THE WASHINGTON POST -- 2002
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December 26, 2002; Page A01

U.S. DECRIES ABUSE BUT DEFENDS INTERROGATIONS

'Stress and Duress' Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects
Held in Secret Overseas Facilities

By Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writers

Deep inside the forbidden zone at the U.S.-occupied Bagram air base in
Afghanistan, around the corner from the detention center and beyond the
segregated clandestine military units, sits a cluster of metal shipping
containers protected by a triple layer of concertina wire. The containers hold
the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism -- captured al Qaeda operatives
and Taliban commanders.

Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are
sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted
goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation
methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of
sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights -- subject to what are known as
"stress and duress" techniques.

Those who cooperate are rewarded with creature comforts, interrogators whose
methods include feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some
cases, money. Some who do not cooperate are turned over -- "rendered," in
official parlance -- to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture
has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations.

In the multifaceted global war on terrorism waged by the Bush administration,
one of the most opaque -- yet vital -- fronts is the detention and interrogation
of terrorism suspects. U.S. officials have said little publicly about the
captives' names, numbers or whereabouts, and virtually nothing about
interrogation methods. But interviews with several former intelligence officials
and 10 current U.S. national security officials -- including several people who
witnessed the handling of prisoners -- provide insight into how the U.S.
government is prosecuting this part of the war.

The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in
concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional
lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred.

While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the
current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the
use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed
confidence that the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has
primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment.

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably
aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and
transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of
zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the
CIA."

The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret detention
centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, according to several
U.S. and European national security officials, where the CIA undertakes or
manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Another is Diego Garcia, a
somewhat horseshoe- shaped island in the Indian Ocean that the United States
leases from Britain.

U.S. officials oversee most of the interrogations, especially those of the most
senior captives. In some cases, highly trained CIA officers question captives
through interpreters. In others, the intelligence agency undertakes a "false
flag" operation using fake decor and disguises meant to deceive a captive into
thinking he is imprisoned in a country with a reputation for brutality, when, in
reality, he is still in CIA hands. Sometimes, female officers conduct
interrogations, a psychologically jarring experience for men reared in a
conservative Muslim culture where women are never in control.

In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to
foreign intelligence services -- notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco --
with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary
renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve
countries with security services known for using brutal means.

According to U.S. officials, nearly 3,000 suspected al Qaeda members and their
supporters have been detained worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001. About 625 are at
the U.S. military's confinement facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some officials
estimated that fewer than 100 captives have been rendered to third countries.
Thousands have been arrested and held with U.S. assistance in countries known
for brutal treatment of prisoners, the officials said.

At a Sept. 26 joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees,
Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, spoke cryptically
about the agency's new forms of "operational flexibility" in dealing with
suspected terrorists. "This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say
that all you need to know: There was a before 9/ 11, and there was an after
9/11," Black said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off."

According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives
into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of
them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of
them." Some countries are known to use mind-altering drugs such as sodium
pentathol, said other officials involved in the process.

Abu Zubaida, who is believed to be the most important al Qaeda member in
detention, was shot in the groin during his apprehension in Pakistan in March.
National security officials suggested that Zubaida's painkillers were used
selectively in the beginning of his captivity. He is now said to be cooperating,
and his information has led to the apprehension of other al Qaeda members.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment
earlier this week on CIA or intelligence-related matters. But, he said: "The
United States is treating enemy combatants in U.S. government control, wherever
held, humanely and in a manner consistent with the principles of the Third
Geneva Convention of 1949."

The convention outlined the standards for treatment of prisoners of war.
Suspected terrorists in CIA hands have not been accorded POW status.

Other U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity,
acknowledged that interrogators deprive some captives of sleep, a practice with
ambiguous status in international law.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the authoritative interpreter of
the international Convention Against Torture, has ruled that lengthy
interrogation may incidentally and legitimately cost a prisoner sleep. But when
employed for the purpose of breaking a prisoner's will, sleep deprivation "may
in some cases constitute torture."

The State Department's annual human rights report routinely denounces sleep
deprivation as an interrogation method. In its 2001 report on Turkey, Israel and
Jordan, all U.S. allies, the department listed sleep deprivation among often-
used alleged torture techniques.

U.S. officials who defend the renditions say the prisoners are sent to these
third countries not because of their coercive questioning techniques, but
because of their cultural affinity with the captives. Besides being illegal,
they said, torture produces unreliable information from people who are desperate
to stop the pain. They look to foreign allies more because their intelligence
services can develop a culture of intimacy that Americans cannot. They may use
interrogators who speak the captive's Arabic dialect and often use the prospects
of shame and the reputation of the captive's family to goad the captive into
talking.

'Very Clever Guys'

In a speech on Dec. 11, CIA director George J. Tenet said that interrogations
overseas

have yielded significant returns recently. He calculated that worldwide efforts
to capture or kill terrorists had eliminated about one-third of the al Qaeda
leadership. "Almost half of our successes against senior al Qaeda members has
come in recent months," he said.

Many of these successes have come as a result of information gained during
interrogations. The capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan,
Omar al- Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al
Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during
interrogations, according to U.S. intelligence and national security officials.
All four remain under CIA control.

Time, rather than technique, has produced the most helpful information, several
national security and intelligence officials said. Using its global computer
database, the CIA is able to quickly check leads from captives in one country
with information divulged by captives in another.

"We know so much more about them now than we did a year ago -- the
personalities, how the networks are established, what they think are important
targets, how they think we will react," said retired Army general Wayne Downing,
the Bush administration's deputy national security adviser for combating
terrorism until he resigned in June.

"The interrogations of Abu Zubaida drove me nuts at times," Downing said. "He
and some of the others are very clever guys. At times I felt we were in a
classic counter- interrogation class: They were telling us what they think we
already knew. Then, what they thought we wanted to know. As they did that, they
fabricated and weaved in threads that went nowhere. But, even with these ploys,
we still get valuable information and they are off the street, unable to plot
and coordinate future attacks."

In contrast to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where military lawyers,
news reporters and the Red Cross received occasional access to monitor prisoner
conditions and treatment, the CIA's overseas interrogation facilities are off-
limits to outsiders, and often even to other government agencies. In addition to
Bagram and Diego Garcia, the CIA has other secret detention centers overseas,
and often uses the facilities of foreign intelligence services.

Free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of
war, the CIA and its intelligence service allies have the leeway to exert
physically and psychologically aggressive techniques, said national security
officials and U.S. and European intelligence officers.

Although no direct evidence of mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody has
come to light, the prisoners are denied access to lawyers or organizations, such
as the Red Cross, that could independently assess their treatment. Even their
names are secret.

This month, the U.S. military announced that it had begun a criminal
investigation into the handling of two prisoners who died in U.S. custody at the
Bagram base. A base spokesman said autopsies found one of the detainees died of
a pulmonary embolism, the other of a heart attack.

Al Qaeda suspects are seldom taken without force, and some suspects have been
wounded during their capture. After apprehending suspects, U.S. take-down teams
-- a mix of military special forces, FBI agents, CIA case officers and local
allies -- aim to disorient and intimidate them on the way to detention
facilities.

According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the
treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces
troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists
are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions,
subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. The tone of intimidation and
fear is the beginning, they said, of a process of piercing a prisoner's
resistance.

The take-down teams often "package" prisoners for transport, fitting them with
hoods and gags, and binding them to stretchers with duct tape.

Bush administration appointees and career national security officials
acknowledged that, as one of them put it, "our guys may kick them around a
little bit in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath." Another said U.S.
personnel are scrupulous in providing medical care to captives, adding in a
deadpan voice, that "pain control [in wounded patients] is a very subjective
thing."

'We're Not Aware'

The CIA's participation in the interrogation of rendered terrorist suspects
varies from country to country.

"In some cases [involving interrogations in Saudi Arabia], we're able to observe
through one-way mirrors the live investigations," said a senior U.S. official
involved in Middle East security issues. "In others, we usually get summaries.
We will feed questions to their investigators. They're still very much in
control."

The official added: "We're not aware of any torture or even physical abuse."

Tenet acknowledged the Saudis' role in his Dec. 11 speech. "The Saudis are
proving increasingly important support to our counterterrorism efforts -- from
making arrests to sharing debriefing results," he said.

But Saudi Arabia is also said to withhold information that might lead the U.S.
government to conclusions or policies that the Saudi royal family fears. U.S.
teams, for that reason, have sometimes sent Saudi nationals to Egypt instead.

Jordan is a favored country for renditions, several U.S. officials said. The
Jordanians are considered "highly professional" interrogators, which some
officials said meant that they do not use torture. But the State Department's
2001 human rights report criticized Jordan and its General Intelligence
Directorate for arbitrary and unlawful detentions and abuse.

"The most frequently alleged methods of torture include sleep deprivation,
beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted
positions and extended solitary confinement," the 2001 report noted. Jordan also
is known to use prisoners' family members to induce suspects to talk.

Another significant destination for rendered suspects is Morocco, whose general
intelligence service has sharply stepped up cooperation with the United States.
Morocco has a documented history of torture, as well as longstanding ties to the
CIA.

The State Department's human rights report says Moroccan law "prohibits torture,
and the government claims that the use of torture has been discontinued;
however, some members of the security forces still tortured or otherwise abused
detainees."

In at least one case, U.S. operatives led the capture and transfer of an al
Qaeda suspect to Syria, which for years has been near the top of U.S. lists of
human rights violators and sponsors of terrorism. The German government strongly
protested the move. The suspect, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, holds joint German and
Syrian citizenship. It could not be learned how much of Zammar's interrogation
record Syria has provided the CIA.

The Bush administration maintains a legal distance from any mistreatment that
occurs overseas, officials said, by denying that torture is the intended result
of its rendition policy. American teams, officials said, do no more than assist
in the transfer of suspects who are wanted on criminal charges by friendly
countries. But five officials acknowledged, as one of them put it, "that
sometimes a friendly country can be invited to 'want' someone we grab." Then,
other officials said, the foreign government will charge him with a crime of
some sort.

One official who has had direct involvement in renditions said he knew they were
likely to be tortured. "I . . . do it with my eyes open," he said.

According to present and former officials with firsthand knowledge, the CIA's
authoritative Directorate of Operations instructions, drafted in cooperation
with the general counsel, tells case officers in the field that they may not
engage in, provide advice about or encourage the use of torture by cooperating
intelligence services from other countries.

"Based largely on the Central American human rights experience," said Fred Hitz,
former CIA inspector general, "we don't do torture, and we can't countenance
torture in terms of we can't know of it." But if a country offers information
gleaned from interrogations, "we can use the fruits of it."

Bush administration officials said the CIA, in practice, is using a narrow
definition of what counts as "knowing" that a suspect has been tortured. "If
we're not there in the room, who is to say?" said one official conversant with
recent reports of renditions.

The Clinton administration pioneered the use of extraordinary rendition after
the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But it also
pressed allied intelligence services to respect lawful boundaries in
interrogations.

After years of fruitless talks in Egypt, President Bill Clinton cut off funding
and cooperation with the directorate of Egypt's general intelligence service,
whose torture of suspects has been a perennial theme in State Department human
rights reports.

"You can be sure," one Bush administration official said, "that we are not
spending a lot of time on that now."

[ Staff writers Bob Woodward, Susan Schmidt and Douglas Farah, and correspondent
Peter Finn in Berlin, contributed to this report. ]

© 2002 The Washington Post Company


* * *


December 22, 2002; Page B01

A YEAR AND HOLDING
The Longer We Wait, The Worse We Look

By Thomas Wilner

The Bush administration told us originally that the men in orange jumpsuits
being herded into small cells at Guantanamo Bay, chained and blindfolded, were
all dangerous terrorists who threatened our national security. It is now clear,
however, that at least some of the detainees were taken there by mistake.

The facts surrounding the initial captures are themselves murky. Many of the men
were not picked up as a result of any scalpel-like investigation into the
terrorist organizations, but rather were turned over to American authorities by
Pakistani and Afghani tribesmen in exchange for substantial financial bounties.
U.S. officials have acknowledged both publicly and privately that some of the
prisoners were simply "in the wrong place at the wrong time." At least four have
been released. The remaining captives have been in jail for almost a year now,
with no legal process to give them a chance to present their case.

The government has argued that the U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to hear
lawsuits involving the detainees because these men are foreigners held at a
location outside the United States. But this is not simply a case of legal
technicalities. These detentions raise profound questions that ought to be of
concern to all Americans -- and the longer the detentions persist, the more
troubling the questions become.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, it was
understandable that the government had to act swiftly in sweeping up everyone
who might possibly have been involved. But the need for haste has passed, and
administration officials admit that some are innocent. A formal legal process --
not some sort of internal and secret procedure -- must be instituted to sort out
those who were involved in hostile activity against the United States from those
who were not.

The availability of an impartial tribunal to review the detentions is
fundamental to the rule of law and to American ideals. Our founding fathers
recognized that government officials, no matter how well- intentioned, can at
times be overzealous, and that the deprivation of an individual's liberty must
therefore always be subject to dispassionate and impartial review. We believe in
that principle not only because it is fair, but also because it provides the
best assurance that the process will achieve the correct results -- punishing
the guilty and not the innocent.

Is this basic principle one that we should sacrifice in the war on terror? I
think not. I agree with Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.). In October, he criticized the
Justice Department for its "lack of regard for personal civil liberites in
America" and said it makes no sense to save ourselves from international
terrorism only to sacrifice these fundamental principles. The same argument
applies to the Guantanamo detainees.

Some may ask, however, why foreigners deserve these protections. There are a
number of reasons: First, it is right. The rule of law assures the integrity of
our processes and of our government's actions. The world's respect for our
nation around the world is based not only on our might, but also on our
principles. We are supposed to be the good guys who adhere to those ideals.
Equally important, we have championed the rule of law and due process rights for
individuals around the globe because it is in our self interest. We are all
foreigners outside our borders. We want to make sure that our sons and daughters
who go abroad cannot be jailed arbitrarily without access to their families and
some impartial tribunal. We want to make sure that our soldiers who go into
combat are protected not only by their guns, but also by the rules of the Geneva
Conventions.

For example, when a U.S. military aircraft was downed in China last year,
President Bush immediately demanded, "These U.S. airmen should be allowed to
communicate directly with their families." How credibly can we make that demand
if we deny those very rights to others? What precedent is set when the United
States, the champion of due process and the rule of law, itself disregards those
principles?

It is fair to ask whether the war on terrorism has changed the ground rules,
requiring us to sacrifice some of our principles in the interest of national
security. Clearly, this is a difficult and unusual war. We face a dangerous and
amorphous enemy. But we have been in wars before, and we have faced grave
threats to our national security before. It would be hard for me to tell my
father, who lost two brothers in World War II, that this is a more dangerous
war, or to imagine telling the friends I lost in Vietnam that this is a more
terrible conflict. In previous wars -- World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War and the Persian Gulf War -- we always held the people we captured in
accordance with the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions. This war should be
no different.

We can do everything we need to do to protect our national security without
abandoning the rule of law. But if we fail to abide by it, we undermine our
stature in the world community. We endanger our citizens and our troops abroad.
And we compromise the very principles we are fighting so hard to defend.

President Bush stated last spring in his commencement address at West Point:
"The 20th century ended with a single surviving model of human progress, based
on non-negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power
of the state . . . and equal justice. . . ."

Sticking to those principles is most difficult in times of crisis -- and most
important.

Thomas Wilner is a Washington attorney representing the families of the 12
Kuwaitis detained at Guantanamo Bay.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


December 22, 2002; Page B01


A YEAR AND HOLDING
Limbo Is No Place To Detain Them

By Joseph Margulies

Last January, when U.S. military forces began shipping hundreds of "unlawful
belligerents" from Pakistan and Afghanistan to a makeshift prison at the U.S.
base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, many Americans seemed to accept the need for such
unusual action. Rear Adm.John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "They are bad guys. They are the worst of the
worst, and if let out on the street, they will go back to the proclivity of
trying to kill Americans and others."

Some legal experts were supportive, too. David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey,
lawyers who had served in earlier Republican administrations, wrote last March
in the pages of Outlook with their colleague Darin R. Bertram that the United
States had legal justification for holding the roughly 625 detainees without
giving them prisoner of war status or trials. But they stated that some judicial
process eventually would have to be applied: "Otherwise, their continued
detention becomes, at some point, penal in nature." Nine months have passed
since those words were published..

Two weeks after the first captives arrived in Cuba, Pentagon spokeswoman
Victoria Clarke said, "At the end of the day . . . the American people and the
people around the world will see that we are . . . adhering to the principles
that we care very deeply about." This week, Outlook offers the views of two
lawyers hired by the families of some of the detainees.

For nearly a year, my colleagues and I, working with the Center for
Constitutional Rights, have represented four men we have never met. They are
held in a U.S.-run prison. They have not been charged with any wrongdoing, nor
brought before any court.

Casualties of the "war on terrorism," these four men say they had nothing to do
with the events of Sept. 11, 2001. According to their families, the four men
have never joined any terrorist organization, and are not enemy combatants; the
government has presented no evidence to the contrary. Yet they live in solitary
confinement and have never spoken with an attorney. They do not know how long
they will be imprisoned, nor even where they are being held.

The legal question posed by their case is simple: Does a person jailed by our
military during the war on terrorism have a right to tell someone -- someone who
can do something about it -- that he has done no wrong and that his jailers have
made a mistake? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will decide
whether the detainees are entitled to a day in court. This month, the appeals
court heard arguments in two cases of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay naval
base in Cuba. My colleagues and I represent two Australians and two British
citizens, while another legal team represents 12 Kuwaitis.

Each one has a different account. Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian,
traveled to Pakistan in July 2001 to look for work and schools for his children.
After Sept. 11, Habib decided he wanted to return home to Australia, but was
detained by Pakistani authorities who turned him over to Egyptian authorities
who later handed him over to the Americans. "I don't know why we were
kidnapped," he later wrote to his wife in Australia. Habib has been in custody
since Oct. 2001, and has been at Guantanamo since May. Our other clients have
been held at the base since January.

I should note what is not in dispute. Certainly, the military has the right to
detain people seized during armed conflict, provided it complies with the Geneva
Conventions. It may hold them at Guantanamo Bay. And it may interrogate them to
gather battlefield intelligence. This litigation threatens none of those
prerogatives.

But what the military may not do, and what it has never previously done during
armed conflict in the modern era, is ignore the rule of law by detaining people
without giving them any access to the legal process.

In ways both large and small, this case is unusual. Our clients have no idea
that litigation on their behalf is underway. After they were brought to
Guantanamo, each was allowed to write a short letter to his family, which, like
Habib's, was delivered by the International Red Cross. Several family members
retained attorneys overseas, who contacted us. Although we represent the
prisoners, we are not permitted to speak with them.

The case is unprecedented in another, more fundamental, way. So far as we can
tell, it marks the first time the United States has held anyone completely
outside the protection of the law. If the government is correct, the more than
600 people imprisoned at Guantanamo are not entitled to any legal protections
enforceable in any court in the world. They occupy what a British court recently
called "a legal black hole," a status devoid of enforceable rights. And with no
rights, they may be held indefinitely -- until the "war on terrorism" is over --
with no legal process contemplated.

The government's position, then, is that these particular detainees are not
members of a standing army, and the government may hold them indefinitely as
unlawful belligerents, with no proof they have done anything wrong, while
providing them no opportunity to show their innocence.

The government, in its brief, relies on a Supreme Court decision involving
German soldiers captured in China during the closing weeks of World War II.
After Germany surrendered but while Japan fought on, the United States captured
27 Germans in China and charged them with assisting the Japanese army. Because
Germany had surrendered, this violated the laws of war. With permission from the
Chinese government, the United States then tried the Germans before a military
tribunal in Shanghai.

It is hard to see how this earlier ruling advances the government's position.
The German prisoners were represented by counsel and given a proper chance to
prepare their defense. They had the right to discover and introduce evidence, to
call and confront witnesses, and to make opening and closing statements. After a
trial that lasted months, six were acquitted and released, while 21 were
sentenced to fixed terms in prison. Later they filed a lawsuit in Washington,
claiming that their trial was unlawful. In Johnson v. Eisentrager, the Supreme
Court disagreed. It held that their trial was fair, and that they received all
the process due under the circumstances.

In contrast, the prisoners at Guantanamo have had no such process, even though
the administration recently admitted that some of the prisoners are probably
innocent. In fact, the military just released four men, including one elderly
man whom the New York Times described as "babbling at times like a child,"
adding that "the partially deaf, shriveled old man was unable to answer simple
questions." A second man said he was 90.

It is one thing to say that enemy aliens lawfully tried and convicted in a
military court overseas may not seek additional review in a civilian court, as
the Supreme Court held in the World War II case, but quite another to apply the
same rule to people who have never been charged.

There is a second part to the government's argument. In the earlier case, the
Supreme Court reinforced its conclusion with the observation that China was not
part of our sovereign territory; if the German inmates had been imprisoned in
the United States, more rights might have applied.

Seizing on this, the Bush administration argues that we are not "sovereign" in
Guantanamo. Just as our courts had no jurisdiction over events in China, the
administration asserts, the courts have none over Guantanamo.

But Guantanamo is not China. It is a fully American enclave, a city where
thousands of American soldiers and civilians live under U.S. authority. Nearly
half the size of the District of Columbia, it has its own schools, generates its
own power, provides its own internal transportation and supplies its own water.
No one may enter or leave without approval from the U.S. government.

We have occupied Guantanamo since 1903 under a lease with Cuba. While the lease
"recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty" of Cuba, it grants the
United States "complete jurisdiction and control over and within" Guantanamo.
Another provision allows us to stay as long as we see fit. We have repeatedly
declared our intention to remain indefinitely.

For nearly a century our government has described Guantanamo as "practically a
part of the Government of the United States." Solicitor General Theodore B.
Olson, who heads the government team in the current litigation, once described
Guantanamo as part of the "territorial jurisdiction" of the United States and
"under exclusive United States jurisdiction."

The government confirms this in practice: Crimes committed at Guantanamo are
prosecuted in a federal court in Virginia, where defendants enjoy the complete
panoply of constitutional rights. Despite Cuba's attempts to exercise its
"ultimate sovereignty" by insisting we leave Guantanamo, we remain.

We alone exercise power at Guantanamo. We refuse to recognize the authority of
any foreign or international court. Earlier this year, the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, of which we
are a member, ruled that the prisoners are entitled to a prompt determination of
their legal status by a "competent tribunal." The commission explained what is
self-evident: Everyone captured during armed hostilities is entitled to the
protection of the law and the prisoners cannot be held "entirely at the
unfettered discretion of the United States government." Yet we refuse to comply
with the commission resolution.

