MISCELLANEOUS NEWS REPORTS * 2003.10.01 to 2003.10.31

    misc_digest_2003_5.txt

    * Associated Press (AP): http://www.ap.org/
    * Inter Press Service (IPS): http://ipsnews.net/
    * Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/

    * ABC News (Aus): http://www.abc.net.au/news/
    * BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
    * CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/
    * CNN: http://www.cnn.com/

    * The Age (Melbourne):  http://www.theage.com.au/
    * Baltimore Sun: http://www.sunspot.net/
    * Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
    * Dawn (Islamabad): http://www.dawn.com/
    * The Guardian (UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
    * The Globe and Mail (Toronto): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
    * The Independent (UK): http://www.independent.co.uk/
    * Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/
    * The Mirror (UK): http://www.mirror.co.uk/
    * The Observer (UK): http://www.observer.co.uk/
    * Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp
    * San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/news/
    * Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/
    * The Telegraph (UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
    * The Times (UK): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

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


NCM:

October 31, 2003

CAPTAIN YEE’S WIFE CALLS UPON THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO RELEASE HER HUSBAND

Sing Tao Daily, News Report, Boyd Fung, Translated by Franz Schurmann

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?
article_id=42ecd9a235fb9eb5e20f01b46f047757

Huda says "My husband is not a bad person. I hope the government will release
him" Yesterday, Huda, wife of Captain James Yee, spoke on the phone with the
reporter from the Sing Tao. She hopes the public will understand that her
husband is not a bad person and she hopes the government will release him.

Toward the end of last week Huda, Captain Yee’s father and mother and younger
brother, flew to Charleston, S.C. This is the first contact he has had with any
family members since his arrest on September 10, 2003. In the case of his wife,
the separation was even longer. Last September 2002, Huda went to Syria, and
this is the first time she has seen her husband in more than a year.

Huda said "He looked very tired to me yet he looked like he had a lot of
strength in him." Huda said the authorities transferred him from a high security
system to a lower-grade security unit. They had removed his hand cuffs.

Huda said. "He was very concerned about me and my daughter. He was very troubled
that he was not able to see his wife and child for so long a time."

In Huda’s eyes, Captain Yee was a wonderful husband and father. "He was very
concerned about our family, especially because in December our daughter will be
celebrating her fourth birthday."

During the time with him, Huda said her husband did not say anything about why
he was incarcerated. He avoided anything that had to do with his case. He
restricted himself to family concerns. He was sad that they were unable to
celebrate their fifth anniversary on Oct. 1. Captain Yee’s father and brother
were told they could see him on Friday and Saturday for three hours but it
turned out to be two. "Captain Yee is very proud of the U.S. He loves the
country and the army."

Like Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist, who was incarcerated and later
exonerated, Captain Yee would have never done anything to harm the U.S., Huda
says.

[ The Sing Tao Daily is a member of NCM Editorial Exchange. ]

* * *


IPS:

October 31, 2003

WALKING THE MIDDLE GROUND, ANNAN IRKS EXTREMES

When U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently faulted a lop-sided U.S.
resolution for failing to assure self-rule for Iraqis, he was accused of
threatening a regime change in the White House.

Analysis - By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - When U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently faulted a
lop-sided U.S. resolution for failing to assure self-rule for Iraqis, he was
accused of threatening a regime change in the White House.

The politically conservative 'Wall Street Journal' said Annan's open criticism
of the proposal was "unprecedented for a U.N. leader".

Annan has made it clear, said the Journal editorial, "that he's now more
interested in defeating (U.S.) President George Bush than he ever was in
toppling (Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein".

The charge was way off the mark, even though right-wing U.S. ideologues fear
that the deadly U.S. military misadventure in Iraq might cost Bush a second term
as president in elections scheduled for 2004 -- the fault of Bush himself and
nothing to do with Annan.

At a time when many as a willing servant of the United States are dismissing the
United Nations, Annan has been trying to assert himself and protect the
credibility of the much-maligned organisation.

On Thursday, he announced the withdrawal of his international staff from
Baghdad, over U.S. objections, fearing for their safety.

When Annan complained that the recent U.S. resolution fell short of
expectations, an unnamed senior U.S. official -- rumoured to be Secretary of
State Colin Powell -- was quoted as saying that the U.N. chief's remarks were
"unhelpful", "unusual" and "surprising".

In his opening address to the 191-member General Assembly in September, Annan
strongly denounced the concept of the pre-emptive military strike -- taking a
dig at the United States, which invaded Iraq in March without U.N.
authorisation.

At a summit meeting on terrorism, also in September, Annan condemned state
terrorism, this time taking a shot at Israel, a political sacred cow in the U.S.
administration.

Still, Annan's new-found assertiveness has drawn mixed reviews from U.S.
academics, long-time U.N. watchers and representatives of non-governmental
organisations (NGOs).

"It is too late for Kofi Annan to try to rescue the sinking reputation of his
leadership, or lack thereof, of the international organisation," Professor As'ad
Abukhalil of California State University told IPS.

"Maybe the U.N. bombings in Baghdad were a wake-up call for Annan, who had been
long asleep at the wheel. But it is a belated wake-up, and this person who was
brought in by the United States, will be kept by the United States because he
proved his usefulness."

Former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Hans Von Sponeck, who headed the oil-
for-food programme in Iraq, was more charitable. "The U.S. government does not
want to understand that its hegemonial policies and its unilateral actions are
endangering the future of the organisation Secretary-General Annan is heading."

"Annan has no choice but to remind the United States that this is neither
acceptable to the international community nor to himself," Von Sponeck told IPS.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco,
believes Annan is deeply committed to the United Nations as an institution. "So,
the credibility of the world body is of great importance to him."

"He recognises the geo-political reality of a unipolar world, where challenging
U.S. prerogatives too directly could end up harming not just his career but the
institution as a whole," Zunes added in an interview.

At the same time, Annan realises that allowing the Bush administration to get
away with too much would damage U.N. credibility in much of the rest of the
world, he added.

"It has always been a delicate balancing act, and his eloquent use of 'U.N.
speak', the diplomatic style of communication he has learned through his many
years of service to the organisation, has been one way of trying to find that
middle ground," Zunes said.

As U.N. Secretary-General, Annan might be one of the few people with a high
enough profile and international reputation to potentially make a difference.
"Besides, most secretaries-general don't serve more than two terms, anyway," he
added.

Annan, a native of Ghana and the first U.N. secretary-general from Africa,
completes his second five-year term in December 2006.

Ian William, a contributing editor to the New York-based 'Nation' magazine, told
IPS that Annan is clearly not standing for another term "and I think he is
genuinely upset when he discovered how his tactfulness was being misinterpreted
in the Third World -- not least when the consequences of confusion between the
occupation and the U.N.'s undefined 'vital' role were so bloodily exposed in
Baghdad."

"In either case," said Williams, "Annan has to bridge the divide: the United
Nations can only work effectively with the United States as a member, but cannot
work in the way the U.N. charter and the other members want by letting
Washington pull all of the strings all of the time."

"He obviously felt that the time had come to draw a line in the sands -- of
Iraq," Williams added.

Jeff Laurenti, a long-time U.N. expert and member of the board of directors of
the U.N. Association of USA, told IPS that Annan alone has the international and
American credibility to be able to represent the U.N. cause in the face of
controversy coming out of Washington.

"He was explicitly critical of pre-emptive strikes. But he was careful not to
criticise any particular government. (Yet) nobody could fail to see he was
talking about the conservative ideologues in Washington," Laurenti said.

"It is his conviction -- and that of many others in the world -- that the whole
question of regulation of the use of force is the cornerstone of the U.N.
charter and the collective security system. And if you take that out, the whole
structure comes crumbling down."

"So, he felt compelled to dramatise it and make this issue the sole theme of his
address to the General Assembly, which indicates the gravity of the situation."

Laurenti also pointed out that humanitarian intervention was Annan's theme in
his 1991 General Assembly speech following the Kosovo war: "ultimately it is
people, not states that matter", he said at the time.

"Just as he took on the governments of developing countries in that debate, so
Annan has taken on the American nationalist conservative critics this year. In a
sense, there is a symmetry," Laurenti added.

"Annan obviously feels that if he does not speak up on this, he will be
remembered in history as a secretary-general who was afraid to stand up to the
ideals of the United Nations. And that Kofi Annan is definitely not."

But Joan Russow of the Canada-based Global Compliance Research Project saw no
redeeming feature in Annan's General Assembly statement.

"Regardless of Kofi Annan's remarks about pre-emptive-preventive attacks, the
Security Council under his guidance has essentially condoned what should not be
condoned: pre-emptive attacks; violation of the (U.N.) charter and the rule of
international law; invaders setting up a hand-picked provisional government in
Iraq; and invaders avoiding their responsibilities under U.N. Geneva
Conventions," she said.

"After Bush declared that the war in Iraq was over, Annan called upon nations to
support the reconstruction of and humanitarian support for Iraq, conveying that
there were no irreversible consequences of war; and consequently relegated the
United Nations to the role of not 'preventer' but a perpetuator of the cycle of
error," she added.

* * *


The Economist:

October 30, 2003

RIGHTS TO REMEMBER

By Harold Hongju Koh

How has September 11th changed America's approach to human rights?
Dangerously, suggests Harold Hongju Koh, but perhaps only temporarily

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2173160

I WOULD argue that September 11th ended the euphoria brought on by the fall of
the Berlin Wall, the belief that American-led global co-operation could solve
global problems. The American administration responded to the twin-towers
tragedy with a sweeping new global strategy: an emerging "Bush doctrine", if you
will.

One element of this doctrine is what I call "Achilles and his heel". September
11th brought upon America, as once upon Achilles, a schizophrenic sense of both
exceptional power and exceptional vulnerability. Never has a superpower seemed
so powerful and so vulnerable at the same time. The Bush doctrine asked: "How
can we use our superpower resources to protect our vulnerability?"

The administration's answer has been "homeland security". To preserve American
power and prevent future attack, the government has asserted a novel right under
international law to disarm through "pre-emptive self-defence" any country that
poses a threat. At home it has instituted sweeping strategies of immigration
control, security detention, governmental secrecy and information awareness.

The administration has also radically shifted its emphasis on human rights. In
1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the allies to arms by painting a vision
of the world we were trying to make: a post-war world of four fundamental
freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, freedom
from fear.

This framework foreshadowed the post-war human-rights construct -- embedded in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent international covenants
-- that emphasised comprehensive protection of civil and political rights
(freedom of speech and religion), economic, social and cultural rights (freedom
from want), and freedom from gross violations and persecution (the Refugee
Convention, the Genocide Convention and the Torture Convention). But Bush
administration officials have now reprioritised "freedom from fear" as the
number-one freedom we need to preserve. Freedom from fear has become the
obsessive watchword of America's human-rights policy.

Witness five faces of a human-rights policy fixated on freedom from fear. First,
closed government and invasions of privacy. Second, scapegoating immigrants and
refugees. Third, creating extra-legal zones, most prominently at the naval base
at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Fourth, creating extra-legal persons, particularly
the detainees of American citizenship labelled "enemy combatants". Fifth, a
reduced American human-rights presence through the rest of the globe.

The following vignettes illustrate this transformation of human rights.

* Closed government and invasions of privacy. Two core tenets of a post-
Watergate world had been that our government does not spy on its citizens, and
that American citizens should see what our government is doing. But since
September 11th, classification of government documents has risen to new heights.

The Patriot Act, passed almost without dissent after September 11th, authorises
the Defence Department to develop a project to promote something called "total
information awareness". Under this programme, the government may gather huge
amounts of information about citizens without proving they have done anything
wrong. They can access a citizen's records -- whether telephone, financial,
rental, internet, medical, educational or library -- without showing any
involvement with terrorism. Internet service providers may be forced to produce
records based solely on FBI declarations that the information is for an anti-
terrorism investigation.

Many absurdities follow: the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, in a study
published in September, reports that 20 American peace activists, including nuns
and high-school students, were recently flagged as security threats and detained
for saying that they were travelling to a rally to protest against military aid
to Colombia. The entire high-school wrestling team of Juneau, Alaska, was held
up at airports seven times just because one member was the son of a retired
Coast Guard officer on the FBI watch-list.

* Scapegoating immigrants. After September 11th, 1,200 immigrants were detained,
more than 750 on charges based solely on civil immigration violations. The
Justice Department's own inspector-general called the attorney-general's
enforcement of immigration laws "indiscriminate and haphazard". The Immigration
and Naturalisation Service, which formerly had a mandate for humanitarian relief
as well as for border protection, has been converted into an arm of the
Department of Homeland Security.

The impact on particular groups has been devastating. The number of refugees
resettled in America declined from 90,000 a year before September 11th to less
than a third that number, 27,000, this year. The Pakistani population of
Atlantic County, New Jersey has fallen by half.

Zones and people outside the law

* The creation of extra-legal zones. Some 660 prisoners from 42 countries are
being held in Guantánamo Bay, some for nearly two years. Three children are
apparently being detained, including a 13-year-old, several of the detainees are
aged over 70, and one claims to be over 100. Courtrooms are being built to try
six detainees, including two British subjects who have been declared eligible
for trial by military commission. There have been 32 reported suicide attempts.
Yet the administration is literally pouring concrete around its detention
policy, spending another $25m on buildings in Guantánamo that will increase the
detention capacity to 1,100.

* The creation of extra-legal persons. In two cases that are quickly working
their way to the Supreme Court, Yasser Hamdi and José Padilla are two American
citizens on American soil who have been designated as "enemy combatants", and
who have been accorded no legal channels to assert their rights.

The racial disparities in the use of the "enemy combatant" label are glaring.
Contrast, for example, the treatment of Mr Hamdi, from Louisiana but of Saudi
Arabian ancestry, with that of John Walker Lindh, the famous "American Taliban",
who is a white American from a comfortable family in the San Francisco Bay area.
Both are American citizens; both were captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 by
the Northern Alliance; both were handed over to American forces, who eventually
brought them to the United States. But federal prosecutors brought criminal
charges against Mr Lindh, who got an expensive lawyer and eventually plea-
bargained to a prison term. Meanwhile, Mr Hamdi has remained in incommunicado
detention, without a lawyer, in a South Carolina military brig for the past 16
months.

* The effect on the rest of the world. America's anti-terrorist activities have
given cover to many foreign governments who want to use "anti-terrorism" to
justify their own crackdowns on human rights. Examples abound. In Indonesia, the
army has cited America's use of Guantánamo to propose building an offshore
prison camp on Nasi Island to hold suspected terrorists from Aceh. In Australia,
Parliament passed laws mandating the forcible transfer of refugees seeking entry
to detention facilities in Nauru, where children as young as three years old are
being held, so that Australia does not (in the words of its defence minister)
become a "pipeline for terrorists".

In China, Wang Bingzhang, the founder of the pro-democracy magazine China
Spring, was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for "organising and leading
a terrorist group", the first time, apparently, that the Chinese government has
charged a democracy activist with terrorism. In Russia, Vladimir Putin on
September 12th 2001 declared that America and Russia "have a common foe" because
Osama bin Laden's people are connected to events in Chechnya. Within months the
American government had added three Chechen groups to its list of foreign
terrorist organisations.

In Egypt, the government extended for another three years its emergency law,
which allows it to detain suspected national-security threats almost
indefinitely without charge, to ban public demonstrations, and to try citizens
before military tribunals. President Hosni Mubarak announced that America's
parallel policies proved that "we were right from the beginning in using all
means, including military tribunals, to combat terrorism".

What's wrong with this picture? Each prong of the Bush doctrine places America
in the position of promoting double standards, one for itself, and another for
the rest of the world. The emerging doctrine has placed startling pressure upon
the structure of human-rights and international law that the United States
itself designed and supported since 1948. In a remarkably short time, the United
States has moved from being the principal supporter of that system to its most
visible outlier.

Around the globe, America's human-rights policy has visibly softened, subsumed
under the all-encompassing banner of the "war against terrorism". And at home,
the Patriot Act, military commissions, Guantánamo and the indefinite detention
of American citizens have placed America in the odd position of condoning deep
intrusions by law, even while creating zones and persons outside the law.

Nothing natural about it

At this point, you are surely asking: "Why did this happen?" and "What can we do
about it?" People living outside America sometimes suggest that the reason is
rooted in the American national culture of unilateralism, parochialism and an
obsession with power. With respect, let me urge you to see it differently. The
Bush doctrine, I believe, is less a broad manifestation of American national
character than of short-sighted decisions made by a particularly extreme
American administration.

Many, if not most, Americans would have supported dealing with September 11th in
a different way. Imagine, for example, the Bush administration dealing with the
atrocity through the then prevailing multilateralist strategy of using global
co-operation to solve global problems. On the day after the attack, George Bush
could have flown to New York to stand in solidarity with the world's ambassadors
in front of the United Nations.

He could have supported the International Criminal Court as a way of bringing
the Osama bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins of the world to justice. He could have
refrained from invading Iraq without a second UN resolution and he could have
maintained a host of human-rights treaties to signal the need for even greater
global solidarity in a time of terror. I am convinced that the American people
would have supported him in all those efforts.

So to those who would blame American culture for America's unilateralism, let me
remind you that not every American is equally well-placed to promote American
unilateralism. In recent years, such individuals as Mr Bush, Donald Rumsfeld,
John Bolton, Jesse Helms and Justice Antonin Scalia have held particularly
strategic positions that enabled them to promote this sea-change in human-rights
policy.

But if particular politicians and judges are part of the problem, they are also
part of the solution. For, in recent months, American human-rights lawyers have
launched multiple efforts to counter these trends, particularly through lawsuits
seeking to persuade judges to construe American law in light of universal human-
rights principles.

What are the signs of this trend? With each passing day, I see growing
resistance to these policies among ordinary Americans. Some promising examples:

* Career bureaucrats have started to challenge the administration's policies for
undoing years of hard work.

* Military judges and former federal prosecutors have expressed dismay over
military commissions.

* A group of former federal judges filed a brief in the Padilla case challenging
the president's detention of American citizens without express congressional
authorisation. They were joined in those efforts by two conservative libertarian
groups: the Cato Institute and the Rutherford Institute.

* Career diplomats have told me of early retirements by those who refuse to
implement what they view as discriminatory visa policies.

* A group of former American diplomats and former American prisoners-of-war have
challenged the administration's flouting of the Geneva Conventions before the
Supreme Court.

* Librarians and booksellers have joined a bipartisan group of 133 congressional
representatives to press for a law, called the Freedom to Read Protection Act,
that would shield library and bookstore records from government surveillance.

These grassroots efforts are finally reaching the political actors. The public
outcry following the leak of a proposed second Patriot Act has put that
legislation on hold. Resolutions opposing the first Patriot Act have passed in
three states and 162 municipalities. The House of Representatives has refused to
provide funding for the part of the Patriot Act that allows so-called "sneak and
peek" searches of private property without prompt notice to the resident. A
battle is brewing in Congress over whether parts of the current act should be
eliminated in 2005.

The Supreme Court to the rescue?

Most important, the key cases are finally starting to make their way to the
United States Supreme Court. Now you may ask: what influence can a combination
of international pressure and protest from ordinary Americans have on such a
conservative court?

But recent cases may give hope. For instance, last June in Lawrence v Texas, the
Supreme Court finally overruled its 17-year-old decision in Bowers v Hardwick,
which had permitted states to ban same-sex sodomy among consenting adults.
Representing Mary Robinson, the former UN Human Rights High Commissioner, and
several other human-rights groups, I had filed an amicus curiae brief urging the
court to consider two decades of European human-rights precedent rejecting the
criminalisation of same-sex sodomy as a violation of the European Convention's
right to privacy.

In a six-to-three vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, citing our brief, that
the rationale of Bowers had been rejected by "values we [Americans] share with a
wider civilisation". The court noted that "the right petitioners seek in this
case has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other
countries" and that "[t]here has been no showing in [the United States] that
governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more
legitimate or urgent."

What this may mean is that when the September 11th cases get to the Supreme
Court, American human-rights lawyers can similarly argue that the legality of
our policies must be evaluated by "values we [Americans] share with a wider
civilisation". Citing Lawrence, human-rights advocates can urge the court to
decide whether the rights being asserted by detainees like Mr Hamdi, Mr Padilla
and those on Guantánamo "have been accepted as an integral part of human freedom
in many other countries" and can argue that our government has not demonstrated
"that the governmental interest in circumscribing [these freedoms] is somehow
more legitimate or ugent" in the United States than in other countries that have
seen fit to forgo such legal restrictions.

Whether our Supreme Court will accept these arguments remains unclear. But these
cases may well determine whether historians will remember these past two years
as a fundamental change, or as only a temporary eclipse, in America's human-
rights leadership. I, for one, have neither given up hope, nor accepted as
inevitable a 21st-century American human-rights policy that is increasingly at
odds with core American and universal values.

In our "Declaration of Independence", Thomas Jefferson wrote: "When in the
course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people...to assume among
the Power of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of
Nature...entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that
they should declare the causes..." Most patriotic Americans, I believe, still
think that our human-rights policy should pay "decent respect to the opinions of
mankind". As a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to certain inalienable
rights, our country has strong primal instincts to address the world not just in
the language of power, but through a combination of power and principle.

In 1759, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "They that can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither." In the months ahead, I
believe, we can both obtain our security and preserve our essential liberty, but
only so long as we have courage from our courts, commitment from our citizens,
and pressure from our foreign allies. Even after September 11th, America can
still stand for human rights, but we can get there only with a little help from
our friends.

[ Harold Hongju Koh is professor of international law at Yale Law School, and
was assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Clinton administration.
This is extracted from the 2003 John Galway Foster lecture delivered in London
on October 21st. ]

* * *


October 30, 2003 - 04:00 PM ET

U.S. MILITARY TRIALS OF TERROR SUSPECTS 'IMMINENT'

By Will Dunham, Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The start of military trials of foreign terrorism
suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is imminent, the Pentagon's chief
prosecutor said on Thursday, while defending a rule allowing the U.S. government
to monitor conversations between the defendants and their lawyers.

President Bush in 2001 authorized the first U.S. military commission trials of
wartime prisoners since World War II. On July 3, Bush designated six foreign
captives as eligible for such trials. The Pentagon refused to identify them.

"I think it's safe to say our start is imminent, soon," Army Col. Frederic
Borch, named by the Pentagon to lead the prosecution, told an American Bar
Association event.

He did not give a specific date, how many defendants would be tried, or the
charges involved.

The rules set by the Pentagon for the trials have come under sharp criticism
from human rights groups and criminal defense lawyers, who doubt the defendants
can get fair trials.

"Ultimately, I would ask all the critics, wait until we actually start the
process so you can see what actually happens," Borch said.

Defendants tried before the commissions of seven American military officers must
be non-U.S. citizens. They are expected to be among the roughly 660 foreign
prisoners, most captured in Afghanistan and imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at
Guantanamo Bay. No criminal charges have been brought against any Guantanamo
prisoners to date.

Commission trials are set to be held there. Defendants could face the death
penalty if convicted.

Critics argue the rules are biased in favor of the prosecution, place
unacceptable conditions on the defense and allow for no independent judicial
review by civilian courts.

"We are now putting forth a system of justice before the world that doesn't meet
either current American or international standards of due process," said Kevin
Barry, a renowned expert in military justice and board member of the National
Institute of Military Justice.

One rule that has drawn particular ire from critics is the government's right to
monitor communications between the defendants and their lawyers.

Borch said that even though the rules allow for such monitoring -- which many
experts consider a breach of attorney-client confidentiality -- any information
obtained from this could not be used by prosecutors in the case.

"Monitoring is security and an intelligence function. It's not a law-enforcement
function," Borch said. "None of this monitored information on a particular
accused is going to be used in any trial of that accused."

Air Force Col. Will Gunn, the chief defense lawyer, said he anticipates that
defense attorneys will ask that their conversations not be monitored and, if it
is permitted, that the defense knows when it is taking place.

Each defendant will be assigned a U.S. military defense attorney and also has
the right to hire an American civilian lawyer as long as that attorney is deemed
eligible by the Pentagon to hear classified evidence and agrees to conditions
that include monitoring conversations.

Asked about the admissibility in commission trials of hearsay and other evidence
barred in U.S. civilian courts, Borch noted that such evidence is allowed by the
international court trying war crimes from the former Yugoslavia.

He said defense lawyers in commission trials have "the same evidentiary
standard," adding: "In other words, all those things that the prosecution may
benefit by the admissibility rule, the same thing applies to the defense."

© Copyright Reuters 2003

* * *


Sydney Morning Herald:

October 30, 2003

CHENEY'S HAWKS 'HIJACKING POLICY'

By Ritt Goldstein

A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower says a group of hawks in the Bush
Administration, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is running a shadow
foreign policy, contravening Washington's official line.

"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra [a Reagan administration
national security scandal] look like amateur hour. . . it's worse than Iran-
Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam," said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former
air force lieutenant-colonel.

"[President] George Bush isn't in control . . . the country's been hijacked,"
she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of neoconservative concern
were politically staffed".

Ms Kwiatkowski, who retired this year after 20 years service, was a Middle East
specialist in the office of the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, headed by
Douglas Feith.

She described "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a
co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress", adding that "in
order to take that first step - Iraq - lies had to be told to Congress to bring
them on board".

Ms Kwiatkowski said the pursuit of national security decisions often bypassed
"civil service and active-duty military professionals", and was handled instead
by political appointees who shared common ideological ties.

There was speculation earlier this year that such an ideologue group had
emerged, and that it was behind the US attack on an Iraqi convoy in Syria in
June.

The New York Times quoted Patrick Lang, a former senior Defence Intelligence
Agency (DIA) official, as saying that many in the Government believed the
incursion was an effort by ideologues to disrupt co-operation between the US and
Syria.

Ms Kwiatkowski said there was an extra-governmental network operating outside
normal structures and practices, "a network of political appointees in key
positions who felt they needed to take some action, to make things happen in a
foreign affairs, national security way". She said Pentagon personnel and the DIA
were pressured to favourably alter assessments and reports.

In a separate interview, Chalmers Johnson, an authority on US policy, said that
the Administration's neo-conservatives had in effect seized power from Mr Bush.

Dr Johnson said the neo-conservatives had pursued an agenda outlined in the
controversial 1992 Defence Planning Guidance. That document, drawn up at the
direction of Mr Cheney when he was defence secretary, said the world's only
superpower should not be cautious about asserting its power.

* * *


Sydney Morning Herald:

October 30, 2003

DETAINEES 'SUSPICIOUS OF LAWYERS'

The United States Chief military defence counsel who will defend terrorist
suspects held at Guantanamo Bay said today his greatest challenge was winning
clients' trust.

Colonel William Gunn said giving detainees access to private lawyers before they
were tried by US military commissions could help win that trust.

"(The greatest challenge is) convincing individuals that the people that are
assigned to represent them do in fact have their best interests at heart," Col
Gunn told ABC Radio.

"We are military officers, all of us; the people who have been detaining them
are also military personnel, so they may well look at us as the enemy and be
very suspicious of our services.

"If we are in a position where we can bring in experts and consultants - and
there are civilian attorneys that have been hired by the families - then that
may in fact help with the situation.

"When you have another party there that can verify that, yes, the advice that
you're getting is in fact competent advice, that helps a lot."

Colonel Gunn said he had raised concerns with the US military about the
possibility that lawyers' discussions with clients could be monitored at the US
military base at Cuba.

He would not discuss Australian detainee David Hicks who was among the first to
be nominated for trial.

AAP

* * *


Baltimore Sun:

October 29, 2003

ARMY GUARD TO RETRAIN 2,000 TROOPS AS POLICE
Missions after Sept. 11 have depleted MP ranks

By Tom Bowman, Sun National Staff

WASHINGTON - The Army National Guard, its military police force stretched thin
and its skills badly needed in Iraq and elsewhere, is preparing to retrain some
2,000 of its seldom-used artillery soldiers as MPs, Pentagon officials said.

About 1,200 soldiers from five National Guard artillery units are expected to be
retrained between this fall and early spring, while plans are under way to
eventually turn an additional 800 Guard artillerymen into MPs.

"We want to have them ready as soon as possible," said a senior Defense
Department official, who outlined the program and requested anonymity. "We
recognize a changing threat and an increased request for these troops both at
home and abroad."

Of the Guard's 92 military police units, only nine have not been called to
federal duty since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some of the activated police
units, such as elements of the Maryland National Guard's 115th Military Police
Battalion from Parkville and Salisbury, have been called up more than once.
Soldiers from the Maryland contingent are patrolling the perimeter of the
Baghdad airport.

Twenty-one percent of the Army Guard, or about 73,500 soldiers, are serving in
the United States or overseas, Guard officials said. But a little more than half
of the Guard's MPs, about 7,870, are on federal duty, providing security from
the Pentagon to bases in North Dakota and patrolling the streets in Iraq and the
Balkans.

Although it generally takes nine weeks to train a military police officer, the
plan calls for a truncated monthlong training regimen before the new police
units head to Iraq or take up guard duties at domestic bases early next year,
officials said.

Ten artillery companies have been alerted for the training program. They are
from Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, Tennessee and Montana, and none has mobilized
since the Sept. 11 attacks. Eventually they will be "reflagged" as permanent
military police companies, officials said.

It is not immediately clear how the artillery units will react to their new
role.

"I think you'll get some grumbling, and you'll get some resistance," said Ralph
Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer and defense analyst. "Artillerymen
are proud of what they do. They're called the king of battle."

Still, said Peters, the move makes sense. "It keeps the Guard at the cutting
edge of relevance," he said. "We need MPs. The artillery units are unlikely to
be called up."

The plan reflects the changing nature of the national security threat, in which
peacekeeping duties, nation building and brush fire wars call for soldiers
trained to guard facilities and patrol war-torn cities such as Baghdad more than
fire a howitzer.

Some of these Guard artillerymen should receive mobilization orders within the
next two weeks, when the Pentagon is expected to announce a broader call-up of
15,000 more Guard support soldiers, from military police and civil affairs
specialists to logisticians and truck drivers, for duty in Iraq.

Maryland is not among the states that have received alert orders. The states
where Guard support units have received such orders, meaning they should prepare
to mobilize under federal service, include Illinois, California, Florida,
Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington,
officials said.

Besides the support troops, Pentagon officials said an additional 15,000 Army
Guard combat troops will also be part of that mobilization order: the 30th
Infantry Brigade from North Carolina, the 39th Infantry Brigade from Arkansas
and the 81st Infantry Brigade from Washington state. Soldiers from the 30th have
begun training for Iraq duty at Fort Stewart, Ga., and Fort Bragg, N.C.

Some of the 30,000 Guard combat and support troops will replace other reservists
in Iraq during the coming months, while the remaining will take the place of
active duty Army units, officials said. A total of 130,000 U.S. troops are
stationed in Iraq, while about 29,000 Army National Guard soldiers are either in
Iraq or the region. In addition, there are an estimated 24,000 soldiers from
Great Britain, Poland and other countries.

But the difficulty in attracting more non-American forces, coupled with
overtaxed U.S. active-duty ground troops, means that the Pentagon has once again
been forced to turn to reservists.

One of the Guard artillery units that will see some of its soldiers retrained as
MPs is the 2nd Battalion of the 122nd Field Artillery from Sycamore, Ill., about
50 miles outside Chicago. Maj. Tim Franklin, a spokesman for the Illinois
National Guard, said 248 soldiers, about one-third of the battalion's strength,
have been alerted for training as military police.

"We are expecting they will get a mobilization order," said Franklin. Defense
officials also said they have yet to decide on a training site, but one possible
location is Camp Shelby, a National Guard facility in Mississippi.

The National Guard has the greatest number of military police in the U.S.
military. There are about 15,000 Army National Guard military police, compared
with about 14,000 in the active duty Army and 9,500 in the Army Reserve.

Guard officials from around the country say there is a need for more military
police, noting that in some cases their police units have been tapped out for
duty in Iraq and elsewhere.

"We're fresh out of MPs," said Capt. Robert Carver, a spokesman for the North
Carolina National Guard. The state's three military police companies are gone,
two deployed to Iraq, the third training at Fort Bragg for duty in Kosovo.

In Rhode Island, Lt. Col. Mike McNamara told a similar story. "They've pretty
much taken all our MP assets between Iraq and Guantanamo," the U.S. naval base
in Cuba that is holding terrorism suspects in a military prison. McNamara said
roughly 375 Guard police officers from Rhode Island have deployed, leaving about
75 in the state.

In Maryland, the 150-member headquarters company of the 115th Military Police
Battalion has been called up repeatedly since the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.

The soldiers arrived at the Pentagon hours after a hijacked airliner slammed
into the building. Then the soldiers headed to Fort Stewart and later Guantanamo
Bay for guard duty. In February, they were mobilized for Iraq duty.

By creating more of these high-demand military police, Pentagon officials expect
to spread the burden of such duty among a larger number of Guard units. One of
the reasons for the artillerymen-to-police program is to prevent call-ups of
current Guard MP units for a third straight year.

Still, some members of Congress fear that the increased reliance on Guard units
will result in an eventual drop in retention and recruitment.

"If there's no relief in sight there will be huge pressures not to re-enlist,"
said Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee who once served with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. "It's
going to have an effect; the question is how much?"

Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services
Committee, said he, too, worries about repeated and long deployments for Guard
troops. And he said he is disappointed that there are not more nations willing
to send troops and share the burden in Iraq.

"They are few and the numbers they send are few, so you call on the Guard and
Reserve," said Skelton. "I think at the end of the day any good number of [Guard
soldiers] will not re-enlist."

But the National Guard said this month that it reached its recruiting goal for
the past year, as it has for the previous six. The Army National Guard's
programmed strength was 350,000, Guard officials said, and its number of
soldiers stands at 350,835.

When the numbers were released, Lt. Gen. Steve Blum, chief of the National Guard
Bureau, said: "This is what sets us apart, the ability to recruit and retain
good people."

Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

* * *


BBC:

October 29, 2003 -- 19:20 GMT

RED CROSS TO CUT IRAQ STAFF

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said it will reduce its
foreign staff in Iraq, after its headquarters in Baghdad was bombed on Monday.

The agency, which has about 30 international and 600 Iraqi staff in Iraq,
stressed it was not pulling out of the country.

Two ICRC workers were among more than three dozen people killed in a series of
co-ordinated suicide attacks in the Iraqi capital.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell personally appealed to the head
of the ICRC not to withdraw its foreign staff from Iraq.

The ICRC's decision to scale back came a day after medical charity Medecins Sans
Frontieres said it would pull out four of its seven expatriate staff in Iraq
following the Red Cross attack.

Other aid agencies and non-governmental organisations reduced their staffing
levels in Iraq, or pulled out entirely, after the UN headquarters in Baghdad was
bombed in August, killing at least 20 people.

The announcement came amid continuing violence in Iraq, with the deaths of two
US soldiers killed by a roadside bomb 40 kilometres (25 miles) north-east of
Balad, 75 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad, on Tuesday.

It brings the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the end of the war on 1
May to 115, exceeding for the first time the toll of troops killed during major
combat.

A US research group, meanwhile, has said about 13,000 Iraqis, including as many
as 4,300 civilians, were killed during the war.

The Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) said that despite the advent of
precision weapons, more civilians probably died in the latest conflict than in
the 1991 Gulf War.

'NO CHOICE'

"The ICRC is not withdrawing from Iraq," said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the agency's
director of operations.

"We are reducing the number of our international staff and increasing measures
for the security of the remaining staff," he said.

He said the terms of the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in
times of war meant it was incumbent on the ICRC to stay in Iraq while the
country was occupied.

But he said the staff's safety was a priority and any foreign or Iraqi ICRC
workers will be asked whether they want to stay or leave.

Florian Vestphal, an ICRC spokesman in Geneva, told the BBC's Newshour programme
the agency will take additional measures to enhance the safety of its staff in
Iraq.

"[But] what is obvious is that in this kind of situation we simply cannot
guarantee 100% protection," he said.

He said the withdrawal of staff will impact on the agency's work, but the ICRC
"still think that even under these extremely difficult circumstances there is a
role we can play".

PESSIMISM

The BBC's Jill McGivering in Baghdad says the news may be greeted with dismay as
yet another sign of falling confidence.

The ICRC has an essential role to play in Iraq while the country is under
occupation, our correspondent adds.

