning these guys to long-term imprisonment," said a
military official who was a senior interrogator at Guantanamo Bay.

"If they weren't terrorists before, they certainly could be now."

Moreover, he said, even amid the tight security there is significant
indoctrination of prisoners by radical Islamists among them.

The Afghan and Pakistani governments have raised the issue with Washington. A
Pakistani embassy official, who declined to be identified, said his government
is convinced that many of the 58 Pakistanis known to be in custody "probably
joined the Taliban but didn't know how to spell Al Qaeda."

Even some prisoners red-flagged by the screening guidelines were clearly of no
intelligence value and should not have been sent, military intelligence sources
said.

One prisoner was transferred because he was Arab by birth and had once fought
for the Taliban, thereby meeting two key screening criteria. But before the war
he had sustained such a massive head injury that he could utter little more than
his name and was known by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as "half-head Bob."

"He had basically had a combat lobotomy," the interrogator said. "Every
[intelligence report] on him from Afghanistan said, 'No value, no value, don't
send him.'"

Others were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who
collected bounties for prisoners, sources said. One such prisoner was captured
at a restaurant near the border where he claimed to have lived and worked for 20
years.

"He had the mental capacity to put flatbread in an oven and that was the extent
of his intellect," the interrogator said. "He never got trained on a rifle,
never got pressed into service. But he was Arab by birth so he was picked up and
sent away."

Pentagon officials declined to discuss individual cases, but insist that the
U.S. has reasonable grounds for holding all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

"All are considered enemy combatants lawfully detained in accordance with the
law of armed conflict," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a spokeswoman for
the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations at Guantanamo Bay.

Several senior military officers responsible for transfers of prisoners also
defended their decisions.

"Everybody that was sent met the conditions that were sent down from our higher
headquarters," said Army Col. Michael T. Flynn, the top intelligence officer in
Afghanistan when many of the detainees were transferred. "We were sending the
right folks."

According to classified Pentagon guidelines, Guantanamo Bay was meant to be a
long-term detention facility for Al Qaeda operatives, Taliban leaders, "foreign"
fighters and "any others who may pose a threat to U.S. interests, may have
intelligence value, or may be of interest for U.S. prosecution."

But from the beginning, prisoners who didn't meet those criteria were sent,
sources said. In some cases, military police seemed to have more influence over
flight lists than intelligence officers, lobbying commanders to ship out
troublesome detainees.

Other detainees seemed to get caught up in the military's bureaucratic
machinery. In many cases, low-value prisoners caught early in the war were
placed at the bottom of prioritized lists. But as planeloads of prisoners were
sent to Cuba, names at the bottoms of the lists drifted to the top, and some
started showing up on flight manifests.

Once they appeared on the manifests, sources said, removing them proved almost
impossible. Doing so required senior intelligence officers in Kuwait or
Afghanistan to work through thickets of military red tape. It also required them
to trust the judgment of junior intelligence officers, something they were loath
to do given the stakes.

Through much of the war, the decisions were made far from the battlefield, by
commanders in Kuwait or back in the United States. Intelligence officers in
Afghanistan became increasingly dismayed at the number of low-level detainees on
the manifests.

"We saw it as having huge potential for eroding public trust," one officer said.
In a conflict dependent on the cooperation of local Afghans, he said, "winning
the hearts and minds was our greater concern."

To call attention to the problem, some began circulating lists of prisoners they
believed were being improperly placed on Guantanamo Bay flight manifests. The
lists were seen by senior intelligence officers in Afghanistan, Kuwait and the
United States.

One of the lists covers 49 Afghans and 10 Pakistanis who were being held at
Kandahar Air Base until the Afghan facility was shut down in June, prompting
their transfer to Guantanamo Bay, sources said.

The list describes detainees' occupations, the circumstances of their captures,
summaries of interrogations and alibis they provided. The prisoners range in age
from 16 to 50, most with little or no education. None was deemed to have
meaningful ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

A typical entry describes a 30-year-old Afghan farmer captured by Afghan forces
who "seemed most interested in stealing his car and money."

Another describes a 22-year-old Afghan who sold firewood at a bus station in
Konduz and was picked up by Northern Alliance forces while he and six others
were traveling to Kabul, the Afghan capital.

"He answers all questions quickly and fully," interrogators concluded. "His
story is plausible and consistent, and there is no evidence that he has ever
worked for or had any knowledge of the Taliban or Al Qaeda."

Not all of the detainees' stories are so tidy. Many admitted to being fighters
for the Taliban, although often as low-level soldiers conscripted when they
couldn't afford payments required by the Taliban to avoid service -- often
amounting to six months' wages.

Among the Pakistanis on the list was a 16-year-old who traveled to Afghanistan
at the start of the war to help the Taliban, but quickly had second thoughts and
was captured by the Northern Alliance while trying to flee. "He showed no signs
of deception," interrogators noted. "He never fought for the Taliban."

Another Pakistani, a 33-year-old taxi driver, was captured near Mazar-i-Sharif.

"The fact that the detainee's taxi car broke down was a deciding factor for him
to leave home and fight the Jihad," according to his file.

"Detainee is a low-level fighter with no tactical intelligence. Recommend
repatriation."

These detainees would almost certainly have been repatriated had they not been
captured early in the war, before screening systems were overhauled to make
releasing low-level prisoners easier, sources said.

By midsummer, military officials took to withholding the names of new inmates
from prison rosters until they could be evaluated. That way, they didn't
officially exist and, if deemed harmless, could be released before their names
got caught up in the system.

"The same people who created this huge bureaucratic monster came up with a way
to thwart it," one Army interrogator said, "which is never enter people into the
system."

At Guantanamo Bay, the presence of dozens of low-value prisoners drained
resources. The facility, known as Camp Delta, was also plagued by other
problems.

A chronic shortage of military police meant interrogations were shut down at 9
p.m., sources said, denying interrogators the often effective tactic of
subjecting detainees to marathon interview sessions.

There was also a confusing command structure that hampered information sharing.
Guantanamo Bay was controlled by the U.S. Southern Command -- whose territory
includes South America -- even though the war on Al Qaeda was principally the
purview of the U.S. Central Command.

Intelligence reports often got tied up in transit between the two commands,
sources said, sometimes delaying delivery for days. And intelligence officers at
Southern Command who edited reports out of Guantanamo Bay knew far more about
Colombian rebels than Al Qaeda terrorists.

The White House has classified prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as "enemy
combatants," a murky status in which detainees are not allowed hearings or legal
representation.

In July, a federal judge considering a lawsuit filed on behalf of 14 Kuwaiti
detainees ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have no right to appear in U.S.
courts and can be held indefinitely.

In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the prison
population at Guantanamo Bay went beyond the "hard-core" cases for which it was
constructed.

"The first people who were brought down were the hardest of the hard-core,"
Rumsfeld said. "Now it is a mix. They run pretty much across the spectrum....
Some may be transferred to other countries, some may be released, some may be
held for the duration, some may be tried in one or more of the various
mechanisms that are available."

But nine months after Rumsfeld's comments, only five prisoners have been
released from a population that totals about 625 and represents 43 nations.

The first prisoner released, in April, was so mentally unstable he was known by
interrogators as "Wild Bill."

"He would eat his own feces, dump fresh water from his canteen and urinate in it
and drink it," the senior interrogator said. CIA, FBI and psychiatric experts
"concluded he was insane."

Four others were released at the end of October, including three Afghans and one
Pakistani. Among them were one low-level Taliban conscript and two men who
appeared to be in their 70s and said they had never served the Taliban.

* * *


CNN:

December 18, 2002

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saying the United States is at war, Attorney General John
Ashcroft Tuesday adamantly defended the administration's policy to detain enemy
combatants without giving them the right to speak to an attorney.

"Some people fail to understand that security is designed to secure something,
and what we are securing are the rights of individuals," Ashcroft told CNN's
"Larry King Live."

"So, rather than security being something that challenges rights and that
diminishes rights, security makes those rights safe and strong."

He said the administration is "securing the rights of individuals to be free
from the kind of assault" unleashed on the United States on September 11, 2001.

"We're in the business of securing freedom, not sacrificing freedom," Ashcroft
said.

The Bush administration has come under criticism from civil libertarians for
detaining some individuals without giving them due process.

Ashcroft emphasized that the suspects detained in the war on terrorism who have
not been allowed to speak to attorneys are classified as enemy combatants.

"They're being detained because they have been combatants against the United
States in a wartime situation," Ashcroft said.

"To say to an enemy that if we capture 10,000 of your people on the battlefield,
we'll provide attorneys for all of them" is not realistic, he said.

Referring to the post-September 11 environment, he said, "It's a new game, and
it's different."

He did say enemy combatants "deserve certain conditions of humanity" and that
the United States has provided that.

"But we don't believe that an enemy combatant qualifies for all of the
safeguards that are included for people who are charged with crimes in our
criminal justice system," Ashcroft said.

He said the Justice Department has granted the right to an attorney to those
detained "in the immigration setting" or within the judicial system.

Solicitor General Ted Olson, who also appeared on "Larry King Live," said he has
been following the detainment of individuals "very, very carefully."

"We're all concerned about it, and we're all sensitive to it," said Olson, whose
wife, Barbara, was killed in the September 11 terror attacks. "We do what we can
to protect people's lives, but we protect their liberties at the same time."

He said the Bush administration is following the rules in the detainment of
enemy combatants in accordance with previous administrations.

Olson also said the nation has never seen a battle like this before where
"people are infiltrating the United States in order to ... do damage to our
citizens."

"I want to add that the people that are conducting this war against the United
States and the citizens of the United States wear no uniforms, swearing
allegiance to no country, obey no treaties and have sworn and acknowledged that
what they want to do is do the most amount of damage to the most amount of
individuals without regard to any rules," Olson said.

* * *


GAURDIAN:

December 12, 2002

YESTERDAY IN PARLIAMENT

Staff and agencies

GUANTANAMO BAY

An eighth British national is being detained at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay,
the Foreign Office minister, Mike O'Brien, said. Foreign Office and security
service officials visited the base to establish the identity and nationality of
two detainees believed to be British. "As a result of these enquiries, one was
identified as British." A FCO official met the detainees individually and saw
"no visible signs of mistreatment".

* * *


LOS ANGELES TIMES:

December 1, 2002

PRISONERS MAY FACE 'LEGAL BLACK HOLE'

* Lawyers for 16 terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay want hearings on whether
they're being lawfully held. U.S. says detainees have no rights.

By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer

On Monday, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., will take up one of the
most vexing legal questions to arise in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks: Is it possible for the U.S. government to keep 600 suspected terrorists
held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in custody forever?

Sixteen prisoners from Kuwait, Britain and Australia contend that they are being
held in territory far from any combat zone in violation of the U.S. Constitution
and the Geneva Conventions. They have asked federal courts to give them hearings
to determine whether they are being lawfully held.

If U.S. courts fail to step in, the detainees will fall into a "legal black
hole," where they could be forever, said Minneapolis attorney Joseph Margulies,
who represents several detainees.

Added his co- counsel, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights: For all the legal rights the detainees currently have,
"these guys might as well be on the moon."

That is as it should be, Justice Department lawyers retort. Keeping the
detainees locked up serves "the vital objectives of preventing combatants from
continuing to aid our enemies and gathering intelligence to further the overall
war effort," the government lawyers argue.

Turning aside the prisoners' pleas will ensure that "enemy litigiousness does
not jeopardize the war effort or bring aid and comfort to the enemy," Justice
Department lawyers said in a brief filed with the appeals court.

And officials agree that the detainees' stay in Guantanamo could be a very long
one.

The Geneva Conventions require that, after a war, captured soldiers should be
returned home. But those treaties were not designed for situations like the
current war on terrorism in which one of the combatants -- Al Qaeda -- is not a
nation and is not likely to sign a formal peace treaty ending hostilities,
government lawyers say.

Does releasing the prisoners "make sense in this kind of a conflict, where the
individuals in question who are being detained are members of terrorist
organizations?" John C. Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general, asked in a
speech at the College of William & Mary Law School.

"Does it make sense to ever release them if you think they are going to continue
to be dangerous, even though you can't convict them of a crime?"

If the men involved were being held in the U.S., it would be much easier for
them to get a federal court to consider their cases. But Guantanamo Bay naval
station, which the U.S. leases from Cuba, is not a part of the U.S. Because of
that, the captives have no right to have their cases heard in any U.S. court,
government lawyers argue.

So far, the government has been winning that argument.

In July, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a federal district judge in Washington, ruled
that the detainees don't have the right to a hearing of any sort.

Their status, she ruled, is governed by a 1950 case involving the fate of 21
Germans captured in China at the end of World War II and convicted of espionage
by a U.S. military commission.

After their convictions, the 21 prisoners were returned to Germany and put in a
U.S. military prison there. Their lawyers filed a legal motion known as a writ
of habeas corpus asking the U.S. courts to review what the military commission
had decided.

By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court turned them down. There has never been a case
in which a court used habeas corpus "on behalf of an alien enemy, who at no
relevant time and in no stage of his captivity, has been within its territorial
jurisdiction," Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the court majority. "Nothing
in the text of the Constitution extends such a right, nor does anything in our
statutes."

Justice Hugo L. Black, writing for the dissenters, said the decision "denies
courts power to afford the least bit of protection for any alien who is subject
to our occupation government abroad, even if he is neither enemy nor belligerent
and even after peace is officially declared."

That is precisely what the Supreme Court's opinion means, Kollar-Kotelly said.
Because the detainees are being held "abroad" by the military, U.S. courts have
no power to review their cases, she ruled.

The detainees might have "some form of rights under international law," but
those rights would have to be negotiated between diplomats from their countries
and U.S. officials, the judge said.

So far there is no sign that diplomacy will aid the almost 600 detainees, who
hail from 40 nations and speak 17 languages.

Of the 16 whose cases are coming before the appeals court, two -- Mamdouh Habib
and David Hicks -- are Australian citizens; two more, Shafiq Rasul and Asif
Iqbal, are British; and 12 are Kuwaiti.

Ratner and Margulies were hired by the families of the British and Australian
detainees, but have not been able to meet with the prisoners they represent.
Family members of the 12 Kuwaitis have hired Thomas B. Wilner, an international
lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, a prominent Wall Street firm. Wilner said he
has not been able to talk to any of the captives.

According to their lawyers, the Kuwaitis were volunteers doing charitable work
in Afghanistan or Pakistan when they were captured by bounty hunters after last
year's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and turned
over to the U.S. military.

Hicks, Rasul and Iqbal were captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and
turned over to U.S. custody in December 2001. Hicks' father said his son had
joined the Taliban. Habib was detained by Pakistani authorities in October 2001,
then taken to Egypt and turned over to U.S. authorities, who brought him to
Afghanistan before he was sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Their lawyers argue that U.S. courts offer the men their only chances for a
hearing. "If United States courts have no jurisdiction to review the ...
detentions at Guantanamo, then no court has jurisdiction to review them,"
Margulies and Ratner said in their brief to the appeals court.

The lawyers have tried to counter the government's case by arguing that
Guantanamo Bay cannot be considered foreign territory.

Under the 1903 treaty with Cuba that allowed the United States to build its
base, Cuba has formal "sovereignty" over Guantanamo Bay, but the U.S. military
has "complete jurisdiction and control over" everything that happens there, and
no foreign country has any power to intervene, Wilner notes. The treaty also
states that the lease can only be terminated with the agreement of both parties,
which means it can be continued as long as the U.S. desires.

Anyone accused of a crime at Guantanamo Bay, whether a U.S. citizen or not, is
brought to a U.S. federal court in Virginia for trial, Margulies and Ratner
said.

The appeals court should "avoid the tyranny of titles and ... recognize
Guantanamo Bay for what it is: a fully American enclave with the basic
attributes of full territorial sovereignty," they told the judges.

Columbia University international law professor Gerald Neuman agrees that the
traditional notion of "sovereignty" -- a term normally used to refer to the
power a country has over its territories -- is misplaced when talking about
Guantanamo Bay.

"All the practical rights of governance were given away to us in the treaty,"
said Neuman, who has written law review articles dealing with Guantanamo Bay.
"We do not need [Cuban President] Fidel Castro's permission to do anything
there. We are answerable only to ourselves and therefore our Constitution ought
to govern what we do there."

But Justice Department lawyers, led by Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement,
say that the 1950 Supreme Court decision on which Kollar-Kotelly relied turns on
formal "sovereignty," not "de facto control."

After all, they say, in 1950, the U.S. military, which was still the occupying
power in West Germany, completely controlled the Landsberg prison.

The Guantanamo Bay case has drawn widespread interest in international law
circles and in other nations.

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross have visited the
Guantanamo Bay detainees several times to check on their conditions. The
organization issued a statement in February saying the captives were entitled
under the Geneva Conventions to have a hearing before "a competent tribunal."

The Bush administration disagrees, saying that as "unlawful enemy combatants,"
not soldiers in regular army units, the detainees have no such rights.

In early November, three senior British judges strongly criticized the U.S.
position. The judges were considering a case filed in London by the mother of
Feroz Abbasi, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for 10 months. Zumrati Juma
asked the court to order the British Foreign Office to take action on her son's
behalf.

"Mr. Abbasi is subject to indefinite detention in territory over which the
United States has exclusive control, with no opportunity to challenge the
legitimacy of his detention before any court or tribunal," Lord Phillips wrote
for the trio of British judges. There "appears to be a clear breach of a
fundamental human right," the judge added.

Nonetheless, Phillips said, the English jurists had no power to do anything
about the situation.

Wayne Smith, who represented the U.S. in Havana during the Carter administration
and is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, said he thought it was
clear that U.S. law does not extend to Guantanamo Bay and "that is why we take
prisoners there."