The result is a Catch-22: Because we exercise sole power at Guantanamo, we
refuse to recognize the authority of any other court. Yet because Cuba retains
"ultimate sovereignty," the government says that none of our courts have
jurisdiction, either. We are "sovereign" enough to exclude the prying eyes of
any other court, but not sufficiently sovereign to permit scrutiny by an
American court.

Formally, the question now before the U.S. appeals court is jurisdictional: Do
federal courts have the authority to determine whether this indefinite
imprisonment -- and absence of legal process -- is against the law? But the real
question is more fundamental: Is the American military subject to the rule of
law? We hope that it is.

[ Joseph Margulies, a civil rights lawyer in Minneapolis, represents the
petitioners in Rasul et al. v. Bush et al., which is pending before the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. ]

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


December 11, 2002; Page A32

Editorial--

A VOICE OF REASON

FROM A FEDERAL judge in New York has come a welcome and rational effort to
impose some limits on President Bush's claimed power to designate any American
citizen an enemy combatant and then detain that person without criminal charge
and with almost no judicial oversight. Federal District Judge Michael B. Mukasey
ruled last week in the case of Jose Padilla, whom the FBI detained last May in
Chicago. Initially Mr. Padilla was held under a material witness warrant on
suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks for al Qaeda. But the government later
transferred him to military custody, locked him up in a military brig in South
Carolina and forbade him any contact with his lawyer or anyone else. His status
as a citizen arrested domestically who was yanked out of reach of the Bill of
Rights when the criminal process began to look dicey to the government makes his
case a particularly disturbing example of the dangers of enemy combatant
detentions. Judge Mukasey's opinion offers a pointed reminder that even during
wartime, the president's power to lock up an American citizen must be justified
to the courts, and that hearing from the accused is essential to the court's
task.

Judge Mukasey is no civil liberties radical. And his opinion does not contend,
as many civil libertarians argue, that the military cannot hold American
citizens as enemy combatants at all. To the contrary, he argues that if Mr.
Padilla is an al Qaeda fighter, his detention for the duration of hostilities is
lawful. Judge Mukasey also agreed with the government that the president's
designation of Mr. Padilla should be reviewed deferentially. He will look, he
says, only at whether "some evidence" supported the president's position and
whether "that evidence has been mooted by events subsequent to [Mr. Padilla's]
detention." In other words, uncomfortable though military detentions may be in a
war that has no obvious endpoint, Judge Mukasey agreed with the government that
capturing and holding the other side's fighters -- even if they happen to be
Americans arrested at home -- can be lawful.

But Judge Mukasey balked at the next step that would turn this scary authority
into an unchecked power. The government argues that Mr. Padilla -- along with
the other enemy combatant it holds, Yaser Esam Hamdi -- doesn't need to talk to
a lawyer. The courts' power to review the president's designation is so minimal,
it claims, that the judge need consult only the cursory submission made by the
military. But Judge Mukasey understood that without access to a lawyer and at
least some ability to contest the government's claims in court, nobody's rights
are safe. So Mr. Padilla, he ruled, must be able to meet with his lawyer for the
narrow purpose of responding to the government's allegations.

Judge Mukasey's ruling should guide the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th
Circuit as it considers related questions in Mr. Hamdi's case. Deference to the
president is appropriate, because the Constitution gives him, not the courts,
the power to conduct wars, and the courts are badly positioned to micromanage
this power. Yet deference cannot mean abdication of the responsibility, which
does belong to judges, to safeguard the rights the Constitution promises to
Americans. For this reason, there must be some check on the executive branch's
ability to lock people up. No judge can meaningfully perform that check without
hearing from the accused to ascertain whether the facts are in dispute.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


December 3, 2002; Page A22

DETAINEES SEEK ACCESS TO COURTS
Lawyers Appeal An Earlier Defeat

By Neely Tucker, Washington Post Staff Writer

Lawyers for 16 men detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, asked
a federal appeals court yesterday to give the prisoners access to the U.S.
judicial system, arguing that their indefinite, incommunicado captivity defies
the letter and spirit of U.S. and international law.

The attorneys asked a three- judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit to overturn a lower court's ruling in July that the
men captured during the war in Afghanistan have no legal standing because they
are foreign nationals not held on U.S. soil.

Joe Margulies and Thomas B. Wilner, attorneys representing the prisoners'
families, argued that the writ of habeas corpus -- which compels judicial review
of inmates' detentions -- the federal Alien Tort Claims Act and the
international protocols of the Geneva Convention give the detainees at the U.S.
Navy prison camp rights to U.S. courts and legal protection.

"Intelligence gathering may go forward, detentions on Guantanamo Bay may go
forward, but detentions may not go forward without process of law," Margulies, a
Minneapolis-based attorney arguing the case for the Center for Constitutional
Rights, told the judges.

The lawyers represent 12 Kuwaitis, two Britons and two Australians captured in
Afghanistan during the fighting that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New
York and the Pentagon. After the 90-minute hearing, both attorneys said the
court's ruling would apply to the more than 600 Guantanamo detainees.

In a move that has drawn sharp criticism from foreign governments and human
rights organizations, the prisoners have been held and interrogated without
access to lawyers or family members. The Bush administration has said those
detentions may continue indefinitely.

Government attorneys yesterday repeated their argument that because the
Guantanamo Bay facility is on territory leased from Cuba, U.S. courts lack
jurisdiction over it. They noted that in Johnson v. Eisentrager, a World War II
espionage case involving German nationals captured in China, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled in 1950 that foreign citizens detained abroad lack the "capacity and
standing to invoke the process of the federal courts."

Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement told the judges yesterday that it was
"fundamental" that suspected terrorists would not be given the rights accorded
to other criminal defendants.

"If you hold someone as an enemy combatant, obviously you hold them without
access to family members and without access to counsel," he said.

The government's 56-page brief urged the court to uphold the July ruling by U.S.
District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who rejected the plaintiffs' arguments.

"The court concludes that the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is outside
the sovereign territory of the United States," she ruled. "Given that . . .
writs of habeas corpus are not available to aliens held outside the sovereign
territory of the United States, this court does not have jurisdiction."

The judges hearing the appeal -- Merrick B. Garland, A. Raymond Randolph and
Stephen F. Williams -- peppered each side with questions but gave no indication
of when they would issue a ruling.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

December 1, 2002; Page A01

IN TERROR WAR, 2ND TRACK FOR SUSPECTS
Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections

By Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism
suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed,
interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the
ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's
orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military
detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material
witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law
enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or
deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately
interact.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the
administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on
the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be
held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited
authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of
it.

Administration officials, noting that they have chosen to prosecute suspected
Taliban member John Walker Lindh, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and alleged Sept.
11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in ordinary federal courts, say the parallel
system is meant to be used selectively, as a complement to conventional
processes, not as a substitute. But, they say, the parallel system is necessary
because terrorism is a form of war as well as a form of crime, and it must not
only be punished after incidents occur, but also prevented and disrupted through
the gathering of timely intelligence.

"I wouldn't call it an alternative system," said an administration official who
has helped devise the legal response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"But it is different than the criminal procedure system we all know and love.
It's a separate track for people we catch in the war."

At least one American has been shifted from the ordinary legal system into the
parallel one: alleged al Qaeda "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla, who is being
held at a Navy brig, without the right to communicate with a lawyer or anyone
else. U.S. officials have told the courts that they can detain and interrogate
him until the executive branch declares an end to the war against terrorism.

The final outlines of this parallel system will be known only after the courts,
including probably the Supreme Court, have settled a variety of issues being
litigated. But the prospect of such a system has triggered a fierce debate.

Civil libertarians accuse the Bush administration of an executive- branch power
grab that will erode the rights and freedoms that terrorists are trying to
destroy -- and that were enhanced only recently in response to abuses during the
civil rights era, Vietnam and Watergate.

"They are trying to embed in law a vast expansion of executive authority with no
judicial oversight in the name of national security," said Kate Martin, director
of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based nonprofit group
that has challenged the administration approach in court. "This is more tied to
statutory legal authority than J. Edgar Hoover's political spying, but that may
make it more dangerous. You could have the law serving as a vehicle for all
kinds of abuses."

Administration officials say that they are acting under ample legal authority
derived from statutes, court decisions and wartime powers that the president
possesses as commander in chief under the Constitution.

"When you have a long period of time when you're not engaged in a war, people
tend to forget, or put in backs of their minds, the necessity for certain types
of government action used when we are in danger, when we are facing eyeball to
eyeball a serious threat," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, who leads the
administration's anti-terrorism legal team in the federal courts, said in an
interview.

Broadly speaking, the debate between the administration and its critics is not
so much about the methods the government seeks to employ as it is about who
should act as a check against potential abuses.

Executive Decisions

Civil libertarians insist that the courts should searchingly review

Bush's actions, so that he is always held accountable to an independent branch
of government. Administration officials, however, imply that the main check on
the president's performance in wartime is political -- that if the public
perceives his approach to terrorism is excessive or ineffective, it will vote
him out of office.

"At the end of the day in our constitutional system, someone will have to decide
whether that [decision to designate someone an enemy combatant] is a right or
just decision," Olson said. "Who will finally decide that? Will it be a judge,
or will it be the president of the United States, elected by the people,
specifically to perform that function, with the capacity to have the information
at his disposal with the assistance of those who work for him?"

Probably the most hotly disputed element of the administration's approach is its
contention that the president alone can designate individuals, including U.S.
citizens, as enemy combatants, who can be detained with no access to lawyers or
family members unless and until the president determines, in effect, that
hostilities between the United States and that individual have ended.

Padilla was held as a material witness for a month after his May 8 arrest in
Chicago before he was designated an enemy combatant. He is one of two U.S.
citizens being held as enemy combatants at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The
other is Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi Taliban fighter who was captured by American
troops in Afghanistan and sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until
it was discovered that he was born in Louisiana.

Attorneys are challenging their detentions in federal court. While civil
libertarians concede that the executive branch has well-established authority to
name and confine members of enemy forces during wartime, they maintain that it
is unconstitutional to subject U.S. citizens to indefinite confinement on little
more than the president's declaration, especially given the inherently open-
ended nature of an unconventional war against terrorism.

"The notion that the executive branch can decide by itself that an American
citizen can be put in a military camp, incommunicado, is frightening," said
Morton H. Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Open Society
Institute. "They're entitled to hold him on the grounds that he is in fact at
war with the U.S., but there has to be an opportunity for him to contest those
facts."

However, the Bush administration, citing two World War II-era cases -- the
Supreme Court's ruling upholding a military commission trial for a captured
American-citizen Nazi saboteur, and a later federal appeals court decision
upholding the imprisonment of an Italian American caught as a member of Italian
forces in Europe -- says there is ample precedent for what it is doing.

Courts traditionally understand that they must defer to the executive's greater
expertise and capability when it comes to looking at such facts and making such
judgments in time of war, Bush officials said. At most, courts have only the
power to review legal claims brought on behalf of detainees, such as whether
there is indeed a state of conflict between the United States and the detainee.

In a recent legal brief, Olson argued that the detention of people such as Hamdi
or Padilla as enemy combatants is "critical to gathering intelligence in
connection with the overall war effort."

Nor is there any requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria
for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant, Olson argues.

"There won't be 10 rules that trigger this or 10 rules that end this," Olson
said in the interview. "There will be judgments and instincts and evaluations
and implementations that have to be made by the executive that are probably
going to be different from day to day, depending on the circumstances."

The federal courts have yet to deliver a definitive judgment on the question. A
federal district judge in Virginia, Robert G. Doumar, was sharply critical of
the administration, insisting that Hamdi be permitted to consult an attorney.
But he was partially overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit,
based in Richmond.

The 4th Circuit, however, said the administration's assertion that courts should
have absolutely no role in examining the facts leading to an enemy combatant
designation was "sweeping." A decision from that court is pending as to how much
of a role a court could claim, if any. The matter could well have to be settled
in the Supreme Court.

Secret Surveillance

The administration scored a victory recently when the U.S. Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruled 3 to 0 that the USA Patriot Act,
passed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, gives the
Justice Department authority to break down what had come to be known as "the
wall" separating criminal investigations from investigations of foreign agents.

The ruling endorsed the administration's view that law enforcement goals should
be allowed to drive Justice Department requests for special eavesdropping and
search warrants that had been thought to be reserved for counterintelligence
operations. But the court went further, agreeing with the administration that
"the wall" itself had no real basis in pre-Patriot Act law. Instead, the court
ruled, "the wall" was a product of internal Justice Department guidelines that
were, in turn, based partly on erroneous interpretations of the law by some
courts.

There is no clear line between intelligence and crime in any case, the court
said, because any investigation of a spy ring could ultimately lead to charging
U.S. citizens with crimes such as espionage.

The decision overruled an earlier one by the lower-level Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, in which seven judges sharply criticized past Justice
Department misstatements in applications for permission to do secret
surveillance.

Administration officials say that the ruling permits what is only sensible --
greater sharing of information between federal prosecutors and federal
counterintelligence officials.

Thanks to enforcement of "the wall" by FBI lawyers, they note, pre- Sept. 11
permission to search Moussaoui's computer was not sought, a crucial missed
opportunity to prevent the attacks.

In practical terms, the ruling means that the attorney general would still have
to convince the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that he has probable
cause to believe that a given subject of a wiretap or search is an agent of a
foreign terrorist group, a standard that is not dissimilar to the one required
for warrants in ordinary criminal cases.

Yet civil libertarians say that targets of such investigations who end up being
ordered out of the country or prosecuted would lose a crucial right that they
would have in the ordinary criminal justice system -- the right to examine the
government's evidence justifying the initial warrant.

"So the government starts off using secret surveillance information not to
gather information upon which to make policy, but to imprison or deport an
individual, and then it never gives the individual a fair chance to see if the
surveillance was lawful," Martin said.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


November 30, 2002; Page A16

ROAD TO SON'S FREEDOM PAVED WITH ANGUISH
Mother of British Detainee Joins Calls For Due Process at Guantanamo Bay

By Glenn Frankel,Washington Post Foreign Service

LONDON, Nov. 29 -- Zumrati Juma had not heard from her 22-year-old son, Feroz
Abbasi, for more than a year. She had checked with the police, the missing
persons bureau, the mosque where he had worshiped -- all in vain, she recounted
in an interview. By now she assumed he was dead, a careless young soul murdered
for pocket change in London's back alleys.

Then last January a reporter from the British newspaper Sunday Times knocked on
the door of her row house in South London with amazing news: Abbasi was alive
and in the custody of the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He had been
flown there in chains after being captured in Kunduz, Afghanistan, as a
suspected al Qaeda foot soldier.

There he remains, nearly 10 months later, one of more than 600 men seized during
U.S. military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban who were declared
illegal combatants with no right to lawyers, hearings or charges. And there,
under U.S. policy, he will stay until Washington determines he is no longer a
threat.

"At first I was so relieved that he was alive somewhere," Juma recalled. "But
then I realized it's a complicated case and it's not going to be as simple as I
thought. And it's 10 months now."

On Monday, a group of human rights lawyers will plead before the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on behalf of two Britons, two
Australians and a dozen Kuwaitis for a writ of habeas corpus, a document that
would require that they be produced in court, charged and tried -- or released.
Whichever side wins, the next step will likely be an appeal to the Supreme
Court.

But whatever the courts rule, the case of the Guantanamo detainees has already
become a cause celebre for some foreign governments and human rights groups --
and an embarrassment for the State Department, which would like to see the
Pentagon hasten the process of deciding who's a bona fide threat and who is
innocent or harmless.

Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Kuwait and Australia have all asked that their
citizens be charged or released. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,
an arm of the Organization of American States, has declared the United States in
breach of its international obligations because it hasn't given detainees legal
recourse.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations' new high commissioner for human
rights, said during a recent visit to London that the U.S. military's detainees
should be taken before a court in the United States or their countries of
origin. "Otherwise, they should be released," he said.

Even Britain, the United States' closest ally in the war on terrorism, is losing
patience. There are seven Britons among the detainees, and while Prime Minister
Tony Blair told a recent news conference that the detentions were necessary "at
the moment," British officials have been quietly pressing their U.S.
counterparts to speed up the process of determining which detainees can be
released.

"It's still a hot issue here," said a senior British official who insisted on
anonymity. "We've not said you must release all the British detainees, but we
have asked the Americans to make decisions and sift out the small fry. If
someone's not prosecutable, not of intelligence value and not a danger to
society, he should be released."

In the United States, Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana-born man raised in Saudi
Arabia, has sparked a parallel tug of war in the courts. He was captured in
Afghanistan and is being held without access to lawyers in a Navy brig in
Norfolk as an illegal enemy combatant. Lawyers arguing on his behalf contend
that his Louisiana birth makes him a U.S. citizen entitled to legal counsel.

Last month, the Pentagon released three Afghans and a Pakistani from Guantanamo.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said more releases would eventually follow.
"We have no desire to hold large numbers of these people for a long period of
time," she said.

The U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo detention center,
declined comment on Abbasi's case. Air Force Capt. Thomas Crosson said the
command has a no-comment policy for all individual cases, under which the
military would not confirm the identity of any particular detainee.

But as pieced together in Britain, Feroz Abbasi's story runs like this:

He was born in Uganda, came to Britain with his family when he was 8 and grew up
in Croydon, a working-class community in South London. His mother works as a
hospital nurse. His parents are Muslims, but his mother says neither is devout.

He was studying computer technology at a local college and living at home when
he began to grow restless, his mother said. He took a trip to continental
Europe, winding up in Geneva -- broke, lost and confused after he was robbed of
all his money.

His mother sent him money to return home. He did, and later he told her that
when he was feeling most desperate, he had experienced a religious awakening,
inspired by a Kashmiri refugee who had told him, "If you believe in Allah,
you'll find your way home."

After that, she recounted, her son began searching for religious instruction. He
went to the local mosque but found it unrewarding. Then he made his way to the
Finsbury Park mosque in northern London, and its charismatic preacher, Abu
Hamza.

Hamza is a radical imam with hooks for hands, which he says were blown off
during fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. He is wanted for
questioning in Yemen and Jordan for his alleged role in terrorist bombing
campaigns there. He has expressed sympathy for Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the
September 11, 2001, attacks, and authorities said he helped recruit hundreds of
young Muslims for religious and military training in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
British security authorities have kept him under surveillance but have not
charged him. He denies any involvement in terrorism and told a public gathering
in September that he cannot recall ever meeting Abbasi.

At first, Juma said, her son would venture up to Finsbury Park for Friday
prayers. Then he started going up during the week for evening seminars. Then he
moved into a dormitory there. He told her he was doing charitable work for
Muslim refugees in Bosnia, but he was also serving as a security guard at the
mosque and helping to set up an Internet site for Supporters of Shariah, a
militant organization established by Hamza and other radicals. He would phone
regularly to let Juma know where he was and when he would be coming home. Then,
in December 2000, the phone calls suddenly stopped.

Juma said she went to Finsbury Park several times to search for her son. "They
kept telling me to come back, they didn't know where he was," she recounted. She
went to the authorities; she contacted the Pakistani Embassy and Pakistani
airlines because she heard that young Muslims often journeyed to Pakistan for
religious training. No one would help.

Then the Sunday Times reporter showed up at her door. "I almost fainted," she
said. "They were the first people in a year to say to me, 'Your son is still
alive.' "

But her relief soon turned to anxiety, she said, when British newspapers
published photographs of the Guantanamo detainees bound, gagged and blindfolded.
"Torture," declared one tabloid.

A British consular official was allowed to visit the detainees and reported back
that the men were in good health and held under humane conditions. The official
has returned three more times, accompanied each time by interrogators from MI5,
the British internal security service. Louise Christian, a British lawyer whom
Abbasi's family hired to try to represent him, said she learned through official
channels that her client had demanded a lawyer at each of these sessions. The
consular official passed on the request to U.S. authorities, who turned it down.

In April, the Sunday Times published what it called Abbasi's confession, in
which he reportedly said that members of the Finsbury Park mosque had provided
him with a plane ticket to Pakistan for military training at the Khaldan
terrorist camp in Afghanistan. Abbasi also reportedly said that at one point
that he wanted to become a suicide bomber and die as a martyr.

Christian was enraged by the report. If MI5 leaked the alleged confession, she
said, "it's an extreme breach of privacy and abuse of their position by our own
security services. He's had no access to a lawyer, he's not been charged with
anything. Before being questioned by a police officer, he should have been given
a long formal warning about incriminating himself."

Christian filed suit here to get the Foreign Office to intervene on Abbasi's
behalf. A three-judge panel rejected the request this month, saying it could not
require the Foreign Office to act but declaring that Abbasi's detention "appears
to be a clear breach of a fundamental human right."

Recent terrorism attacks, however, such as the Oct. 12 bombing that killed
almost 200 people in Bali, Indonesia, and Thursday's suicide bombing on a
tourist hotel and almost simultaneous missile attack on an Israeli airliner in
Mombasa, Kenya, may prolong the process. After the Bali attack, Prime Minister
Blair told a news conference, "This terrorist threat is not over. . . . Some of
the information that we are getting, it is important to relay back and
interrogate and question those people who are still at Guantanamo Bay."

"The fact is, no one cares what happens to these people," said Michael Ratner,
president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York-based nonprofit
litigation group that has brought the case to the federal appeals court.
"They're in a legal black hole. But if a U.S. court doesn't have jurisdiction,
then who does?"

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


November 18, 2002; Page A10

MILITARY TRIAL PLANS NEARLY DONE
Bush to Decide Which Detainees Will Be Tried by Tribunals

By Susan Schmidt and Bradley Graham, Washington Post Staff Writers

The government is nearly ready to go forward with military tribunals for
suspected al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan,
pending completion of final details and approval from President Bush, according
to federal officials.

Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II has met in recent weeks with
senior officials in other agencies, including the Justice Department, to outline
the plans that have been put in place for the tribunals, also known as military
commissions.

The moves, officials said, confirm the government's intention to put al Qaeda
prisoners on trial in special military courts in the near future. Until now,
U.S. officials have been preparing rules and regulations for the tribunals, but
have suggested that they were unsure if the military courts would ever be used.

Bush will make the decision about moving forward on specific cases.

The military proceedings currently are contemplated only for a small number of
prisoners held in camps outside the United States and would be conducted outside
this country, sources said. Only a small number of the approximately 625
detainees in the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the 100 or so in
a U.S. military compound in Bagram, Afghanistan, are ever likely to be taken
before a tribunal, they said. It is not clear which detainees may be the first
to face trial.