One of its main functions is monitoring the treatment of detainees, acting as an
independent watchdog to make sure the coalition does not violate international
humanitarian law.

Other tasks, our correspondent says, include supplying equipment and medicines
to hospitals, helping hospitals with basic repairs and tracing missing people -
all vital at a time of instability and conflict.

* * *


The Age (Melbourne):

October 29, 2003

PACIFIC SOLUTION 'OUTSIDE THE LAW'

Australia's Pacific Solution for asylum seekers and the way the United States
was holding terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba breached human rights law,
an international law expert said.

Hilary Charlesworth linked the two actions, saying she knew of no other
precedents for countries removing people from the reach of their own courts.

Professor Charlesworth, head of the Centre for International and Public Law at
the Australian National University, told the National Press Club the federal
government appeared to be washing its hands over the rights of Australians David
Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, who are being held at Guantanamo Bay.

"Generally Australia takes a very strong view on the procedural rights of people
we might find unattractive," she said.

"Earlier this year Australia made very strong representations to Vietnam against
the death penalty imposed on an Australian-Vietnamese citizen charged with
serious drug crimes.

"What strikes me as curious from a legal perspective is that we are willing to
go in and bat for an unattractive defendant, somebody involved in serious drug
trafficking, yet in respect to the two Australians at Guantanamo Bay -- and I
don't know what's happening behind the scenes -- we seem to be washing our
hands."

It was extraordinary the government was not demanding they were given the rights
the American and Australian legal systems provided.

Professor Charlesworth said there was an argument whether the captives were
prisoners of war.

However, the Fourth Geneva Convention required a tribunal to be set up to sort
out their status. The US had refused to do this.

Moreover, even if it was conceded that they were not POWs and were potentially
pretty horrible people, there were still obligations under international human
rights law to which the US and Australia were parties.

"So I don't understand why our government has played, on the surface, such a
passive and indeed acquiescent role in what are clearly serious human rights
violations," she said.

Professor Charlesworth said the Pacific Solution was legally unacceptable
because the major human rights treaties say anyone who comes within Australia's
jurisdiction had a range of rights.

"By stopping people and putting them away, we're certainly not living up to the
spirit and, I would argue, not living up to the letter of the obligations we've
accepted by signing human rights treaties," she said.

©2003 AAP

* * *


October 29, 2003

AM Interview with Prof Darryll Jones, U Pittsburgh School of Law
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2003/s977384.htm

DELAY IN HICKS TRIAL 'AN INJUSTICE': PENTAGON-CLEARED LAWYER

Reporter: Leigh Sales

LINDA MOTTRAM: One of two civilian lawyers cleared by the Pentagon to take part
in the military commissions which may try David Hicks, has told AM that it may
be a case of justice delayed being justice denied.

Mr Hicks has been held at Guantanamo Bay as a suspected terrorist for almost two
years without charge, and the US Government named him four months ago as one of
six men eligible for military trial.

Darryll Jones is a Law Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and he's been
approved by the Pentagon to join the defence counsel at the commissions.

He says that the military process can allow for a fair trial, though he's
concerned not just about delays, but also that national security may be invoked
by the prosecution to withhold evidence from the defence.

Professor Jones is the first person on the inside of the process to raise such
criticisms so frankly, and he's been speaking to our North America Correspondent
Leigh Sales.

DARRYLL JONES: I'm fairly confident that our...  that there will be a fair
judicial process, although I am, as a sort of defence attorney, I am concerned
or I am anticipating some of the issues that might inject a level of unfairness.
I'm prepared to assume that the procedures will provide for a fair adjudication
but I'm also prepared to speak up when they don't.

LEIGH SALES: What do you think about the fact that the justice process is taking
so long?

DARRYLL JONES: I think that's terribly inexcusable. On the one hand, I think it
would encourage detainees to agree to a charge or to say what they think ought
to be said in order to, in hope that by doing so they would be allowed to go
home. It would certainly make them more cynical. If they weren't enemies of the
United States at one point, they might have good reason to be at this point
having been held without any charge and perhaps being innocent.

I don't know any of them personally, I haven't spoken to them but I would think
these are the general matters. After I've been detained for nearly two years and
no family and then somebody comes to me and says, well if you take this plea,
we'll give you a date when you will get out, you know, two or three years hence.
Otherwise, you might be held, if you don't take the plea and you're found
guilty, it could be seven or eight years or even longer, you know, that's a lot
of pressure to take the deal.

LEIGH SALES: Is it a case of justice delayed is justice denied?

DARRYLL JONES: I think, I think, invariably yes. I mean, because due process
delayed is an injustice. Due process is designed to make sure that we don't
inflict punishment on somebody who doesn't deserve it, so yes. A delay is a
denial of justice.

LEIGH SALES: At this moment, you're one of only two civilian lawyers that the
Pentagon's cleared for involvement. Do you have any concern that by raising
questions and being critical of the process that you might find that approval
withdrawn?

DARRYLL JONES: No, I don't think that the Pentagon is afraid of intellectually
honest criticism and I don't think that they're seeking to squash that
criticism. And I think that my criticisms have been pretty much balanced, not
that I would be seeking to balance my representation of detainees one way or the
other. I mean, if I were to represent a detainee, I'm going to bring the full
force of my intellectual capabilities against the government's case.

LINDA MOTTRAM: American Law Professor, Darryll Jones, speaking to Leigh Sales.

* * *


October 28, 2003

FORMER GUANTANAMO CHAPLAIN NOW LOW-SECURITY PRISONER

By Mike Barber, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter

The Army has lowered the detention security status of Army Muslim chaplain James
Yee, who once was stationed at Fort Lewis and now faces criminal accusations,
from maximum to low, Yee's new lawyer said yesterday.

Yee, who was assigned last November to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, where
nearly 660 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners are detained, was himself taken into
custody Sept. 10 after getting off a flight from Guantanamo at Jacksonville
Naval Air Station.

Yee, who also uses the first name Yousef, was held for a month before being
charged with failing to obey orders for taking classified material to his home
and wrongfully transporting it without proper containers.

Eugene Fidell, one of the nation's leading military lawyers who recently joined
Yee's defense team, last week sought the 35-year-old West Point graduate's
release from the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., or at least release from
maximum-security confinement.

Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice and a retired
Coast Guard officer, said the two charges against Yee are lesser offenses that
don't warrant maximum security, solitary confinement or a general court-martial.

"He is charged with two violations of the general rule on safeguarding
classified information, which is usually handled administratively," said Fidell,
who also is head of the military practice group at the Washington, D.C., law
firm of Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell.

"In my experience that's not what generates a court-martial. It's the type of
thing that generates a reprimand" or an administrative hearing, he said.

Each count carries a maximum of two years in prison and a bad-conduct discharge.

As a low-security prisoner, Yee "no longer is in leg irons and can wear a belt
and shoe laces," Fidell said yesterday.

Yee now also is allowed to read a censored copy of USA Today.

He had been allowed just the Quran.

Yee was able to meet with his family for the first time on the weekend, Fidell
said.

"He's doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances, considering the
indignity to which he's being subjected," Fidell said.

Last week, Fidell strongly objected when military prosecutors said they were so
overworked they needed to delay proceedings against Yee. Military speedy trial
rules require a hearing for Yee within 120 days, or by Dec. 10.

Yesterday, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo,
granted a 45-day delay.

High-profile cases or those dealing with classified information, as well as
manpower and workload considerations, can allow an extension, military lawyers
argued.

Raul Duany, spokesman for Southern Command, said the extension is warranted
because of the sheer complexity of the case.

Both defense and prosecution lawyers, for example, now must acquire security
clearances because of classified material involved in the case, pursue leads and
witnesses in different states and countries, and subject evidence to intense
analysis, he said.

Yee has a four-member defense team of two civilian and two uniformed lawyers.
The prosecution team is still being formed, Duany said.

Miller has not yet made a decision whether to dismiss charges, convene a special
court-martial or send the case to Southern Command to conduct an Article 32
hearing -- a general court-martial.

A special court-martial is heard by a three-member panel for minor or slightly
more serious offenses. A general court-martial more closely resembles a trial
and has a judge and jury.

"Basically, he's on ice," Fidell said of Yee.

[ P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or
mikebarber@seattlepi.com ]

* * *


The Australian:

October 28, 2003

CUBA DETAINEES HELD LEGALLY: HILL

By Sophie Morris

Two Australians suspected of training with al-Qa'ida were being detained legally
by the US and would be dealt with fairly, Defence Minister Robert Hill said
yesterday.

David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib have been held without charge in US military
prison in Cuba for two years on suspicion of links to al-Qa'ida.

Their fate was raised with US President George W. Bush last week by Prime
Minister John Howard, Opposition Leader Simon Crean and - in a more dramatic
fashion - by Greens senator Bob Brown, who interrupted Mr Bush's address to the
Australian parliament.

Senator Hill told Senate question time yesterday that the Prime Minister had
asked Mr Bush to expedite the military commission trial of Mr Hicks.

The Adelaide man was named in July as one of six foreign nationals who could
face military commissions, but he has not been charged and no date has been set.

"Just in case there is any doubt, the Government certainly does not accept that
they are being illegally detained," Senator Hill said, in response to a question
from Greens senator Kerry Nettle. "But it is true the issues were raised with
President Bush during his visit last week. The Prime Minister indicated he would
like to see the military commission process brought forward."

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last month the detainees at Guantanamo
Bay could be held until the end of the global war on terror - an indeterminate
date.

Senator Hill said yesterday the Howard Government understood why they continued
to be detained while the war on terror continued, but was nevertheless anxious
that their future be resolved as quickly as possible.

* * *


BBC:

October 27, 2003 - 15:08 GMT

ATTACK ROCKS RED CROSS

The International Committee of the Red Cross's unwavering neutrality has been a
source of both admiration and bitter controversy.

Its decision during World War II not to speak out publicly on the crimes being
committed in German concentration camps for fear of compromising that neutrality
continues to prompt passionate debate.

So it is difficult for the agency - so proud of its utter impartiality - to
stomach the first suicide attack ever carried out against it, launched by those
who apparently do not see it as a neutral and benevolent force.

"It's totally un-understandable," says the ICRC's Baghdad spokeswoman, Nada
Doumani.

"We've been working in Iraq since 1980. People know us. They know exactly what
we're doing and what we're doing it for and we are not associated with anybody
in this country, with no political government, with no military. I'm shocked."

UNPROTECTED

The ICRC prides itself on being the first to arrive and the last to leave.

But attacks on those working for the ICRC in recent years have already proved
that the symbol of the Red Cross or the Red Crescent does not necessarily
command respect or immunity.

In a shocking incident in late 1996, six Red Cross workers were shot dead by
masked gunmen as they slept in a hospital in the village of Novy Attagi, just
outside the Chechen capital Grozny.

The murders rocked the organisation to its core. It pulled its foreign staff out
of the country and suspended all programmes which required their presence.

It also prompted a wholesale review of security arrangements for its staff.
Within months, the ICRC decided for the first time to use armed guards to
protect its field workers in certain situations.

Nonetheless, the improved protection did nothing to save the lives of six
further volunteers five years later.

This team was travelling in two vehicles marked with the Red Cross emblem, and
were on an assignment to bring assistance to the Ituri region of The Democratic
Republic of Congo, when they were killed by unidentified assailants.

Since then, individual Red Cross workers have continued to be attacked and
killed.

Observers note that when aid agencies move to deal with the humanitarian issues
exacerbated by Western military action - as in Afghanistan and Iraq - all aid
agencies, no matter what their genesis or politics, risk being viewed as part of
an unwanted international presence.

IN AND OUT

The ICRC has said it will take stock of what happened on Monday before taking
any major decisions about its future in the country.

But it had in the summer already started cutting down the number of foreign
staff stationed in Baghdad after a Sri Lankan aid worker was shot dead.

In the wake of the attack on the UN's Baghdad headquarters in August, which left
20 dead, the agency further reduced its foreign staff to 50 - a number that has
steadily decreased since.

Several other agencies also pulled put after the attack, including Oxfam.

It is widely believed that a full withdrawal of the ICRC, which has been
involved in supplying hospitals with medical equipment and drugs - including the
only Baghdad centre for the mentally ill, visiting those detained by the
American forces and helping families trace missing relatives - would be a great
loss to many ordinary Iraqis.

Workers for the Coalition Provisional Authority say they are not able to fill
the void left by aid agency pull-outs.

"The aid agencies provide the people with food, medical assistance and
construction efforts. If they were to leave, these things would not then be
finding their way into the community. The Coalition Military is not structured
or equipped to conduct the task," Tim Severino, an Australian working for the
authority, told BBC News Online.

"Aid agencies leaving - like the UN did - also signifies to the terrorist that
they are winning. They will then attempt to drive, one by one, every agency or
organisation out. The result is the common people will suffer."

* * *

Boston Globe:

October 27, 2003

SHAKEN INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS PONDERING IRAQI CUTBACK, SPOKESMAN SAYS

By Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) The international Red Cross said Monday it is considering cutting
back its operations in Iraq after a bomb attack on its Baghdad headquarters that
shook the neutral Swiss-run organization.

The attack killed two Iraqi employees of the International Committee of the Red
Cross and as many as 10 other people outside the agency's compound, said agency
spokesman Florian Westphal.

"Such an attack is a major blow for us," Westphal told The Associated Press.
"It's a big shock. It is obviously impossible to move onto a normal day's
business, so we really have to step back and take stock."

United Nations aid agencies also reacted with shock, but said it was unlikely
their operations would be affected: They already had cut back to skeleton staffs
because of the Aug. 19 truck bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

Several ICRC employees were slightly injured inside the compound, Westphal said.

He said ICRC officials in Baghdad and at the Geneva headquarters were reviewing
operations.

"It's too early for us at the moment to say how this attack will impact on our
activities," Westphal said. "We will have a fairly clear idea within the next
few days how we want to proceed."

He said much of the ICRC operation focuses on the agency's visits to prisoners
held by coalition forces and the Iraqi police a main part of the agency's
mandate under the Geneva Conventions on warfare and occupation.

It also offers emergency medical aid in conjunction with the Iraqi Red Crescent,
provides water and sanitation and educates Iraqis on how to avoid land mines and
other explosives left over from warfare.

Westphal said that weeks ago the agency had received "unspecified warnings that
we may at one stage or another be the targets of an attack," but added that the
ICRC didn't know who would want to target the organization.

The warnings had been "relayed" to the ICRC, Westphal said.

"They were not in any way specific and it was really impossible to read too much
into that except obviously that the situation is extremely difficult and
dangerous," he added.

Last August the ICRC disclosed that it had received warnings of a threat and
said it had been cutting back on its staff since a Sri Lankan staffer was killed
July 22 south of Baghdad.

U.N. agencies, which scaled back their operations following the August attack,
saw Monday's bombing as another assault on the very people trying to help
Iraqis.

"Everybody is quite shaken about another attack on a humanitarian agency and a
close partner," said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees in Geneva.

Most of the foreign staff have remained outside Iraq since the August attack,
whose 23 victims included the top U.N. envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

But spokeswoman Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said, "We are
seriously concerned about the consequences, not only in terms of loss of life
but also in terms of reducing further the international presence in the
country."

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Program said her agency would be able to
continue its distribution of food in Iraq because it is mostly handled by a
network of 44,000 Iraqi agents.

The ICRC was the main international relief organization to maintain operations
in Baghdad and Basra during the U.S.-led invasion earlier this year, keeping six
international staffers and several dozen Iraqis to provide help to hospitals.

"We have been in Iraq since 1980," said Westphal.

The ICRC, which provided relief during the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War,
currently has 30-40 international staff and several hundred Iraqis working for
it throughout the country, Westphal said.

"This attack yet again primarily hurts Iraqis, which is the particular tragedy,
be it our staff or others who happened to be in this area," Westphal said.

* * *


Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

October 27, 2003

ICRC TO REASSESS ROLE IN IRAQ AFTER BOMBING

By Anna Nelson, swissinfo

GENEVA - Following Monday’s deadly suicide attack on its offices in Baghdad, the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it planned to review its
operations in Iraq.

The bomb explosion at the ICRC buildings killed two of the organisation's
employees, along with an estimated ten other people.

"The ICRC condemns this attack in the strongest terms and expresses its
heartfelt sympathy to the victims and their families," the organisation said in
a statement.

"All deliberate attacks causing death or injury among civilians are strictly
prohibited by international humanitarian law and negate the most basic
principles of humanity," it continued.

The neutral, Swiss-run agency said it was not in a position to give further
details concerning the explosion but added that it planned to reassess its
working conditions in Baghdad over the coming days.
Ongoing commitment

Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the ICRC in Baghdad, told reporters she hoped
the blast would not deter humanitarian efforts in the region.

"We believe we have to stay here because we do have an important job to do here
for the Iraqis," she said.

But she added that the attacks were likely to have a serious impact on the
ICRC's work, despite its ongoing commitment to stay in the country.

"This is a hideous act, a reprehensible act against the ICRC. Without a doubt
what happened today will affect any decision on what our future role here will
be.

"I hope the Iraqis won’t have to pay the price for such individual horrible
acts," she added.
Deadly attacks

Bombers struck four times during Baghdad’s morning rush hour on Monday, killing
at least 33 people near the ICRC and three police stations in the city.

Two of the explosions are reported to have been suicide attacks, with the one on
the ICRC involving a vehicle marked as an ambulance.

The Swiss foreign ministry condemned the ICRC bombing as an "intolerable act",
saying an attack on the agency amounted to an attack on the Iraqi people.

The blasts were carried out a day after a rocket hit Baghdad’s heavily guarded
Al Rasheed hotel, where the United States Deputy Secretary of State, Paul
Wolfowitz, was staying.

Wolfowitz was not hurt, but a US solider was killed and 17 other people were
injured in the attack.
Geneva Conventions

The Geneva-based ICRC has been operating in Iraq for the past 20 years,
providing humanitarian assistance in the country and monitoring compliance with
the Geneva Conventions.

It was the only aid agency to remain active in Iraq throughout the US-led war
against Saddam Hussein.

Following August’s deadly bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad,
the ICRC announced it was scaling back its activities in the country after being
warned that it too could be the target of a terror attack.

This left about 50 expatriate staff in the whole of Iraq, with several hundred
local staff to assist them in their work.
Death toll

Pascal Jansen, an ICRC official, said two of the people killed in Monday’s blast
were Iraqi guards working for the organisation, along with eight casual
labourers going past in a lorry.

International staff working for the ICRC were reported to have sustained
superficial injuries.

It is still unclear how Monday’s bombings will affect the work of the ICRC,
which has so far declined protection from US-led coalition forces in Iraq in an
effort to maintain its neutral stance.

Copyright © Swissinfo / Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG

* * *


Los Angeles Times:

October 26, 2003

Commentary
THE AGONY OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

By Bruce Laingen

Ninety miles off Miami, the United States today maintains, in virtual total
secrecy, a prison camp on U.S. soil at Guantanamo, Cuba.

About 660 prisoners (their exact number is also secret) represent the human
debris of the war in Afghanistan -- Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, Saudis,
Pakistanis and others of various nationalities. Taken prisoner about 18 months
ago, they have been held in total isolation without judicial proceedings of any
kind and without contact with their families.

I am in no position to judge these prisoners. Presumably, they are accused of
attacks or assaults or terrorism against American-led military forces in
Afghanistan. Their acts may well have been brutal. There is no way to know
because the accusations against them are secret.

But I too have been held prisoner, and I can attest to the extremely
demoralizing effect of not knowing what will happen, or when -- of not knowing
what one's captors have planned or whether there is any hope for release.

I was chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and was taken
hostage along with 52 other Americans after the Iranian revolution. For 444 long
and, for many of us, physically painful days -- including solitary confinement
-- we did not know our fate.

Day after day, well beyond the physical abuse -- and one would like to believe
that there is less such abuse for our prisoners at Guantanamo than there was for
many of the hostages in Tehran -- it was the agonizing uncertainty that hurt
most.

Most of my colleagues in Tehran spent their entire captivity without contact
with, or mail from, their families. Like those in Guantanamo, most were held
alone and allowed little if any contact with their fellow hostages. Several
spent almost their entire captivity in solitary. Open dialogue was prohibited by
and with those who held them, and they had absolutely no knowledge of any
planning for their release. Endless boredom prevailed, punctuated by occasional
mock executions or other surprises.

For those who are being held today on that isolated patch of ground in Cuba, it
must be degrading in the extreme. Prison confinement under any conditions is
painful; total isolation is infinitely worse.

According to press reports, representatives of the International Committee of
the Red Cross recently visited the camp and reported, among other things,
evidence of a "worrying deterioration" and clinical depression among a good many
of the detainees. The findings also noted 32 suicide attempts to date.

To my knowledge, none of the Iranian hostages attempted suicide, although a few
did attempt to escape; their inevitable failure meant deepened isolation. Of
course there was depression. Several showed the effects on their return to
freedom; one or two experience it to this day.

Official U.S. government policy on the Guantanamo detainees insists that
circumstances surrounding their capture justify the manner of their detention.
But even granted the limits that the war on terror imposes on judicial
proceedings, what appears to be happening in the camp, and, yes, what is not
happening, is wrong. The effect on our image abroad is increasingly adverse. And
it is unworthy of American traditions and precepts of justice.

[ Bruce Laingen was the highest-ranking U.S. official held hostage in Iran. ]

* * *

Memphis Flyer:

http://www.memphisflyer.com/onthefly/onthefly_new.asp?ID=2631

REMEMBER THE GUANTANAMO 660

In its treatment of its prisoners in Cuba,
the U.S. is behaving like a rogue nation

By Ed Weathers

You spend your days in a wire-mesh cell that’s eight feet long and six feet
eight inches wide--about the size of a walk-in closet--yet you’ve never been
convicted of a crime. You’ve never had a hearing, or stood before a judge, or
been in a courtroom of any kind--yet here you are. Your toilet is a hole in the
ground in your cell. Your guards keep the lights on 24 hours a day, and there is
no air-conditioning, even in the summer heat of this tropical place. You sweat
profusely and sleep fitfully under the lights. For exercise, you get to trudge
up and down a narrow caged concrete slab in your shackles for 30 minutes three
times a week. You’ve been here for almost two years now, and in that time you
haven’t seen or spoken to a single member of your family or talked with a
lawyer. You are not allowed news from the outside world; you knew nothing about
the war in Iraq, for instance, until your guards told you the U.S. had won.

Periodically you are pulled from your cell and interrogated. If you tell the
questioners what they want to know--which is much more than your name and serial
number--you might get a stick of chewing gum or the privilege of playing
checkers with another inmate. Last week, one of your fellow prisoners tried to
hang himself; at least twenty other inmates have tried to commit suicide that
you know of. Three of your fellow prisoners are children under the age of 16.
One was 13 years old when he was brought here.

No one tells you how long you will be here, and that’s the real horror. If you
knew the truth, you too might try to hang yourself, for the truth is this: You
might be here forever.

This is life for most of the 660 prisoners being held by the United States at
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Most of the prisoners were captured in
Afghanistan in the war against the Taliban after the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001. The Bush administration has declared these prisoners
"unlawful combatants," claiming that they were not real soldiers and are
therefore not protected by the Geneva Convention protocols protecting ordinary
prisoners of war. Since the prisoners are being held at Guantanamo, says the
Bush administration, they also have no protections under the U.S. judicial
system, which apply only to those held on U.S. territory. The Bush
administration says it will try the prisoners whenever it feels like doing so
(if it tries them at all) in military courts whose judges will be named by the
Bush Pentagon. If they are tried, the prisoners will be represented by military
counsel also chosen by the Bush Pentagon. They will have no right of appeal to
any court not determined by the White House. Some of them could be sentenced to
die.

For these 660 prisoners, George W. Bush has made himself God. He has, for all
practical purposes, given himself the right to imprison, judge and execute
whomever he wishes, without independent judicial review and in defiance of
international law, all in the name of his self-declared "war on terrorism."
Guantanamo is Bush’s little self-created world, where law and human rights mean
nothing, where George’s word is considered to come from the burning Bush.

On October 10, the International Red Cross, an organization which almost never
speaks out publicly on political subjects, issued a press release condemning the
U.S. for its treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo. "The main concern today
after more than 18 months in captivity is that essentially the internees in
Guantanamo have been placed beyond the law," said a Red Cross spokeswoman. "They
have no idea about their fate after 18 months. And they have no legal recourse."

Others have likewise taken up the cause of the Guantanamo 660. On October 9,
nineteen former U.S. diplomats, including former assistant secretaries of state
William Rogers and Alexander Watson, and former assistant secretary of defense
Allen Holmes, filed a brief with the Supreme Court demanding that the court
intervene to protect the rights of the prisoners at Guantanamo and to force the
Bush administration to treat them according to accepted standards of U.S. and
international law, either providing them with swift, fair and open trials or
treating them as POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. Among those
condemning the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo are three former U.S.
POWs and a retired Navy judge advocate general, Rear Admiral Donald Guter. The
POWs and the admiral point out that with its failure to provide due process or
judicial review for the prisoners at Guantanamo, the Bush administration is
encouraging other nations to treat prisoners the same way. "My concern is fairly
selfish," says Guter. "If we don’t preserve the rule of law, what happens when
our own people are taken captive?"

Other organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have pointed out that in fact
the Fourth Geneva Convention does apply even to those nontraditional soldiers
the Bush administration calls "unlawful combatants" (a phrase which does not
appear in the Geneva Conventions). Nearly all international legal organizations
have declared that any of the detainees who fought as representatives of the
Taliban must in fact be treated as POWs. Furthermore, say most legal observers,
the notion that Guantanamo is not "U.S.-controlled territory" is at best
disingenuous. The alternative is that the base belongs to the Cuban government,
from which the U.S. leases the base. But the Bush administration denies Cuban
sovereignty there. Acknowledging Guantanamo as Cuba’s would mean the detainees
could then petition the Cuban government for treatment under its laws. In other
words, Bush and friends are trying to have it both ways with respect to
Guantanamo: it’s not Cuba’s if it means giving the prisoners rights under Cuban
law, but it’s not ours if it means having to treat the prisoners there under
U.S. judicial guidelines.

George Bush has declared the prisoners at Guantanamo "the worst of the worst" in
the war on terrorism. How this determination was made in the heat of battle in
Afghanistan is more than problematic. When a 13-year-old is declared "the worst
of the worst," one wonders if the phrase has any meaning at all, or if it just
Bush abusing the language as he is wont to do. No doubt some of the Guantanamo
660 are members of Al Qaeda or other organizations that would do harm to the
United States. But that doesn’t mean the Bush administration can treat them any
way it wishes. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of Bush’s few buddies
on the international scene, demanded last week that Bush give the Guantanamo
detainees--especially those who are British citizens--a fair trial soon. Blair
spoke out under pressure; the British public, like most of the rest of the free
world, is outraged at what Bush is doing in Guantanamo.

Simply put, international law does not permit a nation to detain anyone
indefinitely without charges or access to counsel. In its treatment of the
Guantanamo 660, the United States is behaving like a rogue nation.

And apparently it plans to continue doing so. The U.S. is now building a new
"Camp Five" to house the inmates at Guantanamo. According to The Miami Herald,
Camp Five, like the rest of the Guantanamo prison expansion, is being built by
Kellogg Brown & Root, which so far has been granted $69 million in government
contracts without any competitive bidding. Kellogg Brown & Root is a subsidiary
of Halliburton, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former company and a big
contributor to Republican campaigns. Camp Five will be made of concrete, not
wire mesh. When it is finished, it will have all the feel of a permanent place,
like a tomb.

* * *


CNN:

October 24, 2003 - 1911 GMT

U.S. SEEKS DELAY IN PROCEEDINGS AGAINST MUSLIM CHAPLAIN, LAWYER SAYS

By Matt Kelley, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Military prosecutors claim they are so overworked they need
to delay proceedings against a Muslim chaplain accused of mishandling secrets at
the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison, the chaplain's lawyer said Friday.

Military speedy trial rules require hearings for Capt. James Yee by December 10,
defense lawyer Eugene Fidell said. No hearings have been scheduled, and military
prosecutors want that deadline delayed by another 45 days, Fidell said.

"Among other things, they say they don't have the resources to pursue the case,"
said Fidell, a civilian expert in military law. "We have objected to any
delays."

Military spokesman Raul Duany said Friday he could not confirm that prosecutors
had asked for a delay.

Duany, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, said Guantanamo Bay commander Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey C. Miller will decide whether to drop the charges, hold
proceedings against Yee in Guantanamo or send the case to Southern Command
officials for consideration of a general court-martial.

Yee, who also has used the first name Yousef, is charged with two counts of
mishandling classified information from the prison for terrorism suspects at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 35-year-old chaplain is being held in solitary
confinement at a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

Yee is one of three people to be charged with alleged security breaches at
Guantanamo Bay. About 660 suspected members of al Qaeda and the Taliban from
more than 40 countries are being held at the Navy base.

Military authorities arrested Yee Sept. 10 as he arrived in Jacksonville,
Florida, on a flight from Guantanamo Bay. He's charged with carrying classified
documents to his home at the base in Cuba and with him on the flight to Florida.
Each count carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a bad conduct
discharge.

Fidell said Yee's lawyers have asked Miller to release the Muslim chaplain from
prison.

"The notion that you would keep an officer in maximum security based on these
charges is preposterous," Fidell said.

Yee is scheduled to have visits from relatives for the first time this weekend,
Fidell said. He has been allowed to read only the Quran, Fidell said.

Two other former workers at the prison have been arrested. A former Air Force
interpreter, Senior Airman Ahmed I. al Halabi faces more than 30 charges,
including espionage and aiding the enemy. He has pleaded innocent.

A civilian interpreter, Ahmad F. Mehalba, was arrested last month in Boston
while returning to the United States from his native Egypt. He's charged with
lying to federal agents by denying computer discs he was carrying had classified
information from Guantanamo on them. Mehalba also has pleaded innocent.

* * *


ABC Online (Aus):

24 October, 2003  08:11:20

HICKS, HABIB FAMILIES DISTURBED BY MILITARY TRIAL PROCESS

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2003/s974165.htm

AM - Friday

Reporter: Peta Donald

HAMISH ROBERTSON: The families and lawyers of the two Australians detained in
the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are taking no comfort from
discussions at the highest level about the plight of the detainees.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has raised the cases of David Hicks and Mamdouh
Habib with President George Bush. Mr Howard says he's now confident the process
of trying the prisoners before a military commission will be accelerated.

And overnight, Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has also indicated there
will be a resolution to the issue of trials for some Guantanamo Bay detainees in
a matter of weeks.

Peta Donald reports.

PETA DONALD: The Adelaide man, David Hicks, has been held at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba for almost two years without charge. For Mamdouh Habib, from Sydney, it's
been about 18 months.

Now, John Howard wants some action.

JOHN HOWARD: I indicated today to President Bush that we would like to see the
process that was being discussed earlier, whereby there should be some, a trial
before a military commission, I would like to see that brought forward.

PETA DONALD: The Prime Minister on the 7.30 Report last night.

It seems the process that he wants accelerated is the one outlined by the US in
July. British and Australian prisoners would be entitled to an American military
lawyer and would not face the death penalty.

JOHN HOWARD: I'll tell you what I am confident about, that there will be a
process established to give an adjudication probably, almost certainly through a
military commission, in a way that will conform with some basic principles that
we regard as important.

PETA DONALD: None of this pleases the families and lawyers for the two
Australians. Maha Habib, the wife of Mamdouh Habib, was last night upset about
what happened to her 18-year old son, who she took to Canberra with her to hear
the President's speech.

MAHA HABIB: My son got up and said: "Mr Bush, what about my father?" you know,
and then two security men came, grabbed him, pulled him out of the chamber, and
another two came and he was telling me that they almost teared his shirt off.
And I was really, that was a very bad experience.

PETA DONALD: So, does it give you any comfort at all that John Howard raised
your husband's case with President Bush?

MAHA HABIB: But he didn't raise it in a proper way. He doesn't deserve to be in
a military court. He does deserve to come back to his family in Australia, in
his country.

PETA DONALD: Stephen Kenny, the Solicitor for David Hicks, also went to Canberra
for the Bush address, and he too is alarmed rather than comforted by Mr Howard's
intervention.

STEPHEN KENNY: I'd have been much more comfortable if the Prime Minister had
asked that justice and the rule of law be applied to David Hicks, rather than
simply an accelerated process.

And the real problem with the process that the Americans currently have is that
at the end of the day, the military commission is really a genuine show trial in
that after it's made its decision, even if a person is found innocent, the
matter will still go to President Bush for, in accordance with his order, as it
says, his final determination.

So that's not really a justice process. Indeed it's no justice at all.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: Stephen Kenny, a solicitor for David Hicks, speaking there to
Peta Donald.

* * *

Bangkok Post:

October 24, 2003

US MUST MOVE TO TRY TERRORIST SUSPECTS

The United States is believed to be holding around 660 suspected al-Qaeda and
Taliban fighters at its naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Most are men
captured during or after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. While the
majority of detainees were arrested in Afghanistan, they represent 40 different
nationalities. The European Union has 26 of its citizens at Guantanamo and has
urged its president, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, to take the
matter up with US President George W. Bush. Individually, Danish Prime Minister
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, French Justice Minister Dominique Perben and even the
United States' closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have in the past
week voiced their concern over the lack of action being taken on the detainees.

The matter was also on the agenda for talks between Prime Minister John Howard
of Australia and the visiting Mr Bush yesterday. Mr Bush said later he had
assured Mr Howard that these people would be taken care of "in a way that
conforms with our rules and regulations". But the world is not concerned with Mr
Bush's US laws and interpretations but with internationally accepted law and the
Geneva Convention.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has urged Washington repeatedly to
resolve the legal status of the suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members, while
Amnesty International has joined the fray by accusing the US of stalling. The US
government describes the Guantanamo detainees as "unlawful combatants" who can
be held indefinitely and do not deserve Geneva Convention prisoner of war
protection. It says authorities are working quickly to determine which prisoners
will be prosecuted in US military tribunals and who will be released, held
indefinitely or sent to their own countries for trial or continued detention.

Dozens of cases were resolved after Secretary of State Colin Powell complained
to the Defence Department that allies were being alienated over the long
detention of their citizens without charge or benefit of lawyers. Forty
detainees were freed from May to early July, most to Afghanistan. Four Saudis
also went home for continued detention. Despite a statement in August that three
juveniles would be recommended for release "very soon", they remain in prison.
There are no other cases known to have been resolved in nearly three months.

Mr Bush announced in July that he had chosen six possible candidates for
military tribunal. But the trials were put on hold almost immediately when
Britain sought to clarify the tribunal's rules, written by the Pentagon and
decried as unfair by US friends and critics alike. To add to the confusion,
cases are being reviewed by the Justice and State departments, the Pentagon, the
CIA and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services among others _ each
with its own interests. After more than 18 months of captivity, the internees
are no closer to knowing their fate, and have no means of recourse through legal
mechanisms.

Everybody sympathised with the United States after the attacks of Sept 11, 2001.
We understand why these people have been detained and why it is important that
any cases that go to court for trial are handled correctly and fairly. We also
appreciate the pressure on the United States to ensure no terrorist linked
detainee is set free only to later become a security threat or worse.

The US has taken upon itself the role of the world's policeman and the champion
of human rights abuses. By detaining alleged terrorists indefinitely and denying
them access to legal representation, the US not only erodes its good standing
but jeopardises the rights of any future US prisoner of war.

* * *

10 Downing Street:

October 23, 2003

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page4712.asp

PRIME MINISTER'S PRESS CONFERENCE

QUESTION: ... recent Human Rights Report encoded but nevertheless pungent
language talks about Guantanamo and the continuing difficulties that you face in
Guantanamo. The International Committee of the Red Cross has also unusually
broken its silence to criticise it. Now retired American diplomats and Generals
are criticising it. You said in February that this was an irregular situation
and we would certainly want to try to bring it to an end as swiftly as possible.
Don't you think 8 months is enough, given your relationship with President Bush?
And even if you get further concessions on the British detainees, would you be
concerned if not all the detainees have good due process protections?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, it's a perfectly fair point, but I think we are going to
bring this to closure one way or another within the next 2 weeks. And to be fair
to President Bush there's no hold up on his side at all. It is a question of -
as I said in the House of Commons yesterday ? either you get a trial of these
people which we can be satisfied meets the obligations and stipulations that
we've got, or alternatively they will come back here. But the one thing I do say
to people about this because we are in a sense not in a position, and neither
would it be proper to give the other side of the case, but the people who are
out in Guantanamo Bay are people who got there via a particular process to do
with the Afghan conflict and I just ask people to be a little understanding of
the fact that there are also issues to do with our national security that we
have to be careful of, and my experience of these debates is that very swiftly a
civil liberties issue turns into a national security issue. Now I'm not saying
anything about the individual cases, but there are real issues that we have to
get right in this for our own national security.