On the other hand, Smith said, he was troubled by the prospect that the Defense
Department is developing "an American Devil's Island on Guantanamo."

And Harold H. Koh, a Yale Law School professor who served as assistant secretary
of State for human rights in the Clinton administration, sharply criticized the
current administration's policy.

"What is tragic about this is that Fidel Castro does not rule this part of Cuba,
but in terms of the rights the detainees are being accorded, it is hard to tell
the difference," he said.

But Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the American International Law Society,
said the Guantanamo Bay detentions are an area in which "honestly, there is no
clear law."

The cases may point up a need to reexamine how the Geneva Conventions apply to
the world after Sept. 11, 2001, said Slaughter, who also is dean of the Woodrow
Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton University. She said
international and domestic lawyers need to "extend both domestic law and
international law to cover this case."

* * *


BBC "Newsnight" Transcript:

28 November, 2002, 17:51 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/archive/2524241.stm

[ A Real video file for this program is also in this folder under the file name:
BBC_38522899_alqaeda22_marshall_vi.ram ]


GUANTANAMO BAY

In France a deranged man hijacks a plane in the name of al-Qaeda, in Germany a
court hears Osama Bin Laden's former bodyguard say he boasted of plans to murder
thousands, from Washington the CIA investigates links between Saudi Arabia and
terrorism. It was a relatively uneventful day in the so-called war on terror.

In theory the Americans have a potentially invaluable intelligence base in the
650 prisoners, they've got locked away in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Pentagon calls them "unlawful combatants." Britain's appeal judges have
labelled the camp a "legal black hole".

Now Newsnight has found the CIA believes many of those held without charge,
trial or sentence, shouldn't be there at all.

Peter Marshall reported.

SHUHEL AHMED:
My brother's not a terrorist. That's just ridiculous. The bottom line is that my
brother is not a terrorist.

JED BABBIN:
This is a different kind of war. We're taking different kinds of prisoners.

CLIVE STAFFORD-SMITH:
The Americans say "might is right", and then they totally disrespect all
international law.

SHUHEL AHMED:
What we ask is just the role of law, due process. Otherwise release them.

PETER MARSHALL:
Camp Delta, the military-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It's where the
Americans are keeping their captives. Britain's judges and others have
questioned its legality, but it's there to stay. How long is America going to
hold these people in Camp Delta without charge, without trial, without sentence?

BABBIN:
Until the war is over, and it may be ten years.

MARSHALL:
So there will be no charge until the war is over? This is the war on terrorism?

BABBIN:
Absolutely. The war on terrorism may not end in our lifetime or theirs. This is
a global conflict. These people are prisoners in that conflict.

MARSHALL:
Our story begins in the land of America's number-one Gulf ally, Kuwait. Khalid
al Udah has always loved America. As a colonel in Kuwait's Air Force, he spent
what he calls the best year of his life training there. When Saddam's invaders
put Kuwait's oil fields to the torch, Khalid became a hero of the resistance,
spotting targets for US planes. When the American-led liberators rolled in,
Khalid was joyful, so was his son.

KALID AL UDAH:
He let go of my hand and went directly to these troops and shook hands with
them. He was shouting, dancing. He was very happy. You know, you can imagine
this boy, 14-year-old boy seeing this, the Americans with the other allies
liberating his country. This is the most recent letter we received. Today his
only contact with his son, is through Red Cross letters. His son, who is now 25,
is one of more than 600 inmates of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay. The details are
sketchy, but Khalid says his son and some other Kuwaitis were working for a
charity on the Afghan-Pakistan border when they were snatched by bounty hunters
who handed them to the Americans for cash.

AL UDAH:
They are guilty of one thing only, to help people. This is the guilt they have
in the eye of the United States Government. What we ask is just the role of law,
due process. Trial them if they are guilty, otherwise release them.

MARSHALL:
In the land of America's number one European ally, that's Britain, there's
similar concern. Tipton has now been labelled the home of the Tipton Taliban.
Three young men born and raised here are locked up in Guantanamo Bay. Again the
only contact is the Red Cross letters.

SHUHEL AHMED:
"Hi. How are you all? Hope that you're fine and well. I'm fine and well. I miss
you all a lot. Say hello to big sister's family. Tell mum not to worry about me.
I'm OK. Hope you all have my present for my 20th birthday as soon as I return.
Love you all. Take care." While he was there, my brother passed his 20th
birthday. He was 19. Now he's 20. So basically, he's only a young lad.

MARSHALL:
Last October, Ruel Ahmed and his two friends all separately left Tipton for
Pakistan. A wedding was mentioned. There was also vague talk of a holiday. The
next the families knew was a report they were prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

AHMED:
I want him back here so he can tell us the story, what happened, what he went
through, how he ended up there and what was he doing there? Did he go for aid
work? Did he go for an adventure? What the hell was he doing in that place?
That's what we need to know. Did he get involved with the wrong people? Did
somebody capture him? Someone may have kidnapped him and took him.

MARSHALL:
The Ahmeds neighbours, the Rassouls, were alarmed to see footage on Newsnight of
what they took to be their son wheeled on a stretcher. They later heard he'd
lost three stone in weight. Physically he's now recovered, but all the families
are concerned.

AHMED:
Even though until today he's not been proven guilty, not charged, and he's been
living in a prison, a military prison and serving his sentence. For what reason?

MARSHALL:
The sons of these few streets in Tipton, the same as the sons of Kuwait and
hundreds of others, are now locked in what the appeal judges called a legal
black hole. Whether they are terrorists or Taliban, reckless adventurers or the
unluckiest of innocents, this raises serious concerns about their future and
their health. It also raises questions about the future of international law and
the health of American justice.

JED BABBIN:
These are the kinds of people who will chew through the hydraulic lines of an
aircraft. These are the Hannibal Lecters of south-west Asia.

MARSHALL:
During the Gulf War, Jed Babbin was a senior figure in the US Defence
Department. He remains a close political ally of the man now running the
Pentagon and Guantanamo Bay. He doesn't waste a moment worrying about the
detainees at Camp Delta.

BABBIN:
The only right they have is to be kept in a humane manner.

MARSHALL:
Until the war is over?

BABBIN:
Exactly.

MARSHALL:
But there's a feeling that this is too fluid a concept, this war on terrorism.
It's not a conventional war. It may go on forever.

BABBIN:
Well, it may, but that's the choice of the terrorists, not our choice. We have a
situation here that is new. We're adapting to it. We're doing something
differently because we have a different threat and enemy that we're fighting.
It's not a legal matter. This is a matter of security. It's a matter of war.

MARSHALL:
A British lawyer based in New Orleans says that's nonsense. Next week he takes
the matter to America's Appeal Court, quoting the UK judges, calling Camp Delta
a legal black hole.

STAFFORD-SMITH:
What you have to wonder about, unfortunately, and I've dealt with the Feds over
here for a long time, is just how naive they are. It would be silly to suggest
that the US gets it wrong all the time. But I'm afraid even when we look at our
experience in what I normally do, which is death penalty work, they get it wrong
a substantial amount of the time when they give everyone their legal rights and
when they do it all publicly. I think it's naive to assume that they don't make
some mistakes when they're doing it without anyone questioning them.

MARSHALL:
The US Defence Secretary's insisted since his trip to Guantanamo Bay that these
men are no ordinary prisoners.

DONALD RUMSFELD:
The characteristics of the individuals captured is that they are unlawful
combatants, not lawful combatants. That is why they're characterised as
detainees and not prisoners of war. They went around like terrorists.

MARSHALL:
In fact, the Red Cross has said that unlawful combatant category is an American
concept unrecognised in the Geneva Conventions.

They note: The Red Cross has repeatedly asked the US to determine properly each
prisoner's status.

Back at the Pentagon, Mr Rumsfeld has said Guantanamo Bay holds the most highly
trained killers, the hardest of the hard core. Some of his colleagues elsewhere
in the administration are sceptical.

At the Pentagon they've suggested one of the chief functions of Guantanamo Bay
is to provide vital intelligence through the interrogation of the detainees a
boom then surely for the CIA. Well, curiously, that's not how the head of the
CIA seems to see it. Indeed, he's believed to doubt whether many of the
detainees are master terrorists at all, leaving their intelligence value non-
existent.

The CIA director, George Tenet, is just one of the President's trusted
lieutenants, but he's already at odds with the Pentagon over invading Iraq. He's
been against it.

Newsnight has found that Guantanamo Bay and Camp Delta has opened up a second
rift. The al-Udahs are among 12 Kuwaiti families campaigning to bring their sons
home. They say Kuwait's Interior Minister met with the CIA boss Tenet in August
and came back with good news. Mr Tenet believed at least nine of the 12 were
innocent. He told the minister:


AL UDAH:
"We want just to hold these three names. The rest of the nine Kuwaitis are
totally cleared. If I am", that's what he said, "if I am in charge or I have the
authority on the Guantanamo Bay, I will immediately release the nine Kuwaitis.
But I don't have the authority to do so. The Pentagon has the authority to do
so. But I can promise you", this is still Tenet talking to our minister, "I will
raise this matter with the administration, the US administration, especially
with our President, Mr George Bush."

MARSHALL:
While Kuwait's Interior Minister won't comment, separate sources have confirmed
the story. Back in Washington, though, the Pentagon's defenders barely blink.

BABBIN:
Well, I think Mr Tenet and others have very different views. That's part of the
problem that we have in the US. I think Britain and Europe mistake us for being
far better organised than we really are. I think Mr Tenet would have one view. I
would suspect Mr Rumsfeld would have another, and I would suspect the FBI
director would have a third. Somewhere in a blending of the three we will come
out with, I hope, the right answer.

MARSHALL:
Whether it's co-ordinated or not, Mr Tenet is saying what he thinks presumably?

BABBIN:
I assume he is.

MARSHALL:
He doesn't think this intelligence you're getting is worth a candle a lot of the
time.

BABBIN:
Well, I think he is contradicting much of what we're hearing from the rest of
the Government.

MARSHALL:
People like Colin Powell are also understood to be concerned about Mr Rumsfeld's
Camp Delta. In part it's because of damage to America's reputation, but also
because any evidence gleaned from Camp Delta can't be used in court, the
prisoners having been denied lawyers.

STAFFORD-SMITH:
One of the problems the US faces is if they let people go, and if my hypothesis
is correct that actually they didn't do much of anything down in Afghanistan or
they were aid workers, humanitarian people, then the US is going to have a lot
of egg on its face. So their obvious interest is not to let people go, because
as long as they're caught up in Guantanamo Bay, no-one can know what the truth
is.

MARSHALL:
In Kuwait City, they've heard reports that the Pentagon may be ready at last to
hold military tribunals for prisoners against whom there is specific evidence.
Others may be released or they may be held indefinitely. The al-Udahs have been
marking Ramadan, but there's an empty place at the meal table for their son in
prison so far away. In Tipton, in the English Midlands, there's the same sense
of loss.

AHMED:
My mum, every day she cries. Every time we have dinner she's crying, saying,
"What's happened to my son?" We just want our brother back, because he's not in
Al-Qaeda or whatever they class him as. For the families of Tipton and the
families of Kuwait, their sons remain in a legal limbo, a place of uncertainty
that doesn't seem to end.

[ This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated
live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast,
however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We
will be happy to correct serious errors. ]

* * *

HOMELAND LAW EVOKES FEARS OF 'BIG BROTHER'
GOVERNMENT'S GREATER POWERS PUT CITIZENS AT RISK, CRITICS SAY

Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief

Thursday, November 28, 2002

Washington -- The Bush administration's latest effort to protect the nation
against terrorist attacks is raising concern that Americans are now at greater
risk of intrusion from their own government.

The legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, signed by
President Bush on Monday, contains provisions that build on law enforcement's
ability to peek at e-mail, monitor credit card purchases, bank transactions and
travel patterns and shield its own activities from scrutiny.

Even critics acknowledge that taken individually, each provision is just a tiny
step toward transforming the federal government into "Big Brother." But coupled
with a series of recent court rulings favorable to the Department of Justice and
new administration initiatives, privacy advocates warn that the nation is indeed
experiencing the beginnings of a real-life Orwellian nightmare.

In recent weeks:

-- The Pentagon confirmed the existence of the Total Information Awareness
program, which will monitor passports, visas, work permits, airline tickets,
rental cars, gun purchases, chemical purchases and other activities in search of
potential terrorists. The program is being run by Adm. John Poindexter,
President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser who was convicted in 1990 of
five counts of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra affair. (The convictions
were overturned on a technicality.) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. , said she
plans to try to cut off funds for the program until Congress has a chance to
review it.

-- A special federal appeals court ruled that the Justice Department has broad
powers under the Patriot Act enacted last year to use wiretaps, read e- mails
and conduct searches of suspected terrorists. Attorney General John Ashcroft
called the ruling "a victory for liberty, safety and the security of the
American people" and immediately stepped up the use of intelligence, saying the
decision "revolutionizes our ability to investigate and prosecute terrorists" by
allowing criminal investigators and intelligence officers to share information.

-- The Justice Department challenged a court order instructing it to release the
names of hundreds of people arrested on immigration charges after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. Federal attorneys argued that to make such information public
would provide al Qaeda a "road map" to the government's anti- terrorism efforts.

-- A federal court in San Francisco rejected a challenge to the detention of
about 600 war prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that a group
of clergy and professors have no legal standing to intervene.

"Some of these measures have nothing to do with homeland security," said Jim
Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. "We
continue to chip away at these protections, and we continue to move things off
the books in a way that are away from scrutiny. It's a troubling step down the
slippery slope."

The recent developments follow a vast expansion of the Justice Department's
surveillance powers under the anti-terrorism bill passed last year, an easing of
restrictions on FBI agents to infiltrate churches, mosques and political groups
where terrorist activity is suspected, and the secretive detention of an
estimated 1,200 foreigners with suspected links to terrorism.

The United States has a long history of restricting civil liberties during times
of war, from President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus
to President Franklin Roosevelt's forced internment of more than 100,000
Japanese Americans.

Most Americans appear to have accepted the activities as a reasonable precaution
at a time of high risk, polls show, with the notable exception of Arab
Americans, who have been the primary targets of law enforcement.

FEARS OF UNENDING CONFLICT

However, unlike government crackdowns during the Civil War or World War II, the
fight against terror is open-ended, prompting some concern that the government's
new authority will last indefinitely, and ultimately affect a wider circle of
Americans. And because so much of today's law enforcement activity is taking
place in secret, civil libertarians warn that there are no judicial or
congressional checks to make sure the power is not abused.

"There is a tremendous potential for abuse," said Elliot Mincberg, legal
director for People for the American Way, a liberal interest group that monitors
the administration's judicial activity. "The Department of Homeland Defense is
another example of . . . providing authority to the executive branch with a lack
of effective oversight and checks and balances."

Justice Department officials say the real threat to freedom is posed by the
terrorists.

"At this time and place, the threat to liberty is the disorder that terrorists
seek to bring about in our government," Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh
said in interview earlier this year.

Dinh, who fled Vietnam as a 10-year-old child, and was the chief author of the
Patriot Act, said he has seen "threats to liberty from both the lack of
government, and the excessive zeal of totalitarian control."

"It is not a balance between security and liberty. It is a liberty rooted in
security," he said.

"Ask yourself this: When you take your child to a ballgame, are you more afraid
of government agents watching your child, or terrorists attacking the ballpark.
It's as simple as that. The threat to our freedom comes from Osama bin Laden,
not the U.S. government."

The Department of Homeland Security is intended to combat terrorists by knocking
down bureaucratic barriers and combining 170,000 federal workers, in agencies
ranging from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Coast Guard and
Customs Service, under a single department.

Buried in the legislative details is a provision calling for the creation of
something that sounds like it was taken from George Orwell's "1984": the
Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The agency
is charged with creating a massive database that could be used to identify
future terrorists or, some fear, spy on alleged domestic enemies.

LOWER THRESHOLD FOR E-MAIL

The legislation also lowers the threshold for Internet service providers to
comply with government authorities who want to monitor e-mail. In the past,
authorities had to show they were concerned about an "immediate danger," while
under the new standard they must show only that they are acting out of a
"reasonable belief" that a crime is about to occur.

As the government seeks to reduce the privacy of suspected terrorists, it also
has extended its own power to shield information from the public. A provision in
the legislation allows the agency to exempt itself in certain cases from Freedom
of Information Act requests without any judicial review.

"Without vigilant oversight by Congress and accountability to U.S. citizens . .
. there is a significant threat that this new department will abuse civil rights
and infringe on civil liberties," said People for the American Way President
Ralph Neas.

"Unfortunately, opportunities to attack the legitimate rights of Americans are
widespread in our new reality, from harassing immigrants to the collection of
massive quantities of data on all Americans, innocent and otherwise," Neas said.

E-mail Marc Sandalow at msandalow@sfchronicle.com.

* * *


San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

COURT BLOCKS LAWSUIT ON DETENTIONS IN CUBA
THOSE SUING AREN'T AUTHORIZED, JUDGES SAY

By Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

A group of lawyers and civil rights advocates has no right to sue on behalf of
some 600 battlefield prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba,
a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The decision could effectively shield the
prolonged detentions from judicial review.

The would-be plaintiffs, 17 clergy, lawyers and law professors, have no
relationship with the detainees, have not been authorized to sue on their behalf
and have not even made an attempt to communicate with them, said the U. S. Court
of Appeals in San Francisco.

The court said there was no need to consider a second reason cited by a Los
Angeles federal judge to dismiss the suit: that a prison on foreign soil is
outside the jurisdiction of any U.S. court, even if the facility is controlled
by the U.S. government.

