MISCELLANEOUS NEWS REPORTS * 2004.10.01 - 2004.10.01

misc_digest_2004_10.txt

Aljazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
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/

Baltimore Sun: http://www.sunspot.net/
Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/
Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Dawn (Islamabad): http://www.dawn.com/
Hartford Courant: http://www.ctnow.com/news/
Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/
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 Age (Melbourne): http://www.theage.com.au/
The Guardian (UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
The Independent (UK): http://www.independent.co.uk/
The Mirror (UK): http://www.mirror.co.uk/
The Observer (UK): http://www.observer.co.uk/
The Scotsman (Edinburgh): http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/
The Telegraph (UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Toronto Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

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


October 25, 2004

DEBATE RAGES ON

"I am a civilian, so why am I being tried in a military court?"

By Zachary R. Dowdy, Staff Correspondent

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woguan1025,0,3581741.story

U.S. NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Chained to a chair before three
judges in a fortified detention camp, the man in the orange jumpsuit and flip-
flops smiled nervously when a U.S. military officer called him an "enemy
combatant."

The man is charged with being a member of al-Qaida. The proof? That his name
appeared on a list in a senior al-Qaida member's computer, though the list had
no heading.

Did he have anything to say in his defense? the judges asked.

The detainee took an oath to "Allah, the most merciful," clutched the three
yellow pages of his statement and read it aloud in Arabic.

"I am a civilian so why am I being tried in a military court?" the man asked.

The detainee's confusion is understandable: though being charged by the
military, he did not serve in an army.

It also cuts to the heart of a debate about the U.S. military's treatment of the
550 foreign men it has held here for nearly three years as alleged Taliban or
al-Qaida fighters.

Until recently, the men were held without formal charges or legal counsel,
prompting outrage from critics who claimed they were being denied due process
and subjected to heavy-handed interrogation tactics including physical abuse.

That changed in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the detainees are
entitled to hearings to challenge their status as enemy combatants. Since then,
more than 200 of the detainees have appeared in the hearings, known as Combatant
Status Review Tribunals, at this U.S. military outpost.

Human rights concerns

But many human rights groups believe the hearings are biased against the
detainees. Among their concerns is the fact that the detainees can be held
indefinitely on the basis of evidence they aren't even allowed to see.

"The persons who have been responsible for war crimes should be prosecuted but
in a fair manner -- and that's not what is taking place," said James Ross,
senior legal adviser for Human Rights Watch. "We're concerned about the process
and concerned about the United States abiding by its international law
obligations. These hearings are not a substitute."

Military officials at Guantanamo Bay said they are detaining, interrogating and
judging the detainees "in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions" of
1949, which govern the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians. "The global
war on terrorism is a different type of war," said Capt. Beci Brenton, a
military spokeswoman. "We are developing an innovative way to deal with that
terrorism. We think the process we have established provides them a fair
opportunity."

The detainees are being treated better than international law says they have to
be, U.S. military officials said.

The Supreme Court rejected the U.S. government's argument that it could hold the
detainees indefinitely without a hearing because al-Qaida fighters aren't
citizens of a single country and Taliban soldiers aren't soldiers for a
legitimate government, making both groups ineligible for POW status.

The detainee, whose name the military will not allow to be released, said he
belongs to neither group. "I know that the accused is innocent until proven
guilty," he said. "First prove that I am a criminal," he continued, asking that
he see evidence against him, "and then after that I will prove I am innocent."

A few independent U.S. media reports suggest this detainee is not a member of
al-Qaida or the Taliban, but a humanitarian volunteer who went to Afghanistan to
help war victims but was sold into captivity by Afghans who traded dozens of men
for cash. U.S. officials had offered bounties for suspected fighters in the
frenzy after the invasion.

Low intelligence value

The apparent holes in the case against him coincided with the release of other
media reports and independent investigations alleging detainees at the camp here
have very low intelligence value in the war on terror.

Lt. Col. Anthony Christino, a 20-year veteran Pentagon intelligence officer,
said earlier this month that officers at Guantanamo Bay are harvesting low-grade
intelligence from the detainees and that U.S. officials have "wildly
exaggerated" the value of the interrogations.

The detainees, whose names are being kept secret by the military, were plucked
from areas near battlefields in Afghanistan or Pakistan after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks. Many have been held here since January 2002.

They live in cells identical to those in facilities ranging from minimum- to
maximum-security U.S. prisons.

They are assigned white, tan or orange jumpsuits, the colors denoting how
cooperative they have been: white is most cooperative, orange is least.