QUESTION: ... You were talking about that might happen in the next few weeks
just with respect to the British detainees or to all of them.

PRIME MINISTER: Well I can only answer really for the British ones. So you will
have to ask the Administration on the others.

QUESTION: You know a lot about the Administration does sometimes.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, that's kind of you Jeff, but I'm not omniscient. Not in
this case in any event.

QUESTION: Do you agree with the Foreign Secretary that it is not crucially
important that weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, what he was saying is this that what is important is the
information that we had at the time and how we acted on it, and as I have always
said to people, imagine you were in a situation where you receive the
intelligence that I think people beyond doubt people now accept we did receive,
with all the history of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction, and you simply
did nothing about it. I think we would have had some pretty serious questions to
answer in respect of that. But on the other hand I would also say look at the
Iraq Survey Group and what they've already found, and the huge network of
concealment that they have already uncovered, and I would just simply give them
time to do their work. They are doing it in difficult circumstances, but they
will get it done, and I just go back to the basic point, there are only two
things that have happened in this situation either Saddam for some extraordinary
reason, once he effectively made the UN Inspectors job impossible back in
December 1998 then decided voluntarily to get rid of all these weapons and not
tell anyone, or alternatively the programme of concealment is as good as it was
back in the early 1990s and we have got to unlock that programme of concealment.

QUESTION: I know for a fact that you were hoping for the Road Map to work but it
appears to have come to a dead end. Is there any alternative, or is there just
no way that we will ever see two states in Palestine?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I think the Road Map isn't dead at all. I think it is still
there and it is still the only way through. The real problem is this. Until we
can get a proper set of security circumstances in place that gives the Israelis
confidence that 100% effort is being employed to combat terrorism, and the
Palestinians some hope that if they employ that 100% effort then restrictions
are going to be lifted and life is going to become easier. Until we get such a
plan in place as a sort of bridge to the rest of the Road Map then it is very
difficult to see how we can make progress but the Road Map and the essential
business of two states side by side is still the only way through. And all I say
to you is the remarkable thing about the Northern Ireland process because 6
years ago you would have said the Middle East Process was in better shape than
Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland we've had an additional difficulty,
because in Northern Ireland there isn't an agreement about the end game because
one side wants a United Ireland and the other side wants to remain part of the
UK. Now we have had to manage a peace process without agreement as to what the
final outcome should be. In the Middle East, as a result of all the changes that
have happened in the past couple of years, and as a result frankly of President
Bush being the first President to come out and say clearly he wanted two states
there is agreement, at least ostensibly, on a two state solution. The
Palestinians say they want it, the Israelis say they want it, the Arab world
says it wants it, the whole of the international community says it wants it.
That's why it should be possible to find a way through.

But I think the basic problem at the moment is to do with security, and it is
also to do with this wretched business that I don't think people are yet really
aware of the full potency of, and that is issue to do with terrorism. Because I
don't incidentally say that this is all on the Palestinian side. Don't
misunderstand me. There are real issues for both sides in that. But I do say
that the wretched business of terrorism, every single place you look in the
world where there's the possibility of progress, terrorism is holding it back.
And there can't be any compromise with it in my view if you want to make
progress. Now that doesn't mean to say that the Palestinians are ever going to
be in the position of stopping every single suicide bomber. They can't do that,
but it does mean that there can't be any looseness of commitment to combating
this terrorism. Because if you look at Palestinian, you look at what's happening
in Iraq today, you look at Kashmir, you look at Chechnya, any of these places,
it would be possible to get political solutions if the terrorists didn't make
people hate each other.

* * *


October 23, 2003

AMERICAN RED CROSS DONATIONS STAY IN COMMUNITY

Millard Adams, American Red Cross of Northwest Florida

PENSACOLA, FLORIDA -- Recent national and international media
reports have raised questions about donations made to local chapters of the
American Red Cross. At issue are comments made by the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC) over the treatment of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.

Red Cross officials want to make clear that the responsibilities of the ICRC are
quite different from the functions of local chapters of the American Red Cross.

Some donors have expressed concern about where their donations are used.  While
supporting the American Red Cross, most say they do not support even the
suggestion that detainees should be allowed to roam free.

According to Donate Now, the official website of the American Red Cross, "All
donations made to local chapters of the American Red Cross, stay within those
local chapters to assist people jn need in their respective areas."

A memo released by Phil Zepeda, Vice-President, Programming Communication and
Marketing for the American Red Cross, states that "the American Red Cross is not
a party in this particular matter and does not visit detainees."

Under the Geneva Convention, which applies to all armed conflicts, the ICRC is
required to inspect all prisoners of war or detainees held as a result of armed
conflict.  Their job is to make sure prisoners and detainees are treated
humanely.

The confusion appears to arise from news stories in outlets as diverse as The
New York Times, BBC, CNN and The Washington Post, that failed to make a
distinction between the two entities.

* * *


Birmingham News:

October 23, 2003

ADMINISTRATION FIGHTS PAYMENTS TO EX-POWS

Miles Benson, Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is quietly piling up victories in a legal
battle to block payments to 17 U.S. combat veterans who were captured and
tortured in the first Gulf War and won a suit against Iraq for nearly a billion
dollars.

The former POWs - whipped, beaten, burned, electrically shocked and starved by
their Iraqi captors in 1991 - say they are baffled by the administration's
refusal to let them collect any of the assets of Iraq now under U.S. control,
and by the Justice Department's efforts to overturn a federal court decision
upholding their claims to compensation.

Army Sgt. David Lockett of Birmingham, currently on duty in Mannheim, Germany,
said he understands the government "wants to help the people of Iraq, but our
case didn't have anything to do with that."

Lockett was taken prisoner when his truck convoy wandered into Iraqi army
emplacements. He was shot in the abdomen, a wound his captors made the target of
blows from fists and rifle butts during his captivity. He was held 33 days.

"I don't understand why they want to see this case go away," said Lt. Col. Dave
Storr of Spokane, Wash., who today is an airline pilot and serves in the Air
National Guard.

"My country can be mistaken," Storr said, "but I'll still serve it and love it.
I'm proud to wear the uniform, no matter what comes."

He has proven that. Parachuting through a fireball after his Air Force plane was
hit by ground fire on Feb. 2, 1991, then-Capt. Storr was captured by the Iraqis
and beaten, kicked in the head and urinated on. During interrogation sessions,
guards shocked him with an electrical device, beat him with clubs, broke his
nose, dislocated his shoulder and burst his left eardrum. He was held 33 days.

The government that heaped praise and medals on the ex-POWs has drawn a line at
extracting a financial price from Iraq for their ordeal.

In court filings, the government asserts sweeping presidential power to block
the claims because of the "weighty foreign policy interests at stake."

It does not dispute details of the POWs' suffering.

"The United States government fully recognizes the brutal actions to which the
plaintiffs here were subjected as they heroically served their country and made
sacrifices during the Gulf War in 1991," the Justice Department acknowledges.
"Plaintiffs' suffering at the hands of the former Iraqi government officials
cannot be excused or forgotten.

"Nevertheless, the political branches of our government have decided that, now
that the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein has been removed from power, U.S.
sanctions against Iraq based on its support of terrorism must be removed."

The former POWs launched their lawsuit in April 2002 under a 1996 law that
allows terrorist nations, so designated by the State Department, to be sued for
personal injuries to U.S. nationals, including prisoners of war. They argued
that they were tortured in violation of the Geneva Conventions' ban on
mistreatment of POWs.

Their position was strengthened last November when Congress passed and Bush
signed into law a terrorism insurance bill allowing Americans to collect court-
ordered compensatory damages from frozen assets of terrorist states.

Air Force Capt. Harry Michael Roberts was shot down by a surface-to-air missile
on Jan. 19, 1991. He ejected just south of Baghdad and was captured on landing.
During a night-long interrogation, his captors beat him with fists and a club,
cut his head with repeated blows from rifle butts, and shocked him with an
electric prod. Subsequent battering sessions followed the same pattern, with
blows to his right leg with a baton, kicks and electrical shocks.

Roberts, now a lieutenant colonel in the Ohio Air National Guard on active duty
at Wright Patterson Air Force base, said he is less interested in the money than
in "holding Iraq accountable."

U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts ordered Iraq on July 7 - three months after
the fall of Saddam's regime - to pay the 17 ex-POWs and their families $653
million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages for
torturing the men. Roberts ordered a temporary freeze on $653 million in Iraqi
assets then held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as a source of funds
for the settlement.

At that point the Justice Department stepped in, asking the judge to throw out
the judgment against Iraq.

The government's attorneys quoted Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the
presidential envoy to Iraq: "Restricting these funds as a result of this
litigation would affect adversely the ability of the United States to achieve
security and stability in the region, would compromise the safety of U.S. forces
and Iraqi civilians, and would be harmful to U.S. national security interests."

On July 30, Judge Roberts ruled that Bush had the power to prevent the frozen
Iraqi funds from being awarded to the ex-POWs. But Roberts refused to overturn
his original finding that the men are entitled to compensation from Iraq.

* * *


October 23, 2003 12:16 PM

BLAIR: GUANTANAMO ROW SHOULD FINISH SOON

LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday he expected to resolve
differences with the United States over the detention of nine Britons at
Guantanamo Bay "within the next few weeks."

"It's a question of, as I said the House of Commons yesterday, either you get a
trial of these people which we can be satisfied meets the obligations that we've
got, or alternatively they will come back here," Blair told a news conference.

The fate of the terrorism suspects held without charge or access to lawyers at
the U.S. base in eastern Cuba has been a sticking point between close allies
Britain and America for months.

Nine Britons are among the 660 people held at the Caribbean prison camp. The
United States agreed in July to suspend legal action against them while
officials discussed concerns about planned military tribunals. Britain and other
nations whose citizens are being held - some for as long as two years - have
raised concerns about the military courts and about possible death penalties.

"I think we are going to bring this to closure one way or the other within the
next few weeks," Blair said at a monthly news conference at his 10 Downing St.
office.

* * *

The Guardian (UK):

October 23, 2003

GRENADA DETAINEES STILL IN JAIL, 20 YEARS ON

Julian Borger in Washington

As Washington prepares special commissions to judge inmates at the Guantanamo
Bay detention camp, 17 prisoners sentenced in controversial circumstances by a
similar US-financed tribunal in nearby Grenada are marking two decades in jail.

In a report published today, Amnesty International, said the prisoners were
given an unfair trial, which had "startling" similarities with the military
tribunals due to begin work early next year in Guantanamo Bay. The human rights
group called for a judicial review of the convictions or for the 17 prisoners to
be released

The "Grenada 17" were detained by US troops after an invasion ordered by
President Ronald Reagan 20 years ago this Saturday, in alleged response to a
violent coup and the killing of the island's prime minister, Maurice Bishop, and
nine others.

The detainees, including the coup leader, Bernard Coard, were treated in a
similar way to prisoners in the current "war on terror", said Amnesty's UK media
director, Lesley Warner.

"These people were initially held without charge in cages, before being tried
before an unfair, ad-hoc tribunal. They were denied access to legal counsel and
to documents needed for their defence," Mr Warner said.

"After sentencing, the Grenada 17 were held in tiny cells with lights left
permanently on. It is entirely unacceptable that, 20 years on, more people are
suffering near-identical abuses of their basic rights."

Plans for military commissions to try some of the 660 inmates at Guantanamo Bay
have aroused controversy because of the limitations imposed on defence lawyers,
and the absence of an independent appeals process.

Piers Bannister, who researched the Grenada report, added: "Here we have a
situation just like Guantanamo Bay, just after a country was invaded and normal
human rights were suspended."

The US handed the prisoners over to be tried by revolutionary courts originally
set up by the Bishop government, financed by a US grant and staffed by a mix of
Caribbean judges and lawyers. Eleven of the 17 prisoners claimed that they had
been tortured.

According to the report, the jury was selected by a member of the prosecution
who was appointed court registrar.

All 17 were found guilty, and 14 were sentenced to death for their role in the
murder of Bishop and the nine other victims of the coup. According to official
documents obtained by Amnesty International, a US diplomat met the chief
prosecutor while their appeals were being considered.

The appeals were turned down, but the death penalties were later commuted. All
17 are still incarcerated, although one of them, Mr Coard's wife Phyllis, has
been permitted to seek medical treatment outside her jail.

"As far as I'm concerned they did not have a fair trial," said Leslie Pierre,
the publisher and editor of the Grenadian Voice, who has campaigned for the
prisoners' release. "They were railroaded by the Caribbean prime ministers who
were being coerced by the US."

Mr Pierre, who had been imprisoned by the revolutionary government and was freed
by American troops, said the court in which the Grenada 17 were tried was
unconstitutional, and the defendants were not allowed to see evidence which they
could have used to point out discrepancies in the prosecution's case.

However, Grenada is deeply divided on the issue. Terrence Marryshow, a former
Bishop supporter and now president of the People's Labour Movement, said that
most citizens were in favour of keeping the 17 in jail.

"I believe they should stay there because the crimes they committed against the
Grenadian people do not justify them being set free. The sentences were
originally death sentences, so they have already benefited from mercy."

* * *

The Christian Science Monitor:

October 23, 2003

GUANTANAMO PROBE STIRS WIDER SECURITY CONCERNS

Arrests of base workers lead to reexamination of Islamic ties in military bases
and prisons.

By Peter Grier and Faye Bowers, Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON -- The investigation into security breaches at the US military's
Guantanamo Bay prison has not yet turned up evidence of a coordinated Al Qaeda
penetration of the heavily guarded Cuban camp.

One of the three people recently arrested for alleged suspicious actions at
Guantanamo - Muslim chaplain Capt. James Yee - hasn't even been officially
accused of espionage. The Defense Department has instead charged him with two
counts of misuse of classified material.

Still, there's little doubt that the detention of Captain Yee and two Arabic
translators has shocked Washington into an intensive reexamination of Islamic
influence inside civilian and military prisons, and the military itself. One
early conclusion: The government cut corners in its rush to hire speakers of
Arabic following Sept. 11, 2001.

"I think the results of that are as we are seeing here," said Charles Abell, a
Defense Department personnel official, at a Senate hearing last week. "We found
a couple who were not as trustworthy as we had hoped initially."

The Guantanamo Bay base seemed an ideal place to take Taliban and Al Qaeda
prisoners in the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan. Prisoners there would be
isolated both physically and culturally, US officials thought, and thus more
prone to talk. In addition, the base has been heavily secured over the years,
due in part to its unique status as an American toehold on an island ruled by US
nemesis Fidel Castro. Escape seemed unlikely.

Escape is still unlikely, but in general the base no longer seems iron-plate
locked. The weak point was internal: Those who work with prisoners had been
allowed to come and go through prison gates into the larger base without
extensive scrutiny. US personnel had to have a security clearance to be at
Guantanamo at all, went the thinking. Why bother to check whether such
presumably loyal military and contract workers were, in essence, passing
prisoner notes?

Yet some were. In a quick burst this fall the military announced the arrests of
Yee, who counseled Guantanamo prisoners, and two camp translators: Air Force
Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, and contract employee Ahmed Fathy Mehalba.

The proximity of the arrest announcements led some observers to wonder if
investigators had stumbled upon an Al Qaeda attempt to organize a cell at the
camp. Details of the cases so far seem to indicate something else: three people
who were allegedly compromising base security independently, and with varying
degrees of seriousness.

Take the case of Yee, who was arrested at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Fla.,
on Sept. 10. Pentagon officials have said that he was carrying personal
information about the prisoners he counseled during a 10-month stay at
Guantanamo, as well as a map of the base. They've hinted that they're curious as
to whether he's passed this information to a foreign power.

But on Oct. 10, Yee was charged only with disobeying orders by taking classified
material to his home, and wrongfully transporting classified material without
proper security containers or covers. Officials say they reserve the right to
bring further charges later, following a more thorough investigation.

The charges are "nothing compared to what [initial reports] made you think it
was," says a native Arab speaker who works in military intelligence.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be a surprise if Yee had developed mixed feelings about
the treatment of prisoners, say some. Chaplains aren't interrogators, or guards.

"There's sympathy, then there's treasonous affiliation, but if he didn't develop
some kind of sympathy [for prisoners] he shouldn't be a chaplain," says Ingrid
Mattson, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, who trains
Muslim chaplains at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

But whatever happens to Yee, the military's Muslim chaplain program now faces a
wide-ranging review.

The two Islamic organizations that have made referrals and religious
certifications for the military's chaplain program - the Graduate School of
Islamic and Social Sciences, and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans
Affairs - have been accused of ties to radical groups. The co-founder of the
latter, for instance, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was arrested and charged with an
illegal relationship with Libya earlier this month.

"As a result of the last several months of activities, we are looking around to
see if there are organizations that might provide us Muslim chaplains other than
the two that currently provide [them]," Abell, the Defense Department's
principal deputy undersecretary for personnel and readiness, told the Senate
last week.

Meanwhile, the cases against the two ex-Guantanamo translators involve
allegations of serious espionage.

The list of charges preferred against Senior Airman al-Halabi is impressive, for
instance - at least in length and breadth. He is accused of taking illegal
photos of camp facilities in Guantanamo Bay, and of wrongfully communicating
with detainees, according to court documents.

The documents allege that when he was arrested at the Jacksonville Naval Air
Station, al-Halabi was attempting to deliver notes from prisoners, "writings
related to the national defense," to a citizen of a foreign government by
carrying them en route to Syria. He allegedly e-mailed sensitive information
overseas as well, and even, according to court papers, conducted "unauthorized
communications with detainees by furnishing and delivering unauthorized food, to
wit: baklava pastries."

Contract translator Mehalba, for his part, has not been accused of illegal
baklava delivery. But on Oct. 16 a federal judge found probable cause that he
had lied to investigators after he was found carrying classified documents upon
his arrival at Logan International Airport in Boston after visiting his native
Egypt.

An affidavit from an FBI agent who participated in Mehalba's initial
interrogation describes a scene in which the suspect almost breezily waives his
Miranda rights and allows investigators to scan his compact discs, all the while
denying that they contained secret information.

Unbeknownst to Mehalba, he had apparently been under surveillance for some time.
In 2001, FBI agents had interviewed a former girlfriend of his, and learned that
he had an uncle who was an intelligence officer for the Egyptian Army.

The woman in question, an Army specialist named Deborah M. Gephart, had
proferred this tidbit in part because she herself was in big trouble. A student
at the Army's counterintelligence school at the time, she had been arrested for
vehicle theft. A search of her quarters revealed a stolen laptop and classified
counterintelligence training material.

While detained at Logan Airport, Mehalba at first denied knowing Gephart. He
discussed his family only reluctantly.

"I asked about his uncle and whether he was in the [Egyptian] military," said
FBI Special Agent John F. Van Kleef, according to the affidavit. "Mehalba said
he was. I asked what he did. Mehalba mumbled 'MI', an acronym for military
intelligence."

Shortly thereafter Mehalba asked if he needed a lawyer, and questioning ceased.

Should these suspects have set off alarms before they set foot on Cuban soil?
The Department of Defense doesn't say otherwise. In particular, there's such a
demand for Arabic translators in the post-Sept. 11 federal government that
Mehalba and al-Halabi may not have received enough scrutiny prior to their
postings.

For decades the military focused on developing Russian linguists to help in the
Cold War, says Kevin Hendzel, spokesman for the American Translators
Association, the largest professional group for US translators. Now, with the
sudden onset of the war on terrorism, the focus has shifted to Arabic, Farsi,
Urdu, Pashto, and other languages.

"I don't mean to suggest that the Department of Defense is radically less
careful, but they've got a really tough mission to do," Mr. Hendzel says.
"They're grabbing warm bodies pretty fast."

Today the Pentagon is implementing a number of new efforts to develop needed
language skills, according to US officials. Among them: a new military reserve
program for linguists.

"We hope never to be caught in this position again," Abell of the Pentagon told
the Senate last week.

* * *


Sydney Morning Herald:

October 23, 2003

PROTESTERS TO BUSH: HOW DARE YOU?

By Claire O'Rourke

Buses carrying hundreds of protesters were expected to leave Sydney for Canberra
this morning, to coincide with the visit by the United States President, George
Bush.

Rallies and marches in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne yesterday evening kicked
off a series of actions to oppose the presidential visit and that of the Chinese
leader, Hu Jintao.

In Sydney yesterday, the crowd, estimated by protest organisers to be 5000
people and by police at between 3000 and 4000, filled Town Hall square during
peak hour.

Senator Bob Brown of the Greens was greeted with wild cheers and applause before
he called on Mr Bush to release two Australians held in the US military jail in
Cuba.

"How dare you lock up Australian citizens in Guantanamo Bay?" Senator Brown
said.

He demanded that Mr Bush repatriate Mamdouh Habib, of Sydney, and David Hicks,
of Adelaide, to Australia "the same as you repatriated the Americans to
America".

A federal Labor MP, Harry Quick, repeated his wish to turn his back when Mr Bush
addresses Parliament today, despite strict instructions from his party leader,
Simon Crean.

"They told me I have to be respectful, respectful of the US President," he told
the rally.

"But I will tell you, why should we respect this duplicitous conniving and lying
President of the United States?"

Wearing a white band on his right arm, he said he hoped to be joined by a number
of fellow MPs including Jennie George, Tanya Plibersek and the Greens senators
Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle.

Protesters marched peacefully, albeit noisily, along George Street and up King
Street, slowing as they passed the US consulate at Martin Place, which was
guarded by police. They chanted "No racism, no war, this is what we are fighting
for", and "Troops out now, Iraq for Iraqis" as they walked.

Donna Mulhearn, who acted as a human shield in Iraq and plans to go back there
next month to establish houses for children left homeless in the conflict, said
yesterday's protest meant the Australian public have not disengaged from the
issue.

"The concerns and the fears that they had when the war was brewing in February-
March is still deep within the Australian people," she said.

"I would like to see this translated into action and support for Iraqis and I
think that it will."

A Democrat member of State Parliament, Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, told the rally
in Martin Place that Australia should be a non-racist neighbour.

"John Howard does not speak for us - we oppose the war on Iraq, we oppose the
use of pre-emptive strikes," he said.

Five buses filled with a total of 250 protesters were expected to leave from
Central railway station early this morning to join protest actions in Canberra
near Old Parliament House scheduled to begin at 9am. Additional buses were
expected to leave from the eastern and western suburbs of Sydney, while
protesters from Brisbane and Melbourne travelled to Canberra last night.

One of the protest convenors, Nick Everett, of the Stop the War Coalition,
predicted that there would be even larger protests in Canberra today.

"I think the protests revive a sense of confidence and determination . . . that
we can make headway and push back Bush and Howard's agenda," he said.

Simon Smart, a high school history teacher who had a "peace monitor" sticker
stuck to his back over his blue business shirt, said he was drawn to yesterday's
protest to "express some sort of voice against George Bush and Australia jumping
on the bandwagon".

"The Australian population seems to have been clearly misled in [Howard and
Bush's] justification for war," he said.

* * *


Newsday:

October 22, 2003 - 6:08 PM EDT

By Beth Gardiner, Associated Press Writer

LONDON -- The legal status of Britons imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay must be
resolved soon, and the United States will have to ship them back home if it
cannot guarantee acceptable trial procedures, Prime Minister Tony Blair said
Wednesday.

Nine Britons are among the 660 people detained as terrorism suspects at the
prison camp in eastern Cuba. The United States agreed in July to suspend legal
action against them while officials discussed concerns about planned military
tribunals.

Blair told the House of Commons that the issue "certainly has to be resolved
soon."

"There is one of two alternatives -- either there will be sufficient (promises)
given about the form of trial that they will have under a military commission or
alternatively they will be returned to this country," he said.

Britain and other nations whose citizens are being held without charge or access
to lawyers -- some for as long as two years -- have raised concerns about the
military courts and the possible death penalties they can mete out.

International impatience has been growing over the slow pace of deciding what to
do with the detainees. The Pentagon will not say how many it is holding, and the
issue has been a nagging area of disagreement between the close allies.

"It may be that it's not possible to bring (America's) rules into conformity
with ours, in which case they will be returned here," Blair said in response to
a lawmaker's question in the House of Commons.

"It is important to realize that there is a reason why these people have been
detained and there is a reason why it is extremely important that we exercise a
lot of care about how they're tried, not merely for their sake, because they're
entitled to a fair trial, but also for the security of the country."

American and Afghan forces began capturing terror suspects shortly after the
U.S.-led war against al-Qaida started in Afghanistan in October 2001. They began
transferring them to Guantanamo in January 2002.

Two Britons -- Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg -- were among six suspects
President Bush named in July as possible candidates for military tribunals. But
their trials were put on hold when Britain asked for negotiations on the rules.

The office of Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has said it wants to
ensure that the British detainees receive fair trials, wherever they are
prosecuted.

* * *


BBC:

October 22, 2003 - 17:10 GMT

EUROPE URGES GUANTANAMO ACTION

European Parliament leaders have urged the EU presidency to raise the case of 26
Europeans held as terror suspects by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

MEPs called on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to press the US to free
the suspects or put them on trial.

Mr Berlusconi avoided commenting on the issue, and it was not put to the vote.

In London, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said a decision would be taken "soon" on
the fate of Britons held at the camp which is located in a US naval base.

In Strasbourg, the head of the European Parliament's Liberal grouping, Graham
Watson, lit 26 candles as he urged Mr Berlusconi - whose country currently heads
the rotating presidency - to put pressure on the US.

"The continued detention of the Guantanamo Bay 26 is unacceptable," he said.

The leader of the parliament's biggest grouping, the European People's Party,
said "even the worst criminals must have the right to a fair trial".

"I am a friend of the United States but... we call on the United States to
respect their human rights," said Hans-Gert Poettering.

After the debate, Mr Berlusconi told reporters that EU foreign ministers had
been mandated to examine the issue of the prisoners and report back.

In July, the US agreed to suspend legal action against nine Britons being held
in Guantanamo, pending discussions with British officials.

On Wednesday, Mr Blair addressed the men's legal status in a speech to the House
of Commons.

"It may be that it's not possible to bring [US] rules into conformity with ours,
in which case they will be returned here," he said.

The US is holding more than 600 prisoners at Guantanamo, most of whom were
detained during the Afghanistan conflict that followed the 11 September 2001
attacks.

Earlier this month, the International Committee of the Red Cross described the
camp as a "legal black hole".

* * *


The Scotsman (UK):

October 22, 2003

DECISION SOON ON GUANTANAMO BRITONS, SAYS BLAIR

By Joe Churcher, Chief Parliamentary Reporter, PA News

A decision will be taken "soon" on whether British terror suspects held by the
US at Guantanamo Bay will be returned to the UK for trial, Tony Blair said
today.

The Prime Minister conceded the American authorities might not be able to give
sufficient guarantee of a fair trial to satisfy British justice.

But amid pressure to resolve the issue before or during US President George
Bush’s state visit to this country next month, he said he could not give a firm
date.

At question time he told Liberal Democrat Alan Beith: "It certainly has to be
resolved soon but I can’t say exactly when.

"There is one of two alternatives: either there will be sufficient undertakings
given about the form of trial they will have under a military commission or
alternatively they will be returned to this country.

"The Attorney General has been in touch with his American counterpart in order
to try to make sure that sufficient undertakings are given.

"It may be that it is not possible to bring their rules into conformity with
ours in which case they will be returned here.

"But it is important to realise that there is a reason why these people are
detained and there is a reason why it is extremely important that we exercise a
lot of care about how they are tried -- not merely for their sake, because they
are entitled to a fair trial, but also for the security of the country."

Mr Beith told him the "legal no-man’s land" was "an unacceptable aspect of the
war on terrorism" and reminded him that Mr Blair himself had said that "there
has to be a point in time when this issue is brought to a head".

"Is that point in time not before or during President Bush’s forthcoming visit
to London?" he asked.

* * *


ITV (UK):

October 22, 2003

CALL FOR GUANTANAMO JUSTICE

European Parliament leaders have demanded justice for 26 Europeans held
indefinitely in the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

European Liberal Democrat leader Graham Watson lit 26 candles in the parliament
chamber in protest at the failure of the European Union president to raise the
issue with the United States.

The EU presidency rotates, and Italy is the country that currently holds it.

Mr Watson said: "The continued detention of the Guantanamo Bay 26, and indeed
all 600 detainees, is unacceptable.

"The failure of EU leaders and the Council Presidency to even discuss it last
week is a scandal," he told deputies just before Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi addressed the house.

Guantanamo Bay, a US naval base in Cuba, houses al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects
captured after the operation to drive the Taleban from power in Afghanistan.

They have not been tried or charged and have been denied both prisoner of war
status and access to US courts.

Mr Watson said: "As someone who complains so regularly that he is a victim of
injustice himself, Mr Berlusconi should be particularly concerned about this
very real injustice on a far greater scale."

Hans-Gert Poettering, leader of parliament's largest group, the conservative
European People's Party, insisted that all 600 should be given a fair trial.

He said: "We are decisively in favour of fighting terrorism. But every human
being, even the worst criminal, has a right to a fair trial. What an injustice
we are doing to these people."

Mr Berlusconi avoided making a comment, telling a news conference after the
debate that EU foreign ministers had been mandated to examine it and report
back.

* * *


Washington Times:

October 22, 2003

SECURITY CHECKS BOOSTED AT GUANTANAMO

By Guy Taylor, The Washington Times

Military officials responding to the espionage probe at the Guantanamo Bay U.S.
Navy prison camp in Cuba have ramped up security checks of materials carried off
the camp's grounds by prison guards and civilians.

Days after the Sept. 29 arrest of a Guantanamo interpreter charged with lying
about classified materials in his possession, senior Pentagon officials said
counterintelligence measures had been in place at the prison camp to prevent
such a case.

Those measures, however, apparently did not include the thorough bag and
computer checks under way now.

"We just started those baggage checks this past Saturday," Army Lt. Col. Pamela
Hart, spokeswoman for the Guantanamo prison camp, said yesterday.

Col. Hart said "anyone carrying a laptop or any other digital devices must have
those screened 72 hours in advance." Previously, she said, such checks were not
conducted. "It is a little inconvenient for some, but we all realize how
necessary it is for the protection of the mission and for everyone involved."

Meanwhile, a team assessing the camp's security procedures is expected to make
its findings public once presented to camp commanders, a spokesman for the
Defense Department's Southern Command, which oversees the U.S. naval base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said yesterday.

The Miami Herald first reported Friday the checks were put in place in response
to the spy probe. The Herald said Brig. Gen. Mitchell LeClair, deputy commander
of the prison for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, described them as "corrective
actions."

Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, the Guantanamo interpreter arrested in Boston on Sept. 29,
is said to have had in his possession a list of names of suspected terrorists
mentioned during interrogation sessions with terror suspects at the base.

Federal law-enforcement authorities have said the classified materials were
found on a compact disc he was carrying. Mr. Mehalba, 31, an Egyptian-born U.S.
citizen, is being held in Massachusetts pending trial.

The spy probe began in July with the arrest of Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al
Halabi, 24, also an interpreter at Guantanamo. The Pentagon has identified 32
charges against him, accusing him of collecting more than 180 messages from
detainees with plans to pass them on to unidentified enemy operatives in Syria.

While the charges against Airman al Halabi are serious, one count could carry
the death penalty, those filed by the Pentagon are less severe against a third
man, an Islamic chaplain held in the spy probe.

Army Capt. James J. Yee, 35, who was also stationed at Guantanamo for the
detainees, nearly all of whom are Muslims, is charged with disobeying a general
order for improperly handling classified information, but not espionage.

* * *


ABC News (Aus):

October 22, 2003 - 0:46am (AEST)

COPENHAGEN CRITICISES US OVER DANISH NATIONAL HELD IN GUANTANAMO

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday criticised Washington
over the detention without trial of a Danish national held since February among
the so-called "war on terror" suspects at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.

"I don't think the indefinite detention of people without clarifying their
situation is acceptable. We have stressed to the American Government that this
is untenable," he said after a cabinet meeting.

Prime Minister Rasmussen, whose conservative government was one of the United
States' staunchest allies in the war on Iraq, has been under increasing pressure
from the Opposition to speak out on the Guantanamo issue, notably after recent
Red Cross criticism of US policy there.

Prime Minister Rasmussen said he was "aware of the criticism" from both the
International and Danish Red Cross over the legal limbo of the 600 Guantanamo
detainees, but stressed that Danish authorities have had regular contact with
the Danish prisoner, a 29-year-old man captured at Kandahar, Afghanistan.

"We don't have any reason to believe that he is not being treated well," the
Prime Minister said.

"We are fully convinced that the Americans are respecting all the international
conventions."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has repeatedly urged
Washington to immediately resolve the legal status of the suspected Al Qaeda and
Taliban members held at Guantanamo.

The Geneva-based organisation generally refrains from public criticism, but in
an unusually blunt criticism this month, its top Washington representative
Christophe Girod denounced Washington's lack of action on the matter.

The US Government describes the Guantanamo detainees - mostly captured during
the Afghanistan campaign that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - as "unlawful combatants" who can be held
indefinitely and do not deserve Geneva Convention prisoner of war protection.

"It is not only a matter of the Danish prisoner, but of defending the principles
of international law violated by Americans," charged Soeren Soendergaard, a
spokesperson for the opposition Red-Green Unity List.

--AFP

* * *


The Gaudian (UK):

October 20, 2003

VICTIM OF SUSPICION

A Canadian-Syrian computer engineer finds fears
about terrorism make it hard to clear his name

By Anne McIlroy

OTTAWA -- Maher Arar's nightmare began 13 months ago, when he was arrested by US
immigration officials at a New York airport while changing planes on his way
home to Canada from Europe. Mr Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who works as
a computer software engineer, was deported to Jordan, then Syria, where he was
incarcerated for a year on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

His ordeal ended earlier this month when Syria released him and allowed him to
return home to Canada. The Canadian government was quick to claim a victory for
its "quiet diplomacy", but troubling questions remain about the role Canadian
security forces may have played in his arrest and detention.

It is still unclear how the US authorities obtained the information on Mr Arar
that prompted them to deport him - not to Canada, only a short plane ride away,
but to Syria.

The worst-case scenario is this: the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) was
frustrated with Mr Arar after he asked for a lawyer when they knocked on his
door to ask him a few questions. They passed vague or misleading evidence about
potential links to terrorist groups to US authorities, knowing the authorities
would arrest and deport him to Syria on one of his frequent trips to the United
States.

But Mr Arar and his fellow Canadians may never find out what happened.

Despite intense pressure from opposition critics and its own MPs, the Canadian
government is refusing to hold a public inquiry into the matter.

The solicitor general, Wayne Easter, won't answer direct questions about what
information the Mounties told the US government about Mr Arar.

The RCMP is also refusing to answer key questions about its role. Earlier this
year, the US ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, said that Canada did not
really want Mr Arar back. Speaking to an Ottawa audience in private last year,
he said that Canada's law enforcement officials "understand our handling of the
case" and "wouldn't be happy" to see Mr Arar return home.

So far Mr Arar, who looked pale and disoriented when he arrived in Montreal
after his ordeal, has not said much to the media, other than to thank the
Canadians who pressured the government to help him.

He is now in seclusion with his wife and two children. His 19-month-old son
didn't know him, but his six-year-old daughter was eager to show him drawings
she had done for him while he was away.

There is no question he owes his release to the tireless efforts of his wife,
Monia Mazigh. Helped by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, she
led a relentless public campaign to win his freedom. She says she wants
questions about Canada's role in her husband's ordeal answered.

Mr Arar has lived in Canada since his family moved here as a teenager, but had
dual citizenship with Syria. He was travelling on a Canadian passport when he
was arrested.

He is one of hundreds of people around the world imprisoned because of US
counter-terrorism efforts. The case against him, however, appears to be
exceptionally flimsy.