Though there has been speculation that accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias
Moussaoui might be moved from federal court in Virginia to a military tribunal,
Justice Department officials said there is no plan to do so now.

The decision to push forward with tribunals comes at a time when U.S.
interrogators have gained information from a number of high- profile detainees
that may prove useful in prosecuting other al Qaeda operatives.

Among those in U.S. custody who have been providing significant information is
Abu Zubaida, the high-ranking al Qaeda leader whose information led to the
apprehension in Chicago earlier this year of Jose Padilla, who was allegedly in
the United States to scout targets for an attack with a radiological bomb. Two
others, Omar al-Farouq, the alleged Southeast Asia facilitator for al Qaeda, and
Muhammad Darbi, an alleged member of a Yemeni cell, have provided information
about al Qaeda plans and personnel in those regions, government sources have
said.

More recently, interrogators have been questioning Ramzi Binalshibh, who
admitted his role as a planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in an interview
with the al-Jazeera television station this fall, shortly before his capture.

Moussaoui, who is accused of conspiring with Binalshibh in the Sept. 11 attacks,
has said he wants to call Binalshibh as a witness in his trial. That prospect,
coupled with the recent decision of Justice Department officials to take a more
active role in the handling of his case, has led to the theory that federal
officials will move to dismiss the case and put Moussaoui, who is defending
himself with the aid of court-appointed lawyers, before a military tribunal.

But government sources said the Justice Department has no interest in doing so.
Because Moussaoui is in this country, he could try to fight such a move in
federal court. That could open the tribunal process to a constitutional
challenge, something the Bush administration wants to avoid.

Instead, the government continues to debrief Binalshibh, taking advantage of the
delay in Moussaoui's case granted by a federal judge who ruled the defendant
needs more time to prepare his case. Moussaoui is now scheduled to go on trial
in June.

Counterterrorism investigators may need months to debrief Binalshibh and would
not want a trial appearance in the United States to interrupt that process,
government officials said. They also may want to ensure that Binalshibh is not
able to publicly reveal information that could be useful to al Qaeda.

Bush originally called for the special military proceedings in an executive
order last November, and in March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld released
a preliminary set of regulations to govern them.

The tribunals would be held amid extremely tight security, U.S. officials said,
with some witnesses possibly testifying from remote locations or with
electronically altered voices. Defendants will have the right to see evidence
against them, unless it is classified, and will be given military counsel. A
two-thirds majority of judges is required for conviction, but a unanimous vote
is needed to impose the death penalty.

Pentagon attorneys are in "the process of identifying potential key personnel"
for the military commissions, according to a senior defense official. The
official would not specify which personnel are being screened, but the military
must select judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys before a tribunal can be
held.

The senior official stressed that the screening should not be taken to reflect a
decision to proceed with the military commissions, but said it is necessary for
the Pentagon to be in position to move ahead should the president decide to do
so.

Pentagon lawyers are also drafting final implementing regulations needed to
initiate the military tribunals. Officials in the Pentagon general counsel's
office said they are completing work on specific charges that could be lodged
against defendants. U.S. officials have said previously that the charges would
include violations of the laws of war and possibly other offenses.

The president would need to designate those taken before the tribunals by name.

[ Staff writer John Mintz contributed to this report. ]

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


November 11, 2002; Page A07

MOUSSAOUI CASE MAY BE MOVED TO MILITARY TRIBUNAL
No Decision Yet, but Discussions Held

By Bradley Graham and Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writers

Frustrated by obstacles in the civilian prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the
Bush administration is looking at changing course and attempting to bring the
accused al Qaeda terrorist before a military tribunal, government officials said
yesterday.

Lawyers for the Justice Department, Pentagon and White House have been
discussing the matter, the officials said, confirming a report in yesterday's
New York Times. But they said no decision has been reached to end the federal
court case and turn Moussaoui over to military authorities.

A White House spokesman said, "There is no such proposal under review by the
White House."

Moussaoui, 34, a French citizen, was arrested on immigration charges three weeks
before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks after his behavior raised suspicions
at a Minnesota flight school. He was indicted last December and is facing trial
in Alexandria on charges that he conspired with other al Qaeda members to hijack
planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last year. If
convicted, he faces execution. He is the only person charged in a U.S. court
with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, but while he has admitted belonging to
al Qaeda, he has denied any link with the attacks.

Some officials within the White House and Defense Department have long advocated
moving Moussaoui into military custody, citing the problems that have dogged
prosecution of his criminal case.

But Justice Department officials, including criminal division chief Michael
Chertoff and Northern Virginia federal prosecutor Paul J. McNulty, have
strenuously argued in favor of keeping the Moussaoui case in a criminal venue
and have expressed confidence about winning a conviction and the death penalty
against him.

One Justice official said yesterday that no change in Moussaoui's status is
imminent, and that reports to the contrary "are pure speculation."

"We have been and remain extremely confident of a successful prosecution," the
official said. "We've got a great case."

But Justice's case has been complicated by the refusal of the Pentagon and
intelligence authorities to meet Moussaoui's demands for access to some evidence
and witnesses, including a number of captured al Qaeda members.

A military tribunal would restrict Moussaoui's right to press such demands. But
opting for such a course might also be seen as an embarrassment for the
administration and could confront President Bush with legal challenges to the
constitutionality of using military judges to try terrorists as "unlawful
combatants."

In a decision last month, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema postponed the
trial's start until June citing the enormous amount of evidence that must be
digested by Moussaoui, who is serving as his own attorney.

The judge also granted Moussaoui's motion for larger quarters, calling his
detention in a small, windowless Alexandria cell "both inhumane and an
unreasonable barrier to his ability to work with the materials produced to him."
The judge ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to give Moussaoui more space to
review the reports, computer disks, audio and video tapes gathered by the
government for possible use against him.

Moussaoui's stand-by lawyer, Frank W. Dunham Jr., said yesterday that he hasn't
heard of any discussions to dismiss the case. Dunham, the federal public
defender for eastern Virginia, was fired by Moussaoui but ordered by Brinkema to
remain on the case should Moussaoui be disqualified from acting as his own
counsel.

"My notion is there's been no decision made at the present time," Dunham said.
"It may be something that's been talked about, but not decided one way or the
other."

[ Staff writers Tom Jackman and Dana Milbank contributed to this report. ]

* * *


November 9, 2002; Page A01

U.S. CITIZEN KILLED BY CIA LINKED TO N.Y. TERROR CASE

By Michael Powell and Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writers

The U.S. citizen killed by a missile launched from a pilotless drone aircraft
over Yemen was the ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in
Lackawanna, N.Y., administration officials said yesterday.

Kamal Derwish, one of two unindicted co-conspirators in the Lackawanna case,
died along with the intended target of the attack, senior al Qaeda leader Abu
Ali al-Harithi, who is accused of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the
USS Cole in which 17 sailors died.

These two men and four others were traveling in a car outside the Yemeni capital
of Sanaa when they were hit by a Hellfire missile operated at an undisclosed
location by the CIA. Derwish had been identified by sources Thursday as Ahmed
Hijazi, an alias.

The CIA knew Derwish had returned to Yemen and was, as one administration
official described him, "a fellow traveler" in a tight circle of terrorists atop
the United States' unofficial most-wanted list. But the CIA officers who
targeted the car, following it via live video from the drone and ultimately
firing the missile, did not know Derwish was a passenger, the official said.

But, as the administration official -- who asked not to be identified -- noted
dryly, "it would not have made a difference. If you're a terrorist, you're a
terrorist."

The Long Island newspaper Newsday first reported that the U.S. citizen killed in
the attack was Derwish.

Six American-born men accused of being Derwish's recruits were arrested in
September and have been indicted in Buffalo, N.Y., on charges of giving
"material support" to a terrorist organization, al Qaeda. Prosecutors charge
that the men trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and were awaiting orders
to carry out terrorist attacks.

Derwish, 29, an unindicted co-conspirator, was the most mysterious of the men
from Lackawanna named in court papers, and, according to U.S. prosecutors, the
most influential. They portrayed him as the devoutly religious provocateur who
lured the six indicted men into the al Qaeda orbit.

"Derwish was a very religious man, but obviously no one here is going to like
that he was in that car with an al Qaeda leader," said Khalid A. Qazi, head of
the American Muslim Council of Western New York. "We want to know what happened,
but these men should get what they deserved."

Derwish, according to accounts in the Buffalo News and interviews with those who
knew him, was born in Buffalo and spent his early years in the suburb of
Lackawanna, a down-at-its-heels former steel town by the shores of Lake Erie.

His father, who labored at Bethlehem Steel, eventually took the family back to
his native Saudi Arabia in hopes of finding steadier work. Three years later,
his father died in a car crash and Derwish soon traveled to Sanaa, Yemen, where
he found relatives to care for him and the fundamentalist brand of Islam that
soon consumed him.

In the late 1990s Derwish apparently returned to Lackawanna. He was known as an
austere fellow -- a husky, bearded man who roiled some leaders at the local
mosque with his insistence on following the strictest Muslim practice. He
upbraided a local shopkeeper for selling pork and beer, the shopkeeper said
weeks ago.

He was fluent in English and Hebrew, often held discussion groups that doubled
as pizza parties in his modest Lackawanna home, and spoke of wanting to fight
alongside the Taliban someday, neighbors said. He often traveled back and forth
to Saudi Arabia.

He was accused of persuading the six Lackawanna men of Yemeni descent to attend
religious school in Pakistan. Prosecutors contend that he greeted them in
Karachi and soon took them to an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors say that Derwish helped convert the men into willing recruits for al
Qaeda. Their families and defense attorneys portray them as small-town working-
class boys who didn't know what they were getting into.

Two of the men, Sahim Alwan, 29, and Mukhtar al-Bakhri, 22, say that when they
got to the camps, they were appalled with what they found. Alwan, feigning
injury, talked his way out of the camp 10 days later. He is the only defendant
granted bail but must live under extremely restrictive conditions.

The CIA operation that killed Derwish, al-Harithi and the others operated under
a set of highly classified rules derived from a "presidential finding" approved
by President Bush and vetted by White House, CIA and State Department lawyers.

The operation had its own "rules of engagement" that described which individuals
could be targeted. U.S. officials assert that the men were enemy "combatants" in
the U.S.-led global war on terrorism, which unlike any other conflict cannot be
defined by national boundaries. Some scholars of constitutional and
international laws have raised questions about these rules and charged that the
killings do not fall within known legal bounds.

Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


November 9, 2002; Page A02

RELEASE OF DETAINEES' PHOTOS IS PROBED
Images of Terror Suspects in Transit Were Sent to Web Site

Associated Press

The Pentagon undertook an investigation yesterday to find out who took and
released photographs of terror suspects as they were being transported in heavy
restraints aboard a U.S. military plane.

Four photographs of prisoners -- handcuffed, heads covered with black hoods and
bound with straps on the floor of a plane -- appeared overnight on the Web site
of radio talk show host Art Bell.

"Anonymous mailer sends us photos taken inside a military C- 130 transporting
POWS," the headline said.

The photos offer the first glimpse into the security measures aboard the
airplanes used over the past year to transfer prisoners to prisons in
Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, including the high-security U.S.
facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It has long been known that prisoners are heavily restrained. And photos of
prisoners bound and kneeling after arrival in Cuba early this year created a
stir among human and prison rights groups.

The plane in the latest photos was a C-130, said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col.
Dave Lapan. But it has not been determined where it was going or when the photos
were taken. Officials believe the photos were not authorized and know their
release was unauthorized, he said.

The Air Force and the Central Command are investigating the breach, said
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.

"We have very, very tight restrictions on any images of the detainees for
security purposes and because we have no interest in potentially holding
detainees up for any kind of public ridicule," she told a Pentagon news
conference.

This is at least the third time prisoner photos have troubled the Pentagon.

Although the Defense Department has restricted the news media in the kind of
photos they can take of prisoners in the war on terrorism, officials have
discovered that troops posed for photos with the Taliban fighter John Walker
Lindh as he was being handcuffed and while he was wearing a blindfold with an
obscenity they had apparently scrawled across it.

The military itself takes photos for documentation, and individual soldiers
often take their photos as souvenirs of deployments.

In a court motion, Lindh's lawyers said earlier this year that unofficial photos
and videos of Lindh were taken aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu,
where he was confined. Officials said an officer confiscated cameras and film
and erased digital images.

Also as part of a court filing, Lindh's lawyers released a picture of him in
Afghanistan, blindfolded, strapped to a stretcher and naked. Defense officials
have said that while that photo may have been shocking, Lindh was naked as part
of the preparation for medical treatment.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


November 8, 2002; Page A01

CIA KILLED U.S. CITIZEN IN YEMEN MISSILE STRIKE
Action's Legality, Effectiveness Questioned

By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer

A U.S. citizen was among the people killed in the pilotless missile strike on
suspected al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen Sunday, administration officials
confirmed yesterday, adding a new element to an attack that reflects the
evolving nature of the U.S. war on terrorism around the world.

Ahmed Hijazi and five other suspected al Qaeda operatives were killed by a five-
foot long Hellfire missile launched from a remote controlled CIA Predator
aircraft as they rode in a vehicle 100 miles east of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Hijazi held U.S. citizenship and was also a citizen of an unidentified Middle
Eastern country, a senior administration official confirmed. He was not born in
the United States, but resided here for an unknown period of time, the official
said.

With him in the vehicle, said Yemeni and U.S. government officials, was a senior
al Qaeda leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, who is suspected of masterminding the
October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole.

Hijazi's citizenship highlights the different approaches pursued simultaneously
by the administration as it wages its war on terror. In some cases since Sept.
11, American citizens have been arrested and afforded traditional legal rights
in the criminal justice system. In others, they have been captured and held
indefinitely in military brigs as "enemy combatants." Now, at least in Hijazi's
case, a citizen has been killed in a covert military action.

What's more, Hijazi was killed in a country considered at peace with the United
States, although U.S. officials say the strike was carried out with the approval
and cooperation of Yemen's government.

It was unclear whether the CIA operatives who fired the missile knew that an
American citizen was among their targets. It also was unclear whether that would
have made any difference.

Even in war, the U.S. government affords greater legal protections to U.S.
citizens than foreigners and, in peacetime, the CIA is restricted in the kinds
of surveillance and operations it can conduct against U.S. citizens at home and
abroad.

The administration, working with the authority of a presidential finding that
permits covert actions against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network,
considered al-Harithi and his traveling party a military target -- "combatants"
under international law.

Officials further contend that Sunday's missile strike was an act of self-
defense, which is also permitted under the international laws of war, because
al-Harithi already had allegedly attacked the United States in October 2000 when
he helped blow up the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors.

Administration officials, intelligence operatives and military analysts,
frustrated with the slow, torturous pace of locating and capturing individual
terrorists in lawless areas of countries such as Yemen, praised the CIA strikes
as an innovative way to get the job done.

"This is an extraordinary change of threshold," said one former intelligence
operative who praised the tactic as particularly effective.

The CIA strikes are also a reflection, they say, of how slow the U.S. military,
even its Special Operations forces, have been to adapt to the ad hoc, ever-
changing tactics of smaller and smaller cadres of terrorists now operating
without much of a command structure. The CIA, in fact, has become a much more
central tactical military tool in the terrorism war than in any previous
conflict, largely because it has a much less cumbersome bureaucracy.

The CIA's separate targeting process, which was used in Sunday's Predator
strike, is quicker, more fluid and involves fewer decision- makers in its
"trigger-pulling" chain of command than even the nimblest military operation,
intelligence experts said.

But while the lethality of the CIA Predator attack was considered successful, it
also raises a host of new questions about the legality, effectiveness and ethics
of using a tactic outwardly akin to assassination. Assassination is banned by a
presidential executive order.

"This ought to be a last resort for the United States," said Jeffrey H. Smith,
former general counsel at the CIA. The preferable route, he said, would be to
capture and try terrorists, and share the evidence of guilt with the world.

"To the extent you do more and more of this, it begins to look like it is
policy," Smith said. "It is not clear that that is an effective tool." Israel,
for example, has asserted it has targeted individual Palestinians whom it
considers combatants. But the tactic has not stopped suicide attacks and other
violence; some analysts suggest it has only outraged the Palestinian community
and fueled the violence.

After a while, Smith said, such pinpoint targeting of individuals might "suggest
that it's acceptable behavior to assassinate people. . . . Assassination as a
norm of international conduct exposes American leaders and Americans overseas."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday that the government
did not yet have enough information to verify Hijazi's U.S. citizenship but may
learn more from Yemeni authorities. Yemeni officials said yesterday that
personal documents, weapons and satellite telephones had been found in the
burned-out car.

Yemen is bin Laden's ancestral home, and U.S. intelligence officials describe
the country as one of the key refuges for al Qaeda operatives pushed out of
Afghanistan by the war there. U.S. Special Forces trainers were sent to Yemen
after Sept. 11, 2001.

The U.S. military has been preparing more intensive operations in Yemen. But
military operations have proven highly risky. In December, an attempt to force
militant Islamic tribal forces on the Saudi border to turn over suspected al
Qaeda members ended with the deaths of 13 Yemeni soldiers.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


November 5, 2002; Page A01

U.S. STRIKE KILLS SIX IN AL QAEDA
Missile Fired by Predator Drone; Key Figure in Yemen Among Dead

By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer

A missile fired by a U.S. Predator drone over Yemen Sunday killed six suspected
al Qaeda terrorists in a vehicle about 100 miles east of the nation's capital,
the first time the United States has used the unmanned weapon outside
Afghanistan, sources familiar with the action said yesterday.

A senior administration official said Yemeni defense officials had identified
one of the men killed as Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader and one of
the terrorist network's top figures in Yemen. Al-Harithi is one of the suspected
planners of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 American
sailors in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, and has been linked to the Oct. 7 bombing
of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen.

The attack by the unmanned aircraft marks a new stage in Washington's war on
terror and a step up in U.S. assistance for Yemeni President Ali Abdallah
Salih's fight against terrorists who have taken refuge in his mountainous
country. Since Salih's meeting with President Bush at the White House in
December, military assistance to Yemen has grown to include weapons and training
by U.S. Special Forces units.

CIA and Pentagon spokesmen yesterday refused to discuss the operation, although
other sources said the CIA has been operating armed Predators over Yemen for
months. While many details of Sunday's attack were not available, sources said
U.S. operators of the unmanned aircraft, who could be working from ground
stations hundreds of miles away, were probably alerted to the al Qaeda utility
vehicle and its passengers by intelligence information that may have included
intercepted phone messages.

The Predator, which can operate from altitudes of up to 25,000 feet, picked up
the vehicle using either television or radar and tracked it as it sped along a
highway toward the city of Marib. The Hellfire missile carried by the Predator
can be aimed and fired by the ground station operators and guided to the target.

Yemeni sources reported that the vehicle was destroyed and that the other
passengers were burned beyond recognition.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked at a midday news conference
yesterday whether U.S.-Yemeni cooperation could include use of U.S. force
against al Qaeda in Yemen, replied: "We have some folks in that country that
have been working with the government and helping them think through ways of
doing things. It's been a good cooperation, and we've shared some information
and we think that over time it ought to be beneficial because there is no
question but that there are al Qaeda in Yemen."

Speaking of al-Harithi, Rumsfeld said: "It would be a very good thing if he were
out of business."

A senior military officer said no U.S. troops were involved in the attack but
said he did not know whether the CIA had a hand in it.

Earlier on Sunday, a helicopter belonging to Hunt Oil Co., a U.S. firm that
operates a refinery in Yemen, was attacked by gunmen on the ground as it took
off from Sanaa, the capital. One person on the helicopter was wounded. The U.S.
ambassador in Yemen, Edmund J. Hull, was scheduled to visit Marib yesterday, but
sources said there apparently was no connection between either of those events
and the Predator attack.

In Afghanistan, the 27-foot long Predator aircraft first gained notice after it
was used in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. The
missile destroyed Omar's sport-utility vehicle, but he was not in it. Last
spring, a Predator Hellfire missile was used against three individuals in the
Afghan mountains near Pakistan, one of whom appeared to be al Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden. Later examination of the bodies showed that bin Laden was not among
the dead.

The Pentagon late last year claimed a nearly "100 percent record of hits" in
several dozen battlefield attacks by Predators in Afghanistan.

Since U.S.-led coalition forces began driving al Qaeda and the Taliban out of
Afghanistan, Yemen -- bin Laden's ancestral home -- has become an increasing
focus of U.S. activities. "The inability of the government to control large
areas of Yemen has provided the opportunity for terrorist groups to reorganize
there," a senior intelligence analyst said yesterday.

In December, attempts by the Yemeni army to force militant Islamic tribal forces
on the border with Saudi Arabia to turn over al Qaeda suspects ended in
disaster, when Yemeni forces lost 13 soldiers in a series of battles.

Among the al Qaeda leaders targeted in the raids were al-Harithi and another
Yemeni, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, owner of a company that the United States has
branded a financier of terror. Al-Nashiri is believed to have been involved in a
failed terrorist attack on warships in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The FBI in February issued an alert naming 17 suspects who might be planning an
attack against U.S. interests in Yemen. In April, Yemeni officials broke up a
plot to assassinate a high-ranking Yemeni intelligence official who was
cooperating with the United States, and an explosive device was found near the
U.S. Embassy in Sanaa.

Yemeni authorities in August discovered a huge cache of plastic explosives at
the scene of an accidental blast that killed two al Qaeda operatives and wounded
another.

Sunday's attack comes against the backdrop of increased U.S. military and
intelligence operations in the Horn of Africa. The Pentagon announced last week
that it was increasing its forces in the region to about 1,200 troops and
establishing a task force headquarters in Djibouti to facilitate attacks on al
Qaeda and training missions with African states.

The task force will include Marines and Special Operations forces in addition to
CIA operatives. Defense officials point to the initiative as a prototype for the
way military planners may structure future anti- terrorism operations.

"The Horn of Africa turns out to be a fairly busy place in terms of the flow of
people and other instruments of war -- weapons, explosives, perhaps weapons of
mass destruction," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
told reporters yesterday in answer to a question about the reason for the new
task force.

He added that "in the Horn of Africa there are a number of areas that you could
call ungoverned, or at least not under some government's tight control, where
terrorists can gather and either do operational planning or training and so
forth. And so, we're very interested in the area for that reason and have
positioned forces there to take appropriate action."

A headquarters element of the 2nd Marine Division, numbering about 400 troops,
will head the task force, initially operating offshore from a Navy ship while a
command post ashore is built. They will join about 800 Army Special Forces
soldiers already in Djibouti.

U.S. Special Forces conducted counterterrorism training with Yemeni troops
earlier this year, and a small number of U.S. military personnel have remained
there since the summer.