All will undergo hearings by the end of the year during which they will sit
shackled in 10-by-20-foot rooms in Camp Delta, the sprawling detention center
inside Guantanamo Bay.

The tribunals, designed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, decide
whether detainees are enemy combatants based on secret evidence garnered from
secret sources. The military judges, whose names also aren't revealed,
deliberate in secret. And detainees must answer charges without help from a
lawyer, unless you count the "personal representative," an officer with no legal
training whose name is also secret, even to the detainee.

Neutrality test

On Wednesday, a federal court judge ruled that three detainees must be allowed
access to attorneys and that the U.S. government can't monitor their
conversations with their lawyers. But it is unclear when or whether that ruling
will apply to all detainees.

In addition, lawyers and human rights advocates are barred from even observing
the tribunals. Journalists may attend only if they keep secret the identities
and nationalities of detainees. That applies even in the case of the man who
smiled when accused of belonging to al-Qaida, though he is one of 12 detainees
named in the lawsuit that prompted the Supreme Court's June ruling.

All three military judges must pass a "neutrality" test, but human rights
monitors say the criteria are weak.

Neutrality is established merely if none of a judge's relatives was killed in
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The judges also must not have been involved in the
capture, detention or interrogation of detainees.

The hearings may have two outcomes: The detainee will be freed if the judges
believe he's not an enemy combatant or judged to be of little intelligence
value. Otherwise, he'll be held for up to a year until his case is reviewed at
another hearing. Those reviews can be repeated indefinitely -- and the detainee
held indefinitely.

So far, the tribunal judges have declared 95 detainees to be enemy combatants.
It has only found one detainee to be innocent. He was released.

As a result of the Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. military also must hold trials
for detainees suspected of having committed war crimes. The 15 detainees who
have been charged with war crimes so far will be given military defense lawyers.

Underscoring concerns by human rights groups about the neutrality standards for
judges, three of the six U.S. military officers conducting those war-crimes
trials were removed Thursday after complaints of potential bias. Preliminary
motions in those trials are to begin Nov. 1.

Military officials acknowledged that they probably will release most of the
detainees, who come from at least 42 countries and speak a dozen languages. More
than 200 of the 750 men who have been brought to the detention camp have been
released so far.

Some were freed for lack of evidence, said Brig. Gen. Martin Lucenti, deputy
commanding general of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay, while others were
released to their own countries' authorities for further judicial proceedings.

Lucenti said a core group of detainees from one country -- which the military
would not allow Newsday to identify -- has been the most resistant to
interrogations, and that some of the members have not uttered a word to
authorities since arriving nearly three years ago.

He said a small group of detainees are providing the best intelligence
information, and that some have no intelligence value, but that "They are
committed to radical Islam, to cut the heads off of infidels -- and that's us."

Treatment of detainees

Nonetheless, he said they are treated well, receiving, for example, religious
items including Qurans, prayer beads, mats and oil, and arrows in their cells
pointing to Mecca. "We're intent here on providing a humane detention regime
because it will yield the best intelligence," he said. "We're making efforts to
comply to the maximum extent we can with the International Committee of the Red
Cross."

Still, he acknowledged that the camp has been the site of at least 34 suicide
attempts by 21 prisoners, none of which was successful.

In January, Red Cross officials publicly aired concerns about the treatment of
the detainees at the camp, in a highly unusual move for the organization, which
gains access to POWs and other suspected combatants in exchange for keeping its
findings confidential. Some of those concerns still exist, Red Cross officials
said.

"Our basic line hasn't changed," said Antonella Notari, a spokeswoman for the
Geneva-based organization, referring to the group's concerns over the detainees'
mental and emotional health since they have endured long periods of
interrogation.

Amanda Williamson, a Red Cross spokeswoman based in Washington, said, "Some of
our recommendations have been implemented, but there are certain elements of
treatment that need to be addressed."

Lucenti said Guantanamo Bay was unfairly "painted with the same brush" when the
Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq erupted last spring.

Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the Camp Delta joint task force, said
Guantanamo came under suspicion when critics charged that some methods of abuse
of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were first approved by high-level U.S. military
officials such as Rumsfeld, and had been used first on detainees in Guantanamo
Bay.

Some released Guantanamo Bay detainees have said they were severely beaten by
special armed teams, and that the assaults were videotaped by other officers.

Other media have reported that detainees complained to the Red Cross of being
hooded, stripped naked and intimidated by dogs, in incidents similar to those
depicted in photos from Abu Ghraib. Last week, The New York Times quoted unnamed
officers at Guantanamo Bay as saying the most resistant detainees were regularly
beaten.