A ruling upholding the dismissal on that basis would have gone even further than
Monday's decision and barred a suit by anyone on the detainees' behalf,
including relatives or the detainees themselves. But one of the lawyer-
plaintiffs said the practical effect of the ruling would be just about as
severe.

"It lets the government hold people indefinitely in violation of international
law, with no access to the courts," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of
Southern California law professor.

The full appeals court will be asked to hear the case, said another plaintiff,
attorney Stephen Yagman.

The Defense Department had no immediate comment.

The Bush administration says the Guantanamo prisoners are the most dangerous
captives of the war in Afghanistan and are not entitled to prisoner- of-war
status because they were fighting for al Qaeda, not a regular army.

That means they are not entitled to go home at the end of the war and can be
held indefinitely without criminal charges.

They have also been denied access to lawyers. The Defense Department says some
may be tried by military tribunals.

Family members of some prisoners have gone to court to challenge their
detentions. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed a suit in August
filed by relatives of 15 prisoners, saying Guantanamo was outside the court's
authority. The ruling is being appealed.

Monday's ruling involved a suit by nonrelatives seeking to represent all the
detainees. The lawyers argued that detentions on a U.S. military base were
subject to the U.S. Constitution, as well as international law, and that the
prisoners were entitled to be informed of the accusations against them and to
have legal assistance.

But the appeals court said the would-be plaintiffs were the wrong people to
raise those issues.

Although one person can sometimes sue to vindicate another person's rights - -
typically a prisoner who is mentally disabled or lacks access to the courts for
some other reason -- such suits must be limited to those with ongoing
relationships, the three-judge panel said.

"The existence of a significant relationship enhances the probability that a
(plaintiff) . . . knows and is dedicated to the prisoner's individual best
interests" and is not merely an "uninvited meddler," said Judge Kim Wardlaw.

Her observation that the plaintiffs haven't tried to contact the detainees drew
a retort from Chemerinsky.

"It's illegal to travel to Cuba," he said. "Guantanamo is a closed military
base. There's no way to contact them."

* * *


November 8, 2002

PENTAGON PROBES ANONYMOUS RELEASE OF DETAINEE PHOTOS

Pictures show restrained men in military transport

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon is investigating an apparently unauthorized
release of photographs of detainees on a U.S. military transport plane out of
Afghanistan.

Several electronic images were e-mailed to news organizations, including CNN. A
Pentagon spokesman says the photographs appear to be genuine. It is not known
who took or e-mailed the pictures.

The images show men wearing hoods and headphone-type ear protection. The men are
held to the floor of what appears to be an open interior area of a C-130
transport by chains, leg cuffs and other restraints. A large U.S. flag hangs
from the ceiling.

The men are under heavy guard. In one shot, a military police officer is shown
addressing a restrained and blindfolded man seated with his arms behind him.
Other men in uniform are shown relaxed and seated along the sides of the cargo
area.

Military sources familiar with Defense Department aircraft say they think the
images show the interior of a C-130, a four-engine turboprop. The type of
aircraft could indicate a flight from Afghanistan to Turkey, where detainees
have typically been transferred to other types of aircraft for the trans-
Atlantic haul to U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The U.S. military has previously taken pictures of its transport missions to
document conditions of the detainees, but in this case, it is not known whether
the pictures were taken for official purposes by U.S. personnel aboard the
aircraft.

* * *


Reuters:

November 08, 2002

AMNESTY QUESTIONS U.S. OVER YEMEN STRIKE

LONDON (Reuters) - Human rights group Amnesty International wrote to President
Bush on Friday to question Washington's role in a missile attack on al Qaeda
suspects in Yemen.

Six men suspected of membership of the militant Islamic network died in a car
blast on Sunday that the United States said was due to a missile fired from an
unmanned CIA aircraft.

"If this was the deliberate killing of suspects in lieu of arrest, in
circumstances in which they did not pose an immediate threat, the killings would
be extra-judicial executions in violation of international human rights law,"
the London-based rights group said in a statement.

"The United States should issue a clear and unequivocal statement that it will
not sanction extra-judicial executions."

The attack, which the U.S defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, termed "a highly
successful tactical operation," killed a leading suspect in the bombing of U.S.
destroyer Cole two years ago. Seventeen U.S sailors died in the explosion in
Aden.

Washington blames Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for the September 11
attacks on the United States as well as the Cole attack.

A Yemeni official told Reuters on Thursday one of the six suspects killed was a
U.S. national, which the United States said it could not confirm, and all six
were "dangerous" members of al Qaeda.

Amnesty said in Friday's statement it had also asked Yemen to clarify whether it
had any prior knowledge of the attack. The Pentagon has praised the Yemeni
government for cooperating with the United States.

* * *


CBS:

Nov. 7, 2002

A SECRET TRIAL FOR MOUSSAOUI?

(CBS) Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

If you are licking your chops in anticipation of a high-profile trial in federal
court next year for Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged conspirator in the attacks on
America, you may be disappointed. There is a strong chance now that Moussaoui
never will be put on trial in our civilian courts; that instead he will simply
be transferred into military custody and prosecuted before a military tribunal.
There are no legal impediments to such a dramatic move and the administration
can make a reasonable political case for it as well.

The Bush administration faces the prospect of transferring Moussaoui from
federal custody to a military brig because his constitutional rights as a
capital defendant appear to be conflicting more and more directly with the
government's ongoing intelligence-gathering operations. As CBS News
Correspondent Jim Stewart first reported Wednesday, that conflict may soon reach
its moment of truth because of the capture of al Qaeda honcho Ramzi bin-Alshihb,
the man allegedly involved at the highest levels in the plan to destroy the
World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Now that the feds have bin-Alshihb in their custody and control, Moussaoui has a
constitutional right either to confront him as a prosecution witness or simply
rely upon his testimony at trial as an exculpatory witness. Either way, though,
the government must make bin-Alshihb available in some way to Moussaoui and/or
his lawyers. And it's not hard to understand why Moussaoui would want to touch
base with bin-Alshihb. If bin-Alshihb really was the key 9/11 planner, he would
be in a wonderful position to explain or refute Moussaoui's alleged role in that
conspiracy.

In most criminal cases, this duty poses no problem for prosecutors -- they
simply work it out with defense attorneys and the judge. In this case, however,
making bin-Alshihb available to the defendant presents a huge problem. Bin-
Alshihb isn't just a common co-conspirator, after all; he's an enormous
intelligence asset and, indeed, the Justice Department says it won't make him
available because he is currently being interrogated in a secret location.
Prosecutors are perfectly within their powers to refuse to make bin-Alshihb
available, but the price of that recalcitrance may be to drop the charges
against Moussaoui. He simply cannot be fairly tried under the Constitution if
prosecutors withhold his access to such an important witness.

Prosecutors know it. Moussaoui's attorneys know it. And U.S. District Judge
Leonie M. Brinkema knows it, too, which may be why she has delayed the trial in
this case from September 2002 to January 2003, and now again to May 2003. It
would be one thing, of course, if dropping the charges against Moussaoui for
this reason forced the government to let him go. If that were truly the
alternative result here, the government surely would figure out a way to make
bin-Alshihb available in some way to Moussaoui. Perhaps bin- Alshihb could be
made available with Moussaoui's attorneys in the presence of a military official
(to make sure no secret, coded messages were passed) and with a special master
or magistrate assigned by the court (to make sure the interview is on the up and
up). And such a scenario still may be the solution to this intractable legal
problem.

But the White House has another option in the Moussaoui case that isn't
typically available in capital cases. And so the Justice Department doesn't have
to bend nearly as far to meet its constitutional duties while at the same time
achieving its prosecutorial objective. Since Moussaoui is not a US citizen,
since "jeopardy" for purposes of the "double jeopardy" clause of the
Constitution has not yet attached in his case, and since the government already
has labeled him a terrorist, law enforcement officials simply could hand
Moussaoui over to the military for a tribunal proceeding authorized last year by
an executive order from President Bush.

A tribunal proceeding for Moussaoui would -- in one swift, bold stroke --
obliterate the legal problem of what to do with bin-Alshihb. It would do so
either by precluding Moussaoui's right to interview his purported al Qaeda buddy
or permitting a limited interview to take place in such secret surroundings that
the government's intelligence-related concerns would be sated. Also, a tribunal
proceeding would not be public so the details of bin- Alshihb's testimony, if
used, never would see the light of day. And, obviously, because of the
procedural rules in place for tribunal proceedings, the government would be even
more likely than it already is to gain a favorable result after trial.

That's the legal dynamic. The political dynamic is a bit cloudier, but by no
means tricky for the White House. It's true that the government might take an
initial public relations hit if Moussaoui suddenly were to disappear from jail
one night and turn up in a locked cell at the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.
After all, these same prosecutors for nearly one year now have been preaching
the importance of bringing Moussaoui to justice in public in a federal court
where he will be judged by Americans living in the shadow of the Pentagon. To
suddenly turn around and say "never mind" probably would give ammunition to the
administration's critics who say that Moussaoui is destined to receive only a
pretense of justice.

But there certainly was no great public outcry this summer when the government
settled its grievances with John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, because the
feds didn't want to make available to his attorneys the soldiers who captured
him. And most folks, I suspect, will be fairly delighted if Moussaoui disappears
from public view and is judged by the military in a closed proceeding. The
administration has told us since last Sept. 11 that it would use every process
and procedure in its arsenal to achieve its objectives. Taking Moussaoui out of
the federal court system in the middle of his case would be one of the clearest
examples yet that prosecutors meant what they said.

By Andrew Cohen © MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved

* * *


CNN:

November 7, 2002

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PREPARING MILITARY TRIBUNALS FOR TERROR DEFENDANTS

From Barbara Starr

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration in recent weeks has been "very
close" to finalizing procedures for military tribunals and beginning its first
trial of a detainee from the war on terrorism.

The process has stalled, however, according to one official, because of
disagreement over whether other detainees can be questioned by defense attorneys
at the tribunals, according to an administration official.

The Pentagon and Justice Department have been in "continuous" conversation about
the tribunal process, according to the official, who wished to remain anonymous.
The the Bush administration has stopped short of actually beginning any trials
because it presently does not want to allow defense attorneys to question the
hundreds of detainees now held by the U.S. government.

Most of those held are under heavy security at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo
Bay, where at last count approximately 625 detainees were being held by the
Defense Department.

Additional detainees are held elsewhere, and an official told CNN the first
tribunal could involve a detainee being held by other U.S. government agencies.
Those detainees would include:

* Mohamed Jabarah, a Kuwaiti-born Canadian who has been held at Fort Hamilton,
  New York;

* Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi being held at the naval base at
  Norfolk, Virginia, under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, and who
  still may be considered a dual-citizen in some quarters;

* Abu Zubaida, a top al Qaeda operational planner being held by the CIA at an
  undisclosed location.

The official would not say where the first tribunal is likely to be held.

In a related matter, more detainees are expected to be released and returned to
their home countries as the United States concludes they are no longer a threat
or have no useful information. Pentagon officials said this week that the people
released are given about $200 in cash to help them with their return, and are
put in touch with additional sources of aid.

The United States says it is not publicizing details about return arrangements
because some detainees have said they fear for their lives in their home
countries.

* * *


The Gaurdian (UK):

November 7, 2002

JUDGES ANXIOUS FOR CAMP DELTA INMATE

Jamie Wilson, The Guardian

Lawyers acting for a British man imprisoned by the US on suspicion of being a
Taliban member were yesterday claiming an important victory, despite a ruling
that the foreign secretary could not be compelled to intervene in his case.

Three court of appeal judges, headed by the master of the rolls, Lord Phillips,
described Feroz Abbasi's detention without charge or access to a court at the US
base in Guantanamo Bay as "legally objectionable".

Despite upholding the high court's refusal to order the government to make
diplomatic protests to the US about a breach of international law, the panel of
judges said their anxiety about Mr Abbasi's treatment might act to draw the
attention of the US supreme court - a move described by lawyers acting for the
22-year-old as "virtually unprecedented".

Mr Abbasi is one of seven British nationals detained at Camp Delta in Cuba,
since being captured by US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. Lord Phillips said
it was understood Mr Abbasi and others like him were being held under a military
order of the US president, which excludes any right ofaccess to any court.

Louise Christian, lawyer for Mr Abbasi's mother, Zumrati Juma, a nurse from
Croydon, said: "It is virtually unprecedented for the court to give a direct
message to the US supreme court, which is to hear an appeal over the finding
that no court has jurisdiction in the matter."

She added: "This judgment will have an impact on US-UK relations. It will mean
that the government has to take notice and make protests behind the scenes.

"The effect of this is that some very strong expressions of opinion have been
made about the plight of British citizens at the hands of the US government."

Lord Phillips said that in contradiction of the legal principles of both the US
and Britain Mr Abbasi was being arbitrarily detained in a "legal black hole".
But though the foreign secretary could not be compelled to take action he was
under a duty to give proper consideration to a request by a British subject to
make representations about an injustice at the hands of a foreign state.

The panel said it was clear from the evidence that the foreign secretary had
considered Mr Abbasi's request for assistance and acted on it.

They also said it would not be appropriate to order the secretary of state to
make any specific representations to the US, even in the face of what appeared
to be a clear breach of human rights, as this would have a negative impact on
the conduct of foreign policy at a "particularly delicate time".

Yesterday a Foreign Office spokesman welcomed the court's ruling, saying it had
sought throughout to ensure Mr Abbasi's well being, as well as to protect
Britain's national security.

"We shall continue to act in line with these objectives. We shall be reflecting
on the other aspects of the court's judgment," the spokesman added.

* * *


The Gaurdian (UK):

November 6, 2002

APPEAL COURT BLOW FOR BRITISH TALIBAN SUSPECT

Staff and agencies

The government cannot be compelled to intervene over the fate of a Briton held
by the US in Guantanamo Bay even though his imprisonment is "legally
objectionable", the court of appeal ruled today.

The family of Feroz Abbasi, 22, who was taken to US base in January following
his capture in Afghanistan, had wanted the courts to force the British
government to protect his rights and complain that his internment breached
international law.

A panel of judges sitting in the court of appeal upheld an earlier high court
ruling that British courts did not have the power to intervene in a foreign
policy matter.

But the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, outlined the courts' opposition to
his detention.

"The court does not express any view on whether Mr Abbasi's detention as an
alleged enemy combatant may be justified as a matter of law," he said.

"But it finds it legally objectionable that Abbasi should be subject to
indefinite detention in territory over which the United States has exclusive
control with no opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of his detention before
any court or tribunal," he said.

Louise Christian, the solicitor representing Mr Abbasi's mother, Zumrati Juma,
who brought the case, said after the judgment: "We came to the court to ask it
to order the British government to make diplomatic protests about the unlawful
detention but the court did something better than we asked for.

"Some very strong expressions of opinion have been made about the plight of
British citizens at the hands of the US government," she said.

Mrs Juma lost touch with her son in 2000 after he began attending mosques in
Croydon, south London, and in Finsbury Park, north London, from where he was
sent by a Muslim cleric to Afghanistan to train with the Taliban regime.

She did not hear of him again until his name appeared on a list of those
detained by the US authorities in Cuba.

Lord Phillips said that the appeal court had decided to hear the case itself
because it raised important issues about an English court's powers to examine
whether a foreign state is in breach of treaty obligations or public
international law where fundamental human rights are engaged.

In his ruling he said that the there was no direct remedy in the English courts
that could free Mr Abbasi from the "legal black hole" he was being held in
against both US and UK legal principles. He said the US government was not
involved in the case and no order would be binding on it. While the British
government was involved in the case it had no direct responsibility for the
detention.

But Lord Phillips said the court had refused the appeal because it was clear
from the evidence that the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had considered Mr
Abbasi's request for assistance and acted on it.

Mr Straw could not be compelled to make a specific representation to the US as
it would impact on foreign policy at a "particularly delicate time", he added.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We welcome the court's decision that the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office has done as much as Mr Abbasi could reasonably
expect in terms of offering assistance and making representations to the US."

Mr Abbasi is one of seven British nationals detained in Camp Delta at Guantanamo
Bay.

* * *


The Guardian (UK):

November 6, 2002

KILLING PROBES THE FRONTIERS OF ROBOTICS AND LEGALITY

'War on terror' tag allows US to attack anywhere, lawyer argues

Brian Whitaker in Cairo and Oliver Burkeman in New York, The Guardian

The US was accused last night of summarily executing the six alleged al-Qaida
members killed in Yemen on Sunday by the first act of what experts say could be
a new age of "robotic warfare".

As the embarrassed Yemeni government remained tight-lipped about the
assasination on its soil more details emerged of how an unmanned CIA predator
drone found the six men in a car and killed them with a Hellfire missile.

It was reported that the Yemeni intelligence service had monitored them for
months, and relayed the information to the Americans.

Tribesmen in Marib province said a Yemeni air force helicopter was hovering over
the area moments before the explosion occurred.

Yesterday the Yemeni cabinet issued a brief statement urging people to unite
against "terrorist activities targeting our country, its people and its national
economy", but it refused to say whether it had given the CIA permission to carry
out the attack.

Officials declined to contradict their earlier suggestion that the deaths might
have been caused accidentally by explosives being carried in the car, whose
occupants apparently included Qaed Senyan al-Harithi, who was suspected of being
involved in the terrorist attack on USS Cole in Aden two years ago.

In Washington officials admitted that the CIA had carried out the operation.

The Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, told the Swedish news agency TT: "If
the USA is behind this with Yemen's consent, it is nevertheless a summary
execution that violates human rights. If the USA has conducted the attack
without Yemen's permission it is even worse. Then it is a question of
unauthorised use of force."

