MISCELLANEOUS NEWS REPORTS * 2004.02.01 - 2004.02.29 misc_digest_2004_2.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/ * The Age (Melbourne): http://www.theage.com.au/ * 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/ * The Guardian (UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ * Toronto Globe and Mail: 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/ ================================================================================ Seattle Post-Intelligencer: February 29, 2004 REPORT: SEPT. 11 COORDINATOR MET HIJACKER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103 &slug=Spain%20Binalshibh MADRID, Spain (AP) -- The suspected coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks is being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has told investigators he met with the lead hijacker, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday. El Pais, the country's largest daily newspaper, said Ramzi Binalshibh, who was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002, acknowledged meeting Mohamed Atta of Egypt in July 2001 - two months before the attacks in the United States. The story cites an FBI report given to Spain's Civil Guard as its source. The Civil Guard is the national police force. A U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to comment Sunday on Binalshibh's whereabouts or other details in the El Pais report. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy said "this information didn't come from us." The Civil Guard did not answer its phone Sunday. An Interior Ministry spokesman who declined to identify himself said Sunday that no one was available to comment. Binalshibh was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002 and was known to be in U.S. custody, but his location has been kept secret. Defendants in at least two trials stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks have been denied access to Binalshibh. U.S. federal prosecutors in the trial of alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui have argued that national security would be gravely harmed if details were revealed about the sensitive interrogations of Binalshibh and other suspected al-Qaida operatives. Binalshibh is a Yemeni who lived in Hamburg, Germany, with Atta and failed four times to get a U.S. entry permit. He also wired money to Moussaoui. The July 2001 meeting between Binalshibh and Atta in Tarragona, in northeast Spain near Barcelona, has long been suspected but not proven. Both men were known to be there at that time. According to El Pais, information from his interrogation at Guantanamo led to last week's arrest in Murcia, southeast Spain, of Khaled Madani of Algeria. Madani allegedly is a forger who sold Binalshibh a false passport he used to leave Spain on Sept. 7, 2001, for Athens, Greece; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Kabul, Afghanistan, where he allegedly met Osama bin Laden. Last week, National Court Judge Guillermo Ruiz Polanco ordered Madani and another Algerian, Moussa Laouar, jailed on suspicion they formed part of bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. Laouar is wanted in France and faces extradition proceedings. Judge Ruiz Polanco intends to request access to Binalshibh at Guantanamo as part of Spain's investigation of the al-Qaida cell, El Pais reported. * * * The Independent (UK): February 29, 2004 GUANTANAMO DETAINEES' EVIDENCE MAY BE UNUSABLE By Kim Sengupta http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=496245 Evidence obtained by MI5 officers from British detainees being returned from Guantanamo Bay will not be usable, for legal reasons, in any trials they may face in this country. The Independent on Sunday has learnt that MI5 staff carried out extensive interviews of all the British prisoners, and that the information obtained from some has, it is claimed, been valuable in subsequent counter-terrorist operations. The questioning had, however, taken place without the suspects being allowed legal representation, or being cautioned about self-incrimination, and as a result is certain to be ruled inadmissible. There is also a strong possibility, according to senior Whitehall sources, that MI5 may refuse to pass on some of the information to the Crown Prosecution Service because of guarantees of confidentiality given to the prisoners. Scotland Yard yesterday formally began their investigation into the five Britons who are expected to return in the near future from their incarceration in Camp X-Ray. Anti-terrorist officials do not hold out much hope of a successful prosecution, however, unless the men decide to make self-incriminating confessions. This, it is believed, is unlikely once they take legal advice in Britain. The nine Britons were interviewed by MI5 in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as Guantanamo Bay, some of them on several occasions. The access gained by the security service was one of the issues raised in a legal action by Zumrait Juma, mother of one of the detainees, Feroz Abbasi, claiming that the British Government had failed to protect his rights. However, this was dropped from subsequent legal proceedings. Louise Christian, solicitor for Mr Abbasi, Richard Belmar and Martin Mubanga, who all continue to be held, and Tarek Dergoul, who is being returned, said, "We felt the MI5 interviews took place under conditions of coercion. The evidence will not be admissible in a British court, but I do not know whether it can be used by those who may face the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal." The tribunal has ruled that it will examine evidence which may have been obtained without subjects being allowed legal representation. Mr Dergoul has been interviewed three times at Guantanamo by security officials, his brother Halid claimed. He said, "They have not get a shred of evidence against the detainees. Tarek was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. "My brother has no links to the Taliban and al-Qa'ida and the Government knows that. He should now definitely consider some kind of legal action. He has been deprived of two and half years of his life. God knows what state of mind he is in right now. We have not spoken to a solicitor, but this is definitely something the family is talking about. "When I last spoke to Tarek he was in Kabul getting heavily bombed. I told him to get out of the country fast, and all I can imagine is that he may have been caught up in some bombing." According to the US authorities, Mr Dergoul was captured during fighting against remnants of al-Qa'ida and Taliban in the Tora Bora Mountains. Michael Birnbaum, of the Human Rights Committee of the Bar Council, said yesterday that any prosecution of returning detainees is likely to suffer from lack of evidence. "If the Americans could not get any evidence against them after two years in which they were interrogated in a way which would probably not have been lawful under the English system, then why should we expect that any evidence will be forthcoming now?" * * * Toronto Star: February 28, 2004 US WANTED ARAR TO BE TORTURED, LAWYER SAYS By Bruce Demara, Staff Reporter U.S. authorities "contracted out" the torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen deported to Syria for a year of interrogation and torture, says a New York civil rights lawyer representing him in a lawsuit against the United States government. The case of Arar, who was detained in the U.S. while returning to Canada and sent to his native Syria in September, 2002, will be the subject of an upcoming public inquiry to uncover the role Canadian intelligence officials played. Barbara Olshansky, assistant legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, is handling Arar's civil suit against the U.S. government. In Toronto to speak on civil rights after 9/11, sponsored by the Law Union of Ontario, Olshansky charged that U.S. authorities, who have long identified Syria as a "state sponsor of terror, torture and terrorist interrogation technique," sent Arar to Syria to be tortured by methods illegal in the U.S. They "contracted out for interrogation under torture, and that's what they did. They sent Maher for that special `vacation,'" Olshansky said in an interview. Arar's case could take three to five years to resolve, she said. Immigrants in the U.S. are still routinely detained in solitary confinement without legal counsel, and some have been deported secretly "in the middle of the night on private jets," she added. The USA Patriot Act, passed six weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is responsible for a terrible erosion of civil rights south of the border, allowing judges to authorize "roving wiretaps" for any potential criminal activity with an intelligence component. "A roving wiretap ... does what it says. It follows you wherever you go. Not only that, but it's like a bad cold. When you visit your friends, you contaminate your friends," Olshansky said. "If you're an immigrant in America now, you're afraid to call the police. I don't know how much more outrageous it could be," she said. But the greatest attacks on civil rights and freedoms have come via "executive fiat" from the Bush administration, she said. U.S. soldier Jeremy Hinzman, who fled to Toronto last month and requested refugee status, days before he was to go to Iraq, also attended last night's session at Bloor Street United Church. The Law Union's Barbara Jackman said a Pentagon official recently said Hinzman could face the death penalty for desertion during war if he returns. * * * The Village Voice: February 27th, 2004 THE RUMSFELD-BUSH LEGAL BLACK HOLE Powers Formerly Reserved Only for Kings By Nat Hentoff http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0409/hentoff.php "[After the American Revolution], there was to be no king. . . . Allegiance would go, not to a man with a crown, but to the law. . . . It was to be a 'government of laws and not men.' " -- Law in America, Lawrence M. Friedman "Pick your favorite constitutional amendment or right: its survival during the war on terror cannot be assumed if the legitimacy of these indefinite detentions is sustained." -- Thomas H. Moreland, chair of the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, February 6, 2004 The headline on a February 13 BBC News World Edition dispatch, "Guantanamo Inmates Get New Rights," concerned an announcement by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the hundreds of alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists imprisoned on an American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would from now on get an annual review by a three-person panel to decide whether or not they should be released. This was a classic misleading headline on a story that left out all the significant details except one: "Mr. Rumsfeld added that the U.S. was planning to hold many of the detainees for 'as long as necessary.'" The February 13 front-page New York Times story was much more revealing of Bush's parallel legal system. The story began, "Senior Defense Department officials said Thursday that they were planning to keep a large portion of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, there for many years, **perhaps indefinitely**." (Emphasis added.) Furthermore, the decisions of this new three-person panel Rumsfeld will choose to determine the fates of these prisoners will ultimately get a final review -- but only by Donald Rumsfeld, acting for King George. As Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights -- a key litigator in the battle to rescue the Constitution from Bush's warriors -- told the Times: "The idea that you could theoretically keep someone locked up forever under these circumstances is reprehensible. . . . It's nothing to do with law as any person should understand it, at least since the Magna Carta. How do you know without a trial that these people are even dangerous? It all depends on the military's word." Well, some of these prisoners may get what passes for a trial before a military commission. But what kind of trial? That is the subject of a brief to the Supreme Court by five of the military lawyers assigned by the Defense Department to defend prisoners brought before these tribunals in the case of Fawzi Al Odah et al. v. United States. This is the first time in American history that military lawyers have imperiled their careers by making public statements such as this one, from Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, who told a Washington press conference in January: "The military commissions will not provide a full and fair trial. . . . The commission process has been created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions." (Emphasis added.) But even if these rigged commissions, also called tribunals, were to give specific sentences to prisoners, there would be no guarantee that they would be released after serving their time. Deep in the New York Times February 13 story is this chilling admission by a "senior defense official [who] said that it was possible that an individual could be convicted by a tribunal and serve a five- year sentence and then not be released if he were judged to remain a danger." (Emphasis added.) The authority to unilaterally keep a defendant locked up -- conceivably for the rest of his or her life -- used to be reserved solely for kings, who could ignore any part of the realm's legal system. This monarchical power -- as I've indicated in reporting on the indefinite imprisonment, without charges, of American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla -- has been expanded by George W. Bush to include defendants at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court of the United States will decide, during the current term, whether the prisoners at Guantanamo have any recourse to our civilian courts to challenge the Bush-Rumsfeld power to keep them in a legal black hole. This hole is now so bottomless that even if some were to be convicted by an American military tribunal, they might never be released -- no matter what their sentences were. Keep in mind that the rules Rumsfeld and Bush have set for these military tribunals include the denial of any appeals by the defendants to American civilian courts! This door of last resort has been closed even though -- contrary to the statements by the president and his solicitor general, Theodore Olson -- these proceedings are taking place on territory that, according to the U.S.'s lease with Cuba, is wholly under American jurisdiction. The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, one of this nation's most influential bar associations, issued an exceptionally valuable 153-page report on February 6, "The Indefinite Detention of 'Enemy Combatants': Balancing Due Process and National Security in the Context of the War on Terror." Much of the report concerns the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. But the conclusion of the report is also crucially relevant to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If we can strip non-American citizens of all meaningful due process rights, this precedent will also be used by other countries who imprison American "enemy combatants." And the administration's professed concern with spreading the seeds of constitutional democracy to other nations will be farcical. The Association of the Bar of the City of New York's report concludes: "It should take far more than the monstrous brutality of a handful of terrorists to drive us to abandon our core constitutional values. We can effectively combat terrorism in the United States without jettisoning the core due process principles that form the essence of the rule of law underlying our system of government. "Insistence on the rule of law will not undermine our national security. Abandoning the rule of law will threaten our national identity." (Emphasis added.) I have seen nothing of this bar association report in the media. I hope the justices of the Supreme Court will read -- and remember -- it. "Law," said Thomas Jefferson, "is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of the individual." * * * The Stanford Daily February 26, 2004 PANELISTS DEBATE TREATMENT OF PRISONERS IN GUANTANAMO BAY Law prof says Bush administration wants to create a ‘legal black hole’ By Andrew Gay, Contributing Writer http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=13333&repository=0001_article# Panelists UC-Berkeley Law Prof. John Yoo, Stanford Law Prof. Jenny Martinez and attorney George Harris last night discussed the detainment of more than 600 prisoners held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The event was sponsored by Bursting the Bubble and the Stanford International Human Rights Organization. The prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay were captured while allegedly fighting for either Taliban or Al-Qaeda forces. The issue of whetehr the legal status of these detainees should be prisoners of war (POW) or "unlawful combatants" is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Because President George W. Bush has declared the detainees unlawful combatants, they are currently not being granted all of the rights guaranteed to POWs as directed by the dictates of the Geneva Convention. George Harris, John Walker Lindh’s former attorney, opened the debate by comparing his former client’s situation to that of the Guantanamo detainees. Harris said that when the United States entered into the conflict on the side of the Northern Alliance, Taliban soldiers such as Lindh were declared unlawful combatants by Bush, despite not being accused of any war crimes. Harris said that Bush’s blanket decision unfairly lumps together Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters. Martinez said that in its treatment of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, "the [Bush] administration is attempting to create a legal black hole, a piece of land where there is no law that can be applied by the federal courts, and a category of enemy combatants where no law applies." She argued that the federal courts should be able to challenge the status of the detainees as prisoners of war or as unlawful combatants. Yoo, who is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, countered by saying, "There are two types of detainees: Taliban detainees and Al-Qaeda detainees. The Al-Qaeda detainees are not part of a nation-state. The Taliban detainees were part of units that did not follow the laws of war." Yoo continued by noting that the Geneva Convention rules apply only to soldiers fighting for nations that follow the laws of war. Bush made the determination that neither the Taliban nor the Al-Qaeda detainees fit this description and therefore are not entitled to P.O.W. status. Yoo also said that in past wars, either the president or the military determined the status of captured enemy combatants. According to Yoo, involving the federal courts in a military decision would "lawyerize war" and would not allow our military to pursue the nation’s best interests. Martinez said that the complete attempt by the president to avoid any involvement by the judiciary and by Congress shows "a remarkable distrust of the other branches of government. The administration is saying ‘We don’t trust our Congress and we don’t trust our courts.’ " Yoo maintained that it is the president’s power to interpret treaties such as the Geneva Convention and to determine our action in wartime. He said that the attempt to use the framework of the criminal justice system in regards to enemy combatants is like "trying to put a round peg into a square hole" because that is the duty of the president and the military. The first student question focused on the physical treatment of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. The panelists agreed that the detainees are being kept in humane conditions that fulfill most of the Geneva Convention requirements. Detainees are held in solitary confinement, which is a violation of the Geneva Convention requirements for POWs. However, detainees are all provided with food that meets Muslim dietary laws, medical care equal to that of the U.S. soldiers stationed on the base and the opportunity to worship. In response to another student question regarding future U.S. policy towards captured terrorists, Harris said that all branches of government should be engaged in developing this policy, rather than just the executive branch. Martinez agreed, stating, "It is too early to decide, as Bush has, that the federal courts have no right for a presence in these hearings." Yoo said that it is too early to see what the new U.S. program will look like but admitted that such a program was necessary in dealing with captured terrorists. Martinez agreed. "We need to set up a system based upon legislation with more safeguards for abuses than the current system has as set up by the Bush administration," Martinez said. * * * February 26, 2004 MEETING WITH LAWYERS IN PADILLA DIRTY-BOMB CASE SET FOR NEXT WEEK By Larry Neumeister, Associated Press Writer http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ ny-bc-ny--enemycombatant0226feb26,0,4046224.story NEW YORK -- Defense lawyers for a dirty-bomb suspect who was designated an enemy combatant even though he is a U.S. citizen will meet their client next week for the first time in more than 20 months, a lawyer said Thursday. The four-hour meeting with Jose Padilla, 31, a former Chicago gang member and a convert to Islam, will take place March 3, lawyer Donna R. Newman said. She said restrictions set by the U.S. government for the visit with her and fellow defense attorney Andrew Patel will prevent the kind of conversation that would occur during a normal attorney-client meeting. "It would be unethical for me to consider it an attorney-client meeting," she said. "My aim is to advise him of what the world knows and he doesn't, what has been going on in his case and the efforts being made on his behalf." She added, "We're thrilled to see him." The government last week backed off from its insistence that no attorney-client meeting occur, just days before the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the government's appeal of an appeals court ruling forcing the government to charge Padilla with a crime or release him. The government is permitting the meeting under strict conditions, which will not allow the lawyers and Padilla to be in the same room and will restrict what gets discussed. The meeting also will be monitored by the government and likely recorded, Newman said. Padilla has been held since his May 2002 arrest in an alleged al-Qaida plot to set off a radiological dirty bomb. Initially held as a material witness in the investigation that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Padilla within a month was designated an enemy combatant by President Bush and was moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C. He has been held there since, unable to meet with his lawyers or to challenge his detention. Padilla is alleged to have approached Abu Zubaydah, al-Qaida's top terrorism coordinator, in Afghanistan in 2001 and proposed stealing radioactive material to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, an attack experts say would cause radiation contamination over several city blocks but probably no deaths. On Dec. 18, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling ordered Padilla released from military custody within a month unless the government chose to charge him in civilian courts. A government spokesman had no comment Thursday. * * * BBC: US 'MAY HOLD CLEARED DETAINEES' By Nick Childs, BBC Pentagon correspondent http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3487958.stm Hundreds of Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects are held at Guantanamo Pentagon officials have confirmed that Guantanamo detainees may still be kept in detention, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal. They say detainees could be kept prisoner if they are considered a security risk. If found guilty, they could also be held beyond any sentence laid down by the tribunal. The Pentagon this week laid the first charges against two foreign detainees held in Guantanamo Bay. 'Not common sense' The US military officials argue that there are two processes underway. Detainees are being held because they are suspected of being enemy combatants in an ongoing war. Separately, some may be put before tribunals accused of specific war crimes or other offences. But the officials say it would not be common sense to release detainees after the tribunals if the so-called war on terrorism were still under way and it was thought they might launch new attacks on US interests. The officials add that anyone convicted of war crimes would have to serve out their sentences, even if the other detainees were released because the war was deemed to be over. All of this looks like further evidence of how difficult the issue of detainees is. * * * UPI: February 25, 2004 SAUDIS 'CALLED HOME' FROM GUANTANAMO By John C. K. Daly http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040225-010104-3341r DOHA, Qatar, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Saudi detainees at the U.S Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were given the special privilege of the right to telephone their families back home during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. One of the detainees directly told his family he was calling from Camp Delta. A condition for making the telephone calls, up to 50 minutes in length and paid for by the U.S. authorities, was that the detainees told their families that their talks should remain confidential. The calls were reserved for prisoners who had been cooperative, Najeeb bin Mohammad Ahmed al-Nauimi, their British-trained lawyer and a former minister of Justice in Qatar, told United Press International during an interview in his home in Doha, Qatar. The Department of Defense, which administers Camp Delta in Guantanamo, has publicized its system of rewards for cooperative prisoners. Benefits of cooperating include more frequent showers and exercise time and snack goodies such as Twinkies and McDonald Happy meals from the McDonalds concession on the base. But so far the Pentagon has never acknowledged some detainees had been given the right to call their families. "No comment," U.S. Army Southern Command spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers told UPI Wednesday. He promised to make further inquiries. During the fasting month of Ramadan in 2002 and 2003, several Saudi detainees exercised this privilege, said al-Nauimi, who represents 96 families of detainees. Al-Nauimi's academic credentials are impressive, including a law degree from Egypt's Alexandria University and a doctoral degree in International Law from Scotland's Dundee University. Al-Nauimi suggested the U.S. authorities allowed the men to telephone home "because they had been cooperative and that the privilege might convince them to share further information." Al-Nauimi, who has been the United States four times in the course of his defense work, said Defense Department officials denied to him such phone calls had been permitted and asked him: 'Where's your proof?" Al-Nauimi offered to telephone the father of one of the detainees and get him to relate the conversations with his son. Al-Nauimi also speculated the calls were monitored by the U.S. authorities in the hope of overhearing useful information. But he also noted the translating capacities of the U.S. authorities at Camp Delta, particularly on regional Saudi dialects and tribal slang, were strained. The news of the phone calls adds to charges the Bush administration is treating Saudi Arabia differently from other front-line states in the war against terror. Despite the fact 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were Saudis, according to an interview in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine with former White House terrorism chief Richard Clarke, within a week of the attacks private planes flying to 10 American cities collected 140 high- ranking Saudis, including relatives of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and flew them to Boston, where they boarded two jumbo jets for home. Some reports put the departure date as Sept. 14, others Sept. 18-9. Clarke said top White House officials personally approved the evacuation plan. Two of bin Laden's sons work for the Saudi government. Al-Nauimi's revelations are likely to increase pressure on Washington from allies such as Britain and Australia, which have nationals in Camp Delta, to accord their citizens similar privileges. "I would like to see all the detainees given at least one telephone call home, as it would make the burdens on their families easier," al-Nauimi told UPI. Al-Nuaimi strongly believes after more than two years' detention, the detainees should all be allowed at least one telephone call home, however brief, as it would make their families happy. * * * February 25, 2004 US MILITARY LAWYERS CRITICIZE GUANTANAMO TRIALS By Will Dunham http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4439505 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The system created by the United States for trials by military tribunal of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay is fundamentally unfair and hopelessly antiquated, military lawyers assigned to represent these prisoners said on Wednesday. "We are concerned with virtually every aspect of the military commission process and the impact that will have on our client's chances to get a fair trial," Navy Lt. Cdr. Philip Sundel told Reuters. Sundel and Army Maj. Mark Bridges were assigned by the Pentagon on Feb. 6 to represent Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen. The United States on Tuesday brought charges for the first time against prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, charging al Bahlul and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan with conspiracy to commit war crimes. The Pentagon said they face trial by tribunals of military officers, formally called commissions. The Pentagon identified al Bahlul as an al Qaeda "propagandist" and former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden. Army Maj. Mark Bridges said he and Sundel plan a defense case that not only challenges evidence presented against al Bahlul, but attacks the foundation of the tribunal process. "We do envision raising a lot of motions related to the rules and the procedures themselves," Bridges said in an interview. But he doubted these motions will not get a fair hearing because the rules do not permit a truly independent review. He said the same Pentagon official who approved the charges against his client also may rule on these types of motions. The tribunals will mark the first such U.S. trials since World War II. 'OUTDATED SYSTEM' "The bottom line is it's an outdated system that was pulled off the shelf and dusted off from the World War II era. The law has advanced a lot since then, both internationally and domestically. The standards that were applied then simply aren't acceptable today," Bridges said. He said he and Sundel have not been given a chance to meet their client yet, and do not know whether al Bahlul has been informed of the charges. Bridges also said he has not seen any prosecution evidence in the case. "The checks and balances that we expect from a system today to make sure that the process is fair and that it is not subjected to improper influences by any of the participants don't exist in the military commission system," said Sundel. President Bush in November 2001 authorized military tribunal trials for non-U.S. citizens caught in what he calls the global war on terrorism. Human rights groups and legal activists have said the rules for the tribunals are rigged to yield convictions and handicap defense counsel. "I think military commissions provide a full and fair process," said Maj. John Smith, a lawyer and spokesman for the Pentagon's office of military tribunals. "We have the presumption of innocence. We have the highest burden of proof in criminal court -- proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We have representation by zealous defense counsel. They have the ability to present evidence and call witnesses." Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori, who represents Australian Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks, echoed the criticism. Hicks, one of four Guantanamo prisoners given lawyers, has not yet been charged. "When you use an unfair system, all you do is risk convicting the innocent and providing somebody who's truly guilty with a valid complaint to attack his conviction. It doesn't help anybody. It only helps the people who created the system to predict the outcome," Mori said. * * * Reuters: February 25, 2004 US TRANSFERS GUANTANAMO PRISONER TO DENMARK By Will Dunham http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4436879 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States turned over a Danish national who was imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the government of Denmark, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, and the Danes planned to set him free. "He's going to Denmark as a free man," said Lene Balleby, a spokeswoman at the Danish Embassy in Washington. The Pentagon did not give his name, but Danish media have identified him as Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, imprisoned in February 2001 after being captured in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said Denmark has provided unspecified assurances that he will not pose a further threat. The United States has released 93 prisoners from Guantanamo but still holds roughly 650 non-U.S. citizens caught in what President Bush calls the global war on terrorism. The Pentagon said it decided he no longer posed a danger. "If he was still considered a threat or of intelligence value, he would still be there at Guantanamo," said U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman. The Pentagon said in a statement that the decision to turn him over to Denmark followed "extensive discussions between our two governments." "It was based on assurances provided by the government of Denmark that it will accept responsibility for its national and will take appropriate and specific steps to ensure that he will not pose a continued threat to the United States or the international community," the Pentagon said. "We are satisfied they will do everything possible to ensure that the individual does not engage in terrorist activities." The transfer of custody took place overnight and the Danes then flew the prisoner out of Cuba bound for home. HARSH CRITICISM Human rights groups have directed harsh criticism at the United States for holding hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely without charges, condemning them to what some critics call a "legal black hole." The United States has began transferring custody of a limited number of prisoners to the countries where they are citizens, and said more are expected. Of the 93 prisoners who have exited Guantanamo, 88 have been transferred to other countries for release and five have been turned over to other countries for further detention, including four for imprisonment in Saudi Arabia and one to face trial in Spain. The United States on Tuesday brought charges against Guantanamo prisoners for the first time since opening the prison there more than two years ago, accusing a Yemeni man and a Sudanese man identified as associates of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden of conspiring to commit war crimes. They will be brought to trial before U.S. military tribunals. Two other prisoners have been assigned U.S. military lawyers, but the rest have no legal representation. * * * Boston Globe: February 25, 2004 TWO AT GUANTANAMO FACE MILITARY TRIBUNAL US will prosecute the first detainees since WWII trials By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/02/25/ two_at_guantanamo_face_military_tribunal/ WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced yesterday that it will prosecute two Guantanamo Bay detainees in the first military tribunal convened in more than half a century, filing charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes against an alleged Yemeni propagandist and an alleged Sudanese paymaster for the Al Qaeda terror network. Both men served as bodyguards and aides for Osama bin Laden, according to military indictments unsealed yesterday. One allegedly also produced an Al Qaeda recruitment video glorifying the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 Americans. The other allegedly served as a key accountant for bin Laden, funneling money from front groups to Al Qaeda. Neither will face the death penalty for their actions, said Major John Smith, a spokesman for the Defense Department's Office of Military Commissions. Both are among 650 "enemy combatants" captured after the Afghanistan invasion who have been held for as long as two years in a prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Navy Base in Cuba. The decision to move forward with the charges brings a new urgency to what had until now been a hypothetical debate over the fairness of military tribunals, in which defendants face a panel of officers and are denied the protections of a jury trial or the right of appeal to an independent panel. The military may close portions of the trial or monitor attorney-client discussions for security reasons. Civil libertarians around the world have questioned whether such tribunals could protect a defendant's right to a fair trial, but the Bush administration argues that the alternative justice system is necessary to protect national security in a time of war. The Pentagon noted yesterday, however, that in many respects the commissions will resemble a conventional trial: Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; they have the right to remain silent, the right to a defense attorney paid for by the government, and the right to call and confront witnesses. The military is charging each with conspiring with Al Qaeda to kill civilians, destroy property, and commit other acts of terrorism. The tribunal has yet to appoint judges, who are likely to convene in a retrofitted air traffic control tower adjacent to the headquarters at the heart of the Guantanamo naval base. It may be months before the tribunal gets underway if the defendants do not enter a plea deal, officials said. Army Major Mark Bridges, who is representing one of the defendants, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen, said yesterday that he has not yet been shown any of the evidence against his client and difficulties in obtaining an independent Arabic translator with security clearances have delayed a first meeting with Bahlul. "My main concern is Mr. Bahlul's ability to get a fair trial in the system he's being prosecuted in," Bridges said. "We're going to need a substantial amount of time [to prepare] to be sure. This is an investigation into charges that span a couple of different countries in a time period significantly in the past and with witnesses perhaps scattered around the globe." The other defendant charged yesterday was Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan. Steven Watt of the Committee for Constitutional Rights, which filed the pending Supreme Court case over the Guantanamo detainees may challenge their detention in the civilian court system, criticized the choice of the first tribunal defendants. "This `conspiracy' charge is so amorphous," he said. "It's hardly the worst of the worst that are going before the military commission first. We'd still criticize the commissions wholesale, but this would have been an opportunity for them to put out the worst of the worst first to give them the legitimacy that the government so craves for these commissions." But Paul Rosenzweig, a senior legal fellow at the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation, said the importance of these two defendants to the Al Qaeda effort should not be underestimated. "Saying that a propagandist is not an integral part of a terrorist organization is a bit like saying that Joseph Goebbels was not an intimate part of the Third Reich," he said. In a related development, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales made a rare public appearance yesterday to defend the Bush administration's policy of detaining both US citizens and foreigners suspected of terrorist intentions for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts. Speaking at a American Bar Association breakfast meeting, Gonzales said the Bush administration's decision to designate someone an enemy combatant involves extensive consultation among the departments of Defense and Justice, the FBI, CIA, attorney general, and the president to ensure the suspects pose a substantial security risk. "For those worried the president can designate anyone in this room as an enemy combatant, I can assure you a process is in place," he said. Michael Noon, a Catholic University law professor who attended the ABA meeting, said the timing of the Gonzales speech with the military tribunal announcement emphasized the Bush administration's position that what was legal in World War II remains legal today, despite international agreements over war prisoners subsequently enacted, such as the 1949 Geneva Convention. That position, he said, will remain controversial as the tribunals get underway. "When this happened the last time, nobody knew it or cared," Noon said. "We had over a thousand trials in the Pacific of Japanese war criminals by military commission and hundreds in Europe." * * * Los Angeles Times: February 24, 2004 ALLEGED BIN LADEN BODYGUARDS TO FACE TRIBUNAL By Esther Schrader, Times Staff Writer http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-gitmo25feb25,1,6674658.story WASHINGTON -- Two men alleged to have been close associates and bodyguards of Osama bin Laden have been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes and ordered to stand trial before the first U.S. military tribunals to be convened since World War II, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul, of Yemen, and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, of Sudan, are the first prisoners held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face criminal charges. The Pentagon says it expects more charges to follow against other prisoners. Al Qosi is alleged to have been a key al-Qaida paymaster and weapons smuggler and "a longtime assistant and associate of bin Laden," according to the charges. The charges describe al Bahlul as an al-Qaida "propagandist" who worked in the organization's "media office." Al Bahlul, the charges allege, was "personally tasked" by bin Laden "to create a video glorifying, among other things, the attack on the USS Cole" in 2000. Military officials said the two were chosen as the first to be charged simply because "the cases against them were ready," and not because of the nature of their crimes. The charges do not mean they will be the first Guantanamo detainees to be tried. The Pentagon has yet to impanel a military commission to try such cases. "They are not the worst of the worst or the least of the characters down there," said Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman. While President Bush has authorized the death penalty for suspects convicted by military tribunals, prosecutors will not seek it for the two charged Tuesday, Shavers said. They face a maximum of life in prison if convicted. More than 650 prisoners are being held at the Guantanamo base without being charged and without access to legal counsel in conditions widely criticized by human-rights and legal advocacy groups. Other high-profile captives, including a number of suspects reportedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are confined at undisclosed locations. The Pentagon has promised them all "full and fair" trials, but has insisted on its right to tailor the process according to its own rules. Al Bahlul and al Qosi are among six detainees who were designated by Bush in July as eligible to be tried by a military commission. No explanation has been given by the government of what accounted for their eligibility. The charges against the men do not include any documentation of the government's claims that they were terrorist co-conspirators. The charges state that the two men "willfully and knowingly" joined into a conspiracy with bin Laden to attack civilians, to murder and to commit terrorism. The indictments list several terrorist crimes attributed to al-Qaida, including the 2001 attacks, the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy warship Cole. The indictments do not allege the pair played any specific role in planning for or carrying out those attacks. According to the charges, al Bahlul traveled from Yemen to Afghanistan in 1999 to join bin Laden's cause and to receive military training at the al-Qaida- sponsored Aynak camp. The charges say that from late 1999 through December 2001, al Bahlul was personally assigned by bin Laden to create several instructional and motivational recruiting video tales for al-Qaida. In the weeks just before the Sept. 11 attacks, al Bahlul helped bin Laden and others move from their base of operations in Kandahar, the government charges. And on the day of the attacks, al Bahlul tried, at bin Laden's instruction, to set up a satellite connection at the terrorist leader's mountain hideaway so that bin Laden could view news reports. His attempts failed. Al Qosi joined al-Qaida in 1989 and remained a member until his capture in December 2001, the charges said. He traveled with bin Laden, serving as a driver and quartermaster, and also worked as an accountant and treasurer for a business designed to provide income and cover for al-Qaida terrorist operations, according to the charges. Among other activities, al Qosi signed checks on behalf of bin Laden, exchanged money on the black market and couriered money on behalf of al-Qaida, according to the charges. The charges against the two men come amid mounting criticism of the military commission process. In an interview, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel, one of two military defense lawyers assigned to represent al Bahlul, leveled a scathing criticism of the military tribunal process and said he has yet to obtain permission either to meet with his client or to view the evidence gathered by prosecutors. "We have grave concerns about virtually every aspect of the military commission process and the risk that it poses to the chances of our client getting a fair trial," Sundel said. Sundel said of the military commissions that "checks and balances do not exist in this process." Of his client, Sundel said: "Certainly the fact that he's been in detention for two years without access to lawyers, and under conditions that have been criticized by a variety of people, causes us concern about our ability to have a productive relationship with our clients." Military tribunals last were used by the United States after World War II to try Nazi war criminals. In November 2001, two months after terrorists commandeered commercial airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush issued a White House directive creating the military commissions system. The commissions share some similarities with the process of military court- martial. But unlike those military trials, verdicts by the military commissions will not be eligible for appeal to civilian courts. The proceedings of the military tribunals could be kept secret. A conviction, which in civilian criminal court would require a unanimous jury verdict, could be handed down on a two-thirds vote by the military jury. A death sentence, however, would have to be unanimous. While U.S. courts provide many layers of appeals, military commission findings and sentences are final once approved by the president or the secretary of defense. Pentagon officials said they have built a courtroom at the U.S. base in Cuba, as well as an execution chamber, should one be needed. Detainees held elsewhere could be brought to Cuba, or tried in military commissions at other locations. * * * The Christian Science Monitor: February 24, 2004 SUPREME COURT DECISION MAY LIMIT ACCESS TO TERROR CASES By Warren Richey, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0224/p04s01-usju.html The US Supreme Court has given a green light for the government to conduct certain federal court cases in total secrecy. In a case with major implications for public access to the courts, as well as the war on terror, the nation's highest court said Monday it will not examine the circumstances surrounding a habeas corpus appeal filed by an Arab immigrant challenging his detention during the post-9/11 investigation. The proceedings were conducted under a government secrecy request upheld by federal judges. The Bush administration considers the issue so sensitive that its brief to the high court was filed under seal. The government took that unusual action even though the individual at the center of the case - an Algerian living in South Florida - has been free on a $10,000 bond for two years. The case, M.K.B. v. Warden, was being closely followed by legal experts because it asked the high court to spell out whether there is a constitutional requirement that judicial proceedings in the federal courts be conducted in public - or at least noted somewhere on the public record. Administration officials say that public records and open court hearings involving terror suspects could provide Al Qaeda a road map of US counterterror efforts. Critics of this approach say the government has the ability to seal certain portions of court hearings for security reasons, but that it is a dangerous practice to allow the government to conduct certain cases in total secrecy. "We are moving toward an entire system of secret justice," says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press. Despite its decision not to hear the secret trial case, the Supreme Court has already positioned itself at the center of the national debate over civil liberties and other implications of the war on terror. Last Friday, the high court agreed to take up a potential landmark case involving the indefinite detention of alleged nuclear "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. At issue in that case is whether President Bush has the power to order an American citizen who has been arrested on American soil to be held indefinitely without charge or access to a lawyer because he has been designated by the president to be an enemy combatant. To resolve that case, the justices must examine the scope of presidential power in times of national emergency. In addition, the court has agreed to decide two other major terrorism cases. One deals with the indefinite detention of Yaser Hamdi, a US-born Saudi, who was captured in Afghanistan and is being held in a Virginia military prison as an enemy combatant. The other deals with the detention of more than 600 Al Qaeda and other prisoners being held as enemy combatants at the US naval base at Guantãnamo Bay. The three terrorism cases are expected to be argued at the high court in April. The secret trial case that the court refused to consider involved the circumstances surrounding a habeas corpus appeal filed by Mohamed K. Bellahouel. Mr. Bellahouel, who is married to a US citizen, was detained for allegedly overstaying his visa. His detention was extended to permit the FBI to conduct an investigation of him and then question him about alleged links to two of the 9/11 hijackers. The case appears to be an effort by the Bush administration to extend to the federal courts its policy of conducting immigration hearings dealing with potential terrorism suspects in total secrecy. The M.K.B. case began as an immigration matter and then moved to federal court as an appeal of that process. In declining to hear the case, the justices have set the stage for the government to use the same secrecy rules that now apply in certain immigration hearings to cases at the district, appeals court, and even US Supreme Court levels. In addition to keeping Al Qaeda in the dark about the scope of US counterterrorism efforts, the secret-trial policy helps government agents more easily recruit cooperating witnesses. When there is no public record that a particular individual entered the legal system, if that individual at some point agrees to become a government informant or undercover operative the secrecy rules would help maintain that person's cover once released into the community. The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the public enjoys a right to access certain judicial proceedings. But what is unique about M.K.B. v. Warden is that the entire case - including the fact that it existed at all - was kept secret. In effect, the government, judges, and lawyers agreed to keep the matter secret, including maintaining a private docket system accessible only to those authorized. The existence of the case was revealed by an alert reporter at the Daily Business Review of Miami after a brief docketing error by an appeals court clerk. But for the error, the press and public may never have learned of the case. * * * The Scotsman (Edinburgh): February 22, 2004 CAMP DELTA 'UNCIVILISED' SAYS FORMER BEIRUT HOSTAGE By Andrew Woodcock, Political Correspondent, PA News America’s treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay was today denounced as "inhumane and uncivilised" by former Beirut hostage John McCarthy. Mr McCarthy compared the plight of the 600-plus detainees in Cuba with his five- year captivity at the hands of Islamic militants in 1980s Lebanon. He said it was amazing that the US authorities had been allowed to get away with their activities in Camp Delta in Cuba. It was announced last Thursday that five UK nationals would soon be returned home from Guantanamo Bay, but four others remain there under the threat of trial before a military commission for alleged links to al Qaida and the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Mr McCarthy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "I find it quite amazing that the American authorities are allowed to get away with it. "It seems to me that in this apparent war on terror, which is apparently to sustain and maintain and protect civilisation, we are treating these people in such an inhumane and uncivilised way. "Their case is even more extraordinary (than mine). Whilst Brian Keenan, myself, Terry Waite and others were picked up in the streets of Beirut and then held there, these people were arrested or detained in Afghanistan and then shipped somewhere else. "They may not even know where they are on the planet, which would add to the terror I would imagine they experienced, I mean the trauma. "I can have some understanding of what it is like to be forced to wear a hood or blindfold and to be chained up as these prisoners appear to be." A film about Mr McCarthy’s experiences in Lebanon, entitled Blind Flight, was receiving its UK charity premiere in London today. * * * The Age (Melbourne): February 22, 2004 PM REJECTS ANTI-TERROR LAW OVERHAUL (AAP) -- Prime Minister John Howard has ruled out allowing two Australian terrorism suspects to return home to face trial. Labor has called for David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib to be released from US custody in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and put on trial under Australian law. But new Australian anti-terrorism laws were not in force when Hicks and Habib were detained more than two years ago, and Mr Howard said he would not support amending the laws to cover crimes committed before they were passed. Mr Howard said while tax laws were sometimes changed retrospectively to close loopholes, it was not fair to backdate criminal laws. "It's fundamentally wrong to make a criminal law retrospective," he told the Nine Network. Mr Howard accused Opposition Leader Mark Latham of flip-flopping on the issue of making the laws retrospective. Mr Howard said Mr Latham last Friday appeared to call for the laws to be made retrospective, but by Saturday had appeared to back down after concerns were expressed by Labor frontbencher Robert McClelland. "I don't quite know where he (Mr Latham) stands on this issue but I can tell you where we stand," Mr Howard said. "And that is that those people will not be brought back to Australia, unless of course they are acquitted, unless of course and they are tried in the United States and acquitted." Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said it would be difficult to successfully prosecute someone under a retrospective law. "The courts have always strictly construed legislation that is retrospective in creating criminal offences and it's highly problematic whether the courts would allow your legislation to survive," Mr Ruddock told the Nine network. David Hicks' Australian lawyer Stephen Hopper accused Mr Ruddock of hypocrisy, saying his client was likely to be charged under a retrospective American law. Mr Hopper said President George W Bush did not sign an executive order creating a military commission to try terrorist cases until after Hicks was detained. "Mr Ruddock can't have it both ways," Mr Hopper said. He can't say retrospective laws are inappropriate here but it's all right for America to use retrospective laws to try these people in military commissions." * * * The Scotsman (Edinburgh): February 22, 2004 JUSTICE AS MUCH A PRISONER IN GUANTANAMO AS THE 'AL-QAEDA' SUSPECTS By Gerard DeGroot http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=209192004 GUANTANAMO the place is a perfect metaphor for Guantanamo the issue. The military base is hot, humid, cramped and secretive, an unreal world isolated physically and morally from the ‘civilised world’. Like the place, the Guantanamo issue is a steaming cauldron of facts, fears, lies, hype and half- truths. In one of the guardrooms at the base a poster showing the World Trade Center asks ‘Are you in a New York state of mind?’ The poster encapsulates the justification for Guantanamo. The 9/11 attacks were extraordinary actions which supposedly validate extraordinary reactions. Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, has openly stated that he’s not remotely concerned whether the Geneva Convention applies to the detainees, since the only important issue is what they did to the US. In other words, the US feels entirely justified to act in anger and call it law. Because of its secrecy, Guantanamo has generated a great deal of heat but very little light. Journalists, deprived of real facts, have made do with speculation. Take, for instance, the situation involving the nine British detainees. Over the last two years, a script has been carefully written by Blair and his government. It goes like this: British citizens should be tried in British courts. The government has tirelessly struggled to get detainees released into British custody, but has been thwarted by American intransigence. These efforts have finally borne fruit and five suspects will soon enjoy British justice. That’s the government’s line, but that same government claimed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So why should we believe them now? Let me propose a different explanation. Blair realised that the British suspects were a political hot potato. If they were evil, he didn’t much want them in this country. Gaining custody would mean having to give them a trial, which would inevitably cause controversy, particularly in Britain’s Muslim communities. A better idea would be to let the Americans detain them, while supposedly demanding their release. Playacting of this sort would appeal to those concerned about civil liberties, particularly within the Labour party. Perhaps the idea that Blair didn’t want the detainees returned seems preposterous, but since when has this government been a model of legal propriety? The popular version implies that the Americans are untrustworthy and the British honest. If, as seems more likely, shifty bastards exist on both sides, the accepted story begins to unravel. The truth is that none of us has a clue what’s going on. For me, the really interesting story on Thursday was not that five detainees will return home, but that four will stay at Guantanamo. Clearly, these four have been deemed too dangerous to be released. But is it the case that the Americans don’t trust the British to guard them, or that the British don’t really want them back? If these men are indeed nasty characters, a trial by the Americans would be a great deal more convenient than having to try them here. Guantanamo reveals why politics should be kept quarantined from law. Blair and Bush have a political agenda in which the detainees play a prominent part. Blair wants to be friends with Bush, but he also wants to make the British people believe that he upholds civil liberties. Bush is interested in winning the next election and is aware that a trial in late summer will help his chances. Stuck in the middle is the US military, which has been given the task of dealing with the suspects, a job which it doesn’t want and is patently unsuited to handle. JAG corps lawyers have been ready to go to trial for a year, but they’re waiting on Bush, who’s operating according to a political agenda, not a legal one. Guantanamo also reveals how difficult it is to do the right thing when it comes to trying terrorists. Much has been written about violations of international law. Anguished critics mention the Geneva convention, but few have actually read the protocols. Law unfortunately is reactive, and seldom sagacious. Every Geneva convention has dealt with unacceptable practices in the war which preceded it, in the vain hope that a measure of civility could be retained. Delegates could not predict what might happen in the next war. There are, consequently, no laws appropriate to mysterious stateless criminals who fly airplanes into buildings. When the Guantanamo detainees eventually go to trial, some will be revealed as dangerous people who had evil intent. Most of us will breath a sigh of relief that they were captured and tried. But the longer the trial is delayed, the more difficult it will be for the US to convince the outside world that justice has been served. In the meantime, the genuinely innocent among the detainees (and probably more than half are innocent) are being radicalised by their incarceration. Instead of punishing terrorists, the US is creating them. * * * The Observer (UK): February 22, 2004 TO HELL - AND BACK http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1153662,00.html As the five Camp Delta detainees prepare to leave one nightmare, at home another awaits. But not only are their communities divided, their imprisonment has caused a serious rift between Britain and the US. By Martin Bright, Gaby Hinsliff, Anushka Asthana and Paul Harris in New York When Shafiq Rasul arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002 he was in a desperate state. His weight had dropped to eight stone from a healthy 11 stone and he was described as 'lucky to be alive'. When he had recovered enough to realise where he was, this 24-year-old football fanatic from Tipton in the West Midlands probably wished he had died in the Afghanistan conflict in which friends and family say he had become accidentally embroiled after travelling to Pakistan for a computer course. The first 110 men taken to the American airbase were kept at Camp X-Ray, a makeshift gulag of tiny cages open to the intense Caribbean sun and lacking all privacy. Early photographs from the camp showed the men in orange boiler suits shackled, blindfolded and huddled on their knees in their cages or transported around the camp on trolleys. Rasul and his fellow 'enemy combatants' were later transferred to huts in Camp Delta, a purpose-built prison camp where conditions were less obviously barbaric but still nowhere near the levels of basic human comfort offered by even the harshest high-security prison in Britain. One report from a New York Times journalist who visited the camp last year suggested the conditions were based on the 'super-max' solitary confinement conditions designed for the most dangerous killers in the United States penal system. Each man at Camp Delta is kept alone in a wire-mesh cell, 6ft 8in by 8ft and allowed out for 20 minutes' solitary exercise three times a week. The US makes no pretence that the camp is covered by the Geneva Conventions because the men are not designated as prisoners of war. When the families of Rasul and his schoolfriend, Asif Iqbal, were told of their detention they immediately started proceedings for their release. They contacted Gareth Peirce, the human rights lawyer famous for exposing the miscarriages of justice in the cases of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, wrongly accused of being republican terrorists. By chance Shafiq's brother Habib had been studying Irish miscarriages of justice and knew Peirce was the right person to contact. Legal experts now agree that it was their swift action that paved the way for the announcement last week that the pair would soon be freed. American justice moves slowly, and there is no fast track for suspected terrorists. But the persistence of the Rasul and Iqbal families and their legal team brought the issue to a head. A third friend from Tipton, Ruhal Ahmed, who told his family he was travelling to Pakistan for a wedding, can also be thankful, as he and two other detainees, Jamal al-Harith from Manchester and Tarek Derghoul from London, are also to be freed. Back in Tipton there are no plans for a celebration. A support group has sprung up around the men, but members told The Observer that, as one nightmare ends for Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed, another begins. The Tipton three will return to another battleground. The town has become deeply divided over the men who have been labelled as terrorists. The British National Party has played on local fears of the Muslim community and gained two council seats in the town's local elections. Attacks on Muslims and bullying at schools have increased. The families of the men fear for their safety when they return. Mushtaq Ahmed, who has led the 'Justice for Shafiq' campaign, which became the focus for moves to release the Tipton Three, said the news, though welcome, gave him a sense of anti-climax. ' I feel numb,' he said. 'What have we achieved? It is like someone physically stripping you of all your clothes, and then, when they give them back, expect you to say thank you. 'The question is why did this happen? Why were they paraded around like in the circus? Why were they not treated like human beings? And what happens now? There will be attention for a few weeks, maybe months, and then it will die down.' Personal tragedy has also struck Shafiq Rasul while he has been away. When he returns to Tipton he will discover that three close members of family have died: his three-year-old nephew, his brother, of cancer, and just 10 days ago his brother-in-law, who had a heart attack. 'His mother's heart is broken,' said Ahmed. 'She went to the shops and people avoided her, instead of comforting her. Shafiq's brothers had to change jobs.' Whatever their reasons for travelling to Afghanistan, the Tipton Three could never have imagined their actions would cause such a serious diplomatic rift between Britain and the United States. When George Bush and Tony Blair stood side by side in the Locarno Suite at the Foreign Office last November, they had virtually nothing to say about the Guantanamo detainees. Protesters in boiler suits posed behind fake metal bars to highlight the plight of the men, but from the leaders' speeches no one would have known the issue was becoming a festering sore between the two countries. Bush's state visit to London at the end of last year was the first of several 'near misses' on the road to the five Britons' release. Aware that the trip was likely to be marked by demonstrations against the US President, both sides had been negotiating furiously in the hope of being able to announce a deal on the Guantanamo nine which would ease Bush's ride in Britain - not necessarily releases, but the option of a fair trial in the US for the Britons rather than a closed military tribunal which would be unacceptable in the eyes of the world. The Americans did offer last-minute concessions, thought to include strengthened rights of access for observers to the tribunals, but it was not enough for the Attorney-General, Peter Goldsmith. His advice to the Prime Minister has consistently been that the tribunals are unacceptable under international law - and therefore unacceptable for Britons. 'Peter Goldsmith holds very dear the issues of a fair trial,' said one government source. 