But Hood, who came to Camp Delta in March, and Lucenti said they are unaware of
specific instances of prisoner abuse.

"There's no record or accusation that we had stripped prisoners here or left
anyone naked for any period of time," Hood said.

"We do have guard dogs," Hood said, but "those dogs have not been anywhere near
the detainees."

During interrogations, an interrogator, an analyst and a linguist or translator
interview each of the detainees searching for strategic information about al-
Qaida and links to other terrorist groups. Detainees may be held in place for
questioning by chains strapped to an eyelet bolted to the floor.

One interrogator said he makes the most progress when detainees view their
captors as human beings, too.

"When you make a connection with them and humanize Americans, that creates great
breakthroughs," he said, adding that some detainees have opened up after being
brought tea and biscuits, for example, or ice cream.

Hood, who opened the camps to the media in the wake of an international outcry
over lack of access, claimed information gathered at Guantanamo Bay has forced
al-Qaida to abort a number of attacks, especially in Europe, but he would not
provide specifics.

Brenton, the military spokeswoman, said officials are completing about seven
hearings each week. Some detainees remain silent or choose not to take part in
their proceedings, while others take issue with their confinement and question
the authority of the officers who judge them. About one-third so far have
refused to take part, but their hearings go on in their absence, officials said.

One detainee, a young, red-bearded man who was allegedly captured in Afghanistan
because he was a friend of a man who later committed a suicide bombing, claimed
he did not know his friend had such designs.

"What explosion, what bomb?" the detainee asked through an interpreter.

"I cannot say in this session," responded a military officer, saying the
information about that incident is in the "classified" portion of the hearing.

The detainee had also been staying and studying at a school that the military
officer said was supported by a nongovernmental organization that had allegedly
provided funding to a terrorist group.

The man admitted to attending the school, which he said he sought out because it
offered fast-track education in Islam, but he disavowed the terrorist ties.

"I didn't know [his friend] do something like that to kill himself or someone
else," said the detainee, speaking in broken English. "If I know that, I
wouldn't have friends like that. ... My religion is a peace religion. ... I
don't support terrorists. I only want to be a Muslim and pray to God."

Disputes al-Qaida link

Meanwhile, the detainee in the orange jumpsuit whose name appeared on an al-
Qaida member's computer was allowed as much time as he liked to make his case
and ask questions. His statement lasted over an hour.

The man, a soft-spoken father of two and a teacher with a degree in Islamic law,
had participated in a weeks-long hunger strike while being detained.

He took issue with the criteria used to determine his alleged membership in al-
Qaida. He testified he was in Afghanistan in fall 2001 because a man he had met
in Mecca had asked him to teach the Quran to villagers there.

"Is a person who traveled to China a communist?" he asked. "Is a person who
traveled to Iraq a member of the Baath Party?"

His "personal representative," an Air Force officer, sat quietly during the
response to the charges and offered no evidence in his defense.

Tribunal members were most concerned with why the detainee traveled to
Afghanistan during the war and why his name turned up on the al-Qaida
operative's computer.

"There is no relationship between me and any person from al-Qaida," he said.
"There are millions of Arabs with my name."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

* * *



Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot --

October 22, 2004

NORFOLK JUDGE HAS CASE OF A LIFETIME

By Tim Mcglone, The Virginian-Pilot

NORFOLK -- Judge Robert G. Doumar had just finished a putt on the 10th green at
the Tartan Golf Course earlier this month when a cart pulled up, and off stepped
a man in a dark suit carrying a briefcase attached by a chain to his wrist.

In a line out of a Hollywood spy thriller, the man said something like: "Judge,
I have some papers for you. They are classified and for your eyes only."

Doumar left the course to inspect the papers in private. It was the evidence he
had long waited to see in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American and Saudi
Arabian citizen who had been captured in Afghanistan and was being held in a
Navy brig without charge.

The papers included Hamdi’s statements to military authorities explaining why he
was in Afghanistan alongside Taliban soldiers. For the first time since the case
had landed on his desk in May 2002, Doumar was able to see Hamdi’s words for
himself.

Doumar never spoke publicly about the case while it remained open. Once Hamdi
had been freed, however, the judge agreed to discuss the issues surrounding his
capture and detention.

"This is unquestionably the most important case I’ve ever had," Doumar said from
his chambers this week. "This case involved the rights of every individual in
the United States."

Doumar said that on Oct. 8, the day of his golf outing, the Justice Department
met his 2 p.m. deadline to deliver the documents, and he took some delight in
forcing the government to find him on the course.