Walid al-Saqqaf, editor of the Yemen Times, said: "The Yemeni government is now
in a very weak position. It means they no longer have sovereignty over the
country."

While defence experts said the incident could herald a new era of robotic
warfare, international lawyers debated the legal implications of the surprising
turn in US strategy: killing specific individuals in countries where there is no
war.

"To have a drone that engages and kills people, that is quite a threshold to
cross," Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, told Reuters.

"This is the beginning of robotic warfare. There is underlying tension in the
military about using it. The CIA does not have any qualms. This is really the
first success story of this system."

The Predator drone said to have carried out the attack has a range of 400 miles
and would not necessarily have been launched in Yemen.

The CIA and the Pentagon refused to comment on its performance yesterday.

Anthony D'Amato, a professor of international law at Northwestern University in
Chicago, said Yemeni consent would probably not affect the legality of the
attack.

"In a war you have the right to shoot the combatants of the other side, and one
of the things Bush accomplished when he called it a war against terrorism was to
turn questions like this in his favour."

"In the very earliest days the notion of assassinating a terrorist in another
country would have been questionable, but not after so many Israeli-Palestinian
episodes."

If Washington had substantive evidence that the six were al-Qaida members,
Yemen would effectively be "harbouring" them, making its consent immaterial
according to precedents established as far back as the Vietnam war.

* * *

The Times (UK):

November 06, 2002

ROBOTIC WARFARE LEAVES TERRORISTS NO HIDING PLACE

by Daniel McGrory, Michael Evans and Elaine Monaghan

A new era of combat has dawned, where death is delivered by an unseen hand from
hundreds of miles away

THE CIA is deciding where next to deploy its lethal
robot technology after the spectacular success of its operation against a top
al-Qaeda terrorist ambushed in the Yemeni desert.

Military experts say that, when the CIA used a remote-controlled unmanned
aircraft to fire Hellfire missiles at a vehicle carrying six suspects, America
was pursuing a revolutionary new form of warfare in which no terrorist will be
safe anywhere in the world.

The Predator can range over hundreds of miles.

It strikes without warning.

In America’s no-holds-barred War on Terror, distant operators, hunched over
computer screens, act as judge, jury and executioner.

As the al-Qaeda gang bumped across the desert in a black Toyota Land Cruiser on
Sunday afternoon, they had no idea that they were being watched by a team of CIA
agents hundreds of miles away, manoeuvring a camera on the nose of the Predator
drone 25,000ft overhead.

The vehicle carried Ali Qaed Sunian al-Harthi, who allegedly masterminded the
attack on the USS Cole. Minutes later he became the first victim outside
Afghanistan to be killed by what the CIA are calling their "robo-assassin". The
identity of the man who launched the missile will never be revealed, nor where
he was based. He could have been at a military base in Yemen, across the Red Sea
in Djibouti or working from the control room at US Central Command in Tampa,
Florida.

Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, said yesterday: "One hopes each
time you get a success like that, not only to have gotten rid of somebody
dangerous, you have imposed changes in their tactics and operations. Sometimes
when people are changing, they expose themselves in new ways."

Clifford Beal, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, said: "To use a remote-
controlled drone that engages and kills people, that is quite a threshold to
cross. This is the beginning of robotic warfare.

"There is underlying tension in the military about using it, but the CIA does
not have any qualms. This is really the first success story of this system . . .
It doesn’t seem they were given the opportunity to surrender. They were taken
out Israeli-style."

The CIA is reported to have used the same drone in Afghanistan in March when it
blew up a villa outside Kabul being used a hideout by Mohammed Atef, who was
said to be third-in-command of al-Qaeda.

The CIA does not need to seek permission to fire from Washington. President Bush
has agreed that to fight al-Qaeda and the terrorist threat the United States
needs a new rapid response philosophy that boils down to "who sees it, shoots
it".

In Afghanistan last month these drones clocked up 2,100 hours flying combat
missions.

This mission began on Sunday afternoon when al-Harthi, a confidant of Osama bin
Laden, climbed into his Land Cruiser with five colleagues at a farmhouse in the
mountains of Marib. He was being watched by a Yemeni undercover agent. The
Yemeni spy passed details of the car to the CIA, who had a drone pick up the al-
Qaeda team as it headed towards the neighbouring province of Shabwa. The pin-
sharp live pictures sent back by the drone showed the car veer off the road at
al-Naqaa just before it reached a military checkpoint.

As the Toyota turned on to a desert track and picked up speed in what is known
as the Empty Quarter, it was destroyed by the missiles. There was little left--
just enough for Yemeni investigators to say that it had carried explosives,
sophisticated communications equipment and weapons. Witnesses said that almost
all those inside were burnt beyond recognition. Only al-Harthi, better known as
Abu Ali, was identified.

The Americans had been hunting him for two years. When a US-trained force of
Yemeni troops tried to ambush him at a hideout in the tribal village of al-
Hosun in December, 18 soldiers were killed and he escaped.

All the Yemeni Government would say officially yesterday was that they were
still investigating the cause of the explosion. Some senior officals were
furious that the Americans had made the operation public. They face internal
dissent from militant groups over their support for the United States.

Diplomats in Sanaa say that the Government would have co-operated with this
operation, but would hope that Washington gets the blame.

Intelligence sources say that suspicious e-mail messages had been picked up in
recent days warning of another imminent attack in Yemen.

Officials in Sanaa suspected that Abu Ali was also behind the suicide-bomb
attack on a French oil tanker, the Limburg, last month, which led to many
shipping companies abandoning Yemen. His death may persuade some to return.

Anxious not to upset its allies in Yemen, Washington is saying little more in
public about the success of the CIA’s robot wars. But the timing of this attack
was ideal for the Republicans ahead of yesterday’s congressional mid-term
elections.

* * *


Associated Press:

November 5, 2002

http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/831116.asp

FREED GUANTANAMO INMATE SPEAKS OUT

Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer

PATTAN, Pakistan - Mohammed Sanghir is a hero to many in this conservative
village, but the first Pakistani released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, says his time in captivity left him and his family mired in debt.

Family and dozens of friends by his side, Sanghir said his captors never
apologized for whisking him out of Afghanistan.

"They told me I could go home. They said, 'You are innocent.' They didn't say
sorry. They just said, 'You can go home,'" said Sanghir, who still wears a green
plastic wristband with his picture, name, age and prison number: US9PK000143DP.

He also demanded compensation from his American captors claiming he was told he
would get $400 a month or about $4,800 upon his return. Instead he received
$100.

"I have nothing but debts. My equipment is broken. My family had nothing for one
year. They had to borrow to survive," he said tossing aside a piece of the
broken saw he had used to cut logs for construction.

Sanghir said his U.S. interrogators always asked the same questions: "Do you
know Osama bin Laden? Do you know where he is? Have you seen him? When?"

Then they would show him pictures of bearded men. "Do you know these men? Have
you seen these men?"

His answer was always the same: "No."

Sanghir espouses the same strict interpretation of Islam as the Taliban. A
member of a preaching group called the Organization of Tabliquis, every year he
goes off for two or three months to preach to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Usually his assignments have been in Pakistan. But last year he went to
Afghanistan.

"It was just his bad luck," said Dost Mohammed, a teacher in Sanghir's home
village of Pattan, a wretchedly poor place in an achingly beautiful corner of
northern Pakistan. Wood and stone homes cling to the mountains of the Hindu Kush
range. Below, the emerald green Indus River roars past.

Sanghir is considered a hero in Pattan, where the anti-American Jamiat-e-Ulema
Islam Party of Islamic clerics won big in recent elections.

Mohammed Saeed, a Jamiat follower, was among dozens of men who came to greet
Sanghir, drinking green tea and chewing tobacco while seated crossed-legged on
the carpeted floor.

Saeed's party dominates the six-party religious bloc that seems set to form a
government along with a coalition of democratic parties. And Saeed said one of
the first orders of business for the new Parliament will be to ask President
Pervez Musharraf to end Pakistan's support for the war on terror and order
American military personnel to leave the country.

"We will ask the Americans politely to go, but if they don't, then we will kill
them," he said.

But Sanghir lashed out at Saeed, angry at the interruption and afraid of being
associated with Saeed's anti-American threats.

Sanghir said he was not a fighter in Afghanistan, but got caught in the northern
city of Kunduz after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. When the bombing
began the next month, he said he tried to flee, but his vehicle was attacked by
fighters loyal to warlord Rashid Dostum.

Sanghir was imprisoned in a railway container packed with 250 men - 50 of whom
suffocated, he said. "They screamed for water, they banged their head against
the walls and then right next to me they died," he said.

For 45 days, Sanghir was held in a prison in northern Afghanistan, he said,
along with hundreds of Taliban, Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Bosnians and
others. They had all been on the front lines with the Taliban.

He was eventually transferred to the U.S. military base in Kandahar, identified
as a possible al-Qaida man or sympathizer by Dostum.

In Kandahar, he was questioned about bin Laden and al-Qaida.

After 18 days, he was taken away and his head and beard were shaved.

"I physically tried to stop them. This is my Islamic belief I told them. But
they wouldn't listen. I was humiliated."

The trip to Guantanamo was 22 hours on an aircraft, with his hands bound, his
eyes blindfolded and his mouth covered with a mask. Bathroom breaks were given,
as well as water and a small meal.

When he reached Guantanamo, his eyes still covered, "some men dragged me from
the plane, kicked me and slapped me."

At Guantanamo he was held in a cage. "We were animals. We weren't like humans at
all. Even to go to the bathroom they watched us."

Initially, Sanghir and the other captives were not allowed to pray or talk to
each other. They went on a two-day hunger strike. The rules were changed. They
spent their days praying, reading the Quran, talking among themselves.

The questioning continued throughout his captivity. Then one day two weeks ago,
a "new general said to me 'you are going to get some good news next week.'" He
would go home, along with three Afghans.

* * *


Los Angeles Times:

November 5, 2002

U.S. ENTERS A LEGAL GRAY ZONE

* Strike in Yemen raises thorny questions of assassination
  and the definition of war.

By Esther Schrader and Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON -- In striking an alleged close associate of Osama bin Laden dead in
Yemen, the Bush administration has entered a murky area of international law and
demonstrated it will use more aggressive and controversial tactics to defend
American interests abroad than the U.S. has historically employed.

When a Hellfire laser-guided missile screamed out of an unmanned Predator drone
and straight into a car carrying Qaed Sinan Harithi on Sunday, the United States
may have violated international law, or it may not have. The answer depends on
whether the Yemeni government acceded to the strike, international law experts
said Monday.

But the attack clearly placed the Bush administration outside the bounds of
actions recent U.S. administrations have acknowledged taking to defend American
interests overseas.

"Where we have refrained from doing this in the past, it's been the judgment of
the U.S. that killing our enemies abroad is a very foolish thing to do," said
Alfred P. Rubin, a former Pentagon counsel and a professor of law and diplomacy
at Tufts University.

"After all, the Soviets killed their enemies abroad, and the Iranians have tried
to do the same thing against [author] Salman Rushdie. We decided a long time ago
that this was not a wise thing to do. It was not consistent with our vision of
where the world should be going. But now we apparently have changed our minds."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, blamed on Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, the Bush
administration has steadfastly argued that the United States is at war with the
terrorist group, wherever its tentacles reach.

However, the United Nations charter forbids a nation to intervene in the
internal affairs of another country with which it is not at war. So unless Yemen
agreed to the strike, the United States acted in violation of the U.N. charter.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday that Yemen has been acting in
close cooperation with the U.S. in the war on terrorism, but he did not say
whether the Yemeni government was aware of and had permitted Sunday's strike.

Beyond the question of Yemeni involvement lies the deeper question of defining
war. The Bush administration says that it is engaged in a worldwide war against
terrorists that is far more than rhetorical, and that it views attacks on
suspected terrorists as military strikes against combatants.

"It shows they are not looking at this in a law enforcement context but in a
military one. And in a military conflict, you shoot to kill the enemy," said
Suzanne Spaulding, former executive director of the National Commission on
Terrorism, a former lawyer for both the CIA and the Senate Intelligence
Committee, and chair of the American Bar Assn.'s standing committee on law and
national security.

Robert K. Goldman, a professor of international law at American University's
Washington College of Law, said the situation presents a new paradigm because
most of the laws that have evolved about war involve hostilities between
countries.

"If you assume the U.S. can be at war against non-state actors," Goldman said,
members of Al Qaeda "are combatants who are susceptible to direct attack at all
times."

"The basic premise is that the U.S. regards itself as at war with Al Qaeda. That
being the case, it regards members of Al Qaeda as combatants engaged in war
against the U.S."

But the United States is not at war with Yemen. In seeking out and killing its
avowed enemies anywhere it finds them without arresting, charging and trying
them first, critics of such a strike say, the U.S. mirrors the Israeli
government, which has been criticized for carrying out "extrajudicial
executions" in response to terrorist attacks.

"If we go down this path, we might find ourselves in the same position that
Israel is in," Rubin said. "We can target terrorists too if we like. But I don't
think it's brought very much peace to the Middle East, and I don't think it's
going to bring very much peace to the U.S. either."

While some may consider the attack in Yemen an assassination, Goldman said it
was different from U.S. attempts decades ago to kill foreign leaders. Those led
President Ford to promulgate an executive order prohibiting political
assassinations; it has been in force since 1976.

"This is not an assassination. The U.S. is not in a situation of peace with
these people. This is not putting poison into Castro's toothpaste," Goldman
said. "My view is the administration has a strong argument based on the doctrine
of self-defense and the continuing threat from Al Qaeda."

M. Cherif Bassiouni, professor of international law at DePaul University in
Chicago, who headed the U.N. commission investigating war crimes in the former
Yugoslav federation, said the most appropriate comparison would be if a U.S.
drug agent killed a narcotics trafficker rather than arresting him and putting
him on trial.

Bassiouni said that any living relatives of those killed in Yemen might be able
to sue U.S. officials who approved or participated in the attack under the Alien
Tort Claims Act. He said the CIA could not be sued as an entity because it has
governmental immunity.

The attack "is a dangerous precedent," Bassiouni said. "The biggest danger is
something that is intangible. It suddenly puts governments at the same level as
terrorists. If we come down from the moral heights and start wallowing in the
same mud as the terrorists, we have lost our legitimacy and we can no longer
marshal the claim of moral authority for us and immorality for them."

In recent years, the U.S. has attacked targets in countries with which it was
not at war, although such strikes apparently did not target specific
individuals. In 1998, for instance, the Clinton administration used cruise
missiles to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that it claimed was
involved in chemical-weapons production.

Although military lawyers have taken an increasingly prominent role in vetting
U.S. strikes on a range of targets, it is unclear whether they were consulted
about Sunday's attack in Yemen. In previous cases, the U.S. has refrained from
killing individuals on advice of lawyers.

For instance, in October 2001, a Predator drone targeted Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammed Omar at the start of the war on Afghanistan, but military lawyers could
not decide whether he was a permissible target, officials have said. Its
missiles were ultimately fired near him, but not to kill him.

In May, a CIA Predator attacked Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar near Kabul,
the Afghan capital, missing him but killing some followers. Hekmatyar had
offered rewards for anyone who killed U.S. troops. The former Afghan prime
minister is said by U.S. counter-terrorism officials to be loosely associated
with Al Qaeda.

[ Schrader reported from Washington and Weinstein from Los Angeles. Times staff
writer Josh Meyer contributed to this report. ]

* * *


Associated Press:

November 5, 2002

CIA PLANE STRIKE KILLS AL-QAIDA AIDE

Missile Strike From CIA Drone Aircraft Kills
Senior al-Qaida Operative, Five Others in Yemen

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 -- Opening up a new front in the war on terror, U.S. forces
launched a pinpoint missile strike in Yemen, killing a top al-Qaida operative in
his car in the first such overt attack outside of Afghanistan, a U.S. official
said.

The strike, conducted by a CIA drone aircraft, killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-
Harethi, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S.
counterterrorism officials say al-Harethi was al-Qaida's chief operative in
Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole.

Al-Harethi's car was struck by a Hellfire air-to-ground missile launched from a
pilotless Predator. Five other people, believed low-level al-Qaida operatives,
also were killed.

At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz appeared to
confirm that the attack was a U.S. operation. In an interview with CNN, he
called it "a very successful tactical operation" and said such strikes are
useful not only in killing terrorists but in forcing al-Qaida to change its
tactics.

"We've just got to keep the pressure on everywhere we're able to, and we've got
to deny the sanctuaries everywhere we're able to and we've got to put pressure
on every government that is giving these people support to get out of that
business," he said.

The attack occurred in the northern province of Marib, about 100 miles east of
Yemen's capital San'a, where al-Qaida is considered active.

The official Yemeni news agency, local tribesmen and the U.S. official confirmed
the strike killed al-Harethi. Witnesses said they saw an aircraft, possibly a
helicopter, in the area. Hellfires can also be launched by attack helicopters
and are used by both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have said al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, was
a top target of their efforts. He was a close associate of Osama bin Laden in
Sudan in the early 1990s. Saudi fugitive Bin Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11
attacks, relocated to Afghanistan in 1996.

Speaking Monday about al-Harethi, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told
reporters, "It would be a very good thing if he were out of business." The CIA
declined comment on reports of his death, and President Bush ignored a question
about the attack after he voted Tuesday in Crawford, Texas.

Al-Harethi was among hundreds of former fighters who returned to Yemen in the
1990s from Afghanistan, where some fought alongside bin Laden against the Soviet
army.

Yemeni officials say al-Harethi went into hiding in 2001 after learning he was
wanted for questioning by U.S. investigators in the Cole bombing.