[ Staff writers Susan Schmidt and Bradley Graham contributed to this report. ]

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 29, 2002; 11:53 AM

FOUR RELEASED FROM GUANTANAMO PRISON

By Pamela Constable, Washington Post Foreign Service

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 29-- Looking weary and bewildered, three Afghan
prisoners released after nearly one year's detention at U.S. military base in
Guantanamo, Cuba, said today they were not mistreated during their long
confinement but were exhausted from the long trip home.

Two of the freed men were elderly Afghans with white beards and Muslim
skullcaps; one was toothless, used a cane and asked for his medicine as soldiers
hustled him from a military hospital room into a police van here this morning.
The third, a younger man, was wearing stiff iron wrist manacles.

"We were not tortured. ... We were not unhappy," said one of the elderly men,
who gave his name as Hajji Faiz Mohammed and claimed to be 105 years old. "The
Americans treated me well, but they were not Muslims, so I didn't like them."

The three Afghans, who arrived here today after a four-day trip from Cuba, were
freed along with one Pakistani man in the first release of long-term prisoners
from U.S. custody in Guantanamo since the fall of the Taliban last November. One
mentally ill Afghan was sent home in May.

U.S. officials in Washington and Kabul said the four were released because they
no longer represented a threat to U.S. security, were not going to be prosecuted
for any crime and could provide no further useful information to authorities.
They also said medical considerations had been taken into account.

There was no explanation from U.S. officials as to why the Afghans and the
Pakistani had been held for at least 10 months. Another 625 detainees of various
nationalities remain at Guantanamo, according to U.S. officials, who said some
may be released if they meet the same criteria.

Faiz Mohammed, speaking briefly in Afghanistan's Pashto language to a crowd of
journalists in his cramped hospital room this morning, said he had not been a
supporter of the Taliban or al Qaeda, but had been detained mistakenly by U.S.
and Afghan troops late last year while visiting a village in his native Oruzgun
province.

"I was shouting and angry, and I cried when they put me in chains," he said.
"The Americans took me away in a car, but I didn't know my sin." But he also
said he believes Americans are infidels and enemies of Islam.

A second released prisoner, Jan Mohammed, 35, said he had been forcibly
conscripted into the Taliban army last fall and was arrested by Afghan troops
during fighting in northern Kunduz province. He said Afghan militia leaders
first imprisoned him and then turned him over to U.S. forces, claiming falsely
that he was a "high-ranking Taliban."

"I don't know anything," he told journalists today, describing himself as a
farmer from Helmand province. "The questions the Americans asked me are the same
ones you are asking: Why was I arrested, was I in the Taliban."

The third Afghan prisoner, an elderly man from Paktia province named Mohammed
Sidiq, did not speak with journalists.

The men described their confinement at Guantanamo as boring but not inhumane.
They said they were allowed to bathe and change clothes once a week and were
given copies of the Koran to read. Faiz Mohammed said the food was good, but he
complained that there was no okra or eggplant.

Jan Mohammed said he had seen numerous high-level Taliban officials among the
detainee population at Guantanamo, including Mohammed Zaeef, the former Taliban
ambassador to Pakistan, and several other senior Islamic clerics. He also said
he saw as many as 200 Arab prisoners and about 50 Pakistanis, as well as a few
Australians and British.

The three men were flown from Cuba to Bagram air base, a U.S. military facility
north of Kabul, where they were handed over to Afghan authorities Monday under
the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

That night they were taken to Kabul's military hospital for medical
examinations, and today they were transferred by police van to the Interior
Ministry, where officials described them as temporary "guests" and said they
would probably be released Wednesday to go home.

"We do not know if they were unresponsible or a little responsible" for Taliban
activities, Interior Minister Taj Mohammed Wardak said tonight, adding that U.S.
officials had merely informed Afghan authorities the three would be arriving.
"We don't want to bother them. They are our guests."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 29, 2002; Page A15

4 PRISONERS SENT HOME; MORE MAY BE RELEASED

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

U.S. military authorities have released four prisoners who had been held for
months at the Navy detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and will release
others soon, officials said.

The four -- three Afghans and a Pakistani -- constitute the first group to be
released from the prison since it began housing detainees captured abroad in
January. But even as the four were being flown back to their home countries over
the weekend, another group of about 30 new captives was flown into the detention
facility from Afghanistan.

"Senior leadership of the Department of Defense, in consultation with other U.S.
government officials, determined that these four detainees no longer posed a
threat to U.S. security," chief Defense Department spokesman Victoria Clarke
said yesterday at a Pentagon news conference. The men were released Saturday.

U.S. officials declined to release the names or nationalities of the men, but
sources in Pakistan identified the freed Pakistani detainee as Mohammed Sagheer,
60, who is from the North-West Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan.
Pakistani newspapers reported that officials there said they will debrief
Sagheer before releasing him to his family in the town of Mansehra.

Private aid officials confirmed the other three men released were from
Afghanistan, but their identities could not be learned yesterday.

U.S. officials said they plan to free small groups of detainees from Guantanamo
Bay after determining they have no intelligence value and do not pose a
terrorist danger. Until Saturday, the only detainees removed from Guantanamo Bay
were a man returned to Afghanistan after it was determined he was mentally ill,
and a captive transferred to a U.S. military brig after officials learned he may
be a U.S. citizen.

"We have no desire to hold large numbers of these people for a long period of
time," Clarke said. "If we can go through all those factors -- determine someone
doesn't have [intelligence] value, is not a real threat to the United States or
our friends and allies, we think there will be proper handling on the other end
-- then we'd like to get rid of some of these people. So we're working a lot of
those issues with countries, but it takes time."

U.S. and foreign officials have said about six more of the 55 or so remaining
Pakistani inmates in Cuba are expected to be repatriated. During visits to
Guantanamo Bay and Washington in August, Pakistani officials told U.S.
authorities that a number of the Pakistani men being held appeared to be
innocent bystanders swept up in mass arrests near the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The families of 12 Kuwaiti men held at Guantanamo Bay said in a statement that
they are "disappointed" that none of their relatives was in this first group of
inmates to be let go. But they added in the statement transmitted by their
Washington lawyers that "we are encouraged by this first step, and hope the
Kuwaitis will be freed soon. The process of releasing innocent people has
begun."

There were approximately 598 inmates in Cuba before the four were flown on U.S.-
chartered planes to their homelands. The 30 additional detainees flown to Cuba
from the U.S. interrogation facility at Bagram brings the total number of
prisoners in Cuba to about 624. With the completion of 204 new cells in recent
days, the Guantanamo Bay compound can house a total of 816 inmates.

The last time new prisoners were flown into Guantanamo Bay was in early August,
when 34 men were delivered there. The largest increase came in June, when more
than 200 arrived.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


Tuesday, October 29, 2002; Page A15

DETAINEES AT BASE IN CUBA YIELD LITTLE VALUABLE INFORMATION
U.S. Officials Say Facility Is Losing Its Usefulness as Interrogations in
Afghanistan and Elsewhere Prove More Fruitful

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

Despite its notoriety in the U.S. war on terror, the detention facility at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is losing its usefulness as a place for gathering valuable
intelligence information, while interrogations at the U.S. military base in
Bagram, Afghanistan, and elsewhere abroad have proven more fruitful, U.S.
officials and other informed sources say.

With the vast majority of its inmates seized at least eight months ago, the U.S.
Navy prison camp has yielded limited information recently, sources said. In
contrast, CIA and U.S. military interrogations conducted at Bagram and elsewhere
have produced more useful intelligence, sources said.

Four Guantanamo Bay detainees were released Saturday, in part because they have
no valuable intelligence to provide, U.S. officials said yesterday. Authorities
also said they believe the three Afghanis and one Pakistani released have no use
in criminal prosecutions, are not dangerous and are not linked to terror groups.
Officials expect to release small numbers of additional detainees in weeks to
come.

Another 30 detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay yesterday, bringing its
population to about 625, officials said.

Although it is still seen as the possible site of any military tribunals that
might be held for top al Qaeda or Taliban personnel, Guantanamo Bay has evolved
into a long-term penal colony in the war on terror, a place where many detainees
may still be held indefinitely.

Almost all Guantanamo Bay detainees were interrogated dozens of times before
being flown to Cuba, and only a fraction of them began cooperating once they
arrived. In contrast, Bagram, far from the United States and with more of a
frontier atmosphere, is slowly replacing Guantanamo Bay as the site where timely
information is elicited from prisoners.

"Every few days we'll capture 15, interrogate 10, and get three or four to rat
out everybody else," a U.S. official said of operations in Afghanistan. "Then
using that information, we'll go find a new bunch of 15 or 20, and start over."
Much of the information military interrogators collect in Bagram concerns plots
by fighters for al Qaeda, the Taliban and allied warlords to attack U.S. forces
and the pro-American government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

"Gitmo is a dead end" for fresh intelligence information, a U.S. official said.

U.S. government officials said that newly captured al Qaeda operatives who may
yield intriguing information are being held by the CIA or military in Bagram, or
transported for questioning in countries such as Jordan, Egypt or Morocco. As
the Guantanamo prisoners' information becomes more out-of-date and officials
realize many of them had little intelligence value to begin with, many
interrogations there have become dreary exercises in going through the motions,
officials said. The questions, they said, become less focused and more general.

"Most of the detainees aren't being asked about al Qaeda anymore," a U.S.
official said. "They're asking them things like, 'Why do Muslims dislike America
in that part of the world?' "

Terrorism experts said U.S. officials fumbled a chance to constrict the
Guantanamo prisoners' environment -- and encourage cooperation -- by
constructing cells close together so the inmates can converse freely.

"That was a mistake because the detainees can see they're not alone in the
world," said Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Centre for the Study of
Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Prisoners who are isolated, such as CIA inmate Abu Zubaida, are much easier to
manipulate, he said.

Interrogators at the U.S. military facility in Bagram are sometimes able to use
more aggressive and creative tactics in questioning detainees than their
counterparts at Guantanamo Bay can employ, the sources said.

Although they stay within the U.S. military's rules for proper questioning,
interrogators in Afghanistan sometimes trick detainees into cooperating by
falsely hinting, for example, that intelligence agents from Egypt or Afghanistan
are interested in questioning them because the captives fear those nations'
security agencies, knowledgeable sources said. Other prisoners begin providing
information after an interrogator feigns losing his temper and starts shouting
or tossing chairs around the interrogation room, sources said.

Because Guantanamo is so close to the United States and is continually visited
by U.S. and foreign officials, informed sources said, the camp operates in more
of an atmosphere of "political correctness" than does the Bagram facility -- a
sense among interrogators that they must not allow detainees an opening to
complain of mistreatment.

One U.S. Army interrogation manual allows the use of "psychological ploys,
verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses," as well as
"simulated emotions or attitudes."

But it warns that "the interrogator must have an exceptional degree of self-
control to avoid displays of genuine anger." It also states that both military
rules and international law ban "the use of force, mental torture, threats,
insults or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment," as well as
brainwashing and drugs.

It could not be learned which interrogation tactics the CIA uses in questioning
the few highly placed al Qaeda operatives it controls, such as Abu Zubaida and
Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of helping plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
CIA officials, like their counterparts in other agencies, said the agency's
interrogations are conducted humanely and legally. The CIA interrogations,
conducted jointly with the FBI, are by far the most useful in unearthing
insights about future al Qaeda attacks, officials said.

The CIA has declined to say where it is interrogating its detainees, but other
U.S. officials say at least some sessions are conducted at a CIA-run detention
facility near the U.S. military jail at the Soviet air base in Bagram. One of
the detainees held by the CIA is Omar al- Farouq, a suspected al Qaeda operative
captured in Indonesia last June, who is now revealing many al Qaeda secrets.

A number of the Guantanamo inmates have proven helpful when U.S. officials pose
questions to them based on fresh intelligence from Abu Zubaida, Binalshibh and
other sources.

Authorities have asked some prisoners in Cuba and Afghanistan, and the CIA's
inmates, for their reading of recent terrorist attacks in Kuwait, and on a
French oil tanker off Yemen, as well as tapes purportedly made by Abu Zubaida
and Osama bin Laden. The inmates told questioners that the tapes and attacks
suggest al Qaeda is instructing far-flung sympathizers to ratchet up attacks on
Americans, U.S. officials said.

Every few days U.S. forces capture groups of suspected al Qaeda or Taliban
fighters, and interrogators at Bagram go to work. They operate under the same
rules that govern Guantanamo interrogations, and generally employ the same
tactics, but sometimes with more vigor.

The prisoners, who come straight from the battlefield and are subject to stories
of their captors' evil intentions, "sometimes think we're going to cut out their
livers." Thus, interrogators can take the initiative early in the questioning
without displaying any aggressiveness, a military officer said.

One particularly talkative prisoner there is Omar Khadr, who at 16 is one of the
youngest prisoners in U.S. custody. U.S. officials allege that on July 27 he
killed a U.S. Special Forces medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer, during a four-hour,
house-to-house battle in the village of Ayub Kheyl. The wounded youth was
captured, taken to Bagram, treated for his wounds and interrogated.

"He's singing like a bird," a U.S. official said. Among other things, the
official said, Khadr, who used to live with his family in Ottawa, is providing
information about the activities of his father, Ahmad Sa'id Khadr. Last year the
U.S. government designated the elder Khadr a terrorist and top al Qaeda
financing operative. The Canadian government has asked U.S. officials to take
into account the youth's age in deciding the terms of his confinement.

Another detainee in Bagram who has provided valuable information is a former
Iraqi military officer who feared his life was in danger there and fled to
Afghanistan. He is giving interrogators details of Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's security agencies and military infrastructure in and around Baghdad,
sources said.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 29, 2002; 12:01 PM

FORMER GUANTANAMO PRISONERS SAY THEY WEREN'T TORTURED

By Pamela Constable, Washington Post Foreign Service

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 29-- Looking weary and bewildered, three Afghan
prisoners released after nearly one year's detention at U.S. military base in
Guantanamo, Cuba, said today they were not mistreated during their long
confinement but were exhausted from the long trip home.

Two of the freed men were elderly Afghans with white beards and Muslim
skullcaps; one was toothless, used a cane and asked for his medicine as soldiers
hustled him from a military hospital room into a police van here this morning.
The third, a younger man, was wearing stiff iron wrist manacles.

"We were not tortured. ... We were not unhappy," said one of the elderly men,
who gave his name as Hajji Faiz Mohammed and claimed to be 105 years old. "The
Americans treated me well, but they were not Muslims, so I didn't like them."

The three Afghans, who arrived here today after a four-day trip from Cuba, were
freed along with one Pakistani man in the first release of long-term prisoners
from U.S. custody in Guantanamo since the fall of the Taliban last November. One
mentally ill Afghan was sent home in May.

U.S. officials in Washington and Kabul said the four were released because they
no longer represented a threat to U.S. security, were not going to be prosecuted
for any crime and could provide no further useful information to authorities.
They also said medical considerations had been taken into account.

There was no explanation from U.S. officials as to why the Afghans and the
Pakistani had been held for at least 10 months. Another 625 detainees of various
nationalities remain at Guantanamo, according to U.S. officials, who said some
may be released if they meet the same criteria.

Faiz Mohammed, speaking briefly in Afghanistan's Pashto language to a crowd of
journalists in his cramped hospital room this morning, said he had not been a
supporter of the Taliban or al Qaeda, but had been detained mistakenly by U.S.
and Afghan troops late last year while visiting a village in his native Oruzgun
province.

"I was shouting and angry, and I cried when they put me in chains," he said.
"The Americans took me away in a car, but I didn't know my sin." But he also
said he believes Americans are infidels and enemies of Islam.

A second released prisoner, Jan Mohammed, 35, said he had been forcibly
conscripted into the Taliban army last fall and was arrested by Afghan troops
during fighting in northern Kunduz province. He said Afghan militia leaders
first imprisoned him and then turned him over to U.S. forces, claiming falsely
that he was a "high-ranking Taliban."

"I don't know anything," he told journalists today, describing himself as a
farmer from Helmand province. "The questions the Americans asked me are the same
ones you are asking: Why was I arrested, was I in the Taliban."

The third Afghan prisoner, an elderly man from Paktia province named Mohammed
Sidiq, did not speak with journalists.

The men described their confinement at Guantanamo as boring but not inhumane.
They said they were allowed to bathe and change clothes once a week and were
given copies of the Koran to read. Faiz Mohammed said the food was good, but he
complained that there was no okra or eggplant.

Jan Mohammed said he had seen numerous high-level Taliban officials among the
detainee population at Guantanamo, including Mohammed Zaeef, the former Taliban
ambassador to Pakistan, and several other senior Islamic clerics. He also said
he saw as many as 200 Arab prisoners and about 50 Pakistanis, as well as a few
Australians and British.

The three men were flown from Cuba to Bagram air base, a U.S. military facility
north of Kabul, where they were handed over to Afghan authorities Monday under
the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

That night they were taken to Kabul's military hospital for medical
examinations, and today they were transferred by police van to the Interior
Ministry, where officials described them as temporary "guests" and said they
would probably be released Wednesday to go home.

"We do not know if they were unresponsible or a little responsible" for Taliban
activities, Interior Minister Taj Mohammed Wardak said tonight, adding that U.S.
officials had merely informed Afghan authorities the three would be arriving.
"We don't want to bother them. They are our guests."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 29, 2002; Page A16

JUDGES WARY OF INTERFERENCE IN HAMDI CASE
U.S. Appeals Panel Uneasy About Judicial Review of Military Wartime Decisions

By Tom Jackman, Washington Post Staff Writer

RICHMOND, Oct. 28 -- Federal appeals judges hearing the case of military
detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi expressed serious reservations today about letting the
judiciary review military decisions about prisoners captured in wartime.

The three-judge panel, hearing its third appeal from the U.S. government in the
case, issued no ruling on whether a federal judge in Norfolk was entitled to
more information about the case. But the judges' comments reflected a continuing
reluctance to involve the federal judiciary in the matter.

"I'm worried about wading in over my head," said Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson
III, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

Hamdi has been held incommunicado for nearly a year, after being captured by
Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan and turned over to the U.S. military.
Though he was raised in Saudi Arabia, he revealed to investigators in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, that he had been born in Louisiana, which would make him him a U.S.
citizen. The military transferred him to a naval brig in Norfolk, and the
federal public defender, expecting that a case similar to John Walker Lindh's
was impending, made efforts to visit him.

A federal district judge in Norfolk granted the request twice, but each time the
government obtained a stay from the appeals court here. When the government
provided a two-page declaration explaining why the military believed Hamdi to be
an illegal enemy combatant, not entitled to a lawyer or the rights accorded
prisoners of war, the Norfolk judge demanded more information. The government
appealed again, causing today's hearing.

"With the document requests and the production requirements . . . I would think
the burdens on the military would be considerable, litigating a capture that
occurred halfway around the world," Wilkinson said.

Judge William B. Traxler added, "You would have judges making credibility
decisions on actions taken during a war and overseeing decisions made by the
military."

After U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar originally granted access to Hamdi,
the same three-judge panel that heard today's argument instructed Doumar to give
greater deference to the executive branch's decision-making in a time of war.
Specifically, the appeals court told Doumar to revisit the two-page declaration
filed by Defense Department Special Adviser Michael Mobbs and said there was
"little indication . . . that the court gave proper weight to national security
concerns."

The Mobbs declaration said Hamdi traveled to Afghanistan in July or August 2001,
joined a Taliban military unit and received weapons training. In late 2001,
Hamdi's unit surrendered to the Northern Alliance, then battling the Taliban for
control of Afghanistan. Mobbs said Hamdi was carrying a rifle and acknowledged
wanting to fight for the Taliban.

In an August hearing, and then in a 15-page order, Doumar said the Mobbs
declaration was vague about Hamdi's actions and about who made the decision to
classify him an enemy combatant, or even who Michael Mobbs is.

"To accept the Mobbs Declaration," Doumar wrote, "would in effect be abdicating
any semblance of the most minimal level of judicial review."

Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement told the appellate judges, "I think
it's important to give discretion to the executive branch, to handle detainees
as it sees fit." He said it doesn't matter if a captured person is American, and
"it is possible for the United States to handle an individual seized in the
United States as an enemy combatant."

Enemy combatants are entitled to some protections under the Geneva Convention.
But last year President Bush declared those fighting for the Taliban and al
Qaeda to be illegal enemy combatants, entitled to neither constitutional nor
international protections, Clement said.

Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender from Alexandria, said he just
wants Hamdi to be able to view the Mobbs declaration, and say whether it is
true. "Nobody knows what his version of the facts might be," Dunham said.

Wilkinson worried that giving a prisoner access to a lawyer would shut down any
information the prisoner might provide about the enemy. "That means the only way
the U.S. is going to get intelligence out of a detainee is through plea
negotiations or a grant of immunity," Wilkinson said.

The appellate judges also expressed concern with Doumar's instruction that the
government provide him with Hamdi's statements, the screening criteria used to
determine enemy combatant status, the names of the interviewers and other secret
information. In requiring the government to turn over sensitive statements, even
for a judge's review only, "I'm really concerned about the kind of precedent
that [Doumar] order sets," Wilkinson said.

Dunham noted that the process of challenging enemy combatant status would be
available only to U.S. citizens.

Appellate Judge William W. Wilkins Jr. said that if an enemy combatant were
granted a lawyer and a right to challenge his status, the lawyer would want a
full-blown hearing. And since the prisoner probably wouldn't testify, Wilkins
said, the government could prove its case only by "deposing soldiers or bringing
them to court. Doesn't that just move the battlefield right into the courtroom?"

Dunham responded: "Our freedoms, they don't come cheap. They come with a lot of
inconvenience." He suggested that the prisoner be allowed to respond to the
declaration, that the unresolved issues be framed and that testimony then be
taken with deference given to the military version of events.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 23, 2002; Page A02

U.S. TO FREE 7 HELD IN CUBA
Pakistani Detainees Are Not Terrorists, Officials Say

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

The U.S. military is planning to release seven Pakistanis being held at the
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison within the next few days, having concluded that
they are not terrorists and have no value for intelligence purposes, government
officials said yesterday.

The move would be the first release of a significant number of detainees since
the U.S. Navy jail began housing them in January.

The anticipated release follows weeks of discussions between officials of the
United States and Pakistan, which has been a close American ally in the war on
terrorism. It is possible that citizens of other allied nations might also be
freed from Guantanamo Bay soon, particularly some from Kuwait, knowledgeable
sources said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently signed off on the release,
government officials said, and he announced the decision at a news briefing at
the Pentagon yesterday.

"There are some people likely to come out the other end of the chute," Rumsfeld
said, without specifying which countries' citizens would be let go. "I know what
we've decided -- that we were willing to turn them back. Whether the other
countries would set them free, they may have a process they have to go through."