After reading the papers, Doumar phoned the government and ordered that Hamdi be
brought to his courtroom in four days. He was ready to rule on the legality of
Hamdi’s detention.

Instead, three days later, Hamdi was back home in Saudi Arabia, hugging his
family. A table in Doumar’s fourth-floor chambers at the Walter E. Hoffman
United States Courthouse on Granby Street holds the entire Hamdi case file,
stacked high.

On one of those piles sits a book, written by Supreme Court Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist, titled "All the Laws But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime."
The book, published three years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, makes
clear that Rehnquist supports some sort of judicial oversight of individuals
detained, without charge, during times of war.

So Doumar figured that when the Hamdi case reached the nation’s highest court,
Rehnquist and the four liberal justices would likely back his decision granting
Hamdi a hearing and access to counsel. In the end, six of the nine justices were
on his side.

Doumar, a senior judge who technically is part time but whose workload rivals
that of his full-time counterparts, is known in legal circles for his bluntness
on the bench. He is prone to scolding lawyers and speaks his mind like no other
judge in the Norfolk federal courthouse.

In the Hamdi case, for example, he called the government’s position "idiotic."

Doumar is of Middle Eastern descent himself, and his local roots run deep. His
father built Doumar’s restaurant on Monticello Avenue. During several recent
interviews, he appeared jovial and relaxed, quite opposite his typical courtroom
demeanor.

The Hamdi case posed a challenge for him on several levels. He knew he would be
upsetting some Republican friends with his position, yet he believed that the
case transcended politics.

Hamdi, now 24, was born in Louisiana but moved with his family back to his
parents’ native Saudi Arabia when he was 3. In the summer of 2001, while on
break from a Saudi college, he traveled with a friend to Pakistan for what he
says was part relief mission, part spiritual journey.

That autumn, Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance forces captured Hamdi alongside
Taliban fighters and turned him over to the U.S. military. The Pentagon said
Hamdi had received weapons training and was carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle
when he was captured.

After learning that Hamdi was a U.S. citizen, the military brought him to the
brig at Norfolk Naval Station.

Doumar received the case in May 2002 after a magistrate had already ruled that
Hamdi was entitled to challenge his detention.

The government had submitted a nine-paragraph affidavit from a senior Pentagon
official declaring that Hamdi was affiliated with a Taliban military unit, that
he had received weapons training and that he was captured on the battlefield
with a weapon.

After learning that this official had never met Hamdi, Doumar asked for more. He
ordered the government to produce the military officers who questioned Hamdi as
well as statements from the Northern Alliance soldiers. The government balked.

"I was looking for anything to give me some insight into this thing," he said.

The case, he knew, had far-reaching implications.

"If they could continue to hold Hamdi, then they could hold anyone," said
Doumar, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan. "I thought it
was pretty open and shut." The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

A three-judge panel overturned Doumar. The case then went to the U.S. Supreme
Court.

"I knew in my own mind that ultimately the Supreme Court would rule that he’s
entitled to a hearing," the judge said. "I was confident of that from the
beginning."

But the case grew more frustrating. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in June,
Hamdi had been held in solitary confinement for more than two years, and that
disturbed Doumar the most. Even then, the government refused to produce Hamdi,
citing procedural rules to delay the case for three more months.

"The biggest thing that concerned me was that the other enemy combatants were
not in solitary confinement," he said. "He couldn’t talk on the telephone. He
couldn’t read the newspaper. He couldn’t speak to anyone other than his
interrogators."

Doumar refused to say how he would have ruled had the government not released
Hamdi. Hamdi conducted several interviews once he returned home to Saudi Arabia.
In each, he denied being a Taliban fighter and said he was only carrying a rifle
to protect himself as he tried to flee the country.

"The allegation about me is wrong," he told The New York Times. "I believe I am
innocent. And I think it is very clear that I am innocent because if I was not,
I would not be sitting here talking to you."

Doumar still wonders whether Hamdi is telling the whole story.

"There’s no question that Hamdi was accompanying the Taliban, nor did he deny
accompanying the Taliban," he said.

Still, he bristles at the thought of the government stripping citizens of their
basic constitutional right to access the courts.

"We would be destroying the very foundation of our society," Doumar said.

"They were trying to set a precedent that would have given them unlimited
power," he added. "And that’s a scary prospect."