Between August and November of last year, al-Harethi spent months in Hosun
al-Jalal, a poor village in Yemen's Marib province, a region populated by
gun-toting tribesmen where government forces venture only with the permission of
local chiefs.

Al-Harethi lived in the village along with Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, another
al-Qaida suspect wanted in the Cole attack.

A Yemeni security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
intelligence agents had al-Harethi's farm under surveillance for months and
relayed information to U.S. forces.

Yemen, bin Laden's ancestral home, has become a haven for some al-Qaida
operatives fleeing the war in Afghanistan.

In the spring, hundreds of U.S. troops were deployed to Djibouti, the tiny
African nation facing Yemen across the Gulf of Aden, officials said. The Marine
amphibious assault ship USS Nassau recently replaced the USS Belleau Wood in the
waters between the two nations.

Inside Yemen, U.S.-trained Yemeni troops deployed to suspected al-Qaida hotbeds
in August.

Among other targets in Yemen are Shaykh Dabwan and Suwaid, described as al-Qaida
operatives who plan and provide support to terror operations, and an al-Qaida
communications expert known as Miqdad, said a U.S. defense official, speaking on
condition of anonymity.

Many al-Qaida operations in Yemen are directed by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, bin
Laden's Persian Gulf operations chief, U.S. counterterrorism officials said.

He is believed to have directed from afar the attack on the USS Cole, when two
suicide bombers slammed an explosives-laden boat into the hull of the ship at
the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors and disabling the vessel.

U.S. intelligence also believes Yemeni-based terrorists linked to al-Qaida
conducted an Oct. 6 attack the French oil tanker Limburg. A small boat crashed
into the ship and exploded, killing a crewman, blowing a hole in the Limburg's
hull and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the CIA has used remotely
operated Predators to make pinpoint strikes on al-Qaida leaders and conduct
reconnaissance.

Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's military chief and a Sept. 11 organizer, was killed
in November near Kabul in a joint airstrike by a Predator and U.S. military
aircraft.

A Predator targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar at the start of the war
on Afghanistan, but military lawyers could not decide whether he could be
struck, officials have said. Its missiles were ultimately fired near him, but
not to kill him.

In May, a CIA Predator attacked Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar near Kabul,
missing him but killing some followers. Hekmatyar had offered rewards for those
who killed U.S. troops. The former Afghan prime minister is said by U.S.
counterterrorism officials to be loosely associated with al-Qaida.

Associated Press writers Robert Burns in Washington and Ahmed al-Haj in Marib,
Yemen, contributed to this story.

* * *


The Observer:

Sunday November 3, 2002

DISTANT VOICES TELL OF LIFE FOR BRITONS CAGED IN CAMP DELTA

Letters to families reveal hunger strikes and suicides
in US jail for terror suspects

Paul Harris and Burhan Wazir, The Observer

The letters are brief and blunt. Crammed into eight lines in block capitals, the
postcards ask after family and friends and wish a happy birthday to a much-loved
brother. Asif Iqbal, 20, from Tipton in the West Midlands, could be any prisoner
writing home to a concerned family.

But Iqbal's notes come from inside the most secretive and infamous prison in the
world - a place created to hold those captured in America's War on Terror and
condemned by critics as a centre of brutality and fear. Iqbal is an inmate at
Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The letters offer a glimpse behind the prison bars. 'They have not sent about
eight of my letters because I've been writing the truth of the way we are being
held and I'm not allowed to do that,' Iqbal wrote.

The Observer has obtained letters from three Britons held at Camp Delta and
others from Kuwaiti prisoners. Added to interviews with lawyers, experts, former
guards and the testimony of the first prisoners to be released, they reveal a
detailed picture of life at the camp.

It is a regime of total control; of 30 minutes spent outside a cell per week; of
shackles and interrogations; of starvation and suicides; of the threat of the
'cooler box'; of being trussed up and carted to hospital. Many inmates have gone
on hunger strike; 34 have attempted suicide or harmed themselves. Others have
developed serious mental illnesses.

Nearly all the prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan by American soldiers and
spies. But there is a growing belief that many of the 620 inmates are not
terrorists. Some were pressganged into fighting for the Taliban; others were in
the wrong place at the wrong time.

At night arc lights shine on the complex. But, despite the 24- hour light, the
prison is hidden from the outside world. It lies on an American naval base and
the only viewing point is 100 metres away. Held within are men from 38 nations.
Some are in their seventies, one is only 15. Each man spends 30 minutes a week
showering and exercising; the rest of the time he is alone in a cell measuring
8ft by 6ft 8in.

A prisoner raising his voice is sent to 'the cooler': a metal box just big
enough to move in. An isolation wing houses 80 prisoners. In the main wings,
prisoners move cell every few weeks to prevent them forming relationships with
other inmates. Any trips to the camp's clinic involve the prisoner being
shackled to a trolley and wheeled out of his cell. He is then chained to the
hospital bed. Prisoners are exercised, shackled at the ankles, waist and hands.
Guards hold each man's arms as he walks.

Interrogations are carried out by operatives from a special unit called JTF 170,
made up of agents from the CIA, FBI and military intelligence. No beatings have
been reported, but psychological techniques - including sleep deprivation - are
used. Perhaps this is what Iqbal meant when he wrote about the visit of a
British official. 'I told him the problems with this place but I'm not allowed
to write [about them],' he noted. Certainly the three Afghan men - two in their
seventies - released last week condemned the harsh conditions. 'We were kept
like animals,' Mohammed Sadiq said when he arrived back in Kabul last Tuesday.

There have been four serious attempts at suicide, three by hanging with towels
and bedding and one when an inmate tried to slash his wrists with a plastic
razor. Thirty other inmates have tried to injure themselves.

At least one of those who emerged last week appeared to have been mentally
damaged by his ordeal. As journalists asked him questions, Faiz Mohammed babbled
like a child. His memory failed him as he claimed to be 105 while a bracelet on
his wrist gave his birth date as 1931.

Almost one year after prisoners started arriving at Camp Delta, a veil of
secrecy still hangs over the inmates. US officials would not confirm the names
of the three Afghans and one Pakistani released last week. But a few facts have
emerged. The largest group is the Saudis, of whom there are at least 150. Then
come the Yemenis with 85. There are fewer than 100 Afghans, and the largest
Western contingent is from Britain with seven.

Letters from the Britons - obtained by The Observer last week - are heavily
censored. They speak almost entirely of family events. 'Tell mum I am okay and I
miss her. Let me know the football scores and I write again soon,' writes Shafiq
Rasul, 24, also from Tipton. In another letter he tries to reassure his family,
who heard he had lost three stones. 'Don't worry about my weight problems. It is
okay. Tell everyone to write because I am bored here, do the same thing every
day,' he wrote.

Another Briton, Feroz Abbasi, 22, from Croydon, wrote: 'Dear Family, I have hope
in Allah that you all are well and good. I have sent many messages out to you
but received none yet so far... I have hope in Allah that their contents are
full of good news and blessings from Allah. Love you all very much, Feroz.'

Some at Camp Delta are hardcore al-Qaeda. It is believed Mullah Faisal Mazloom,
the former Taliban chief of staff, and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of the 25 top
al-Qaeda military commanders, are there. But there is evidence many of the
inmates are not terrorists.

Pakistani interrogators visiting the camp this summer said nearly all the 53
Pakistanis should be released. Rasul's family describe a man who loved American
fashion and had gone on 18-30 holidays. 'It is ridiculous. It's been 11 months
and it is so hard for the family,' said his brother Mirza.

Efforts are getting some of the inmates out. American lawyer Thomas Wilner
represents 12 Kuwaiti inmates who claim to be charity workers caught up in the
war. 'Of the 12 men, we can vouch for nine,' said Wilner. 'We have a paper trail
that stretches back miles and proves, without a doubt, they were bona fide
charity workers.'

One Kuwaiti, Fawzi al-Odah, is a 25-year-old religious teacher from Kuwait City
who, according to family and friends, has been making annual trips abroad since
1996 to participate in humanitarian efforts in Somalia, India and Bangladesh. 'I
have gone on food strike for 27 days and I will continue my strike to indefinite
period. Further, I have gone on strike for water and speech for four days till
they... set me free as I am innocent or take me to the court for trial in order
to obtain all my rights or to die as I cannot stand life in this place,' he
wrote.

His father, Khalid Al Odah, 50, is bewildered at his son's treatment. 'I love
America for liberating my country during the Gulf war. But this makes no sense
to me. I cannot understand why the Americans are doing this,' he said.

Inmates at Camp Delta are in a legal black hole. In dubbing them 'unlawful
combatants', the US implies the Geneva Conventions do not apply to them: there
is no need to charge the men, no need for a trial, they have no right to a
lawyer, and no rights to visitors.

The US has said it can hold them until the War on Terror is over. Even when
released, they have no recourse to compensation. The three Afghans freed last
week received only $500 between them.

Legal efforts on behalf of the inmates have been foiled by a legal ploy that
states Guantanamo Bay is outside the jurisdiction of the US courts. Lawyers have
argued the base is under Cuban sovereignty. 'The US is picking and choosing what
law it obeys,' Jamie Felner of Human Rights Watch said.

And Camp Delta continues to grow. Last week - even as four inmates were released
- a plane carrying 30 prisoners from Afghanistan touched down at the base.

The camp is being extended to a capacity of 812 by the end of the year,
blueprints exist for an expansion to 2,000 and the base is to be included in a
'20-year plan' for Guantanamo's naval base.

Camp Delta is starting to look permanent. For al-Odah that could be a disaster.
Despite last week's releases, there are few signs of many more. 'I will be back
soon, God willing. Just be patient,' he wrote in April. 'I would like to see my
newly born baby and my children too.

* * *


The Salt Lake Tribune:

November 2, 2002

First Minor Held at Guantanamo Prison Camp Is Canadian

By Carol Rosenberg
Knight Ridder News Service

MIAMI -- The U.S. military is holding a wounded Canadian-born teenager in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite diplomatic objections, a Canadian Foreign Ministry
official said Friday.

Omar Khadr, 16, was captured in July in Khost, Afghanistan after a four-hour
firefight described by U.S. officials as an al-Qaida ambush of an American
patrol. A Special Forces medic was wounded and later died.

Khadr was also wounded during the firefight. He was treated and interrogated at
the U.S.-controlled Bagram air base in Afghanistan, diplomat Reynald Doiron said
from Ottawa on Friday.

Khadr is the first confirmed minor being held in the prison camp and the first
known Canadian.

Doiron said U.S. officials confirmed his presence there in a diplomatic note
delivered by the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa on Thursday. He was among about two
dozen prisoners who arrived at the base on Monday, raising the prison population
of suspected terrorists to about 625.

"We are disappointed in the U.S. decision to move him because he is a minor,"
Doiron said. "Detainee conditions at the Guantanamo Bay base may not be optimal,
given this young man's age."

Canadian officials are also inquiring whether the ongoing U.S. investigation of
Khadr could subject him to a military tribunal.

The Pentagon published rules for tribunals last year and they do not
specifically exclude children.

No one has yet been charged under them. The focus at Guantanamo so far has been
the interrogation of captives to glean intelligence.

"There's no law or regulation that prevents military commissions from applying
to minors," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "The
key probably is, it's case by case."

Khadr, born in Toronto on Sept. 19, 1986, was 15 at the time of the firefight.
His family has for years run afoul of Pakistani and Afghan authorities.

His Egyptian-born father, Ahmed Saeed Khadr, also a Canadian, was arrested in
Pakistan in 1995 in connection with an attack on the Egyptian Embassy in
Islamabad, and has "simply vanished," Doiron said.

His brother, Abdul Rahman Khadr, 19, is being held by the Afghan government
after his capture by the Northern Alliance last year.

Canadian officials have not been able to meet with him either, Doiron said. But
the Canadian diplomat said he expected that U.S. military commanders would make
Khadr available for interviews at Guantanamo.

It is not known what role Khadr had in the July clash between alleged al-Qaida
and U.S. forces. A 28-year-old Green Beret died Aug. 7 in Germany from wounds he
received in the battle.

Amnesty International has highlighted Khadr's case. Without arguing his guilt or
innocence, it alleges that his detention is "outside the framework of human
rights protections against arbitrary arrest, secret detention and unfair trial."

Friday, the London-based human rights organization also published a lengthy
criticism of overall Guantanamo detentions:

"It is time to end the unacceptable legal limbo in which these prisoners are
kept . . . denied 'prisoner of war' status while at the same time are not
allowed to enjoy the rights recognized to criminal suspects under U.S. law."

* * *


October 29, 2002

'THEY INTERROGATED US FOR HOURS'

Staff and agencies

Three Afghan men captured by the US and held at a military base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, today spoke for the first time about their time in captivity.

Released from Camp Delta on Sunday and now convalescing under guard at a
military hospital in Afghanistan, the men said they were generally treated well
and allowed to practise their religion but complained of being chained up during
frequent interrogations.

"They interrogated us for hours at a time. They wanted to know, 'Where are you
from? Are you a member of the Taliban? Did you support the Taliban? Were your
relatives Taliban? Did the Taliban give you weapons?"' Said one of the men,
Mohammed Hagi Fiz, who appeared to be in his 70s.

Mr Fiz said he was tied up and blindfolded by US forces while he was in a clinic
in the central province of Uruzgan then flown by helicopter to Kandahar and
later by plane to Guantanamo.

The Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo consisted of low-level Taliban fighters and
mullahs, he said.

"I don't know why the Americans arrested me. I told them I was innocent. I'm
just an old man," he said.

A plastic wristband, apparently issued by authorities at Guantanamo, indicated
the year of Fiz's birth was 1931, but he claimed to be 105 years old. Without
birth certificates many Afghans do not know their exact age.

Another prisoner, Mohammed Sadiq, claimed to be 90 years old and said he was
arrested in the eastern province of Paktia.

Jan Mohammed, 35, said he was forced to fight with the Taliban and was captured
in the northern city of Kunduz last year by Afghan forces and handed over to the
Americans.

"I wasn't Taliban, but the Taliban made me fight with them," Mohammed said. "I'm
innocent. I'm a farmer."

As they spoke earlier today, Afghan soldiers stood guard inside a small room at
the hospital. It is not clear when they will be allowed to return home.

A Pakistani man, 60-year-old Mohammed Saghir, was also released from Guantanamo
and returned to Pakistan. He is being questioned by Pakistani authorities in
Islamabad.

The group of four were the first prisoners released by the Americans, who have
determined that they no longer pose a threat.

Human rights groups have criticised the US for its treatment of the prisoners,
who were initially kept in outdoor cages and are held indefinitely without
access to lawyers.

Washington calls the 625 men from 42 countries enemy combatants and says it may
legally hold them until the end of hostilities.

* * *


CNN:

October 12, 2002

U.S. TO FREE SOME GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States is close to moving some of its prisoners
captured in the war on terror out of its detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he has given his approval to ending
the detention of a "small group of prisoners" he said were no longer of interest
to the United States.

"It's true that the process is working, and that there are some people likely to
come out the other end of the chute," he said.

Rumsfeld said prisoners are normally questioned first to determine if they could
provide useful intelligence.

If not, he said, they would then be in a "different basket," and their further
detention would be based on whether they could be prosecuted as criminals or
whether they posed a security risk and "should be kept off the street."

If none of those conditions apply, Rumsfeld said, "then the goal is to not have
them. Let's be rid of them."

Rumsfeld says that now there are a small number of prisoners who have "moved
through that process," and that he has approved their consideration for release.
He indicated he was unsure of the exact number or their nationalities.

Currently there are 598 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, representing 42
nationalities, and about 150 in Afghanistan. The United States will not release
names or nationalities of specific prisoners.

Any of the detainees released would be handed to another government with prior
consultation, he said. If the other governments wanted to keep the men in
custody themselves, that would be their decision. If not, Rumsfeld said, the
prisoners would be freed.

Sources told CNN Monday that one of the men under consideration for release is
estimated to be more than 80-years-old.

The transfer will not be officially announced until it is completed, for
security reasons. A Pentagon source also said some detainees are asking that the
United States not disclose any details because they fear retribution from al
Qaeda and the Taliban when they are released.

The United States has been holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay since January,
classifying them as enemy combatants -- a category that has come under criticism
for reducing the detainees' access to due process.

One prisoner, who was found to be seriously mentally ill, was released several
months ago.

* * *


The Guardian

October 16, 2002

'SOFT' GUANTANAMO CHIEF OUSTED

Julian Borger in Washington

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp - who was criticised in the
US press for being too soft on the inmates - has been dismissed, it emerged
yesterday.

Brigadier-General Rick Baccus was relieved of his duties as camp commander and
as an officer in the Rhode Island national guard on October 9, five days after a
newspaper report quoted defence sources as saying he was "too nice" to the 598
inmates, and was consequently making it hard for the military interrogators to
extract information from them.

Back home in Rhode Island General Baccus told a local radio station that"in no
instance did I interfere with interrogations", and expressed surprise at his
treatment.

"I'm a little amazed that after being deployed for seven months, separated from
my wife, family and my job and being called to active duty, this is the kind of
reception I'm getting."

Officials at the Guantanamo Bay base, a US enclave in Cuba, said Gen Baccus had
left because his unit, responsible for running Camp Delta, the base's detention
centre, was merged with Joint Task Force 170, a combined unit drawn from the
Defence Intelligence Agency, CIA and FBI, which questions the inmates.

His commanding officer in the Rhode Island national guard, Major-General
Reginald Centracchio, said he had sacked him for various reasons that
"culminated in my losing trust and confidence in him". A national guard
spokesman said General Baccus had failed to keep the headquarters up to date
with reports on the troops' wellbeing.

General Baccus denied the allegation and said General Centracchio did not have
the authority to dismiss him from the national guard. He said he had no
intention of retiring.