The decision follows 10 months of outcry from human rights groups and some
foreign governments about the indefinite detention without charges of hundreds
of unidentified people apprehended abroad in the U.S. war on terror. Some
advocates have also protested the conditions under which the detainees are being
held and have said the inmates should either be charged criminally or released.

Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have said for months that they plan to release
detainees who are deemed not to be dangerous.

Mahnaz Ispahani, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New
York-based think tank, said it appears to be no accident that the first releases
are of Pakistanis.

Especially with a U.S. attack on Iraq looming, President Pervez Musharraf "is
under ever greater pressure to show his relationship with the U.S. is producing
something," Ispahani said. "He desperately needs signs from the U.S. targeted at
the religious parties that he can deliver."

Only two prisoners, so far, have been removed from Guantanamo Bay -- where the
United States is holding 598 people from 42 nations -- and both were under
special circumstances. One was found to be suffering from acute mental illness
and was flown back to Afghanistan for hospitalization. The other, a Saudi
student named Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured after an uprising at an Afghan
prison last autumn, was taken to a Navy brig in Norfolk in April after U.S.
officials discovered that he was born in the United States.

Earlier this year, under pressure from their allies in the Pakistani government,
U.S. officials released from American jails two large groups of Pakistani
citizens -- one of 140 people and another of 133 -- who had been imprisoned for
months on immigration and other charges after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

It was unclear yesterday whether Pakistani officials plan to set free the seven
people scheduled for release from Guantanamo Bay or to keep them in custody for
further investigation in their country. People close to the negotiations said it
is likely at least some will be freed because that gesture would be welcomed by
many in Pakistan who are angered by Musharraf's close ties with Washington.

The latest talks between the two countries began in August, when a delegation of
Pakistani security officials visited Guantanamo Bay to interview the inmates.
The group also met with top State Department, military and CIA officials in
Washington, and it passed on its views that at least some of the Pakistani
prisoners had had no involvement with terrorism before their capture last year.

"The message [from the Pakistani delegation] was some of them may have been
misguided idiots, but they're not dangerous," said one person familiar with the
talks. "There was some understanding, some commitment in principle [between U.S.
and Pakistani officials] that there's no need to hold them."

Rumsfeld said the decision to release the inmates was reached in stages -- first
by concluding that they are not valuable as intelligence sources about al Qaeda,
then concluding that they can't help in any criminal prosecutions, and finally
that they will not take part in any future terrorist attacks.

"If you don't want them for intelligence, and you don't want them for law
enforcement, and you don't need to keep them off the street, then let's be rid
of them," Rumsfeld said.

News of a possible release surfaced first in USA Today in September, and then
earlier this month in Pakistani newspapers. The USA Today article quoted a
secret Pakistani intelligence report as saying that "the U.S. authorities have
agreed that most of the Pakistanis are innocent and they were at the wrong place
at the wrong time . . . . [U.S. officials] have agreed to release [the] first
lot of minimum 10 as soon as possible."

But last week, when an administration official was asked about an anticipated
release of Pakistani detainees, he replied: "[It's] not going to happen.''

Newspapers in the Arab world have also reported for months that U.S. authorities
were on the brink of releasing nine of the 12 Kuwaitis being held at Guantanamo
Bay.

The families of the 12 Kuwaitis have told reporters that high-ranking Kuwaiti
security officials returning from a trip to Cuba and Washington reported that
U.S. officials had agreed that most were innocent. According to the families,
the Kuwaiti officials said CIA Director George J. Tenet agreed to press
President Bush to release nine of the 12.

But U.S. and Kuwaiti officials said in interviews that Tenet had not said that.

Kuwaiti government officials said that after investigations in their country,
and interviews in Guantanamo, they had concluded that nine detainees were likely
engaged in charitable work in Afghanistan unrelated to terrorism. Kuwaiti
officials have lingering suspicions about three of the 12, they said.

"We're not upset with the U.S.," said Salem Abdullah Jabr Sabah, Kuwait's
ambassador to the United States. "But we're concerned maybe there are innocent
people in jail, so let's put them on trial" in either the United States or
Kuwait.

U.S. lawyers for the 12 Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo Bay, as well as several
Britons and Australians, are appealing their cases to a federal appeals court in
Washington, where they will be argued in December. In July, U.S. District Judge
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled here that they had no constitutional rights to
judicial hearings because they are being held outside the country.

Meanwhile, Najeeb Nauimi, a Qatari lawyer who represents about 80 of the
families, said he is preparing to sue the U.S. and Cuban governments in a Cuban
court in a novel attempt to force a judge to hold hearings into the fairness of
the detentions. U.S. judges have ruled that they have no jurisdiction over
Guantanamo Bay, in part because the Navy base is on Cuban land leased by the
United States.

International legal experts give Nauimi little chance of success because Cuban
officials previously said they will not interfere with operations at the base.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 16, 2002; Page A01

RUMSFELD'S STYLE, GOALS STRAIN TIES IN PENTAGON
'Transformation' Effort Spawns Issues of Control

By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writers

When Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold was preparing earlier this year to leave
his position as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his boss,
Gen. Richard B. Myers, nominated an Air Force officer to succeed him.

But when Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld that Lt. Gen. Ronald E. Keys would be the next director of
operations, or "J-3," one of the most important jobs in the U.S. military, he
got a rude surprise. Not so fast, said Rumsfeld, who in a sharp departure from
previous practice personally interviews all nominees for three-star and four-
star positions in the military. Give me someone else, Rumsfeld told Myers after
twice interviewing Keys.

Myers complied and came up with a selection more to Rumsfeld's liking, Air Force
Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, ending a long-standing practice of the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs naming his own top subordinates.

Senior military officers now recount Keys's demise to illustrate a pronounced
civilian-military divide at the Pentagon under Rumsfeld's leadership. Numerous
officers complain bitterly that their best advice is being disregarded by
someone who has spent most of the last 25 years away from the military. Rumsfeld
first served as secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977, in the Ford
administration.

Indeed, nearly two dozen current and former top officers and civilian officials
said in interviews that there is a huge discrepancy between the outside
perception of Rumsfeld -- the crisp, no-nonsense defense secretary who became a
media star through his briefings on the Afghan war -- and the way he is seen
inside the Pentagon. Many senior officers on the Joint Staff and in all branches
of the military describe Rumsfeld as frequently abusive and indecisive, trusting
only a tiny circle of close advisers, seemingly eager to slap down officers with
decades of distinguished service. The unhappiness is so pervasive that all three
service secretaries are said to be deeply frustrated by a lack of autonomy and
contemplating leaving by the end of the year.

Rumsfeld declined to be interviewed for this article.

His disputes with parts of the top brass involve style, the conduct of military
operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and sharply different views about how
and whether to "transform" today's armed forces. But what the fights boil down
to is civilian control of a defense establishment that Rumsfeld is said to
believe had become too independent and risk-averse during eight years under
President Bill Clinton.

What makes this more than a bureaucratic dispute, however, is that it is
influencing the Pentagon's internal debate over a possible invasion of Iraq,
with some officers questioning whether their concerns about the dangers of urban
warfare and other aspects of a potential conflict are being sufficiently weighed
-- or dismissed as typical military risk aversion.

The dispute also promises to have a huge impact in the coming year over the fate
of hugely expensive weapons systems, with Stephen A. Cambone, a top Rumsfeld
deputy, now recommending more than $10 billion in savings by cutting or delaying
the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter, the Navy's next generation aircraft
carrier, and three Army programs, the Comanche reconnaissance helicopter, the
Stryker wheeled combat vehicle and the Future Combat System.

These tensions were straining relations between the uniformed military and
Rumsfeld prior to Sept. 11, 2001, but were partially submerged by the Afghan war
and other counterattacks on terrorism. They have now reemerged as the Pentagon
plans for a possible war in the Persian Gulf and for a fiscal 2004 budget that
is in danger of being swamped by war costs and long-deferred expenditures on
modernization, new weapons and Rumsfeld's desire to transform the military into
a 21st-century force.

"There is a nearly universal feeling among the officer corps that the inner
circle is closed, not tolerant of ideas it doesn't already share, and determined
to impose its ideas, regardless of military doubts," said Loren B. Thompson, a
defense analyst at the Lexington Institute who has close ties to defense
contractors and the military.

"All of the bad blood of last year is coming back in a very big way," said one
former Pentagon official.

All three service secretaries were recruited from private industry to bring
"best business practices" to the Pentagon and promised autonomy in making
management reforms. But all three find their actions constrained by Rumsfeld and
what is referred to as his small "palace guard," according to Pentagon insiders.

Air Force Secretary James Roche has felt he lacked input on decisions about the
service's centerpiece program, the F-22, senior officers and defense contractors
say. Navy Secretary Gordon England has expressed an interest in a top job at the
proposed Department of Homeland Security, and Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a
former executive at Enron Corp., has been tarnished by the Enron scandal, his
failure to promptly divest his Enron holdings, and a controversy over his use of
Army aircraft for personal business.

Presiding over a Pentagon thick with tension is an ironic position for an
administration that came to office promising to show new respect for the
military. In Congress and elsewhere in Washington, some now are questioning
whether the military feels free to give its best advice to the administration --
or whether that advice is being welcomed.

"I've heard repeatedly about the lack of trust between the secretary and the
uniformed officers," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed
Services Committee and a former Army officer who commanded an infantry company
in the 82nd Airborne Division. "That, I think is a problem," particularly, he
added, with the administration contemplating an invasion of Iraq.

"If there is an atmosphere where contrary views aren't well received, you may
move into an operation that isn't well-advised," a three-star officer warned.

Myers, in an interview, denied that he or any other senior officers feel
constrained in speaking their mind to Rumsfeld or raising objections about
pending military operations. "It has never been easier to express our opinion,
our thoughts, with any secretary," Myers said. "There is ample opportunity, in
fact, encouragement, to present other views and disagree. . . . I think it's
very, very healthy."

Victoria Clarke, Rumsfeld's spokeswoman, cited a series of "spectacular
accomplishments" at the Pentagon -- a new defense strategy, a nuclear posture
review, a restructured missile defense program, far more realistic budgeting
procedures, and an ambitious agenda for "transforming" the military -- and said
they simply could not have happened without close civilian-military relations.

"It's extraordinary that those things got done, in the face of amazing
resistance to change, at the same time we were prosecuting the war on
terrorism," Clarke said, adding that Rumsfeld "not only welcomes, but
encourages, dissent."

RUMSFELD'S REVOLUTION

While issues of great substance lie at the heart of Rumsfeld's

unsettled relationship with the military, discussion of the current environment
at the Pentagon invariably begins with assessments of the defense secretary's
powerful personal style.

Even Rumsfeld's detractors admit he is a man of considerable energy and
intellect who is pushing the right issues and raising many of the right
questions at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld, 70, is universally praised for his handling
of the war in Afghanistan, where he and other members of the Bush Cabinet
insisted on a bold plan for toppling the Taliban and driving al Qaeda out of the
country.

What appears at times to be indecisiveness on Rumsfeld's part, according to one
senior officer, stems from his deep personal involvement in operational
planning. "The guy wants to see [a plan] at the 30 percent level, and the 60
percent level, so it's become a very iterative process, and it's been hard for
the bureaucracy to adjust to that," the officer said. "It's good in the sense
that the man is talented and has tremendous insight into the political process.
The only time it's bad is having" to make decisions rapidly in the context of
ongoing operations.

But the result, said one White House aide, is that "it's hard to get decisions
out of the Pentagon, because he doesn't delegate."

It has become a truism in national security circles that Rumsfeld has been a
better secretary of war than secretary of defense. Rumsfeld has two dominant
priorities. The first is reshaping the U.S. military from a heavy, industrial-
age force designed in the Cold War to an agile, information-age force capable of
defeating more elusive adversaries anywhere on the globe.

Rumsfeld's second priority, about which he has been less open, is reasserting
civilian control over a military establishment that had grown autonomous -- and,
many believe, too cautious -- during the Clinton years. Indeed, Rumsfeld has
pushed throughout the war on terrorism for bolder plans from the military. Under
his stewardship, war planning has become far more effective and imaginative,
said a former official who otherwise is critical of Rumsfeld.

"This guy really is trying to get [the Pentagon] to work for him," said one
former defense official. "I don't think he's chosen the right path. But it's not
a question of him being the devil and everyone else is a misunderstood angel."

If Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon in January 2001 predisposed to see senior
military officers as dull and uncreative, as many believe, he has since shown a
willingness to reassess their capability. Officers, even those unhappy with
Rumsfeld's approach, say relations between his office and the uniformed branches
have improved as both sides have come to better understand how to interact,
thanks in part to the crucible of the war in Afghanistan.

"Rumsfeld has changed over time. He's still cantankerous, but he's not
necessarily as combative as he was at one point in time," one three-star officer
said. "There is more mutual respect."

Others are far more pessimistic. "Things are more fouled up [at the Pentagon]
than I've ever seen them," said one former defense official sympathetic to
Rumsfeld.

"The depth of disaffection is really quite striking," added one defense
consultant. "I think Rumsfeld is courting a rebellion."

Two other people who have dealt with Rumsfeld said there is still a glass bowl
in the secretary's office. Rumsfeld likes to tell people that if he says
anything nice about anyone, a coin is put in the bowl. Rumsfeld likes to point
out that the bowl is almost always empty. It puzzles some generals that he would
take pride in such a hard-line approach.

"It is," said one, "a heck of a way to run an organization."

JOINT STAFF IN THE CROSS HAIRS

Rumsfeld's primary objective in reasserting civilian control over the

Pentagon has been in reining in a Joint Staff that the defense secretary,
according to associates, believed had become too powerful and independent of
civilian control, with officers acting at times as though they were not
subordinate to their civilian bosses.

The Joint Staff, an umbrella organization that draws from all four services,
consists of about 1,200 officers and other personnel and plays a critical role
in overseeing the daily activities of the U.S. military around the world. The
staff works for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Rumsfeld has made
it clear that, in his Pentagon, the chairman works for him.

Since Rumsfeld's first tour as defense secretary in the mid-1970s, the Joint
Staff has grown enormously in power and capability. During the Ford
administration, it was something of a backwater where the services placed
officers considered second-rate. But after the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act
greatly empowered the chairman, making him the formal leader of the Joint Chiefs
and explicitly the principal military adviser to the president, the staff began
getting the best the services had to offer, in part because that law barred
officers lacking "Joint" time from becoming top generals or admirals.

Rumsfeld, say people who have dealt with him over the last two years, saw the
Joint Staff as sometimes unresponsive to civilian leadership, even asserting its
own policy positions at interagency meetings. He wasn't alone in that feeling,
recalled one officer at the Pentagon, who said that Joint Staff officers
sometimes seemed to have the attitude that "the suits don't need to know this,
they stay in our lane, we stay in ours."

Under Rumsfeld, the civilians are no longer cut out.

Rumsfeld, early on, tried to gain control over the key position of director of
the Joint Staff, the person who helps determine the daily agenda of the U.S.
military leadership. When his move to oust the incumbent met opposition, he
backed down. But he succeeded in making the point that the defense secretary
would be intimately involved in deciding who filled the top positions. And he
prevailed when it came time this year to pick a new J-3 to replace Gen. Newbold,
who had told colleagues he found the job deeply frustrating partly because of
Rumsfeld's constant bypassing of the Joint Staff.

Rumsfeld made it clear that he did not feel Keys, the general first nominated by
Myers to succeed Newbold, was suited for the job. One three-star officer said
Rumsfeld considered Keys unimaginative, while a four-star officer said the
defense secretary considered Keys arrogant.

"He has been relentless and aggressive in putting these guys in their place,"
concluded one former Pentagon official. Myers also has come in for criticism
from other generals who think he has failed to stand up to Rumsfeld, and some
point to the Keys nomination to make their case.

"In the Rumsfeld Pentagon, the chairman works as staff to the secretary of
defense," the former official added.

Myers said he has heard such complaints but that he finds them voiced by
officers who do not understand the closeness of the relationships that exist
between him and Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Marine
Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

"I think the relationship between the Joint Staff and the Office of the
Secretary of Defense staff is really very good and very close, and also has
matured over time," Myers said. "If I didn't feel like I had my say to my boss
and had an opportunity to be influential, I wouldn't be here."

At the moment, Rumsfeld is working to strip the Joint Staff of a series of its
offices -- legislative liaison, legal counsel and public affairs. These have
given the military leadership a degree of autonomy by providing it direct
pipelines to Congress, to other parts of the government and to the media.

Clarke, Rumsfeld's spokeswoman, denied Rumsfeld has singled out the Joint Staff
in an attempt to diminish its power. "The secretary thinks the entire
department, civilian and military, was lethargic, bureaucratic, not fully
addressing the dramatically changed world in which we find ourselves," she said.
"And he has appropriately lit fires under everybody and said, 'Ladies and
gentlemen, the stakes around here are very high.' And some people respond well
to that and some people don't."

THE ARMY IN OPPOSITION

The biggest battle facing Rumsfeld is with the Army, the nation's

largest military service, which effectively has gone into opposition against the
secretary of defense.

The Army, for institutional and historical reasons, is the most skeptical of the
services of Rumsfeld's drive to move the military into the information age.
Rumsfeld has complained that the Army is too resistant to change, while Army
officers claim the defense secretary does not sufficiently appreciate the value
of large, armored conventional ground forces.

"Does he really hate the Army?" asked one Army officer, obviously pained by the
question. "I don't know."

The relationship, never close, hit the rocks when Rumsfeld let it be known in
April that he had decided to name Gen. John M. Keane, the Army's vice chief of
staff, as its next chief, 15 months before its current chief, Gen. Eric K.
Shinseki, was scheduled to retire. This immediately made Shinseki a lame duck
and undercut his ambitious "transformation" agenda, which he had set forth in
late 1999.

"I do feel that this secretaryship has been very hard on this chief and has
undermined his ability to bring about the kind of transformation that Shinseki
envisioned," said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee. "Clearly there's a need for
some repairing of relations between the department and the Army."

Next, Rumsfeld killed the Army's new mobile howitzer system, the Crusader, on
grounds that it was too heavy to deploy to distant battlefields and not
"transformational" enough to be relevant on the future battlefield.

Army leaders had coveted Crusader for years as a weapon system that would
finally make the Army second to none in artillery firepower. They were
particularly steamed at how Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz killed the system, keeping
the Army in the dark about what was happening until Congress was ready to vote
on the fiscal 2003 budget.

In recent weeks, another dispute has arisen, with officials in Rumsfeld's office
expressing concerns about the effectiveness of the new Stryker wheeled combat
vehicle designed to replace the tank in the latest Army fighting unit called the
Interim Brigade Combat Team. Cambone, Rumsfeld's closest aide, has proposed
cutting in half the Army's plan to field six of these combat teams, saving $4.5
billion in Stryker procurement.

The Interim Brigade Combat Team is Shinseki's bridge between the heavy Army of
the Cold War and the Army of the future. But Cambone is also zeroing in on two
programs at the heart of that future Army, or Objective Force, proposing a 50
percent cut in the Army's Comanche helicopter and a two-year delay in fielding
its Future Combat System.

But Rumsfeld's office, aided by former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who
is close to Rumsfeld and deeply interested in how to reform the Army, is now
questioning whether Stryker measures up.

"The mood is so morose these days" in the Army, concluded a retired general.

Already on edge, Army generals were dismayed when some Republican defense
experts suggested that invading Iraq would be easy. And on top of everything
else, the Army now is trying to figure out how it would supply tens of thousands
of troops to keep the peace in Iraq should President Saddam Hussein be ousted in
a U.S. invasion.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


October 11, 2002; Page A29

JFK AIDES SAY BUSH IS WRONG ON CRISIS

By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service

HAVANA, Oct. 10 -- Two top advisers to President John F. Kennedy said President
Bush is misreading history when he cites Kennedy's actions in the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis to justify a preemptive military strike against Iraq.

"I would flunk him in history," said Arthur Schlesinger Jr., one of several
Kennedy administration figures who are here to join President Fidel Castro and
key former Soviet officials at a three-day conference marking the 40th
anniversary of what is often called the world's closest brush with nuclear war.

In an address Monday, Bush cited a speech by Kennedy during the October 1962
crisis over the Soviet Union's installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Bush
portrayed it as an endorsement of the idea of attacking potentially lethal
enemies even if they have not attacked first.

"It's taken totally out of context," said Theodore Sorensen, who wrote the words
Bush cited and is also here in the Cuban capital. "It was not intended to
justify a preemptive strike, because JFK had specifically ruled out a preemptive
strike."

Schlesinger and Sorensen, both of whom voiced opposition to a preemptive attack
against Iraq, said that Kennedy never endorsed a first-strike policy at any time
during the crisis and was, as Schlesinger said, "determined to exhaust all
peaceful remedies before resorting to military action."

"I think the whole shift from containment and deterrence, which is why we won
the Cold War, to preventive war is most alarming," Schlesinger said. "That's the
doctrine invoked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. FDR called that a day that
will live in infamy, and the Bush doctrine is perpetuating that infamy."

The missile crisis conference, which begins Friday, has been organized by the
Cuban government and the National Security Archive, a research organization at
George Washington University that specializes in the declassification of foreign
policy documents.

"This couldn't be more important or more timely in focusing the national and
international debate over U.S. intentions toward Iraq," said Peter Kornbluh, who
runs the archive's Cuba project. "There is no doubt that the conference will
hold lessons for President Bush's doctrine of preemptive strikes."

Thousands of previously top-secret U.S., Soviet and Cuban government and
military documents have been declassified in recent years, adding enormously to
historians' understanding of the Cold War crisis.

Among the documents to be discussed is a detailed chronology of the crisis,
compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence organizations
and declassified by President Clinton on the last day of his presidency. The 58-
page document, to be released by the National Security Archive at the
conference, provides new details about another issue that has been hotly debated
since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: intelligence failure.

The document details how U.S. intelligence underestimated the Soviet Union's
intention to station offensive weapons in Cuba as late as August 1962, even
after Soviet ships carrying equipment and personnel to Cuba had been detected.

The conference is also intended to dispel many popular myths about the historic
showdown between Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Nikita Krushchev, Kornbluh said.
Many, including Schlesinger and Robert F. Kennedy, have portrayed President
Kennedy's actions as a model of carefully controlled crisis management that
systematically defused the situation.

But documents declassified in Washington, Moscow, Havana and other capitals in
recent years have provided a more nuanced reading of history. Many people,
including Robert S. McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense during the missile
crisis and the highest- ranking former U.S. official at the conference, now say
the crisis was not solved as neatly as had been previously believed.