[ Reach Tim McGlone at 446-2343 or tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com ]

* * *


October 17, 2004

USA TODAY

SPY CASE WAS A 'LIFE-ALTERING EXPERIENCE' FOR AIRMAN

By Laura Parker

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-10-17-halabi_x.htm

FAIRFIELD, Calif. -- The day Ahmad Al Halabi, an Air Force translator at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was arrested, he was more puzzled than alarmed.

His focus had been on getting to Syria for his wedding before his non-refundable
airline ticket expired. It wasn't until he had been jailed in a windowless cell
and told that he could face the death penalty that he learned what to him was
unthinkable: He had been accused of spying against the United States.

Over the next 14 months, he found himself in a kind of hell in an adopted
country that he had once praised as having so many freedoms that even "the
animals had rights." Al Halabi, however, spent 10 months in solitary
confinement.

The case against him - part of the so-called spy ring case at Guantanamo {ndash}
{ndash} collapsed last month, when all of the spy charges were dropped after a
black comedy of errors. But he pleaded guilty to lesser charges. He has been
reduced in rank to airman basic and is being kicked out of the Air Force, a
place he would like to stay, on a bad-conduct discharge.

Despite the ordeal, Al Halabi, 25, says he is not bitter. "The American dream is
still out there for me. I am pursuing it," he says.

"It may have got a little more difficult because of the charges and labels," he
says of his pursuit. "I am more cautious of what I do. It's been a life-altering
experience."

Al Halabi is still absorbing the consequences of having been accused of
something he says he didn't do.

He is aware that some friends have dropped him out of fear of being associated
with a suspected spy.

Al Halabi's arrest so frightened his fiancee, who was left waiting with 200
relatives for her missing groom, that she's not sure she wants to move to the
USA. He would like to visit her in the United Arab Emirates, where she lives, to
calm her. But Al Halabi worries that if he leaves, he'll have trouble returning,
although he's a naturalized U.S. citizen.

He was accused of attempting to deliver about 200 secret documents to unknown
enemies in his native Syria. A week before his court-martial, however, military
officials concluded that only one document was classified secret.

Al Halabi pleaded guilty to four counts, including taking two souvenir snapshots
at the prison camp where more than 600 suspected al-Qaeda operatives and Taliban
soldiers are being held.

He says he hasn't taken a photograph since. He has also stopped collecting
memorabilia to document his life. That's partly what got him into trouble:
keeping a copy of his orders, which were stamped "secret," as a souvenir of his
role in America's war on terrorism.

Because Al Halabi was the subject of a counterintelligence inquiry, he says he
wonders whether agents are still investigating him.

When he misplaced his calendar recently, his first thought was that agents had
secretly searched his room, as they did in their investigation of him.

Before it all went so wrong, Al Halabi looked at his six-month tour at
Guantanamo with pride. His job was to translate mail to and from the prisoners
into English.

But he was also asked to visit the cellblocks and translate for the guards. Al
Halabi once accompanied a prisoner into surgery for a knee operation.

He also was in charge of handing out library books. Investigators seized a
cellblock roster that included a series of numbers next to the name of an
Australian prisoner named David Hicks. Investigators speculated that the digits
could be a secret coded message.

Al Halabi said the numbers were references to library books. Hicks was on the
waiting list to receive a Harry Potter book.

"The Brits were always arguing about which volume of Harry Potter they could
have," he says.

When a number of prisoners attempted suicide, Al Halabi helped write a plan for
holding funerals. And when a wooden coffin was shipped to the base, he helped
paint it green.

Al Halabi says he did not witness any treatment of prisoners that has now been
called into question as abusive. But he says he saw things at Guantanamo that
disturbed him. He says guards would purposely mishandle the Koran "just to see
the detainees' reaction."

"All I wanted was for them to treat those prisoners like human beings," Al
Halabi says.

But he says that view was seen as sympathy toward the enemy, and it fueled
suspicions about him.

He says the small group of U.S. troops at Guantanamo who were Muslim sometimes
felt like they were an island on an island. The non-Muslim guards resented their
explanations about the proper handling of the Koran. Some guards derided them as
"detainee lovers." Yet the prisoners called them infidels and threw urine and
feces at them.

"We were caught in the middle," Al Halabi says with a shrug.

He says it is difficult to explain Guantanamo to someone who has not been there.

"It's its own world," Al Halabi says. "It's got its own rules."