In August Gen Baccus told a visiting group of journalists, including the
Guardian, that uniformed officers had concerns that the Guantanamo Bay inmates
continued to be labelled "enemy combatants" rather than "prisoners of war", a
classification which would give them more rights under the Geneva conventions
and which would assure their release at the end of hostilities.

The Pentagon said there were no current plans to reclassify the Guantanamo Bay
inmates.

On October 4 the Washington Times reported that the chief interrogator, Major-
General Michael Dunlavey, was irritated by the prisoners' treatment,
particularly by Gen Baccus's decision to let the Red Cross put up posters
telling inmates they need only provide their interrogators with their name, rank
and number. Gen Dunlavey has taken over Gen Baccus's duties.

The newspaper also reported that, when addressing the detainees, Gen Baccus
began with the words "peace be with you" and finished with "may God be with
you".

* * *

CNN:

October 12, 2002

FEDS PUSH TO KEEP TERROR SUSPECT BEHIND BARS

Phil Hirschkorn

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The federal government has argued in court papers that a U.S.
citizen in his fifth month of detention as an "enemy combatant" is an al Qaeda
agent and should remain behind bars.

In papers filed Friday in Manhattan federal court, federal prosecutors said Jose
Padilla, a Muslim convert also known as Abdullah al Mujahir, engaged in the
early stages of a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" -- a conventional bomb laced
with radioactive material -- inside the United States.

Padilla, 31, is being detained at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, South
Carolina, publicly accused of plotting to commit an act of terrorism, but never
formally charged.

His attorneys, who are barred from communicating with their client, say he is
being detained illegally and should be returned to New York, where they say the
government should be forced to comply with standard criminal court procedures.

Short of obtaining Padilla's immediate release, his attorneys want to be
permitted to meet with him.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey is due to decide whether Padilla's case will
be heard in his lower Manhattan courtroom, or whether it will be heard by a
South Carolina court or stay in the hands of the military.

According to a June 9 order from President Bush declaring Padilla an enemy
combatant, Padilla "engaged in hostile and war-like acts, including conduct in
preparation for acts of international terrorism that had the aim to cause injury
to or adverse effects on the United States."

Bush accused Padilla of associating with al Qaeda, the terrorist group
responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Padilla's continued detention "is necessary to prevent him from aiding al Qaeda
in its efforts to attack the United States or its armed forces, other
governmental personnel, or citizens," according to the government's court
papers.

Padilla was arrested in Chicago, Illinois, May 8 after getting off a plane from
Zurich, Switzerland. He had been in Egypt and Pakistan -- the gateway to
Afghanistan, where, according to prosecutors, he received bomb-making training
and met with al Qaeda leaders.

"Multiple intelligence sources separately confirmed Padilla's involvement in
planning future terrorist attacks," prosecutors have said. "The plan included
stealing radioactive material for the bomb within the United States ... possibly
in Washington, D.C." they have said.

Other plans, prosecutors allege, called for "multiple, simultaneous" bombing
attacks on U.S. hotels, gas stations, and train stations.

Padilla allegedly received his instructions from senior al Qaeda leader Abu
Zubaydah, who is in U.S. custody and is one of two al Qaeda operatives who have
talked to investigators about Padilla.

Zubaydah was approached by Padilla and "an associate" with the dirty bomb
proposal, according to prosecutors, who said Zubaydah then sent the two to
terrorist training camps.

Court-appointed defense attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel offered a
different view of their client.

"His entrance [to the United States] can hardly be characterized as
surreptitious. He did not possess a weapon, a bomb, nuclear material, or an
instruction manual relating to even rudimentary bomb making" when he got off the
plane, they wrote in their court briefing. He is not a member of al Qaeda, they
added.

Padilla was transferred to New York City's federal jail on a material witness
warrant signed by Mukasey and held for a month until Bush changed his status, a
move within his power as commander-in-chief, prosecutors said.

Newman and Patel called the accusations against Padilla little more than hearsay
and said his constitutional right to due process is being violated. "Padilla is
being incarcerated without a charge, based on suspicion of possible future
acts," they wrote.

Padilla is "at most, a person who was not willing to be a martyr but who was in
the beginning talk stage of a plan for a crime that had neither a target,
timetable, nor access to materials to build the weapon under investigation,"
Newman and Patel wrote.

The defense attorneys also have said Bush was not authorized to name Padilla an
enemy combatant, because Congress has issued no formal declaration of war.

Prosecutors said Friday that the "enemy combatant" classification is not limited
to soldiers detained in Afghanistan or foreign nationals, and that such
detention is lawful under the joint congressional resolution authorizing force
to respond to the September 11 attacks.

"The settled authority of the military to detain enemy combatants in a time of
war does not depend on a formal declaration of war, and it is fully applicable
to those who attempt to extend the conflict beyond the traditional battlefield,"
prosecutors said.

The government has classified only one other detainee an "enemy combatant" --
Yaser Hamdi, a Louisiana-born U.S. citizen who fought with the Taliban and is
being held in a Norfolk, Virginia, Navy brig.

Recently, prosecutors filed charges in criminal court against Americans who are
alleged al Qaeda operatives in Buffalo, New York, and Portland, Oregon.

Padilla, born in Brooklyn, grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and has a troubled
past. As a juvenile gang member, he was convicted of aggravated battery and
armed robbery and was incarcerated for three years until he turned 18. He later
spent nearly a year in a Florida jail for a handgun crime.

His defense attorneys said he had been planning to visit his son in Chicago,
Illinois, when he was taken in to custody.

* * *


Associated Press:

August 21, 2002

LAWYERS ACCUSED GOVERNMENT OF STALLING IN HAMDI CASE

NORFOLK -- Lawyers seeking the release of a U.S.-born detainee captured in
Afghanistan accused the government today of trying to stall the case to continue
holding the man without charges or access to an attorney.

The government's request to appeal a judge's demand for more evidence to justify
holding Yaser Esam Hamdi "reflects a scorched-earth attempt to appeal almost
every order issued by this court, thereby prolonging the indefinite detention of
... Hamdi by indefinitely protracting this litigation," Virginia's federal
public defender's office said in papers filed in U.S. District Court.

The lawyers urged the judge to deny the government's request, saying a
successful appeal at this stage would not be enough to end the case because
other issues need to be resolved.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment, a spokeswoman said.

Hamdi, 21, was born in Louisiana and later moved to Saudi Arabia with his Saudi
parents. He has been held in the Norfolk Naval Station brig since April 5.

The government contends it can detain Hamdi indefinitely without charging him or
letting him see a lawyer because he is an enemy combatant. Federal public
defender Frank Dunham Jr. has been seeking to meet with Hamdi and win his
release.

U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar gave the government until Monday to turn
over evidence for him to review in private, including all statements Hamdi made
to his military interrogators, the names of his interrogators and any notes they
took during interviews with him, and statements made by the forces that captured
him late last year.

Government lawyers want Doumar to let them appeal the order, saying it "presents
a controlling question of law" over the military detention of enemy combatants
and that the documents Doumar wants include sensitive national security
information.

If the judge grants the request, the government will take the case for a third
time to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

Doumar demanded the evidence after he determined that a two-page declaration by
a Pentagon official was not enough justification for holding Hamdi. The official
wrote that Hamdi told U.S. military interrogators he went to Afghanistan last
summer to train with and, if necessary, fight for the Taliban regime and that he
laid down an assault rifle when he surrendered.

Even if the appeals court should rule that the declaration is sufficient, the
federal public defender's office contends that Doumar still would have to decide
whether Hamdi has a right to contest the declaration's "thin allegations,"
whether he must either be charged with a federal crime or released, and whether
the international armed conflict with the Taliban that purportedly justified
Hamdi's imprisonment is over.

If Doumar believes it would be appropriate to grant the government's request to
appeal, the federal public defender asked the judge to take the request under
advisement and stay his order for the additional evidence until he rules on
those three issues.

* * *


Newsweek:

August 19, 2002

AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

John Ashcroft crowed over the arrest of alleged ‘dirty bomber’ Jose Padilla. But
do the Feds have a case?

By Michael Isikoff NEWSWEEK

Aug. 19 issue -- Word spread quickly through the Charleston Naval Station last
June: a big-time terrorist was headed for the brig. An entire wing of the base’s
military lockup was emptied out.

And when the prisoner arrived-- 31-year- old Jose Padilla-- he was placed in an
isolation cell with a lamp burning 24 hours a day and a phalanx of guards around
the clock. One inmate asked a guard what exactly Padilla had been charged with.
"He’s not charged with anything," the guard shot back. "We’re just holding him."
The prisoner was baffled. "How the hell can you do that?" he asked.

Quite easily, it turns out. Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly accused
Padilla-- a.k.a. Abdullah al- Muhajir-- of being a Qaeda operative who was
actively "plotting" to set off a radiological bomb when he flew into Chicago’s
O’Hare Airport from Zurich four months ago. Inside the U.S. intelligence
community, sources tell NEWSWEEK, there were high-level doubts about Ashcroft’s
dramatic announcement of an ongoing plot from the very beginning. But those
views received scant attention at the White House, officials say. After a
hastily signed finding by President George W. Bush that he was an "enemy
combatant," Padilla was removed from a New York jail and flown to the Charleston
brig in early June. He’s been held there incommunicado ever since-- with no
charges pending against him and no prospect of a trial or court hearing where
the government’s evidence can be tested. Last week authorities told NEWSWEEK
they’re not even interested in making a case: they want to force Padilla to tell
what he knows about Al Qaeda. "If this guy thinks he might be there for 20 years
with no recourse, he might just say, ‘OK, let’s talk’," said one administration
official.

Padilla’s case promises to be a flash point in a high-stakes constitutional
showdown over the legal basis for much of the administration’s war on terrorism.
Acting under the direction of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, administration
lawyers have staked out increasingly bold positions: under his wartime powers as
commander in chief, they argue, President Bush has wide-ranging powers to
secretly round up suspected terrorists and detain them indefinitely, including
U.S. citizens like Padilla. Faced with a deadline last week to justify the
detention of another U.S.- born enemy combatant, Yaser Esam Hamdi, Justice
Department lawyers told a federal judge that he didn’t have the right to review
the material.

The details of the Padilla case may suggest why. Much of the evidence, officials
say, comes from a single, less-than-reliable informant: Abu Zubaydah, a former
chief of Qaeda training camps who was picked up in Pakistan last fall. Zubaydah
told interrogators about a U.S.-born Qaeda recruit who, along with two
accomplices, had talked to him in Afghanistan last year about a plan to build a
radiological dispersion device or "dirty bomb" that could create mass terror
inside the United States. Apparent confirmation came when U.S. forces found
photos of Padilla in a Qaeda safe house and computers showing that someone--
believed to be Padilla-- had been cruising the Internet checking out Web sites
of U.S. university labs and hospitals where radiological material could be
acquired.

But none of it was enough for the Justice Department to bring charges against
Padilla. Officials now acknowledge that the plot had never moved much beyond
talk. If Padilla had any accomplices in the United States, FBI officials say,
they have never been found or even identified. The idea of a plot was "blown out
of proportion," said one U.S. intelligence official. (Last week Padilla’s
lawyer, Donna Newman, told NEWSWEEK that Padilla had told family members he was
coming to Chicago to visit his 12-year-old son.)

Newman, who has been barred from seeing her client, is trying to challenge his
detention in federal court. The outcome could have broad consequences. So far,
only two U.S. citizens -- Padilla and Hamdi--  have been deemed enemy
combatants. But last week administration officials confirmed they were talking
about creating a panel to review whether others should join the list. That even
gives some Bush officials the creeps. "It’s one thing if there were three guys
-- but if there are going to be hundreds of Padillas, I’d be concerned," said
one. Which is why it may take the Supreme Court to ultimately answer that
nagging question: can they do that?

[With Sarah Downey in Chicago]

* * *


The Los Angeles Times:

August 18, 2002

NO LEADERS OF AL QAEDA FOUND AT GUANTANAMO

* Dearth of 'big-time guys' has frustrated U.S. authorities' efforts to learn
more about global terror workings.

By Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Despite intense interrogations and investigations,

U.S. authorities have yet to identify any senior Al Qaeda leaders among the
nearly 600 terror suspects from 43 countries in U.S. military custody at
Guantanamo Bay, officials say.

The failure to find high-ranking Al Qaeda officials has frustrated intelligence,
law enforcement and military authorities, who had hoped to harvest far more
valuable information about global terror structures and operations.

Although some of the information has been helpful, officials said, the
interrogations at the high-security prison camp have not provided the kind of
details needed to identify new Al Qaeda cells or to detect specific terrorist
plots.

"It's not roll-up-plots, knock-your-socks-off-kind of stuff," said a U.S.
intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said the 598 inmates flown to the U.S. Navy base in eastern Cuba
since January are mostly "low and middle-level" fighters and supporters, not
"the big-time guys" high enough in the command and control structure to help
counter-terrorism experts unravel Al Qaeda's tightly-knit cell and security
systems.

Another official who has visited the seaside detention facility called Camp
Delta said U.S. authorities had netted "no big fish" there. "Some of these guys
literally don't know the world is round," the official said.

Most of the prisoners were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan last fall
or during subsequent raids and sweeps conducted by United States and allied
authorities.

The most recent group of 34 prisoners arrived in Cuba on Aug. 5 and included
several alleged Islamic militants seized in Pakistan. Other suspects have been
brought from Bosnia and other parts of Europe.

The Bush administration has declared those held at Guantanamo Bay to be "enemy
combatants," a murky legal and political status that apparently has added to
stress there.

About 200 defiant inmates joined hunger strikes last spring to protest their
detention. More recently, the military has registered 30 "self-harm incidents,"
including suicide attempts, according to Lt. Col. Joe Hoey, a military spokesman
at the camp.

In the last six weeks alone, he said, three inmates have tried to hang
themselves in their cells with camp-issued "comfort items" such as towels and
sheets, and another tried to slit his wrists with a plastic razor. None has
succeeded.

Hoey said camp doctors are treating some detainees for psychological disorders
and have administered antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs. One inmate was
repatriated in April to an undisclosed country after doctors deemed him mentally
ill.

Not everyone apparently is eager to leave, however. One official said several
inmates have inquired about learning English and applying for political asylum
in America, saying they fear imprisonment, persecution or worse if they are sent
home.

That isn't likely anytime soon. The prisoners are monitored by the International
Red Cross, but they have not been charged in court, brought before a military
tribunal or provided with lawyers.

And on Aug. 1, responding to two lawsuits brought on behalf of 14 detainees,
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the detainees don't
have a right to appear in U.S. courts and that the military may hold them
indefinitely.

Officials concede they have not confirmed the identity of everyone being held at
Guantanamo Bay. Many prisoners either carried false identity documents or none
at all, or have given a variety of names and aliases.

Al Qaeda routinely provided false or stolen passports to some of its operatives.

"Most of them have given us more than one identification," said Steve Lucas, a
military spokesman in Miami. "We are not always sure who they represent, from
foot soldiers to leadership. They tell different stories at different times."

Lucas said the military would not publicly name any of the prisoners to protect
their privacy, and to avoid providing potentially useful information to
terrorist groups looking for missing members.

"It's a sensitive matter as to who is at large and who isn't," he said.

Some names have begun to emerge, however.

Although U.S. authorities censor their mail, prisoners are allowed to write to
their families via the Red Cross. Among those who recently told his family he is
at Guantanamo Bay: the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul
Salam Zaeef.

After the war in Afghanistan began in October, Zaeef held frequent news
conferences at the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad to denounce America. Pakistan
denied his application for political asylum after the Taliban collapsed in
December, and he later was arrested and handed over to U.S. authorities.

Another prisoner who allegedly fought for the Taliban, Yaser Esam Hamdi, was
taken from Guantanamo Bay to a U.S. Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., after he claimed
he had been born in Louisiana.

On Friday, a federal judge, Robert G. Doumar, said he would not be a "rubber
stamp" and ordered the government to turn over documents supporting their
argument that Hamdi should remain jailed without charges and without access to a
lawyer.

Some foreign governments have begun to voice similar concerns.

Pakistan's interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, told reporters Saturday in
Karachi that Islamabad would seek the release of some of the 58 Pakistanis held
at Guantanamo Bay. Haider said many of the detainees were ordinary Muslims who
had gone to fight for the Taliban but were not members of Al Qaeda.

Pakistani intelligence and diplomatic officials visited the camp to interview
prisoners earlier this month.

A similar delegation from Kuwait was at the camp last week to meet a dozen
Kuwaiti prisoners.

Several European countries have quietly offered to take prisoners home and put
them on trial if U.S. officials can provide evidence that they have committed a
crime. None has been released for trial so far.

After eight months of operation, Camp Delta is now almost full.

Navy engineers last month began building a new wing of 204 one-person cells to
house detainees now being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other
locations. It is unknown if higher-ranking Al Qaeda leaders are among them.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Al Qaeda operatives and commanders escaped
Afghanistan and fled into Pakistan during the battle of Tora Bora in December.
Some authorities believe Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was among those who
escaped.

The most senior figure known to be in U.S. custody is Abu Zubeida, a key Bin
Laden lieutenant. Captured in March during a raid in central Pakistan, he has
been interrogated ever since at an undisclosed location and apparently has
provided highly useful information on several occasions.

"He's still talking from time to time," one official said. He said Zubeida was
not sent to Guantanamo Bay with the other prisoners "because we find it easier
to talk to him alone."

The U.S. government also has secretly transported some suspects to Middle
Eastern countries that use interrogation tactics, including torture and threats,
that are illegal under U.S. law.