"I now conclude that, however astutely the crisis may have been managed, luck
also played a significant role in the avoidance of nuclear war by a hair's
breadth," McNamara wrote in a statement to be released here on Friday.

McNamara would not comment directly on Bush's policy on Iraq, but he said
tonight that Kennedy's strategy in 1962 "was not preemption. It was the reverse
of preemption."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

October 5, 2002; Page A12

U.S. SAYS COURTS HAVE NO SAY IN COMBATANT CASE

The federal government yesterday renewed arguments that military detainee Yaser
Esam Hamdi is not entitled to a lawyer and that only the executive branch can
determine who is an enemy combatant.

The argument came in a 64-page brief filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Richmond. Hamdi is a Saudi national captured in Afghanistan in
November. He was moved from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Navy brig in Norfolk when
investigators learned he was born in Louisiana.

Hamdi's father has been fighting to get a lawyer to see Hamdi, and a federal
judge in Norfolk has twice authorized such a visit. But the appeals court stayed
both visits. U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar ruled in August that a two-
page Defense Department declaration was insufficient evidence that Hamdi is an
enemy combatant.

The Justice Department cited the separation-of-powers doctrine, arguing that the
judiciary "lacks institutional competence" in determining whether a prisoner is
an enemy combatant. The brief said that enemy combatants, even if they are
American, are not entitled to counsel under the laws of war.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


September 6, 2002

AN AMERICAN JUSTICE
Free-Spoken Judge Challenges the White House Over 'Combatant' Rights

By Richard Leiby, Washington Post Staff Writer

NORFOLK -- Federal judge Robert G. Doumar has one word for the Bush
administration's argument that an American citizen, captured in Afghanistan and
confined in a Navy brig here, doesn't have the right to see a lawyer:

"Idiotic."

Okay, maybe one more word:

"Mind-boggling."

His dulcet drawl accented by irritation, Doumar lobbed those adjectives from the
bench while presiding over the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, 21, a Saudi Arabian and
accidental American. Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge when his father, a Saudi oil
executive, worked there. He left as a toddler, and as a Saudi university student
he answered the call to jihad by allegedly carrying a Kalashnikov rifle with the
Taliban last fall.

The Pentagon, deeming Hamdi an "enemy combatant," wants to keep him locked up
indefinitely with no charges and no right to due process. The Justice Department
says Hamdi has been lawfully detained in the war against terrorism. Refusing to
become what he called "little more than a rubber stamp" for the executive
branch, Doumar says the whole procedure smacks of the Star Chamber, a secret
court convened by English kings.

It's become a constitutional drama of historic proportions, playing this summer
in the stately, Depression-era courthouse here: All the President's Men take on
Senior U.S. District Judge Doumar.

"I never dreamed that at 72 I'd be in the limelight," says the silver-haired
jurist, welcoming a reporter to his chambers for an interview the other day. He
sheds his robe to reveal wide, colorful suspenders. His black eyebrows scissor
expressively as he recollects a 50-year legal career, beginning when he
prosecuted and defended soldiers in Korea as an Army lawyer.

Doumar, appointed to the bench in 1981 by President Reagan, would not discuss
the Hamdi matter, which appears destined for the Supreme Court. But it turns out
that the detainee and the judge have something in common: Both are of Arabic
descent.

Doumar's father, who immigrated to America in 1901, was Syrian. His Lebanese
mother came later in an arranged marriage. Both were Arabic-speaking Christians.
Both became U.S. citizens. The family-owned eatery, Doumar's, still thrives
here, an oasis of Americana featuring curb service, homemade barbecue and
handmade ice cream cones.

The family even lays claim to inventing the ice cream cone.

"My father was so adamant about us being Americans that it was ridiculous,"
Judge Doumar says, explaining his family's rapid assimilation. He is sensitive
to any suggestion that his ancestry could somehow color his interpretation of
the law.

"It doesn't have anything to do with it," he says. "I'm just doing my job."

The judge spelled out his mission in a ruling in the Hamdi case last month. "We
must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us," he wrote. "We must
preserve the rights afforded to us by our Constitution."

Yaser Hamdi may not appreciate it, but his name is now attached to a test case
about what it means to be an American.

Learning 'to Ride'

"Nut cone, all the way down!" "Barbecue upstairs, to ride!" "Shoot one all the
way down!"

The food and drink orders are flying at Doumar's on Monticello Avenue when the
judge strolls up to the counter after a day of hearing drug cases, still wearing
his courthouse photo ID.

"Let's get a Diet [Coke] all the way down," he says, lapsing into the lingo he
learned as a teenager, jerking sodas and waiting tables here in the 1940s.

"All the way down" signals an order at the far end of the counter; "to ride"
means food bagged and delivered by waitresses to customers waiting in their cars
under canopies.

Doumar's father, George, presides approvingly from an oil portrait hung above
the manager's office. Little has changed since the place opened in 1934.

"What I really want you to do is taste one of those cones," Doumar tells a
visitor. He gestures to an ancient contraption parked in front of the
restaurant.

"This is the original cooker. It's still the same machine," he says proudly.
"Can you imagine, 1905 technology."

The cone cooker is fired up every morning by Doumar's oldest brother, Albert,
who bakes cones at a rate of four a minute from a "secret recipe." To him, this
machine is good evidence that Uncle Abraham, a Syrian immigrant, invented an
all-American treat.

Dressed in Arab garb, Abe Doumar peddled souvenirs at the 1904 World's Fair in
St. Louis, including glass paperweights filled with water --  ostensibly from
the River Jordan. That's when he came up with the idea of placing a scoop of ice
cream into a folded waffle for his customers.

"He was always looking for a new item to sell in his souvenir stands," says
Albert Doumar, 80. "That's how he got into the ice cream cone."

The family submitted documentation of its claim to the Smithsonian, but isn't
the only contender. "There were 40 ice cream stands in the World's Fair and all
of them claim they invented the ice cream cone," Albert concedes.

Of course Judge Doumar believes in the family legend. But just as important, to
him, is consistency: After nearly a century, those cones still taste exactly the
same, he says.

He admires what endures. Certain things you don't tamper with.

Holding Court

"Nothing shakes him, he just goes his own way, he calls 'em as he sees 'em,"
says one of Doumar's close friends, former congressman Bill Whitehurst. "He's
great copy. What you see is what you get."

The judge is widely known here for his common-man sensibilities and pungent
remarks from the bench. "Perpetually irascible," a local columnist recently
called him.

In a ruling this summer he slammed corporate officers as greedy "vultures" for
stealing the invention of two business students. Fourteen years ago, Doumar
sentenced a Pepsi bottling company to probation, then a novel idea. He sent
price-fixing executives to prison, quoting the Lord Chancellor of England: "'You
cannot expect a corporation to have a conscience when it has no soul to be
damned and no body to be kicked.' Obviously, Allegheny Bottling did not have a
conscience."

He also is notorious for questioning witnesses himself when he feels lawyers are
trying to obscure the truth. He fumes when they fail to ask obvious questions.

Beats the heart of a frustrated trial attorney beneath those robes?

"Maybe," he confesses with a chuckle. But he says it's his proper role to help
ferret out evidence for the jury.

"Where justice is demanded, one must get into the fray," says Doumar, balling
his fists for emphasis. "Otherwise, we will watch an injustice being committed.
. . . I will participate, and probably will continue to do so, where I feel a
great injustice has occurred."

Challenging Mobbs Rule

Doumar beetled his brow in disbelief last month as he grilled government
attorneys about the "sparse facts" they presented to justify holding Hamdi
incommunicado.

Last fall, Hamdi was captured by anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces under
circumstances similar to those of John Walker Lindh, the jihadi from California
who enjoyed full constitutional rights in the same Virginia federal district.
Unlike Lindh, Hamdi was sent to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other
foreigners. But then U.S. authorities discovered he had been born in Louisiana
and shipped him to Norfolk.

Both the federal public defender and Hamdi's father petitioned Doumar earlier
this year for a hearing. In August, the old Army lawyer marched back into the
fray, picking apart a two-page, nine- paragraph document prepared by a Defense
Department official as evidence that Hamdi fought with the Taliban.

"Due process requires something other than a basic assertion by someone named
Mobbs," the judge said, referring the declaration from Michael H. Mobbs, who
identified himself as "a special adviser to the Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy . . . involved with detainee operations since mid-February 2002."

"Who is this Michael Mobbs?" Doumar asked. A commissioned officer?

The document doesn't say, answered the government's lawyer.

"Is there anything in here that says Hamdi shot anyone?" Doumar pressed.

No, your honor.

The Mobbs declaration didn't even pinpoint the date of Hamdi's capture. "I don't
know of any battle this man engaged in, I don't know of any weapon he ever
fired, I don't know of anything he did, other than to be present with a Taliban
unit, according to them," the judge said.

Nor did the statement indicate how long the alleged Taliban volunteer might be
held without access to counsel.

"How long does it take to question a man?" Doumar wondered. "A year? Two years?
Ten years? A lifetime? How long?"

"The present detention is lawful," the government lawyer said.

"If they sat him in boiling oil," Doumar asked, "would that be lawful?"

Boiling oil: Good copy indeed.

Confident of President Bush's authority to designate enemy combatants and
prosecute the war without interference from the judiciary, the government has
taken its case to the appeals court. It recently reversed Doumar for prematurely
trying to give Hamdi a public defender:

"There is little indication in the order (or elsewhere in the record for that
matter) that the court gave proper weight to national security concerns," Chief
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in a unanimous decision by the three-judge
appellate panel. "The authority to capture those who take up arms against
America belongs to the commander in chief."

Speaking generally about reversals, Doumar adopts a honeyed, non-defensive tone.
"I don't expect people to agree with me at all times," he says. "But I still
think in each instance I've done justice."

Bringing Up Bobby

The Doumar name derives from "some Frenchman who got loose in the Near East,"
the judge likes to say. His parents came from prominent, interrelated Syrian and
Lebanese families, and many in the clan emigrated to America around the turn of
the century.

"There was a great exodus in those years," says Albert Doumar. Future ice cream
pioneer Abraham arrived in 1895 and beckoned others to make the third-class
crossing in steerage for $25.

The family sold cones from Coney Island to Florida, erecting wooden stands at
bathing beaches, including southern Virginia's old Ocean View Park. Those booths
were swept away in the hurricane of 1933, but by then the Doumars had
established a foothold in Norfolk, where the future federal judge was born.

Bobby Doumar, youngest of three brothers, says his parents spoke English to
speed their children's assimilation. He attended Catholic schools. Their father
stocked the family library with Shakespeare and other great books.

The family ate tabbouleh, hummus and kibbe, a national dish of lamb, pine nuts
and cracked wheat. Bobby doesn't recall hearing Arabic at home, but Albert can
still summon a few phrases including a salaam aleikum: "Peace be upon you."

While his older brothers fought in World War II, Bobby worked at Doumar's. After
graduating from the University of Virginia's law school in 1953, he went into
the Army as a first lieutenant. The Korean War was essentially finished, but he
worked "court martial after court martial" for nearly two years.

"I was defending a lot of MPs who were shooting Koreans who were stealing," he
recalls, "and a lot of people who just went berserk. . . . Every once in a while
they'd start shooting up each other."

Back home he defended "run of the mill" criminals and stirred juries with a
closing argument he calls his "Fourth of July speech," invoking God, country and
reasonable doubt.

In the '50s, backwoods bootleggers were still making whiskey and dodging
Treasury agents. Doumar recalls taking on one such case for $100 because he
wanted to work in federal court. "The regular bootlegger lawyer charged $500."

Doumar formed his own firm and became a community fixture, the kind of guy who
delivered fundraising gum-ball machines for the Junior Chamber of Commerce. In
1962 he married a grade school teacher, Dorothy Mundy, and they had three sons,
one of whom died.

He ran, unsuccessfully, as a Republican for the House of Delegates in 1959 and
1961. He also lost a state Senate bid in 1967. "I couldn't beat my way out of a
wet paper bag," he admits today.

But he picked a winner when he talked history professor Bill Whitehurst, a
political novice, into running for Congress in 1968 as a Republican in Norfolk's
heavily Democratic 2nd District. They shocked even themselves, reclaiming the
seat for the GOP for the first time in 36 years.

"He was a masterful political strategist," says Albert Teich Jr., a friend who
worked on the campaign. Voters returned Whitehurst to Washington for eight more
terms before he retired.

As a delegate to three Republican national conventions, Doumar met California
Gov. Ronald Reagan, with whom he shared a skepticism about government and an
admiration for individual rights. After Reagan won the White House, Sen. John
Warner (R- Va.), a law school classmate, sponsored Doumar for the bench.

Still, when Doumar picked up the phone in his office late one afternoon in 1981,
he assumed it was just another practical joke engineered by his friend Wayne
Lustig, who liked to mimic voices.

"This is Ronald Reagan," announced the folksy man on the line.

"Lustig, will you cut that crap out!" Doumar huffed in annoyance.

The president chuckled. "Who is Lustig?"

Doumar fumbled to explain, realizing it really was Reagan.

"He took it in really good humor," the judge recalls, still looking relieved.

American Justice

From his august, wood-paneled office, Doumar enjoys a view of the
Trailways/Greyhound bus station across the street and a big sign for Bob's Gun &
Tackle Shop. He's semi-retired now, only accepting cases as he chooses.

"The government's getting their money's worth," he says, alluding to the long
hours he puts in. His young clerks from last year, now in private practice, are
bringing home better salaries than his, he says.

But: "It's a fabulous job, intellectually stimulating," Doumar says. "Why would
I want to sit back and retire?"

Reflecting on his life, he often talks like a lottery winner. He's always been
lucky, he says. "I'm one of the luckiest people on God's Earth."

Pluck, discipline and toil all have something to do with his success. It also
didn't hurt that he was born in the land of opportunity instead of Damascus.

"We are Americans," his father always said. All these years later, the judge
also remembers an adage his father used to explain the American way.

In the old country, he'd say, an enemy will kick you when you're down. But here,
the victor will extend a hand and help you get back up --  so you can both keep
on fighting.

That way it's fair.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


September 2, 2002

DEBATE CRYSTALLIZES ON WAR, RIGHTS
Courts Struggle Over Fighting Terror vs. Defending Liberties

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer

As they tend to do in times of national crisis, on Sept. 11 Americans looked to
the person the Constitution designates as commander-in-chief. And President Bush
responded -- with aggressive and often unilateral executive action.

Without seeking formal approval from either Congress or the courts, the Bush
administration has taken steps to establish military trials for foreign terror
suspects, designated two U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" who may be held
indefinitely without being charged, and ordered secret deportation hearings for
suspected terrorists. In these and other cases, the president and his aides say
his office gives him the authority he needs to fight al Qaeda.

"The enemy has declared war on us," Bush said on Nov. 29. "And we must not let
foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself."

Yet, as the initial shock of Sept. 11 receded, criticism -- and even
condemnation -- of Bush's approach by civil liberties groups, members of
Congress, the courts and the media emerged. He stands accused of usurping powers
not conferred upon him by the Constitution and of infringing upon individual
freedoms.

Perhaps the toughest rebuke came last week, when a Cincinnati- based federal
appeals court said the administration's arguments for secret deportation
hearings were "undemocratic" and "in complete opposition to the society
envisioned by the Framers of our Constitution."

The result is that, a year after the bloodiest foreign attack ever on U.S.
territory, the administration and the country are engaged not only in a
seemingly open-ended struggle against terrorism but also in a searching debate
over democratic values -- a political and legal argument that seems headed for
the Supreme Court. The basic question is as old as the Constitution itself: How
can Americans defeat a grave external menace without undercutting the very
democracy they are trying to save?

"Asking questions [of the executive] is not being un-American," said Sen.
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who has taken issue with some of the administration
initiatives. "It's saying that no one person knows everything or has all the
right answers."

"We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the way 9/11 affects our civil
liberties comes not from the government's response but from the danger caused by
terrorists in the first place," counters William P. Barr, who served as attorney
general in the first Bush administration and has advised the current one on
terrorism-related legal issues.

Checks and Balances

The framers of the Constitution guaranteed basic rights and contemplated that
government could suspend at least one of them, the writ of habeas corpus, in an
emergency. Constitutional scholars note that the framers wanted checks and
balances, but also saw a strong presidency as a bulwark of national security.

Making the case for ratification of the Constitution in 1788, Alexander Hamilton
wrote that "energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of
good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against
foreign attacks." Hamilton listed the advantages of a strong executive:
"Decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch."

In this sense, legal analysts say, Bush's aggressive claims of authority are
within the constitutional tradition and akin to the actions of past wartime
presidents.

Though some of his actions, such as using force in Afghanistan or eavesdropping
on suspected terrorists' cell phones and e-mail in the United States, have been
authorized by Congress, and others, such as denying access to U.S. courts for
detainees at Guantanamo, Cuba, have been upheld by courts, the Bush
administration seems to prefer acting on its own.

This preference held sway not only with respect to military commissions, alleged
enemy combatants and closed-door deportation hearings, but also in detaining
hundreds of mostly Arab and Muslim men under near-secret conditions, and
decreeing that Justice Department officials may eavesdrop on some conversations
between terror suspects and their attorneys.

Although opposition to the Bush administration's approach may be spreading --
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's proposal to enlist meter readers and truck
drivers as anti-terrorism informants met with outrage not only from Democrats in
Congress but also from such Republicans as House Majority Leader Richard K.
Armey (Tex.) -- opinion polls show it is not yet a majority sentiment.

In a Gallup-CNN-USA Today poll in June, 11 percent of those surveyed thought the
Bush administration had gone too far in restricting civil liberties, 50 percent
said it has been about right and 25 percent said it hasn't gone far enough.

Even many of Bush's critics acknowledge he has not tried to regiment U.S.
society as some wartime predecessors did. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln
suspended habeas corpus without an act of Congress and detained thousands of
suspected rebel sympathizers. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson prosecuted
anti-war activists and banned anti-war publications from the mails. Franklin D.
Roosevelt interned tens of thousands of Japanese Americans.

"By the standards of current law, some of the things Bush has done are
aggressive, but they are not out of line -- and they're pretty cautious by
historical standards," said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at
the University of Chicago.

Sunstein said that, to many people, the relevant comparison is not between what
Bush has done and what Lincoln or FDR did; it is how Bush's actions measure up
to modern concepts of constitutional rights, which are, by most measures, far
more expansive than they were even as recently as World War II.

More Expansive Rights

Legal racial segregation is gone, and the Supreme Court has

enshrined the rights of criminal defendants to a degree that would have been
unimaginable in FDR's day. Past wartime emergency measures, especially the
treatment of Japanese Americans, have been recorded in collective memory as
terrible excesses. And the country has been through Vietnam, Watergate and a
series of FBI and CIA scandals that rendered the media and much of the public
instinctively skeptical of executive power.

In this new, more democratic, political and legal context, civil libertarians
argue, Bush struck the wrong balance between national security and individual
liberty.

"So many of the efforts undertaken by the government are either not necessary or
the tradeoff is wrong, " said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the
American Civil Liberties Union. "The public will have greater confidence in the
workings of government if Congress and the courts engage. . . . This is not the
executive branch's war on terrorism. This is the American government's war on
terrorism."

Romero argued that the most effective check on executive power now may come from
the news media and "civil society," the same amalgamation of nongovernmental
groups that helped bring about the last half-century's expansion of individual
rights .

Indeed, after the intense debate over military commissions, which, as outlined
by Bush on Nov. 13, included no clear presumption of innocence for defendants
and might have allowed the death penalty on less than a unanimous vote, the
administration appeared to backpedal. It chose to prosecute one captured terror
suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, in a civilian court, and in January, the Defense
Department issued regulations that met most of the civil libertarians'
objections.

The eclipse, for now, of the military commissions, Romero said, "is a sign of
our success."

Still, sources close to Bush administration deliberations on the issue suggest
that the commissions are likely to be used in the future. "The commissions are
something you use at the end of the war," after all al Qaeda detainees have been
fully interrogated, an administration official said.

In recent weeks some federal courts have begun to weigh in against the
administration. Last week's appeals court ruling came after five district judges
had ruled against aspects of the president's anti- terror campaign.

Bush is facing particularly stiff resistance to his assertion that the executive
branch may designate certain U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants," and hold them
indefinitely, without charging them with a crime or permitting them access to an
attorney.

Two such detainees are being held at a Navy brig in South Carolina: Yasser Esam
Hamdi, who was born in the United States of Saudi parents, was captured in
Afghanistan; Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican who converted to
militant Islam after a career as a petty criminal, was arrested by the FBI in
Chicago's O'Hare airport on suspicion that he was part of an al Qaeda plot to
use a radiological bomb in the United States.

The courts should have no role in reviewing these designations, administration
lawyers have argued, because they are inherently military decisions, which the
executive branch is uniquely qualified -- and empowered by the Constitution --
to make.

In terms of asserting executive authority, that claim "is possibly the most
incautious thing Bush has done," said Sunstein, the constitutional law
professor. During still-unsettled litigation over Hamdi's bid for a writ of
habeas corpus, a federal district judge in Virginia, Robert G. Doumar, an
appointee of President Ronald Reagan, has ordered that Hamdi get access to an
attorney, and said that the administration cannot hold him unless it lays out
more of its evidence for the court.

The Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit overruled Doumar's
order granting Hamdi a lawyer, but even that usually conservative court balked
at the the administration's demand that the courts have no role in such cases,
calling the argument "a sweeping proposition."

Doumar's ruling that the government should reveal more evidence is being
reviewed by the 4th Circuit, and the case seems headed to the Supreme Court,
legal analysts said.

For all the resistance some lower courts may put up, the Supreme Court has
historically deferred to the executive branch in times of war.

"Whether or not government tries to preclude judicial review of its actions, at
least with respect to people being held in the U.S., the courts are going to
pass on the validity of detention," predicted Lloyd N. Cutler, who was White
House counsel in the Carter and Clinton administrations, "even though the courts
may end up upholding what the executive and congressional branches have done."

Debate Takes Shape

Though the debate remains unresolved, its terms have crystallized in

the last 12 months.

Those who are skeptical of the administration's approach tend to see the threat
posed by al Qaeda as more criminal than military, a menace that, for all the
death and destruction of Sept. 11, is not inherently different from previous
terrorist groups, and not on a par with those posed by the Confederacy or
Imperial Japan.

"Where they may make a mistake is talking about these terrorist events, terrible
as they were, as if they were the equivalent of World War II," Leahy said.

Thus, the skeptics argue, it can be fought largely with the conventional tools
of civilian law enforcement, wielded by an executive branch overseen and
constrained by the courts and Congress -- especially since the indefinite
duration of the war could mean restrictions on liberty, once in place, could be
perpetuated forever.