* * *


Minnesota Public Radio --

October 11, 2004

ABU GHRAIB INTERROGATOR TELLS HIS STORY

by Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/10/04_bensonl_interrogator/

It's been six months since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq became public,
tarnishing the reputation of American troops. Six soldiers still face abuse
charges. Two others have been sentenced to prison. The assaults at the Baghdad-
area prison came to light after incriminating photographs surfaced in the media.
The images showed naked, bloodied Iraqis in humiliating poses surrounded by
smiling U.S. soldiers. So far, only low-ranking soldiers have been charged with
crimes. But a recent Army investigation says senior level officers were
responsible for a breakdown in the rules at the prison and for a lack of
oversight. After months of self-imposed silence on the issue, a former
interrogator who lives in Minneapolis, has decided to speak out about what he
saw at Abu Ghraib.

St. Paul, Minn. -- Roger Brokaw didn't witness the incidents documented in the
now-infamous photographs. But the Army reservist saw other situations in Iraq
that still haunt him. For six months last year, Brokaw worked at Abu Ghraib
prison as a military intelligence interrogator.

"Your job is to break down the resistance of the person being interrogated, so
he will give you the information that you're seeking," Brokaw says.

Each day Brokaw would get two or three new Iraqi prisoners to question, but the
assignment was always the same.

"It was usually, first question, 'Where's Saddam?' you know. They wanted to
catch Saddam so bad and then you know it fell down to terrorist organizations
and where the weapons are hidden and so on," says Brokaw.

Almost immediately Brokaw had a dilemma. Most of the prisoners appeared to him
to be average Iraqis picked up for petty crimes or for being in the wrong place
at the wrong time - not terrorists. No matter how much he questioned them, they
didn't seem to have any useful information. Brokaw believed them, but he says
his superiors didn't. Suicide bombings were becoming an everyday occurrence in
Iraq and U.S. military leaders wanted interrogators at Abu Ghraib to find who
was responsible.

"A lot of pressure. Oh definitely," says Brokaw. "Our fellow soldiers are dying.
We've got to prevent this you know. So let's just go to the nth degree to get
this information to prevent people from getting killed."

Brokaw says his bosses didn't define "the nth degree". But it was clear that
they wanted him to push detainees much harder to get information.

"I had a couple people tell me that I was too soft on the prisoners and that I
should toughen up my technique. But you know you get a lot of bad information
when you torture people because they'll say anything they can to get away from
the pains," he says.

Brokaw ignored the suggestions - confident in his 27 years of military
experience and his training in prisoner rules under the Geneva Convention. But
he believes many of his colleagues gave in to the pressure. Brokaw recalls
meeting one Iraqi prisoner who had obviously been roughed up before he even got
to his interrogation.

Says Brokaw, "The prisoner was very skittish, very uptight, 'cause every time
I'd just adjust myself in my seat he'd flinch. And he said, 'You're gonna hit
me.' And I told him 'No. I'm not going to hit you.' I says, 'Why do you say
that?' And he said, 'Well the other guy was beatin' me.' And then he opened his
shirt and had a bunch of bruises all over his torso."

Brokaw asked the prisoner to identify the person who beat him. He pointed to a
man dressed in civilian clothes. That meant he was either contracted by the U.S.
government or he worked for the FBI or the CIA. Brokaw reported the incident to
his superiors.

"Well, first I told the sergeant there and he just kind of smiled and said, 'Oh,
you know Iraqis are all liars,'" says Brokaw. "And then when I reported it to
the warrant officer, he just kind of, just 'Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll look into it'
and continued on with what he was doing and never did anything."

On another occasion, Brokaw says he witnessed a military police officer abusing
a kid at the prison who didn't raise his arms properly during a search.

Says Brokaw, "He had his hands maybe a couple inches below horizontal and the
M.P. just went berserk on him and just flipped him on the ground and smashed his
head in the ground in the dirt and was screaming all kinds of epithets at him
and he did this right in front of me. I mean I was like three feet away when he
was doing this and I said 'Hey, what did he do?' 'He didn't put his hands up
like he was supposed to.' And I says, 'I saw him put his hands up.' 'Yeah, it
wasn't high enough.' So I reported to a sergeant in my office and he said, 'Oh,
it's an M.P. problem. Let them deal with it.'"

Brokaw says he was frustrated, but there wasn't much more he could do.

"There was just a general atmosphere of condoning things, of just a lack of
oversight," says Brokaw. "In spite of the fact that different rules and
regulations were coming down telling us we couldn't do this and we couldn't do
that, but it was like it was all lip service. I mean you could just kind of feel
it. There just wasn't something right."

About a week before Brokaw departed Iraq, he says he got a particularly odd
assignment. It began during a Red Cross visit. Brokaw's superiors didn't have
enough military police to guard some prisoners being held in an unoccupied wing
of the prison. At the last minute they recruited Brokaw and several of his
interrogator colleagues.