He wasn't arrested or charged in Canada because there obviously wasn't enough
evidence against him.

US authorities didn't send him to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where
600 people with alleged links to al-Qaida are being held. Instead, they chose to
deport a Canadian citizen to a country they have criticised for using torture on
prisoners.

The Syrians didn't charge Mr Arar. When he was released, Syria's ambassador to
Canada said there wasn't enough evidence to link him to al-Qaida.

Where does this leave Mr Arar? He has gained his freedom, but may be unable to
clear his name. Too many Canadians may believe he must have done something wrong
to be treated so harshly.

"This is precisely the danger of these times," said an editorial in The Globe
and Mail newspaper. "A Canadian who has done nothing to merit a conviction (or
even a charge) can be made to disappear, and turn up again in a Syrian prison.
And it can be shrugged off. *He must have done something to deserve it*. [The
Globe's italics.]

"Canada needs to ensure that this is not shrugged off. The public has a right to
some answers, and to assurances that this will not happen again."

[ Email: amcilroy@globeandmail.ca ]

* * *


San Jose Mercury News:

October 19, 2003

Reservists Accused of Mistreating Iraqis

By Greg Risling, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Eight Marine reservists accused in the mistreatment of prisoners
of war in Iraq were being held at Camp Pendleton on charges ranging from
negligent homicide to dereliction of duty, military officials said.

Meanwhile, a lawyer representing one of the men said Saturday the Army did not
have the necessary personnel to run the detention camp and the reservists were
untrained for the job.

"In the rush to war with Iraq, providing the mandatory training to reservists
seems to have had little if any priority with the Pentagon," Donald Rehkopf Jr.
said in a statement released Saturday.

A call to the Defense Department was referred to Camp Pendleton.

The reservists belong to the 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment. Their
hometowns were not immediately released, and it was not known if all had
retained lawyers.

Two of the men were charged with negligent homicide in connection with the June
death of an Iraqi who was held at a detention facility, said Marine Staff Sgt.
Bill Lisbon, a spokesman at Camp Pendleton.

Lisbon said Saturday he was unsure how many of the other six reservists had been
charged in connection with the death. He would not say whether the man was the
52-year-old Iraqi prisoner of war whose death at a camp run by the 1st Marine
Division near Nasiriyah was reported last June.

Maj. Clark Paulus and Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez face negligent homicide
charges. The other six face lesser charges involving mistreatment of prisoners.

"I think it's surprising because this is not what Marines do," Lisbon said.
"They don't do what these guys are being charged with. Our reaction is that we
are going to serve justice."

Paulus also faces two counts of dereliction of duty, one count of cruelty and
maltreatment, one count of making a false official statement and one count of
assault. Hernandez also faces one count of dereliction, one count of cruelty and
maltreatment, and three counts of assault.

Under military directives, the Army is supposed to handle POW facilities, said
Rehkopf, who is representing Lance Cpl. William Roy.

The reservists "had no training at all. They were given a 30-minute training on
the Geneva convention," Rehkopf said, referring to the international accords for
treatment of POWs.

Roy, 34, faces two counts of dereliction of duty, one count of cruelty and
maltreatment, and five counts of assault.

Rehkopf said his client is innocent, but declined to discuss specific evidence.

The others charged include: Maj. William Vickers, one count of dereliction of
duty; Sgt. Gary Pittman, two counts of dereliction of duty and five counts of
assault; Sgt. Albert Rodriquez-Martinez, one count of making false official
statements and two counts of assault; Lance Cpl. Andrew Rodney, one count of
assault; and Lance Cpl. Konstantin Mikholap, one count of making false official
statements and two counts of assault.

Lisbon said the cases will be examined by the military equivalent of a grand
jury, which will decide whether the men will be court-martialed.

The investigation was handled by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Roy, of Troy, N.Y., worked as a corrections officer for the Rensselaer County
jail for the past two years before going to Iraq earlier this year.

Sheriff Daniel Keating declined to comment on the charges, but described Roy as
"an excellent employee. He always performed within the rules."

Dorothy Roy also defended her son, calling him "a dedicated Marine."

"I know these things are not true and I know everything's going to turn out
fine," Dorothy Roy said Saturday. "I stand beside him through thick and thin."

* * *

The Age (Melbourne)

October 19, 2003

WIFE OF TERROR SUSPECT TO ATTEND BUSH SPEECH

The wife of Australian terrorist suspect Mamdouh Habib says US President George
W Bush should allow her husband to return to Australia to stand trial.

Maha Habib will attend Mr Bush's address to the Australian Parliament on
Thursday as a guest of the Australian Greens.

Habib and fellow Australian David Hicks are detained at the US's Guantanamo Bay
military base in Cuba.

"My husband's been away now for almost two-and-a-half years," Ms Habib told
reporters in Sydney.

"It has made a big effect on my kids and family," she said.

"I just wish that if Mr George Bush believes in human rights and justice (he)
should bring my husband back because he doesn't deserve to be there, he's
committed no crime, a crime has been committed against him," she said.

Ms Habib's message for Mr Bush is to allow her husband to stand trial in
Australia.

"If you think he's done anything, bring him back and give him a fair trial.

Ms Habib said she wanted to speak directly to Mr Bush to explain how her
husband's detention had affected her family.

However, Ms Habib, who will be accompanied to Parliament by her son Ahmed, said
she would restrain herself from any outburst.

"When I get there I will stay silent, I am there to support my husband and to
show that he is innocent," she said.

Ms Habib would also send a message to Prime Minister John Howard during her
visit to Parliament.

"I have no support from the Australian Government," she said.

"I'm not asking for much, I'm just asking for him (Mr Howard) to do his job and
stand by my husband," she said.

Ms Habib was today surrounded by her four children who were dressed in orange
boiler suits - symbolic of the prisoners' clothing worn at Camp X-ray at
Guantanamo Bay.

She said this was in order "to pass a message to everyone and show them about
where my husband is".

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle said the Greens would be calling on Mr Bush to
ensure Habib and Hicks were returned to Australia so they could face trial or be
freed.

"Maha Habib and Ahmed Habib will be in the public gallery ...so that when
President Bush is speaking, he is speaking not just to the Australian people,
but directly to the wife and the son of an Australian who remains illegally
detained in Guantanamo Bay," she told reporters.

Meanwhile, Habib family lawyer Stephen Hopper said he was awaiting a date for
the family's legal challenge to be heard in the United States Supreme Court.

"George Bush is coming out here to preach the principles of freedom and
democracy, but one of the tenets of freedom and democracy is that an individual
will receive justice on the merits of his own case," Mr Hopper told reporters.

"This certainly is being denied in the case of Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks and
other people in Guantanamo Bay," he said.

* * *


The Associated Press:

October 17, 2003

GUANTANAMO TRANSLATOR CASE TO PROCEED

Judge Lets Case Against Guantanamo Translator
Move to Grand Jury for Possible Indictment

BOSTON (AP) Oct. 17 -- A federal judge found probable cause that a translator at
the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay lied to investigators after he
was found carrying classified documents.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Swartwood allows the case against
Ahmed Fathy Mehalba to move forward to a grand jury for possible indictment.

Mehalba, 31, was arrested last month as he arrived at Logan International
Airport after visiting his native Egypt.

The judge found late Thursday that Mehalba knowingly made a false statement to
U.S. Customs officials and FBI agents when they asked him if he had any
classified information on compact discs in his luggage. He denied it repeatedly
and was charged with making a false statement.

A review of one compact disc found 368 documents labelled "SECRET" or "SECRET/NO
FORN," and officials later determined they were classified.

Mehalba had security clearance to see classified documents through his job as a
translator at the base, but he was not allowed to travel with such documents.

In his ruling, the judge said the compact disc contained secret information
obtained from Guantanamo Bay. He also cited a later search of Mehalba's personal
computer which he sold before leaving Guantanamo that turned up similar
classified documents.

Mehalba's lawyer, Michael Andrews, said Friday he had not yet seen the ruling,
but said it was expected.

"Probable cause is not a high burden for the government to meet," Andrews said.

During a hearing Wednesday, Andrews said Mehalba did not know there were
classified documents on the computer disc he was carrying.

Mehalba will remain in federal custody while awaiting trial. The next hearing
date has not been set.

* * *


Los Angeles Times:

October 16, 2003

TRANSLATOR TOOK DATA TO EGYPT, U.S. SAYS

· Accused staffer at the Guantanamo Bay prison knew he was not to take
classified material out of the camp, an FBI agent testifies at a hearing.

By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer

WORCESTER, Mass.-- An Arabic linguist with top security clearance at the
terrorist detention camp on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had gone to Egypt with reams
of classified and secret documents, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was stopped last month at Boston's Logan International
Airport and found to be carrying 132 computer disks in his luggage. A review of
one of those has turned up 725 separate documents labeled "secret," "sensitive"
or "classified" material from the highly secure prison camp, officials said. The
documents included material from the FBI, CIA and the departments of Defense and
Justice. The officials said 368 documents were marked "secret" or
"secret/noforn" and were never to have left the prison.

"The majority of the remaining unmarked documents are assessed to contain
classified or sensitive material," the government said in producing its summary
review.

The remaining 131 disks are still being analyzed.

Mehalba and his lawyer, Michael Andrews of Boston, acknowledged Wednesday that
one disk contained classified material. But Andrews insisted that Mehalba, who
he said had been visiting relatives in Egypt, did not know the material was on
the disk.

"When Mr. Mehalba was asked at the airport, he said he had no idea how that got
there," Andrews said. "He believed he was answering that truthfully."

Andrews added that Mehalba largely had free rein of the prison and "had access
to a wide range of classified information." But when pressed after the court
hearing to explain how the material wound up on the computer disk, the lawyer
responded: "I have no comment on that."

Mehalba is one of three staffers at Camp Delta who have been charged with crimes
for allegedly taking classified material out of the prison. The other two are a
fellow translator and an Army chaplain.

Mehalba, 31, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Egypt, is the only one
being prosecuted in civilian court; the others are being held under military
jurisdiction. The hearing Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Charles B. Swartwood
III was intended to present evidence on whether there was significant reason to
continue holding Mehalba.

The judge said he would issue a ruling by week's end.

Mehalba faces a charge of making a false statement to federal authorities about
the disk when he was arrested. But sources have indicated that prosecutors may
seek a federal indictment against him on further charges.

At the hearing, FBI Special Agent John Van Kleeff, assigned to the bureau's
joint task force on terrorism in Boston, testified that he was summoned to the
airport after U.S. Customs officials detained Mehalba.

Van Kleeff said Mehalba was taken to a second screening station after acting
suspiciously and refusing to show officials an ID badge that he was carrying
from Guantanamo Bay. Van Kleeff said the security detail then checked out the
disk and found material from Camp Delta.

The data were stored in a computer file folder marked "xxxLAW Enforcement
Applicationxxx" and had last been modified May 9, during which Mehalba was
working among the 660 detainees at the camp.

The disk had Mehalba's handwriting on the outside, with the words "Back Up #3
For MO's Profile." Evidence showed that he purchased a computer and disks from
the commissary at the naval base on Guantanamo Bay.

To show that Mehalba knew he was not to leave the camp with classified material,
Van Kleeff presented a series of documents that the linguist from the private
company, Titan Systems, had signed acknowledging the rules and procedures for
classified material from "JTFGTMO" -- the joint task force running the prison at
Guantanamo Bay.

For instance, Mehalba had signed two JTFGTMO computer user licensing agreements
in November 2002, and he also initialed the sections in the agreements 30
separate times. He agreed to "ensure classified material is not accessed,
stored, or processed on an unclassified computer."

In February, he had signed an acknowledgment that he had attended a "JTFGTMO
initial security briefing," in which he said: "I agree that I will never
divulge, publish, or reveal [either by word, conduct, or other means] any
government information" about Camp Delta activities "except in the performance
of my official duties in accordance with the laws of the United States."

In other written agreements, he said he would never take classified material out
of the country and never let it "be disclosed to anyone who does not have a
valid need to know."

One of the forms stated, in boldface capital letters, "do not take classified
material."

Despite those agreements, Van Kleeff said that when he interviewed Mehalba at
the airport, "he denied ever receiving a security briefing."

The agent said the 725 sensitive or secret documents from the disk were printed
out, running nearly 2,000 pages. Van Kleeff said he asked Mehalba five times how
the material got onto the disk and that each time the linguist said he did not
know.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael D. Ricciuti told the magistrate that when Mehalba
made those assertions, "his statements were false."

But defense lawyer Andrews reminded the magistrate that Mehalba was cooperative
and not nervous, and consented to be interviewed and searched -- all signs that
he honestly did not know the material was there.

Despite what was found on the disk, Andrews said, "there is little evidence
against Mr. Mehalba that he made a false statement."

* * *


Sarasota Herald Tribune:

October 16, 2003

Editorial

JUSTICE DENIED INDEFINITE DETENTION AT GUANTANAMO IS UNACCEPTABLE

A courtroom with closed-circuit TV, microphones and American flags has existed
for months at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And yet, the 660 prisoners there have had no trials.

They don't have lawyers, either. They aren't even charged with anything
specific.

Human rights organizations have justifiably complained that the U.S. government
is holding the prisoners -- some for more than 18 months -- without filing
charges and without offering access to counsel.

The government says the detainees, most of them taken prisoner in Afghanistan,
are suspected of having links with the fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida
terrorist network. As "enemy combatants," the government says, the prisoners
aren't subject to the rights of prisoners of war.

Yet, whatever the prisoners' legal status, their indefinite detention without
charges or trial is unacceptable. And U.S. policy- makers should determine
whether those circumstances might have led some Americans serving at Guantanamo
to sympathize with the prisoners.

That possibility seems enhanced by the International Red Cross' demand last
Friday for fair treatment of the prisoners.

The Red Cross said the mental health of prisoners is deteriorating because they
"have no idea about their fate and they have no means of recourse at their
disposal through any legal mechanism." Suicide attempts by 27 prisoners indicate
the prisoners' desperation, the Red Cross reported.

Despite the public alarm sounded by the Red Cross, the U.S. government has made
no apparent shift in its stance. That's not surprising, because the Red Cross
reportedly expressed its concerns privately to the Bush administration over the
past two months when its workers were at the camp.

Even if the White House and Justice Department aren't fazed, the American people
should demand more accountability from the U.S. government.

Imagine the outcry in the United States if a Middle Eastern country were holding
American prisoners indefinitely for vague reasons and without access to justice.
The Guantanamo camp could be establishing a dangerous international precedent.

Perhaps it was an American's simple desire for justice that got Army Capt. James
Yee into trouble with U.S. military authorities in Guantanamo.

Yee, an Arab-speaking, Islamic chaplain at the camp, was taken into custody
Sept. 10. U.S. authorities strongly implied that he had cooperated with
prisoners at Guantanmo and might be involved in espionage.

Yet, last Friday, the military charged Yee with two relatively minor counts of
disobeying orders. Other charges could follow, a military spokesman said.

That means Yee, like the prisoners, could be in legal limbo.

The U.S. government should continue to aggressively pursue terrorists and their
supporters. But in that pursuit, the administration should adhere to the basic
American principles that suspects should know the charges against them and be
granted a speedy trial. The empty military courtroom at Guantanamo should be put
to use.

* * *


ABC Online (Australia):

October 16, 2003 - 16:01 AEST

NO EVIDENCE GUANTANAMO DETAINEES TORTURED, RUDDOCK SAYS

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he has seen no evidence inmates at
the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have been tortured.

An Australian lawyer working for the Camp X-Ray inmates, Richard Bourke, claims
prisoners, including two Australians, have been tortured.

US President George W Bush has denied the claim.

Mr Ruddock has told Parliament the Red Cross recently visited Guantanamo Bay,
but in a report gave no indication that prisoners had been tortured.

"I've seen also the reports of Australian officials who have on a number of
occasions visited Guantanamo Bay and seen both of the detainees and there were
no reports to them of any torture so that's the background to the matter," Mr
Ruddock said.

"I have seen the reports and I have asked for inquiries to be made as to whether
there have been any further developments."

* * *


VOA News:

October 16, 2003 - 00:24 UTC

PENTAGON ACKNOWLEDGES BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR SOME TRANSLATORS WERE LIMITED

Alex Belida, Pentagon

A senior defense official has acknowledged translators were hired for terrorist
interrogations at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with only limited security checks.

Charles Abell, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and
readiness, now admits the Pentagon rushed to fill a critical shortage of Arabic-
language translators in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the
United States two years ago.

Mr. Abell said that meant some linguists were hired with only limited background
checks. He said that could account for the recent discovery of security
violations by two translators who worked at the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility for suspected al-Qaida terrorists and Taleban fighters.

"I think it's fair to say that folks who were brought on with sort of interim-
level checks, and then the more detailed checks to follow, I think the results
of that are as we are seeing here," said Mr. Abell at a Congressional hearing
Tuesday. "We have found a couple who were not as trustworthy as we had hoped
initially. But there was an initial push. I think we all recognized that we
didn't have enough Arabic linguists already employed to meet those
requirements."

There are some 70 translators working at Guantanamo, assisting in the
interrogations of the estimated 660 detainees held at the U.S. Navy Base in
Cuba.

Some of the translators are military personnel. Others are civilians.

One of the detained linguists is a senior airman named Ahmad al-Halabi, who has
been charged with aiding the enemy and espionage, including passing classified
material to Syria.

The other translator who has been arrested is a civilian named Ahmed Mehalba,
who was discovered carrying classified information about Guantanamo during a
routine customs check as he returned to the United States from a visit to Egypt.

In addition to the two translators, a Muslim military chaplain who worked with
the Guantanamo detainees has also been charged with security violations.

As a result of the arrests, the Pentagon is conducting a security review at the
base. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is working with the Defense Department
to examine the way chaplains and translators are hired.

* * *


The Daily Telegraph (UK):

October 16, 2003

ATTORNEY STICKS TO HIS GUNS OVER ADVICE ON IRAQ

By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor

For someone who is rapidly becoming one of the most controversial members of the
Government, Lord Goldsmith seems remarkably sanguine. He continues to "relish"
his job, he says, regarding it as "a privilege". Yet opposition peers are
ganging up on him over the advice he gave Parliament in March that it was lawful
to go to war against Iraq. Writing in the Spectator, Lord Heseltine says that
Lord Goldsmith must have been deceived - how can the Attorney General stay with
honour "in a government that apparently allowed him to be so seriously misled?"
he asks.

Lord Alexander, QC, in his Tom Sargant memorial lecture this week, said that
Lord Goldsmith's legal advice had no support in international law. It should now
be published in full, he argued, and opened up to judicial scrutiny. The Liberal
Democrat peer Lord Lester, QC, weighed in on Monday, telling the Lords that
there were precedents for publishing the Attorney's advice.

Lord Goldsmith has also come under attack from newspaper lawyers for "advising"
them that the press cannot identify any of the footballers suspected of raping a
woman recently in a London hotel.

Others, meanwhile, are wondering why he has not done more for British citizens
detained in the "legal black hole" of Guantanamo Bay, and why he appointed a
Director of Public Prosecutions who has a criminal record involving a drug
offence.

On Iraq, Lord Goldsmith is standing firm. "The convention is that legal advice
by the law officers is not disclosed." Otherwise, he says, none of the 1,800
members of the government legal service could advise ministers with candour and
frankness.

Does he still hold to his view that the authority to use force against Iraq -
granted by a UN resolution in 1990 - was "revived" when Iraq was found by the
Security Council to have been in material breach of a separate resolution passed
in 1991?

"Yes," he replies shortly.

And his response to Lord Heseltine?

"I think he misunderstands the legal basis of the military action."

That surely cannot be said of Lord Alexander, one of Lord Goldsmith's
predecessors as Chairman of the Bar. In Lord Alexander's view, "the suggestion
that the authority to use force 'revives' like spring flowers in the desert
after rain . . . is risible" and has no support in international law.

"His own party believed it did in 1993," says the Attorney General. He refers me
to the Conservative government's justification for military action against Iraq
in January 1993. This even received the backing of the then UN Secretary
General.

Why not let judges decide whether advice from the Government's law officers is
sound? Lord Alexander believes it "strange for the courts not to be able to give
rulings on the legality of an act as fundamental as the invasion of another
sovereign state".

"The courts have taken a completely different view, I believe rightly," replies
Lord Goldsmith, citing the case brought by CND against ministers last December.
Lord Justice Simon Brown said that the English courts had no jurisdiction to
interpret an international instrument, such as a UN resolution, that had no
bearing on domestic rights. The judge also declined to issue rulings that would
damage international relations, national security or defence.

"I believe certain matters of high policy are not matters for determination in
the courts," the Attorney explains, "but that is simply saying what the courts
themselves have said."

Turning to the detainees held by US troops at Guantanamo Bay, Lord Goldsmith
tells me he has now had four meetings with American officials to discuss the
forthcoming trial of two British men suspected of being involved in terrorism.

"Those talks were helpful. The objective remains to ensure that the British
detainees in Guantanamo Bay, if prosecuted, are assured of fair trials that meet
generally recognised principles, wherever those trials take place."

His discussions with the Americans centred on membership of the military
commission that will act as judge and jury (but, at least in the case of British
suspects, not executioner).

"The US is continuing to examine ways in which the commission's independence,
its review process, and the rights of defence counsel can be safeguarded,
enhanced and respected," Lord Goldsmith says.

He has, of course, no authority to speak up for the non-British detainees. Does
he believe that British citizens may therefore be treated more favourably than
other nationals?

That's for the Americans to decide, he says; the Government hopes that any deal
will benefit all those held, whatever their nationality.

It sounds as if Lord Goldsmith is resigned to the prospect of trials taking
place at the inaccessible US naval base in Cuba. Not at all, he insists. "As far
as I am concerned, repatriation remains an option."

Surely, there is not enough evidence to prosecute any of the detainees here?

As the ultimate head of the prosecution service, Lord Goldsmith will not
comment. What he is happy to talk about is the new Director of Public
Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, QC. As this newspaper revealed in August, Mr
Macdonald was convicted as a student in 1971 of possessing cannabis and
attempting to supply it to a friend. It also emerged that he practised from the
same chambers as Cherie Booth and appeared to have little or no recent
experience as a prosecutor.

"Ken had a grossly unfair press at the time he was appointed. I think he
deserved better than that - and the CPS deserved better than that," he insists.

What about the DPP's criminal record?

"There was this very old, very stale conviction, which he had disclosed . . ."

Not to the public, I interject. And the Attorney's office did not mention it
until contacted by this newspaper.

"It would always have been revealed," Lord Goldsmith maintains. "All right-
minded people now recognise that it is an irrelevance as far as his suitability
to do this job is concerned. Let's now see how he performs, which I am sure will
be outstandingly well."

But what sort of convictions would disqualify someone from appointment as the
country's leading prosecutor? Lord Goldsmith declines to answer my hypothetical
question, pointing out that the DPP "had a single conviction a long, long time
ago when he was a very young man".

He had also been strongly recommended by an independent panel, Lord Goldsmith
continues. "Why should he be disqualified because he happens to be in the same
chambers as the Prime Minister's wife?"

I am curious to know why someone making a good living out of defence work would
want to take on this bed of nails. "He is very enthusiastic about doing this job
and he shares my vision of bringing prosecutors into the centre of the criminal
justice system," Lord Goldsmith says. The retiring DPP, Sir David Calvert-Smith,
ruffled a few judicial feathers this week when he suggested that prosecutors
should play a bigger part in sentencing.

Lord Goldsmith supports moves to give prosecutors a greater sentencing role -
assisting the court with the correct sentence and challenging unfair mitigation.
Prosecutors should no longer be "backroom people who pass the parcel from the
police to counsel," he says. Instead, they will be involved in the initial
decision to charge as well as able to do deals with defendants by issuing
cautions if defendants are willing to make reparation.

The Attorney also wants to ensure that any future trials are not prejudiced by
press reports: hence his warning to the media this week not to publish the names
or photographs of Premiership footballers under investigation for allegedly
raping a woman in a London hotel.

Some newspaper lawyers are furious. They accept that photographs of the
footballers may be prejudicial if published before an identity parade but cannot
see how it can be in contempt of court merely to publish names.

"I acted because I was told by the police, and by the prosecutors involved, that
identification was an issue and the publication of names and photographs would
seriously prejudice the prospects of a fair trial," Lord Goldsmith explains.

"This is not a case of trying to gag the press. It's not for me to safeguard the
reputations of individuals or to be concerned with taste and decency. But it is
my public interest role to protect the administration of justice and to offer
guidance and warnings."

Of course, it is normally the police who tell reporters about high-profile
arrests in the first place. Is that what happened here? Over more than two
demanding years as Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith has learned exactly when not
to answer a leading question.


* * *


Dayton Daily News:

October 15, 2003

LAWYER: GUANTANAMO SUSPECT HAD CLEARANCE

By Denise Lavoie, Associated Press Writer

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP)--A translator at the U.S. prison for terror suspects at
Guantanamo Bay, who was arrested last month carrying classified documents, had
government clearance to access the information, his lawyer said in court
Wednesday.

But federal prosecutors, while acknowledging Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was cleared to
see classified documents, said he was forbidden to transport any information.

Agents arrested Mehalba in September as he arrived at Boston's Logan
International Airport after visiting his native Egypt. Mehalba is accused of
lying to investigators by denying that a computer disc he carried with him held
classified information from Guantanamo Bay.

His attorney Michael Andrews, speaking after a probable cause hearing Wednesday
at U.S. District Court in Worcester, said his client didn't know how the
information got on the disc.

"When he was asked the question, 'Do you have classified documents on you, and
he said, 'No,' he believed he was answering truthfully," Andrews said.

Andrews wouldn't comment on how Mehalba believes the classified information got
on his disc.

FBI agent John Van Kleeff, testifying for the government on Wednesday, said when
Mehalba was questioned, he said he didn't have any classified documents on CDs
he was carrying. He also said Mehalba didn't appear nervous and was cooperative,
giving verbal and written consent for his luggage to be searched.

Van Kleeff said 368 out of 725 files on one disc were marked "SECRET," and some
were marked "secret/noforn," meaning that foreign government representatives
were prohibited from seeing them.

Mehalba is being held on a charge of making a false statement. He could face up
to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 if convicted.

At the time of his arrest, he was carrying 132 compact discs, which he said
contained only music and videos, according to a government affidavit filed in
court. But agents found at least one that appeared to contain unspecified
classified information, the affidavit said.

Mehalba on Wednesday waived his right to a detention hearing. Andrews said
Mehalba likely would have been denied any request to be released on bail.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Swartwood said he would rule on probable cause by
the end of the week.

Mehalba, 31, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Egypt, worked as a
translator for the largely Muslim, non-English-speaking population of about 660
suspected terrorist fighters being held at the camp in Cuba.

Mehalba is a civilian who was hired by a private defense contractor to work as a
translator at the prison.

His arrest was the third involving someone who worked closely with Guantanamo's
prison population. Two military personnel are also in custody.

Another Arabic translator, Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, is
charged with espionage and aiding the enemy. A Muslim chaplain, Army Capt.
Yousef Yee, has been charged with disobeying orders for improperly handling
classified information.

AP-NY-10-15-03 2226EDT

* * *


Reuters:

October 14, 2003 03:47 PM ET

SENATORS URGE CAUTION ON MUSLIM CHAPLAINS
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. senators urged top prison and military officials on
Tuesday to urgently review how they recruited Muslim chaplains, of whom a very
small number are suspected of recruiting and training Islamic militants.

"There's a lot of smoke coming from the chaplain programs in the military and
the prisons. We don't know if there's fire but we need to get to the bottom of
it quickly," Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, told a Senate
Judiciary subcommittee hearing on terrorism.

Last week, the U.S. military charged a Muslim Army chaplain who worked with
imprisoned terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay as part
of an espionage probe.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl said he hoped there would be a change in
recruitment procedures for military and prison chaplains to deter the potential
for "terrorist infiltration."

"It is unacceptable for our government to utilize organizations suspected of
terrorist ties to recruit Muslims for sensitive positions in our military and
prison systems," said Kyl.

Schumer and Kyl said two groups that recommended Muslim chaplains to the
military were suspected of having ties to terror groups. One is the Graduate
School of Islamic and Social Sciences and the other was founded by Abdul Rahman
Al-Amoudi, who was arrested last month for alleged unauthorized visits to Libya
and for violating sanctions against that country.

Both groups have denied the claims. Nancy Luque, a lawyer representing the
Virginia-based school, said her client was in no way linked to a "terrorist"
group.

"They are absolutely false and scurrilous claims," Luque told reporters.

There are 12 Muslim clerics in the U.S. military and 10 in the federal prisons
service, military and prison officials said.

Paul Rogers, president of the American Correctional Chaplains Association, said
in his testimony reports of prisons being infiltrated via prison religious
programs had been "blown out of proportion."

Charles Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and
readiness, said he signed a memorandum on Tuesday that revised some guidelines
for hiring chaplains.

Harley Lappin, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, also said his
department was looking into its hiring policies.

* * *


Aljazeera:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/51BAD764-65E3-4F50-A490-F9C8B756C177.htm

October 14, 2003 - 0159 GMT

GUANTANAMO GUARDS EMBRACE ISLAM

A number of the US troops guarding the 660 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban
detainees in Guantanamo Bay have converted to Islam, according to an Algerian
mediator.

Hassan Aribi, who chairs his country’s committee on the Guantanamo question, has
negotiated the release of 18 detainees from the heavily-guarded detention camp
at the eastern tip of Cuba.

He claimed that the freed detainees told him that some of their American guards
had converted to Islam as a result of daily interaction with Muslim prisoners
for the past two years.

The US military refused to comment when contacted by Aljazeera.net on Tuesday.

Release of prisoner

Aribi made his claims at a seminar in Egypt recently which was covered by Islam
Online.

Speaking to the Cairo seminar, he said his negotiations, held in Washington
before the Iraq war, resulted in the release of eight Algerians and ten other
detainees.

"They told me that the American guards were very sympathetic with them to the
extent of buying the detainees’ needs (with) their pocket money," Aribi said.

Aribi appealed to other Arab governments to immediately act for the release of
their citizens, held without charges in Guantanamo.

He said 90% of those held had "no relation whatsoever with al-Qaida or Taliban.
They were working with humanitarian relief agencies and were only arrested as
part of an American campaign against possible suspects."

A New York representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
said he had also heard reports of US guards converting to Islam in Guantanamo.

Arrests

No comment was immediately available from the camp. US military officials have
imposed stricter reporting limits since the arrests of a Muslim army chaplain
and two interpreters.

The arrests involved civilian interpreter Ahmad Mehalba, a naturalised US
citizen from Egypt allegedly found with classified documents from Guantanamo,
and Air Force Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, an interpreter accused of espionage for
allegedly sending classified information about the camp to an unspecified
"enemy."

Army Capt James Yee, a Muslim chaplain, has been charged with disobeying orders.
He is accused of leaving the base with a layout of the prison block.

All three say they are innocent.

Red Cross speaks out

The International Committee of the Red Cross complained on Friday that the camp
denies prisoners basic rights and is leading to mental health problems among
them.

"We've witnessed growing anxiety and a rather serious deterioration in the
psychological health of the detainees, linked very much, we believe, to their
ongoing uncertainty," said Amanda Williamson of the ICRC's office in Washington.

The public protest is highly unusual for the ICRC, which traditionally raises
concerns about such conditions privately.

* * *


The Australian:

October 14, 2003

PHONE CALL HOPE FOR HICKS
By Sophie Morris

DAVID Hicks could talk to his family in Adelaide for the first time in more than
two years if the suspected Taliban fighter is charged by a US military
commission.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has revealed, in an answer to a question on
notice that, during bilateral negotiations in July, the Americans agreed to work
on increasing Hicks's contact with his family.

But Hicks's lawyer Stephen Kenny said yesterday that the prospect of a phone
call could prove hollow because it was not known if and when he would be
charged.

"His family have not spoken to him since about three weeks after September 11
(2001)," Mr Kenny said.

Mr Ruddock also confirmed there had been discussions with the US about whether
Hicks, who is in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be tried
in Australia.

But the Government told the US that Hicks's activities in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, where he was arrested in 2001, did not breach any Australian law in
force at the time.

"The US has agreed to work on ways to allow Mr Hicks additional contact with his
family, including via telephone, following approval of military commission
charges," Mr Ruddock wrote in answer to a question from Labor legal affairs
spokesman Robert McClelland. Mr Ruddock said Australia had not been consulted by
the US about the composition and rules of the military commissions set up to try
suspected terrorists.

The only communication Hicks and a fellow Cuba detainee from Sydney, Mamdouh
Habib, have had with the world beyond the military prison has been through
censored letters delivered by the Red Cross.

Hicks's family last received a letter from him in May.

Mr Ruddock confirmed Hicks had been visited five times by Australian police and
intelligence authorities, most recently in May.

In July, he was one of six foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay who the US said
could face trial by military commission.

However, US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said last month that detainees
could be held until the end of the global war on terror.

* * *


Los Angeles Times:

October 13, 2003

U.S. PRISON CAMP HAS A KEY FLAW

· It's called trust. The security system at heavily fortified Guantanamo Bay
rests on the belief that all staff members are loyal.

By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Navy Cmdr. Sheldon Stuchell always imagined that if Al Qaeda was
going to pull a prison break on Guantanamo Bay, the terrorists would sneak up
the Cuban coastline. He pictured enemy agents slinking toward the fortress in
submarines with periscopes up, trolling the Caribbean waters for Camp Delta's
weakest link.

But Stuchell, a Navy Reserve officer who spent much of last year overseeing
external prison security, may have been off the mark. If authorities are
correct, it appears the soft spot was not outside; it was within.

Three staffers at the camp -- a chaplain and two translators, all Muslims and
all working for the U.S. military -- have been charged in separate cases on
suspicion of taking classified material out of the prison, possibly to give it
to outside terrorist networks.

The arrests have stunned the military and Capitol Hill, triggering fears, two
years after the Sept. 11 attacks, that Al Qaeda may have managed to penetrate
what was supposed to be an impregnable prison.

What has been learned is that while Camp Delta may have been secured from
outside attack, its internal security system rested largely on trust -- the
belief that its staff, all of whom had security clearance, was loyal.

Allegations that the detained staffers appear to have developed sympathies for
the prisoners also have alarmed the American Muslim community, raising fears of
a backlash against Muslims serving in the military.

Heavily fortified, far from the Afghan battlefield, so remote and hard to get to
that it seemed the ideal solution for holding suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban
captives, Camp Delta was meant to be the most secure site for detaining
combatants in America's war on terror.

Now, the Pentagon has dispatched a special task force to determine the extent of
the alleged security breaches, what damage has been caused and how Camp Delta
can be fixed.

Democrats are demanding a thorough examination of the general security at the
prison and of how staffers and contractors are granted secret clearance to work
in an environment filled with classified material.

The military must "restore or create, depending on how bad this is, the adequate
capability of Guantanamo to thwart the plans and intentions of terrorists who
are out there," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), the ranking Democrat on the
House Intelligence Committee.

In the Senate, Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld demanding accountability.

"If we are to win the war on terror, we must aggressively pursue terrorists
where they take refuge," Schumer wrote. "We must think creatively about
weaknesses in our current security structure, especially at our most sensitive
bases that we believe to be secure against traditional threats."

Army Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, spokeswoman at Camp Delta, said there was still no
evidence linking the three detained Muslim staffers to a single spy ring or
plot. The military, she said, continued to evaluate them as individual cases.

The immediate concern, Hart said, was the need to improve security.

"We are very much aware of the situation, and we're making internal
assessments," she said. "This is the venue we work and live in every day. It's
always paramount in everything we do -- safety and security. So we're fine-
tuning every aspect of our mission."

But Stuchell and others who know Camp Delta said it might be impossible to stop
information from leaking out.

A military workforce of some 2,000 -- and an undisclosed number of contract
employees -- staff Camp Delta. Most live next to the facility, at Camp America,
where they have access to computers and the Internet and a postal drop for the
U.S. mail.

It might take a strip-search of every guard and chaplain, every translator and
cook who passes through the prison gates to ensure that nothing ever gets out,
Stuchell said.

"We could open every duffel bag too," he said. "But the only 100% guarantee is
not a guarantee at all. Because what if somebody writes letters? What if
somebody takes floppy disks and puts them in the U.S. mail? Could he have gotten
something out? Of course."