Suspects are known to have been handed over to authorities in Egypt, Syria,
Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Authorities believe one such suspect, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, helped recruit
some of the Sept. 11 skyjackers in Hamburg, Germany.

Although he is a German citizen, Zammar was arrested in October during a visit
to Morocco and was secretly flown to his native Syria, where he was imprisoned.
His family and the German government were only notified months later.

* * *


August 16, 2002

Reuters:

JUDGE FAULTS GOVERNMENT IN ENEMY-COMBATANT CASE

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled on Friday that the U.S. government
had provided insufficient evidence supporting its claims against a U.S.-born
Taliban prisoner held as an enemy combatant, and ordered it to turn over more
documents by next Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar in Norfolk, Virginia, ruled that the
government must provide documents about the capture, classification and
detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, whose case has become a test of the government's
power to hold enemy combatants in the war against terrorism.

Hamdi, 21, has been held in a U.S. military jail in Norfolk since early April,
without access to a lawyer and without any charges brought against him.

Doumar's ruling was a stinging defeat for the government.

"This case appears to be the first in American jurisprudence where an American
citizen has been held incommunicado and subjected to an indefinite detention in
the continental United States without charges, without any findings by a
military tribunal and without access to a lawyer," Doumar said.

"We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find
objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we
create," Doumar wrote in the 15-page ruling.

BORN IN LOUISIANA

After U.S. officials discovered that Hamdi had been born in Louisiana, he was
moved from the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where other Taliban and
al Qaeda detainees are being held. His parents returned from the United States
to Saudi Arabia when he was a young child.

The Justice Department had given the judge an explanation as to why the U.S.
military determined that Hamdi was an enemy combatant, providing him with the
declaration by a Defense Department official to support its decision.

Michael Mobbs, special adviser to the undersecretary of defense for policy,
wrote in the affidavit that Hamdi told U.S. military interrogators that he went
to Afghanistan last summer to train with and, if necessary, fight for the
Taliban. The Taliban was toppled as Afghanistan's rulers amid a U.S.-led
military campaign prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks.

But Doumar ruled that the declaration was insufficient.

A federal appeals court in July reversed an earlier ruling by Doumar allowing
Hamdi to meet privately with Public Defender Frank Dunham, and sent the case
back to the judge for more proceedings.

Spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said the Justice Department was reviewing the
judge's ruling and "will consider all appropriate options." She did not
elaborate on what that meant.

"Yaser Esam Hamdi traveled to Afghanistan for the purpose of fighting with the
Taliban, and was carrying an AK-47 when he was captured with an enemy Taliban
unit by coalition forces," she said in a statement.

Doumar said the court "would be acting as little more than a rubber stamp" if he
accepted the sparse facts of the Mobbs declaration.

* * *


The Los Angeles Times:

August 14, 2002

U.S. JAILING OF DETAINEES UNDER FIRE

* Rights: Lawyer group demands to know why immigrants held after 9/11 have no
counsel.

By JOSH MEYER, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The American Bar Assn., the nation's largest lawyers' group, on
Tuesday condemned the government's secret detention of hundreds of immigrants
after Sept. 11, demanding to know who has been held and why many detainees have
not received legal representation.

In Norfolk, Va., meanwhile, a federal judge also sharply criticized the Bush
administration, saying it has mistreated a U.S. citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, by
detaining him for months without charges or access to a lawyer.

The administration, the Pentagon and the Justice Department have staunchly
defended their actions, saying the secret detentions were needed because the
nation is at war with an unseen enemy: terrorists who aim to strike again and
are hiding within the U.S. borders.

The Justice Department, for instance, has appealed last week's ruling that it
release the names of more than 1,100 people detained since the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, arguing that doing so would put the nation
at risk of additional terrorist attacks.

But the ABA, which has 408,000 members, and U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar in
Norfolk, expressed significant objections Tuesday to the administration's
detainee policies, suggesting that the government was trampling the rights of
immigrants and U.S. citizens alike in waging its self-described war on
terrorism.

The association, which consists of prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and
legal experts, wields enormous influence in Washington and in legal circles
throughout the country. It issued its resolution at its annual conference in
Washington after a short debate and voice vote.

"It is essential that we not tamper with the most fundamental freedoms," said
Esther F. Larden, a Georgetown University law professor who heads the ABA's
Coordinating Committee on Immigration Law. "At the most difficult times, when
our freedoms are tested, we speak out to preserve the rule of law, to preserve
our core values and to preserve our national heritage."

U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson attended the meeting at a packed
downtown hotel but did not address the group. Several lawyers spoke in defense
of the government, but the legal body appeared to support the resolution
overwhelmingly.

The ABA formally opposed the "incommunicado detention of foreign nationals in
undisclosed locations" and urged that the constitutional and legal rights of
immigrants be protected.

It also issued a series of recommendations for the Justice Department and its
Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The ABA said authorities should immediately disclose the names, detention
facilities and charges against detainees, and ensure their immediate access to
lawyers. Also, it said the government should promptly charge detainees or
release them, and provide them with prompt hearings before immigration judges
"with meaningful administrative review and oversight."

It also urged the government to hold public hearings in detainee cases, except
in rare instances in which the nation's security is believed to be at risk if
information about terrorist plots is disclosed. The group also urged the INS to
create a set of standards regarding the detention of such immigrants.

Immigrants were swept up by the hundreds in the dragnet that followed the Sept.
11 attacks, when the FBI and other law enforcement agents interviewed thousands
of people and chased leads all over the United States.

Many of those detained remained in federal detention facilities long after
authorities had determined that they played no role in Sept. 11 or any other
terrorist conspiracy. Such detentions, and the secrecy in which the detainees
were held, prompted an outcry from a broad array of civil and human rights
groups, as well as legal and constitutional scholars, and led to a lawsuit
against the government.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington ruled that the
government must turn over the names of the detainees, saying there was no
justification for such blanket secrecy.

Nearly all of the detainees have been released from custody. Most already have
been deported for immigration violations, and none has been charged with
involvement in terrorist acts or conspiracies.

In a related measure, the ABA delayed deliberation of a proposed recommendation
on the government's classification of Americans as enemy combatants.

So far, only two U.S. citizens are believed to be held by the military as
combatants: Hamdi and Jose Padilla, who is accused of conspiring with members of
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network to detonate a low-level radioactive, or
"dirty," bomb in the U.S. Both men are being held without charges or access to
attorneys.

In Hamdi's case, the federal judge in Norfolk said Tuesday that he was
"concerned" that the government was trying to "punish" Hamdi, perhaps in an
effort to pressure him into talking.

Hamdi has been held in solitary confinement since his capture in Afghanistan,
where the government alleges he was an armed soldier in the Taliban army.

Doumar has already given the government a deadline to turn over information to
justify its continued detention of Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana but moved at
a young age to Saudi Arabia.

The government has refused to do so, saying Doumar does not have the right to
review anything but one declaration from a U.S. official as to why Hamdi has
been classified as an enemy combatant.

Doumar repeatedly sided with Hamdi on Tuesday. During a two-hour hearing, he
said, for instance, that the government's declaration said Hamdi was only
"associated" with the Taliban, not fighting with them.

Separately Tuesday, Dennis W. Archer, a former mayor of Detroit, became the
first African American president-elect of the ABA, which until 1943 banned
membership by blacks. Archer, 60, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice, is a
past president of the competing National Bar Assn., which was founded in 1925 by
African American lawyers who were refused membership in the ABA.

The group also chose another black lawyer, Robert Grey Jr. of Richmond, Va., to
succeed Archer as president in 2004.

* * *


The Los Angeles Times:

August 14, 2002

Commentary

CAMPS FOR CITIZENS: ASHCROFT'S HELLISH VISION

* Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.

By JONATHAN TURLEY, Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at
George Washington University.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems
to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political
embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.

Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to
order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of
their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy
combatants.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and
reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al
Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and
present threat to our liberties.

The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner
circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this
vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi
will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to
the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.

Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are
virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and
Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh
was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in
Norfolk, Va.

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered
that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The
Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its
declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a
time of war."

In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to
detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration
later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was
on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was
arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full
application of constitutional rights.

Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom
he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism,
aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens
are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new
camps.

Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps
for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the
internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II.
But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful
experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.

We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his
predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by
racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly
contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.

For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent
values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where
security must precede liberty.

Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become
a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.

Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to
accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.

His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would
induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.

In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer,
Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut
down every law in England to get after the devil.

More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was
down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws
all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast
... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really
think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions
as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we
allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand
and have the courage to say, "Enough."

Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no
longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join
together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what
we are defending.

* * *


CNN:

August 9, 2002

DOJ SEEKS STAY ON NAMING DETAINEES

From Brad Wright
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Citing what it says would be "irreparable harm" to the
investigation of the September 11 attacks, the Justice Department has filed a
motion for an expedited stay pending appeal of last week's order that the
government identify certain individuals detained in the United States.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled last Friday that the government must
identify within 15 days the names of everyone "arrested and detained in
connection with its September 11, 2001, terrorist investigations." The
government says about 700 people have been detained because they were subject to
detention under immigration laws.

In her order, Kessler wrote, "The government's only response is that it cannot
'rule out' possible connections to terrorism for every detainee and that 'dire
consequences' ... would flow from one unnecessary disclosure. ...The
government's response is flawed, legally and factually."

But in the motion for a stay of that order, government lawyers led by Assistant
Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. wrote that if the government must release
the names of those detained in the terrorism investigation, it would "enable
those who planned the September 11 terror attacks and their followers to map the
nature, extent and direction of the government's investigation."

The government's motion for a stay goes on to say that "in light of the gravity
of the risk, prudence counsels that a stay be issued to protect the public until
the issues have been fully litigated through the appellate process." The
government has filed a notice of appeal.

David Sobel, legal counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said
last week that the government's appeal was likely.

WHO BROUGHT THE LAWSUIT

The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the American-
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Center for National Security Studies and
others had filed the lawsuit seeking disclosure of the names.

At the time of the court filing in October 2001, the government had detained 751
people on immigration violations; none of their names has been made public,
although 677 of them have been released or deported.

In addition, there were 129 people detained on federal criminal charges related
to the September 11 investigation. As of mid-June, 73 remained in custody. All
but one of their names have been made public.

Kessler's ruling does not affect prisoners held at the U.S. naval base in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suspected of supporting the Taliban regime that was ousted
as part of a U.S. anti-terrorist push after the attacks of September 11.

* * *


Newsweek:

July 16, 2002

WHY DID JOHN WALKER LINDH MAKE A DEAL?

The defense wanted to avoid a life sentence. And prosecutors seemed to realize
they were stoking a bonfire to fry a guppy

By Karen Breslau

July 16 -- His father compared him to Nelson Mandela. His lawyer said "this
isn’t Rambo." The government, which earlier had called him a "terrorist,"
settled instead for John Walker Lindh’s admission that, for four months last
year, he had been a grenade-toting foot soldier for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
That admission-- in a plea bargain announced in court on Monday-- means that the
21-year-old Lindh will spend some 20 years of his life in federal prison.

In return, he will be spared the ninety-years-plus-life sentence he faced had he
been convicted on terrorism and conspiracy charges in a trial that was scheduled
to begin next month at a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. By 2022, when he
walks out of a federal prison, Lindh will be 41 years old. By then, a whole
generation of Americans will probably have no idea who the "American Taliban"
was or what threat he may have posed to national security.

It could have been that growing realization-- that the government had stoked a
bonfire to fry a guppy-- that helped motivate federal prosecutors to strike a
deal with Lindh. Even though they were nearly certain to win convictions on at
least some of the charges against Lindh, the case looked far less spectacular
than it did last December, when the disheveled young American was captured on
the Afghan battlefield and instantly became an icon in the war on terrorism.

While George W. Bush first dismissed Lindh as a "poor fellow," Attorney General
John Ashcroft quickly upped the ante, saying that Lindh consorted with Osama bin
Laden, "chose to embrace fanatics," and that his tale of a religious quest gone
wrong was nothing but a ruse. Eight months later, the administration appears to
have moved full circle. Especially with accused hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui
about to stand trial in the same Virginia courthouse, it made sense, conceded
U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, for the government to "conserve precious resources"
for a bigger fish. Lindh’s guilty plea allows the government to chalk him up in
the "win" column in the war on terrorism, without the risks and uncertainties of
a trial in which the defendant’s self-incriminating statements formed the
backbone of their case.

In their pretrial maneuvering, Lindh’s lawyers were exploiting that perilous
weakness in the government’s case with increasing effectiveness. The photo of
Lindh, naked, blindfolded and strapped tightly to a stretcher, was becoming
nearly as ubiquitous as that of the sooty, wild- eyed, bearded creature after
his arrest in Afghanistan. This week, defense lawyers were planning to lay out
in perhaps embarrassing detail the allegedly coercive conditions under which
they claim that Lindh’s battlefield statements that he had been trained by Al
Qaeda were extracted. "We were actually looking forward to that hearing," says
George Harris, one of Lindh’s attorneys. As part of the plea bargain, Lindh was
forced to acknowledge that he was not "intentionally mistreated by the U.S.
military" and to drop all claims of abuse.

But while Lindh’s lawyers were making some headway in the court of public
opinion with their torture narrative, they were getting nowhere with the judge.
In a contentious hearing last week, Judge T. S. Ellis III signaled that he was
unlikely to accept motions by the defense team to have Lindh’s incriminating
statements to federal investigators thrown out. The prospect of facing a hostile
judge, in addition to a pro-government jury drawn from the hordes of retired
military and government workers who live in the Virginia suburbs, prompted the
defense team to seek a deal over the weekend. "Even if he had been convicted on
one charge of supplying services to the Taliban he could have been sentenced to
40 years," says attorney George Harris. Twenty years didn’t seem all that bad by
comparison.

As if the courtroom odds weren’t daunting enough, last week the Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen of Saudi descent
who is being held with Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, should be considered
an enemy combatant and was not entitled to defense counsel. If you don’t like my
rulings, Ellis seemed to suggest, try your luck with the court of appeals. "The
handwriting was on the wall," says a Justice Department official.

Even James Brosnahan, Lindh’s combative lead attorney, acknowledged on Monday
that accepting a 20-year sentence for a 21-year-old client was a better option
than testing his slim odds in court. "Our goal frankly was to give him some kind
of future in the chaos," said Brosnahan.

In Afghanistan, at least some U.S. soldiers thought Lindh had got off easy.
"Twenty years? I thought they should have just shot him in the first place,"
Private Mike Stokes, 19, of the 511th Military Police company of the 10th
Mountain Division, told NEWSWEEK at Bagram airbase outside Kabul when he heard
the news of Lindh’s plea. Stokes, who was sent to Afghanistan straight out of
infantry training last winter, believed almost all of his fellow soldiers would
think the sentence wasn’t harsh enough. "We have to worry about people from
other countries attacking us," he said. "We shouldn’t have to worry about people
from our country trying to kill us. If you’re going against our country, you
have no right to live."

Lindh’s father, Frank Lindh, said Monday that he tried to comfort his son by
telling him that Nelson Mandela, another "good man," had done more than 26 years
of hard time-- a bit of imagery unlikely to sit well with the public.

Lindh’s lawyers are likely to ask that he be sent to a federal prison in
Northern California close to his parents’ separate homes in Marin County, Calif.
Judge Ellis still has to confirm his 20-year sentence-- something he has
indicated he will do. While Lindh will not be eligible for parole, he may earn
some time off for good behavior. In their continuing campaign to polish Lindh’s
public image, lawyers said Monday that their client was looking forward to
broadening his education in prison-- studying not only Islam and Arabic, but
also American history and English literature. Barred from reading newspapers or
magazines during his months in detention, Lindh has been devouring the works of
James Joyce. Over the next 20 years, he should have time to memorize them all.

/With Michael Isikoff in Washington and Colin Soloway in Afghanistan/

© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.

* * *


CNN:

July 9, 2002

INTELLIGENCE REPORT: BIN LADEN SOUGHT INDONESIAN BASE

Counterterrorism experts say he also checked out Yemen

From Maria Ressa
CNN Correspondent

MANILA, Philippines (CNN) --

Intelligence officials tell CNN that Osama bin Laden wanted to move the base of
operations for his al Qaeda terrorist network from Afghanistan to Southeast Asia
in 2000.

The plan, according to these officials' intelligence report, was to move the
base to Aceh in Indonesia, where members of the Free Aceh movement (or GAM) were
working with al Qaeda.

Aceh is a remote Muslim province in which rebels have fought for a separate
Islamic state for decades. Bin Laden's No. 2, Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri visited
Aceh with al Qaeda's former military chief, Mohammed Atef, in June 2000.

"Both of them were impressed by the lack of security, the support and extent of
Muslim population," reads the intelligence report made available to CNN. "This
visit was part of a wider strategy of shifting the base of Osama bin Laden's
terrorist operations from the subcontinent to Southeast Asia."

Al-Zawahiri and Atef were accompanied by two men now in custody: Kuwaiti Omar
al-Faruq and Indonesian Agus Dwikarna. Asian intelligence sources tell CNN that
al-Faruq was al Qaeda's senior representative in Southeast Asia.

United States sources confirm that al-Faruq was arrested by Indonesian
authorities on June 5 and now is at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

U.S. and Asian sources say al-Faruq's name and telephone number were found in a
phonebook recovered in Pakistan during the arrest of former al Qaeda operations
chief Abu Zubayda.

That same phone number, according to Philippine intelligence sources, was found
in the mobile phone of Dwikarna, who guided the al Qaeda members during their
visit to Aceh.

Dwikarna was arrested in the Philippines in March.

"We have found out for sure that Agus Dwikarna has direct links to al Qaeda,"
Andrea Domingo, the Philippines Commissioner of Immigration tells CNN.