"They had five Iraqi men, one per cell and they had hoods on them, the bags over
their heads and they had tie binds on their hands behind them and they were
making them sit in the middle of the floor. You know, for the six hours they
wanted them to sit in the middle of that floor, you know? And so we were sitting
there and it was running through my mind, 'Why are we doing this? Why are we
doing this?,'" says Brokaw.

"Well afterwards, after my shift was over, I was outside of our billeting area
and Colonel Pappas and Lt. Colonel Jordan and two or three other officers were
in a gaggle there talking and I overheard them talking about how they you know,
they says well we'll keep these guys hidden until they leave, til the Red Cross
leaves you know. So I figured, 'Oh, they're hiding them from the Red Cross,'"
says Brokaw.

"And then some woman, I think it might have been Captain Wood, but I'm not sure,
she was saying, 'Well, won't they wonder where they're at if they see their name
on the list?,'" says Brokaw. "They said, 'Well these guys aren't on a list.
These are nobodies. They're ghosts' or something like that."

Brokaw didn't report the incident.

"I didn't know who to report it to," says Brokaw. "Here's my superiors. You
know, who do I report it to?"

Army spokeswoman Pamela Hart says she can't verify the exact conversation Brokaw
overheard, but she says the Army does confirm that those officers were involved
in the so-called "ghost prisoner" scandal.

"Well the statements you've gotten from the former interrogator were completely
in line with what the Army has found," says Hart. "We indeed separated detainees
and did not have them made public to the International Committee of the Red
Cross."

Hart says the Army has no problem with Brokaw talking about his time at Abu
Ghraib because he is retired from the military and he was not part of the
investigation. Brokaw however says he has met others who are annoyed that he's
speaking out.

"Yeah, I've had a couple people tell me, 'Well people shouldn't know about this.
We've gotta keep this quiet,'" Brokaw says.

When Brokaw asks them why anyone should remain quiet, he says they usually issue
the same reply.

"Well, cause you know you talk about this and it's gonna make our troops look
bad and they're going to kill more out there."

Not long ago concerns like that would have stopped Brokaw in his tracks. But not
anymore. The reason has a lot to do with what happened to his wife while he was
serving in Iraq. She was struck by a car while crossing University Avenue and
spent nine days in a coma. Brokaw rushed back to the Twin Cities, but she died
the day before he arrived. He says the experience changed him and he no longer
worries about what people think. Brokaw would still like to share his stories
and concerns with the military. But he probably won't get the chance. The Army
says it has finished its investigation into what went on at Abu Ghraib and all
that's left is to figure out punishments for those who took part in the abuse
scandal.

* * *


Air Force Times:

October 4, 2004 issue

AL HALABI SPY CHARGES DROPPED
Documents were ‘war trophies,’ airman says

By Nicole Gaudiano, Times staff writer

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-AIRPAPER-371122.php

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi still has
homework from high school, 8-year-old utility bills and the business cards from
the Air Force recruiters who got him to join four years ago.

And so, just before he left Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, where he was a
translator last year, he packed the contents of his locker, including classified
information about one of his missions transporting detainees to Afghanistan, and
sent them home in a box.

In a courtroom at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., Al Halabi, 25, spent an hour
and 20 minutes giving a multimedia presentation to convince a military judge
that he was never a spy, but a proud American -- and a pack rat.

"I never had any intention of giving those documents to anyone at all," he said,
a day after pleading guilty to mishandling classified information. "No one told
me to take them. They were interesting to me, and they were about the work I did
at Gitmo. I thought they would be nice memorabilia from my time there.

"They were my war trophies," he said.

The judge, Air Force Col. Barbara Brand, gave him a bad conduct discharge and
demoted him to E-1, but she didn’t send him back to jail. Her decision is not
final. The convening authority, Lt. Gen. William Welser III, 18th Air Force
commander, can accept the sentence, reduce it or throw it out. But he can’t make
it any harsher.

Lt. Col. Bryan T. Wheeler, the lead prosecutor, said he was not disappointed by
the verdict and that the Air Force Office of Investigation will continue to seek
strategic information from Al Halabi as part of the pretrial agreement.

"We are interested in knowing what he knows," Wheeler said. "We are interested
in who he knows."

Al Halabi’s attorney, Donald G. Rehkopf said Al Halabi will be "debriefed" as
part of the agreement. Rehkopf said he will ask Welser to throw out the
conviction or the bad conduct discharge or both. If Welser approves the
sentence, Al Halabi will appeal the case, Rehkopf said.