Other former prison officials, interviewed after the news broke last month about
the three arrests, agreed there was no ready fix for the problems. Security at
Guantanamo, they said, had been built around trust. Once someone obtained
security clearance, he was assumed to be loyal and not subjected to routine
searches.

Military authorities began monitoring the activities of Air Force Senior Airman
Ahmad I. al-Halabi in November 2002, according to the affidavit filed in
September in federal court in Sacramento, near Al-Halabi's home station at
Travis Air Force Base. But Al-Halabi was allowed to keep working with detainees
for months after he aroused suspicions.

The court documents state that there was evidence Al-Halabi was attempting to
deliver classified material "to the injury of the United States or to the
advantage of a foreign power."

While at Guantanamo Bay, "Al-Halabi made statements criticizing United States
policy with regard to the detainees and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East,"
the documents state. "He has also expressed sympathy for and has had
unauthorized contact with the detainees, including providing unauthorized items
of comfort to the detainees."

His military lawyers have steadfastly denied that Al-Halabi was a spy and have
countered that when he was arrested, he was traveling to Syria not as a spy but
to marry his fiance. Al-Halabi now faces an array of charges, some of which
carry the death penalty.

His father, Ibrahim al-Halabi, interviewed at his home in Detroit, insisted in
his broken English that his son meant no harm to the United States. "I know so
much Ahmad good," the 72-year-old immigrant said. "He straight. Not have any
problem for America. He love America. God bless America."

There are indications that the chaplain, Army Capt. James Joseph Yee, a West
Point graduate who spent some years in Syria before returning to the United
States, may have become sympathetic with the plight of the Muslim detainees.

On Friday, Yee was charged with two counts of disobeying orders by allegedly
taking classified material home and transporting it without using proper
security containers or covers on the documents.

Now Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Camp Delta, will decide
whether to dismiss the charges or start the court-martial process. Yee, who
could receive a maximum of a year in prison and a bad conduct discharge, remains
under investigation for other possible violations, authorities said.

Father Raymond Tetreault, a Catholic priest from Rhode Island who served in the
chaplains corps at Camp Delta for much of last year, said Yee alone spoke Arabic
and spent the most time with the detainees.

"He could go into the detention cell areas and talk to different ones,"
Tetreault said. "He was called by the guards when there were problems. So he did
go in there, and he would go and visit them on a regular basis."

Sometimes, the priest recalled, Yee would scold guards for upsetting detainees
by doing things such as picking up copies of the Koran in prisoners' cells. Yee,
he said, would explain to the guards that it was forbidden for "infidels" to
touch the holy book.

"Because he's a Muslim he would have empathy for other Muslims," Tetreault said.
"But I don't know how he felt deep down. I do know that he knew the limitations
on the kinds of documents that were not to be taken off Guantanamo Bay."

Like Al-Halabi, Yee was arrested at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla.,
after leaving Guantanamo Bay.

Investigators would say only that they were continuing to hold him while they
reviewed his activities over some 10 months at the island prison. He has
maintained his innocence.

The third arrestee, Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, is charged with making false statements
to authorities after he was arrested Sept. 30 at Boston's Logan Airport. He was
allegedly found with 132 compact disks, one of which reportedly contained secret
information from Camp Delta.

Mehalba, a contract employee with San Diego-based Titan Corp. who was assigned
to Guantanamo Bay, has pleaded not guilty. He is to appear Wednesday in federal
court in Worcester, Mass., where the government is expected to reveal new
evidence against him.

The prison opened in January 2002. Not one of the 660 detainees remaining at the
facility has been charged with an offense or been granted due process or a
military tribunal. Several dozen detainees have been repatriated after extensive
interrogation.

The Pentagon and the White House have promised that military tribunals would be
held, and President Bush has authorized the Pentagon to begin examining six
individual cases. That was three months ago; nothing has happened yet.

Col. John J. Perrone, an Army reservist from New York who served as Camp Delta's
prison warden for eight months last year, said he believed the facility was safe
from an outside attack. He acknowledged that he often worried about an internal
breakdown, but he said he was amazed that three staff members had been arrested.

"There are a lot of soldiers that are in and out there," he acknowledged. "You
have e-mail and telephones, and there are various other methods of
communication. The Internet is a great source of information."

Security clearances should be tightened and random searches conducted, Perrone
said, noting that getting through the prison doors was no harder than boarding
an airplane when he was at Camp Delta.

But an X-ray machine would not detect classified documents in a knapsack,
Perrone said.

To keep everything classified inside the prison, "you would have to rely on a
hand search" each time, he said -- an impractical option because it is so time-
consuming.

Before the three staffers were detained, Perrone said, the biggest known
infractions were when soldiers took "souvenir photographs" of the prison before
leaving. Several times, cameras were seized and film destroyed.

New guards were given three- and four-day orientation briefings, and they were
warned against any type of lapse that might compromise the highly secret
operation at Camp Delta.

A half-dozen guards who served there said everyone understood there would be
consequences for trying to circumvent security. "They were constantly telling
us, 'Don't do it or else,' " said Sgt. Christopher Renard, an Army reservist
from Wichita, Kan. "Pretty much everybody followed the rules."

Army Spc. James Snoddy, a military police officer from Maryland who also pulled
guard duty at Camp Delta, said strip-searches of prison staff might be
inevitable, especially if more arrests follow.

"If I were to have a prison camp and I didn't want anybody bringing anything in
or out, that is what I might have to do," he said. "But it's not a conducive
environment for your troops, or very efficient."

Others, like Cmdr. Stuchell of Maryland, suggested that more eyes and ears be
trained on what is happening inside the prison walls rather than surveying the
shoreline.

"Al Qaeda will always be trying to find a way to sneak along the Cuban coast and
get onto the base," he said. "If they had pictures of the detention center or
other documents, they might find somewhere to break through and get weapons
tothe detainees, or free some of them."

He added, "We don't need to help them."

Times staff writers Eric Bailey in Sacramento and Aaron Zitner in Detroit
contributed to this report.

* * *


Sydney Morning Herald:

October 13, 2003

HIGH COURT WILL ACCEPT GOVERNMENT STAND: RUDDOCK

By Cynthia Banham

The High Court would fall into line with the Government's policy on whether
Australia was bound by international conventions if it had to decide the issue
now, the new Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, has suggested.

Such a move would stymie cases before the court that have challenged the
Government's mandatory detention immigration policy on the grounds it breaches
the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Mr Ruddock said the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia has
ratified, but not passed into domestic law, was "a document that's expressed in
very general terms - the application of it can mean different things to
different people".

Mr Ruddock, signalling he had no qualms as Attorney-General about making
pronouncements on future decisions of the High Court, referred to the highly
controversial 1995 Teoh's case.

There, the High Court under Sir Anthony Mason said the Convention on the Rights
of the Child, because it had been ratified, entitled a foreign national -
convicted on heroin charges and who had Australian children - to have a
legitimate expectation it would be applied in determining his residency
application.

"The idea that the operation of Australian law which has been implemented in
specific terms is going to be undone by the consideration of the general words
of a convention that has not been introduced into domestic law is, I think,
flawed," Mr Ruddock said.

"And I think the High Court has given an indication that the approach it took in
Teoh's case might be something that if looked at again today would be somewhat
different."

In an interview with the Herald, Mr Ruddock foreshadowed a heavier focus on
national security in the portfolio, at the order of the Prime Minister.

One of Mr Ruddock's first moves has been to take over control of the counter-
terrorism functions of the Australian Federal Police, which had been overseen by
the Justice and Customs Minister, Senator Chris Ellison.

Another priority will be to pass laws giving the Attorney-General the power to
ban organisations deemed to be terrorist - a power his predecessor failed to get
through Parliament.

"Inevitably the issue will be one that will be back on the table, because in
these areas . . . there are no second chances," Mr Ruddock said. "If there are
issues that ought to be pursued, and more abundant caution suggests you can do
something more, then you should."

Mr Ruddock also indicated there would be no softening of the Government's
attitude towards the fate of the two Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib,
who have been held in US custody at Guantanamo Bay since late 2001.

While Mr Ruddock said inquiries were being made with the US authorities about
the recent allegations of torture, he said: "I am sceptical would be a way of
putting it - we've been assured by the US that people have been humanely
treated."

Asked about his attitude towards the military tribunals that the US has
established to deal with the Guantanamo Bay detainees - about which Australian
lawyers have expressed grave concerns - he said September 11 and Bali were not
normal events.

As for his other, non-security priorities, Mr Ruddock nominated family law,
defamation law, and the judicial review of immigration cases as three areas in
need of reform.

* * *


Chicago Tribune:

October 12, 2003

GUANTANAMO DETAINEES LINGERING IN LEGAL LIMBO

By Jane Fritsch, Tribune staff reporter.

[ The Associated Press contributed to this report ]

Human-rights attorneys have come to call it a black hole, a legal conundrum that
emerged 20 months ago as the first of the hooded and shackled men from
Afghanistan began arriving at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Spartan, hastily built prison camp now has 660 inmates who have been granted
no rights under U.S. military or civilian law, international law or the Geneva
Conventions.

An espionage investigation and the arrests in recent weeks of two translators
and a Muslim chaplain have focused new attention on the largely secret
activities at the camp. On Thursday, two dozen investigators began searching for
security breaches there.

Meanwhile, a flurry of new legal activity could mean movement toward some
resolution of the detainees' status.

Lawyers have filed a petition with the Supreme Court in an attempt to win legal
rights in some court for the detainees. Former diplomats, judges and government
officials have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the petition, as
has an association of British lawyers. And the American Civil Liberties Union
has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents that might show
whether the men are being tortured.

But the rush of activity is lost on the detainees, who have been described as
living in boredom, isolation and despair. They almost certainly don't know that
any of this is going on, according to lawyers working on their behalf. In fact,
they probably don't know that they have lawyers, and many still may not even
know where they are.

"It may be that all they know is that there was a war in Iraq, and the United
States won," said Joseph Margulies, a Minneapolis lawyer who was hired by the
families of four men being held at Guantanamo.

The only outsiders allowed to speak with the detainees are from the
International Committee of the Red Cross, which ended its seventh visit to the
camp Friday. The organization's findings generally are confidential, but a
spokesman in Geneva said the team had found "a worrying deterioration" in the
mental health of some prisoners caused by their being held indefinitely without
charges or legal counsel.

32 suicide attempts

Over the months, there have been 32 suicide attempts by 21 inmates, according to
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman. None has been
successful, she said.

Those familiar with the camp, called Camp Delta, describe a life of uncertainty
and stupefying boredom, interrupted five times a day by the Muslim call to
prayer relayed over the camp's loudspeakers.

For the most part, the men live in rows of individual, cagelike metal cells
measuring 6 feet 8 inches by 8 feet, with the lights kept on 24 hours a day.
Each has a built-in bed and a metal toilet seat fastened over a hole in the
floor. Each cell has a water trough situated for the washing of feet according
to Muslim custom, and an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca.

The prisoners are given three meals a day prepared in accordance with Muslim
dietary laws and are allowed two 15- to 20-minute exercise periods a week, as
well as two showers.

The cells have no heating or air conditioning but are open to the air through
tightly woven metal screens. Those in the right locations might pick up a gentle
ocean breeze; the base is on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

Cooperative live better

In recent months, some detainees who have cooperated with investigators trying
to unravel the world of terrorism have been allowed to live in group settings,
where they are able to socialize with each other and are awarded special
privileges. There have been reports that some have been rewarded with Twinkies
and other sweet treats, which are said to be highly prized.

Just who these men are and what may have caused them to end up in the camp is
unknown. The Defense Department has refused to release their names or even say
what countries they are from. Most of that information has come out in a
circuitous route, relayed piecemeal to governments whose citizens are being
held.

Family members then learned from their governments and have been permitted to
exchange letters--heavily censored--through the Red Cross. In all, more than
8,000 letters have been exchanged for detainees from 40 countries, according to
the Red Cross.

There have been no verified reports of torture or abuse at the camp, but neither
is there any way for the public to know that such things are not happening. Last
week Richard Bourke, an Australian lawyer working on behalf of some of the
detainees, said the practices of the camp violate provisions of the Geneva
Conventions that prohibit deliberate infliction of mental or physical torture.

Bourke said he believes there are credible reports of detainees being threatened
with bodily harm or harm to their families after they were picked up but before
they reached Guantanamo.

"Guantanamo Bay is the last stop on the torture railroad," he said.

The issue of torture also was raised last week by the American Civil Liberties
Union in its request to the Defense Department, the CIA, the Justice Department
and the State Department for records related to the treatment of detainees at
Guantanamo and other American bases around the world. The requests cite recent
news reports that detainees have been tortured or subjected to interrogation
techniques that are prohibited by U.S. and international law.

There have been confirmed reports of detainees who have died in U.S. custody in
Afghanistan or were tortured after they were turned over to certain foreign
governments.

Espionage allegations probed

Tensions at Guantanamo have heightened in the past week as officials ratcheted
up pressure to get to the bottom of the recent allegations of espionage. On
Wednesday, investigators from the U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami,
reported to the island. Later, five foreign-born interpreters arrived on the
island to help. They were sent by Titan Corp. of San Diego, the same company
that had employed the translators accused of spying.

Investigators are trying to determine how a translator already under
investigation got secret clearance and was allowed onto the base, and how a
second translator managed to leave with classified information. A Muslim
chaplain was charged Friday with disobeying orders by taking classified material
home. He came under investigation after allegedly leaving with diagrams of the
prison layout.

It is unclear whether the investigation and the espionage allegations will have
any effect on the lives of the detainees, the length of their stay or the legal
battle going on in Washington.

Lawyers said they believe the Supreme Court will decide in the coming months
whether to accept the case brought on behalf of the detainees. Even if the court
does, there is no way of knowing when it might rule.

U.S. prevails so far

The case was brought on behalf of two British and two Australian citizens of
Arab descent and 12 Kuwaitis. The Justice Department has argued successfully in
lower courts that the men are not entitled to the rights granted under U.S.
laws.

The lawyers point out that the government never has disclosed information about
any particular detainee, "including the circumstances of his seizure, what the
government believes he may have done to justify his continued detention, or his
current welfare."

The attorneys are pressing a habeas corpus action before the Supreme Court,
essentially calling on the authorities to show under what authority or evidence
they are holding the men.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District Columbia had rejected the
habeas corpus action in March, saying that "no court in the country has
jurisdiction to grant habeas relief . . . to the Guantanamo detainees."

The Bush administration has remained steadfast in its position that the
detainees do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status--and thus the rights
accorded to prisoners of war--because they were "unlawful combatants." Nor are
they entitled to due process under American law because they technically are in
Cuba, notwithstanding that the base is under U.S. control.

"The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely
outside the law," the lawyers argue in their petition. "Within the walls of this
prison, foreign nationals may be held indefinitely, without charges or evidence
of wrongdoing, without access to family, friends or legal counsel, and with no
opportunity to establish their innocence."

* * *


The Independent (UK):

October 12, 2003

US SOLDIERS BULLDOZE FARMERS' CROPS
Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers

Patrick Cockburn

Dhuluaya, Iraq - US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from
loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and
lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of
farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth
scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles
north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the
branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their
homes for firewood.

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said:
"They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not
true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons."

Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic,
that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not
informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.

"They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were
cutting down the trees," said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place
around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a
delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss
of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a
punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not
tell us'." What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of
Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.

The destruction of the fruit trees took place in the second half of last month
but, like much which happens in rural Iraq, word of what occurred has only
slowly filtered out. The destruction of crops took place along a kilometre-long
stretch of road just after it passes over a bridge.

Farmers say that 50 families lost their livelihoods, but a petition addressed to
the coalition forces in Dhuluaya pleading in erratic English for compensation,
lists only 32 people. The petition says: "Tens of poor families depend
completely on earning their life on these orchards and now they became very poor
and have nothing and waiting for hunger and death."

The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a
bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses who did not want to
give their names. They said that one American soldier broke down and cried
during the operation. When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to
take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and
tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the
region, as saying: "We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or
to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us."

Informing US troops about the identity of their attackers would be extremely
dangerous in Iraqi villages, where most people are related and everyone knows
each other. The farmers who lost their fruit trees all belong to the Khazraji
tribe and are unlikely to give information about fellow tribesmen if they are,
in fact, attacking US troops.

Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught
voice: "It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands
were worth."

* * *


October 11, 2003

SPY PROBE LOOMS OVER GUANTANAMO BASE

By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba - This quiet outpost hastily turned into a
prison for terror suspects looks like a surreal slice of Americana - families
gather at an outdoor movie theater, kids play baseball on tidy fields and pieces
of apple pie swirl around dessert carousels to the crackle of "The Star-Spangled
Banner."

But whispers of espionage have disturbed the peace at this U.S. base where three
workers - a Muslim chaplain and two Arabic translators - have been charged with
crimes ranging from spying to disobeying orders.

It's the latest twist in a tale that began January 2002, when the shackled,
bearded inmates first arrived from the battlefields of Afghanistan. Guantanamo
personnel say it was easy to spot potential enemies back then. Now, the task has
become harder at the U.S. base in communist Cuba.

"You think twice about what you do," said Army Sgt. Jovani Barber, 24, from the
U.S. Virgin Islands, who has been guarding the detainees for about two months.
"You watch what you say inside and outside the fence" holding the prisoners.

Fearful of being questioned, troops say they don't talk to strangers anymore.
Some are writing friends less frequently because they think their e-mails are
being monitored. Others keep opinions to themselves.

"We call it the buddy system," says Army 1st Sgt. Jeffrey McCann, in charge of
Camp America, where the prison guards live. "But that system can also apply to
security as well. We watch each other."

That buddy system may have been what alerted U.S. officials to a security
breach. Fellow troops testified that translator Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I.
al-Halabi uttered anti-American sentiments. Al-Halabi, a Syrian-American, is
charged with espionage and aiding an unspecified enemy after allegedly releasing
detainee serial numbers and trying to pass secrets to Syria.

Ahmed F. Mehalba, a contracted Arabic translator, has been charged with lying to
federal agents when he denied the compact disc he was carrying contained secret
information from Guantanamo.

The Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. Yousef Yee, has been charged with disobeying
orders. He is accused of leaving the base with a layout of the prison block.

All three say they are innocent.

But the chaplain's arrest hits close to home for Maj. Gen. Geoffrey C. Miller.
Yee advised Miller on everything from the history of Islam to insights on the
rise in suicide attempts among the approximately 660 detainees from 42
countries.

Miller, who still insists "We have a thorough screening process," said Yee's
arrest came as a shock. "Some of it is objective. A lot of it is subjective.
It's the feel. It's the look," he told The Associated Press on Friday. "I was
surprised. The implication, whether it's true or not, is an area that we have to
examine quickly."

This past week, military investigators arrived amid fears the isolated camp has
been infiltrated from within and a bombardment of criticism of the detention
mission.

In a rare public statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross
condemned the indefinite detentions without charge or access to lawyers and
blamed it for "a worrying deterioration" in the prisoners' mental health.
Twenty-one detainees have attempted suicide 32 times.

"They have no idea about their fate and they have no means of recourse at their
disposal through any legal mechanism," said Florian Westphal, spokesman for the
Geneva-based organization that is the only independent group allowed access to
the detainees.

Others have questioned the morality of the mission.

Lower courts have supported the administration's argument that the detainees are
aliens held outside U.S. territory and therefore are not entitled to rights
granted by the U.S. Constitution.

Human rights groups have criticized the U.S. government for refusing to classify
the detainees as POWs and for holding three teenagers as "enemy combatants."

The three teenagers are held in townhouses where they watch movies - "Castaway"
is a favorite - learn to read and get debriefed by U.S. authorities who have
become foster parents of sorts. Miller says the boys were "taken hostage into a
life of terrorism" - but he hasn't recommended their release.

It is but one peculiarity on this base of contradictions.

Jamaican and Filipino contract workers earning less than $3 an hour serve
McDonald's hamburgers and apple pies. Military wives in shorts sit next to the
wives of 10 Muslim troops, wearing head scarves and long-sleeved shirts despite
the scorching heat. Children play baseball a short drive from the sprawling
prison camp.

While troops strive to learn more about Middle Eastern geography, the base's
telephone provider, LCN, lists North America as the cheapest calling area and
"The Philippine Islands and Islam" as the most expensive region. Bill Tierney, a
former interpreter at Guantanamo, said an interrogator didn't know Karachi was a
city in Pakistan.

Miller says there still are no plans for military tribunals, though a courtroom
was completed months ago with closed circuit television, government flags and
microphones.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the detainees could be held until the
war on terror ends, which could be years.

As if to emphasize that point, construction work has started on a permanent
concrete prison.

* * *


Newsday:

October 11, 2003

By Knut Royce, Washington Bureau

Washington - An Army captain, who was a Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay
prison where al-Qaida and Taliban suspects are being held, was charged with
disobeying orders in handling classified information, the military announced
Friday.

Army Capt. Yousef Yee, one of three military and civilian personnel arrested in
an ongoing investigation of possible espionage at the base, was charged "with
taking classified material to his home and wrongfully transporting classified
material without the proper security containers or covers," said the U.S.
Southern Command.

If court-martialed, he could receive one year in prison and a bad-conduct
discharge. A counterterrorism source who has been briefed by the Pentagon on the
progress of a major security investigation at the base said a dozen more people
are "under suspicion," with five of them considered to be of "serious" concern.

At the same time, the source said, there is no evidence the suspects -
translators, guard escorts and chaplains - have been involved in terrorism,
conspiracy or espionage. Most, he said, are suspected of disobeying orders and
breaking military regulations.

Yee was the first to be arrested when he landed in Jacksonville, Fla., on a
flight from Guantanamo on Sept. 10.

Scott Siliman, law professor at Duke University and an expert on national
security law, said in an interview the charges against Yee are "relatively
minor," compared with those filed recently against Senior Airman Ahmad al-
Halabi, an Air Force translator at Guantanamo who has been charged with
espionage and could receive a death sentence if convicted.

Siliman said there had been "tremendous pressure" on the Army to file charges
against Yee rather than to hold him indefinitely. He said more charges against
Yee could come later.

Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the Guantanamo prison, which holds
more than 600 suspected terrorists, will decide on the next step. His options
include dismissing the charges against Yee or convening a special court-martial.
He could also refer the case to a panel of officers who would act as a grand
jury in civilian criminal cases to decide whether the case should be sent to a
general court-martial.

The third man to have been charged so far is a former civilian Arabic
interpreter at the base, Ahmad F. Mehalba. Federal agents arrested him last
month when he arrived in Boston from his native Egypt. He has been charged in
federal court with lying to investigators when he denied that computer discs he
was carrying contained classified information from the Guantanamo prison, where
virtually everything is classified.

[ Washington Bureau Chief Timothy M. Phelps contributed to this story. ]

* * *


The Guardian (UK):

October 11, 2003

GUANTANAMO BAY PRISON RECREATED AS NORTHERN ART

by David Ward, The Guardian

Two handcuffed prisoners in orange overalls kneel in the compound of Camp X-Ray.
They can see and hear nothing. One slumps back on his heels as an armed guard
keeps watch.

To their left is the interrogation centre, behind them a watchtower with machine
gun in place. The fences are high and a stiff autumn breeze blows through the
barbed wire, fluttering the US flag.

Beyond the compound is a pub, a battered betting shop and a burger van whose
owner may be surprised to find that a little corner of Cuba has been recreated
on waste land in Hulme, a mile from the centre of Manchester.

This is performance art with a mission to dump state terrorism on the doorsteps
of the inner city. It is meant to shock. "As art goes, it is pretty
straightforward," said its creator, Jai Redman, speaking in his guard's uniform
from the other side of locked steel gates.

"There is nothing complicated about it. This is a fully-operational miniature
version of the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay. What is the point of
painting a picture of it or showing photographs or a video of it? People have
seen those and are immune to them.

"I wanted to create a mirror image of the site and place it in the community
which is the home of Ron Fiddler [known as Jamal Udeen], one of the British
prisoners in the camp, and see what local reaction would be."

Mr Redman argues that Mancunians can less easily dismiss the camp and what goes
on there if it turns up down the road from their local Asda.

"I am asking people to question whether we are the civilised nation we claim to
be or whether we are just barbarians. This camp is a weapon of state terrorism
and the British people need to know what it is like. We are asking them if they
are happy with it."

The camp, supported by donations and a small grant from the Arts Council in the
north-west of England, will stay for nine days to make Mr Redman's protest
clear.

"You can only march round the block with a million people escorted by the
Metropolitan police so many times," he said. "You get bored with that. This is
something different."

It is also chillingly authentic. Nine prisoners, one for each of the
incarcerated Britons, have been recruited via the internet.

They are not forced to sleep in open cages (this is Manchester in October,
remember) and are not tortured. But their stay will be otherwise authentic and
far from comfortable.

They are woken at 5am by the call to prayer and later observe the flag-raising
ceremony. They have a sick call at 11am and a mail call in the afternoon. At tea
time they are locked up in the interrogation centre and lights out is at 9pm.

The daily menu does not vary: porridge for breakfast, vegetable soup for lunch
and beans and rice for supper every day. Cigarettes or books may be available -
but only at the discretion of the guards, who are also volunteers. Some have
already found it "heartbreaking" to stand watch over kneeling prisoners.

Guards are advised that they do not need to shave off all their hair. "It just
needs to be short," says a website instruction. Most appear to have taken little
notice.

"I find the piece very interesting because what goes on at Camp X-Ray has been
very deliberately kept out of our gaze," said a man calling himself Joe Smith as
he arrived for guard duty. "And it's art in the community rather than on a
gallery wall."

The door of the interrogation centre opens again and a bowed, goggled and
shackled prisoner stumbles out, escorted by a guard. He passes through a gate,
uses the Portaloo and goes back where he came from.

* * *


CNN:

October 10, 2003 - 1432 GMT

RED CROSS: DETERIORATING CONDITIONS AT GUANTANAMO

GENEVA (AP) -- The International Red Cross said Friday many detainees held by
the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were suffering "a worrying
deterioration" in mental health because Washington had ignored appeals to give
them legal rights.

"They have no idea about their fate and they have no means of recourse at their
disposal through any legal mechanism," said Florian Westphal, spokesman for the
International Committee of the Red Cross.

Westphal said the ICRC, the only independent body with access to the detainees,
said it had yet to see "any significant movement" from U.S. officials to its
long-standing request that the United States give the detainees due legal
process in accordance with humanitarian law.

"We have observed what we consider to be a worrying deterioration in the
psychological health of a large number of the internees" because of the
uncertainty of their situation, Westphal told The Associated Press.

Some of the detainees, who are suspected of links to the fallen Afghan Taliban
regime or al-Qaida terrorist network, have been at Guantanamo for more than 18
months.

The ICRC, which is winding up a two-month visit to the camp, has been appealing
in private to the Bush administration for due process since soon after the
detention center was opened in early 2002, he noted.

The neutral, Swiss-run ICRC took the unusual step of going public with the
request in May when its president, Jakob Kellenberger, met with top officials of
the Bush administration during a visit to Washington.

In a statement posted on their Web site in August the ICRC noted its concern
"about the impact the seemingly open-ended detention is having on the
internees."

"As the internees spend more time in Guantanamo and continue to have no idea
what is going to happen to them, we are concerned that the impact on them will
get more serious," Westphal said.

Already, he added, "what we are seeing during our repeated visits is that this
uncertainty has definitely had an impact on the internees."

During the current visit, Red Cross representatives have carried out private
interviews with many of the detainees, he said.

They also have been giving the detainees Red Cross messages from their families
and have collected their return messages. For many, the letters are their main
way of staying in touch with their relatives. At last count there had been more
than 5,800 such messages, the ICRC said.

The ICRC says the detainees at Guantanamo come from more than 40 countries and
speak around 17 languages.

The agency, which is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of
warfare, noted that the U.S. has refused to grant the detainees prisoner of war
status but promised to treat them humanely.

Whatever the status, the ICRC said, "People held as a result of conflict or
armed violence are protected by international humanitarian law, and should be
treated humanely."

* * *


Associated Press:

October 10, 2003

ARMY CHARGES CHAPLAIN AT GUANTANAMO BAY

By Matt Kelley, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)--A former Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay prison for
terrorism suspects has been charged with disobeying orders for improperly
handling classified information, the military announced Friday.

Army Capt. James Yee, who also has used the name Yousef Yee, was charged with
two counts of failing to obey a lawful order, U.S. Southern Command announced.
He is charged with taking classified information home and wrongly transporting
classified information.

The charges, as outlined on an Army document released by Southern Command, say
Yee was carrying classified information when he was arrested last month and had
taken secret materials to a housing unit while serving as chaplain at the base
from November 2002 until last month.

Yee is one of three former workers at the high-security military base to be
arrested in a probe of alleged espionage there. Yee is not charged with
espionage.

Conviction of disobeying orders carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison
and a bad conduct discharge.

Authorities arrested Yee Sept. 10 as he arrived at a Jacksonville, Fla., naval
base on a flight from the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba.

He is being held at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

Telephone messages left at the office of Yee's defense laywers were not
returned. Friday was a training holiday for the Army so Yee's military defense
lawyers were unavailable for comment, Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Barbara
Burfeind said.

"The Army continues to investigate Yee's conduct, and if warranted, additional
charges could be forthcoming," Southern Command said in a statement.

Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison, will
decide on the next step. Miller's options include dismissing the charges or
convening a special court-martial, which could impose a penalty of up to a year
in prison and a bad conduct discharge. Miller also could send the case to an
Article 32 hearing, a kind of mini-trial in which prosecutors present evidence
for commanders to decide whether to send the case to a general court-martial.

A team of military investigators arrived at Guantanamo Bay Thursday to probe
security at the facility. Miller has ordered a security crackdown in the wake of
the three arrests, and military officials have said others who have not been
arrested are under suspicion.

The most serious charges are against Senior Airman Ahmed I. al-Halabi, an Air
Force supply clerk who worked as an Arabic translator at the prison for about
nine months. Military prosecutors accuse al-Halabi of gathering classified
information and messages from prisoners with plans to send that information to
Syria and an unidentified enemy. The charges, espionage and aiding the enemy,
could carry the death penalty.

Al-Halabi's lawyers say their client is innocent.

Also charged is a former civilian Arabic interpreter at the base, Ahmad F.
Mehalba. Agents arrested Mehalba last month as he arrived in Boston after
visiting his native Egypt. Mehalba is accused of lying to investigators by
denying that computer discs he carried with him had classified information from
Guantanamo Bay on them.

About 660 suspected members of the al-Qaida terrorist network or Afghanistan's
former Taliban government are being held at the Guantanamo Bay base. Military
officials are investigating whether the three arrested men were working
together.

AP-NY-10-10-03 1800EDT

* * *


Reuters:

October 10, 2003

U.S. ARMY CHAPLAIN CHARGED IN GUANTANAMO CASE

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has charged an Army chaplain who
ministered to imprisoned terrorism suspects at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay
in Cuba with two criminal counts as part of an espionage investigation.

Miami-based U.S. Southern Command said on Friday Army Capt. James Yee had been
charged with two violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for failing
to obey a lawful general order. Specifically, Yee is accused of taking
classified material to his home and wrongfully transporting the material without
proper security containers or covers.

Yee, 35, was arrested on September 10 at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in
Florida as he arrived back in the United States from Guantanamo. He had been
held since then without charges at a military brig in Charleston, South
Carolina.

A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the charges as
"preliminary" and necessary to keep holding Yee, but said the Army continues to
investigate him and additional charges may be filed.

Yee is one of three men arrested in an espionage investigation relating to
Guantanamo, where the U.S. military is holding about 660 foreign terrorism
suspects from 42 countries, most captured in Afghanistan, without charges or
legal representation.

The other two arrested were Arabic-language translators, one serving in the Air
Force and one a civilian contractor at the base. The arrests have triggered an
investigation into security lapses at the Camp Delta prison facility at
Guantanamo, but officials have said they do not know if there was a coordinated
attempt to infiltrate the base.

Yee is a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Raised a Lutheran in New Jersey, the Chinese American converted to Islam while
in the Army at about the same time he served in Saudi Arabia after the 1991 Gulf
War.

Yee resigned his commission and spent four years studying Islam in the Syrian
capital Damascus, then rejoined the American military as a Muslim cleric. He
ministered to many of the prisoners at Guantanamo during 10 months of duty.

The statement did not identify the classified material Yee was accused of
possessing, but officials have said he had maps and diagrams of the prison
facility.

Southern Command said the charges against Yee have been forwarded to Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the military joint task force running the
prison. Miller had the option of referring them to a court-martial, convening an
Article 32 hearing, which is the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding,
or dismissing the charges. The timing of any proceedings has not been
determined.

Ahmed Mehalba, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent who worked as a
civilian contractor, was arrested last week in Boston and was charged with lying
to federal officials about apparently classified information he was carrying.

Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Syrian
descent, was arrested on July 23 in Florida and charged with spying for Syria
and aiding the enemy.

* * *


Reuters:

October 10, 2003

RED CROSS SAYS GUANTANAMO STATUS "UNACCEPTABLE"

By Jonathan Wright

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Red Cross say it is unacceptable that
the United States continues to detain more than 600 people at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba without charges or prospect of a timely trial.

The United States set up the detention camp in early 2002 to hold suspected
members of al Qaeda captured during the war to overthrow the Taliban rulers of
Afghanistan.

But it refuses to treat the detainees as prisoners of war under the Geneva
Conventions and reserves the right to hold them indefinitely without bringing
them to trial.

"The main concern for us is the U.S. authorities ... have effectively placed
them beyond the law," said Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman in the Washington
office of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday.

"After more than 18 months of captivity, the internees have no idea about their
fate, no means of recourse through any legal mechanism. They have been placed in
a legal vacuum, a legal black hole. This, for the ICRC, is unacceptable,"
Williamson told Reuters.

The Red Cross, which has an international mandate to monitor compliance with the
Geneva Conventions and visit people detained in conflicts, has repeatedly
expressed its concerns about aspects of the detention camp at Guantanamo, which
was deliberately chosen because of its legal ambiguity.

But it usually couches any criticism in careful language because its priority is
to retain access to the detainees and to work behind the scenes for
improvements.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger visited Washington in May and told the United
States it was time to set a legal framework for the detainees.

But little has happened since then and the Red Cross has grown increasingly
concerned about the psychological effect of the uncertainty on the detainees.

"As time wears on, the anxiety for the detainees increases, and so do our
concerns for the impact this uncertainty is having on the population in
Guantanamo," Williamson said. "We did feel that we had to make our concerns
known.

"Clearly when you look at Guantanamo today, that crucial element -- the lack of
a legal framework -- remains unresolved."

The United States says the detainees are "enemy combatants" but not prisoners of
war under the Geneva Conventions. It reserves the right to try them before
military tribunals but has not yet brought any to trial.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday repeated the U.S. position that
it treats the detainees consistently with the requirements of the conventions.
"They are enemy combatants. We are at war on terrorism," he added.

On Thursday, a group of former U.S. federal judges, diplomats, military
officials and human rights advocates urged the Supreme Court to review the case
of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in the name of "terrorism."

"The idea that American executive branch personnel, particularly military
personnel, can detain people beyond the reach of habeas corpus is just repugnant
to the rule of law," said John Gibbons, former chief judge of the federal
appeals court in Philadelphia.

* * *


Reuters:

October 10, 2003

WHAT'S IN A LOGO? FOR RED CROSS, IT'S BOMBS, JOB CUTS, INTERNAL STRIFE

By Lars Inge Staveland

OSLO (AlertNet) - The protective emblems of the International Red Cross and Red
Crescent Movement (ICRM) are under more scrutiny than ever, as today's aid
workers face up to the reality that some people see them as representatives of
Western intervention, and therefore a legitimate target of attack.

Equal status for the red crescent alongside the cross since the 1980s has gone a
long way to assuage fears in Muslim countries that the movement was involved in
missionary work, but Israel's equivalent of a national Red Cross society is
still not allowed to use an alternative symbol, for fear of upsetting the
delicate balance.

At a time of heightened tension in the Middle East, the changes to international
humanitarian law required to approve a new neutral logo that would allow the
Israeli society's full membership are unlikely in the near future.