"The sacrifice of checks and balances has to be weighed not as a temporary
expedient," said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard
University, "but assessed as a proposed permanent change."

Supporters of the administration's approach, by contrast, tend to see al Qaeda
as a uniquely dangerous conspiracy whose suicidal members are bent on exploiting
the openness of U.S. society to infiltrate and destroy it, perhaps using weapons
of mass destruction.

"I'm not sure the detention of a couple of American citizens as POWs is that
earth-shattering," Barr said. "I'd make the argument that what seems different
is the unprecedented nature of this threat."

In this view, it is foolhardy to fight back with conventional measures - - and
the indeterminate duration of the struggle is a reason to concentrate power in
the executive now, to avoid having to ask for it when it may be too late.

"We'd rather be safe than sorry," said an administration official. "The
administration didn't want to be in the position of conceding power we may need
five years from now, because we don't know what the war will be like five years
from now."

Both sides in the debate can cite history and legal doctrine, but each also
relies on instinct and ideology.

"I don't think it's appropriate to take an absolute position pro or con secrecy
or openness. . . . The most important point is that notions of civil liberties
are flexible and bend to differing assessments of danger," said Richard A.
Posner, a judge on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.
"It's a gut-level thing -- no one knows exactly what the danger is. And there is
no real measure of what the cost is in personal liberty."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

August 22, 2002; Page B02

JUDGE ALLOWS APPEAL OF 'COMBATANT' ORDER
Decision Could Speed Case to High Court

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge in Norfolk yesterday allowed the government to appeal his order
seeking more information to determine whether an American-born man reportedly
captured with the Taliban is an illegal enemy combatant.

If the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agrees to decide the issue, it could
end the case quickly and set the stage for its advancement to the Supreme Court.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia, was captured in
Afghanistan last November. He has not been charged and is being held in the Navy
brig in Norfolk as an "enemy combatant" without access to a lawyer.

His father asked a judge to allow Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. to
see Hamdi, and U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar granted the request. But the
4th Circuit intervened and stopped the visit.

Prosecutors argued that the executive branch has labeled Hamdi an unlawful enemy
combatant and that the courts should not interfere with military actions during
wartime. To support their determination, the Defense Department filed a two-page
declaration by special adviser Michael H. Mobbs explaining Hamdi's capture. The
appeals court told Doumar to examine the declaration to see whether it provided
satisfactory justification for labeling Hamdi an enemy combatant.

Doumar ruled last week that the declaration was insufficient and requested more
information. Prosecutors said the information would compromise national security
and asked Doumar to allow an appeal. Yesterday, Doumar wrote a 10-page order
reluctantly granting the appeal.

The determination of Hamdi's status is a controlling factor in the case because
the appeals court has found that if Hamdi was appropriately labeled an enemy
combatant, his detention is legal. Adjudicating Hamdi's status "necessarily
implicates the broader question of the degree of deference due to the
Executive's determination," Doumar wrote.

"If the Mobbs declaration is sufficient proof of Hamdi's status as an enemy
combatant," Doumar concluded, "then the Court of Appeals has indicated that
further judicial review of his current detention is foreclosed."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 20, 2002; Page A12

Editorial--

HALF RIGHT ON MR. HAMDI

FEDERAL district judge Robert Doumar was correct on Friday to rule that a two-
page declaration filed by the government is inadequate as a basis to imprison --
indefinitely, without charge or access to counsel -- Yaser Esam Hamdi, who is
likely an American citizen. Mr. Hamdi is American-born, Saudi-raised and
currently being held in a Navy brig as a Taliban fighter. The government
initially argued that the courts had no power to review its determination that
he is an "enemy combatant." Now it is contending that Judge Doumar should
consult no more than a brief statement by a Defense Department official named
Michael Mobbs, in which the government sets out a cursory account of Mr. Hamdi's
actions. We have no reason to doubt the government's factual claims. But for a
judge to allow a detention on such a meager showing would be to forswear any
meaningful review.

But having correctly determined that he needed more information, Judge Doumar
then ordered up the wrong information. The judge reinstated an earlier demand
that the government turn over for his private review notes from interviews with
Mr. Hamdi, lists of people who interrogated him, copies of statements by members
of the Northern Alliance regarding the circumstances of his surrender to that
armed force, and similarly sensitive material. The idea is to assess the claims
of the Mobbs declaration against the primary source materials on which it was
based. But this from-scratch review of the government's designation hardly seems
the sort of deference to which the military's judgment is entitled under the
law. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, in an earlier appeal in this case,
insisted that the judiciary should not be in the position of micromanaging the
executive branch's conduct of a war. Judge Doumar's demand for this material
creates the very situation the appeals court aimed to avert.

More fundamentally, Judge Doumar's procedure does not address the core civil
liberties problem here: the absence of any opportunity for the accused to defend
himself. Although the government is contesting the order, suppose that it
supplied the material Judge Doumar has requested, and that this secret evidence
satisfied him that the Mobbs declaration was factually accurate and that Mr.
Hamdi was indeed an enemy fighter subject to detention. Would Judge Doumar then
declare the detention lawful without even knowing whether Mr. Hamdi contests the
basic facts? There has to be some stopgap against a great misunderstanding.
Judge Doumar's approach seems to leave none.

The lack of deference and the potential unfairness of the judge's procedure
could both be ameliorated if Judge Doumar simply heard from Mr. Hamdi. Judge
Doumar has twice ordered that Mr. Hamdi be allowed to meet with his attorney,
and he has been reversed both times -- so he may be skittish about trying again.
But access to counsel now is critical for any reasonable adjudication of the
case. And it is certainly less intrusive at this stage than would be the judge's
broad-ranging review of military documents. After all, if Mr. Hamdi admits to
the truth of the Mobbs declaration, there will be no need to check its accuracy.
If he contests aspects of it, the court's factual inquiry could be narrowed to
points in dispute. The idea here is to craft a process that ensures basic
fairness while hampering the military minimally. The fundamental principle
remains: The accused has a right to be heard.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 20, 2002; Page A02

U.S. ASKS FOR PERMISSION TO APPEAL RULING ON 'COMBATANT' DECLARATION

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Justice Department yesterday asked a federal judge in Norfolk to allow an
appeals court to decide whether the government will have to turn over "national
security-sensitive" information about Yaser Esam Hamdi.

Hamdi, a Saudi national born in Louisiana, was captured in Afghanistan in
November and is being held in a Navy brig in Norfolk. The government last month
provided U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar with a two-page declaration by
Defense Department special adviser Michael H. Mobbs explaining why Hamdi meets
the criteria of an unlawful enemy combatant, but Doumar ruled last week that the
declaration was insufficient. He demanded more documentation by tomorrow about
Hamdi's statements, his captivity and the criteria used to classify him.

The government yesterday asked Doumar to stay his request and allow the
government to appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, to
determine whether the Mobbs declaration is sufficient. When a federal civil suit
is pending, a party must obtain permission from the judge to appeal key issues.
Hamdi is being denied access to a lawyer, and his father is asking Doumar to
allow a federal public defender to see his son.

The motion by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence R. Leonard states that Doumar's
request "presents an important legal question regarding the proper role for
courts in reviewing the Executive [Branch's] determinations of enemy-combatant
status during wartime." The case is being closely watched as a test of the
government's ability to hold combatants in its war on terror.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 17, 2002; Page A09

JUDGE DEMANDS MORE FACTS ON 'COMBATANT'

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge in Norfolk renewed his order yesterday that the government
provide him with more information about the capture and detention of Yaser Esam
Hamdi, saying a two- page declaration was insufficient to determine whether he
should be held indefinitely without access to a lawyer.

Hamdi, 21, was captured in Afghanistan in November and taken with other
prisoners to the U.S. holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When Hamdi said
he was born in Louisiana, he was declared an "enemy combatant" and moved to
Norfolk, where he remains incommunicado in the Navy brig.

Hamdi's father and the federal public defender have sought access to him, but
the government has said he must be held without visitors for national security
reasons.

His case has resulted in a bitter standoff between U.S. District Judge Robert G.
Doumar and the government over the military's enemy combatant determination and
the rights of such prisoners.

Doumar's order yesterday described the situation as "the first in American
jurisprudence where an American citizen has been held incommunicado and
subjected to an indefinite detention in the continental United States without
charges, without any findings by a military tribunal, and without access to a
lawyer."

Doumar said the government's proof that Hamdi was an unlawful enemy combatant --
a two-page declaration by Defense Department special adviser Michael H. Mobbs --
"leads to more questions than it answers." He assailed the declaration, saying
it contained "sparse facts" that required further information. The government
declined to provide similar information when the judge requested it last month.

"We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find
objectionable," Doumar wrote.

Hamdi, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, has not been charged with a crime. His
father said in a letter to Congress, now in the court record, that Hamdi was a
relief worker in Afghanistan, not a Taliban soldier.

Doumar twice granted Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. access to
Hamdi, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond prevented those
meetings. The appeals court ruled that Doumar needed to reconsider his decision
with deference to the executive branch's ability to wage war. The court told
Doumar to conduct a "meaningful judicial review" of how the military decided to
label Hamdi.

Lawful enemy combatants are treated as prisoners of war, subject to Geneva
Convention rules. Unlawful combatants have fewer rights. Previously, they had to
be declared unlawful by a military tribunal. But the government argues that
President Bush already has declared all Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers unlawful.

To assist Doumar, the government provided Mobbs's nine- paragraph declaration.
It said that Hamdi affiliated with a Taliban military unit and that his unit
surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in late 2001. Mobbs said Hamdi had
acknowledged entering Afghanistan to train and fight with the Taliban. A U.S.
military screening team determined that Hamdi met the criteria for enemy
combatants, Mobbs wrote.

On July 31, Doumar asked for more information. He sought copies of all Hamdi's
statements, notes on his activities in Afghanistan and his participation in the
Taliban military, a list of his interrogators and the names of U.S. officials
who made determinations about Hamdi. The government allowed a deadline to pass
without providing those. Days later, the appeals court said Doumar should first
determine whether the Mobbs declaration was sufficient.

Doumar said it was not. "There is nothing to indicate why he is treated
differently than all the other captured Taliban," Doumar wrote. "Indeed, a close
inspection of the declaration reveals that Mr. Mobbs never claims that Hamdi was
fighting for the Taliban."

In addition to renewing his July 31 order, Doumar asked for the screening
criteria used to determine Hamdi's status. All information would be reviewed
secretly by Doumar, and he set a Wednesday deadline for the government.

"If the Court were to accept the Mobbs Declaration as sufficient justification
for detaining Hamdi," Doumar wrote, "this Court would be acting as little more
than a rubber stamp."

The Justice Department said in a statement that it was reviewing Doumar's order.
"The Supreme Court has unanimously held that it is lawful to detain enemy
combatants in a time of war, even those who claim U.S. citizenship," spokeswoman
Barbara Comstock said.

Dunham said, "I think the judge has properly identified the problems with the
Mobbs declaration and why nobody should be imprisoned indefinitely on something
like that."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 14, 2002; Page A10

JUDGE SKEWERS U.S. CURBS ON DETAINEE

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

NORFOLK, Aug. 13 -- Line by line, a federal judge today dissected the
government's reasoning for holding Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig
here and indicated that he didn't think prosecutors provided enough facts for
him to decide whether Hamdi should have access to a lawyer.

U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said he would soon rule on a request by
Hamdi's father to allow a federal public defender to visit Hamdi, who was
captured in Afghanistan with Taliban forces in November, taken to Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, with other prisoners, then moved here when he told authorities that
he was born in the United States. The government has declared Hamdi an "unlawful
enemy combatant," entitled to neither constitutional protections nor
international prisoner of war status.

Doumar sparred repeatedly with the government's lawyer over why Hamdi was an
enemy combatant and what exactly that meant, saying the government appeared to
be trying to place unprecedented restrictions on a prisoner's rights.

"I tried valiantly to find a case of any kind, in any court, where a lawyer
couldn't meet" with a client, Doumar said. "This case sets the most interesting
precedent in relation to that which has ever existed in Anglo-American
jurisprudence since the days of the Star Chamber," a reference to English kings'
secret court from the 1400s to the 1600s.

Doumar twice has granted requests to visit Hamdi, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in Richmond twice intervened and prevented the visits. Last month,
the appeals court instructed Doumar to revisit the case with greater
consideration to national security and the executive branch's constitutional
right to wage war.

The government then filed a two-page declaration of facts, by Defense Department
special adviser Michael H. Mobbs, explaining how Hamdi was determined to be an
enemy combatant. When Doumar asked the government for additional information,
prosecutors declined. The 4th Circuit told Doumar last week to consider first
whether the Mobbs declaration was sufficient to decide whether the government
had good reason to label Hamdi an enemy combatant.

Doumar began the hearing by saying he would focus exclusively on the Mobbs
declaration. But, he added, "If I rely on this, then I must pick it apart. And
if you gave me the information, then all of this could have been avoided."

For the next hour, he proceeded to pepper Assistant Solicitor General Gregory G.
Garre with questions both momentous and minimal: Who is Mobbs? he wondered, and
what qualified him to be a "special adviser"?

Garre said Mobbs was an undersecretary of defense, substantially involved with
detainee issues.

"My secretary's familiar with the Hamdi case," the judge said. "Should she
decide? She's a special adviser."

Doumar noted that the declaration doesn't say how long Hamdi would need to be
detained and for what purpose: "How long does it take to question a man?" the
judge asked. "A year? Two years? Ten years? A lifetime?"

Garre said he couldn't answer that now "any better than we could 11 months after
Pearl Harbor."

Garre declined to take the judge's bait, frequently referring Doumar to the
government's pleadings or the 4th Circuit's rulings. "I tell you, it's hard to
get an answer out of you," the judge told Garre at one point.

In a typical exchange, Doumar asked: "Can the military do anything they want
with him, without a tribunal?"

"The present detention is lawful," Garre said.

Doumar asked again, "What restraints are there?" Garre said Hamdi had asked to
speak to diplomats from Saudi Arabia, where he was raised.

"Can I beg you to answer my question?" Doumar then said. "If the military sat
him in boiling oil, would that be lawful?" Garre said he didn't think anyone had
suggested that.

Doumar said it seemed too easy to call someone an unlawful combatant and use it
to arrest someone indefinitely: "If the man next door to you is an unlawful
combatant, maybe Mr. Mobbs could say you're an enemy combatant."

Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. pointed out that Mobbs's declaration
doesn't use the words "unlawful enemy combatant." Garre said Mobbs was merely
providing the factual foundation and that the military had made the decision.
"The reason why the courts have a limited role is, under our constitutional
system, the executive [branch] is the branch which is in the best position to
make the military determination," Garre said.

Doumar confirmed with Garre that the government would provide no more
information beyond the Mobbs declaration, which he said had "certain omissions
that seem substantial," such as specifics about Hamdi's battle experience and
why he was brought to Norfolk. "If that is sufficient standing alone," the judge
said, "to put him in a cell without windows for six months or 10 months or four
months or whatever it is, then so be it. I have some real doubts about that."

If Doumar determines that the Mobbs declaration isn't enough for him to make a
decision, he could again order the government to turn over its interrogators'
notes on Hamdi, its records of his movements and his chronology of custody.

"I have no desire to have an enemy combatant get out of any status," Doumar
said. "However, I do think that due process requires something other than a
basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers and
therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just think of
the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?"

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 11, 2002; Page B06

Editorial--

WHY MR. HAMDI MATTERS

Considering what is known about Yaser Esam Hamdi, it is easy to lose sight of
why his case is so important. The government claims that Mr. Hamdi -- the
Louisiana-born, Saudi-raised and likely American citizen who is currently being
held indefinitely without charge or access to counsel in a military brig in
Norfolk -- is an enemy combatant. He was, the government says, captured when the
Taliban unit to which he was attached surrendered to the Northern Alliance, and
he has allegedly admitted to government investigators that he went to
Afghanistan to train with and, if necessary, fight for the Taliban. His father's
claim, made in a letter last week to members of Congress, that his son went as a
relief worker is being greeted with skepticism. Mr. Hamdi is, in short, hardly a
sympathetic character. Many Americans will be tempted to conclude that if people
like him cannot be locked up easily, there must be some problem with the rules.

A remarkable story in Thursday's Wall Street Journal shows why this instinct may
be wrong and why it is essential that the government be required to justify
persuasively "enemy combatant" designations. The White House, the Journal
reported, has become dismayed by the legal circus of the Zacarias Moussaoui
trial and the strong defense put forth for John Walker Lindh. In reaction, it
has determined that, rather than pursue civilian trials, the government should
-- assuming it prevails in the Hamdi and Jose Padilla cases - - use enemy
combatant detentions instead. A wing of a navy brig in Goose Creek, S.C., where
Mr. Padilla -- held in connection with an alleged dirty bomb plot -- now
resides, is available for Americans subject to military detentions. And a high-
level committee -- composed of the attorney general, the defense secretary and
the CIA director -- is being contemplated to decide which American citizens
should be locked up with no rights. The White House did not respond to our
requests for clarification Friday, nor did it comment upon the accuracy of the
Journal's story.

The government is right to worry about the chaos the Moussaoui trial has
produced, which has been both dangerous and embarrassing. And few doubt that the
military has the authority to detain enemy combatants -- a long-standing feature
of the laws of war. But the idea of using enemy combatant designations of
citizens as a relatively routine means of handling terrorism cases is appalling.
A cardinal protection of liberty in this country is the requirement that the
government justify deprivations of freedom. Yet the emerging hallmark of the
enemy combatant cases is the unwillingness of the government to do precisely
that. In Mr. Hamdi's case, the Justice Department initially argued that its
designation was unreviewable by any court. Even now, after an appeals court cast
doubt on that position, the government contends that the courts should not look
beyond the sketchiest of evidentiary statements it has offered in justifying its
view of Mr. Hamdi. Creating a regime under which these detentions would be a
norm, rather than an extraordinary exception, would be extremely dangerous.

For this reason, it is critical that judges remember how the doctrine they are
creating could be used against people other than the ones whose cases they are
currently seeing. The government's case against Mr. Hamdi may be solid. But if
it is allowed to detain him without some procedure that requires a persuasive
showing, it will create a rule that allows Americans to be exempted from the
protections of the Bill of Rights on the strength of a two-page statement the
government condescends to present in court. A goodly number of people in this
country have controversial political beliefs or associate with people who might
turn out to be terrorists. Whatever process is used to lock up Americans must be
capable of distinguishing such people from actual terrorists and soldiers in the
war against America.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 9, 2002; Page A02

FATHER SAYS 'COMBATANT' WAS DOING RELIEF WORK

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

Yaser Esam Hamdi was not a Taliban soldier when he was captured in November, but
was in Afghanistan doing relief work and should not be held as an enemy
combatant by the United States, his father said in a letter to Congress released
yesterday.

Hamdi, who is at the center of a civil liberties debate, has spent eight months
in prison without access to his family or a lawyer. He has not been charged and
may be an American citizen. After he was picked up in Afghanistan, he was
shipped to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other prisoners, then moved to the Navy
brig in Norfolk when he revealed he was born in Louisiana.

The government alleges that Hamdi was captured with Taliban forces and
acknowledged to Army officials he was fighting on behalf of the now-fallen
government. The government has declared him an enemy combatant, not entitled to
the constitutional rights of Americans or the international rights of prisoners
of war. Hamdi's parents are Saudis, and he was raised in Saudi Arabia.

His father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, aided by Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham
Jr., has filed a motion in federal court in Norfolk seeking access to his son.
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar initially granted the request, but the
government appealed. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay, then
told Doumar to reconsider, giving deference to the executive branch's
constitutional right to conduct war.

Yesterday, the 4th Circuit officially remanded the case to Doumar, ordering him
to proceed in the "least drastic" way possible. The appeals court told Doumar
that he needed to consider existing evidence before ordering the government to
produce new materials. The ruling is significant because Doumar had ordered
prosecutors to turn over notes and documents about Hamdi's captivity, but the
government declined, saying it already had provided a factual declaration
explaining Hamdi's status.

Meanwhile, the elder Hamdi sent a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary
committees, dated Aug. 5, that said his son "was caught up in a local dragnet of
non-Afghans in Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan in November 2001."

He said Yaser Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge while the father was working there
for Exxon. More recently, Hamdi wrote, "Yaser left our home in Saudi Arabia for
Pakistan and then Afghanistan on July 15, 2001, to do relief work in those
countries."

The letter says that Yaser Hamdi was in Pakistan and Afghanistan "less than two
months prior to September 11, which is not enough time to receive any military
training, so how can he be considered an enemy combatant?"

The government argued in a declaration filed last month that two months was
plenty of time to become a soldier. Michael H. Mobbs, a special adviser to the
Defense Department, wrote that Hamdi traveled to Afghanistan in July or August
2001, "affiliated with a Taliban military unit and received weapons training."

Hamdi's Taliban unit surrendered to Northern Alliance forces, and Hamdi handed
over a Kalashnikov rifle, Mobbs wrote.

Hamdi's father said he was writing to Congress for "help in getting the proper
treatment for my son's case and that he is treated fairly as an American
citizen, regardless of the background of his parents or the country where he
grew up." The letter, distributed electronically to the news media by the Arab
American Institute, reportedly was sent from Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

August 8, 2002; Page A02

JURISDICTIONAL ISSUE DELAYS HEARING ON 'COMBATANT'

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

A hearing on the status of "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi, scheduled for
today in Norfolk, has been postponed because the federal judge hearing the issue
said it was unclear whether he has proper jurisdiction over the case.

Hamdi, a Saudi national captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in November,
is being held in the Navy brig in Norfolk without having been charged. He was
moved from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where other U.S. prisoners are held, after
disclosing that he was born in Louisiana and may be a U.S. citizen. Hamdi's
father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, and Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. have
asked U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar to allow them access to the prisoner.

Doumar had previously ruled that Dunham could see Hamdi. But the government
appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying Hamdi was an enemy
combatant not entitled to constitutional protections. The appeals court issued a
stay of Doumar's ruling and on July 12 ruled that Doumar needed to reconsider
his actions with deference to the executive branch's constitutional right to
conduct warfare and an awareness of national security implications.

Doumar immediately moved ahead, scheduling briefings and hearings, including one
for today. But yesterday, Doumar said it is not certain that he has regained
jurisdiction over the case from the 4th Circuit. Traditionally, after the
appeals court rules, it issues an official mandate sending the case back to a
trial court. The government has been arguing that that has not occurred.

"To proceed under such ambiguity," the judge wrote, "would simply divert
attention away from the substance of this case toward further procedural
wrangling." Doumar suspended all proceedings until the 4th Circuit dissolves its
stay and returns the case to his court.