'It's been down to him to say whether or not a deal could be done, and he's been uncompromising.' Others have wryly pointed out that the Attorney-General has not applied the same standards when arguing for the detention without trial of foreign nationals in Britain's 'Guantanamo' for terrorist suspects in Belmarsh jail in London. From the start, the release has been a twin-track process: on the one side, the legal track led by the quiet, unassuming Goldsmith - who had clocked up five trips to Washington for talks on the Guantanamo detainees, before Air Force One touched down in the UK last November - and the political track led by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, attempting to convince the White House that the continuing wrangle over the detainees is damaging the special relationship and causing domestic ill feeling. The fact that the future of only five of the detainees, rather than nine, is certain suggests it is the political track that now has the upper hand. Crucially for Goldsmith, the issue of their innocence or guilt is irrelevant, since if the trials were unfair they would be inappropriate for anyone regardless of whether they are dangerous. But for the White House - which insists the four remaining in Guantanamo are a security risk - and for the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who will be held responsible if any detainees are released and commit terrorist offences, it is everything. What has changed in the last month - after several further 'near misses' - has been the political acceptance, on both sides of the Atlantic, that all nine cases were never going to be resolved simultaneously. Some observers suggest the turmoil over the Hutton inquiry - which showed the White House how much pain had been inflicted on Blair domestically by his support for the Iraq war - may have helped to convince the Americans to be more accommodating. But in the end Downing Street settled for having five detainees home, rather than none, 'to make some headway' - although privately senior figures accept it has now become harder to negotiate over the remaining quartet. 'We had been trying to get all nine, as that was the Attorney-General's advice. The Americans were very clear there were four of them that they didn't want to come back,' said one senior Whitehall source. Talks are likely to centre now not on the repatriation of four, but on further changes to the tribunal process, which could make it possible for them to stand trial in the US. The only crumb of comfort is the understanding, extracted by Goldsmith, that the remaining four will not face the death penalty. Both the Foreign Office and the Home Office insist there is no link between the draconian proposals for new terrorism courts, which would convict suspects on a lower standard of evidence and without juries, first trailed by Blunkett earlier this month - which could theoretically provide a venue for trying suspects like the remaining four detainees - and the Americans' change of heart. But just as the Government's willingness to put sky marshals on flights to America in defiance of British pilots' wishes before Christmas sent soothing signals, it will be seen in Washington as a symbol that Britain remains serious about dealing with global terrorism. 'This stuff is not and never was meant to be specific [to any one person] but it may be a factor in the Americans saying "under these circumstances, we are a bit more relaxed" - it sends symbols,' said one Downing Street source. But the final piece of the jigsaw could come when the five touch down on British soil - to be greeted by an anxious clamour of tabloids bidding for stories of life in the camp, as well of Tory demands that they face trial for treason. The White House, as well as Downing Street, is likely to be watching the impact on international opinion carefully. Lawyers for the detainees are now convinced that the releases were designed to head off growing disquiet in the White House about their cases being heard in the Supreme Court in April. Two of the soon to be released Britons - Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal - were subjects of a petition to the court arguing that Camp Delta, although in Cuba, fell under American jurisdiction and under US law their detention without trial would be illegal. That only leaves an Australian, Mamdouh Habib, as the case's sole remaining active petitioner. Stephen Watts, a lawyer for the four men, said that he would not be surprised if Habib was either released or put up to a military tribunal before the Supreme Court hearing. 'By doing this the US government can try and show the court there is a proper process going on here or that the case is no longer a live one,' Watts said. Though it has controlled Guantanamo Bay for years, the US argues that it is sovereign Cuban soil and that it just rents the land under the terms of an agreement reached with the pre-Fidel Castro government in Havana. Castro has always refused to accept the annual US rent payments. As a result of the dispute the US base has fallen into a legal black hole which the prisoners' cases will challenge at the Supreme Court. 'All these releases and other things are designed to preserve what is essentially an American gulag in the Caribbean,' Watts said. Legal sources, however, said that other detainees who are not currently the subject of legal action were being looked at as 'back up' if Habib was also released or put forward for a military tribunal. 'Some contingency plans have been made for this eventuality,' he said. However, there is another case also coming before the Supreme Court that involves 12 Kuwaiti detainees. So far, sources say, no diplomatic discussions have taken place on their fate. But some movement is expected in the wake of the Britons' release and the upcoming Supreme Court date. 'It would not be surprising if, just before the court appearance, something happens,' a source close to the case said. Thomas Wilner, a lawyer for the 12 Kuwaitis, said that he believed the fate of his clients lay in the realm of politics. 'This whole thing is a question of policy for the government and army, not a question of law,' he said. He added that he was not hopeful of securing their release. The world of high politics seems a million miles away from Riasoth Ahmed as he sits in his lounge in Tipton, with one eye on the television waiting for news of his son, Rahul. 'He kept writing that he was all right, that he could look after himself and not to worry. But the way a father feels about his son it is painful. We saw pictures of them in shackles being carried by two men and he is just a teenage boy. That is not right.' Whatever Rahul's alleged crimes, it now seems the British Government agrees. * * * The Observer (UK): February 22, 2004 Comment: THE ABUSE GOES ON A lawyer for two of the freed Guantanamo detainees attacks the continuing violation of human rights By Clive Stafford-Smith http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1153376,00.html It is cause for joy that our clients, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, and three other British citizens are coming home after two years in Guantanamo Bay. The British Attorney General has placed principle above political expediency in his criticism of the military tribunals. When he said that the commissions do 'not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals', he was guilty only of understatement. After all, Donald Rumsfeld picks the judges, the prosecutors, the military defence lawyers and the charges. But at least Lord Goldsmith had the guts to be critical of President Bush in his hour of excess. Here the congratulations must cease. Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal are being released because they are the two British plaintiffs in our case before the US Supreme Court, which is slated to issue an opinion in late June. The Bush camp fears the Guantanamo procedures may be condemned as illegal, which would be a painful political blow just before his coronation as Republican presidential candidate. It was obvious in December that the Bush Administration would work hard to release the 16 plaintiffs to our suit, or provide them with lawyers so that an argument could be made that they now had 'due process'. The irony of this is that Bush's lawyers have argued that no court should have jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay. In effect, the 680 foreigners held there should not be considered human, since they have no enforceable human rights. Now that the court has agreed to consider whether it should assert jurisdiction, the Bush Administration wants to deny the court a role by cherry-picking the clients off the Guantanamo tree. Meanwhile, a high-level delegation is visiting Washington on behalf of 12 Kuwaiti plaintiffs in mid March. Those prisoners' families have been led to believe they will hear good news. Bush's lawyers will then argue that all 16 Supreme Court plaintiffs have received favoured treatment, a random act among the 680 held in Cuba. This is the politics of cynicism. So, rather than congratulating anyone for securing the release of five innocent citizens two years too late, we should call for an inquiry on why it took so long and look more closely at the prisoners who remain. The Government is playing along with the Bush charade. Surely it should expect condemnation, not praise. Only last week, Rumsfeld told the world that the men in Guantanamo were 'enemy combatants and terrorists who are being detained for acts of war against our country'. It proved indigestible to Jack Straw, though he still implied on Thursday that the British had been removed from the al-Qaeda 'stronghold in Afghanistan'. I don't like to criticise Mr Straw, because he has tried to do the right thing for some of my clients. But we must ask why he parrots American propaganda. How can he imply our nationals were captured on the Afghan battlefields? Truth is not an elastic technicality and the words of the powerful must serve a moral purpose. Before a government official tars our citizens as terrorist criminals, he should be sure the charge is true. In fact, it can be proved that few, if any, of the British were involved in the Afghan conflict. Martin Mubanga is one of four apparently condemned to remain indefinitely in Guantanamo. The US pretends he was captured in Afghanistan. He was seized in Zambia. Another British citizen in Cuba, Richard Belmar, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities for overstaying his visa. And why is Moazzem Begg to remain in Cuba? We know that he was not in Afghanistan but abducted from Pakistan and bundled into the boot of a car in front of his wife. Somehow, his mobile phone worked and he called his panicked father in England. After a year in a windowless cell in Kandahar, he was shackled and taken to Guantanamo. Mr. Straw tells us that 'valuable information' results from Rumsfeld's Guantanamo interrogations. Interrogation experts tell us that a confession taken after two years of solitary confinement, accompanied by threats of the death penalty, is no more valid than the Salem witch's description of her meetings with the Devil, exacted while the pyre was scorching her feet. Believe such admissions if you will, but don't sign me up to a seventeenth-century world that relies on coerced confessions. Begg cracked months ago and fabricated the implausible plot that he was going to drop anthrax on Westminster from a military drone aircraft fired from Suffolk. Now Mr Straw tells us that his case raises a 'range of security issues'. He should be honest and say that the case provokes serious human rights concerns. And what about Feroz Abbasi? He remains in a tiny cell, held in isolation away from other prisoners. Every day, his mother must pray that he survives, her fears exacerbated by the news that he tried to kill himself. He is depressed that he might be held alone forever. Can you blame him? Rumsfeld said only last week that 'forever' is the sentence Abbasi might have to serve, without the luxury of a charge or a trial. The promise of protection on his British passport has been a hollow myth. The other detainees in Guantanamo Bay without British passports are human beings, too, and have human rights, all American claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The time for celebration is yet to come. * * * The Independent (UK): February 22, 2004 GUANTANAMO BRITONS LEFT IN LIMBO AS TALKS WITH US STALL The five men returning to the UK will be interrogated by anti-terrorist police and then released - but the fate of the other four is far from certain By Severin Carrell http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=493906 High-level talks over the fate of four Britons still being held without trial in Guantanamo Bay are deadlocked after ministers refused to accept fresh concessions by the Pentagon, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Britain and the US agreed a partial deal last week to release five British men who have been detained at Camp Delta, in Cuba, after months of increasingly intense legal wrangling between Lord Goldsmith QC, the Attorney General, and the US Department of Defence. The five, including the three so-called "Tipton Taliban" and a website designer, Jamal al-Harith, 35, are expected to be repatriated within the next few weeks. They will be interrogated by anti-terrorism police but are widely expected to be released without charge. The deal has left four Britons in limbo after discussions about their treatment and release broke down earlier this month. Their lawyers believe at least two of the men, Moazzam Begg, 36, and Feroz Abbasi, 23, will be held for up to another year. They face prosecution before US military courts after confessing to helping al-Qa'ida. But they are at the centre of a protracted dispute between the US and UK governments over their legal rights, as well as internal rows within the Cabinet. The status of the other two, Richard Belmar, 23, and Martin Mubanga, 29, is even more confused. Mr Mubanga was arrested in Zambia and handed over to the CIA, but little has emerged about their alleged crimes. Ministers believe they should have been included in the release deal announced by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, last week. There is now growing evidence that the Government is hardening its position on the illegality of the military commissions. Lord Goldsmith rejected concessions last month from the Pentagon as insufficient. Whitehall sources insist he is pressing the US to overhaul plans for military courts, which the Pentagon has refused to do, or release both men without charge - suggesting neither men will actually face a US military court. US and British lawyers for the two believe their fate will be determined by domestic politics on both sides of the Atlantic, since both governments are anxious to prove they are cracking down on Islamist extremism. Clive Stafford Smith, the British-born defence attorney for Mr Begg in the US, believes neither of the men will be released by George Bush before this year's US presidential elections in November - unless the UK has new anti-terrorism measures in place to ensure they are not immediately released. One of their British lawyers, Louise Christian, highlighted plans that are being drafted by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, to put emergency powers in place which would allow both men to be tried on a lower standard of proof. Earlier this month, he revealed he wanted new legislation that would allow British-born and foreign suspected terrorists to be jailed on preventative grounds, under a new open-ended offence of "acts preparatory to terrorism". His proposals provoked uproar from MPs and civil liberties' groups, but Ms Christian said she suspects Mr Blunkett has Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi uppermost in his mind. Both men were amongst the first six of the 660 detainees at Camp Delta to be "designated" as suitable, in June last year, for a military trial. The IoS revealed in December that Mr Begg had apparently confessed to helping a bizarre al-Qa'ida plot to release anthrax over the Houses of Parliament from an unmanned drone aircraft. Mr Begg, who was already under suspicion by Special Branch in the UK, was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002 for alleged links to al-Qa'ida. Mr Abbasi, a convert to Islam, was found in Afghanistan and arrested as an "unlawful combatant" in January 2002. Neither confession will be admissible in a British court since they were allegedly secured using torture, by a foreign government and without any defence lawyer present. Azmat Begg, Mr Begg's father, said his son's last letter suggested he had lost some fingernails. Their future is also complicated by suspected links to the controversial detention of 14 alleged foreign terrorists in four British prisons without charge or trial, including Belmarsh, south London, and Woodhill, near Milton Keynes. The detainees include al-Qa'ida's alleged "spiritual leader" in Europe, Abu Qatada, and Abu Rideh, a Palestinian man who is now in Broadmoor secure hospital after suffering a major breakdown. His psychiatrists have formally urged the Home Office to release him because his continued detention is severely damaging his mental health, said his lawyer, Gareth Peirce. Confessions and information extracted from several of the British detainees at Camp Delta are believed to have played a role in the arrests of many of the Belmarsh and Woodhill detainees. That evidence,which would be unacceptable to an English judge, is believed to have formed a substantial element of a secret file of evidence used by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which last year upheld Mr Blunkett's powers to hold the men without trial. Ms Peirce said the release of the Camp Delta detainees could allow defence lawyers to prove that their evidence was obtained using illegal interrogation methods - undermining Mr Blunkett's case to continue holding many of the Belmarsh detainees. The British detainees could also claim their confessions were false, she added. "There are serious questions as to what that evidence is and where it comes from," she said. Mr Blunkett will submit to a Commons debate this week on the 2001 emergency powers, which have allowed him to detain the 14 suspects for more than two years, after an influential committee of Privy Councillors accused him in December of violating their human rights. The Home Secretary is under pressure from Law Lords, the Law Society, MPs and his own advisers to release the men. Earlier this month, Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, appointed by Mr Blunkett to review his emergency powers, urged the Home Secretary either to deport them or release them under "suspended detention" - keeping them in the community under intense surveillance and heavy restrictions. Ms Christian, who acts for Mr Abbasi, Mr Mubanga and Tarek Dergoul, 24, the fifth returning Briton, said she suspected this legal predicament was at the heart of the failure to get the remaining Britons released. Mr Blunkett, she said, would not allow them back in the UK unless he had powers to arrest and charge them - powers he wants to introduce. "He's making noises about lowering the standard of proof, using something called pre-emptive trial," she said. "My feeling is that it is more likely the British Government has decided not to bring them back again." Azmat Begg, a retired bank manager, said: "I'm totally confused about why my son hasn't been released. If they've no evidence against him, he should be released. If they have, he should be sent back home, put him behind bars but give him all his human rights, and have him examined by an independent medical board. If he's fit to answer questions, he should be tried and should be punished if he's done something wrong. But keeping him in Cuba like an animal isn't right." The families: Sanctuary in safe house awaits freed suspects Relatives of the five Britons being released from Guantanamo Bay are exploring plans to put the men in safe houses, to keep them from the media, potential retaliation and give them time to recover from their ordeal. The five men are expected home next month after spending two years in cages and concrete cells at the US Marines base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, often in solitary confinement and with only heavily restricted contact with other detainees. As a result, their families, lawyers and civil rights groups are extremely worried about their mental and physical condition - but are unlikely to be given any details about their health before they return home. Several have suffered major injuries. One, Tarek Dergoul, 24, from East London, is believed to have lost an arm after being wounded in the fighting in Afghanistan, and suffered frostbite. Others have complained of mental illness and malnutrition. The so-called "Tipton Taliban", Shafiq Rasul, 24, Ruhal Ahmed, 21, and Asif Iqbal, 20, are also believed to have been held in the notorious Northern Alliance prison of Shebarghan for at least two months. The jail was racked by disease and food shortages, before being handed over to US forces in January. Mr Rasul's brother, Habib, told The Independent on Sunday that the family is planning to take his brother to a safe house in another city. They intend to raise money by selling his story to a major national newspaper. The Rasuls have also discussed proposals for him to share the safe house with his close friend and neighbour Asif Iqbal. The decision to sell Mr Rasul's story is motivated by their anxiety about his mental and physical state. They believe it is highly unlikely he will be compensated or be properly cared for by the NHS. They also suspect he will be extremely angry about his treatment. "Being held in Guantanamo Bay for two years, you don't know what his mental attitude to the outside world will be," Habib Rasul said. "He has been held and tortured, and he's not going to take that lightly. It all depends on his mental condition." The Rasuls are understood to have already agreed a newspaper deal, and the families of other detainees are expected to follow suit. Riasoth Ahmed, the Bangladesh-born father of Ruhal Ahmed, the third man from Tipton, said he did not know whether to throw a party to celebrate his son's release or just prepare for a deeply traumatised man to return home. "I'm happy and I'm a bit scared as well," he said. "It has been very stressful - I don't know what will happen." * * * February 22, 2004 BLUNKETT DEFIANT ON UK'S TERROR DETAINEES By Andy McSmith, Political Editor http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=493905 David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will defy the Privy Council and civil rights campaigners this week over the 14 foreign terrorist suspects held in what has been nicknamed the "British Guantanamo Bay". The suspects have been detained indefinitely without charge under powers granted to the Home Secretary in a law passed after the 11 September attacks. The Home Office denies that their fate is comparable to that of the detainees held by the US in Camp Delta, because they can leave Britain - but only if another country will take them. They cannot go back to their homelands, where they could expect far harsher treatment than at the high-security jail at Belmarsh, where most are held. They also have the right to appeal against the Home Secretary's decision to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. However, 11 of the suspects have had their appeals rejected by the commission - a point Mr Blunkett will use when he faces the Commons on Wednesday as evidence that he is not detaining people unreasonably. Two other appeals are pending. When the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act was passed, three months after the attacks in New York and Washington, it was agreed that it should be reviewed after two years by a statutory committee of privy councillors. Last December, the committee, headed by a former leader of the Commons, Lord Newton of Braintree, said the detention of people indefinitely without charge should end "as a matter of urgency". They suggested electronic tagging of suspects, and restricting their access to telephones and bank accounts. But Mr Blunkett will say the threat from al-Qa'ida and associated terrorist groups is too serious to allow suspected supporters to roam freely. The Newton committee was a more powerful body than the normal parliamentary committee, in that its findings mean that the Anti-Terrorism Act could have ceased to be law if the Government had not arranged for it to be debated by both houses of Parliament. * * * The Telegraph (UK): February 22, 2004 Simpson on Sunday: BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS THE BARRIERS OF SECRECY AROUND GUANTANAMO By John Simpson http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml ?xml=%2Fnews%2F2004%2F02%2F22%2Fnguan122.xml Last week, in the bar of an impossibly expensive hotel in the Qatari capital Doha, I met an old friend whom I hadn't seen for 15 years. John Daly was once one of the West's principal academic experts on the Soviet navy, with a staggering knowledge of ships' tonnage and weaponry. Then everything changed, and with it the Soviet navy, and Dr Daly had to turn one of the sharpest research minds in the world to something else. He chanced to be staying in the hotel while I was chairing a conference there. Now, over a glass of whisky, he brought out a sheaf of papers. "There you are," he said. "Everything I've been able to find out about the prisoners in Guantanamo." Dr Daly works for the news agency United Press International, and has laboured for months on a breakdown of who the prisoners are - he now has hundreds of their names - and where they come from. It makes fascinating reading. Because of the intense wall of secrecy that the United States had built up, no one had previously been able to work out who was being held at Guantanamo; all we knew was that there were 650 of them. America has always refused to provide details of the detainees' nationalities. By careful examination of every conceivable piece of evidence, and sometimes simply by ringing up relatives in countries from Yemen to Bangladesh, Dr Daly established that by far the largest number - at least 160 - were from Saudi Arabia. Next came Yemen (85), Pakistan (82), and Afghanistan (80). Jordan and Egypt each have 30. Algeria has 19, Morocco 18, Kuwait 12. Interestingly, China has 12 citizens inside Guantanamo, all of them ethnic Uighurs rather than Han Chinese. Tajikistan and Turkey have 11 citizens each, and Tunisia eight. Russia has eight, all of them from Muslim minorities. According to a former justice minister of Qatar, who represents about 70 prisoners, one of the men held at Guantanamo is a member of the royal family of Bahrain. As Dr Daly conducted his immensely painstaking research, he came to the conclusion that the Pentagon itself was ignorant of the nationalities of some of its prisoners. Yemeni officials told him they thought there were many more of their citizens in US custody than the Americans were aware of. Guantanamo is only the largest of the camps where the Americans are holding their prisoners, of course. Many are held under probably worse conditions at Bagram air base, north of the Afghan capital Kabul. Others are held secretly and incommunicado on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which the British allowed the US to turn into an air base. [The inhabitants were summarily removed to other places.] The prison at Guantanamo has, however, attracted almost all the attention and international disquiet. It doesn't help that it was built by Brown and Root Services, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company formerly headed by the vice- president, Dick Cheney. Halliburton's activities in Iraq have attracted a good deal of controversy lately, and Mr Cheney's past links with it have done him and the Bush administration no good whatever. Slowly, belatedly, the Bush administration is starting to address the big human rights problem it has created for itself at Guantanamo. When David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said that the five British prisoners whom the Americans agreed last week to release would not "actually be a threat to the security of the British people", the overwhelming implication was that they should never have been held there in the first place. How many other detainees should also not be there? I would hazard a guess that in private not a single member of the British Government is happy about the notion of detention without trial at Guantanamo. They know, as anyone who travels around the Middle East and beyond knows, that Guantanamo has turned into a justification for the misguided fanatics who believe they have a religious duty to attack America and its friends and allies. And yet the indications are that nothing serious in the way of information has been extracted from this random collection of prisoners, except that they hate the US. Their imprisonment has succeeded in spreading the hatred further. At the conference in Qatar which I was hosting, the ex-vice president Al Gore suggested that the Bush administration invaded Iraq because it had failed to find Osama bin Laden. No doubt large numbers of the 650 detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere - many of whom, judging by this research, are by origin far removed from the fight against the Taliban - are also paying a heavy price for American frustration. [ John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor. ] * * * The Guardian (UK): February 21, 2004 MINISTER ASKS FOR PATIENCE IN TALKS TO FREE REMAINING FOUR By Patrick Wintour, Clare Dyer and Tania Branigan http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1152839,00.html Two of the four Britons who will remain at Guantanamo Bay should have been included in the release of detainees announced this week, the government believes. The Foreign Office had pressed the US for the return of Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar, both from London, on the basis of the evidence they had seen. Feroz Abbasi, from London, and Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham - the other remaining Britons - were among the first six prisoners at the detention camp to be named as probable defendants in trials by military commissions. But they have not been charged and their cases are currently suspended. Yesterday the constitutional affairs secretary, Lord Falconer, defended the government's acceptance of the partial deal. "See what happened as progress being made on a journey, where we have got five back; we are continuing to talk about the four," said Lord Falconer. "It's far better that we continue to talk than ... take a particular stance that may make it harder to get results." It also emerged yesterday that some cabinet ministers repeatedly pressed the prime minister on the issue of the British detainees. They felt Tony Blair did not want to use his limited capital with President George Bush to demand releases. It is not clear why the US authorities want to continue holding the four Britons. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, has said that the prisoners at the military base in Cuba are "very tough, hardcore, well-trained terrorists", although other officials have suggested that several are held primarily for intelligence purposes. On Thursday, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said that there were still "security and other issues" to address with the US. Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi still have no access to lawyers and are thought to be held in solitary confinement. There are serious concerns over their mental health and their families fear they are unaware that they do not face the death penalty. The commissions they face lack basic safeguards for defendants' rights found in civilian courts or courts martials. "The president, through his designees, serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and, potentially, executioner," according to New York-based civil liberties body Human Rights Watch. Even less is known about the US authorities' plans for Mr Mubanga and Mr Belmar. American lawyers believe the government will not schedule more detainees to face trial or proceed with scheduled commissions until the supreme court rules on whether civilian courts have jurisdiction over Camp Delta. They also believe that the US repatriated the other Britons, who include two co- plaintiffs in the case, in the hope of avoiding an election-year defeat. But Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School, said yesterday: "If all 16 claimants were released, new challenges could be filed for continuing detainees with a request to the court to join these cases to the existing appeals. The court would likely decide that the legal issue remains alive, and so should be heard as scheduled." Despite claims that most detainees were captured with Taliban troops, only Mr Abbasi, 24, was found in Afghanistan. Mr Begg, 36, had worked on a charity project to Afghanistan but was arrested in Islamabad after moving his family there when the US bombings began. Mr Mubanga, 29, was arrested in Zambia and Mr Belmar, 24, in Karachi. Louise Christian, who represents two of the remaining Britons, added: "Even if we got all nine Britons and the three British residents out, there would still be over 600 people left. What is Britain doing allowing its close ally to breach the international human rights of all the other nationalities?" Special reports * * * The Guardian (UK): February 21, 2004 Leader GUANTANAMO SUSPECTS: INTERNATIONAL INJUSTICE http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1152843,00.html Parliament returns on Monday when it has some important questions to ask about the nine Britons held in detention by the US in Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of having terrorist links. Belatedly five are to be released but four retained. Question one was raised by the comments of David Blunkett, the home secretary, late on Thursday suggesting that the men who were being repatriated would not face terrorist charges. In his words: "I think you will find that no one who is returned in the announcement today will actually be a threat to the security of the British people." If they are not a threat today, why were they a threat two years ago? The doubts were reinforced by a statement from the White House, which said the Britons and a Dane were being repatriated because the British and Danish governments had given assurances they would not pose a threat to the US. Why couldn't these have been given earlier? Or, if they were, why were they ignored for so long by the US? As Stephen Jakobi, the lawyer who runs Fair Trials Abroad, declared: "The big question is, why weren't they released 18 months ago? What has happened since?" What is needed is a much fuller account than we got from Jack Straw's statement on Thursday, exculpating the US from the initial detention of the Britons. It is not just human rights groups like Amnesty International which have indicted the US for their breaches of international law but Britain's attorney general Lord Goldsmith who, speaking in the US to the International Bar Association, said democratic countries that failed to accord basic legal rights to terrorist suspects were furthering the goals of terrorism. Yet Mr Straw on Thursday defended the detention of 650 suspects in Guantanamo Bay on the grounds that "valuable information has been gained which has helped to protect the international community from further al-Qaida and related terrorist attacks." Mr Straw is a lawyer. He should not be so quick to ignore basic principles of justice even if it might be politically expedient to do so. Just how serious the current breaches of international law by the Bush administration are was set out by a British law lord late last year. Lord Steyn, in a lecture in London, described the US detentions as "a monstrous failure of justice". Red Cross officials, who have described the Cuban camp as a centre of interrogations rather than a centre of justice, were reported to believe that the techniques of interrogation were "not quite torture, but as close as you can get". No wonder British lawyers were saying yesterday that the repatriated Britons would never face prosecution here. Any evidence against them provided by the US would be ruled inadmissible by the manner of its extraction. But, as Lord Goldsmith has noted, the current military tribunals which the US plans to use to try at least two of the four detained Britons fall far short of minimum criminal justice standards. The suspects have been held for two years, without access to lawyers or their families. They will be tried by military officers with an ultimate appeal to the president, who has already said all 650 suspects are "bad people". Their best hope is that the US supreme court, which is about to review the right of the president to imprison foreign suspects, will declare the Cuban camp unlawful. The wisest words uttered yesterday came from Shirley Williams, the Liberal Democrat peer, who warned about the erosion of natural justice by the use of domestic courts to try suspect global terrorists. She rightly accused the US of using power as a substitute for law. Mr Blunkett will set out next week a plan for more powers under which he can prosecute suspect terrorists. The answer must surely be the widening of the new international criminal court in The Hague, rather than using domestic justice. * * * The Guardian February 21, 2004 Comment: RELEASE OUR PRISONERS By Louise Christian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/comment/0,11538,1153053,00.html "They must face trial - Fury at freedom for Taliban Brits", screamed the Sun yesterday. Elsewhere, however, the "fury" was difficult to find. Even the Mail and the Telegraph gave a cautious welcome to the news that five of the nine British citizens in Guantanamo Bay are to be returned to this country. Far from fury, there were complaints about the injustice to the four being left behind, with the Mail describing their treatment as a "continuing affront to justice". Clues about why only five are being returned were hard to find in the foreign secretary's statement. Jack Straw made it clear that the attorney general has reported on America's proposed military commission trials and that the view taken is that "as presently constituted [they] would not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals". This massive understatement gives no indication of the reasons for the discriminatory treatment of the four left behind. This came only with the statement from the home secretary David Blunkett that no one who is to be returned is "a threat to the security of the British people". This carried a prejudicial implication that this was not true of the remaining four. The silence of the British government during the progress of the attorney general's negotiations with the US, which began in July last year, has failed to disguise a rift among senior cabinet ministers. It is probable that the attorney general reported many months ago that a fair trial could not be negotiated with a US government bent on vindication in a kangaroo court. Since then Straw and Blunkett have been at loggerheads, with Blunkett resisting the implementation of a promise repeatedly made to detainees' families that all nine would be brought back if a fair trial could not be secured. That promise has been broken and the families of Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar have been betrayed. Of course the news is good for the five families of detainees to be brought back. They may well be wondering why it has taken over two years to return them if the home secretary knew they were not a threat. But they can be sure there will be no prosecution here. Evidence obtained under coercion and without a lawyer in Guantanamo is not admissible in British courts, and even our draconian anti-terrorism laws do not yet permit British citizens to be locked up without due process. For the families of the other four the future is more uncertain. There is a real worry that Blunkett will attempt to rush into law his proposals to lower the standard of proof and introduce "pre-emptive trials" in terrorist cases before bringing them back. There is still the terrible fear, too, that the British government could agree to military trials under pressure from the US and that they could end up serving long sentences in Guantanamo, never seeing their families again. The worst thing for all the families in their interminable wait has been the lack of information given to them and the constant press speculation. Straw's claim that the families have been "kept informed" was simply not true. The families of the four left behind do not know why they have been refused citizenship protection, or what further negotiations could now take place, or what the British or the US governments have in mind. They deserve better. Blunkett recently told the Guardian that he sought political balance by acting tough as a cover for reforms. He said his advocacy of "legal managed economic migration" justified all his asylum-bashing legislation. In fact, the Home Office's rhetoric and action on asylum has given the green light to hate-filled hysteria. However much is given to this audience it is never satisfied - hence the latest and worst set of proposals: a bill soon to be given its third reading which creates a legal black hole for those fleeing persecution by removing all supervision by the higher courts of the decision-making process. Blunkett is determined to play to the same gallery on terrorism. His response to September 11 was to create our own version of Guantanamo Bay here, rushing through legislation to lock up non-British nationals without trial, 14 of whom have been detained for almost exactly the same length of time as the five citizens who will be returning. Despite a unanimous finding in December that these detentions are unjustified by a Privy Council committee, Blunkett has refused to release the detainees. The position of home secretary needs to be filled by someone with a strong sense of the importance of the rule of law; someone capable of using measured language and reasoning even in the face of rabid unreason and prejudice. When that does not happen it doesn't simply damage our own judicial system. All over the world Guantanamo Bay is being copied, not least in Iraq, where thousands are being held. Blunkett should accept that the four Britons left in Guantanamo should come back, and that the 14 in prison here should be released. And then our government should start persuading others - not least the US - that human rights are not negotiable. [ Louise Christian is a solicitor acting for the families of three British detainees and one long-term British resident detained in Guantanamo Bay. louisec@christiankhan.co.uk ] * * * Los Angeles Times: February 21, 2004 SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE PADILLA CASE * It will rule on whether the U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago can be held as an 'enemy combatant.' By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/ la-na-padilla21feb21,1,1684661.story WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court said Friday that it would decide whether an American citizen arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely, without access to lawyers or courts, as an "enemy combatant." The justices decided to take up the case of Jose Padilla, who has been in custody 21 months but not formally charged with a crime. The case goes to the heart of questions central to the government's conduct of the war on terrorism within the United States -- whether the threat of terrorism allows the Justice Department to circumvent constitutional protections of defendants, much as the military would on a battlefield. A federal appeals court ruled in December that President Bush did not have the constitutional authority as commander in chief to arrest American citizens on U.S. soil and hold them without filing criminal charges. The court said in a 2-1 decision that the president's wartime powers did not extend to law enforcement within the United States itself, unless Congress authorized the chief executive to act. Investigators suspect that Padilla, a New York-born Muslim convert, conspired with Al Qaeda operatives in a plot to detonate a radioactive explosive device, or "dirty bomb," in the United States. He was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, after a trip to Pakistan. The decision by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York gave the government 30 days to release Padilla from the brig at the Navy base in Charleston, S.C. It did not order the government to set him free, but said the government needed to charge Padilla with a crime if it wanted to continue to hold him. Pending action by the Supreme Court, the government has continued to hold him in the brig. Donna R. Newman, one of Padilla's lawyers, expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would uphold the New York court's decision. "The Supreme Court time and time again has said the commander-in-chief powers do not extend to the domestic sphere," she said. "We are confident that, as we prevailed in the 2nd circuit, here too we shall prevail." Padilla has not met with his lawyers since he was placed in military custody 32 days after his arrest. A separate court ruling this month granted the lawyers access to their client. But by allowing the government to record and videotape the meeting, the ruling did not grant Padilla the right to consult privately. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, seeking to have the Supreme Court overturn the New York court's ruling, said in a written statement that Bush's authority "to designate individuals as enemy combatants is a vital part of the war on terrorism." He said that by taking up the case, the court was providing "an opportunity to reaffirm this critical authority." Ashcroft argued that Padilla was "closely associated" with Al Qaeda, the organization the government says conducted the Sept. 11 attacks, and that "he was engaged in conduct that constituted hostile and war-like acts." He said Padilla "possesses intelligence that would aid U.S. efforts to prevent attacks by Al Qaeda." The court is expected to hear the case in late April and to issue its decision by the end of its term in early summer. The court already had agreed to hear a related case in the spring. That case involves Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi national who was fighting for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Hamdi surrendered to U.S. troops in fall 2001 and was taken to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Military authorities learned he was born in Louisiana and therefore a U.S. citizen. He was sent to a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., in April 2002 and has been held there without being charged or being permitted to speak to a lawyer or his family. Taken together, the Padilla and Hamdi cases test the assertion by Bush administration lawyers that neither the Constitution nor the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners of war, apply to what the government calls "unlawful enemy combatants." Under this argument, such "combatants" could be held indefinitely, with no right to contest whatever charges are brought against them. Amnesty International says that the government's conduct in both cases has constituted an abuse of power. "The executive branch has created an environment in which anyone can be labeled an 'enemy combatant,' arrested, held in secret and denied access to a lawyer and his family," William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said Friday * * * channelnewsasia.com: 21 February 2004 1103 hrs DANISH FOREIGN MINISTER ACCUSED OF GIVING FALSE INFORMATION ON GUANTANAMO DETAINEE http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/72092/1/.html COPENHAGEN (AFP) -- Denmark's parliamentary opposition called for an explanation from the Foreign Minister over false information allegedly given on the circumstances of the arrest of a Danish national being held by US forces at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Foreign Minister Stig Moeller has repeatedly told parliament and the media that the detained man, a 30-year-old Dane suspected of having connections with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, had been arrested by US forces in January 2002 during the campaign in Afghanistan. On Thursday he revealed in confidence to some deputies that the man, whose name has not been disclosed, had been taken prisoner in Pakistan. "The government has a serious problem because, according to media reports, the person in question was not arrested in Afghanistan. And it should have required irrefutable proof of his guilt from day one before he was handed over to the Americans," said opposition Social Democrat party spokesman Jeppe Kofod. On Thursday, Denmark, a staunch US ally, announced the release "in the very near future" of the unnamed detainee. Denmark's media blasted Washington on Friday for its handling of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and fired a salvo at the Danish government. "It's not enough that the Danish prisoner comes home a free man," the centre- left daily Politiken wrote, while independent daily Information said it would be "inappropriate" to praise Copenhagen for negotiating his release. Politiken said it was "a veritable scandal that the United States, under the pretext of defending democratic rights, allows itself to do as it pleases, making not only a mockery of the principles of international law but also of the lives of hundreds of people" detained at Guantanamo. Kofod confirmed the media reports of the false account given by the Foreign Ministry, saying that the version of events supplied by the Minister during a meeting of the parliamentary foreign policy committee on Thursday did not correspond to the official version of events given over the past two years. However he refused to give many details, citing "the need for secrecy". "It's a serious matter because it shows that if a Danish person were arrested in Pakistan tomorrow, he risks being imprisoned indefinitely, without trial," he said, calling on Moeller to provide a full report on the matter which "put the government's credibility in question". The Radical Party and the extreme left Unity List echoed that call, demanding that "light be shed on this new development". * * * L.A. Weekly: February 20-26, 2004 SOLDIER FOR THE TRUTH Exposing Bush’S Talking-Points War by Marc Cooper http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to an end when -- in the months leading up to the war in Iraq -- she felt she was being "propagandized" by her own bosses. With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP’s task was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq crisis. She would soon conclude that the OSP -- a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld -- was more akin to a nerve center for what she now calls a "neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon." Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq. Deeply frustrated and alarmed, Kwiatkowski, still on active duty, took the unusual step of penning an anonymous column of internal Pentagon dissent that was posted on the Internet by former Colonel David Hackworth, America’s most decorated veteran. As war inevitably approached, and as she neared her 20-year mark in the Air Force, Kwiatkowski concluded the only way she could viably resist what she now terms the "expansionist, imperialist" policies of the neoconservatives who dominated Iraq policy was by retiring and taking up a public fight against them. She left the military last March, the same week that troops invaded Iraq. Kwiatkowski started putting her real name on her Web reports and began accepting speaking invitations. "I’m now a soldier for the truth," she said in a speech last week at Cal Poly Pomona. Afterward, I spoke with her. L.A. Weekly: What was the relationship between NESA and the now-notorious Office of Special Plans, the group set up by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney? Was the OSP, in reality, an intelligence operation to act as counter to the CIA? Karen Kwiatkowski: The NESA office includes the Iraq desk, as well as the desks of the rest of the region. It is under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Bill Luti. When I joined them, in May 2002, the Iraq desk was there. We shared the same space, and we were all part of the same general group. At that time it was expanding. Contractors and employees were coming though it wasn’t clear what they were doing. In August of 2002, the expanded Iraq desk found new spaces and moved into them. It was told to us that this was now to be known as the Office of Special Plans. The Office of Special Plans would take issue with those who say they were doing intelligence. They would say they were developing policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the invasion of Iraq. But developing policy is not the same as developing propaganda and pushing a particular agenda. And actually, that’s more what they really did. They pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon -- to try and make this case of immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States. L.A. Weekly: You retired when the war broke out and have been speaking out publicly. But you were already publishing critical reports anonymously while still in uniform and while still on active service. Why did you take that rather unusual step? Karen Kwiatkowski: Due to my frustration over what I was seeing around me as soon as I joined Bill Luti’s organization, what I was seeing in terms of neoconservative agendas and the way they were being pursued to formulate a foreign policy and a military policy -- an invasion of a sovereign country, an occupation, a poorly planned occupation. I was concerned about it; I was in opposition to that, and I was not alone. So I started writing what I considered to be funny, short essays for my own sanity. Eventually, I e-mailed them to former Colonel David Hackworth, who runs the Web page Soldiers for the Truth, and he published them under the title "Insider Notes From the Pentagon." I wrote 28 of those columns from August 2002 until I retired. L.A. Weekly: There you were, a career military officer, a Pentagon analyst, a conservative who had given two decades to this work. What provoked you to become first a covert and later a public dissident? Karen Kwiatkowski: Like most people, I’ve always thought there should be honesty in government. Working 20 years in the military, I’m sure I saw some things that were less than honest or accountable. But nothing to the degree that I saw when I joined Near East South Asia. This was creatively produced propaganda spread not only through the Pentagon, but across a network of policymakers -- the State Department, with John Bolton; the Vice President’s Office, the very close relationship the OSP had with that office. That is not normal, that is a bypassing of normal processes. Then there was the National Security Council, with certain people who had neoconservative views; Scooter Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff; a network of think tanks who advocated neoconservative views -- the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy with Frank Gaffney, the columnist Charles Krauthammer -- was very reliable. So there was just not a process inside the Pentagon that should have developed good honest policy, but it was instead pushing a particular agenda; this group worked in a coordinated manner, across media and parts of the government, with their neoconservative compadres. L.A. Weekly: How did you experience this in your day-to-day work? Karen Kwiatkowski: There was a sort of groupthink, an adopted storyline: We are going to invade Iraq and we are going to eliminate Saddam Hussein and we are going to have bases in Iraq. This was all a given even by the time I joined them, in May of 2002. L.A. Weekly: You heard this in staff meetings? Karen Kwiatkowski: The discussions were ones of this sort of inevitability. The concerns were only that some policymakers still had to get onboard with this agenda. Not that this agenda was right or wrong -- but that we needed to convince the remaining holdovers. Colin Powell, for example. There was a lot of frustration with Powell; they said a lot of bad things about him in the office. They got very angry with him when he convinced Bush to go back to the U.N. and forced a four-month delay in their invasion plans. General Tony Zinni is another one. Zinni, the combatant commander of Central Command, Tommy Franks’ predecessor -- a very well-qualified guy who knows the Middle East inside out, knows the military inside out, a Marine, a great guy. He spoke out publicly as President Bush’s Middle East envoy about some of the things he saw. Before he was removed by Bush, I heard Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti-anybody who might provide information that affected their paradigm. They were the spin enforcers. L.A. Weekly: How did this atmosphere affect your work? To be direct, were you told by your superiors what you could say and not say? What could and could not be discussed? Or were opinions they didn’t like just ignored? Karen Kwiatkowski: I can give you one clear example where we were told to follow the party line, where I was told directly. I worked North Africa, which included Libya. I remember in one case, I had to rewrite something a number of times before it went through. It was a background paper on Libya, and Libya has been working for years to try and regain the respect of the international community. I had intelligence that told me this, and I quoted from the intelligence, but they made me go back and change it and change it. They’d make me delete the quotes from intelligence so they could present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic force. They edited my reports in that way. In fact, the last report I made, they said, "Just send me the file." And I don’t know what the report ended up looking like, because I imagine more changes were made. On Libya, really a small player, the facts did not fit their paradigm that we have all these enemies. L.A. Weekly: One person you’ve written about is Abe Shulsky. You describe him as a personable, affable fellow but one who played a key role in the official spin that led to war. Karen Kwiatkowski: Abe was the director of the Office of Special Plans. He was in our shared offices when I joined, in May 2002. He comes from an academic background; he’s definitely a neoconservative. He is a student of Leo Strauss from the University of Chicago -- so he has that Straussian academic perspective. He was the final proving authority on all the talking points that were generated from the Office of Special Plans and that were distributed throughout the Pentagon, certainly to staff officers. And it appears to me they were also distributed to the Vice President’s Office and to the presidential speechwriters. Much of the phraseology that was in our talking points consists of the same things I heard the president say. So Shulsky was the sort of controller, the disciplinarian, the overseeing monitor of the propaganda flow. From where you sat, did you see him manipulate the information? We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans. And it would provide to us an electronic document of talking points on these issues. So I got to see how they evolved. It was very clear to me that they did not evolve as a result of new intelligence, of improved intelligence, or any type of seeking of the truth. The way they evolved is that certain bullets were dropped or altered based on what was being reported on the front pages of the Washington Post or The New York Times. L.A. Weekly: Can you be specific? Karen Kwiatkowski: One item that was dropped was in November [2002]. It was the issue of the meeting in Prague prior to 9/11 between Mohammed Atta and a member of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence force. We had had this in our talking points from September through mid-November. And then it dropped out totally. No explanation. Just gone. That was because the media reported that the FBI had stepped away from that, that the CIA said it didn’t happen. L.A. Weekly: Let’s clarify this. Talking points are generally used to deal with media. But you were a desk officer, not a politician who had to go and deal with the press. So are you saying the Office of Special Plans provided you a schematic, an outline of the way major points should be addressed in any report or analysis that you developed regarding Iraq, WMD or terrorism? Karen Kwiatkowski: That’s right. And these did not follow the intent, the content or the accuracy of intelligence . . . L.A. Weekly: They were political . . . Karen Kwiatkowski: They were political, politically manipulated. They did have obviously bits of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. So we inside the Pentagon, staff officers and senior administration officials who might not work Iraq directly, were being propagandized by this same Office of Special Plans. L.A. Weekly: In the 10 months you worked in that office in the run-up to the war, was there ever any open debate? The public, at least, was being told at the time that there was a serious assessment going on regarding the level of threat from Iraq, the presence or absence of WMD, et cetera. Was this debated inside your office at the Pentagon? Karen Kwiatkowski: No. Those things were not debated. To them, Saddam Hussein needed to go. L.A. Weekly: You believe that decision was made by the time you got there, almost a year before the war? Karen Kwiatkowski: That decision was made by the time I got there. So there was no debate over WMD, the possible relations Saddam Hussein may have had with terrorist groups and so on. They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda storyline, which is the same storyline we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002. The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them because they are blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice President’s Office were critical in this propaganda effort -- to convince Americans that there was some just requirement for pre-emptive war. L.A. Weekly: What do you believe the real reasons were for the war? Karen Kwiatkowski: The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress. L.A. Weekly: So you don’t think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Karen Kwiatkowski: It’s not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t know. The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent -- a billion dollars! -- by David Kay’s group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything, they didn’t expect to find anything. L.A. Weekly: So if, as you argue, they knew there weren’t any of these WMD, then what exactly drove the neoconservatives to war? Karen Kwiatkowski: The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq. One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit. The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter -- to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important -- that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in. The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 -- selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro. The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar. L.A. Weekly: At the time you left the military, a year ago, just how great was the influence of this neoconservative faction on Pentagon policy? Karen Kwiatkowski: When it comes to Middle East policy, they were in complete control, at least in the Pentagon. There was some debate at the State Department. L.A. Weekly: Indeed, when you were still in uniform and writing a Web column anonymously, you expressed your bitter disappointment when Secretary of State Powell -- in your words -- eventually "capitulated." Karen Kwiatkowski: He did. When he made his now-famous power-point slide presentation at the U.N., he totally capitulated. It meant he was totally onboard. Whether he believed it or not. L.A. Weekly: You gave your life to the military, you voted Republican for many years, you say you served in the Pentagon right up to the outbreak of war. What does it feel like to be out now, publicly denouncing your old bosses? Karen Kwiatkowski: Know what it feels like? It feels like duty. That’s what it feels like. I’ve thought about it many times. You know, I spent 20 years working for something that -- at least under this administration -- turned out to be something I wasn’t working for. I mean, these people have total disrespect for the Constitution. We swear an oath, military officers and NCOs alike swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. These people have no respect for the Constitution. The Congress was misled, it was lied to. At a very minimum that is a subversion of the Constitution. A pre-emptive war based on what we knew was not a pressing need is not what this country stands for. Karen Kwiatkowski: What I feel now is that I’m not retired. I still have a responsibility to do my part as a citizen to try and correct the problem. * * * IPS -- February 20, 2003 IRAQ: CHALABI, GARNER PROVIDE NEW CLUES TO WAR Analysis - By Jim Lobe http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22509 WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (IPS) - For those still puzzling over the whys and wherefores of Washington's invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, major new, but curiously unnoticed, clues were offered this week by two central players in the events leading up to the war. Both clues tend to confirm growing suspicions that the Bush administration's drive to war in Iraq had very little, if anything, to do with the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or his alleged ties to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda -- the two main reasons the U.S. Congress and public were given for the invasion. Separate statements by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and U.S. retired Gen Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction from January through May 2002, suggest that other, less public motives were behind the war, none of which concerned self-defence, pre-emptive or otherwise. The statement by Chalabi, on whom the neo-conservative and right-wing hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office are still resting their hopes for a transition that will protect Washington's many interests in Iraq, will certainly interest congressional committees investigating why the intelligence on WMD before the war was so far off the mark. In a remarkably frank interview with the London 'Daily Telegraph', Chalabi said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC's role in providing misleading intelligence and defectors to President George W. Bush, Congress and the U.S. public to persuade them that Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States that had to be dealt with urgently. The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations his group had deliberately misled the administration. "We are heroes in error", he said. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful", he told the newspaper. "That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants". It was an amazing admission, and certain to fuel growing suspicions on Capitol Hill that Chalabi, whose INC received millions of dollars in taxpayer money over the past decade, effectively conspired with his supporters in and around the administration to take the United States to war on pretences they knew, or had reason to know, were false. Indeed, it now appears increasingly that defectors handled by the INC were sources for the most spectacular and detailed -- if completely unfounded -- information about Hussein's alleged WMD programmes, not only to U.S. intelligence agencies, but also to U.S. mainstream media, especially the 'New York Times', according to a recent report in the New York 'Review of Books'. Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld -- Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby. Feith's office was home to the office of special plans (OSP) whose two staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing raw intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein represented a compelling threat to the United States. OSP also worked with the defence policy board (DPB), a hand-picked group of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend. DPB members, particularly Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, played prominent roles in publicising through the media reports by INC defectors and other alleged evidence developed by OSP that made Hussein appear as scary as possible. Chalabi even participated in a secret DPB meeting just a few days after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the main topic of discussion, according to the 'Wall Street Journal', was how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq. The OSP and a parallel group under Feith, the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, have become central targets of congressional investigators, according to aides on Capitol Hill, while unconfirmed rumours circulated here this week that members of the DPB are also under investigation. The question, of course, is whether the individuals involved were themselves taken in by what Chalabi and the INC told them or whether they were willing collaborators in distorting the intelligence in order to move the country to war for their own reasons.. It appears that Chalabi, whose family, it was reported this week, has extensive interests in a company that has already been awarded more than 400 million dollars in reconstruction contracts, is signalling his willingness to take all of the blame, or credit, for the faulty intelligence. But one of the reasons for going to war was suggested quite directly by Garner -- who also worked closely with Chalabi and the same cohort of U.S. hawks in the run-up to the war and during the first few weeks of occupation -- in an interview with 'The National Journal'. Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, "I hope they're there a long time", and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S. military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992. "One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)", he said. "And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade". "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East", Garner added. While U.S. military strategists have hinted for some time that a major goal of war was to establish several bases in Iraq, particularly given the ongoing military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, Garner is the first to state it so baldly. Until now, U.S. military chiefs have suggested they need to retain a military presence just to ensure stability for several years, during which they expect to draw down their forces. If indeed Garner's understanding represents the thinking of his former bosses, then the ongoing struggle between Cheney and the Pentagon on the one hand and the State Department on the other over how much control Washington is willing to give the United Nations over the transition to Iraqi rule becomes more comprehensible. Ceding too much control, particularly before a base agreement can be reached with whatever Iraqi authority will take over Jun. 30, will make permanent U.S. bases much less likely. * * * Boston Globe: February 20, 2003 US TO FREE 6 DETAINEES; 2 BROUGHT LEGAL CASE By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff WASHINGTON -- The US military will soon release a Dane and five British detainees being held without trial at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, officials said yesterday -- including two lead plaintiffs in a pending landmark Supreme Court case over whether the prisoners have a right to challenge their detention in US courts. The announcement that the detainees will be returned to their home governments was the most dramatic gesture yet in a series of moves legal analysts say are meant to convince the Supreme Court that it need not interfere with the US detention center in Cuba because the Bush administration is providing sufficient safeguards on its own. The transfer also rewarded Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has faced intense political heat over the British citizens being held at Guantanamo. In an unprecedented gesture, 175 members of the British Parliament from all parties have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the US Supreme Court, saying the detention policy flouts the rule of law. "The administration is trying to strengthen its case at the court by expatriating detainees back to friendly allies, with an eye toward eventually claiming that only truly bad apples are left on Guantanamo," said Harold Koh, Yale Law School dean-designate and a former assistant secretary of state for human rights. "The question, of course, is why it has taken so long to return those who should have been expatriated months ago." Two of the Britons who will soon be released, Shafiq Rasul, 24, and Asif Iqbal, 20, are among the four named plantiffs in Rasul v. Bush, for which the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in April. The case centers on the Bush administration's contention that the US court system has no jurisdiction over foreigners held on Cuban soil, and thus cannot hear challenges to their detention. Human rights advocates counter that the United States has had exclusive control of the Guantanamo Bay base for a century, and that under the rule of law, the military's actions must be held accountable to review by an independent court. The release of Rasul and Iqbal alone does not render the case moot, said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, because two Australian plaintiffs remain at Guantanamo, as do 12 Kuwaitis in a companion case. Ratner said the center, which filed the Rasul case, has contingency plans in the event the Bush administration releases the rest of the plaintiffs: filing a new challenge for a remaining prisoner, then petitioning the court to join his case to the existing appeal. "We haven't yet seen whether what's going on here is really an attempt to get this out from under the court," Ratner said. "What's clear is, this is an effort to try to say to the court that `We can do something as the Bush administration and you don't have to mix in here.' " But a Defense Department spokesman said the releases and other recent policy changes at Guantanamo Bay were not made in response to the Supreme Court. "We do believe that we have a good process in place at Guantanamo," he said. "The developments you see are simply the natural development in the detainee process," he said. "As we said all along, we had no desire to hold these individuals longer than necessary. We have said that we would release individuals when they were no longer a threat. And what you're seeing now are developments that are completely in line with our policy." Since the court announced last November that it would hear the Guantanamo appeal, the US military has implemented a series of new policies. In December, officials said that 100 or more detainees would soon be sent home. Four detainees facing possible trial were subsequently assigned lawyers. Three juveniles whose plight had received news media attention were freed late last month. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gave new rights to a core group of detainees who may never be released because they are deemed to pose too much of a threat. He said each detainee in this group would be brought before a parole-board-like review panel once a year and be allowed to make the case that he should be freed. And in parallel cases involving US citizens who had been held without charges or legal representation, both American "enemy combatants" -- Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi -- have also been given access to lawyers. In each case, the administration said its actions were discretionary and not mandated by law. Nonetheless, many European leaders were not assuaged by the recent changes and continued their criticisms of the lack of civil liberties at Guantanamo, demanding transfer of their citizens into custody in their own countries. Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said the British and Danish governments have given assurances that they would not allow the six detainees to pose a future threat to America. "These two countries are among our closest allies in the fight against terorrism," Boucher said yesterday. "We have full confidence that they will take the responsibility to ensure that these people do not become a threat to the United States or to their own citizens." Like most at Guantanamo, the detainees who will soon be released were all apparently captured in Afghanistan shortly after the coalition invasion in late 2001. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain said the five British detainees -- identified by the BBC as Rasul, Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed, 21, Tarek Dergoul, 24, and Jamal Udeen, 35 -- would probably be taken into custody again as soon as they arrived in England. "Once the detainees are back in the UK, I understand that the police will consider whether to arrest them under the Terrorism Act 2000 for questioning in connection with possible terrorist activity," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. In contrast, Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller of Denmark said that Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane would not face further incarceration. "Under Danish law, it is not possible to put him on trial," he reportedly told the Danish Parliament. "He will come to Denmark as a free man." There are four Britons still at Guantanamo who have not been promised their release, two of whom have been designated as eligible for trial by military commission. There was no word about why the other two had not been released, though the United States has said it will not free those it views as the most dangerous. The US military has released 87 prisoners and transferred five more to their home governments -- four to Saudi Arabia and one last week to Spain -- for continued detention. It continues to hold about 650 people at the naval base, where the first detainees were brought from Afghanistan more than two years ago. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. * * * The Independent (UK): February 20, 2004 'WE WANT ANSWERS: WHY HAVE THEY BEEN HELD SO LONG WITHOUT CHARGE?' By Kim Sengupta and Arifa Akbar http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=493235 The images were stark and shocking. Britons, swathed in orange overalls, hooded and shackled, kneeling in front of their American captors. Others, on stretchers, being wheeled into mesh cages. None of them charged, let alone convicted, of any crime, yet facing indefinite sentences in prison. The unabating controversy caused by the treatment of British citizens arrested in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then shipped off to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, was one of the most embarrassing problems faced by Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, as he stood "shoulder to shoulder" with President George Bush in the war on terror. The announcement yesterday by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that five of the nine British prisoners at Camp X-Ray were to be released showed, the Government said, that the men had not been forgotten, and that prolonged and painstaking negotiations had been taking place behind the scenes on their behalf. But even as Mr Straw was making his speech at the Foreign Office, there were accusations and recriminations. The families and lawyers of the four still being held, with support from Muslim organisations and human rights groups, renewed their protest. There were also demands for explanations as to why it had taken so long to secure the freedom of the others. Suhul Ahmed, the elder brother of Ruhul Ahmed, one of those being freed, said: "We are feeling great happiness and relief at the moment. He has been gone for years. But we will be asking many questions of the Government. We are sure he would have been mentally disturbed by what had happened. We would like answers on why he had been away for two years. "The Foreign Office have not put 100 per cent of their effort into this. I believe if they had wanted to, they could have solved this a long time ago." Moazzam Begg, 36, from Birmingham, is one of those not being freed. His father Azmat described the family's disappointment and anger at his non-release. "This is just a face-saving gesture by the Americans. It was plainly illegal to keep those men there," he said. "I am desperately worried for Moazzam. I received a letter from him six months ago, and I have heard nothing since. I fear he is not in good health, and he is being tortured. I want to go to the US and take up his case, that is all I can do." Janet Paraskeva, the chief executive of the Law Society, said there was deep concern about Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, two of the men not coming back, who are likely to face an American military court. "These men have been held for over two years and their families are extremely concerned about their physical and mental health," she said. "The families and solicitors, backed by the Law Society, fear that the provisions for trials before military commissions are so severely flawed that it will not be possible to bring them up to an acceptable standard.We again call on the Government to do all it can to ensure that these men face trial in a US court, or be repatriated to the UK for trial." Raza Kazim, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, added: "I am very concerned that it has taken them all this long time to come up with this announcement. Why have only five been brought back and not the others, when Jack Straw himself has said that military tribunals cannot possibly offer the proper legal process?" Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, said: "The big question is, why weren't they released at least 18 months ago? What has happened since?" There also appeared to be confusion about what the future held for the returning detainees in Britain. Asked whether they could pose a security threat, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said: "I think you will find that no one who is returned in the announcement today will actually be a threat to the security of the British people." However, at the same time, Scotland Yard's National Coordinator for Terrorism, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, was certainly not ruling out possible prosecutions. "We have a responsibility to all communities to investigate suspected terrorist activity, which includes all the circumstances which led to the men's detention," he said. "The Anti-Terrorist Branch is conducting investigations which will consider the case of each man individually. This process will involve close liaison with the Crown Prosecution Service." All the prisoners, with the exception of one, were arrested in Afghanistan or Pakistan, either by US or Pakistani forces, in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Kabul. Martin Mubanga, 29, from north London, was picked up in Zambia after visiting Afghanistan. The families of the detainees had always maintained their innocence, although some were captured during fighting inside Afghanistan. Tarek Dergoul, a 24-year- old former care worker from east London, of Moroccan descent, was held after US and Northern Alliance forces clashed with the remnants of the Taliban and al- Qa'ida in the Tora Bora mountains. Mr Dergoul, one of whose hands was reportedly amputated due to shrapnel wounds, had told his family when he went to Pakistan in 2001 that he intended to learn Arabic. Asif Iqbal, 20, one of the so-called "Tipton Three" detainees from the town in the West Midlands, was captured in northern Afghanistan by Northern Alliance soldiers while allegedly fighting for the Taliban. He had reportedly gone to Pakistan, accompanied by his father Mohammed, to get married. Shafiq Rusul, 25, a fervent Liverpool fan who was into fashion and clubbing, according to his family, was supposedly among Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners who mutinied in Mazar-i-Sharif. Others maintained they were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Jamal al-Harith, also known as Jamal Udeen, a 35-year-old website designer from Manchester of Jamaican descent, claimed that he was on a backpacking holiday trekking from Pakistan to Iran when he was captured by the Taliban and imprisoned. Instead of freeing him, the Americans, when they came, sent him off to Cuba. The capture of young British men in the killing fields of Afghanistan was seen as a worrying indicator of levels of disenchantment within the Muslim community, and the extent to which fundamentalism had made inroads. Islamic leaders stressed yesterday that the prospect of legal actions against those returning, and those in America, will do nothing to heal the bitter divisions. TO BE FREED SHAFIQ RASUL, 24, FROM TIPTON Reportedly captured by US forces in Afghanistan. He lived a few streets away from Asif Iqbal in Tipton. His family describe him as shy and "westernised". He travelled to Pakistan in October 2001, apparently for a computer course, and his family lost contact with him in December. His brother Habib described him as a football-mad Liverpool fan. He said: "I sent a few football magazines and some pictures of the family to him. They came back three months later, with a label saying: "Suspicious items, return to sender." RUHAL AHMED, 21, FROM TIPTON His father Risoth says that his son left for Pakistan in 2001 with Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal to attend a wedding. They were at the Alexandra High School in Tipton. He was held in Kandahar in Afghanistan and sent to Cuba. His father is a British citizen who came from what is now Bangladesh. His family say he was "a friendly boy" into kick-boxing and a practising Muslim. He had a part-time job in a factory and helped in community centres. Mr Ahmed said: "He is a kid, straight out of school. How could he be a terrorist?" JAMAL AL HARITH, 35, FROM MANCHESTER Also known as Jamal Udeen, the web designer, 35, is of Jamaican origin. With the operation to catch al-Qa'ida forces under way, he was believed to have been captured by US forces while in a Kandahar jail. Born Ronald Fiddler to devout church-going parents, he converted to Islam in his 20s. His family say he is a gentle man.After learning Arabic and teaching in Sudan, he returned home, got married and set up a business. The devoted father of three was crushed when the marriage ended. He worked in a Muslim school. ASIF IQBAL, 20, FROM TIPTON He was picked up by US special forces in Afghanistan. Before his detention the last news from him was when he phoned his father from Karachi, where he went to meet friends. His parents were of Pakistani origin and moved to Britain 40 years ago. His father was a railway worker. Asif studied at the Sacred Heart school and the Alexandra High School in Tipton alongside other detainees, Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed. He left school at 16 to work in a factory. His family had suggested that he go to Pakistan to meet a bride. TAREK DERGOUL, 24, FROM EAST LONDON A former east London care worker, he is the son of a Moroccan baker and a lifelong Muslim. It is believed he was captured in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan, to which the Taliban had fled. One of his arms was reportedly amputated after he was wounded. He contacted his family in March 2002 to say he was being held in Kandahar. In 2001 he had told his family he was flying to Pakistan to learn Arabic. He is believed to have been sent to Guantanamo Bay in May 2002. TO BE DETAINED FEROZ ABBASI, 23, FROM SOUTH LONDON Born in Uganda, he moved to Britain with his family when he was eight and lived in Croydon. Hereportedly attended Edenham High School. After A-levels at the John Ruskin college, he took a two-year computing course. He is thought to have regularly worshipped at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, where the Muslim firebrand Abu Hamza gave his sermons. In January 2002 he was arrested in Afghanistan as an "unlawful combatant" and thentransferred to Camp Delta. In November 2002 the British Court of Appeal said it found his detention in Cuba "legally objectionable", but stopped short of forcing the government to intervene. His mother, Zumrati Juma, said she last saw her son in December 2000 before he went to Afghanistan. Since imprisonment, contact with his mother and family has been limited. MOAZZAM BEGG, 36, FROM BIRMINGHAM The language teacher and law student ran a bookshop selling religious and historical books and videotapes, before he decided to move his family to Afghanistan to carry out charity work, according to his relatives. Mr Begg, 31, who has four children, was arrested on suspicion of links with the Taliban regime or the al-Qa'ida terrorist network by the CIA in the Pakistan capital of Islamabad in February 2002, then moved to Cuba in February last year. His family have been refused permission to visit, although they have been able to write. Mr Begg's father says he has not been told why his son is being detained and has not received any letters from him since August 2003. He is one of the two men who face a potential military tribunal. RICHARD BELMAR, 23, FROM WEST LONDON He is believed to have attended a Catholic school in north London, and converted to Islam while in his teens, after his elder brother had done so. He worshipped at Regent's Park mosque, close to his home in Maida Vale, west London. He travelled to Pakistan, where he was first detained, before the attacks of 11 September 2001. MARTIN MUBANGA, 29, FROM NORTH LONDON A former motorcycle courier whose parents came from Zambia and was raised as a Catholic. He has joint Zambian and British nationality. His family moved to Britain in the 1970s. He converted to Islam in his twenties. It is not clear when or how he got to Afghanistan. He fled the country and was arrested in Zambia by the local authorities before being placed in the custody of the Americans. It is reported that he arrived in Zambia after leaving Afghanistan. TWO YEARS OF CONTROVERSY 11 January 2002. First 20 alleged Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters from Afghanistan are flown to detention centre known as Camp X-Ray. 14 January 2002. Foreign Office says three Britons held. 20 January 2002. Graphic pictures show prisoners bound and deprived of sense of sight, sound and touch. Feroz Abbasi from Croydon is the first Briton identified. 1 March 2002. 100 detainees start a hunger strike after a prisoner is told to remove a turban. 2 July 2002. British detainees win right to challenge their imprisonment in the High Court. 3 August 2002. 564 detainees, now seven Britons, are moved to the nearby Camp Delta. 23 September 2002. US releases a small number considered no threat. 22 February 2003. Number of Britons now nine. 17 July 2003. At a press conference with Tony Blair, George Bush says: "The only thing we know for certain is that these are bad people." 21 July 2003. Attorney General begins talks with US on the fate of the Britons. 19 November 2003. Mr Blair raises issue with Mr Bush during state visit to UK. 19 February 2004. Jack Straw announces five British detainees will be released. * * * The Independent (UK): February 20, 2004 HOW CAMP DELTA ALLOWED US TO AVOID GENEVA CONVENTION by Andrew Gumbel http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0220-01.htm President Bush promised a "different kind of war" after the 11 September attacks, and no place on earth better illustrates quite how different than Camp X-Ray, the prison camp established on the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. It seemed extraordinary enough, back in late 2001, that detainees would be flown halfway around the world from the war in Afghanistan to the eastern tip of Cuba. But that was only the start of it. The hundreds of men, suspected members of either the Taliban or al-Qa'ida, were not to be regarded as conventional prisoners of war. Instead, the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, told us, they were being categorized as "enemy combatants", subject neither to the Geneva Conventions nor to the purview of the US civilian court system. In other words, they were subject to indefinite detention, without access to a lawyer, without the privilege of knowing why they were being held or what they were accused of. Even if they were to come to trial, they would appear before a military commission whose three-judge panel would have sole discretion to convict them and, if they so chose, to sentence them to death. As the prisoner numbers increased - now believed to be about 675 - the arrangements at Guantanamo Bay provoked howls of protest from human rights lawyers and foreign governments, particularly those - like Britain - which had nationals inside the prison camp. A number of inmates, seeing not even a glimmer of hope for the future, have attempted suicide. At least 10 are believed to be children, kept in a separate section of the camp known as Camp Iguana. At first, US authorities stonewalled on almost everything. The prisoners could not be identified, their value as intelligence sources could not be discussed, access to lawyers could not be permitted - all for reasons of national security, they said. In December, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that detainees must be granted access to legal counsel. The justices said Guantanamo Bay risked becoming a "legal black hole" from which there was no escape. This has led to a flurry of other legal challenges, including a class-action suit against President George Bush and his administration seeking $1.1bn (£581m) in damages. "Unlike earlier wars, the struggle against terrorism is potentially never- ending," a group of defense lawyers wrote in a recent brief. "The Constitution cannot countenance an open-ended presidential power, with no civilian review whatsoever, to try anyone the President deems subject to a military tribunal, whose rules and judges have been selected by the prosecuting authority itself." Even before yesterday's announcement that five British prisoners were to be released, the Bush administration had softened its line; some of the men had their names released and were able to obtain lawyers, and at the end of January, three teenagers were released and returned to Afghanistan. Earlier this month, Mr Rumsfeld stated that inmates would be allowed to appeal against their detention to a special panel which would review their cases annually to determine whether they still posed a threat - or indeed, if they ever did. RELEASES TO DATE The US has released 87 detainees from the camp, most to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Four have been sent to Saudi Arabia under "continued detention." Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad, 29, from Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta, was released in February. He is being charged by the Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon with having links to an al-Qa'ida cell in Spain. Mohammad Sagheer, 51, is suing the US for $10.4m (£5.5m) in compensation for the "losses" he suffered. He was released in October 2002 after a year in prison. Negotiations are under way for the release of 10 Sudanese detainees after two Sudanese captives were released last week. Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, was one of three teenagers released at the end of January. The US has freed more than 24 Afghans from Guantanamo. Abdurahman Khadr, 20, a Canadian, was arrested in November 2001. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in early 2003 and released and sent to Afghanistan in July 2003. His brother Omar Khadr, 17, is still in Guantanamo. Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Danish man held since February 2002, is soon to be released. He will not face charges in Denmark. * * * Insight Magazine: February 20, 2004 COURT TO DECIDE 'ENEMY COMBATANT' POWER By Michael Kirkland http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/03/02/National/ Court.To.Decide.enemy.Combatant.Power-614046.shtml The Supreme Court of the United States agreed Friday to decide this term whether the president can declare a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil an "enemy combatant" without access to an attorney or the courts. The dispute goes to the heart of presidential powers during wartime and harks to a precedent set during World War II, when a U.S. citizen in the armed forces of Nazi Germany was arrested out of uniform on U.S. soil and eventually was executed as an attempted saboteur. Depending on your point of view, the court's eventual decision has the power to advance the nation's war on terror or provide a precedent to significantly erode civil liberties in the United States. The case accepted by the justices Friday involves Jose Padilla, who was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in May 2002 as he tried to re-enter the country from Pakistan. U.S. officials charged that the Brooklyn-born Padilla conspired with al-Qaeda leaders abroad to introduce a radioactive "dirty" bomb into a U.S. city. Attorney General John Ashcroft conceded at the time of Padilla's arrest that the alleged plot had not advanced far beyond the planning stage. Since then Padilla has been held incommunicado in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The Supreme Court already had agreed to a Justice Department request for a quick resolution of the case, and Padilla's court-appointed lawyer had not opposed Supreme Court review. A lower court in New York ruled last year that Padilla either must be charged in the civilian courts or released, but that ruling has been blocked until the Supreme Court hands down its ruling. Friday's Supreme Court order said all briefs in the case must be filed by April 21. That means the justices could hear the argument in the last week in April, or more likely, sometime in May. The acceptance of Padilla's case indicates the Supreme Court is determined to rule this term on all aspects of detentions in the nation's war against terror. Padilla's case is expected to be heard on the same day as that of Yaser Esam Hamdi. Though there are similarities, there also are distinct differences between the two cases. Like Padilla, Hamdi is a U.S. citizen. But whereas Padilla was arrested on U.S. soil, Hamdi was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 while fighting to support the Taliban regime. After his capture, he was taken to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of terror suspects, also designated "enemy combatants" by the president, have languished for nearly two years. At Guantanamo, however, he told military officials that he was a U.S. citizen by birth, born in Louisiana while his father worked for an oil company. Once U.S. officials became aware that Hamdi was likely a U.S. citizen, they transferred him from Guantanamo to the United States, where he has been held incommunicado in a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va. Hamdi's court-appointed attorneys say that up until very recently they have not been allowed contact with their client. A panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, with headquarters in Richmond, Va., has ruled Hamdi has no right to counsel or access to the U.S. courts. But the Defense Department relented in early December and allowed Hamdi contact with his lawyer, even though U.S. officials continue to insist he has no right to one. At issue in the Hamdi case is whether a U.S. citizen captured in a combat zone can be held as an "enemy combatant" without review by the U.S. courts. In addition to the Hamdi and Padilla cases, the Supreme Court is preparing to hear yet another argument on the detention of other terror suspects at Guantanamo. That argument involves the combined case of two Britons, two Australians and 12 Kuwaitis. The two Britons may be among those British subjects being sent from Guantanamo to the United Kingdom for prosecution. If so, their participation in the case would end. Lawyers for the other detainees are prepared to carry on the case without them, and have filed additional complaints if all 14 of their remaining clients are sent home from Guantanamo. More than 600 alleged Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners of 42 different nationalities have been taken to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay and have been denied contact with lawyers and family members. The majority of the prisoners at Guantanamo's "Camp Delta" are kept in solitary confinement in cells measuring 6 feet, 8 inches by 8 feet, except for 30 minutes of shackled exercise on a small concrete slab, according to lawyers trying to represent the detainees. They say lights are kept on 24 hours a day. The military acknowledges that there have been at least 32 attempted suicides at Camps Delta and X-ray. The United States contends that the Guantanamo detainees are all "enemy combatants" captured without any regular uniform in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and therefore do not have the rights extended to ordinary prisoners of war. The United States also contends that because they are enemy aliens who have never been on U.S. soil, they do not have the right to take their case to the U.S. courts, nor do federal judges have the authority to review their treatment. In agreeing to hear the combined case, the justices were careful to limit argument to the Guantanamo detainees. Yet another detainee case is before the Supreme Court, though the justices have not yet indicated whether they will hear argument in it. Falen Gherebi is a Libyan being held at Guantanamo after being captured while fighting for the Taliban. Lawyers for Gherebi, who claims his name is Salim Gherebi despite the name used in court documents, contend that Guantanamo is technically U.S. soil, not Cuban territory, and therefore Gherebi and similar detainees should have their cases reviewed by the federal courts. However, the Supreme Court has blocked a lower court order that might have given Gherebi access to a lawyer and may hold his case until the other Guantanamo case is decided. Decisions in all of the detainee cases should be handed down before the Supreme Court recesses for the summer in late June or early July. Michael Kirkland is a legal-affairs correspondent for UPI, a sister news organization of Insight magazine. * * * The Scotsman (Edinburgh): February 19, 2004 DETAINEES: STRAW STATEMENT IN FULL By PA News Reporter http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2551930 Here is Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s statement on the British detainees at Guantanamo Bay in full: "I am going to make a statement concerning the nine British citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay. "The al Qaida terrorist attacks on September 11 2001 killed over 3,000 people, from more than 90 countries, including 67 British citizens. "This was the most appalling terrorist atrocity the world had ever seen. "In response to those attacks, a coalition of countries came together to launch a military campaign against al Qaida and its supporters to remove them from their stronghold in Afghanistan. "As a result, individuals believed to be al Qaida or Taliban fighters, or their supporters, were detained by coalition forces. "The vast majority of these individuals were released, but a number who were deemed to pose a substantial risk of returning to the conflict were sent by the US to its detention centre in Guantanamo Bay to be detained, and to be questioned about their knowledge of al Qaida’s activities. "As a result valuable information has been gained which has helped to protect the international community from further al Qaida and related terrorist attacks. "The UK Government has been in frequent and regular contact with the United States authorities concerning the nine British detainees. "British officials have visited Guantanamo Bay six times to check on the detainees’ welfare. We have kept their families, and Parliament, informed. "In July 2003, two of the British detainees were designated by the United States authorities as eligible to stand trial by the US Military Commissions being established to deal with the detainees. "The British Government has made it clear that it had some concerns about the Military Commission