The delay places an extra financial strain on the international movement, since
some U.S. funding is being withheld. Jobs have already been cut as a
consequence, coinciding with a decentralisation drive away from the hub of
Geneva.

This year, at least two members of the Red Cross and Red Crescent have been
killed in targeted attacks in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

At each death, the ICRM has protested that under international law its staff
should have been protected by the organisation's logo.

Frances Stevenson, coordinator and research fellow at the London-based
Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN), told AlertNet: "It seems that humanitarian
aid has become so embroiled and coopted by political processes that it is
difficult to see how anybody could see humanitarian agencies as neutral and
impartial from the political processes.

"The protection of those logos is now fast disappearing.

POLITICS OF AID

"Aid agencies have to do everything they can to avoid being perceived to be in
one political camp.

"The logo issue is part of that," she said.

The red cross and the red crescent are recognised by the Geneva-based
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but the star of David is not.

This policy has sparked debate over the Israeli Magen David Adom (star of David
society-- MDA).

Full membership of the International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent
Societies (IFRC) requires ICRC recognition.

Florian Westphal, an ICRC communications delegate, told AlertNet: "(The logo) is
a very important part of our business, because (it) indicates who we are and
indicates very importantly that under the law we are not allowed to be
attacked."

However, he dismissed suggestions that the current debate was linked to the
perception of the organisation in the field.

Asked how a new emblem would affect the perception of the movement's activities,
Westphal said: "It will come as another element to be explained."

Westphal said IRCM risked a multiplication of national emblems if the star of
David was admitted.

"The whole thing about the emblem is that it works if people recognise it. And
the more of them you have, the more complicated that gets," he said.

A NEUTRAL EMBLEM

Haim Dagan, head of MDA's international department, said this argument did not
hold up, since there was already more than one emblem. "The excuse of
proliferation is not an excuse," he said.

The national societies of Kazakhstan and Eritrea also have reservations about
the existing logos and want to use both the cross and the crescent.

These two societies and MDA, along with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society --
which cannot have full membership because it is not recognised as a state by the
United Nations -- currently have observer status in the IFRC.

A new emblem has been proposed as a way out of the argument, in the form of a
square red frame standing on one corner, with a white background. National
societies would then be free to place their own symbols into the empty central
space.

MDA would prefer the red star of David to be recognised as a new symbol by the
ICRC, but Haim Dagan told AlertNet the new neutral emblem would be acceptable.

"It is a compromise that we can live with. But we are not going to give up our
emblem. Not now, not in the future," he said.

"If this compromise is accepted, we will use the new neutral emblem and we will
insert (the red star of David). With that we should be accepted as a full
member. No doubt," Dagan said.

Agreement on the new emblem has been a tortuous process -- which has still not
been finalised -- because its adoption needs to be enshrined in a new protocol
to the Geneva Conventions.

INTERRUPTED BY INTIFADA

A diplomatic conference involving all the states party to the Geneva Conventions
was planned during 2000, but was put on hold because of the resurgence of
violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ian Piper of the ICRC told AlertNet: "Until the situation in the Middle East
calms down and until the situation evolves where (the states party to the
Conventions) can actually meet, we are stuck."

Dr Mohammed Al-Hadid, president of the Jordanian Red Crescent society and vice-
chairman of the standing commission of the Red Cross Red Crescent, said:
"Because of the Intifada, and we didn’t want to politicise the conflict, it was
postponed."

Asked why unrest in the Middle East would make it difficult to find a diplomatic
solution to an issue that he regarded as a technicality, he said: "Governments
and people usually do not stick to the agenda. You have a lot of opportunists
who will use the occasion to raise other issues."

Al-Hadid dismissed suggestions that some Red Crescent societies had trouble
accepting Israeli membership to the IFRC.

"We have to be realistic," he said. "There is a state of Israel.

"And if you are a member of the Red Cross/Red Crescent, you have to believe in
the principles.

"And the principles say there is no discrimination. So how can we discriminate
against Jews, Arabs, whatever?" Al-Hadid said.

OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE

"It is just that we can not afford to give them some kind of recognition that
can be tailor-made for them. They have to follow the rules.

"It is not a matter of Arabs or Muslim being against Israelis coming in," he
said.

"If the additional protocol is approved at the diplomatic conference (of states
party to the Geneva Conventions), then it is binding and we cannot say
anything," Al-Hadid said.

Maha Azzam, research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and
an expert on Middle East politics, told AlertNet that the ICRC's impartial image
would be seriously damaged.

She said: "The Red Cross was seen as doing work that was welcomed. But it was
only with the foundation of the red crescent that (the movement) has had a more
acceptable face in the (Middle East) region.

"There was the symbolism of someone from the outside coming to help," she said.

"But with the development of the red crescent and its work in close alliance has
given greater credence and acceptability to the Red Cross," Azzam said.

"The good work will continue (with the third emblem). But what it will arouse is
again a feeling that there is a hidden agenda -- that the movement is giving in
to Israeli pressure," she said.

GENEVA CONVENTIONS

"On the level of public opinion, particularly in the Muslim world and among
Muslims throughout the world, the imagery and symbolism of the star of David
would cause a degree of antagonism.

"As soon as (the ICRC) accepts the star of David, its connections with Israel
then become cemented."

Al-Hadid said: "If the additional protocol is approved at the diplomatic
conference (of states party to the Geneva Conventions) and accommodates this,
then it is binding and we cannot say anything."

The red cross on a white background was adopted as a neutral protective emblem
by the first Geneva Convention in 1864, reversing the colours of the Swiss flag,
as a tribute to the country where the movement was started.

Historians disagree over whether the cross on the Swiss flag was originally a
symbol of Christianity or an adaptation of a regional flag used in battle.

The red crescent was first used as a protection symbol in 1876. It was
officially recognised under a Geneva Convention in 1929.

In 1983, the movement became the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
It took on its present name in 1991.

A third emblem, the red lion and sun used by Persia, was also recognised. It has
not been used since the Islamic revolution in 1979, but Iran reserves the right
to use it in the future.

The 1929 Convention on emblems states that no new symbols will be recognised.

CASH CONSEQUENCES

The refusal to accept MDA -- which was founded in 1930 -- as a voting member has
financial consequences for the secretariat in Geneva.

The American Red Cross has withheld $5 million in annual membership dues to the
IFRC since 2000.

American Red Cross spokeswoman Devorah Goldburg told AlertNet: "We think they
are not being neutral by not allowing them. We believe strongly that the Israeli
Red Cross deserves to be a voting member," Goldburg said.

She emphasised that the American Red Cross was only withholding administrative
dues, and that contributions to Red Cross and Red Crescent humanitarian
activities would not be affected.

The unpaid dues amount to 25 per cent of the IFRC secretariat’s budget, and
caused the IFRC to lay off 15 employees in July 2002.

Head of media relations at the IFRC, Denis McClean, told AlertNet no further job
cuts were planned in the immediate future.

However, the financial constraints caused by the withheld dues coincide with a
decentralisation process to move staff and resources out of Geneva. McClean said
this process was unrelated to the funding shortfall because of the logo dispute.

"We don’t have access to that money but that has been factored into the
budgetary calculations for some years," he said.

"(We are) continuing to implement our change strategy which does mean naturally
a decrease of staff and resources in Geneva as we build up our field
infrastructure," McClean said.

The call for full membership of MDA is echoed by the U.S. political
establishment.

The U.S. Senate has agreed to a provision to withhold an $8 million State
Department contribution to the ICRC headquarters, if the State department finds
that MDA is not being included within the movement.

However, for the last two years U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has
determined that MDA is being allowed to participate in the activities of the
international movement, and has released the funds.

* * *


CNN:

October 10, 2003

HIGH CRIMES AT GUANTANAMO BAY?
Why the espionage allegations, if proved, may
be serious enough to warrant the death penalty

By Phillip Carter, FindLaw columnist

Special to CNN.com

(FindLaw) -- Recently, the United States took two of its own servicemen --
Captain Yousef Yee and Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi -- into custody for
alleged acts of espionage.

And just last week, the FBI took another American -- Ahmed Mehalba -- into
custody for allegedly stealing classified documents from the same location. (The
charges against Halabi and the charges against Mehalba are public; Yee has not
yet been publicly charged.)

All three cases are intimately linked to America's detention and interrogation
center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- where more than 600 detainees from the war on
terrorism are being held. The U.S. government has designated these prisoners as
"unlawful combatants," and thus has given them something less than full Geneva
Convention status as prisoners of war.

Since their capture, the government has exhaustively interrogated all of these
prisoners for information about al Qaeda, the Taliban, and terrorism generally.
Although the precise results remain classified, several reports indicate that
this effort has yielded some valuable intelligence for the war on terrorism.

The essence of the charges against these three men is this: According to the
government, they gathered classified information about Guantanamo Bay, and
interfered with the interrogation effort there. If these allegations are proven,
the men could be convicted of capital espionage, defined as communicating,
delivering, transmitting, or attempting to communicate, deliver or transmit
information about nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft, early warning systems
against large-scale attack, war plans, communications, or other major weapons
systems. (A lesser, non-capital charge of espionage exists for communication
information about other secret matters).

Yee and Halabi could also be convicted of aiding the enemy, defined as giving
(or attempting to give) "arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things" to
the enemy, communicating with the enemy, or having "any intercourse with the
enemy, either directly or indirectly".

If convicted, the two military defendants could face the death penalty. (In
contrast, Mehalba currently faces up to 5 years in federal prison for his
alleged false statements to airport officials, but more charges are expected
that could lead to a life sentence for him.)

At first glance, imposition of the death penalty here might seem severe,
especially for non-violent crimes; after all, murder is the classic death-
eligible crime. But, as the government doubtless points out, these crimes, if
they are proven, will have jeopardized not just one life, but literally
thousands, for they could have a lasting impact on America's ability to
understand the threat it faces from Al Qaeda.

Viewed in this context, the death penalty begins to seem far more appropriate.
Certainly few who support the death penalty for murder would oppose it for
Richard Reid -- the so-called "shoe bomber" who tried to down a passenger
airliner. Yet if the allegations against Yee and Halabi are proven, they have
put many, many more people in serious jeopardy than even the notorious Reid did.
The facts of Yee's case

On September 10, in Jacksonville, Florida, the government arrested Captain James
"Yousef" Yee, a U.S. Army Muslim chaplain who was assigned to provide religious
counsel to the detainees at Guantanamo. Yee was then transferred to the military
brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where he remains today. Yee has been
assigned military defense counsel, and apparently, a military magistrate
approved Yee's pre-trial confinement.

Yee grew up in the United States and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point. He fought in the first Gulf War as an air defense artillery officer,
but eventually left the Army. Yee converted to Islam while in the Saudi desert
for that war; he later left the Army and moved to the Middle East to study
Islam.

After graduating from a prestigious seminary in Syria, Yee moved back to the
United States, where he sought to re-enter the U.S. Army as a military chaplain.
In late 2002, the Army deployed Yee to Guantanamo Bay to tend to the religious
needs of the detainees there.

Details are sketchy about Captain Yee's case, because no official charges have
been released. Some reports say that he allegedly counseled detainees not to
reveal information to their interrogators. Other reports say that he allegedly
took messages from the detainees and promised to convey them to friends and
relatives abroad -- messages which may have been coded and intended for other
terrorists. It's also thought that Yee is alleged to have taken a large amount
of classified information from Guantanamo, including schematics of the facility
and the names of the detainees.
The facts of Halabi's case

The facts of Airman Halabi's case are more clear than those of Yee's case, if
only because formal charges have been preferred against Halabi, and made public.

Halabi was assigned to Guantanamo Bay on a temporary basis from Vandenburg Air
Force Base in California because of his language abilities. A native Syrian,
Halabi was a naturalized U.S. citizen who spoke Arabic with a fluency no school-
trained interrogator could ever match. As a translator, he played a crucial role
in the interrogations, serving as the conduit between the intelligence experts
and the detainees.

Prosecutors allege that Halabi did a number of things to frustrate the
interrogation effort he was supposed to be aiding. More than 30 counts charge
Halabi with e-mailing the names and serial numbers of detainees to foreign
sources known to be the enemy, acting as a courier for notes from the detainees,
and mishandling classified materials. In one count, Halabi is alleged to have
aided the enemy by arranging private meetings with the detainees and delivering
food -- including baklava.
The facts of Mehalba's case

The third suspect -- the one who currently faces, at most, a life and not a
death sentence -- is Ahmed Mehalba. Mehalba is a former U.S. Army intelligence
specialist, and the nephew of a retired Egyptian army intelligence officer. He
was employed by Titan Corporation, a San Diego-based defense contractor, as a
linguist for the interrogation effort.

Federal agents arrested Mehalba at Logan Airport in Boston after he returned
from a trip to Egypt. Mehalba presented airport officials with a Defense
Department ID card and U.S. passport upon his entry, as well as an ID that said
he worked as a linguist at Guantanamo Bay. While searching his bags, airport
officials reportedly found a number of classified documents, many connected to
the facility at Guantanamo Bay. Federal agents took Mehalba into custody and
charged him with making false statements to federal agents about whether he had
classified documents in his possession.

Authorities say they have no evidence that Mehalba was connected to Yee or
Halabi, but a classified investigation is currently underway into the matter.
Mehalba remains in custody in Boston pending these charges, with a preliminary
hearing set for October 8.

If convicted on this charge alone, Mehalba could face up to 5 years in prison
and a $250,000 fine. However, many experts think that Mehalba will be charged
with additional crimes such as providing material support to terrorists, which
may make him eligible for life in prison.
Why Yee and Halabi, if convicted, will be death-eligible

If true, the allegations against Yee and Halabi could lead to the death penalty.
Espionage and aiding the enemy both carry the penalty of death under the Uniform
Code of Military Justice.

If a military jury convicts these men, it could recommend the death penalty --
but would have to do so by a unanimous verdict. If such a verdict were issued,
it would have to be approved by the convening officers for each soldier's trial.
(This requirement constitutes a kind of executive review in the military justice
system. Such review ensures that both the jury and the office agree that the
death penalty is warranted in a given case.)

The sentences would then be automatically reviewed by the respective services'
court of criminal appeals. After that, they would once again be automatically
reviewed, this time by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Both military defendants could also appeal their sentences to the U.S. Supreme
Court, but there, review would be discretionary -- not automatic.
The importance of ensuring the security of interrogations

As I noted above, if these three defendants breached interrogation security,
they may have put thousands of lives at risk -- because they may have fatally
imperiled the efficacy of the Guantanamo interrogations.

This contention may sound like hyperbole to a civilian unfamiliar with either
the power of interrogation, or its fragility when imperiled. But to those
familiar with interrogation, this contention about the damage Yee and Halabi, if
guilty, may have done, is very credible indeed.

Interrogation is a dark art, practiced in secrecy by men and women whose
existence is often denied by the governments for whom they work. Most Western
governments -- the U.S. included -- have moved away from physical means of
torture -- for reasons not only of humaneness, but also of efficacy.

As Mark Bowden recently explained in an article in The Atlantic Monthly, torture
usually forces the mind to shut down, yielding no results. Thus, coercion,
distinguished from torture by its focus on the mind instead of the body, has
become the preferred method of interrogation for American intelligence officers.

Successful interrogators generally start their process by building a
relationship in which the detainee feels, and is, dependent upon the
interrogator. This sense of dependency is reinforced by isolation, as well as
other tools like sleep deprivation, and disorientation as to the time and place.
A detainee who's alone, disoriented, and afraid will likely turn to his
interrogator for help -- assistance that can be bought with the currency of
information.

Small environmental changes can have a major impact on the detainee's
willingness to resist interrogation, whether these small changes are extra food
from a guard or a kind word from the chaplain.

Contact with the outside world can be extremely disruptive, as it often gives
the detainee a false sense of hope or sense that he is allied with a larger
struggle. Indeed, in memoirs written after the Vietnam War, many American POWs
said that their contact with other inmates was what enabled them to persevere
through years of captivity.

If Yee and Halabi indeed, as the government believed, acted as friendly
counselors to, couriers for, and even -- in Halabi's case -- procurers of food
for, the detainees, then it is very likely that they fatally sidetracked
interrogation. It is also likely that had that interrogation been successful,
lifesaving information about al Qaeda and terrorism more generally would have
been learned.

Initial reports indicate that Yee and Halabi may have acted so as to destroy the
necessary atmosphere of dependency and isolation. As chaplain, Yee enjoyed a
privileged position where he was able to meet privately with the detainees, and
he was expected to give them religious counsel. In doing so, he may have also
steeled their wills against the American interrogators, hampering the
intelligence gathering effort.

Similarly, Halabi acted as an interpreter at the base, and is alleged to have
had extensive unauthorized contacts with the detainees -- even giving some
baklava as a way of raising their spirits.

While these acts may seem innocent, they have an enormously destructive effect
on the interrogation environment.
The separate but similar isolation issues in the Hamdi and Padilla cases

The issues raised here are somewhat parallel to -- though separate and different
from -- the issues raised in the cases of Jose Padilla (the alleged "dirty
bomber") and Yaser Hamdi (captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan). Yee and
Halabi were part of the U.S. military; Padilla and Hamdi were civilians who are
alleged, respectively, to have conspired with the enemy, and to have fought with
the enemy.

Unlike Yee and Halabi, Padilla and Hamdi have been denied attorneys, though they
are U.S. citizens -- leading to intense controversy on this point. But in the
cases of all four men, as well as that of Mehalba, the government has reasonably
urged that interrogation in isolation is of paramount importance. Indeed, in
Padilla and Hamdi's cases, the government has argued that this seclusion would
be disturbed by allowing access to an attorney.

In December 2002, a federal judge directed that Padilla should be allowed access
to an attorney. But the government has still refused to let it happen, appealing
the issue to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In Hamdi's case, the government offered a declaration from U.S. Navy Commander
Donald D. Woolfolk in support of its bid to deny Hamdi access to legal counsel.
This declaration remains one of the best statements of why the government does
not want to allow anything -- attorneys, family members, or the outside world --
to get inside its interrogation rooms at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.

"The United States does not employ any corporal means of coercion to gain
information from persons being interrogated. Rather, the United States has
adopted a humane approach to interrogation that relies upon creating an
atmosphere of dependency and trust between detainees and the intelligence
gathering staff assigned to that detainee. Over time, information is learned. .
. . Under such circumstances the need to maintain the tightly controlled
environment, which has been established to create dependency and trust by the
detainee with his interrogator, is of paramount importance. Disruption of the
interrogation environment, such as through access to a detainee by counsel,
undermines this interrogation dynamic. Should this occur, a critical resource
may be lost, resulting in a direct threat to national security."

This declaration is no overstatement -- it reflects military realities, and the
reality of the circumstances under which interrogation succeeds, or fails.
How intelligence from interrogation has been effectively exploited

Ultimately, the goal of all these interrogations is to produce information about
al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist threats around the world. This
information is analyzed, refined, and converted into intelligence. This
intelligence subsequently informs the decisions and actions of our political
leaders, law enforcement officers, and soldiers in the war on terrorism -- and
inaccuracies or omissions can be deadly. Two examples help to illustrate how
this can work.

First, The New York Times reported this week that Pentagon officials are
concerned that Halabi and Mehalba might have deliberatively mistranslated scores
of interrogation proceedings at Guantanamo Bay.

At best, these mistranslations might have obscured the truth about al Qaeda, its
organization, and its plans. But it's also possible that these mistranslations
may have concealed critical information about the organization, such as its
plans to bomb a U.S. compound in Saudi Arabia or the known hideouts of Osama bin
Laden. At worst, Halabi and Mehalba may have changed the answers so as to send
investigators on a wild goose chase, taking resources away from counterterrorism
efforts that may bear fruit.

Second -- and more concretely -- since Jose Padilla's May 2002 arrest, the
Justice Department has credited interrogations at Guantanamo Bay with producing
the information necessary to find the man with whom Padilla allegedly conspired
-- the "dirty" bomber himself, who is alleged to have planned to detonate a
radiological dispersal device in the United States.

If someone had frustrated those interrogations -- as Yee and Halabi allegedly
did with respect to the Guantanamo interrogations in which they were involved --
American intelligence officials might not have learned of these plans, and the
"dirty bomb" attack might have gone forward. Had it done so, hundreds or
thousands of Americans could have been wounded or killed.
The death penalty is a proper punishment for espionage and aiding the enemy

In sum, Yee and Halabi -- if guilty -- did something tremendously destructive
and dangerous. If guilty, they have substantially impeded America's collection
of intelligence in the war on terrorism. And if guilty, they may well have put
thousands of lives at risk.

The death penalty may seem extreme for a crime that is not immediately violent.
But the violence may have already happened -- or may be still to come. If these
men did provide intelligence and aid to the enemy, then they may have actually
caused the deaths of Americans at home and abroad -- or they may yet cause such
deaths in the future.

It remains unclear how much damage these three men have caused, if any at all.
Indeed, the findings of any investigations are likely to remain classified.
However, if the allegations are true, then we can be certain that these men have
done an incredible amount of damage to America's war on terrorism. Imposition of
the death penalty, under the circumstances, would not be unjust.

[ Phillip Carter, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Army officer and third year
law student at UCLA who writes the Intel Dump weblog.
http://philcarter.blogspot.com./ ]

* * *


October 10, 2003

RED CROSS CONCERNED OVER GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

Associated Press

The International Red Cross (ICRC) today said that many detainees being held by
the US military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were suffering "a worrying
deterioration" in mental health because Washington had ignored appeals to give
them legal rights.

"They have no idea about their fate and they have no means of recourse at their
disposal through any legal mechanism," Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the
ICRC, said.

He said that the ICRC, the only independent body with access to the detainees,
had yet to see "any significant movement" from US officials in response to its
long-standing request that Washington institute due legal process for the
detainees in accordance with humanitarian law.

"We have observed what we consider to be a worrying deterioration in the
psychological health of a large number of the internees," Mr Westphal told the
Associated Press.

Some of the detainees, who are suspected of having links to the fallen Afghan
Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terrorist network, have been detained at
Guantanamo for more than 18 months.

The ICRC, which is concluding a two-month visit to the camp, has been appealing
in private to the Bush administration for due process since shortly after the
opening of the detention centre in early 2002.

The neutral, Swiss-run ICRC took the unusual step of going public with the
request in May when its president, Jakob Kellenberger, met top Bush
administration officials during a visit to Washington.

The criticism has remained public. In a statement posted on its website in
August, the ICRC conveyed its concern about the impact that the seemingly open-
ended detention is having on internees.

"As the internees spend more time in Guantanamo and continue to have no idea
what is going to happen to them, we are concerned that the impact on them will
get more serious," Mr Westphal said.

During the current visit, Red Cross representatives have carried out private
interviews with many detainees.

They also have been giving them Red Cross messages from their families, and have
collected their return messages. For many, the letters are their main way of
staying in touch with their relatives.

The ICRC, which is the guardian of the Geneva conventions on the conduct of
warfare, noted that the US has refused to grant the detainees prisoner of war
status, but had promised to treat them humanely.

* * *


BBC:

October 10, 2003

GUANTANAMO DETENTIONS BLASTED

A senior Red Cross official has launched a rare attack on the US detention of
al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Christophe Girod told the New York Times it was unacceptable that the 600
detainees should be held for open-ended terms without proper legal process.

His criticism came as a group of American former judges, diplomats and military
officers called on the US Supreme Court to examine the legality of holding the
foreign nationals for almost two years, without trial, charge or access to
lawyers.

Mr Girod said the International Committee of the Red Cross was making the
unusually blunt public statement because of a lack of action after previous
private contacts with American officials.

"One cannot keep these detainees in this pattern, this situation, indefinitely,"
he said during a visit to the US naval base where the Taleban and al-Qaeda
suspects are being held.

'GHOSTS'

US officials insist there are reasons for holding the alleged fighters and say
they will get a fair legal hearing in due course.

The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the
population has become a major problem
Christophe Girod, ICRC
Mr Girod is leading a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross,
which has just completed an inspection tour of the detention camp in Cuba.

Although he did not criticise any physical conditions at the camp, he said that
it was intolerable that the complex was used as "an investigation centre, not a
detention centre".

"The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the
population has become a major problem," he told the New York Times.

Christine Huskey, an American lawyer representing 28 Kuwaiti inmates, told the
BBC she had had "absolutely" no access to them.

"I represent a ghost," she told the World Today programme.

DEAF EAR?

In the past 18 months, 21 detainees have made 32 suicide attempts, and many more
are being treated for depression, the New York Times says.

Mr Girod says prisoners who spoke to his team regularly asked about what was
going to happen to them.

"It's always the number one question," he said. "They don't know about the
future."

Camp officials have said most of the detainees' mental health problems existed
before they arrived.

The Geneva-based ICRC is the only group outside the US Government allowed to
visit the detention camp.

In exchange for access, the committee has agreed to take any initial complaints
directly to Washington. It publicises its views only when it feels they are not
being heeded.

In this instance, the ICRC says it has been urging the White House for months to
make significant changes in Guantanamo.

The administration, Mr Girod said, should consider establishing a policy of
giving detainees some idea of when they can learn whether they will be charged
or released.

'Repugnant'

On Sunday a group including former American judges and military officials filed
legal papers urging the US Supreme Court to intervene.

Don Guter, the US navy's judge advocate general until last year, said it was not
acceptable simply to hold suspected al-Qaeda or Taleban members until the US war
on terror was over.

The argument filed to the Supreme Court by Mr Guter and others said: "The lives
of American military forces may well be endangered by the United States' failure
to grant foreign prisoners in its custody the same rights that the United States
insists be accorded to American prisoners held by foreigners."

That view was backed by ex-prisoners-of-war, some of whom told the Supreme Court
they owed their lives to the fact that their captors abided by the Geneva
conventions.

On Wednesday an Australian lawyer representing some of the suspects said they
were being submitted to torture.

US officials have denied torturing detainees, saying they are allowed to
practise their religion and given good medical care.

* * *


ABC News:

October 9, 2003

NEW GUANTANAMO ARRESTS MAY BE IMMINENT

Investigators Probe Security Breaches at Guantanamo;
Sources Say More Arrests May Be Imminent

The Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba Oct. 9 -- Nearly two dozen investigators are
searching for possible security breaches at the U.S. prison for terror suspects,
officials said Thursday at the camp where espionage charges have heightened
tensions. Sources familiar with the investigation said two more arrests may be
imminent.

Investigators from the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command reported to the island
on Saturday and on Tuesday, the same day as five non U.S.-born interpreters
contracted by the same company that employed an American translator who has been
arrested.

Investigators will try to establish how a translator already under investigation
got secret clearance and was allowed onto the base, and how a second translator
managed to leave with classified information. In addition, a Muslim chaplain is
under investigation after allegedly leaving with diagrams of the prison layout.

The translators, from San Diego-based Titan Corp., arrived as officials boosted
security by closely monitoring e-mail messages, asking troops to report
suspicious behavior, and postponing the assignment of another Muslim chaplain.

Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who commands the detention mission, said they
also are increasing baggage checks and considering lie detector tests.

He thought Titan had done a good job but said its contract is under review:
"They go through a very thorough screening process, but that contract is being
reassessed."

"I was surprised" by the arrests, Miller said, but would not discuss how
security might have broken down.

Titan employed Ahmed F. Mehalba, an Arabic translator charged with lying to
federal agents when he denied the compact disc he was carrying contained secret
information from Guantanamo.

A second translator, Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, was already under
investigation for allegedly making anti-American statements before he arrived at
Guantanamo. He is now charged with espionage and aiding the enemy.

Both translators say they are innocent.

Army Capt. Yousef Yee, the chaplain, is being held on suspicion of aiding the
enemy.

Both military and civilian officials acknowledge part of the problem is finding
qualified linguists for Guantanamo, where about 70 translators help 200
interrogators in 17 languages.

"They're always looking for Arabic interpreters," said Peter Peterson, an Iraqi-
American translator who arrived Tuesday. "I believe in what I'm doing, though,
and I believe in the mission."

The Guantanamo detention mission began Jan. 11, 2002, as an impromptu operation
with 20 shackled terror suspects locked behind crude chain-link cells. The
prison camp now an enclosed facility called Camp Delta has grown to 660
detainees suspected of having links to al-Qaida's terror network or
Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

"You can have the most secure cells and an isolated military base, but if you
don't control the people who come onto the base, you have a serious problem,"
Matt Levitt, a terrorism analyst and senior fellow at the Washington Institute,
said by telephone.

Levitt said if there were three security breaches at Guantanamo it represented
"a colossal intelligence failure."

The prisoners, from 42 countries, are not allowed access to lawyers and none has
been charged. At least three are teenagers. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has said they could be held until the war on terror ends. And construction
workers said Thursday they have begun building a permanent concrete prison.

At the base, new leaflets warn troops to watch what they say.

Miller took over in November 2002 and quickly instituted a system of rewards for
detainees who cooperated in interrogations, ranging from bottled water to being
moved to a medium-security wing.

Miller has said the rewards system has yielded valuable information about terror
cells and recruiting. "We have five times as much intelligence as we did during
the same time last year," he said Thursday.

But as restrictions eased, relationships reportedly grew between the detainees
and their captors.

"Some of the men wrote to their families saying they had developed relationships
with some of the camp personnel," said Qatari lawyer Najeeb al-Nauimi, who is
trying to get at least 90 detainees released to their native countries.

Investigators want to know how deep the relationships were, and whether
translators could have misrepresented statements to protect detainees.

Miller said officials continue to exercise security precautions because "These
(detainees) are still very bad people."

Meanwhile the only independent group with access to the detainees, a team from
the International Committee of the Red Cross was wrapping up its latest visit
Thursday in meetings with U.S. officials.

The ICRC has urged the United States to abide by international conventions
governing prisoners of war. International rights groups have said the indefinite
detentions without charge, which have led to dozens of suicide attempts, are
inhumane.

But Miller insisted Thursday that "There's never been an issue with the ICRC
about the humane treatment we give to the detainees."

* * *


October 9, 2003

Sorting out any damage done by Guantanamo agents

By Lisa Hoffman
Scripps Howard News Service

- If there were enemy moles at work inside the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo
Bay, what damage might they have done to America's war on terror?

That is the question at the heart of a probe under way at the U.S. base on the
tip of the island of Cuba, where 660 suspected al Qaeda or Taliban fighters are
being held.

Shaken by the recent arrests of two U.S. Arabic translators and the detention of
a Muslim U.S. Army chaplain who had worked at the base, investigators are poring
over tapes of interrogation sessions with detainees to see if interpreters
sympathetic to the enemy cause might have sabotaged them.

If they indeed tried to do so, the saboteurs haven't been terribly successful,
at least according to top U.S. military, law-enforcement and Bush administration
leaders who have touted the value of information provided by many of the
detainees since what is now called Camp Delta opened in January 2002.

Recently, for instance, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers called
the Guantanamo operation a "national asset," noting that, "information gleaned
from known terrorists held (there) has helped us to define and disrupt the
global terrorist threat."

Even more effusive has been the FBI, which in June detailed a wealth of insights
and hard information that had been supplied by the Guantanamo prisoners.

In a bulletin to state and local law-enforcement agencies, the FBI said
interrogations had revealed locations of safe houses and terrorist training
camps around the world, identities of key al Qaeda operatives, links between
terrorist groups, tactics and strategies, and evidence that terror chief Osama
bin Laden knew about big attacks before they occurred.

Thanks to information supplied by some of the 17 Moroccans in custody at
Guantanamo, a plot to blow up U.S. and British naval vessels in the Strait of
Gibraltar last May was thwarted, according to the White House. Other detainee
interrogations, coupled with information gathered from al Qaeda camps and
captives in Afghanistan, revealed terrorist interest in targeting U.S. passenger
trains last October.

According to Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who runs the Guantanamo prison complex,
about three-quarters of the detainees have confessed to at least some degree of
involvement in terrorism. In February, he told reporters, the prisoners served
up 35 "high-value" pieces of information. And in June, he said, interrogators
scored more than 225 key bits of intelligence.

During that period, the three Muslim-Americans snared in connection with
possible security breaches were all working at the camp, along with some 70 or
so other civilian and military translators.

Army Capt. James Yee had been a chaplain there for 10 months before he was taken
into custody Sept. 1 for allegedly having maps of the prison and lists of the
names of detainees and interrogators.

Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, who worked as an Arabic translator at
the camp from last November until he was arrested July 23, has been charged with
trying to deliver messages from prisoners, their names and diagrams of the camp
to unspecified people in Syria.

Ahmed Mehalba, a former GI who had been a civilian translator at the camp for
less than a year, was arrested at a Boston airport Sept. 30 after he was
allegedly found to be carrying compact discs that contained classified
information about prisoners.

While everything that transpires at Guantanamo is held by the military in the
tightest grip of secrecy, some of the data the three suspects allegedly took out
of the camp already has become public.

Given that the detainees are allowed to write letters to their families, the
identities of those who correspond are no longer secret. The same holds for the
names of some 70 detainees who have been freed and allowed to return to their
home countries, presumably bringing with them a wealth of detail about the camp,
their interrogators and fellow inmates.

Inside insights about the camp and its operations also have been gleaned by
human-rights groups, who have interviewed many of those returnees in connection
with legal efforts to gain attorneys and other due-process rights for the
remaining detainees. And the layout of Camp Delta is so widely known that a
British artist is building a life-size replica of the facility in Manchester,
England, to publicize what he calls the plight of those being held at the
prison.

Intelligence experts say little of what detainees may offer up is taken as
gospel by interrogators; instead, it is mixed and matched to corroborate or rule
out information picked up elsewhere. That presumably would also minimize any
attempt by a translator to plant false information or otherwise throw anti-
terror forces off the track.

Mitigating any potential major intelligence leak, as well, is the fact that the
most important enemy captives - such as Abu Zubaida, a top al Qaeda operative -
have never been held at Guantanamo.

In some cases, those who have the best beans to spill have been handed over
temporarily to other countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia for the
more muscular interrogation techniques allowed there. Others, such as Zubaida,
allegedly are in the custody of the CIA, held entirely incommunicado in
undisclosed locations.

By far, Camp Delta detainees are considered to have been low- to mid-level
fighters or supporters - and thus of lesser intelligence value. "They're not the
worst of the worst," said Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch in Washington.

(Reach Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl@shns.com)

* * *


October 9, 2003

GROUPS URGE SUPREME COURT TO ACT ON GUANTANAMO

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of former U.S. federal judges, diplomats,
military officials and human rights advocates urged the Supreme Court on
Thursday to review the case of detainees held without being charged at
Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in the name of terrorism.

The group filed seven friend-of-the-court briefs questioning the legality of the
U.S. treatment of prisoners at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
elsewhere under the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and international
law.

"The idea that American executive branch personnel, particularly military
personnel, can detain people beyond the reach of habeas corpus is just repugnant
to the rule of law," said John Gibbons, former chief judge of the federal
appeals court in Philadelphia.

Gibbons said he hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would "restore the rule of law" by
authorizing a judicial review of these cases.

The military is holding about 660 terrorism suspects from 42 countries at the
U.S. base in Cuba. No charges have been brought against them but the United
States has identified a handful it considers eligible for military tribunals.

The briefs were filed in connection with two cases from Guantanamo Bay currently
being appealed to the Supreme Court and one for an American-born Taliban
prisoner detained in a U.S. Navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina.

The United States considers the prisoners enemy combatants and not prisoners of
war who are granted a wide range of protections under international law.

The first detainees, seized during the U.S. campaign against Osama bin Laden's
al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, arrived in January
2002 at Guantanamo. Al Qaeda has been blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Ret. Rear Adm. Donald Guter, who was judge advocate general for the U.S. Navy
from 2000-2002, said the war on terrorism should not be used as an excuse to
disregard the rule of law.

He said the war on terrorism could continue for a long time and it could be
years before these detainees got a hearing.

"For all intents and purposes these folks are condemned to a long time on
Guantanamo Bay in the prison camps with not even an opportunity to have their
issues aired, their situation reviewed by a tribunal," said Guter.

William D. Rogers, a former assistant secretary of state who joined a group of
diplomats filing a brief, said U.S. policy on the detainees was having a
devastating impact on foreign policy.

Once regarded as a model for human rights, he said the United States was seen by
many as the "bully on the block."

"These prisoners stand in a kind of purgatory. They are beyond the reach of the
rule of law which is the very essence of America's role in the world," said
Rogers.