"The most important thing is to view this as an international organization that
has a lot of resources up to now and that is still alive and operating at very
different levels."

An Indonesian police document obtained by CNN says Dwikarna was working with
militants who plotted to assassinate Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri
-- a plan that was later aborted.

Counterterrorist experts say bin Laden was looking for a place to which to move
his operations as long as five years ago, and that in 1997 he sent a delegation
to Yemen. As in Indonesia, nothing came of that visit.

But for investigators, details of the Aceh visit might help unravel the
terrorist network left behind.

* * *


TIME / CNN:

July 1, 2002

AT THE CROSSROADS OF TERROR

Inside the clandestine operations center where the CIA tries to anticipate what
al-Qaeda will do next

By Douglas Waller (Langley VA)

With reporting by Christopher Preston (Washington DC)

It consumes acres of space in the CIA's Langley, VA., headquarters, with
computers whirring, phones jangling and TV sets turned on 24 hours a day, not
only to cnn--the favorite in military command centers-- but also to al-Jazeera,
the Qatar-based TV network that's usually the first to broadcast videos from
Osama bin Laden. The warren of offices and cubicles that make up its main
section has grown so large that street signs named after terror purveyors have
been erected to guide newcomers. The intersection that draws the most smiles is
Saddam Street and Usama Bin Lane.

The Counterterrorism Center, or CTC, as veteran hands call it, has become the
CIA's busiest outfit. Organized in 1986 to coordinate America's effort to foil
terrorists overseas, the center has doubled its manpower since the Sept. 11
attacks to more than 1,100 analysts and clandestine agents. Some 2,500 cables
pour into the CTC every day from CIA stations around the world, from
interrogators interviewing al-Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility and from foreign intelligence services that have tips on terrorists.
The CIA's main cafeteria has expanded its hours to feed the center's workers at
night and on weekends, so they no longer have to truck in pizzas as they did in
the months just after Sept. 11.

The CIA agreed to talk to TIME about the center's operation. While it battles
bin Laden's al- Qaeda network abroad, the agency has been fighting a ferocious
rearguard action at home to keep the CTC independent of the new Department of
Homeland Security. Critics complain that the agency failed to piece together
information that might have led the FBI to the Sept. 11 plotters. "The failure
of the intelligence agencies to share information with each other was one of our
government's most egregious lapses leading up to Sept. 11," charges Democratic
Senator Joseph Lieberman. The CIA and the FBI have promised Congress they will
send the new department their "finished" intelligence reports, but they resist
divulging raw data and sensitive sources and methods. The two organizations also
insist the bureaucratic war between them is over. "The FBI and CIA are working
together," says Jim Bernazzani, an FBI agent detailed to the CTC and one of its
deputy directors. "Anybody who promotes the notion that we are not is wrong.
Period." But many in Congress aren't convinced and believe the two agencies can
still improve coordination. While the number of FBI agents at the CIA center has
doubled since Sept. 11, they still total only 14.

The center grinds out 500 terrorism intelligence reports a month, many of which
are distributed to 80 other U.S. government agencies. A video conference is held
with the White House's National Security Council three times a day. Every
afternoon at 5, CIA Director George Tenet summons 40 senior officers from the
CTC, the agency's Intelligence Directorate and its clandestine Operations
Directorate--a team jokingly called the small group--to the conference room just
off his seventh-floor office for a grilling on the day's terrorism intelligence.
Washington's A-list is no longer the Georgetown party roster but rather the 200
top officials who get their own copy of the daily "Threat Matrix" report the CTC
prepares for President Bush. The top-secret matrix is a running tab of the
terrorism threats the CIA and the FBI are receiving or investigating. On busy
days, it can be 30 pages long.

The center is trying to do what it could not do before: pluck obscure bits of
information from the flood of often irrelevant or insignificant data and connect
the dots to foil a major new attack. CIA scientists are investigating exotic
supercomputer programs and artificial intelligence that might help analysts link
hundreds of thousands of names, places and bank accounts. Teams have even been
sent to pick the brains of Hollywood scriptwriters who dream up far- fetched
terror spectaculars. When the analysts return to Langley, they comb their
databases to see if al-Qaeda has the capability to carry out such attacks. The
CIA has found evidence in seized al-Qaeda documents that bin Laden's operatives
watch action-adventure movies for ideas.

The biggest prize the CTC has captured since Sept. 11 has been Abu Zubaydah, bin
Laden's chief of operations and recruiting. At the beginning of the year, the
CTC formed a special Abu Zubaydah Task Force, manned with 100 covert operatives,
CIA analysts, technicians and even agency rookies who had agreed to interrupt
their spy training to mine data banks. Working around the clock for six weeks,
sifting through thousands of agent reports, spy-satellite photos and signal
intercepts, the task force finally pinpointed the 31-year-old Saudi-born
Palestinian in a villa near Faisalabad, Pakistan. On the evening of March 27,
Tenet and as many of the task-force members as could fit into the ground-floor
conference room crowded around speakerphones that were patched into a team of
CIA, FBI and Pakistani intelligence agents raiding the villa.

When the agents finally reported back that Abu Zubaydah had been captured in a
gun battle, wounded but still alive, only quiet smiles went around the room.
Everyone was too exhausted from the ordeal to cheer. Besides, there was no time
for celebration. The approximately 10,000 pages of documents seized in the villa
had to be translated quickly and analyzed. An interrogation team had to be
organized for Abu Zubaydah, who when he had healed began giving CIA and FBI
agents tantalizing hints of future strikes.

More than 2,000 al-Qaeda suspects have been arrested around the world, many
because of tips the center fed to foreign police. A country-by-country scorecard
is kept of the people nabbed, and periodically a chart of top al-Qaeda
operatives is sent to Bush, color-coded to highlight the ones put out of action.
So far, 10 of the 24 men the CIA considers bin Laden's senior lieutenants are
dead or in custody. Pakistani forces, with the help of intelligence from the
center, last week raided an al-Qaeda hideout near the Afghan border. The four-
hour gun battle killed 10 Pakistani soldiers and at least two al-Qaeda fighters.
The CTC has assembled a task force to try to find bin Laden's other top aide,
Ayman al- Zawahiri, who the agency believes is still alive and on the run.

The final prize, of course, is bin Laden, who the CIA thinks is hiding along the
Afghan-Pakistani border. Since 1995, the center has had a special station
devoted to bin Laden, made up of more than 50 CIA officers who have studied
everything they could find on the man. Even though his top command has been cut
almost in half, the CTC's officers know that bin Laden remains a powerful enemy.
His 14 senior lieutenants still at large are on the run, but according to the
CIA, they are plotting and sending out orders to a terrorism network that may
still number in the thousands. The CTC, fearful of another strike around the
July 4 holiday, is "on a heightened state of alert," says Bernazzani. Its
members live each day worried that the next attack will come tomorrow.

* * *


Newsweek:

June 30, 2002

A WORLD WITH ITS OWN RULES

What Camp Delta is really like

By Roy Gutman

June 30 -- In Pentagon lingo, the site overlooking the sunny Caribbean could be
mistaken for a modest resort, located as it is in a "comfortable climate that is
comparable or better" to that at home, and comprising 612 "single occupancy
units" that are "protected from over-exposure to the sun or other elements." But
the "single occupancy units" at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay are in fact locked
53-square foot steel cages, and the 564 "enemy combatants," held by the United
States as long as six months without charges or any status review, are living in
a de facto penitentiary.

That raises a legal point because under the 1949 Third Geneva Convention on
Prisoners of War, ratified by the United States and nearly every other country
on earth, those taken prisoner in conflict "may not be held in close
confinement" except to protect their health. And, according to the same article,
22, they "shall not be interned in penitentiaries."

President George Bush ruled that the detainees are not POW’s under the
Conventions but "enemy combatants" regardless of what they actually were doing
when the United States intervened in Afghanistan, or the circumstances in which
the were arrested. Followers of Osama bin Laden were disqualfied as POW’s
because Al Qaeda neither signed nor upheld the Conventions; Taliban fighters,
whose government was a party, were disqualified because the Talliban reputedly
did not observe all of the Convention’s requirements. Still, U.S. officials say
they are treating the detainees fully in the spirit of the Conventions. "What we
are doing we believe is fully in accord with all applicable rules and indeed is
quite beyond any rules that are applicable," said a top Pentagon official who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are treating them humanely and consistently
with the rules of the Geneva Conventions."

So far as can be determined, the treatment falls well short of the requirements.
Exactly how far short is difficult to tell. No reporter has been allowed into
Camp Delta, and its configuration as well as the details of the "single
occupancy units," are kept secret for what are described as "security purposes,"
as are the names of detainees and their countries of origin.

Take the fact that the detainees are locked in cells instead of being held
barracks. "Detainees have demonstrated their desire to harm themselves, harm
other detainees, and to harm US forces," said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon
spokesman. "The configuration of single occupancy units is required for the
security of the detainees and the U.S. security force." He revealed that there
are a number of maximum security units in addition to the standard 6’8" by 8’
steel mesh cells. They are air-conditioned instead of air-cooled by sea breezes,
he said, indicating they were of a different, presumably heavier construction.
What about detainees who have not shown any sign of violence or hostility? There
are no minimum security units, he said. Also disregarded is the Convention’s
requirement that detainees be grouped by nationality and that those who served
together be housed in the same area. "Detainees are not grouped by nationality,"
Davis said. "They are grouped as appropriate to address our security concerns."

The administration cites security as the basis for any number of practices which
diverge from its treaty commitments. In comparison with the September 11 attacks
that led to U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, many of these divergences will
sound petty, but they appear to violate agreed international norms. In response
to questions from Newsweek, Pentagon officials disclosed the following
additional details of conditions at Camp Delta:

--In place of the Geneva Convention rules, which ostensibly would be applied to
American troops should they be taken prisoner in a future conflict, the Pentagon
has established its own rules for Camp Delta, which it will not make public for
reasons of security. The Convention requires that in every camp the text of the
Convention and its Annexes "shall be posted in the prisoners’ own languages, at
places where all may read them." But Pentagon spokesman Davis said that no copy
has been posted. He said, however, that the Pentagon’s "rules for deportment"
have been posted in English and several other languages and have been read aloud
to detainees who cannot read. However, he declined to make available a copy of
those rules "for reasons of security."

Despite the Convention’s requirement that tobacco be made available to prisoners
and the fact that combatants of most armies smoke, no smoking is allowed at Camp
Delta. "Smoking, for safety and security reasons, is not permitted in the
detention areas," Davis said.

Detainees do not have identity cards or identity documents as required by
article 18 of the Third Convention. Instead, they have "identification
bracelets."

And how does the Pentagon square the legal requirement that internment
facilities provide "every guarantee of hygiene and healthfulness" with the fact
that Camp Delta detainees have only two 15 minute periods of exercise a week?
Davis responded that detainees "have complete freedom to exercise in their units
as often as desired."

On the positive side, the Pentagon also revealed that while detainees are not
allowed to elect a representative as provided by the conventions, "certain
detainees are designated to serve as liaisons" for addressing concerns and
complaints. They "may do so without fear of reprisals from the military
authorities." But Davis could not say how they are designated. And detainees
theoretically can receive relief packages from their families. Davis said that
so far none of their families has tried to send them.

Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which U.S. officials
say has "unfettered" access to the detainees, said they had raised many of these
issues with the American authorities. But the explanation in every instance was
the need for security.

© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.

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CNN:

May 29, 2002

U.S.-BORN 'ENEMY COMBATANT' AWARDED LEGAL COUNSEL

( http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/05/29/hamdi.hearing/index.html )

NORFOLK, Virginia (CNN) -- A federal judge Wednesday ruled that Yaser Hamdi,
known as the "second American Taliban," is entitled to legal counsel even if
confined as an "enemy combatant" and may privately meet with his new lawyer --
with no government eavesdropping -- as early as Saturday.

But government attorneys can appeal the ruling from U.S. District Judge Robert
Doumar and possibly prevent or at least delay the meeting if they act before 1
p.m. EDT Saturday. The decision can be appealed to a federal appeals court in
Richmond or to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Perhaps in this case, [Hamdi's] detention is legal: But it is not for the
military alone to make that judgment," Doumar wrote in his court order. "Hamdi
must be allowed to meet with his attorney because of fundamental justice
provided under the Constitution of the United States."

The Justice Department had no immediate comment, but a spokesman said the agency
is considering whether to appeal.

Hamdi, born in Louisiana of Saudi parents, was among the Taliban and al Qaeda
prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. detention center until it was learned
he was an American citizen. He was transferred to a detention facility at the
Norfolk U.S. Naval Air Station April 6.

Unlike the case of John Walker Lindh, who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan
and was interrogated at length while held incommunicado, U.S. officials have not
explained what role Hamdi may have played in that conflict.

Hamdi has not been formally charged with any crime but has been held as an
"enemy combatant," a classification the government has used as legal
justification for denying him his right to legal counsel -- a premise Doumar
dismissed Wednesday as "idiotic."

"As long as they're chasing al Qaeda around the Earth, they could hold him
indefinitely" under such criteria, Hamdi's new court-appointed attorney, Frank
Dunham, argued.

The judge peppered Gregory Garr from the U.S. solicitor general's office with
questions regarding Hamdi's status as a prisoner.

"As far as I know, there's been no declaration of war," Doumar said.

Garr responded, "The individual was detained as an enemy combatant ... in an
armed conflict." He said the "enemy combatant" status is "in no way dependent on
a declaration of war."

"Assuming he was an enemy combatant, he would not be entitled to counsel?" the
judge asked.

"No, he would not be entitled to counsel to challenge his detainment," Garr
answered.

"That sounds idiotic," Doumar said.

The judge said Dunham, an associate and an interpreter will be allowed to visit
Hamdi in the Norfolk military brig as early as 1 p.m. Saturday without
interference from any U.S. government agency and "no listening device of any
party."

The government had contended that Attorney General John Ashcroft's policy of
allowing monitoring of meetings between foreigners detained in this country as
part of the Justice Department's anti-terrorism dragnet and their lawyers
applied to Hamdi's case as well.

Doumar rejected that position.

A show-cause hearing is scheduled for June 20, at which time the government is
expected to indicate what charges it may file against Hamdi. All motions must be
filed by June 13.

-- CNN National Correspondent Bob Franken and Producer Laura Bernardini
contributed to this report.

* * *

Newsweek:

May 18, 2002

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

A former Gitmo Bay prisoner talks about his experience from his new home in a
heavily guarded Kabul hospital room

By Roy Gutman and Sami Yousafzai

May 18 -- U.S. officials have mostly kept mum on the names of specific prisoners
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They will say only that there are 384 men from at least
33 countries being held, including more than 100 Saudis, roughly 70 Yemenis, at
least 25 Pakistanis, and a sprinkling of European nationals--nearly all of Arab
ancestry. But in early May, Washington acknowledged that it was willing to
release one prisoner: a 25-year-old Afghan held for four months at Camp X-ray.
It turns out that the man was not actually a terrorist, but a schizophrenic
sufferer. The Pentagon promptly shipped the Mazar-e-Sharif native off to a
hospital in Kabul armed with a six-month supply of medication, then closed the
curtain on any further disclosures. It wouldn’t say why the ethnic Uzbek was
detained in the first place, why it took so long to diagnose his schizophrenia,
or what it had learned from others being held.

NEWSWEEK’s Sami Yousafzai recently tracked down the former prisoner, Abdul
Razeq, and spoke with him at length about his experiences. Razeq was released
from U.S. captivity on May 11, but he is hardly free: Razeq is now being kept in
a maximum-security cell at the hospital with a 24-hour armed guard.

NEWSWEEK: How were you captured?

ABDUL RAZEQ: It was eight in the morning of the Friday one week after
Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the Northern Alliance. The Americans stopped me near the
city and asked me where I was from. I told them ‘I am an Afghan.’ They didn’t
believe me. They said ‘No, you are a foreigner.’ And they took me.

What happened to you after you were taken from Mazar-e-Sharif?

They took me to American to treat my mental problems. I was taken to a very good
hotel and after a month they shifted me to a place where they kept Chechens and
Pakistanis [Camp X-Ray]. I was the only Afghan. Afterwards, they flew me back to
Afghanistan.

How were you treated by your American captors?

They only once tied my hands. They gave us good food three times a day and
biscuits for supper. They were trying to keep us in good health.

Did the Americans interrogate you?

Yes, a lot. They kept asking me, ‘where are you from?’ I told them ‘I am from
Afghanistan, in Mazar-e-Sharif.’ They asked me about the whereabouts of Osama
bin Laden and Mullah Omar and I told them that I have never seen them.

You didn’t ask them why they put you in jail?

We were all asking them. The Arabs even went on a one-week hunger strike. After
one week, the hunger striking Arabs were shifted to another jail.

What were the Arabs doing?

They were reading the Qu’ran loudly, singing songs, making fun of the guards and
even once they threw water on soldiers.

Were you able to pray?

Yes, there were no restrictions on our prayers. We were even given a Qu’ran
each.

How many hours a night did you sleep?

Only one hour. I was so depressed that I was not able to sleep; I walked around
the cage.

What did the jail look like?

It looked like a flat area full of cages. The concrete was burning our feet. [He
pointed to his hands and legs to show the injuries from the hand and leg cuffs.]

Do you want any compensation from Americans for arresting you?

No.

Do you know who is ruling Afghanistan now?

Yes, Hamid Karzai. The soldiers told us all the new events in Afghanistan.

Do you remember anything special from your time in jail?

Yes, once an Arab tried to hang himself with his shawl. He almost died and then
the doctors came and injected him with something with a big syringe and he stood
up promptly.

© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.

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