process. "Consequently, the Prime Minister asked the British Attorney General to discuss with the US authorities how the detainees, if prosecuted, could be assured of fair trials which met international standards. "The Attorney General has held a number of discussions with the US authorities about the future of the detainees. "These have been paralleled by discussions between myself and US Secretary (of State, Colin) Powell and between British and US officials. "There have been many complex issues of law and security which both governments have had to consider. "Although significant progress has been made, in the Attorney General’s view the Military Commissions, as presently constituted, would not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals. "Our discussions are continuing. "In the meantime, we have agreed with the US authorities that five of the British detainees will return to the UK. "They are: Rhuhel Ahmed; Tarek Dergoul; Jamal Al Harith; Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul. "These men will be flown home to the UK in the next few weeks. "Once the detainees are back in the UK, I understand that the police will consider whether to arrest them under the Terrorism Act 2000 for questioning in connection with possible terrorist activity. "Any subsequent action will be a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service so it would be not be right for me to comment further. "We are still discussing with the US authorities the situation of the other four British detainees. "They are: Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Richard Belmar, Martin Mubanga. "There are a range of security and other issues, which we and the Americans need to consider in respect of the four men. "But our position remains that the detainees should either be tried in accordance with international standards or they should be returned to the UK. "Thank you." * * * The Hoya: February 13, 2004 GUANTANAMO JAGs DISCUSS PATRIOT ACT By Derek Richmond, Hoya Staff Writer http://www.thehoya.com/news/021304/news4.cfm The military attorneys for several detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, brought their arguments from the Supreme Court to Georgetown University on Tuesday. The panel, sponsored by the Institute for International Law and Politics, addressed students in Copley Formal Lounge regarding the Guantanamo detainees and the role U.S. courts should play in their prosecution. Four lawyers from the Judge Advocate General Corps who will represent prisoners from Afghanistan received special permission from the Department of Defense to take part in a discussion about a legal brief they filed with the Supreme Court recently. In the brief, the JAG officers requested a civilian review of any judgments handed down by the military commissions President Bush recently established to try the detainees. "We were afraid there would be no voice for those who might be taken to the military commissions," Lt. Col. Sharon Shafer said. "We were afraid the Supreme Court would rule with a broad brush, not allowing any of the detainees recourse to civilian courts." Some of the detainees, captured during military action in the war on terror, have been held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for more than two years, without trial. Bush recently established a military commission and a set of rules by which these wartime detainees would be tried, though he has not yet set a date for the commission to begin hearing cases. The government argues that the detainees do not have the civil rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution because they are not U.S. citizens. It also claims that because they are not in U.S. territory -- Guantanamo Bay is leased from Cuba by the U.S. Navy -- they have no rights to civilian courts of law. The JAG attorneys contend in their amicus curiae brief that any detainee brought before the military commission should also have the right to have the legality of his detention reviewed by the federal courts. The JAG lawyers claimed a small victory when the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that challenges the government’s claim that the detainees cannot have their detention reviewed by civilian courts. "If there is no civilian review, the system of military justice can conceivably be taken over by the executive branch to be used as that branch sees fit," Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift said. He called Bush’s commission an "almost too clever attempt to seize all power for themselves" without a full understanding of the history of military commissions. Swift contrasted Bush’s actions with those taken by President Harry Truman when seizing control of the steel industry in 1952. According to Swift, Truman wrote a letter to Congress the next day justifying his use of immediate action. Bush has offered no such justification to the legislature. Swift said that Bush claimed the need for immediate action in detaining the prisoners, yet two years later no tribunal has been convened to hear the cases. Neal Katyal, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Counsel of Record for the JAG officers’ brief, joined the panel in criticizing Bush’s inaction on the matter. "Your government is creating a legal black hole in Guantanamo, in which they can torture, maim and kill these individuals and there will be no review process," he said. Katyal added that Bush’s order calling for military commissions to hear these cases is troubling for two reasons. First, he said, it gives different forms of justice to aliens and U.S. citizens . He also said he saw it as setting a bad precedent for foreign treatment of U.S. nationals abroad. No dates have been set yet for either the military tribunals or the Supreme Court oral arguments. * * * LA Times: February 13, 2004 Rumsfeld to Discuss Future of Guantanamo Prisoners By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, defending the U.S. policy of open-ended detention for war prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is expected to describe plans today for releasing up to 20 of them while declaring that others will face imprisonment for the indefinite future. Rumsfeld's planned comments come amid increasing criticism from human rights groups about a new form of detention that began with the war in Afghanistan and is now entering its third year. A senior U.S. military official said Thursday that Rumsfeld plans to speak "broadly" in Miami today about the imprisoned combatants and their treatment at Guantanamo, noting that 85 to 90 of the prisoners have been released and an additional 10 to 20 could be transferred in the near future. More than 600 prisoners remain. But Pentagon strategists emphasize that many of those being held pose a potential threat to U.S. security while little is known in some cases about their potential connections to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. "It is a fact that international law permits us to keep enemy combatants for the duration of the conflict," the senior official said. Rumsfeld will speak to soldiers and commanders at the Miami headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. The Southern Command is one of five regional American military headquarters throughout the globe and oversees the naval base prison at Guantanamo Bay. SoCom, as it is known in military parlance, is responsible for an area encompassing 32 countries and 14.5 million square miles. Rumsfeld also will speak to Miami business leaders today. Civil rights advocates have lamented the Bush administration's decision to hold prisoners indefinitely without granting them the privileges of prisoners under the Geneva Convention and with no guarantee of a trial. Six of the detainees could be tried by a military commission, U.S. officials have said. "Quite a number" of the Guantanamo detainees are the subject of negotiations for transfer to home countries, the senior military official said. But there are some whose cases may never merit prosecution under a military tribunal or commission and who will continue to be held, the official said. Rumsfeld "will talk about the nature of the kinds of people that are detained out there," the official said. "We've got people with clear connections to the Al Qaeda. There's a significant number of them that are real bona-fide bad guys." Regarding prisoners being transferred, the official said that U.S. officials "have no desire to detain people" without reason. * * * ninemsn (aus): February 15, 2004 Feature: MAJOR MICHAEL MORI Reporter: Karl Stefanovic http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/feature_stories/article_1484.asp In Rob Reiner's movie A Few Good Men, a US Marine at the Guantanamo Naval Air Station in Cuba dies after a hazing incident. Two young Marines are charged with the murder and a Navy lawyer, played by Tom Cruise, is brought in by a legal ace, played by Demi Moore. She shames the lazy lawyer into living up to his father's heritage and the Cruise character wins the case, fighting for truth, justice and the American way. You could imagine Major Michael Mori playing the Tom Cruise character. In fact, he took reporter Karl Stefanovic to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to talk about the case against his client, David Hicks. It was, after all, Abraham Lincoln who resolved in the Gettysburg Address that America "should have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." In the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, Major Mori criticised the military commission that will decide David Hicks' future. He said the commission "will set a bad example in which the unfair process of rules could be used to try US soldiers in the future ... so you're worried other countries might turn it around and use these rules on your own soldiers in different countries. I think that's one of the primary reasons for fighting for David Hicks to get a fair trial, to ensure US soldiers in the future get a fair trial." Michael Mori is a lawyer for the Marines and the US Navy and has a passion for the law and justice, particularly for his Australian client. "Look, I'm not saying let David Hicks go. I'm saying take him to trial. Not too many defence lawyers would say take him to trial" ... in Australia, if necessary, he says, "so if he violated international laws, it's just as valid in Australia." Aged 38, Mori grew up in Boston, where he joined the Marines in 1983 and had a four-year stint. After he got out, he went back to university, did the officer training program for the Marine Corps as a lawyer and wound up as a lawyer on active duty with the Marines in 1995. Perhaps that's why he's so passionate about the law and justice -- he got his degree the hard way. "America's always had a proud tradition of ensuring fairness and due process. Now's not the time to sacrifice those values." Not one for the limelight, Major Mori was a bit apprehensive about holding his first media conference a few weeks ago, but he felt he owed it to David Hicks. "I was nervous, but I thought it was really important to come out and ensure people knew the defence's position in regards to the rules of the commission process and that they weren't fair." Mori pulls no punches when he talks about the system he has to work under. "I've been assigned to represent David Hicks in a new system that's just been created and part of that is to ensure David Hicks is tried in a fair system. The system is not fair and that can not be hidden." He quotes an example of how unfair it is. "Two members of the team (Defence Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld appointed to set up the military commission are now members of the review panel which will oversee it. How will they be impartial?" he asks. Major Mori doesn't believe David Hicks is a terrorist, despite accusations that he trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, he's hoping that he will be the Marine who helps set Hicks free from his cage in Guantanamo Bay. As the Marine hymn goes, he hopes "to fight for the right and freedom and to keep our honour clean." * * * CNN: February 13, 2004 - 0520 GMT SOLDIER HELD ON SUSPICION OF ESPIONAGE http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02/12/natl.guard.espionage/ (CNN) -- A National Guard soldier at Fort Lewis, Washington, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of trying to pass information about military capabilities to the al Qaeda terrorist organization, military officials said. Spc. Ryan G. Anderson, 26, was taken into custody following an internal sting operation, said Lt. Col. Stephen Barger, post spokesman. He will be charged with "aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the al Qaeda terrorist network," Barger said. Barger said the investigation involved the Army, the FBI and the Justice Department. "This is part of a joint, ongoing investigation," he said. "I can't get into specifics of how the investigation started or proceeded." Barger said it could be four or five days before charges are formally filed. Anderson allegedly offered to pass the information to al Qaeda agents through an Internet chat room, Pentagon officials said. But it is not believed he actually made contact with al Qaeda members, the sources said. Law enforcement personnel were monitoring the chat room looking for people who might try to give up information, and Anderson allegedly tried to offer information to al Qaeda, according to sources. Officials said Anderson, a tank crewman with the 303rd Armor Battalion of the 81st Armor Brigade at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, was the only target of the sting. The sting operation involved passing sensitive information about capabilities and vulnerabilities of armored Humvees and tanks, both of which are used in the brigade, officials said. Anderson's unit, the 81st Armor Brigade, was honored in a deployment ceremony Saturday. The brigade is preparing to deploy for final training in California before it departs for a tour of duty in Iraq. When asked if Anderson is a Muslim, Barger said, "Religious preferences are an individual right and responsibility, and I really can't get into it." Sources said Anderson converted to Islam several years ago. Local media outlets in Washington reported that Anderson was a 2002 Washington State University graduate and studied military history with an emphasis on the Middle East. * * * The Guardian (UK): February 13, 2004 SOLDIER FACES AL-QAIDA SPYING CHARGES By Dan Glaister in Los Angeles http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1147377,00.html A US soldier destined for Iraq was arrested yesterday pending charges of aiding al-Qaida. An army spokesman said that the soldier, a National Guardsman based at Fort Lewis in Seattle, Washington, had attempted to contact the terrorist group before leaving for a year's posting in Iraq. The soldier was alleged to have been "aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the al-Qaida terrorist network". The spokesman said that a sting operation mounted by the FBI, the US army and the US justice department found that the soldier entered an internet chatroom in an attempt to communicate with al-Qaida. Army sources stressed he had never been successful in contacting the terrorist group. It is not known what information the soldier, army specialist Ryan G Anderson, was allegedly attempting to pass on. Anderson, 26, is a tank crew member from the National Guard's 81st Armour Brigade, a 4,000-member unit ready to leave within months for a one-year deployment in Iraq. A Muslim, he studied at Washington State University and graduated in 2002 with a degree in military history, with an emphasis on the Middle East. He converted to Islam five years ago. Captain James Yee, the Guantanamo Bay military chaplain who was detained last September on charges of membership of an espionage ring, was command chaplain at Fort Lewis before being stationed at Guantanamo. Those initially grave charges against Captain Yee were later downgraded to the less serious charge of mishandling classified information. He was also charged with adultery and keeping pornography on a government computer. The charges have incensed his supporters, who argue that they are an attempt by military authorities to salvage a misguided arrest. The chaos surrounding the charges has also fuelled suspicions that the army is deliberately targeting Muslims within the forces. A Syrian-born translator was arrested last year and potentially faced the death penalty, but most of the charges against him were later dropped. Senior airman Ahmad al-Halabi had been charged with espionage, disobeying an order, making false official statements, mishandling classified documents and lying on a credit application. * * * Channel NewsAsia: February 13, 2004 SPANISH PLANE TO BRING GUANTANAMO PRISONER HOME TO FACE CHARGES http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/70833/1/.html MADRID (AFP) - A Spanish military plane headed to the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, to pick up a prisoner known as "the Spanish Taliban" who is wanted at home on charges of belonging to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. Ahmed Abderrahman Hamed, a 30-year-old Muslim from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta adjoining northern Morocco, has been held at Guantanamo since his capture two years ago during the US war in Afghanistan. The Spanish air force plane with eight police escorts on board left the Torrejon base near Madrid around noon, and Spanish diplomats said Abderrahman Hamed was expected to return to Spain on Friday. "At the request of the Spanish government, the US authorities have agreed to proceed with the immediate release of Spanish citizen Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, detained at Guantanamo naval base for his presumed collaboration with the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda," a Spanish foreign ministry source said. Hamed Abderrahman was scheduled to appear immediately after his arrival before judge Baltasar Garzon, who has charged him with membership of a "terrorist" organisation. Spanish judicial sources said Garzon would interview Hamed Abderrahman once doctors had ascertained he was ready to face questioning, adding that a lawyer, chosen by his family, would be present. The sources said the public prosecutor would be seeking jail for Hamed Abderrahman as an alleged member of Al-Qaeda. Hamed Abderrahman is suspected of having belonged to a Spanish-based Al-Qaeda cell which Spanish authorities dismantled in November 2001. According to Garzon's charge sheet, a member of the cell recruited Hamed Abderrahman and sent him to Iran in the summer of 2001 and on to Afghanistan for military training. There, he was captured after the US-led war which ousted Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in November 2001. Garzon demanded Hamed Abderrahman's extradition on December 29 but Spanish justice ministry sources said the request had not been processed by the Spanish government, which was seeking a diplomatic arrangement with Washington. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that the Spanish citizen would be repatriated. Hamed Abderrahman is one of some 660 prisoners from 42 countries, including 21 Europeans, who have been held for more than two years in legal limbo at Guantanamo. Most were captured in Afghanistan as part of the US "war on terror" following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The United States has designated the detainees illegal combatants rather than prisoners of war and has reserved the right to keep them in detention indefinitely without trial. The move has angered human rights groups around the world, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which guarantees the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, has criticised the process. With Hamed Abderrahman's impending release, other European governments with nationals held at the base are set to redouble their efforts to win their citizens' release. Last month, the Pentagon announced that three juveniles who had been captured in raids in Afghanistan had been released from Guantanamo. It did not identify the three, who were all under the age of 16, or provide details of the circumstances of their capture and release, citing concerns that they might be threatened by Taliban or Al-Qaeda sympathisers. The Pentagon said the three were being resettled in their home country with the help of non-governmental organisations but did not specify the country. * * * BBC: February 11, 2004 BIN LADEN'S DRIVER IN GUANTANAMO http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3480671.stm Osama Bin Laden's chauffeur is being held at the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyer has said. Navy Lt Cdr Charles Swift said Salim Ahmed Hamdan was taken into custody about two years ago. Mr Hamdan has not been charged with any crime and denies he was a member of Afghanistan's former Taleban regime or Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The 34-year-old Yemeni is one of four detainees chosen to stand trial at possible military tribunals. Lt Cdr Swift said Mr Hamdan had worked for Bin Laden on the al-Qaeda leader's farm in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar since 1997. He said his client earned $200 a month driving Bin Laden around in a Toyota pick-up truck and was not a terrorist. "He has a wife. He has two young children, one of whom he's never seen. The only reason why he took the job as a driver was to support his family," said Lt Cdr Swift. Mr Hamdan was captured by Afghan forces during the US war in Afghanistan, and turned over to US forces. He is the first among more than 600 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to be publicly linked to Bin Laden. Lt Cdr Swift said his client could be charged with conspiracy or being an accessory to a crime. * * * Knight Ridder Washington Bureau: February 11, 2004 ALLEGED DIRTY BOMB PLOTTER GIVEN ACCESS TO LAWYER By Shannon McCaffrey, Knight Ridder Newspapers http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7931181.htm WASHINGTON - American Jose Padilla, who's accused of plotting an al-Qaida dirty- bomb attack, will have access to a lawyer after being held for 20 months in a military brig without any charges filed against him. The only other U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant, Yaser Hamdi, met with his lawyer for the first time earlier this month under the watchful eye of Defense Department officials. Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, said Wednesday that officials had told her that her conversation with her client also would be monitored. Wednesday's reversal suggests that Padilla's captors have learned all they could from the former Chicago gang member. Since Padilla was declared an enemy combatant on June 9, 2002, the Bush administration has argued repeatedly that providing him with a lawyer would interrupt interrogations vital to gathering crucial intelligence about al-Qaida. On Wednesday, the Pentagon said in a statement that legal access "will not compromise the national security of the United States, and (the Defense Department) has determined that such access will not interfere with intelligence collection." But the Pentagon said the access was discretionary and that it "is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent." Newman, who began representing Padilla in New York, where he was held initially on a material-witness warrant before being transferred to a military brig in Charleston, S.C., said it was "wonderful" that she would be able to see her client again and let him know about the legal battle being waged on his behalf. But she said she was worried about the restrictions the administration had placed on the visit and that she was appalled by the administration's assertion Wednesday that the right to counsel was discretionary. "We have in this country a right to counsel, and for them to say it's discretionary ... is far from a recognition that the Constitution is still alive," she said. The Pentagon's decision comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to take up Padilla's case. An earlier federal appeals panel in New York dealt the government a setback in the legal war on terrorism, questioning the president's authority to hold enemy combatants without approval from Congress. In that 2-1 ruling, a panel of judges from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Padilla released from military custody. The Pentagon's decision to grant Padilla access to a lawyer came the same day the Justice Department filed a brief to the Supreme Court supporting his detention and the Bush administration's authority to designate enemy combatants. The Supreme Court already has agreed to hear an appeal on behalf of Hamdi, an American citizen captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan allegedly fighting for the Taliban. Frank Dunham, Hamdi's lawyer, said Wednesday that he met with his client for about an hour but the government restrictions were prohibitive. Dunham said he wasn't permitted to ask Hamdi about the conditions of his confinement for the last two years. A Defense Department official sat in on the conversation, which was videotaped and monitored by intelligence officials. "We didn't talk about anything that amounted to a hill of beans because what lawyer would want to ask his client any substantive question with the government sitting there watching?" he said. Dunham said he wanted to see Hamdi again and had asked Defense Department officials to relax the rules governing the contact. * * * Reuters UK: February 11, 2004 GUANTANAMO DECISION EXPECTED "SHORTLY" By Peter Graff http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml ?type=topNews&storyID=456499§ion=news LONDON (Reuters) - The government expects a decision "shortly" on the fate of its detainees at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp for terrorism suspects, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith says. But Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said a month ago that the issue would be resolved within weeks, acknowledged that talks had become bogged down over the question of how Britain would handle detainees who are sent home. Goldsmith has led Britain's team negotiating since the middle of last year over nine British citizens among about 660 people held at the camp on Cuba. Two of the Britons are among a small group designated for trial before military commissions. The government regards as unfair the rules of the trials as outlined by the U.S. Defence Department. Defendants cannot have private contact with their lawyers, cannot see all the evidence against them and cannot appeal to civilian courts. "We expect the issue to be resolved shortly, and it will be resolved in one of two ways: either the detainees will be assured a fair trial under the military commission procedure of the United States or brought back to the United Kingdom," Goldsmith said in a speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on Wednesday. A deal on rights for the British detainees is being closely watched elsewhere and could serve as the basis for negotiations with other countries about their citizens held in Guantanamo. Blair acknowledged the delay during parliamentary debate. "I'm sorry that it is taking time," he said. "But it is taking time -- and I hope the house understands this -- for very, very good reasons. "We want to make sure if people are brought back here that we are not in any shape or form -- and I say this without any disrespect for the people concerned -- endangering the security of this country," Blair said. Under British law it could be difficult to try suspects held at Guantanamo, since evidence obtained while they were held without lawyers would generally not be admissible in court. After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the government passed laws allowing it to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge and without obeying the normal rules for evidence. But the measures apply only to foreigners, not to British citizens such as the nine held at Guantanamo. Home Secretary David Blunkett has discussed changing the law to apply more flexible standards of proof to British citizens suspected of terrorism, but has not yet published his proposals. Most of those held at Guantanamo were captured during or immediately after the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2001. * * * Reuters: February 11, 2004 US SET TO SEND SPANIARD FROM GUANTANAMO TO SPAIN By Will Dunham http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4336466 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is set to turn over to Spain this week the only Spaniard held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay for a Spanish probe of al Qaeda, officials in Madrid and Washington said on Wednesday. Justice Minister Jose Maria Michavila said in Madrid that Spanish police will fly to the base in Cuba to retrieve Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad, who is from the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta. Ahmad is set to leave a U.S. military prison at Guantanamo by Friday, a U.S. official added. Michavila also said the United States had agreed to begin the extradition process for three non-Spaniards held at Guantanamo and wanted by Spain. Ahmad is one of four Guantanamo detainees who Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon wants brought back to Spain for his investigation of al Qaeda. Garzon has said the four men had close ties to a Spanish al Qaeda cell. Washington blames Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed 3,000 people. The Pentagon declined comment on the pending release. Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said on Jan. 16 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had agreed to accelerate the process of reviewing Guantanamo prisoners for possible release. The most recent release announced by the Pentagon came on Jan. 29, when three Afghan teen-agers, ranging from 13 to 15 years old, were flown back to their home country. The United States holds about 650 foreign nationals at the Guantanamo Bay base, most caught in Afghanistan. The Pentagon uses the base to house many of the prisoners detained in what President Bush calls the global war on terrorism. None the prisoners has been charged with any crime, and some have been held for two years. They are designated "enemy combatants" and not prisoners of war entitled to a host of legal rights under international accords. The United States periodically releases small numbers of the detainees, while bringing in new ones. Since the prison facilities were opened in January 2002, 87 detainees have been flown out and set free in other countries, while four were transferred to Saudi Arabia for detention, the Pentagon said. "This week, the U.S. will hand over a Spanish citizen now detained in Guantanamo and will start the extradition process for three others, who are not Spaniards but are accused of terrorist activities in Spain," Michavila said in Madrid. Michavila said the Spanish Cabinet was set to approve on Friday a request by Garzon to seek the extradition of the three other al Qaeda suspects. They were named as Moroccan Lahcen Ikassrien, as well as Jamiel Abdul Latif al Banna and Omar Deghayes, whose nationalities were not stated. Spain has been one of America's closest allies in its war on terrorism, and contributed troops in Iraq. The United States is preparing to begin military trials of a small number of Guantanamo detainees. In London, British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said Britain expects a decision soon on the fate of nine Britons held at Guantanamo Bay. The British government regards as unfair the rules created by the Pentagon for the trials. "We expect the issue to be resolved shortly, and it will be resolved in one of two ways: either the detainees will be assured a fair trial under the military commission procedure of the United States or brought back to the United Kingdom," Goldsmith said. * * * New York Post: February 11, 2004 FREED TERROR-SUSPECT TEEN HAILS HIS 'GOOD TIME' AT GITMO By ANDY SOLTIS A 15-year-old Afghan boy who was held along with other terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba said the controversial prison was more like summer camp. "They gave a good time in Cuba," Mohammed Ismail Agha said. "They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons," he added, after being returned to his family in an Afghan village. The plight of Agha and two other Afghan boys held at the prison camps in Guantanamo Bay has been criticized by some human-rights groups as mistreatment of youths without a trial. But Agha, in two interviews since his release on Jan. 29, spoke fondly of his experience. "At first I was unhappy with the U.S. forces. They stole 14 months of my life," he said. But he praised the good food, good schooling and opportunities to pray he received at the hands of the American authorities. Agha's story began in November 2002 when he and a friend, Mohammed Wali, left their farming community in Laskar Gah in Helmand province and stood outside a shop. A group of militiamen approached them and said "Come and join us," he recalled. Agha said despite his protests he was separated from Wali, handed over to American troops, placed in solitary confinement and interrogated. He said he thought his interrogators would believe him but instead they placed a hood over his head and flew him to Cuba. Once he arrived in February 2003 things began to improve. "For two or three days I was confused," he said. "but later the Americans were so nice with me. They were giving me good food with fruit and water for ablutions before prayer." He said camp officials gave him a copy of the Koran and books in his native language, Pashto. "They even took photographs of us all before we left," he said. The Pentagon indicated Agha isn't as innocent as he claims. With Post Wire Services * * * 11 February 2004 GRAND JURY QUESTIONS WHITE HOUSE AIDES OVER OUTING OF UNDERCOVER CIA AGENT VALERIE PLAME By Andrew Buncombe in Washington http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=490018 The controversy over the outing of an undercover CIA agent continued to threaten President George Bush yesterday when it was revealed that some of his most senior officials had been questioned by FBI investigators looking into the leak. Senior officials from the Vice-President's office have also testified as part of the criminal inquiry. Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, and Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief political adviser, are among the officials who have been questioned. Mr McClellan said that he gave evidence before a grand jury last week - a process in which witnesses are questioned before a jury panel which decides whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed. Mr Rove, considered one of the most powerful figures in the Bush administration, was also questioned recently. Mr McClellan said: "[I was] doing my part to co-operate as the President asked us all to do." The FBI inquiry relates to the leaking of the identity of the CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson. It is alleged that the leak was an act of retaliation against the diplomat, who had exposed one of the Bush administration's false claims about Iraq's efforts to produce nuclear weapons. Her identity as a weapons expert was leaked to a right-wing newspaper columnist after Mr Wilson revealed that a fact-finding trip he carried out to Niger in 2002 at the behest of the government proved that claims made by the President that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from the West African nation were false. The White House was forced to admit that the claim should not have been included in the President's 2003 State of the Union address. The affair has the potential to be hugely damaging to Mr Bush as he campaigns for re-election. Having repeatedly argued that he is a president who has stood up for national security, it would be greatly embarrassing to have one of his senior officials accused of ruining Ms Plame's career and potentially threatening the safety of some of those she had worked with overseas. The leaking of the name of an undercover officer is a criminal offence and, under sustained pressure from both Democrats and Republicans, the administration appointed a special prosecutor in December to lead the FBI's inquiry into the incident. Reports published yesterday said that agents had gathered scores of e-mails and phone records and interviewed numerous senior officials including the Vice- President Dick Cheney's former adviser Mary Matalin, Adam Levine, a former White House press official, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, Catherine Martin, an aide to Mr Cheney and Ari Fleischer, the former White House spokesman. Some of the meetings were said to be "tense and combative". The investigators have also questioned Mr Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and during their interviews with other officials the FBI has repeatedly referred to "copious" notes compiled by him. It is believed that the FBI officers have also interviewed John Hannah, another aide to Mr Cheney, and may be offering an incentive to him to reveal what he knows about other officials. Some reports have suggested that Mr Libby could be charged. Larry Johnson, a former CIA operative and a long-time friend of Ms Plame, said he had been told that a number of other advisers to the White House were also at the centre of the FBI inquiry. "This is really beginning to heat up," he said. Ms Plame's identity was revealed last summer by the veteran conservative columnist Robert Novak. It is believed that at least six other journalists in Washington were contacted by two White House officials who disclosed the operative's details. Mr Novak - who has refused to reveal his sources - and the other journalists could find themselves subpoenaed to appear before the inquiry. The inquiry into the leak of Ms Plame's identity is being headed by Patrick Fitzgerald, the US attorney in Chicago. A spokesman for Mr Fitzgerald refused to comment on those questioned, saying he was not legally permitted to talk about them. Mr Cheney's office has also declined to comment. It was reported yesterday by the The Washington Post that a parallel FBI inquiry is investigating the forgery of documents suggesting that Iraq was seeking to buy the uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. That inquiry, which is being carried out by FBI counter-intelligence agents, was launched last spring after experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that the documents obtained by the US were fake. * * * CommonDreams.org: February 10, 2004 PRESS FREEDOM UNDER FIRE by Heather Wokusch http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0210-09.htm If the first casualty of war is truth, then the War on Terror has dealt a body blow to those trying to get at the bottom of the story: journalists. The press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) has noted a sharp jump in attacks on journalists internationally, and not just in high-profile cases such as the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In 2002, a full 1,420 journalists were kidnapped, beaten or detained across the globe, and RSF concludes, "The fight against terrorism launched by the United States and its allies after the 11 September attacks damaged freedom of the press. Many governments stepped up and justified their repression of opposition or independent voices using anti-terrorism as an excuse." In particular, the US military is under fire for its treatment of journalists in Iraq. An RSF report entitled "Two Murders and a Lie" details the April 8 2003 attack by US forces on Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, which left two journalists dead and three injured. Blaming Iraqi snipers for the Palestine Hotel attack, Pentagon officials said, "this desperate and dying regime will stop at nothing to cling to power." When evidence proved a US tank was in fact responsible, officials claimed the shelling was in response to hostile fire from within the hotel. After that version of events was proven false too, the standard line became soldiers attacked the hotel thinking they "were under direct observation from an enemy hunter/killer team." The bottom line is the Pentagon knew the hotel had been filled with reporters for three weeks, yet soldiers on the ground had been left uninformed. According to RSF, "the question is whether this information was withheld deliberately, because of misunderstanding or by criminal negligence." While the Geneva Conventions clearly state that "journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians ... and protected as such," apparently not everyone agrees; in the view of retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, "there's nothing sacrosanct about a hotel with a bunch of journalists in it." Stateside, a similar attitude can be seen in the language used to describe visa requirements for foreign journalists: "You must apply for a United States visa if you ... Are a professional journalist planning to cover news or informational stories; Have been denied entry on a previous occasion or have been expelled from the USA during the last five years; Have a criminal record or suffer from a serious transmittable disease or mental disorder; Are a drug addict, drug trafficker, or were involved in Nazi persecutions, and if you were or still are a member of a subversive or terrorist organization." In other words, journalists, criminals and terrorists belong in the same category. At least it's appearing that way to an increasing number of foreign journalists visiting the US. Just last month, Austrian lifestyle-magazine reporter Peter Krobath flew to Los Angeles to interview Ben Affleck about his latest film. Despite having media credentials and a press junket invitation, Krobath was detained at LAX and interrogated for five hours. He was then body- searched, handcuffed, placed in isolation and taken to a downtown prison where he spent the night in a cell with 45 others, including convicted criminals. Only after the Austrian consulate intervened was Krobath released from prison and placed on the first flight back to Vienna. Krobath's crime? He didn't have a special visa for foreign journalists planning to cover news stories in the States. The catch? No embassies or consulates had been told about this new regulation, so foreign media groups couldn't prepare their staff members. The War on Terror has no doubt taken its toll on press freedom, but it's hard to see how targeting visiting journalists will make the US safer, promote the image of an open and free America, or make life easier for US journalists abroad. And it's unacceptable to whitewash a crime such as the Palestine Hotel shelling. The RSF has called for a reopening of the inquiry into the attack: "At the top level, the US government must bear some responsibility ... its top leaders have regularly made statements about the status of war reporters in Iraq that have undermined all media security considerations and set the scene for the tragedy that occurred." Freedom of the press is crucial to any democracy, and silencing the messenger is no alternative. Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer. She can be contacted via her web site: www.heatherwokusch.com Footnotes: See: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=9045 See: http://www.usembassy.at/en/embassy/cons/niv.htm See: http://www.freemedia.at/Protests%202003/USA04.12.03.htm * * * Chicago Tribune: February 10, 2004 COURT NEXT FRONT IN WAR ON TERROR Justices to review legality of holding U.S. citizens, foreigners indefinitely By Jan Crawford Greenburg, Washington Bureau http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0402100339feb10,1,3236253.story WASHINGTON -- As the government has chased terrorists around the world since the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House and Congress have engaged in fierce debates over how to balance civil liberties with national security. But one pillar of the government has been silent--the Supreme Court, which can overrule the other two. That is about to change, as the court is expected to consider in coming months what already are being called the most important wartime civil liberties cases since World War II. In the cases of Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, the justices are expected to decide under what circumstances, if any, the government can declare U.S. citizens "enemy combatants" and lock them away with no constitutional rights. In a third case involving detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the court will confront the same question about non-citizens. The cases, all of which may be decided by the summer, involve distinct legal and factual issues. But at bottom they "involve national security in times of grave national threat, and are going to raise special issues for the court," said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA. In taking up the terrorism cases, the court must decide whether it should create legal rules to guide the Bush administration's war on terrorism, said John Yoo, a former administration official who now is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Perhaps the most basic question confronting the justices is whether those labeled enemy combatants even have the right to challenge their status in federal courts. In fighting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network, the Bush administration contends it has authority to deny foreigners held at Guantanamo access to the courts to challenge their detention. It also maintains it can hold American citizens designated as enemy combatants without charging them with a crime or immediately giving them access to a lawyer. Historically, the Supreme Court has given great deference to the executive branch during wartime, and the administration maintains that it has the constitutional authority to wage war against Al Qaeda as it sees fit. But lawyers for the foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay argue that they are entitled to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Lawyers for Padilla and Hamdi, the two U.S. citizens designated as enemy combatants, maintain the men are entitled to lawyers and to know of the charges against them. They argue that even in times of war, individuals in the United States have certain basic rights. A role for courts? "The court will have to answer the question: `Do courts have a role to play, and is it meaningful?'" said Steven Shapiro, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. The cases give the justices an opportunity to clarify how far the government can go in waging war on terrorism. They will help shape the political debate on fighting terrorism and influence lower courts grappling with terrorism-related issues. The stakes are high for the administration, which has become accustomed to criticism that it is sacrificing civil liberties in the war on terrorism. The USA Patriot Act, which Congress passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to strengthen law-enforcement efforts against terrorism, has come under assault. Administration supporters say that even if the court orders the government to give the detainees more rights, it would not derail the war on terrorism. The administration's anti-terrorism efforts will "not stand or fall on one particular decision," said Viet Dinh, a former Justice Department official in the Bush administration who now teaches law at Georgetown University. Even if the court rejects the administration's position in one or more of the cases, Dinh said, "I wouldn't think of it as a condemnation of American policy. It is a conversation the court and political branches have all the time." Volokh said the government's fight against terrorism is multilayered, and the court's decisions likely will reflect that. "It's important to realize that different government actions in the wake of Sept. 11 are subject to different legal regimes," Volokh said. "Some do implicate constitutional rights, in the sense that they raise serious constitutional concerns." Political implications Still the decisions, expected by the end of June, will come as the presidential campaign is under way. Observers said Democrats likely will try to cast any rulings unfavorable to the administration as proof that it went too far. "Any rebuff of the administration's unilateral approach is going to have tremendous reverberations legally and politically," the ACLU's Shapiro said. "It will send out a warning signal to the administration and the lower courts that this is not an issue that is beyond judicial review, and that courts are going to continue to police what the administration has done to ensure it comports with basic notions of fairness." The court already has agreed to hear the case of Hamdi and that of the Guantanamo detainees. The justices are expected soon to agree to hear Padilla's case, probably on the same day as Hamdi's, because both involve U.S. citizens challenging their detention. The cases raise distinct legal issues. The Guantanamo case asks whether foreigners captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan can get access to U.S. courts to challenge their detentions at the U.S. base. The government had urged the justices to stay out of the case after a federal appeals court ruled that the detainees were not entitled to have access to U.S. courts. But the court announced earlier this year that it would intervene. And with that case on its docket, observers said the court had little choice but to take Hamdi's case. The Hamdi case touches on more dramatic constitutional issues and asks whether the government can indefinitely detain U.S. citizens captured abroad and labeled enemy combatants without giving them access to a lawyer or charging them with a crime. More leeway to citizens Traditionally, the courts have recognized far more constitutional rights for U.S. citizens than for non-citizens. Hamdi, who was born in the United States, was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2001. Now in a U.S. brig, Hamdi had long been denied access to a lawyer. The Pentagon eventually agreed to let Hamdi meet with his attorney, although a military representative will monitor the conversation. Padilla's case features still different circumstances. In addition to being an American citizen, Padilla was captured not on a battlefield but at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Like Hamdi, he has been designated an enemy combatant without access to a lawyer. The court is expected to announce in coming weeks whether it will consider the Padilla case this term, but advocates on both sides say they are almost certain the court will do so. "The court has already taken the Yasser Hamdi case, which poses one half of the question," Dinh said. "The same reasons would animate taking the Padilla case, which poses the second half of the question." The Justice Department has urged the court to take the case and reverse a decision by a New York-based federal appeals court that sided with Padilla. The court has agreed to decide quickly whether it will hear the Padilla case, which is widely viewed as raising the most critical constitutional issues of the three because it involves the rights of a U.S. citizen arrested in the United States. - - - Defining cases The key cases expected to define the nation's civil liberties in wartime: Guantanamo detainees: Foreigners captured in the war on terrorism seek the right to challenge their incarceration in U.S. courts. Yasser Hamdi: A U.S. citizen seized in Afghanistan as an "enemy combatant," he demands the constitutional rights to see a lawyer and be confronted with the charges against him. Jose Padilla: The former Chicago gang member has the same status and demands as Hamdi, with one difference: He was apprehended in the United States. * * * February 9, 2004 ABA WON'T TAKE POSITION ON GITMO RIGHTS GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/7912918.htm SAN ANTONIO (AP) - The American Bar Association declined Monday to take a position on one of the major legal issues to arise since the Sept. 11 attacks: whether terror suspects held at a military prison in Cuba should have access to American courts. The nation's largest lawyers' group did take a stand on another hot-button issue, saying the federal government should let states make individual decisions on whether to allow same-sex marriages. The issues were among more than a dozen that came up during the final day of the 400,000-member group's winter meeting. The ABA has battled with the Bush administration over the treatment of terror suspects arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks. It called last year for legal rights for U.S. residents classified as "enemy combatants" and urged the White House to change its rules for any military trials for such suspects. "Enemy combatants" is the term used for captives who are neither traditional prisoners of war nor ordinary criminal defendants. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals this spring involving enemy combatants held in Cuba and in South Carolina. The ABA decided to steer clear of the issue raised in the appeal on behalf of detainees at the Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The appeal asks if they may contest their captivity in American courts. Supporters of delaying a policy decision said the ABA could do something later, after the Supreme Court issues its decision, and after spending more time reviewing the subject. The Bush administration maintains that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over non-Americans held outside of the United States. President Bush has identified six of the detainees as possible candidates for military trial, and four of those have been assigned attorneys. But New York lawyer Robert Juceam said that people being held at the base should not be treated differently from those picked up in the United States. "There would be no doubt if they were in Florida, New Orleans or Los Angeles then they would have access to courts," he said. ABA President Dennis Archer said the group is interested in the Guantanamo case and was pleased with the Pentagon's announcement Friday that it was revising rules for civilian defense lawyers who will eventually defend the terrorism suspects tried before military tribunals. Michael O'Neill, a conservative law professor at George Mason University, said the ABA may be smart to focus on something other than the detainment of enemy combatants. "Because it deals with the administration of military justice, not on American shores, it doesn't involve the ABA's core interests as much," he said. Meanwhile, no members spoke against the gay marriage proposal, which does not support the unions but says Congress should stay out of the matter. With the vote, the organization can lobby against constitutional amendment proposals that are pending in Congress. Lawyer C. Elisia Frazier of Fort Wayne, Ind., said the ABA may be criticized for taking up a controversial subject but "we have an obligation to lead and participate in the dialogue of significant legal issues of our day." Last week, the Massachusetts Supreme Court said gay couples should be allowed to marry, setting the stage for the nation's first legally sanctioned same-sex weddings by springtime. Also Monday, the ABA: * Urged states to require the videotaping of police interrogations of criminal suspects. * Went on record opposing federal government recruitment of local police to help enforce immigration laws. * * * Stars and Stripes European edition: February 9, 2004 US CRITICIZED FOR HOLDING FUGITIVES’ RELATIVES By Ward Sanderson, Stars and Stripes http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=20350 BAGHDAD -- One of the few places open for business during the Muslim holidays following the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) was Akram’s perfume shop. It sold animal- print brassieres. It sold something called "Passion Seaweed Slimming Mud." But even with this decadent Western inventory, Akram found a controversial practice of the U.S. military here distasteful. And it wasn’t because it was too Western -- rather, to him, it smacked of the days of Saddam Hussein. Akram believes the coalition should not arrest relatives of the wanted in the process of hunting them down. "If they are dealing in the same methods that Saddam used to use, what have they come here for?" the 35-year-old asked. U.S. forces recently arrested a woman in Fallujah in an effort to track down her husband; locals protested. Also last month, Americans arrested four members of the clan of current top fugitive Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, former vice president of Iraq. The military has said it believes the men may be helping al-Douri hide and coordinate attacks against its soldiers. During a news conference, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, defended the arrests. "The Geneva Convention allows us to detain individuals that might be security risks or may have intelligence value as we continue to execute the task of bringing security and stability to the country," Sanchez said. "In this case, my understanding is that that was the reason why we captured the lady," he said of the Fallujah incident. "And if I’m correct, I believe she was released within a matter of 24 hours." A January briefing to the United Nations by Human Rights Watch, however, accused American forces of ignoring the Geneva Convention. It called the detaining of fugitives’ relatives a breach of international law. "On at least four occasions between mid-November 2003 and early January 2004, U.S. troops demolished homes of relatives of suspected insurgents or former officials in order to punish the families or compel their cooperation," the report read. "On two of these occasions, U.S. troops took into custody family members not themselves suspected of wrongdoing -- in effect, taking hostages, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions." Sanchez said the only houses his forces have demolished were being used by enemy forces, and as such were no longer homes. Robin Bhatty, a senior analyst on assignment in Baghdad with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said targeting relatives is not a new method of hunting fugitives. "It was a tactic that had been used successfully in the past -- for example, by the Jordanians, in their fight during the 1980s against the Abu Nidal group," Bhatty said, referring to an offshoot of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Soviet Union also used what Bhatty called "collective punishment" to deter insurgents. "And the British used a similar technique on the Indian northwest frontier, and here in Iraq; British columns retaliating for Afghan raids on India would level villages, while in Iraq in the 1920s, the Royal Air Force would bomb the villages of offending tribes," Bhatty said. "In neither case was any effort made to distinguish between tribesmen who actually raided and those who stayed home." He said that whatever the pragmatic advantages, similar techniques have been considered immoral and "beyond the pale" by modern Western powers, including the United States. "Such methods are counterproductive, because they tend to produce an overall escalation in violence by both sides," he said. Back in Akram’s shop of purples and pinks and prints from the jungle, those tactics, as well as surprise raids of family homes, leave a bad taste. Akram said his elderly neighbor was recently detained, allegedly without cause. His younger, brother, Ehssun, said he abandoned plans to work for the U.S. military after being disappointed in its methods. Their home, they said, had also been raided by U.S. troops as part of neighborhood sweeps. "Even if I hated Saddam very much, I will start to believe Saddam Hussein was better," Akram said. "Even if I loved the American, I would begin to hate him." * * * The Telegraph (UK): February 8, 2004 I HAD A GOOD TIME AT GUANTANAMO, SAYS INMATE By Rajeev Syal http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/08/wguan08.xml &sSheet=/portal/2004/02/08/ixportal.html An Afghan boy whose 14-month detention by US authorities as a terrorist suspect in Cuba prompted an outcry from human rights campaigners said yesterday that he enjoyed his time in the camp. Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English. His words will disappoint critics of the US policy of detaining "illegal combatants" in south-east Cuba indefinitely and without trial. In a first interview with any of the three juveniles held by the US at Guantanamo Bay base, Mohammed said: "They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons." Mohammed, an unemployed Afghan farmer, found the surroundings in Cuba at first baffling. After he settled in, however, he was left to enjoy stimulating school work, good food and prayer. "At first I was unhappy . . . For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later the Americans were so nice to me. They gave me good food with fruit and water for ablutions and prayer," he said yesterday in Naw Zad, a remote market town in southern Afghanistan close to his home village and 300 miles south-west of Kabul, the capital. He said that the American soldiers taught him and his fellow child captives - aged 15 and 13 - to write and speak a little English. They supplied them with books in their native Pashto language. When the three boys left last week for Afghanistan, the soldiers looking after them gave them a send-off dinner and urged them to continue their studies. "They even took photographs of us all together before we left," he said. Mohammed, however, said he would have to disappoint his captors by not returning to his studies. "I am too poor for that. I will have to look for work," he said. Mohammed said his detention began in November 2002 when he and a friend, both unemployed, left their farming community for Lashkar Gah, a nearby town. He said that as they stood outside a shop they were detained by a group of armed men who accused them of being members of the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic movement formerly in power in Afghanistan. They were then handed over to US soldiers, who took them to the southern city of Kandahar, he claimed. They were taken to Bagram air base, where Mohammed was held in solitary confinement. "They were asking me if I was Taliban. I said, 'No, I am innocent'. I thought they were going to release me but instead they put me on a plane," he said. "They asked me to wear a hood for part of the journey. When I got off the plane I was in Cuba." While Mohammed praised the American soldiers who watched over him, he criticised the US authorities for failing to contact his parents for 10 months to let them know that he was alive. "They stole 14 months of my life, and my family's life. I was entirely innocent: just a poor boy looking for work," he said. Mohammed and his fellow juvenile detainees returned to Afghanistan last week, after the intervention of the International Committee of the Red Cross. His words of praise for the American soldiers in Guantanamo Bay echo those of Faiz Mohammed, an elderly Afghan farmer who was detained at the base for eight months before being released in October 2002. "They treated us well. We had enough food. I didn't mind [being detained] because they took my old clothes and gave me new clothes," said the farmer, who was partially deaf. Camp Delta, which superseded the temporary Camp X-Ray, and Camp Iguana, a lower- security detention facility for juveniles, were established as part of President George W Bush's "war on terror". More than 600 suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects have been held without charge at the barbed-wire camps since December 2001. They include nine Britons and three British residents. Human rights agencies such as Amnesty International have alleged that the detention of the boys contravened the Geneva Convention, saying the separation from their families amounted to a form of mental torture. One of the boys was just 11 when he was detained. The US authorities insist that age plays no role in deciding who constitutes a threat. "Age is not a determining factor in detention. We detain enemy combatants who engaged in armed conflict against our forces or provided support to those fighting against us," said a Pentagon spokesman. Another US government official contradicted Mohammed's claims that he was entirely innocent when detained. The official said last week that one of the three boys had told of being conscripted into an anti-American militia group; a second said that he was abducted by the Taliban and forced to train and fight; while the third was studying in an extremist mosque and captured while preparing to obtain weapons. *** UPI: February 4, 2003 REVEALED: THE NATIONALITIES OF GUANTANAMO By John C. K. Daly, International Correspondent http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040204-051623-5923r WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- At least 160 of the 650 detainees acknowledged by the Pentagon being held at the United States military base at Guantanamo, Cuba -- almost a quarter of the total -- are from Saudi Arabia, a special UPI survey can reveal. In UPI's groundbreaking and detailed breakdown of the nationalities of the detainees, some arrested far from the 2001 battlefield of Afghanistan, the other top nationalities being held are Yemen with 85, Pakistan with 82, Jordan and Egypt, each with 30. Afghans are the fourth largest nationality with 80 detainees, according to the detailed UPI survey that has now for the first time established the homelands of 95 percent of the total number of prisoners. One member of the Bahraini royal family is among those detained, according to his lawyer Najeeb al-Nauimi of Doha, Qatar, who was Qatar's 1995-97 justice minister and has power of attorney from the parents of about 70 prisoners. The Pentagon's own list of nationalities detained at Guantanamo may be flawed. Yemeni officials have told UPI they fear more than twice as many of their citizens are held than the Pentagon count. Suspected terrorists are detained by U.S. forces at a number of points around the world, including Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Bagram air force base outside Kabul. But Camp Delta, the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo, has attracted the most media attention and international protest. Camp Delta was built at a cost of $9.7 million by Brown and Root Services, a subsidiary of Haliburton by contract workers from India and the Philippines. Camp Delta replaces Camp X-Ray, the first improvised detention center constructed in January 2002 to house individuals detained in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has kept a very tight lid on material about the detainees; only the identities of those who choose to correspond via the Red Cross are known. The Defense Department has repeatedly declined to provide a breakdown of the detainees by nationality. Sources close to the Pentagon have admitted to UPI that "sensitive diplomatic considerations" were behind the decision to keep the nationalities secret. The large number of Saudi nationals at Guantanamo, now it has been made public, is likely to intensify concern in the U.S. Congress about the real state of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. A DoD spokesperson told UPI Wednesday "such a list exists, but it is classified." Drawing on a wide range of sources, UPI has tentatively determined the nationalities of 619 of Camp Delta's inmates from 38 countries. Until the U.S. government is more forthcoming with information, the figures below remain incomplete. Complicating the issue is the sporadic release of a number of detainees; in the wake of last week's release of three teenagers, another 87 detainees have been transferred pending release. In addition, four detained Saudis have been transferred to continue their imprisonment in Saudi Arabia. There is a rough correlation between nations subjected to terrorism and the number of their citizens incarcerated in Guantanamo. That Camp Delta currently holds 80 or more Afghans is hardly surprising, as most of the detainees were captured there. However, Camp Delta also holds seven Arab men handed over to U.S. authorities in Bosnia, as well as five individuals arrested in Malawi last summer. The magnitude of the Saudi presence in Camp Delta raises troubling questions about their presence in Afghanistan and whether the U.S. forces succeeded in capturing more than a fraction of those who might have been there. Emphasizing the global metastasizing of terrorism, among the 85 Yemenis is an individual arrested in Sarajevo. Yahya Alshawkani, Yemeni Embassy deputy chief of communication in Washington told UPI that his embassy kept in close touch with the U.S. authorities -- but questioned the accuracy of the Pentagon's own count. His government cites domestic reports that more than twice as many Yemenis were held as the Pentagon has told the Yemeni government. When queried if the number 85 was accurate, Alshawkani replied, "We have been communicated 37 names by United States authorities. I think it is more than 37. Domestic reports indicate more than 70." Asked to comment on the discrepancy Alshawkani said: "We were communicated names that they were sure that they were Yemenis, adding, "Perhaps the U.S. only passed on names of people they could positively identify." Alshawkani remarked that Yemen had already had "some preliminary discussion" about the Yemeni detainees; furthermore, "We were told some Yemenis would be released, but we are not sure how many." Jordan, a close ally of the U.S. in its war on terror, has 30 of its citizens detained in Camp Delta, as does Egypt. Jordan has worked closely with the U.S. in the initial processing of prisoners, providing both interrogators and interpreters. Morocco, site of an al-Qaida attack on a synagogue in April 2002 that killed 21 people, has 18 of its nationals in Guantanamo. Algeria, currently in the throes of a violent conflict between Islamists and the government, has 19 prisoners in Camp Delta, six of whom were arrested in Sarajevo. Kuwait, liberated from Saddam Hussein by Operation Desert Storm in 1991 has 12 citizens in Guantanamo; the Kuwaiti government insists that all of its citizen were involved in charity and relief work. China also has at least 12 its citizens in Guantanamo, although they are all identified as ethnic Uighurs rather than Han Chinese. Next on the list are Tajikistan and Turkey with 11 citizens each. Tajikistan fought a bloody civil war in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in 1991 and fundamentalists maintain a strong presence there. Turkey last November was subjected to al-Qaida bombing attacks in Istanbul, which killed 62 people. Nine British citizens of Muslim background are in Guantanamo; they have proven to be a political liability for Prime Minister Tony Blair, as calls have been made in Parliament for their repatriation. Both Tunisia and Russia have eight of their nationals at Camp Delta; a Russian embassy spokesman was careful to point out however that the eight Russian citizens are not ethnic Russians. Rustam Akmerov, Ravil Gumarov, Timur Ishmuradov, Shamil Khadzhiev (originally identified as Almaz Sharipov), Rasul Kudaev, Ravil Mingazov, Ruslan Odigov and Airat Vakhitov are members of Russia's Muslim community. The Russian embassy nonetheless is quietly pursuing negotiations with Washington to extradite its citizens. France and Bahrain both have seven each of their nationals at Gauntanamo. Highlighting the problems of identification, France only recently discovered its seventh national at Camp Delta. The Bahraini detainees include a member of the royal family. Kazakhstan has been quietly lobbying Washington for the return of its citizens, as have Australia (2) and Canada (2.) Australian David Hicks is one of the most high profile prisoners in Camp Delta; a convert to Islam, Hicks fought as a jihadi in the Balkans before shipping out to Afghanistan. There are reportedly at least two Chechens, two Uzbeks and two Syrians in Camp Delta. The Syrian detainees especially interest U.S. intelligence, as one of the four workers at Camp Delta under investigation for possibly aiding the prisoners, Air Force translator Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi is accused of trying to pass messages from the prisoners to Syria. There are also two Georgian and two Sudanese nationals in Guantanamo. Bangladesh, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, Spain and Sweden all have a single citizen in Camp Delta. The UPI survey was conducted by painstaking compilation and analysis of the press and media reports from countries all around the world along with interviews with foreign government officials and concludes that nationalities of 38 separate countries are represented in the U.S. military detention center. Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International * * * Toronto Star: February 1, 2004 'I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CLEAR MY NAME' Maher Arar counting on public inquiry Wants answers on deportation to Syria By Graham Fraser, National Affairs Writer http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename= thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1075590608017&call_pageid= 968332188774&col=968350116467 OTTAWA -- Maher Arar is now focused on the public inquiry that Justice Dennis O'Connor will conduct into his deportation and detention. "I think we should be consulted on the terms of reference," he said, sitting in the living room in his apartment in Ottawa's west end. "Because the inquiry is only as good as the terms of reference are." Arar, 33, was astonished when Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan announced the inquiry to "assess the actions of Canadian officials in dealing with" the Syrian-born Canadian's deportation from the United States in September, 2002 to Jordan and Syria, where he was interrogated and detained for almost a year. Only a few days before, McLellan had written him saying that the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) and the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC) were doing inquiries. "Once the SIRC and CPC processes are completed, I will review the findings and recommend to the Prime Minister what further steps, if any, are needed," she wrote in a letter dated Jan 21. But that was the day the RCMP raided the home and office of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill -- who wrote a story last fall based on the RCMP file of allegations of Arar's links to terrorism -- looking for evidence of who leaked their file. Suddenly, plans changed. "The name of it is 'public inquiry,' so we hope to get as much of it in public as is possible," Arar said. "That will be up to the judge, but I have to make sure that (with) this inquiry I will be able to clear my name. "And I want to make sure this does not happen again." He has a long list of questions on every stage of his ordeal, which he lists on his website. [ See: http://www.maherarar.ca ] "I really need to know to what extent Canadian officials were involved in the whole affair," he said. "I want to be able to go back to normal life, I want to be able to clear my name." So far, he has been getting answers only through the media -- and from U.S. officials who insist publicly that Canada was not involved (and say privately to reporters that it was). "We need answers here. The problem started here," Arar said. "I've said many times, I have nothing to hide. If the government has anything against me, they should show it in court." What he finds most troubling about the whole affair has been the leak of his RCMP file. "How moral is it to use information obtained under torture?" he asks. "The other question is, how moral is it to deal with a country that is known to practise this? "If the RCMP and CSIS rules say they can exchange information with disregard to this country's history of human rights and the way it interrogates prisoners and detainees ... that is very serious." Arar says he still suffers side-effects from his detention. There are moments of high stress, periodic nightmares and he still has pain in his hips. He also has the sensation that insects are crawling on parts of his body, and thought an ointment would help. But his doctor, who has treated torture victims before, told him this is a common after-effect torture victims feel. Arar says that his faith sustained him through the ordeal, and taught him to be patient. "I believe, like all Muslims, that if you stay steadfast, if you accept what God wanted for you, you are going to be rewarded," he said. "That's how I survived in Syria the whole year, and that's how I'm surviving nowadays." He tries not to show the anger he feels, but sometimes expresses it when he is alone. "I'm still asking for justice, I'm not asking for revenge," he said. "There is no good in showing your anger to people. Just state the facts, and let people conclude and analyze. I try to keep patient all the time. One thing I try avoid, is I try to avoid making speculations. I'm going to continue this way." For he feels he was a victim of speculation. Arar is taking what he calls "baby steps" toward reviving his consulting business. He went to a meeting with a former client, a software company, and some potential customers to talk about giving training sessions on using software designed for engineers. It was a very preliminary step -- and he says there was an RCMP officer keeping an eye on him. As Arar talks, his wife Monia Mazigh is helping their daughter with homework as her mother puts their toddler to bed. A year and a half ago, they lived very different lives. Arar was immersed in the life of a high-tech engineering consultant. Now, his decision to speak out, which he took a month after he returned to Canada, has transformed him into a public person, and he is trying to cope with what he calls "this new reality." He still wonders sometimes if it was worth the stress. "The hardest thing is waking up in the morning and seeing your picture in the newspaper," he said. People recognize him, and express support -- "You don't have to introduce yourself" -- but they know more about him than he does about them. He has given up a lot of privacy -- but for a reason. "Before, I should admit, I was not very social," he said. "I was a workaholic. I worked all the time. But now I was forced to meet with people, to go to public meetings. I discovered a new life. I discovered the power of speaking out." But the ground had been laid for him by his wife, who campaigned for a year for his release, and attracted a team of supporters led by Amnesty International. "My wife had the courage to speak out," he said. "I always knew there was freedom of expression in this country, I always knew the media had a very powerful effect on the government. But unless you experience it, you don't understand what it really means." Mazigh, who has a PhD in finance from McGill, and a thesis that developed a linear model on the term structure interest rates, had been taking care of their young children. "I always wanted to teach at universities; that was my objective," she said. "I applied, but I was never hired." But the last 16 months have transformed her life as well. Events brought out her eloquence, and her effectiveness. It is a commonplace observation in Ottawa that, were it not for her, Arar would still be in a Syrian jail. * * * Mother Jones: January/February 2004 Issue THE LIE FACTORY Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war. By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs. So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone. Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war. Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion. Six months after the end of major combat in Iraq, the United States had spent $300 million trying to find banned weapons in Iraq, and President Bush was seeking $600 million more to extend the search. Not found were Iraq's Scuds and other long-range missiles, thousands of barrels and tons of anthrax and botulism stock, sarin and VX nerve agents, mustard gas, biological and chemical munitions, mobile labs for producing biological weapons, and any and all evidence of a reconstituted nuclear-arms program, all of which had been repeatedly cited as justification for the war. Also missing was evidence of Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda. The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national- security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meeting -- and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11. Indeed, the Bush team at the Pentagon hadn't even been formally installed before Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, began putting together what would become the vanguard for regime change in Iraq. Both Wolfowitz and Feith have deep roots in the neoconservative movement. One of the most influential Washington neo- conservatives in the foreign-policy establishment during the Republicans' wilderness years of the 1990s, Wolfowitz has long held that not taking Baghdad in 1991 was a grievous mistake. He and others now prominent in the administration said so repeatedly over the past decade in a slew of letters and policy papers from neoconservative groups like the Project for the New American Century and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Feith, a former aide to Richard Perle at the Pentagon in the 1980s and an activist in far-right Zionist circles, held the view that there was no difference between U.S. and Israeli security policy and that the best way to secure both countries' future was to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem not by serving as a broker, but with the United States as a force for "regime change" in the region. Called in to help organize the Iraq war-planning team was a longtime Pentagon official, Harold Rhode, a specialist on Islam who speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, and Farsi. Though Feith would not be officially confirmed until July 2001, career military and civilian officials in NESA began to watch his office with concern after Rhode set up shop in Feith's office in early January. Rhode, seen by many veteran staffers as an ideological gadfly, was officially assigned to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, an in-house Pentagon think tank headed by fellow neocon Andrew Marshall. Rhode helped Feith lay down the law about the department's new anti-Iraq, and broadly anti-Arab, orientation. In one telling incident, Rhode accosted and harangued a visiting senior Arab diplomat, telling him that there would be no "bartering in the bazaar anymore. You're going to have to sit up and pay attention when we say so." Rhode refused to be interviewed for this story, saying cryptically, "Those who speak, pay." According to insiders, Rhode worked with Feith to purge career Defense officials who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Wolfowitz and Feith wanted. Rhode appeared to be "pulling people out of nooks and crannies of the Defense Intelligence Agency and other places to replace us with," says a former analyst. "They wanted nothing to do with the professional staff. And they wanted us the fuck out of there." The unofficial, off-site recruitment office for Feith and Rhode was the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank whose 12th-floor conference room in Washington is named for the dean of neoconservative defense strategists, the late Albert Wohlstetter, an influential RAND analyst and University of Chicago mathematician. Headquartered at AEI is Richard Perle, Wohlstetter's prize protege, the godfather of the AEI-Defense Department nexus of neoconservatives who was chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. Rhode, along with Michael Rubin, a former AEI staffer who is also now at the Pentagon, was a ubiquitous presence at AEI conferences on Iraq over the past two years, and the two Pentagon officials seemed almost to be serving as stage managers for the AEI events, often sitting in the front row and speaking in stage whispers to panelists and AEI officials. Just after September 11, 2001, Feith and Rhode recruited David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for AEI, to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Wurmser would be the founding participant of the unnamed, secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon, set up in Feith's office, which would be the nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign that was established within weeks of the attacks in New York and Washington. While the CIA and other intelligence agencies concentrated on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda as the culprit in the 9/11 attacks, Wolfowitz and Feith obsessively focused on Iraq. It was a theory that was discredited, even ridiculed, among intelligence professionals. Daniel Benjamin, co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror, was director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the late 1990s. "In 1998, we went through every piece of intelligence we could find to see if there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq," he says. "We came to the conclusion that our intelligence agencies had it right: There was no noteworthy relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq. I know that for a fact." Indeed, that was the consensus among virtually all anti-terrorism specialists. In short, Wurmser, backed by Feith and Rhode, set out to prove what didn't exist. In an Administration devoted to the notion of "Feith-based intelligence," Wurmser was ideal. For years, he'd been a shrill ideologue, part of the minority crusade during the 1990s that was beating the drums for war against Iraq. Along with Perle and Feith, in 1996 Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav, wrote a provocative strategy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It called on Israel to work with Jordan and Turkey to "contain, destabilize and roll back" various states in the region, overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, press Jordan to restore a scion of the Hashemite dynasty to the Iraqi throne, and, above all, launch military assaults against Lebanon and Syria as a "prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity." In 1997, Wurmser wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal called "Iraq Needs a Revolution" and the next year co-signed a letter with Perle calling for all-out U.S. support of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group led by Ahmad Chalabi, in promoting an insurgency in Iraq. At AEI, Wurmser wrote Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, essentially a book-length version of "A Clean Break" that proposed an alliance between Jordan and the INC to redraw the map of the Middle East. Among the mentors cited by Wurmser in the book: Chalabi, Perle, and Feith. The purpose of the unnamed intelligence unit, often described as a Pentagon "cell," was to scour reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other agencies to find nuggets of information linking Iraq, Al Qaeda, terrorism, and the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In a controversial press briefing in October 2002, a year after Wurmser's unit was established, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that a primary purpose of the unit was to cull factoids, which were then used to disparage, undermine, and contradict the CIA's reporting, which was far more cautious and nuanced than Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith wanted. Rumsfeld particularly enjoyed harassing the CIA staffer who briefed him every morning, using the type of data produced by the intelligence unit. "What I could do is say, 'Gee, what about this?'" Rumsfeld noted. "'Or what about that? Has somebody thought of this?'" Last June, when Feith was questioned on the same topic at a briefing, he acknowledged that the secret unit in fact looked at the connection between Iraq and terrorism, saying, "You can't rely on deterrence to deal with the problem of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of state sponsors of terrorism because [of] the possibility that those state sponsors might employ chemical weapons or biological weapons by means of a terrorist organization proxy. Though Feith, in that briefing, described Wurmser's unit as an innocent project, "a global exercise" that was not meant to put pressure on other intelligence agencies or create skewed intelligence to fit preconceived policy notions, many other sources assert that it did exactly that. That the White House and the Pentagon put enormous pressure on the CIA to go along with its version of events has been widely reported, highlighted by visits to CIA headquarters by Vice President Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff. Led by Perle, the neocons seethed with contempt for the CIA. The CIA's analysis, said Perle, "isn't worth the paper it's printed on." Standing in a crowded hallway during an AEI event, Perle added, "The CIA is status quo oriented. They don't want to take risks." That became the mantra of the shadow agency within an agency. Putting Wurmser in charge of the unit meant that it was being run by a pro-Iraq- war ideologue who'd spent years calling for a pre-emptive invasion of Baghdad and who was clearly predisposed to find what he wanted to see. Adding another layer of dubious quality to the endeavor was the man partnered with Wurmser, F. Michael Maloof. Maloof, a former aide to Perle in the 1980s Pentagon, was twice stripped of his high-level security clearances -- once in late 2001 and, again, last spring, for various infractions. Maloof was also reportedly involved in a bizarre scheme to broker contacts between Iraqi officials and the Pentagon, channeled through Perle, in what one report called a "rogue [intelligence] operation" outside official CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency channels. As the momentum for war began to build in early 2002, Wolfowitz and Feith beefed up the intelligence unit and created an Iraq war-planning unit in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Affairs section, run by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, under the rubric "Office of Special Plans," or OSP; the new unit's director was Abram N. Shulsky. By then, Wurmser had moved on to a post as senior adviser to Undersecretary of State John Bolton, yet another neocon, who was in charge of the State Department's disarmament, proliferation, and WMD office and was promoting the Iraq war strategy there. Shulsky's OSP, which incorporated the secret intelligence unit, took control, banishing veteran experts -- including Joseph McMillan, James Russell, Larry Hanauer, and Marybeth McDevitt -- who, despite years of service to NESA, either were shuffled off to other positions or retired. For the next year, Luti and Shulsky not only would oversee war plans but would act aggressively to shape the intelligence product received by the White House. Both Luti and Shulsky were neoconservatives who were ideological soul mates of Wolfowitz and Feith. But Luti was more than that. He'd come to the Pentagon directly from the office of Vice President Cheney. That gave Luti, a recently retired, decorated Navy captain whose career ran from combat aviation to command of a helicopter assault ship, extra clout. Along with his colleague Colonel William Bruner, Luti had done a stint as an aide to Newt Gingrich in 1996 and, like Perle and Wolfowitz, was an acolyte of Wohlstetter's. "He makes Ollie North look like a moderate," says a NESA veteran. Shulsky had been on the Washington scene since the mid-1970s. As a Senate intelligence committee staffer for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he began to work with early neoconservatives like Perle, who was then an aide to Senator Henry Jackson. Later, in the Reagan years, Shulsky followed Perle to the Pentagon as Perle's arms-control adviser. In the '90s, Shulsky co-authored a book on intelligence called Silent Warfare, with Gary Schmitt. Shulsky had served with Schmitt on Moynihan's staff and they had remained friends. Asked about the Pentagon's Iraq intelligence "cell," Schmitt -- who is currently the executive director of the Project for the New American Century -- says that he can't say much about it "because one of my best friends is running it." According to Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski, Luti and Shulsky ran NESA and the Office of Special Plans with brutal efficiency, purging people they disagreed with and enforcing the party line. "It was organized like a machine," she says. "The people working on the neocon agenda had a narrow, well-defined political agenda. They had a sense of mission." At NESA, Shulsky, she says, began "hot-desking," or taking an office wherever he could find one, working with Feith and Luti, before formally taking the reins of the newly created OSP. Together, she says, Luti and Shulsky turned cherry-picked pieces of uncorroborated, anti-Iraq intelligence into talking points, on issues like Iraq's WMD and its links to Al Qaeda. Shulsky constantly updated these papers, drawing on the intelligence unit, and circulated them to Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, and to Vice President Cheney. "Of course, we never thought they'd go directly to the White House," she adds. Kwiatkowski recalls one meeting in which Luti, pressed to finish a report, told the staff, "I've got to get this over to 'Scooter' right away." She later found out that "Scooter" was none other than Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. According to Kwiatkowski, Cheney had direct ties through Luti into NESA/OSP, a connection that was highly unorthodox. "Never, ever, ever would a deputy undersecretary of Defense work directly on a project for the vice president," she says. "It was a little clue that we had an informal network into Vice President Cheney's office." Although Feith insists that the OSP did not seek to gather its own intelligence, Kwiatkowski and others sharply disagree. Staff working for Luti and Shulsky in NESA/OSP churned out propaganda-style intelligence, she says. As an example, she cited the work of a U.S. intelligence officer and Arabic specialist, Navy Lt. Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, who was a special assistant to Luti. "His job was to peruse the Arabic-language media to find articles that would incriminate Saddam Hussein about terrorism, and he translated these." Such raw intelligence is usually subject to a thorough vetting process, tracked, verified, and checked by intelligence professionals. But not at OSP -- the material that it produced found its way directly into speeches by Bush, Cheney, and other officials. According to Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official and an intelligence specialist at the National War College, the OSP officials routinely pushed lower-ranking staff around on intelligence matters. "People were being pulled aside [and being told], 'We saw your last piece and it's not what we're looking for,'" he says. "It was pretty blatant." Two State Department intelligence officials, Greg Thielmann and Christian Westermann, have both charged that pressure was being put on them to shape intelligence to fit policy, in particular from Bolton's office. "The Al Qaeda connection and nuclear weapons issue were the only two ways that you could link Iraq to an imminent security threat to the U.S.," Thielmann told the New York Times. "And the administration was grossly distorting the intelligence on both things." Besides Cheney, key members of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, including Perle and ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, all Iraq hawks, had direct input into NESA/OSP. The offices of NESA were located on the Pentagon's fourth floor, seventh corridor of D Ring, and the Policy Board's offices were directly below, on the third floor. During the run-up to the Iraq war, Gingrich often came up for closed-door meetings with Luti, who in 1996 had served as a congressional fellow in Speaker of the House Gingrich's office. As OSP got rolling, Luti brought in Colonel Bruner, a former military aide to Gingrich, and, together, Luti and Bruner opened the door to a vast flow of bogus intelligence fed to the Pentagon by Iraqi defectors associated with Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress group of exiles. Chalabi founded the Iraqi National Congress in 1992, with the help of a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm called the Rendon Group, one of whose former employees, Francis Brooke, has been a top aide to Chalabi ever since. A scion of an aristocratic Iraqi family, Chalabi fled Baghdad at the age of 13, in 1958, when the corrupt Iraqi Hashemite monarchy was overthrown by a coalition of communists and the Iraqi military. In the late 1960s, Chalabi studied mathematics at the University of Chicago with Wohlstetter, who introduced him to Richard Perle more than a decade later. Long associated with the heart of the neoconservative movement, Chalabi founded Petra Bank in Jordan, which grew to be Jordan's third-largest bank by the 1980s. But Chalabi was accused of bank fraud, embezzlement, and currency manipulation, and he barely escaped before Jordanian authorities could arrest him; in 1992, he was convicted and sentenced in absentia to more than 20 years of hard labor. After founding the INC, Chalabi's bungling, unreliability, and penchant for mismanaging funds caused the CIA to sour on him, but he never lost the support of Perle, Feith, Gingrich, and their allies; once, soon after 9/11, Perle invited Chalabi to address the Defense Policy Board. According to multiple sources, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress sent a steady stream of misleading and often faked intelligence reports into U.S. intelligence channels. That information would flow sometimes into NESA/OSP directly, sometimes through Defense Intelligence Agency debriefings of Iraqi defectors via the Defense Human Intelligence Service, and sometimes through the INC's own U.S.-funded Intelligence Collection Program, which was overseen by the Pentagon. The INC's intelligence "isn't reliable at all," according to Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice presidential speeches." Bruner, the aide to Luti and Gingrich's former staffer, "was Chalabi's handler," says Kwiatkowski. "He would arrange meetings with Chalabi and Chalabi's folks," she says, adding that the INC leader often brought people into the NESA/OSP offices for debriefings. Chalabi claims to have introduced only three actual defectors to the Pentagon, a figure Thielmann considers "awfully low." However, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, the three defectors provided by Chalabi turned up exactly zero useful intelligence. The first, an Iraqi engineer, claimed to have specific information about biological weapons, but his information didn't pan out; the second claimed to know about mobile labs, but that information, too, was worthless; and the third, who claimed to have data about Iraq's nuclear program, proved to be a fraud. Chalabi also claimed to have given the Pentagon information about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda. "We gave the names of people who were doing the links," he told an interviewer from PBS's Frontline. Those links, of course, have not been discovered. Thielmann told the same Frontline interviewer that the Office of Special Plans didn't apply strict intelligence-verification standards to "some of the information coming out of Chalabi and the INC that OSP and the Pentagon ran with." In the war's aftermath, the Defense Intelligence Agency -- which is not beholden to the neoconservative civilians at the Pentagon -- leaked a report it prepared, concluding that few, if any, of the INC's informants provided worthwhile intelligence. So far, despite all of the investigations under way, there is little sign that any of them are going to delve into the operations of the Luti-Shulsky Office of Special Plans and its secret intelligence unit. Because it operates in the Pentagon's policy shop, it is not officially part of the intelligence community, and so it is seemingly immune to congressional oversight. With each passing day, it is becoming excruciatingly clearer just how wrong U.S. intelligence was in regard to Iraqi weapons and support for terrorism. The American teams of inspectors in the Iraq Survey Group, which has employed up to 1,400 people to scour the country and analyze the findings, have not been able to find a shred of evidence of anything other than dusty old plans and records of weapons apparently destroyed more than a decade ago. Countless examples of fruitless searches have been reported in the media. To cite one example: U.S. soldiers followed an intelligence report claiming that a complex built for Uday Hussein, Saddam's son, hid a weapons warehouse with poison-gas storage tanks. "Well," U.S. Army Major Ronald Hann Jr. told the Los Angeles Times, "the warehouse was a carport. It still had two cars inside. And the tanks had propane for the kitchen." Countless other errors and exaggerations have become evident. The thousands of aluminum tubes supposedly imported by Iraq for uranium enrichment were fairly conclusively found to be designed to build noncontroversial rockets. The long- range unmanned aerial vehicles, allegedly built to deliver bioweapons, were small, rickety, experimental planes with wood frames. The mobile bioweapon labs turned out to have had other, civilian purposes. And the granddaddy of all falsehoods, the charge that Iraq sought uranium in the West African country of Niger, was based on forged documents -- documents that the CIA, the State Department, and other agencies knew were fake nearly a year before President Bush highlighted the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003. "Either the system broke down," former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the CIA to visit Niger and whose findings helped show that the documents were forged, told Mother Jones, "or there was selective use of bits of information to justify a decision to go to war that had already been taken." Edward Luttwak, a neoconservative scholar and author, says flatly that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence it had because it was afraid to go to the American people and say that the war was simply about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Instead, says Luttwak, the White House was groping for a rationale to satisfy the United Nations' criteria for war. "Cheney was forced into this fake posture of worrying about weapons of mass destruction," he says. "The ties to Al Qaeda? That's complete nonsense." In the Senate, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is pressing for the Intelligence Committee to extend its investigation to look into the specific role of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, but there is strong Republican resistance to the idea. In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation calling for a commission to investigate the intelligence mess and has collected more than a hundred Democrats -- but no Republicans -- in support of it. "I think they need to be looked at pretty carefully," Waxman told Mother Jones when asked about the Office of Special Plans. "I'd like to know whether the political people pushed the intelligence people to slant their conclusions." Congressman Waxman, meet Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski. [ Robert Dreufuss is a longtime Washington journalist and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. His last cover story for the magazine focused on the neoconservative plan to topple Saddam Hussein and reshape the Middle East ("The Thirty-Year Itch," March/April 2003). ] [ Jason Vest is a Washington reporter whose work has appeared in the Washington Post,U.S. News & World Report, the American Prospect, and the Village Voice. ] * * * * * * * * *