* * *


New York Daily News:

October 9, 2003

NO SPY RAP VS. CLERIC?
Expect just minor Gitmo charges

By James Gordon Meek, Daily News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Army investigators are leaning toward filing slap-on-the-wrist
charges versus a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was investigated for
espionage, a military source told the Daily News yesterday.

The "handful" of minor charges against Capt. Yousef Yee could be leveled by next
week and are not expected to include the more serious allegations of spying,
sedition or aiding the enemy, according to the source familiar with the probe.

"It's very weak," the military source said, saying the charges are likely to be
related to dereliction of duty and disobeying a general order. "It's nothing
compared to espionage or anything like that."

Yee, 35, who was raised in Springfield, N.J., and graduated from West Point, was
caught up in a growing spy scandal at the ultrahigh-security Camp Delta, where
about 660 AlQaeda and Taliban suspects are being held.

The chaplain was collared by suspicious Customs Service inspectors at the
Jacksonville, Fla., Naval Air Station on Sept. 10. Diagrams of cells and names
of detainees and their interrogators were allegedly found in Yee's luggage, law
enforcement sources said.

Officials at the Army's Southern Command, which oversees the Yee probe led by
counterintelligence agents, declined to comment yesterday.

Military investigators initially suspected that Yee may have acted somehow out
of sympathy for the plight of detainees who have been confined in Cuba for
almost two years without charges.

Yee's arrest came six weeks after the arrest of Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi,
an Arabic translator at Gitmo. Al-Halabi was charged with 30 counts ofspying for
Syria and Qatar, and his case touched off a broad espionage investigation at
Camp Delta.

Other Gitmo translators and staff are under scrutiny, including a Navy cook
questioned by investigators last week and released, Pentagon officials said.
Also last week, a second translator, Ahmed Mehalba, was arrested in Boston after
customs agents allegedly found a secret document on a computer disk in his
luggage.

Several military sources said that although many questions remain in the larger
espionage investigation, there is no indication a spy ring operated inside the
camp.

* * *

October 8, 2003 - 0323 GMT

Military to charge Islamic chaplain

From Barbara Starr, CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military will file charges against Army Capt. James
Yee, the Islamic chaplain who has been held for nearly a month on suspicions of
espionage and aiding the enemy, military officials told CNN Wednesday.

Yee was taken into custody after he was reported to have been found with
classified material on his return to the United States from the U.S. naval base
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but was not charged with a crime.

Yee is a Chinese-American who converted to Islam after graduating from the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point.

Military officials said "the expectation" is to file charges within the next few
days, even if the initial charges are minor.

Charges of espionage, which Yee could eventually face, are likely to take
considerable time to assemble.

By filing the less-severe charges first, the military will demonstrate that it
is continuing to work on the case and that Yee is not languishing in the naval
brig at Charleston, South Carolina, where he is being held, officials said.

Meanwhile, a military investigator has made his recommendations to court-martial
authorities regarding more than 30 charges, including espionage, facing Senior
Airman Ahmad al Halabi, according to his attorney, Maj. Jamie Key.

However, the investigator's recommendations have been classified. Key said it is
unusual for the recommendations to be classified by the government.

The recommendations can be accepted or rejected by court-martial authorities,
who have wide latitude on proceeding against al Halabi, regardless of the
recommendations.

Al-Halabi was taken into custody July 23, but authorities did not announce his
arrest until late September. He is being held at a prison facility at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California.

The investigation into the apparent infiltration of the remote Guantanamo Bay
facility is ongoing, and a senior defense official has told CNN that more
arrests may come.

Court documents obtained by CNN indicate that the offenses allegedly committed
by al-Halabi at Guantanamo occurred between December 20, 2002, and July 23.

He is also charged with offenses at Travis Air Force base in California in
September and November 2002, which allegedly occurred before he reported for
duty at Camp Delta at Guantanamo.

* * *

MSNBC:

October 8, 2003

SECRECY IN GUANTANAMO SPY CASES
Military takes unusual steps to protect prison evidence

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 -- Military authorities have taken unusual steps to protect
evidence in an espionage investigation at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp,
including classifying routine court documents and forcing visiting reporters to
promise in writing not to ask about the case.

Air Force officers tried to close to the public a preliminary hearing for Senior
Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, an Air Force translator facing 32 charges including
espionage. His lawyers challenged the closure in the Air Force Court of Criminal
Appeals, and the judges agreed to close only parts of the hearing that dealt
with classified information.

Court staff refused to give out copies of the ruling, relying on Air Force
officials to do so. The copies the Air Force released have signatures of court
officials and telephone numbers of al-Halabi’s defense lawyers blacked out.
The recommendations of the officer who presided over that hearing, Col. Anne
Burman, also are classified. Reporters traveling to the prison camp in Cuba this
week were required to sign a pledge not to ask questions about the
investigation.

"It looks like it’s going to be a fight from here until the end to keep this an
open process," Maj. James Key III, one of al-Halabi’s lawyers, said Tuesday.
Some secrecy is to be expected in the military’s most high-profile espionage
case in more than a decade. Military law experts say the Pentagon has gone to
extreme lengths, however, to protect secrets in the cases of al-Halabi and the
Army captain and civilian translator arrested on suspicion of espionage at the
prison.

"The court clerk’s signature is not a secret. Why would they black it out in
this case? I can’t understand that," said Kevin Barry, a Virginia lawyer who is
a military law expert and former Coast Guard appeals court judge.

"There does appear to be an effort with regard to anything having to do with
Guantanamo Bay to reveal less rather than more," Barry said.

Unusual secrecy has shrouded the main military prison for suspected terrorists
since before the first prisoners arrived in 2002. Even the number of inmates at
the base in Cuba is classified -- authorities will say only that about 660
suspected members of the al-Qaida network and Taliban, former rulers of
Afghanistan, are held there.

This week, the form military officials made reporters who traveled to the base
sign [a statement which] said they could not ask questions about "ongoing
operations, future operations or investigations that are pending." The military
had not insisted upon such ground rules in the past.

ARREST HIDDEN FOR 2 MONTHS

The Air Force did not announce al-Halabi’s July 23 arrest until two months
afterward, when reporters learned about it from Pentagon sources. Al-Halabi, a
naturalized U.S. citizen who worked as an Arabic translator at the prison camp,
is accused of collecting secrets about the base and messages from prisoners with
plans to transmit them to an unspecified enemy in his native Syria.
The most serious charges against al-Halabi carry a possible death sentence upon
conviction.

The admission of al-Halabi’s arrest came after news broke of the Sept. 10 arrest
of Army Capt. Yousef Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay. Yee has not been
charged.

Military officials have said they wanted to keep the arrests secret to protect
an investigation of possible security breaches at Guantanamo Bay. At least one
other member of the military, who is in the Navy, is being watched, Pentagon
officials have said.

Federal agents also arrested a civilian translator at the base, Ahmed Mehalba,
last month for allegedly bringing Guantanamo Bay secrets with him on a flight to
the United States from his native Egypt.

Mehalba faces charges in federal court, where most high-profile spy cases have
been handled. Al-Halabi and Yee are in the military justice system, where
espionage cases are more rare, although not unique.

Before a court-martial, a military defendant gets an "Article 32" hearing,
similar to arraignment in civilian courts, after which the hearing officer sends
a report to the accused’s commander. The commander decides whether to impanel a
court-martial or order a lesser form of military discipline.

Brig. Gen. Bradley S. Baker, al-Halabi’s commander, had closed his "Article 32"
hearing, saying "virtually all of the evidence presented during this Article 32
hearing can compromise current ongoing investigations that are of concern to
national security."

Al-Halabi’s lawyers objected, arguing that military court hearings, like federal
court proceedings, should be closed only when absolutely necessary. The Air
Force appeals court order then issued its order closing only hearings dealing
with classified information.

The hearing was last month at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., where al-Halabi
has been held, and most of it was closed, attorney Key said. Some of al-Halabi’s
relatives attended the open portions, mostly involving testimony by the
relatives, Key said. No reporters were there.

Military law allows court proceedings to be closed to protect government secrets
and vulnerable witnesses such as children.

© 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

* * *


Los Angeles Times:

October 8, 2003

NEW MILITARY REPORTING RULES

From Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- U.S. military officials imposed strict reporting limits
Tuesday on the first journalists to go to the U.S.-run detention camp for
terrorist suspects since the arrests of a Muslim Army chaplain and two
interpreters.

The reporters were required to sign "ground rules" for coverage that banned
questions about the investigations on pain of being removed from the Navy camp
at Guantanamo Bay, on the eastern tip of Cuba.

Reporters were presented with a statement to sign as they prepared to board a
flight chartered by the military from Jacksonville, Fla. A new paragraph was
added to earlier rules:

"Asking questions or perspectives about ongoing and/or future operations or
investigations can result in restricted access on Gitmo, removal from the
installation, and/or revocation of [Department of Defense] press credentials."

Signing the statement was a requirement to board the flight. Among those who
signed were reporters for Associated Press, the New York Times and Fox
Television.

* * *


October 8, 2003

ABC TV (Australia):

UN SAYS UNABLE TO INVESTIGATE GUANTANAMO TORTURE ALLEGATIONS

Reporter: Ben Knight

PETER CAVE: The head of the United Nations Standing Committee on Torture says it
can't investigate allegations that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been
tortured.

The claims were made by an Australian lawyer who is working in the US on the
cases of detainees in Cuba and Afghanistan.

Richard Bourke told the ABC that prisoners, including two Australians, are being
tortured by their American captors and that lawyers will now apply to
international tribunals to stop it.

But advocates are being told that the US does not recognise the authority of
those tribunals anyway, as Ben Knight reports.

BEN KNIGHT: Richard Bourke and his colleagues have been working to bring these
cases to court in the United States, but he now says it's time to go beyond the
American system.

RICHARD BOURKE: We're looking at international tribunals because the US courts
have so far proven unwilling or unable to intervene to help the people on
Guantanamo Bay. So we're looking at international tribunals such as the
International Court of Justice or the UN Standing Committee on Torture.

BEN KNIGHT: But the Chair of that United Nations Committee, Professor Peter
Burns, says it will be unable to investigate the claims.

PETER BURNS: In the case of the United States, it has ratified the Convention
Against Torture, but the two critical provisions that would have given the
Committee an opportunity of initiating or responding to complaints have not been
ratified, or in one instance, have actually not been declared by the United
States.

BEN KNIGHT: And Professor Burns says approaches to the International Court of
Justice, or the International Criminal Court will meet the same obstacle,
because the US hasn't given them the power to investigate or prosecute American
personnel.

But Professor Burns also says his Committee’s had no reports that Americans are
torturing their prisoners.

PETER BURNS: That's one of the interesting features about this. When you talk
about Guantanamo, we’ve not received any scientific or empirical or provable
evidence. We haven't even at this point, as far as I'm aware, and maybe the
Secretariat has, but it hasn't come as far as me, we've received nothing.

BEN KNIGHT: It’s not the first time these allegations have been raised. Why
would they not have come to your Committee, for example?

PETER BURNS: Well, because most of the bodies, like Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch, the NGOs that are interested and active in this area know
that we have no jurisdiction.

BEN KNIGHT: Gary Highland is the Australian spokesman for Amnesty International.

He says Amnesty have no evidence of torture taking place, but that doesn't mean
it's not happening.

GARY HIGHLAND: It's simply impossible to say because no one, no independent
body, has been given access to Guantanamo Bay, not Amnesty International, not
the lawyers of the men concerned, and not their family members.

What we're calling on is the US Government to investigate these claims and to
give people proper access to that facility.

BEN KNIGHT: In fact, there is one and only one international agency that is
allowed inside Camp X-Ray. The International Committee of the Red Cross is
currently completing its seventh inspection of the camp

But the Red Cross conducts its inspections on a confidential basis, that is, if
there were any evidence of mistreatment, it would not be made public, but taken
up directly with the American military.

It's a policy that has enabled the Red Cross to make such inspections since
1915.

But today, it did express concern, not over conditions in the camp, or treatment
of the detainees, but at the effect the indefinite nature of their captivity was
having on their mental health.

Spokeswoman Amanda Williamson.

AMANDA WILLIAMSON: We have witnessed a rather worrying deterioration in the
psychological wellbeing of many of the detainees, and this concerns us very
much.

It is, if you like, the humanitarian consequences of this legal vacuum that
currently prevails there.

PETER CAVE: Amanda Williamson, from the International Committee of the Red
Cross.

* * *


GUANTANAMO SPY PROBE HIGHLIGHTS WEAKNESS
Officials cite many reasons for possible security breaches

NICOLE GUADIANO GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
Reporters at Guantanamo face new limits

The U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ought to be secure, considering the
2,000 service members deployed there and the steel cells holding 660 men the
United States considers among the most dangerous in the world.

So how could it have happened that not one but three men working at the prison
camp in Cuba have been arrested for suspected espionage and security violations
since July, setting off a sweeping investigation of security breaches?

The reasons range from a military overwhelmed by a need for Arabic translators
to the powerful persuasion exerted by detainees on those assigned to the prison,
experts say.

"They would try to work on you and turn you," said Bill Tierney, a civilian
linguist at the camp for six weeks in 2002. "If you have someone sympathetic to
these prisoners doing the translation, you have a serious security problem."

Those arrested include two working as linguists: Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad
I. al-Halabi and Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, a former Army private first class working
as a civilian.

Also under arrest is Army chaplain Capt. Yousef Yee.

Yee's wife, Huda, and their 4-year-old daughter live in an apartment in
northeast Olympia. He was scheduled to return to Fort Lewis in November,
according to a spokesman with U.S. Southern Command, which controls the
detention facility. Yee occasionally led prayers at the Islamic Center of
Olympia.

Authorities reportedly found Yee and the two linguists carrying information
alleged to be classified.

Though they worked at the camp at the same time, officials said they have found
no connection among them. The series of incidents, however, is forcing military
officials to re-examine security at the camp.

The most serious charges -- espionage and aiding the enemy -- are against al-
Halabi, 24, a Syrian native who once won "Airman of the Year" for his squadron
at Travis Air Force Base in California. If convicted, he could face the death
penalty.

Investigators say they found him at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Fla., on his
return from Cuba, with 186 notes from detainees still on his computer. The
charges say he e-mailed classified information about the detainees to a citizen
of a foreign government and that he gave intelligence to "the enemy."

In a box he apparently sent to himself from the base at Guantanamo to Travis Air
Force Base, investigators found 60 pages of documents, some marked "SECRET,"
tucked amid shirts and sweatpants, according to a warrant filed by an Air Force
Office of Special Investigations agent.

He is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., pending possible court-
martial.

An Air Force spokeswoman said a "formal investigation" of al-Halabi did not
begin until he was assigned to Guantanamo. But even before that, he had come to
the attention of military investigators.

The investigation was based on reports of "suspicious activity" while he was
stationed earlier at Travis and Kuwait, the search warrant said.

NEED FOR TRANSLATORS

Why would someone under suspicion be given a translator's job at a site as
sensitive as Guantanamo?

The Air Force did not respond to questions seeking what was known about al-
Halabi at the time he was assigned to Guantanamo in November 2002.

Part of the problem facing the military is a dearth of Arabic translators, said
Kevin Hendzel, a defense contractor and spokesman for the American Translators
Association.

The Air Force has 145 Arabic linguists and 1,084 airmen who are proficient in
the language. A Defense Department official could not provide an overall count
for the military.

At Guantanamo, translators' interactions with detainees are "supervised and
carefully monitored," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, spokeswoman for the
Joint Task Force in Cuba. "That would dissuade any inappropriate behavior
because they are taught to be professional."

But Tierney described a more casual atmosphere for the translators.

There was plenty of time for translators to stop for unsupervised chats with
detainees or sneak them pastries -- baklava -- as al-Halabi is charged with
doing, he said.

PRESSURE BY DETAINEES

Another potential problem is the influence inmates could exert on the
translators and chaplains.

Some detainees will ask Arab-American captors why they aren't helping their
Muslim brothers. Or they will accuse them of being traitors "for helping the
infidels," Tierney said.

The accusations -- even from accused terrorists behind bars -- could exert
powerful pressure on a sympathetic captor, especially one who believes the
verses being cited from the Quran are inspired by God, he said.

The translators could have been unwittingly in possession of the sensitive
information -- or they're bungling opportunists, Jacobson said.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[ sidebar ]

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- U.S. military officials imposed strict reporting limits
Tuesday on the first journalists to go to the U.S.-run detention camp for
terrorism suspects since the arrests of a Muslim army chaplain and two
interpreters.

The reporters were required to sign "ground rules" for coverage that banned
questions about the investigations on pain of being removed from the U.S. Navy
camp located at Guantanamo Bay.

Reporters were presented with a statement to sign as they prepared to board a
flight chartered by the military from Jacksonville, Fla., on Tuesday. A new
paragraph was added to earlier requirements: "Asking questions or perspectives
about ongoing and/or future operations or investigations can result in
restricted access on Gitmo, removal from the installation, and/or revocation of
DoD (Department of Defense) press credentials."

Asked why journalists are being warned of consequences if they ask questions,
Army Lt. Col. Pamela Hart said: "Why ask a question that you're not going to get
an answer to?"

* * *


ABC TV (Australia):

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s962037.htm

October 8, 2003. 7:49am (AEST)

ALLEGATIONS DAVID HICKS TORTURED AT GUANTANAMO BAY (ABC TV)

Lawyer claims Hicks, Habib tortured at Guantanamo Bay

An Australian lawyer working on the cases of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba
says he has no doubt Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib have been
tortured.

Richard Bourke has been working with detainees at Camp X-ray for almost two
years.

"People sometimes argue about the definition of torture, what they are doing
clearly comes within the definition of torture under the international
convention, but they are engaging in what amounts to torture in the medieval
sense of the phrase," he said.

He says reports of torture have come from leaks from the American military and
been backed up by former prisoners.

Among the reports he is investigating are claims of prisoners being tied to a
post and having rubber bullets fired at them and that they were forced to kneel
in the sun until they collapse.

Mr Bourke is considering taking their cases to international tribunals,
including the United Nations Standing Committee on Torture.

David Hicks's father, Terry, says he has also heard of torture stories and of
his son being put under duress.

"I have heard that they've been taking him out and firing rubber bullets and
putting him into the crucifix position in the sun," he said.

"Quite a number of other things - belting the bottom of their feet, there's
quite a list of what I've gathered over the last 12 months."

* * *


Washingtion Times:

October 7, 2003

GUANTANAMO SPY CASES

By Robert Spencer

The Muslim organizations that certify chaplains for the U.S. military have come
under renewed scrutiny since the arrest of Army Chaplain Yousef Yee and two
Muslim translators who worked with al Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay -- and
that's all to the good. The Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences (GSISS)
and the American Muslim Foundation (AMF) were already being investigated, and it
may well be that somehow Mr. Yee picked up his radical Islam from some contact
with these groups. But so far another possibility has been overlooked, perhaps
because its political incorrectness quotient is positively off the scale: The
possibility that Yee was sincere when he denounced the September 11 attacks, and
that his mind was changed by the Guantanamo prisoners themselves.

According to military intelligence veteran and former Guantanamo translator Bill
Tierney, the prisoners at Guantanamo would frequently ask Muslim American
translators and other servicemen how they could accept the infidel's money. Mr.
Tierney said that the prisoners "would know who the Muslims were, who spoke
Arabic" among the American military personnel, "and would do everything to push
their buttons." Including using the Koran to convince them of the legitimacy of
violent jihad? And using the Koranic command that Muslims must not fight against
other Muslims (Sura 4:93) to assail the legitimacy of Muslims serving in the
American armed forces?

We may never know. So far, these questions have been too hot for the military
even to ask. The official position on terrorism seems to be that Islam is a
religion of peace, terrorists have hijacked it and that's that. The possibility
that American Muslims -- even West Point grads like Mr. Yee -- could fall prey
to the same hijacking is off their radar screen.

To the American officials in charge of Guantanamo, the words "Islamic" and
"terrorism" are so far from residing in the same sentence that Mr. Tierney told
me that he was forbidden during his time there from compiling a list of Koranic
verses relating to jihad, despite the fact that those who were interrogating the
prisoners specifically asked for such a list. And, despite the fact that such
verses appear in abundance in the writings of Osama bin Laden and other radical
Muslims around the world today. These are the writings which are being used as
you read this to recruit terrorists on a global scale, and which were most
likely used to recruit each of the Guantanamo prisoners into al Qaeda.

Who forbade Tierney from making this list? The American Army captain in charge
of all the translators. This captain, an Iranian Muslim who came to the United
States in his teens, claimed to have converted from Islam to Mormonism. But Mr.
Tierney told me that he behaved just like the other Muslims at Guantanamo,
faithfully complained to officials about any anti-Muslim remark, and even
prevented Mr. Tierney from using the Internet after he went online to gather
open source data to aid in an investigation. He shut down Mr. Tierney's Koranic
research by ordering the site manager (a Somali Muslim) to tell Tierney to
desist.

This problem is bigger than Guantanamo. In my book Onward Muslim Soldiers: How
Jihad Still Threatens America and the West, I provide evidence of widespread
anti-Americanism among American Muslims. Muhammad Faheed, a 23-year-old who
lived in America from the age of 3, expressed these sentiments well when he told
a Muslim Student Association meeting in New York: "We are not Americans, we are
Muslims. . . . The only relationship you should have with America is to topple
it!"

Are any Muslims with similar sentiments now serving with American forces in
Iraq? There's no way to tell. No one dares to ask.

Mr. Tierney also recounted to me an incident from his service in Saudi Arabia,
when he drove an American Muslim civilian translator to a local mosque one
Friday. Mr. Tierney stood outside listening to the sermon, which was carried to
the overflow crowd by loudspeakers: "It is the duty of all Muslims," cried the
preacher, "to fight against Israel and those who support Israel!" This
translator, Mr. Tierney said, worked for senior Air Force personnel, translating
sensitive material -- but the American government could not and did not ask him
where he went to mosque. We are simply to assume that that sermon made no
impression on the translator whatsoever.

The Guantanamo espionage cases demonstrate how important it is to root out
politically correct wishful thinking about the causes of radical Islam. If there
is any lesson to be drawn from the Guantanamo spy scandal, it is that the
government's refusal to acknowledge the true dimensions of the threat from
Islamic radicalism could come at a cost far greater than anyone has yet
calculated.

Robert Spencer is an adjunct fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.

* * *


Chicago Sun-Times:

October 5, 2003

WILSONS GIVE IT UP FOR GORE

By Robert Novak Sun-Times Columnist

On the same day in 1999 that retired diplomat Joseph Wilson was returned $1,000
of $2,000 he contributed to Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore a month
earlier because it exceeded the federal limit, his CIA-employee wife gave $1,000
to Gore using a fictitious identification for herself.

In making her April 22, 1999, contribution, Valerie E. Wilson identified herself
as an "analyst" with "Brewster-Jennings & Associates." No such firm is listed
anywhere, but the late Brewster Jennings was president of Socony-Vacuum oil
company a half-century ago. Any CIA employee working under "nonofficial cover"
always is listed with a real firm, never an imaginary one.

A footnote: In July, when he revealed himself as author of a report commissioned
by the CIA, Wilson sought a book agent. After being turned down by a prominent
agent, he has now found one.

(...)

* * *


The Guardian:

October 4, 2003

THE WAR ON AL-JAZEERA
The US is determined to suppress the independent Arab media

By Dima Tareq Tahboub

When my husband decided to go to Baghdad, he knew that I would protest. He told
me that I was exaggerating the risks; that there was nothing to be afraid of
because he was a reporter, an objective witness, neither on this nor that side,
and because of that was protected by world protocol. He bid us farewell,
apologising for having been so busy. He promised to make it up to me and our
daughter, Fatimah, when he returned.

Tareq left for al-Jazeera's Baghdad office on April 5. He called me when he
arrived - the journey was hellish, he said. He sounded exhausted, because he was
sleeping only three hours a day, between shifts. Back home in Jordan, our life
wasn't any better; we could hardly sleep and sat mesmerised in front of the TV
waiting for Tareq to appear in a live report so we'd know he was OK.

On the early morning of April 8, I was still awake at 6am and saw his last live
report, in which he described the situation in Baghdad as being very calm and
quiet. I was relieved and went to sleep, only to wake up one hour later to the
sound of my mother crying and yelling.

At first, I didn't know what had happened. I brought a chair and sat trembling
in front of the TV. The house was suddenly full of people. I couldn't see or
hear anyone. I was waiting for the film to end. I was waiting for the hero to
appear and end all evil. I was waiting for the story of my life to end with "and
they lived happily ever after". I couldn't cry, I was just listening to the
news, seeing again and again all through the day how the Americans bombed the
al-Jazeera office and killed my husband.

I teach English translation. Once, when I was lecturing on the translation of
political terminology, with reference to the UN charter and the declaration of
human rights, one of the students said: "How can the US say that this war has a
noble cause and a humane agenda? All the dictionary definitions of war involve
bloodshed and overwhelming destruction." Another student joined in: "Don't tell
us about charters and so-called noble missions, what we see is what we believe."
The whole class cheered; I had nothing to say.

I used to tell my students that the American dream is best described as life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now I am convinced my students were right
and I wrong. I learned the hard way when the Americans ruined my life,
confiscated my liberty and ended my happiness.

The US bombed al-Jazeera because it was angered by reports that did not confirm
its one-sided picture of the war. For the past five years, al-Jazeera and other
Arab stations have been gaining credibility and fame not only in the Arab
countries but also in the west, competing with international networks such as
the BBC and CNN. Al-Jazeera in particular became very popular during the
American war on Afghanistan. The channel aired voice recordings of al-Qaida and
Taliban leaders as well as the speeches of President Bush and allied leaders.
This decision to broadcast both sides was in keeping with its motto - "The
opinion and the counter-opinion" - but the Americans could not allow such
freedom of expression to prevail.

The US sent its first warning to al-Jazeera in November 2001, bombing its Kabul
office, destroying its equipment and forcing its journalists to flee. An al-
Jazeera cameraman was sent to Guantanamo Bay as a war prisoner.

In Baghdad during the war, the coverage of al-Jazeera again focused mainly on
the daily suffering and loss of ordinary people; and again the Americans wanted
their crimes and atrocities to pass unnoticed. The two bombs they dropped on al-
Jazeera's Baghdad office were the ones that killed my husband. Then the
Americans opened fire on Abu Dhabi television, whose identity was spelled out in
large blue letters on the roof. The next target was the Palestine hotel, the
headquarters of world media representatives - an American tank fired a shell and
two more journalists were killed. Thus the US tried to conceal evidence of its
crimes from the world and kill the witnesses.

The US didn't take responsibility for the attacks, claiming that all three were
mistakes and insisting that it did not know the whereabouts of journalists,
apart from those "embedded" with its troops. Later, al-Jazeera's director
confirmed that it had given the precise location of the station's Baghdad office
to the Pentagon three months before the war. My husband and the others were
killed in broad daylight, in locations known to the Pentagon as media sites.

The US was not content with the message it sent to al-Jazeera signed with the
blood of my husband; it accused al-Jazeera and other Arab channels of anti-
American bias in their coverage of the war. But how biased can a picture of dead
people be? A picture of a destroyed house doesn't need a reporter to tell its
story, and the tears of children and refugees need no interpreter.

Tell me, please, what should I do when my daughter, just 20 months old, starts
calling her late father's name and looking for him all around the house? What
should I do when the clock strikes five and I keep waiting for Tareq to open the
door with his smiling face but he never comes in? When the only way to have some
rest is to cry myself to sleep? When I see my mother-in-law vomiting four times
in less than half an hour? When my daughter brings her toys to play with me, as
she used to do with her father, and I can't even hold her? When my tears fall on
my daughter's face when I give her milk, remembering how her father used to do
it? When I feel ruined and desperate, with no hope in life?

How should I raise my daughter? Allow me to answer the last question. I will
raise her never to forgive or forget. Never to forget her father and never to
forgive those who killed him.

Six months have passed since the killing of Tareq, and those responsible for his
death are still in control, claiming ethical supervision of the world, and
basking in their military achievements. The attacks on al-Jazeera continue -
Iraq's US-appointed governing council has just warned the station that if it
continues to "misbehave", its licence in Iraq will be revoked. Meanwhile, an al-
Jazeera correspondent, Tayssir Alouni - the only television journalist who had a
live link from Taliban Kabul, and a survivor of both the Kabul and Baghdad
bombings - has been accused of helping al-Qaida and the Taliban. When he went to
Spain to obtain his PhD, he was arrested by the Spanish authorities, widely
believed to have been at the behest of the Americans. He is now in a high-
security prison awaiting trial, despite there being no concrete evidence against
him.

As for me, six months have passed since my husband's death and I can't find
anyone to help me to launch legal action against those who killed him. When I
thought I had found an outlet under Belgian law, US threats and ultimatums got
the law repealed and put an end to my hopes of gaining justice.

When the Muslim Association of Britain invited me to speak at last weekend's
anti-war march in London, I hesitated because of the despair I have been in. But
when I saw all these people marching against the war, condemning those
responsible for it, my hope and belief in the solidarity of humankind, in
humanity, justice and truth was rekindled.

My life and happiness came to an end on April 8, but I still have one last
dream; that my Fatimah will have a better future full of love and security, that
her heart and mind as well as mine will be relieved when those who committed the
cold-blooded murder of her father and my husband are brought to justice.

[ Dima Tareq Tahboub is a lecturer at the Arab Open University in Amman and the
widow of Tareq Ayyoub, a correspondent for al-Jazeera. ]

dima@mabonline.net

* * *


October 4, 2003 - (2137 GMT)

GUANTANAMO TRANSLATIONS GET SECOND LOOK
Officials: Spying allegations call airman's work into question

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials are re-examining audio tapes of
interrogations carried out at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility that
were translated by an airman accused of spying, U.S. defense sources told CNN on
Saturday.

Because Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi faces more than 30 charges --
including espionage, aiding the enemy and making false statements -- his
translations of testimony from suspected al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are no
longer considered reliable, the officials said.

Al-Halabi, a Syrian-American, stands accused of spying for parties inside Syria.

The Syrian government denies any connection with him.

U.S. defense, law enforcement and intelligence interrogators at the Guantanamo
Bay detention facility known as Camp Delta use translators to convert questions
from English to Arabic and answers from Arabic to English. The interrogations,
which can last hours, are taped.

Since al-Halabi's credibility has been questioned, all of the interrogations
that he translated will be translated by others, said officials who asked that
they not be identified.

It was not clear how many interrogations were involved.

"If the subject answered 'five' and [al-Halabi] told interrogators he said
'four,' then you have a problem," said one official familiar with the review.

The same official suggested that any deliberate mistranslation by al-Halabi of
the detainees' responses could damage the intelligence-gathering process,
resulting in people being sent off in inappropriate directions.

Al-Halabi was taken into custody July 23, but authorities did not announce his
arrest until late last month. He is being held at a prison facility at
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Also in custody on suspicion of espionage, but not charged, is Army Capt. James
Yee, who worked on the Guantanamo base as a chaplain. Yee is a Chinese-American
who converted to Islam after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point.

A senior defense official told CNN on Saturday that the investigation into the
apparent infiltration of the remote Guantanamo Bay facility is ongoing and
indicated that more arrests may come.

Court documents obtained by CNN indicate that the offenses allegedly committed
by al-Halabi at Guantanamo occurred between December 20, 2002 and July 23.

He is also charged with offenses at Travis Air Force base in California in
September and November, which allegedly occurred before he reported for duty at
Camp Delta.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Chris Plante contributed to this report.

* * *


The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA):

October 4, 2003

SOUTHERN RIGHTS--AN IFFY QUESTION:
Abraham Lincoln has been criticized for suspending constitutional rights during
the Civil War, but Jefferson Davis did the same thing.

By Thomas P. Lowry, M.D.

AFICIONADOS OF OLD World War II movies will always recall the stereotypical Nazi
officers who tended to appear at awkward moments and ask, in Hollywood German,
"May I zee your papers, pliz?" Students of the War of Northern Aggression may be
surprised to learn that a nearly identical system existed in the Confederacy.

Lt. Col. Arthur J. Fremantle, the famous British guardsman, experienced this on
the train between Meridian, Miss., and Mobile, Ala. His passport was "rigidly
examined," and he noted on a further leg of his journey that a sentry stood at
the door of each railroad car and examined the papers of every passenger "with
great strictness."

Even after that, as the train moved along, an officer of the provost guard
visited every car and re-examined the papers of all passengers.

Sen. James L. Orr of South Carolina was traveling with two young Southern
ladies. At 3 a.m. in the morning, the provost guard noticed a deficit in the
documents carried by the girls and put them off the train, to the great
annoyance of the senator.

Sen. Williamson S. Oldham of Texas was quite perturbed that even the short
journey from Richmond into North Carolina required him, a member of the South's
highest legislative body, to go to the provost's office and get "a passport,
just like a free Negro."

While most Southerners accepted these measures as necessary security (as we do
the multiple searches at airports today) even the vice president of the new
nation, Alexander H. Stevens, described the system of internal passports as
"utterly wrong and without authority of law." (Stevens' unending dislike of
Jefferson Davis may have played a part in this spleen-venting.) The government
defended the passport policy as necessary to catch deserters, but offered no
explanation as to why women, too, needed passports.

But this problem of passports, previously required only for persons of color,
was not the core issue. That was, as Jefferson Davis asserted both during and
after the war, that the Confederacy guarded the constitutional rights of its
citizens.

The suspension of habeas corpus by Abraham Lincoln, the arrest of the Maryland
legislature, and exiling of Clement Vallandigham were all cited as examples of
the Union's trampling upon constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Thousands of men and women in the North were arrested for suspicion of
"disloyalty," and many were tried by military commissions, rather than by the
civil courts. After the war, examination of Southern prison records showed
almost no civilian or political prisoners.

Thus, the matter stood for 140 years. The evidence seemed to be with Jefferson
Davis: the North arrested and held political prisoners, the South did not; the
North violated the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, the South did not.

There was, indeed, a problem. But it lay in the Confederate filing system, not
in a lack of diligence on the part of historians. Over 4,000 Confederate
civilians were arrested, examined and held by a system entirely separate from
both the Confederate military and the Confederate judicial system. The records
of these Star Chamber proceedings were filed under "Letters Received by the
Confederate Secretary of War."

To further confuse any researcher, the letters are filed alphabetically, not by
the name of the political prisoner, but by the name of the "Habeas Corpus
Commissioner" who had handled the case. Since the very existence of such
commissioners was virtually unknown, it followed that little research had been
done on their functioning. Since the likelihood of anyone browsing, purely for
recreation, the 150 reels of National Archives microfilm filed in Record Group
109, section M437, approaches zero, the habeas corpus commissioners remained
lost to sight until just four years ago.

Once the vital and dramatic role of this system of extrajudicial control and
secret proceedings was realized, it became possible to reassess a crucial part
of Confederate history. The records show that Jefferson Davis was fully aware of
this system of control and endorsed it without reserve, even though in his
speeches and postwar memoirs he not only omitted any references to it, but
flatly denied that the South had ever failed to uphold its own constitutional
guarantees.

Davis' biographers have taken him at his word and were either ignorant of the
habeas commissioner system or chose to overlook it. With this vital piece of
history missing, the Davis biographies up to this point may need
reconsideration. A dedicated and tenacious leader he was; a strict
constitutionalist he was not.

The painstaking excavation of the evidence in those 150 reels of microfilm has
unleashed a torrent of fresh information that further shows the vast complexity
of the Civil War. While most interest today is focused on a few battles, such as
those at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, or the authenticity of re-enactor's
uniforms and equipment, or the accuracy of movie portrayals of famous generals,
the very foundations of public life, North and South, seem far more vital in
assessing the meaning of those bloody four years.

While a few hundred words cannot encompass all the new or reconsidered
information, some anecdotal high points may give something of the richness now
available to those who are interested in plowing new ground.

Conscription, in the North and South, was a bitter pill. (Many Americans had
fled to Europe to avoid conscription.) Its application could lead to not only
oppression and heartbreak, but to events redolent of the Marx Brothers. At Troy,
Ala., the local conscription officer, a Col. Morehead, had arrested a John D.
Rhodes, for avoiding conscription. Rhodes claimed exemption, as he was a
Confederate States tax collector. A local court functionary, Judge Fitzpatrick,
issued a writ of habeas corpus for the release of Rhodes. When the sheriff
arrived to enforce the writ, the military men drew their guns, whereupon the
sheriff arrested Col. Morehead. The next morning, the colonel arrested the
judge.