A day earlier, the government had dropped all attempted espionage charges
against him. In a case that started off with death-penalty offenses, Al Halabi
pleaded guilty to three lesser offenses, including violating a lawful order,
making false statements and conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.

Even though Wheeler signed the plea deal, he told reporters he still believed Al
Halabi was trying to commit espionage. "We caught him before the act was
completed," Wheeler said.

In his closing argument, he said that Al Halabi should be sentenced to four
years in jail because the documents could have compromised national security.
"Those who support terrorism would have been emboldened to know that in this
secure facility we had an airman who decided to break the rules," he said.

However, the defense questioned how secure Guantanamo really is. One witness,
Army Capt. Jason Orlich, who testified for the government, called the lack of
security clearance among workers "a nightmare." Maj. Kim London questioned why
training and security clearances weren’t required of the linguists if the camp
was supposed to be secure.

"The government oversold, overcharged and overreacted in this case and now
they’re trying to save face," she told the court.

"It was suspicion, not evidence, that made people jump to conclusions," she
said. "The fact is, he was stereotyped."

The case is the latest involving security breaches at Guantanamo to unravel for
the government. Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain, was accused of being a
spy but never charged with it and now awaits an honorable discharge. The Defense
Department is investigating the handling of that case. Another Army officer,
Col. Jack Farr, a Reserve intelligence officer at Guantanamo, recently received
nonjudicial punishment to resolve charges of lying and mishandling classified
information.

Religious tensions

Testimony during Al Halabi’s sentencing hearing shed light on strained relations
between Muslims and Christians at Guantanamo, and that the command had a
climate-assessment survey done as a result of the tensions. The results of the
survey were not made public.

Although the judge would not admit the evidence, the defense had slides that
included an anti-Muslim image that had been sent by e-mail to about seven people
around the camp.

But the prejudicial exchanges weren’t confined to Guantanamo. One government
witness, who originally testified that Al Halabi had a problem with a customer
while deployed in Kuwait, later conceded that the customer had insulted Al
Halabi. When the Army master sergeant asked how to pronounce Al Halabi’s name,
the story went, he said, "Sounds like Airman al-Qaida to me."

Al Halabi told the judge that it was difficult being a linguist at Guantanamo
because the guards accused linguists of sympathizing with detainees, perhaps
because they spoke the same language.

A government witness, Navy Petty Officer Tehmere Elsouifi, who also translated
at the camp, said Al Halabi told him to "be merciful to the brothers" or
detainees, when he was translating the word "infidel." He said to not make it so
harsh because it would get censored. However, he later said Al Halabi told him
to translate as accurately as possible.

As part of his plea, Al Halabi admitted to taking photos of the prison camp
where hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida suspects are being held, and lying about
taking those pictures to an investigator. "I was scared that day so I just told
him, ‘No, I did not take any pictures,’" Al Halabi told the judge.

He also said he mishandled classified information concerning the ferrying of
detainees to and from Guantanamo, and that he "wrongfully and willfully"
retained that unauthorized document and others by sending them with his personal
items in a box back to his home station at Travis.

While accepting responsibility, he told the judge that he had never before
worked with classified information and did not receive training before going to
Gitmo or after arriving. "We had to just figure things out as we went," he said.

Upon his arrest, the government has said, Al Halabi was carrying two written
notes from detainees in his luggage and more than 180 translations of detainee
letters stored on his computer.

While the documents were originally identified as classified by intelligence
specialists at Guantanamo Bay, and later by U.S. Southern Command, Defense
Department and Air Force Office of Special Investigations security experts
recently concluded that those documents were not classified; they are considered
"For Official Use Only."

16 pages were classified

The review concluded that 16 pages out of about 200 documents involved in the
charges were classified -- the information on the "air-bridge mission" he
stuffed in the box and sent home to Travis.

The government has charged that Al Halabi was trying to deliver the documents to
an unidentified "citizen of a foreign government" by carrying them to Syria, but
the government did not identify a recipient of those documents.

Al Halabi, during his statement, said he was bound for Syria to marry his
girlfriend, whose picture he showed on the film projector.

He also showed a picture of his aluminum-walled jail cell, where he was
videotaped at all times. He said he was "scared out of my mind" when he was
arrested, especially when he heard he could be facing the death penalty. "I even
started wondering if they would use an electric chair or firing squad to execute
me," he said.

Speaking of the documents, he told the judge, "It wasn’t smart to keep these
things. In fact, it was a dumb thing to do, but I never meant to harm the Air
Force or the United States."

* * *
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* * *