But such farce was not the real problem. That lay with the habeas corpus
commissioners, whose role was the opposite of enforcing habeas corpus. The
Confederacy was only 4 months old when Gen. John H. Winder, keeper of the
military prisons in the Richmond area, suggested that certain men be empowered
to hold and investigate "suspicious persons." The persons arrested had no access
to counsel, review or appeal, and thousands were held, neither guilty of
anything nor ruled innocent, but in a legal limbo not envisioned in any
constitution, North or South.

With variations, this invisible system, run by men accountable to no one,
endured until the end of the Confederacy.

As always, there is more to the story. East Tennessee, generally dismissed as
useless real estate populated by ignorant root-grubbers and moon-shiners, had a
politically sophisticated electorate (with a 90 percent turnout) who had voted
strongly against secession. During the Civil War, 10,000 troops occupied the
area just to keep it under Confederate control. Hanging, prison or exile was the
fate of hundreds of Union sympathizers. Documents show over 600 political
prisoners in eastern Tennessee alone.

In Arkansas, Gen. Thomas C. Hindman proclaimed martial law, ordered all the
cotton in the state to be burned, and deemed any farmer resisting this "a
traitor."

The best source for this complex subject is the powerfully annotated "Southern
Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism," by
Mark E. Neely Jr., professor of history at Penn State University, published in
1999 by the University Press of Virginia.

[ THOMAS P. LOWRY, M.D., of Woodbridge is a graduate of Stanford Medical School
and the author of six books on the Civil War. His latest two are an edited diary
of Dr. William M. Smith of the 85th New York, titled "Swamp Doctor. A Union
Surgeon in the Marshes of Virginia and North Carolina," and "Tarnished Scalpels.
The Court-martials of Fifty Union Surgeons," co-authored with Jack D. Welsh,
M.D. Both books are from Stackpole Books.

Date published: 10/4/2003

* * *


BBC:

3 October, 2003 - 12:01 GMT

THE GUANTANAMO INCIDENT

By Vivian White, Panorama reporter

Guantanamo was strange, remote, and very hot.

The base itself was calm - transplanted America, complete with a McDonald's and
ten-pin bowling. There were troops loping past taking hot, healthy runs.

While we were on Guantanamo, we interviewed guards from the prison camp, and
their officers, and one of their chaplains, too, and we looked around their
base, "Camp America". Eventually we were taken to "Camp Delta", where the
detainees are kept.

There, the rules were different and tighter. We were not allowed to film in Camp
Delta, but sound recording was allowed. We saw, but could not film, the
individual "cages" in the high-security area, and the place in the open air
where detainees are taken to shower.

No detainees were present. Then we were taken into the so-called medium-security
area. There were two print journalists, a radio reporter, a press photographer
taking no pictures, and our team.

I was recording onto a minidisc, and my producer Fiona Gough was recording as
well, holding a boom mike. Our assistant producer and cameraman, Dan Trelford
was, of course, not filming.

TOUR IS OVER

Then we were brought into a place where a group of detainees were sitting just a
few feet away. They were on the other side of a high fence but in very plain
view of us all. I began to describe what I could see.

One of the detainees then turned and addressed us directly, in English.

He called out "Are you journalists or whatever?" One of the print journalists
and I responded. I said, "We're from BBC Television, we're from BBC TV."

The detainee continued to express his pleasure at seeing us.

But it was too much for our hosts. "The tour is over," barked Colonel Adolph
McQueen. The whole sudden, unexpected incident, lasted 20 seconds.

GROUND RULES

Journalists are told not to speak to detainees
The Panorama team were escorted to the bus, and kept in not very splendid
isolation, while the tour continued for our colleagues.

Further interviews which had been arranged for us on Guantanamo with the US
military themselves were cancelled.

We were taken to an office building, where quite lengthy discussions took place.
The Americans believed I had been questioning detainees and had deliberately
broken the "ground rules."

We insisted that I had not questioned detainees at all.

I was escorted back to my room in the "Combined Bachelor Quarters".

SENSITIVE

The Americans relented sufficiently to let Panorama shoot a further sequence
that evening. We had asked to film at the open air movie theatre on Guantanamo,
which we had thought would be interesting.

Our American hosts thought that we would like to see the uplifting trailer shown
each night before the main feature there.

However, we left Guantanamo Bay the next morning - while the other journalists
stayed.

We had expected that our visit would be memorable, and it was. We had known that
it would be a sensitive place to work in, and it was.

But we could not have predicted what actually occurred, to us, inside
Guantanamo.

[ Panorama: Inside Guantanamo will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday, 5 October,
2003 at 22:15 BST. ]

* * *


DC Military.com:

October 3, 2003
Henderson Hall News

THIRD SUSPECT EYED IN GUANTANAMO BAY CASE

http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/8_39/national_news/25560-1.html

By Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2003 -- A third person possibly tied to espionage at the
military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- this one a civilian
contractor who worked as a translator -- was charged today with making false,
fictitious or fraudulent statements regarding computer disks he carried during a
flight from Egypt.

Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, a naturalized citizen of Egyptian decent, was arrested
Sept. 29 after arriving at Boston's Logan Airport Monday afternoon aboard a
flight from Cairo that stopped at Milan, Italy, on the way to Boston from Egypt.

According to Brian Doyle, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials conducting a routine examination at
the airport noted a military identification card identifying Mehalba as a
contract linguist at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay. While searching
Mehalba's baggage, the inspectors found 132 CD-ROMs, at least one of which
contained information that appeared to be classified, Doyle said.

The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
and the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force responded and arrested Mehalba. The
U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts authorized the arrest.

The complaint filed today with the U.S. District Court for the District of
Massachusetts reports that Mehalba had a close relationship with a former
student at the Army Counter-Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., who was
discharged in September 2001 under less than honorable conditions.

The complaint cites a Dec. 21, 2001, FBI report about former U.S. Army Spc.
Deborah Gephardt, who was arrested May 20, 2001, for vehicle theft. A search of
her quarters revealed a stolen laptop computer and classified counter-
intelligence training material. After Gephardt's arrest, the FBI report says
Mehalba made several unsuccessful attempts to gain information about her arrest,
without success. The FBI report also revealed that Mehalba told Gephardt his
uncle was an intelligence officer for the Egyptian army.

U.S. Southern Command officials said Mehalba had been employed at the facility
as a contractor for The Titan Corporation, but did not yet have specifics about
his employment at Guantanamo Bay.

The Titan Corporation is a U.S. contractor in San Diego that supports homeland
security and counterterrorism.

Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al Halabi, who worked at the facility as a
translator, was arrested July 23. He is assigned to the 60th Logistical
Readiness Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., and has been charged with
espionage.

Army Capt. Yousef Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the detention facility, was arrested
at Jacksonville Naval Air Station on Sept. 10. No formal charges have been filed
against Yee, who is being held pending charges at the Naval Consolidated Brig at
Charleston, S.C. The Uniform Code of Military Justice gives the military up to
120 days to formally charge an accused service member and begin a trial.

Unlike Mehalba, who as a civilian is subject to civilian laws, both Halabi and
Yee are service members subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

* * *


The Washington Times:

October 3, 2003

ANTISPY CONTROLS AT GUANTANAMO AIDED IN ARRESTS
By Guy Taylor

Counterintelligence measures were in place at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp
when two translators and a Muslim chaplain who worked there were arrested on
suspicion of espionage, the nation's top military officer said yesterday.

"But it should not be a surprise that in a time of war, people try to infiltrate
this way," Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told
reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

"The fact that some people have been apprehended and alleged with these very
serious crimes is an indication of some of the good news," he said. The
translator at the U.S. naval base in Cuba was arrested Monday in Boston. In his
possession was a computer disk containing names of suspected terrorists
mentioned during interrogation sessions at Guantanamo, the Boston Globe reported
yesterday.

The newspaper cited two unnamed federal law enforcement officials, one of whom
said Ahmed Fathy Mehalba had a security clearance and had been privy to some
"very sensitive" information when working as an Arabic-language translator at
Guantanamo.

The officials also told the Globe that Boston's Joint Terrorism Task Force is
trying to track Mr. Mehalba's movements of the past two months to determine
whether he shared the classified material with anyone else. Authorities
reportedly are trying to determine whether Mr. Mehalba, 31, was using the
material as part of his translator job at Guantanamo or whether he was smuggling
it to terrorists overseas.

Upon his arrest at Boston's Logan International Airport, Mr. Mehalba, an
Egyptian-born U.S. citizen who once served in the U.S. Army, told Immigration
and Customs Enforcement officials that he was returning from a visit with his
family in Egypt.

He had entered Logan on a flight from Cairo via Milan, Italy. A Customs and
Border Protection official found the classified material among more than 100
compact discs in one of Mr. Mehalba's bags, according to an FBI affidavit filed
Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Boston.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston would not comment
yesterday on what information was in Mr. Mehalba's possession at the time of his
arrest.

Michael C. Andrews, appointed by the U.S. District Court in Boston to act as Mr.
Mehalba's defense attorney, said yesterday afternoon that federal authorities
had not given him access to the classified documents. "I hope to have access
before the hearing next week," Mr. Andrews said, referring to Mr. Mehalba's
scheduled appearance Wednesday in federal court in Worcester, Mass.

The military is using the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to house about 660 mainly
Muslim, non-English-speaking suspects, who are considered enemy combatants in
the U.S.-led global war on terror. Most of the detainees are believed to be
suspected Taliban and al Qaeda members, who were taken into custody in
Afghanistan last year.

Mr. Mehalba's arrest was the latest in an apparently widening espionage probe at
the prison camp. On Sept. 24, the Pentagon announced charges against Air Force
Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, 24, on suspicion he e-mailed classified
information about Guantanamo to unspecified enemy combatants and another
operative in Syria.

Another suspect is Army Capt. James J. Yee, 35, a West Point graduate who
converted to Islam and worked as a Muslim chaplain with detainees at Guantanamo.
He was detained Sept. 10 and has been held since without charge at a U.S. Navy
brig in Charleston, S.C.


* * *


Los Angeles Times:

October 2, 2003

NO SYRIA LINK IS SEEN IN SPY CASE

· Despite U.S. charges, the State Department isn't planning to file a protest in
Guantanamo arrest.

WASHINGTON -- Despite U.S. charges implicating Syria in the Guantanamo Bay spy
case, the State Department has no information about Syrian government
involvement and has not been asked to protest to Damascus, senior State
Department officials said Wednesday.

The detention of three Muslim Americans who worked at the top-security base in
Cuba, where suspected members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network captured in
Afghanistan are held, has rocked the Pentagon and triggered a military
investigation.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the case has been the linkage made by the
government in court documents between Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al-Halabi
and Syria, which is on a list of states Washington accuses of sponsoring
terrorism. The Syrian government has denied any involvement with Al-Halabi.

The State Department officials seemed to back up, to some extent, Syria's
denials.

"We're not aware of any information linking the government of Syria or official
Syrian government involvement to this case," said one senior State Department
official, who asked not to be identified.

Added another senior official: "There's nothing to protest [to Syria about] as
they're not involved."

The State Department issues public or diplomatic protests in cases of illegal or
illicit actions by foreign governments. No action has been taken or requested by
other U.S. government entities, including the White House, Justice Department or
FBI, the officials said.

Some U.S. officials now suggest that Al-Halabi, 24, may instead be linked to
Syrian individuals -- or possibly the Muslim Brotherhood, a group with suspected
ties to Al Qaeda -- rather than to the government.

Al-Halabi was arrested July 23 after serving eight months as a translator at
Guantanamo Bay. He is charged with trying to pass more than 180 notes from
detainees at the prison's Camp Delta, as well as a map of the prison and flight
paths to it.

The Air Force charge sheets filed against Al-Halabi repeatedly contend that he
was trying to benefit Syria. They say his activity was done "with intent or
reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the United States or to the
advantage of Syria."

Other times, the charge sheets allege that Al-Halabi attempted to deliver
material directly concerning intelligence gathering and planning for the U.S.-
declared war on terrorism "to a citizen of a foreign government by carrying such
notes en route to Syria, a foreign nation." The "citizen" was not identified.

The government alleges that Al-Halabi had "contact with the embassy of the
Syrian Arab Republic, a foreign diplomatic establishment," and that he failed to
properly report that contact, as is required of a serviceman.

Al-Halabi, who was born in Syria, immigrated to the United States as a teenager
and grew up in the Detroit area. He joined the Air Force in January 2000 and
worked as a linguist and translator. He was stationed at Travis Air Force Base
in California before serving at Guantanamo Bay.

Lawyers for Al-Halabi said he was arrested en route to California before
traveling to Syria -- not to act as a spy, but to wed a Syrian woman.

His military defense attorneys have insisted that he had no ties to the Syrian
government and was not a spy, although he has been charged with attempted
espionage and trying to aid the enemy. A conviction in a military court-martial
could bring the death penalty.

Some U.S. officials suspect Al-Halabi may have been linked to the Muslim
Brotherhood in part because of reported ties between the group and Al Qaeda.

In 1982, the Syrian government responded to a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in
Hama with an armed assault that reportedly killed between 10,000 and 25,000
Syrians.

In May, remnants of the brotherhood called on President Bashar Assad's
government to end any form of cooperation with Washington.

U.S. officials note that the Syrian government has in the recent past aided
Washington by sharing intelligence on Islamic extremists' plots against the
United States.

Intelligence given by Syria to the Bush administration in the spring of 2002
concerning a plot against the U.S. Navy in Bahrain helped avert the attack,
according to senior U.S. officials.

Al-Halabi is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California while a
general at Travis decides whether he should be court-martialed.

Two other Muslim Americans have been arrested at Guantanamo Bay, but officials
there and at the Pentagon have said that while the three most likely knew one
another, they do not believe they were working together as part of a spy ring.

Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, 31, also an interpreter at Camp Delta, was arrested Monday
and charged Tuesday with giving false statements to federal authorities. He was
taken into custody at Logan International Airport in Boston, where officials
allegedly found him carrying classified material, including compact discs with
Camp Delta information.

The third arrest was of Capt. James Y. Yee, 35, a Muslim chaplain and Army West
Point graduate. He has not been charged, but officials are investigating whether
he too might have compromised security by attempting to bring classified
material out of the base. Yee was arrested at the naval air station in
Jacksonville, Fla., on Sept. 10.

* * *

USA Today:

October 1, 2003 - 9:33 AM ET

GUANTANAMO MISSION PLAGUED BY FEARS OF ESPIONAGE

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The U.S. detention mission for terror suspects at
Guantanamo got off to a rocky start nearly two years ago with few Arabic
speakers, computers or savvy interrogators and now it is plagued by fears of
enemies from within.

The center holding about 660 mostly Muslim, non-English-speaking suspected
terrorist fighters was expanded last year, drawing specialized personnel and a
new general who ordered sweeping changes. But with two former translators and a
former chaplain at Guantanamo under arrest, details are emerging of a troubled
mission.

"The whole thing was a mess," Bill Tierney, a former interpreter at Guantanamo
and a military intelligence veteran, told The Associated Press on Tuesday by
telephone from his Florida home.

He said the prisoners were masters at manipulation, bullying Muslim servicemen
and staging hunger strikes or suicide attempts to get attention. Sometimes, the
detainees would rib the Muslim troops, criticizing them for taking paychecks
from the "infidels."

"These guys would know who the Muslims were, who spoke Arabic, and would do
everything to push their buttons," Tierney said.

Tierney, who was an interpreter in Guantanamo in February and March of 2002,
described an amateur interrogation operation that began after the first
detainees arrived in January 2002, shackled and disoriented after being flown
halfway around the world to be held in cage-like cells open to the elements.

The detention center has since grown to include trailer-style quarters where
detainees have a metal bed, a sink and toilets that flush.

Professor Richard Kohn, former chief Air Force historian at the Pentagon, said
the military confused the roles of jailer and interrogator.

"The military was essentially the jailer down there. And that's not the
intelligence gathering business. It's not the cultural sensitivity business,"
said Kohn, who chairs the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tierney said the mission had few computers and fewer interrogators who knew
Arabic or how to crosscheck information.

He also described a folly of errors with young troops not knowing basic
geography, or trained in classical Arabic rather than the numerous other
languages such as Pashto or Dari spoken in Afghanistan.

Tierney, who was working as a contractor with Worldwide Language Resources, was
ordered out of the remote Naval base in eastern Cuba. Officials say he was
interfering with the interrogation process; he says he simply told an
interrogator the location of Karachi, the Pakistani port city.

Interrogators were seldom left alone with detainees, he said.

The U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees Guantanamo, has refused to
allow interviews with interrogators or interpreters.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller took over the Guantanamo mission late last
year and instituted a system of rewards for detainees that was meant to jolt the
interrogation process into high gear.

Some changes, which included moving cooperative detainees to a medium-security
wing where they get more exercise, books and other liberties, were seen by some
critics as being too easy on the detainees and jeopardizing security.

Although U.S. officials say efforts are ongoing to improve the lives of
detainees, who have yet to be charged with any crime, it is unclear how the
conditions actually have changed other than the construction of proper cells.

Miller says the system of rewards has been a success, saying three-fourths of
the detainees had confessed.

"We have a large number of detainees who have been very cooperative describing
their actions, either terrorist actions or in support of terrorism -- more than
75%," Miller said recently.

The arrest of a second translator on Monday has raised new concerns about
espionage and questions about how the military checked the dozens of translators
needed to help with interrogations of al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects from more
than 40 countries.

A new assessment team traveled to the prison this week to study procedures and
make recommendations on security, defense officials said Tuesday.

Civilian interpreter Ahmed Mehalba, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Egypt, was
arrested Monday with classified documents from Guantanamo. Last week authorities
charged Air Force Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi with espionage for allegedly sending
classified information about Guantanamo to an unspecified "enemy." Another
suspect is Army Capt. Yousef Yee, a Muslim chaplain being detained without
charge at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

* * *


PBS News Hour:

October 1, 2003

GUANTANAMO ARRESTS

>> The arrests of three men who worked at Guantanamo Bay,
   Cuba have raised concerns about the extent of possible
   espionage at the detention center.

>> New York Times reporter Neil Lewis discusses the arrests
   and what they may mean for the U.S. war on terror.

RAY SUAREZ: This week, attention has focused on the arrests of three people who
worked with al-Qaida and Taliban detainees at the U.S. detention center at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Thirty-one-year old Ahmed Fathy Mehalba was taken into
custody Monday at Boston's Logan Airport. The Egyptian- born American was a
civilian Arabic translator. Customs inspectors found 132 compact discs in his
luggage. Authorities said at least one disc contained classified information.

Another translator -- Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi was arrested in
July at a Navy base in Florida; he allegedly tried to pass information to Syria,
including maps of the camp and messages from prisoners. And a Muslim chaplain --
Army Captain James Yee, also known as Yousef Yee -- was arrested last month.
Officials said Yee also had maps of prison areas and notes about prisoner
interviews. Yee has not yet been charged and is being held in the navy brig in
Charleston, South Carolina.

The Guantanamo Bay facility -- known as Camp Delta -- houses about 650 prisoners
from 42 countries. Most were captured during the war in Afghanistan.

For more on the Guantanamo Bay espionage probe, we turn to Neil Lewis of The New
York Times. And Neil, welcome. What have you been able to find out about Ahmed
Mehalba, the man most recently arrested?

NEIL LEWIS: Well, he was -- he had an interesting background that he had hoped
at one time to be a military interrogator and underwent the training course for
that at an intelligence school in Arizona and flunked out not once but twice. So
how did he get to Guantanamo, even though he was rejected by the military? Well,
he was a contract translator, that is, he worked for a private company that the
military makes a contract with to get translators. And since September 11, the
military -- and the rest of the government -- has acknowledged that it's been
woefully short of qualified translators.

-- DETAILS ON THE MOST RECENT ARREST --

RAY SUAREZ: We know he was a naturalized U.S. citizen. Was he the target of an
investigation or was he found almost by accident?

NEIL LEWIS: He was found completely by accident although he was not under
suspicion. He was not under surveillance, which may have been the case with at
least one of the other people who are under suspicion.

The Customs officers at Boston's Logan Airport noticed his badge, his I.D.
badge, which identified him as a contract employee translator at Guantanamo.
They went through his baggage and called in an FBI counterterrorist agent. They
found this, as you mentioned before, Ray, the one disk which was marked as a
duplicate back-up files for music files. And it actually had on it, according to
the affidavit filed in federal court, secret government documents and one other
document that seems to have been classified.

Mr. Mehalba denied any knowledge of it and his interaction with the agent, as
told in this affidavit, is quite interesting. He also denied initially knowing a
woman who was his girlfriend at the army counterintelligence school, and she was
washed out because she had taken classified documents.

RAY SUAREZ: Now with the case of Captain James Yee, this is somebody who before
he was arrested you actually met and interviewed, right?

NEIL LEWIS: Yes. He was a very voluble, talkative fellow at Guantanamo. Often
the people there had arranged for him to be interviewed by the press. He had a
very active role.

One thing I would say that's in common between the translators and the chaplain
is that they had a opportunity other than the military to meet in effect solo
with some of the detainees, that is, Captain Yee could meet with the Muslim
detainees by himself. There was usually a two-person rule that an official had
to be accompanied by someone else. And the translator would be with an
interrogator, of course but presumably the interrogator couldn't speak the
language.

Captain Yee described himself as being very dedicated to showing that Islam is a
peaceful religion and that he saw his principal mission at Guantanamo as
reducing tensions and misunderstandings between the inmates and the
administration. He arranged for the Muslim call of prayer to be played over the
loud speaker five times a day. And once I recall that when the equipment was
broken, he sang it himself.

-- A FORMER WEST POINT GRADUATE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY --

RAY SUAREZ: Now how does the American-born son of Chinese immigrants, a West
Point graduate, end up so conversant in Arabic and a Muslim chaplain in the
United States Army?

NEIL LEWIS: It is apparently a great puzzle. It's a great puzzle to the
investigators. It's a puzzle to some of those who knew him at West Point.
Further, he did not meet all the requirements for being a chaplain but they were
so taken with the idea that this former West Point fellow wanted to come back
into the military as a chaplain, he was certified for that.

And the army, and the military in general, is sort of very leery about the
vexing issue of choosing who should be a chaplain and who is qualified so in
essence they have franchised this out to some American Islamic groups and some
people in Congress, notably Senator Schumer, contend that these are mostly
radical Islam groups.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a difference in military law that makes it possible for
Captain Yee to be in custody and not charged with anything?

NEIL LEWIS: Yes, there is. He can be detained, as he has been, without being
charged for up to 120 days. At that point the military is obliged to let him out
or bring charges against him for a court martial.

RAY SUAREZ: The third man arrested is also on active duty, Ahmad Halabi. Tell us
about him.

NEIL LEWIS: Well, the charges against him seem the most serious or at least I
should say the most detailed. In his case, the military through a funny
procedure found itself having to publicize what the charges were. And he's
charged with more than 30 counts of collecting information from the inmates with
the intent to bring the information to an agent of Syria. He is of Syrian
heritage. He is now being held at Air Force base in Vandenberg, California. As I
say, his is the most serious of all three so far.

One of the issues, of course, did any of these men know each other?
Investigators are at present puzzled, whether they knew each other, or of course
on the larger question, whether there's some wider conspiracy to infiltrate the
base. But I can tell you from being there, it's highly likely that all three of
them encountered each other because there are a couple of mess halls where
everyone goes and people who serve at Guantanamo can choose where they go. So
I'm sure they've encountered each other. It's unclear whether they knew each
other in any other way.

-- REMAINING QUESTIONS IN THE INVESTIGATION --

RAY SUAREZ: Well the bases... the camp has been open for about two years now.
Has it been established that they were all serving there at the same time at
least?

NEIL LEWIS: At least two of them. Captain Yee was serving up until recently when
he was arrested. Mr. Mehalba was on and off and would have gone back. And the
dates the Air Force has given for the airman, they all coincide. They were all
there at one time together.

RAY SUAREZ: Has the military said anything about other targets of this
investigation?

NEIL LEWIS: There is at least one other military man who is being kept under
surveillance and has not been arrested so that would make four, if you're sort
of adding them up cumulatively. Investigators are, as I say, puzzled and
troubled as to this accumulation of evidence.

Now, behind all of this is the great question, whether... are these people
guilty or not? Did they conspire together or is this an example of overeager
investigators, which would be the kind of justification for the criticisms of
civil liberties groups?

RAY SUAREZ: Ahmed Mehalba as a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, it seems like
he could go one of two ways. There's the case of Jose Padilla who is declared an
enemy combatant after being arrested at O'Hare Airport and then there's
Zaccarias Moussaoui who was also arrested on U.S. soil but is going through the
normal courts.

NEIL LEWIS: But if you're a standing member of the military, you are first
subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So he would face a court
martial, if anything.

RAY SUAREZ: Mehalba is a civilian.

NEIL LEWIS: I'm sorry I thought you said the other fellow. Mehalba is a
civillian, a citizen arrested on soil here. He will be prosecuted -- if at all
-- in a federal court, civilian court.

RAY SUAREZ: Thanks a lot, Neil Lewis.

NEIL LEWIS: Thank you, Ray.

* * *


Reuters:

October 1, 2003 - 05:41 PM ET

MILITARY OPENS SECURITY PROBE AT GUANTANAMO

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has sent a team to the U.S. Naval Base
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to find any gaps in security after the arrest of a
Muslim chaplain and two Arabic-language translators on suspicion of espionage,
officials said on Wednesday.

About a dozen investigators sent by U.S. Southern Command will assess security
procedures at the base, where the United States is holding about 660 foreign
terrorism suspects from 42 countries without charges, officials said.

The FBI would join the assessment team if asked by Southern Command, a U.S. law
enforcement official said.

"They're coming down to give us feedback on what they see and what they think of
our operation. They bring in a fresh viewpoint, a new eye," said Lt. Col Pamela
Hart, a spokeswoman at Guantanamo, adding that officials at the base were
conducting their own security review as well.

Steve Lucas, spokesman for the Miami-based Southern Command, declined to say
whether they might recommend new searches of people leaving the base to ensure
classified material is not being taken away.

Lucas said there was no timetable for the team's work, but said the
recommendations to Gen. James Hill, head of Southern Command, and Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, commander of the Guantanamo base, were expected "sooner rather
than later."

Lucas said the team's effort will be "primarily focused on systemic issues
rather than individuals."

"There have been personnel that have traveled down (to the Guantanamo base) in
the last few days. The assessment is ongoing and the team is together this
week," Lucas said.

Ahmed Mehalba, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent, became the third
person who worked at the base to be arrested on Monday.

Mehalba was detained at Logan International Airport in Boston while heading back
from Cairo to Guantanamo, where he worked as a civilian translator provided by
Titan Corp ., a San Diego-based contractor.

Mehalba, who served in the U.S. Army before receiving a medical discharge in
2001, was charged on Tuesday with lying to federal officials about apparently
classified information he was carrying.

The other translator arrested was active-duty military rather than a civilian
contractor. Senior U.S. Airman Ahmad al Halabi, a naturalized U.S. citizen of
Syrian descent, was arrested on July 23 in Florida and charged with spying for
Syria and with aiding the enemy. Pentagon officials said Halabi possessed
classified information on a computer in violation of security rules.

Army Capt. James Yee, who served as a Muslim chaplain for prisoners at
Guantanamo, was arrested on Sept. 10 in Florida. Yee is accused of possessing
maps of the prison and notes about who was conducting interrogations at the
base. Yee has not been charged with any crime.

* * *


VOA News:

October 1, 2003 - 16:37 UTC

DOD SENDS TEAM TO INVESTIGATE SUSPECTED SECURITY LAPSES AT GUANTANAMO

By Jim Teeple

MIAMI - The Defense Department's Miami-based Southern Command is sending an
investigative team to its prison facility at Guantanamo Bay to look into
suspected security lapses. The decision was made a day after a third suspect was
arrested for involvement with Taleban and al-Qaida detainees at the base.

Officials at the Miami headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command say a team of
investigators is being sent to the Guantanamo facility to look into security
procedures at the base. Three men have been detained during the past week, in
various locations, following allegations they were involved in illegal
activities at the base, where about 660 suspected Taleban fighters and al-Qaida
terrorists are being held.

Steve Lucas, a spokesman for Southcom in Miami, says the investigators will work
closely with members of the Joint Task Force, which runs Guantanamo, to review a
broad range of security procedures at the base.

"The Southern Command assessment team will be working jointly with the JTF
[Joint Task Force] staff this week to conduct an internal assessment into
operational security procedures and measures in place at Guantanamo," he said.
"They will immediately recommend reinforcement or correction of established
procedures, or the establishment of new procedures, depending on what their
assessment indicates."

Three men; Muslim Army Chaplain James Yee, Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad al-
Halabi, and civilian translator Ahmed Mehalba have been detained by U.S.
authorities on suspicion of possible espionage at the base.

Captain Yee is suspected of espionage activities, but so far no formal charges
have filed against him. Airman al-Halabi, who worked as a translator at the
base, faces a variety of charges that include aiding the enemy and espionage.

Ahmed Mehalba, a naturalized citizen of Egyptian descent who also worked as a
translator, was arrested this week at Boston airport after customs officials
found a compact disc in his luggage that reportedly contained classified
information.

Defense Department officials say those arrested had been under suspicion for
some time for illegal activities at Camp Delta, the high security facility at
Guantanamo where the detainees are held. There are about 70 translators working
at the base, and while Defense Department officials say there is no evidence of
a wider conspiracy at the base, they are investigating the activities of others
employed in sensitive positions.

* * *


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

October 1, 2003

Business News
Dateline Pittsburgh: 10/01/03

By Natalie Hill

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03274/227482.stm

CONTRACTS

Dick Corp. has received a notice of award from the Navy for
another project at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The $13.45 million award features the design and construction
of the Joint Task Force Military Commissions Complex.

The work features construction of a 38,000-square-foot, two-story
structure on a secure site that will be divided into two distinct
working areas -- the Sensitive Compartmented Facility (SCIF) and
the Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF).

[ Note "SCIF" = "Sensitive Compartmented _____________ Facility".
Incarceration? Interrogation? - CBG ]

Michael Baker is serving as the design entity for the project,
which is scheduled for completion in December 2004.

* * *


Chicago Sun-Times:

October 1, 2003

COLUMNIST WASN'T PAWN FOR LEAK

By Robert Novak Sun-Times Columnist

I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's
CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my
July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off
network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been
distorted and need explanation.

The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a
reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and
credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a
planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's
wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not
much of a secret.

The current Justice investigation stems from a routine, mandated probe of all
CIA leaks, but follows weeks of agitation. Wilson, after telling me in July that
he would say nothing about his wife, has made investigation of the leak his
life's work -- aided by the relentless Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. These
efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President
Bush.

This story began July 6 when Wilson went public and identified himself as the
retired diplomat who had reported negatively to the CIA in 2002 on alleged Iraq
efforts to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. I was curious why a high-ranking
official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council was given this
assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in
Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in
this one.

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why
Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the
CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees,
his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan
gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you
know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to
plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is
simply untrue.

At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had
inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked
me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign
assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she
travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else
would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the
sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of
an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.

How big a secret was it? It was well-known around Washington that Wilson's wife
worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National
Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source
before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie
Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's Who's Who in America entry.

A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my
column as an "operative" -- a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more
than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official
contact says she is "covered" -- working under the guise of another agency.
However, an unofficial source at the agency says she has been an analyst, not in
covert operations.

The Justice Department investigation was not requested by CIA Director George
Tenet. Any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the agency to
Justice, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July
shortly after the column was published. Reported only last weekend, the request
ignited anti-Bush furor.

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October 5, 200

CIA OPERATIVE IN LEAK DRAMA FEARS FOR SAFETY

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former ambassador at the core of the White House leak
controversy accused the Bush administration on Sunday of blowing his wife's CIA
cover to muzzle criticism over the Iraq war and said they both now feared for
her safety.

Joseph Wilson, a seasoned diplomat in both Republican and Democratic
governments, said President Bush's top political aide Karl Rove, while likely
not the source of the leak, later "gave legs" to a newspaper column that
revealed his wife's identity as a CIA operative.

"I do have a number of people, or a person in whom I have a high degree of
confidence, who has told me that Karl Rove told him that my wife is 'fair game',
and that was one week after the leak," Wilson told CBS's "Face The Nation."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week denied Rove was behind the
disclosure of Valerie Plame's name. Revealing classified information is a
federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison and the Justice Department
has opened an investigation into the alleged leak.

Wilson said it now appeared his wife's name was leaked by someone outside the
White House, as an act of revenge to stop him and others from questioning the
intelligence used to go to war with Iraq.

"This administration apparently decided the way to do that was to leak the name
of my wife," he told NBC's "Meet The Press."

Wilson had questioned the president's State of the Union address in which Bush
said Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Africa. Wilson went to Niger early in
2002 at the CIA's request to assess the uranium claim and said it was very
doubtful.

Wilson said he and his wife, a specialist in unconventional weapons who worked
overseas, were increasingly concerned she might be a target due to the
disclosure and "as a consequence of that, have begun to rethink our own security
posture."

The U.S. government had not offered any security measures, said Wilson, adding
that a leading former CIA official had said his wife "was probably the single
highest target of any possible terrorist organization or hostile intelligence
service that might want to do damage."

CAREER "OVER" AS CIA OPERATIVE

The New York Times reported on Sunday Plame had "non-official cover," what the
CIA calls a "Noc," the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to
create, often involving especially dangerous jobs.

Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert, working for a company that
has been identified as Brewster Jennings and Associates, believed to be a CIA
front company.

Jim Marcinkowski, an ex-CIA officer who called Plame the best shot in their
class with an AK-47 rifle, told Time magazine her career as an undercover
operative was over.

"She will no longer be safe traveling overseas," said Marcinkowski, who trained
with Plame at Camp Peary, the Virginia school for CIA recruits. "I liken that to
the knee-capping of an athlete."

With pressure mounting for answers over the leak, Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska
Republican, said it was up to the president to get to the bottom of the story.

"The president should be asking some pretty tough questions, if he's not
already," Hagel said on CBS. "My guess is that he is asking some tough
questions. He needs to get a hold of this himself, call his chief of staff in,
his national security adviser, the vice president and say 'OK, what do we have
here? This is serious, I want it fixed."'

Wilson's wife's cover was blown in mid-July by syndicated columnist Robert
Novak, who reiterated on Sunday he would not reveal his source for the story.

* * *


October 1, 2003

Dick Corporation -- Company News
http://www.dickcorp.com/dickcorp/company/news/

DICK CORP. RECEIVES SECOND GUANTANAMO CONTRACT

Dick Corporation has received a notice of award from the U.S. Navy for another
project at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The $13.45 million award features the design and construction of the Joint Task
Force Military Commissions Complex. The work features construction of a 38,000
square foot two-story structure, on a secure site, that will be divided into two
distinct working areas -- the Sensitive Compartmented Facility (SCIF) and the
Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF).

In addition to this work, the Navy has a 90-day option to award an additional
contract option that would add $4.2 million to the project. This option would
allow for construction of a new Military Commission Facility -- a 9500 square
foot one-story structure that would serve as a courtroom with associated support
functions to be utilized by the Joint Task Force.

Michael Baker is serving as the design entity for the project, which is
scheduled for completion in December 2004.

In July, the Department of the Navy awarded a Job Order Contract to a joint
venture of Dick Corporation and Burns & Roe to perform a wide range of tasks at
the base during the maximum five-year duration of the contract.


DICK CORP. AWARDED WORK IN CUBA

Dick Corporation has received a notice of award from the U.S. Navy to perform
work on the island of Cuba.

The Job Order Contract for work at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay has a
potential value of $50 million. The project, awarded in a joint venture with
Burns & Roe, provides for up to $10 million in work per year at the base during
the maximum five-year duration of the contract.

Work to be performed under the contract includes a wide range of construction
tasks, ranging from renovation and additions to repairs and upgrades on the
myriad number of buildings and structures, as well as other site improvements on
the base.

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