Doumar and the government have been wrangling over the judge's orders since the
4th Circuit's July ruling. For example, when federal prosecutors noted July 22
that the mandate from the 4th Circuit had not been issued, the judge rebuked the
government for not complying with his orders. In a July 31 hearing, Doumar
ordered prosecutors to turn over notes and documents about Hamdi's captivity. On
Tuesday, the government declined, saying it had provided a factual declaration
of facts explaining Hamdi's combatant status, meeting the 4th Circuit's burden
of proof.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 8, 2002; Page A16

Editorial--

THE HAMDI MESS

THE CASE OF Yaser Esam Hamdi -- the likely American citizen now being held in a
Navy brig in Norfolk without charges or access to a lawyer -- is becoming a
procedural mess. The Justice Department is contending that it can indefinitely
lock up those, like Mr. Hamdi, whom it designates as "enemy combatants" with
only the most cursory of judicial review -- during which the accused has no
ability to tell his side of the story. The case, therefore, balances civil
liberties principles of the highest order -- the right of American citizens to
be free of indefinite detention without charge -- against the military's
legitimate need to conduct war overseas without answering every step of the way
to the judiciary. With the stakes so high, consider the actions of U.S. District
Judge Robert G. Doumar.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit gave clear instructions to Judge
Doumar to proceed with great deference to the military's judgment and interests.
Given this, it was reasonable to expect that he would act cautiously. Instead,
the judge is proceeding in a fashion that has muddied the case with procedural
errors that invite reversal.

The appeals court had stayed the proceedings before Judge Doumar when it
reviewed -- and reversed -- his earlier ruling granting unrestricted access to
counsel to Mr. Hamdi. That stay has never been lifted, nor has the court's
opinion formally gone into effect. So nothing should yet be going on in Judge
Doumar's court. Despite that, the judge charged ahead and issued a series of
orders, one demanding sensitive information from the government, and one order
containing an abusive rebuke to government counsel. Proceeding while a stay is
in place virtually guarantees trouble for any rulings the judge might make --
whether or not they are right.

But the problems do not end there. The government, even as it argues that Judge
Doumar should not be proceeding, has asked that the case be dismissed. A brief
factual account of Mr. Hamdi's capture in Afghanistan, it has argued, suffices
to demonstrate that he is an enemy combatant, thus negating the court's request
for additional information. Consequently, the government asked Judge Doumar to
retract his request.

As we have previously argued, the government's substantive position here cannot
be right. While the sketchy assertions it has provided may, if true, justify the
designation, a detainee must have some ability to challenge those facts. That
means that some procedure whereby the court will hear from Mr. Hamdi and obtain
additional facts will almost surely be necessary. That said, Judge Doumar's
attempt to launch a broad factual inquiry at the outset was a mistake. The 4th
Circuit clearly told him to try the least intrusive means of review first. It is
difficult to imagine that conducting an inquest before ruling on whether that
inquest is necessary will satisfy the appeals court's vision of deference.

Judge Doumar yesterday backed down somewhat, canceling a hearing he had
scheduled for today because of the stay. "To proceed under such ambiguity would
simply divert attention away from the substance of this case toward further
procedural wrangling," he wrote. That's right, but he needs to go further. The
government's legal position must, in our view, ultimately be rejected. But the
judge should not risk making bad -- maybe dreadful -- law in a flamboyant
attempt to hold the government's feet to the fire.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 7, 2002; Page A01

U.S. DEFIES JUDGE ON ENEMY COMBATANT
Justice Dept. Refuses To Provide Documents

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Justice Department yesterday defied a federal judge's order to provide him
with documents that would have supported the government's classification of a
man captured in Afghanistan and being held in a Navy brig in Norfolk as an
"enemy combatant."

Government lawyers allowed a noon deadline to pass without handing the materials
over, saying that the separation of powers clause of the Constitution gives the
executive branch the authority to make that determination.

"An inspection of the requested materials would all but amount to a [new] review
of the military's enemy combatant determination, and thus exceed the limited
standard of review governing the Executive determination at issue," the Justice
Department said in a legal memo.

The argument frames the sensitive question of what rights, if any, are available
to military prisoners, particularly an American-born one such as Yaser Esam
Hamdi, as the United States continues its war on terrorism. The Justice
Department has said that the judicial branch has little right to intervene in
the conduct of the war, but yesterday's action was the first time the government
has not agreed to a judge's request.

The government's action sets the stage for a constitutional confrontation
tomorrow with U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar in Norfolk. Doumar has twice
ordered the government to allow a lawyer to visit Hamdi, and twice the
government successfully obtained stays of Doumar's order.

Doumar is scheduled to hear arguments tomorrow on whether the government's enemy
combatant classification was proper and whether Hamdi could see a lawyer. After
Doumar ruled that Hamdi was entitled to counsel, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals ordered him last month to reconsider, giving great deference to the
government's wartime determinations. Doumar then told prosecutors to provide him
with copies of Hamdi's statements, notes from interviewers, a chronology of his
locations, and the names and addresses of his interrogators. Doumar said he
would review the information privately.

Prosecutors instead filed a motion asking Doumar to drop his request.

"Such intrusive discovery is unnecessary in this case," wrote Assistant U.S.
Attorney Lawrence R. Leonard and the solicitor general's office. "None of the
materials listed in the court's July 31 order is within the scope of a proper
inquiry into Hamdi's legal status."

Stephen Dycus, a national security law expert at the University of Vermont, said
he could not think of any other time the government ignored a court's order. "I
don't think the Justice Department has the power to simply defy the court," he
said. " . . . I don't remember anything in the 4th Circuit's order that would
limit the District Court's ability to look into the national security necessity
for keeping this guy."

Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
but when investigators learned that he was born in Louisiana, he was transferred
to Norfolk. The federal public defender for Eastern Virginia, Frank W. Dunham
Jr., began efforts to meet with Hamdi in case the government decided to charge
him.

However, the government had labeled Hamdi an enemy combatant and said he is not
entitled to counsel. Dunham and Hamdi's father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, filed a motion
with Doumar seeking access to the detainee.

Doumar granted the request, and the government appealed to the 4th Circuit in
Richmond. A three-judge panel's ruling July 12 sent the case back to Doumar,
saying he needed to have more facts and hear more arguments.

The opinion, written by Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, advised Doumar that
"the political branches are best positioned to comprehend this global war in its
full context and it is the President who has been charged to use force against
those nations, organizations, or persons he determines were responsible for the
September 11 terrorist attacks."

But Wilkinson also wrote that some judicial review is necessary, otherwise "any
American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely
without charges or counsel."

A week later, Doumar asked the government to explain why it was holding Hamdi,
and on July 25, prosecutors submitted a two-page declaration by Michael H.
Mobbs, a Defense Department special adviser on enemy combatants.

Mobbs wrote that Hamdi traveled to Afghanistan in July or August of last year,
joined a Taliban military unit, received weapons training and remained with his
unit after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors believe that Mobbs's declaration should be sufficient for Doumar's
needs. "Under the fundamental separation of powers principles recognized by the
4th Circuit . . . in justifying the detention of captured enemy combatants in
wartime, the military should not need to supply a court with the raw notes from
interviews with a captured enemy combatant . . . or the other types of
information listed in the court's order," Leonard wrote.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. Dunham said "the
government's doing everything it can to avoid reaching the merits of the case."

Dycus suggested that prosecutors, mindful that the case is being closely watched
by lawyers and civil libertarians, "must have in mind setting some precedent
that would be helpful to them in certain other cases."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 7, 2002; Page A20

Editorial--

THE DECISION last week by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordering the
Justice Department to release information about the approximately 1,200 people
detained during the Sept. 11 investigation is a welcome rebuke to the obnoxious
secrecy with which the federal government has surrounded the probe. The
government has disclosed the number of immigration detainees -- almost all of
whom have now been deported or released -- as well as the fact that it has
arrested people on material witness warrants and criminal charges. But it has
not released either the names of the detainees or the number of those held as
material witnesses. A coalition of civil liberties and other groups sued under
the Freedom of Information Act, and Judge Kessler on Friday rightly rejected the
notion that the government can round up large numbers of people and not bother
to say who they are.

Judge Kessler's mere description of the facts should suffice to convince a
reasonable person that the current level of secrecy is unacceptable. "As of this
moment," she wrote, "the public does not know how many persons the Government
has arrested and detained as part of its September 11 investigation; nor does it
know who most of them are, where they are, whether they are represented by
counsel, and if so, who their counsel are." She convincingly rejected the notion
that the law gags the government concerning material witnesses, and she rejected
as well the government's claim that releasing the names of detainees would
disrupt the investigation and invade the privacy of those who had been locked up
and deported. To protect privacy, she ordered that detainees who wished to could
opt out of having their names released. If her order is permitted to take
effect, it will be interesting to see how many of those who have been held are
as eager to be held anonymously as the government -- in its solicitude for the
privacy of those it jails and deports -- has become in this single
investigation.

People in this country don't just disappear -- not even people suspected of
knowing something about terrorism or people who have overstayed their visas. The
government could continue resisting this rather simple principle, and it
probably will. But it shouldn't. There is no good reason for an investigation of
this size and importance to be conducted without public accountability. Knowing
whom the government has locked up is the most basic element of that
accountability.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


August 1, 2002; Page A10

JUDGE DENIES DETAINEES IN CUBA ACCESS TO U.S. COURTS

By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer

The 600 suspected terrorists being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, have no right to bring their cases to U.S. courts, a federal judge in
Washington ruled yesterday in a decision that allows the government to continue
holding the detainees indefinitely.

In a 34-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected efforts
by 16 captives to end the government's policy of holding them without charges,
access to lawyers or trial dates. It was the first time a U.S. judge had ruled
on the merits of that practice.

Kollar-Kotelly ruled that although the men may have "some form of rights under
international law," such as the Geneva Convention, their nationalities and their
geographic location mean that they do not have the right to press their cases in
U.S. courts.

"The court concludes that the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is outside
the sovereign territory of the United States. Given that . . . writs of habeas
corpus are not available to aliens held outside the sovereign territory of the
United States, this court does not have jurisdiction" to hear the case, she
wrote.

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, a
Washington-based nonprofit legal organization that is not involved in the case,
said Kollar-Kotelly's decision means that "the detainees have no meaningful
access to U.S. courts."

"Unless this is overturned, any submissions from inmates at Guantanamo are going
to be futile," Fidell said.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs -- two British nationals, two Australians and 12
Kuwaitis -- promised to appeal.

"None of the men in Guantanamo have been accused of anything," said Barbara
Olshansky, assistant legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a
New York-based nonprofit organization representing Shafiq Rasul, a British
national, and three other plaintiffs.

"The judge's decision is in error from many perspectives. She says they have
access to international law, but it isn't clear how they would ever get it if
they can never see their lawyers or have any form of due process. . . . The U.S.
calls countries the world over to task for these sorts of abuses."

Monica Goodling, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said officials there
were pleased with the judge's decision.

The administration has said it will treat the Guantanamo Bay captives in
accordance with policies governing prisoners of war but has refused to give them
that label because it would afford them a number of rights, including the right
to be repatriated after the war is over.

The plaintiffs in the Guantanamo case have been held since they were captured in
Afghanistan or Pakistan by U.S. forces who were pursuing Taliban or al Qaeda
members.

Others captured in the war on terror have been treated in various ways. Zacarias
Moussaoui, a French national apprehended in Minnesota and charged as a
conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, is being tried in federal court in
Alexandria. John Walker Lindh, an American captured in Afghanistan, also faced
criminal charges there before he pleaded guilty last month.

Richard Reid, a British citizen who tried to blow up a jetliner over the
Atlantic Ocean, is scheduled to be tried in federal court in Massachusetts.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, another American captured in Afghanistan and originally taken
to Guantanamo Bay, is being held in a military brig in Norfolk. He has not been
charged or allowed access to a lawyer. Jose Padilla, an American apprehended in
Chicago as he was allegedly scouting targets in a plot to detonate a radioactive
bomb, is being held in a South Carolina military prison without charges. Both
men have been designated "enemy combatants" by President Bush.

Kollar-Kotelly based her ruling on Supreme Court precedent from the World War II
era. In that case, Johnson v. Eisentrager, German spies were captured by allied
forces in China after the Nazis surrendered but before Japan stopped fighting.

The Germans were tried and convicted of espionage by a U.S. military tribunal in
China and sent to a prison in Germany that was, in the postwar days, under the
command of a U.S. officer. The Germans appealed to U.S. courts but were
ultimately rejected by a divided Supreme Court. The court ruled that they could
not extend the writ of habeas corpus -- a judicial determination about the
legality of an individual's custody -- to foreigners held outside the United
States.

That opinion, Kollar-Kotelly ruled, applies to Guantanamo Bay, a military base
that the United States leases from Cuba where nearly 600 captives are being
held. The Navy has announced plans to expand the prison, known as Camp Delta, by
an additional 204 cells.

Staff writer John Mintz contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


July 28, 2002; Page B06

Editorial--

THE CASE AGAINST MR. HAMDI

LAST WEEK the government filed its formal response to a federal court case
challenging the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi. Mr. Hamdi is the Louisiana-born,
Saudi-raised man whom the government is holding in a brig in Norfolk, Va., as an
accused enemy combatant following his capture in Afghanistan, where he allegedly
fought for the Taliban. Having been born in this country, Mr. Hamdi is
presumptively an American citizen, yet as an accused enemy combatant, he is
being held without charge and without access to a lawyer. Until the filing, in
fact, the government has made no public effort even to justify its designation
of him as a Taliban soldier. It has argued, rather, that such designations are
beyond court review. Thursday's filing doesn't contain a whole lot of
information, but it represents a first step toward some basic public
accountability for the detention of a likely American citizen. It is, alas, a
baby step. For Mr. Hamdi's detention to be reasonable, the military will have to
give a lot more ground.

The government is on solid ice in arguing that enemy combatants may be detained;
traditionally, prisoners of war -- including, uncomfortably, American citizens
-- are held for the duration of hostilities. This doctrine will surely require
refinement in the context of the current conflict, where there is no declaration
of war, where neither the beginning nor the end of hostilities is easily
defined, and where the conflict does not principally involve an enemy state with
whom peace can be made and to which prisoners can be repatriated. Still, there
is little doubt that -- at least for now -- the government is entitled to hold
Mr. Hamdi if he is, indeed, an enemy fighter. The troubling question is who gets
to make this determination and according to what standards.

The military's position is that it does -- according to standards of its own --
and that court review should be either nonexistent or, at most, cursory. The
courts have not smiled on the idea that no review at all is appropriate, but the
4th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that deference to the military's judgment
is warranted. This means, the government argues, that the courts should not look
behind the facts it presents. It should not conduct evidentiary hearings, and it
should not hear from Mr. Hamdi. Hence, Mr. Hamdi has no need to talk to a
lawyer.

In the government's sketchy account, Mr. Hamdi went to Afghanistan last summer;
there, he joined a Taliban unit, got weapons training and surrendered with his
unit to the Northern Alliance late last year. The government also contends that
in interviews with U.S. interrogators, he stated that he was in Afghanistan "to
train with and, if necessary, to fight for the Taliban." All of this would, if
true, support his detention.

But there's one problem: How do we know it's true? We have no special reason to
doubt the government's statements, but normally, the government has to prove its
allegations before an American can be locked up. Here, however, the government
is laying out the most bare-bones case and asking the courts to authorize the
detention without even hearing from the accused. This cannot be right. At a
minimum, the court needs to hear from Mr. Hamdi to determine whether the facts
are in dispute. That necessarily requires that he be allowed to consult with a
lawyer. This may, as the government fears, compromise intelligence interests if
that attorney recommends that he not talk, but the alternative is a system in
which Americans can be detained on the mistakes of government without any
ability to correct those errors. That may be an academic problem in Mr. Hamdi's
case. But what about enemy combatants arrested not on the battlefield but
domestically, in the midst of civilian life? Do we really want the courts to be
rubber-stamping government decisions to yank such people outside of the
protections of the civilian courts and the Bill of Rights? Even to ask this
question is to answer it.

* * *


July 24, 2002; Page A13

U.S. DECRIES ISRAELI MISSILE STRIKE, PONDERS EFFECT ON PEACE BID

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer

The White House yesterday denounced Israel's missile strike in a densely
populated area in the Gaza Strip as "heavy-handed" and described it as "a
deliberate attack against a building in which civilians were known to be
located."

Rejecting Israel's contention that it did not intend to kill innocents with a
strike that was directed against a leader of the Hamas militant group, spokesman
Ari Fleischer said: "These were apartment buildings that were targeted." In
addition to Salah Shehada, the intended target, the missile fired from an
Israeli F-16 warplane killed 14 other people, most of them under the age of 11,
and injured about 150.

Although President Bush continues "to be a lead defender of Israel around the
world and will speak out about Israel's right to self-defense," Fleischer said,
"this is an instance in which the United States and Israel do not see eye to
eye."

The Monday night attack was widely condemned in Europe and the Arab world. Many,
particularly in Arab capitals, said it demonstrated that the government of
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was trying to undercut recent progress in
the Middle East peace process.

The attack appeared initially to have stunned U.S. officials involved in peace
efforts. They said they had no warning of Israel's plans despite talks here
Monday between high-level representatives of the two governments. By yesterday,
shock had turned to depression and uncertainty over where the process would go.

"There is considerable agreement that this represents something really
problematic, something unique," one administration official said.

U.S. reaction to the attack, which occurred around 7 p.m. Washington time, was
delayed until there was a clear picture of what had happened, the official said.
After a flurry of telephone calls to the region, "within an hour, we knew what
we were dealing with. Then discussions began on how to respond."

Talks Monday night among Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; his deputy, Richard
L. Armitage; and William Burns, the assistant secretary for the region, were
quickly joined by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy,
Stephen Hadley. While acknowledging deep and longstanding differences between
the State Department and the White House over Middle East policy, the official
said, "this particular time, there was agreement across the board."

Under the rhetorical code that has long surrounded statements on the Middle
East, the United States normally "condemns" Palestinian terrorist attacks and
uses the somewhat softer verb, "deplore," to criticize Israeli actions.

Officials considered, then rejected, condemning the Israelis or describing their
actions as "counterproductive" before settling on "heavy-handed," as something
they believed "captured the deploring," as one official put it.

It was decided that Daniel C. Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, would
deliver the message to Sharon. U.S. officials here described that discussion
yesterday as unpleasant, and said Sharon said little in private that differed
from his description of the attack as "one of our major successes."

White House public comment was left to Fleischer, and Bush made no statement
yesterday on the attack. "The president views this as a heavy-handed action that
is not consistent with dedication to peace in the Middle East," Fleischer said.

Asked why Israel's action in Gaza was different from U.S. attacks against al
Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan that resulted in the loss of innocent civilian
lives -- a comparison Israel has made -- Fleischer replied: "It isn't accurate
to compare the two. . . . There are going to be losses of innocents in times of
war, and I think that's recognized around the world.

"What's important is, in pursuit of the military objectives, as the United
States does in Afghanistan, to always exercise every restraint to minimize those
losses of life," Fleischer said. "But in this case, what happened in Gaza was a
knowing attack against a building in which innocents were found."

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana called the attack an "extra-
judicial killing operation" that "comes at a time when both Israelis and
Palestinians were working very seriously to curb violence and restore
cooperative security arrangements."

Solana represents the EU in the "quartet" group on the Middle East that also
includes Powell, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Russian Foreign Minister
Igor Ivanov.

Annan issued a statement late Monday deploring the attack, saying, "Israel has
the legal and moral responsibility to take all measures to avoid the loss of
innocent life; it clearly failed to do so."

There was no direct contact yesterday between Powell and the other quartet
members, and no one seemed to have a clear idea how to proceed beyond waiting
for the immediate fallout -- including widely expected Palestinian retaliation
-- and its unpredictable impact on the wider peace process.

After months in which the process has been frozen, and despite Palestinian
terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians as recently as last week,
significant recent progress had been reported.

Plans to restructure the Palestinian Authority's security and financial
infrastructure and prepare for elections in January were near completion.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met with senior Palestinian officials last
weekend for the first time in months, amid signs that Israeli troops would begin
to withdraw from occupied Palestinian cities.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the Arab countries most active in the peace
process, all condemned the Israeli action. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher
called it a "war crime," and his Saudi counterpart, Saud Faisal, said it was "a
repulsive act that will be registered against [Sharon] in history."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

July 13, 2002; Page A11

RULING BLOCKS ATTORNEY'S ACCESS TO HAMDI
Appeals Panel Tells Lower Court to Carefully Consider Government's Position

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal appeals court yesterday blocked an American- born man captured in
Afghanistan from seeing a public defender and strongly suggested that the
government has the right to detain enemy combatants without a lawyer during
wartime.

But rather than dismiss Yaser Esam Hamdi's request to see counsel, the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals returned the case to a lower court in Norfolk with
instructions to consider the larger constitutional questions raised in the case.
The Norfolk judge must review the government's classification of Hamdi as an
"enemy combatant" with great deference to the country's ability to wage war, the
three-judge appeals panel ruled.

Experts said the issue of detaining a U.S. citizen incommunicado for an
indefinite period, based on a military declaration, is likely headed on a fast
track for the U.S. Supreme Court. Yesterday's ruling was "only one act in a much
larger play," said Eugene R. Fidell, a lawyer and head of the National Institute
of Military Justice.

Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November. He was transferred to the Navy
brig in Norfolk after telling U.S. investigators that he was born in Louisiana.
But while he was in Norfolk, the military declined to allow Hamdi to speak with
anyone because he was deemed an enemy combatant.

Hamdi's father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, and Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham
Jr. filed petitions with the federal court in Norfolk seeking permission for
Dunham to meet with Hamdi. In both cases, U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar
granted the requests.

But the appeals court found yesterday that Doumar had acted both times without
considering the impact of the decision or, in one case, even allowing the
government to file a brief. Although Dunham's case has been dismissed, the court
ordered Doumar to reconsider Hamdi's father's case, this time taking into
account the government argument.

Rather than just sending the case back to Doumar on the procedural basis of his
failure to give the government its say, the 4th Circuit has added pages of
commentary filled with references to the power given to the executive and
legislative branches to wage war without interference.

Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote that Doumar must "adequately consider
the implications of [his] actions," mindful that the "Constitution's commitment
of the conduct of war to the political branches of American government requires
the court's respect at every step."

Both sides said they were pleased with the ruling. The government was
"particularly gratified that the Court of Appeals recognized the need to look at
these things with care and deference to national security issues," Justice
Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said.

Dunham said he was glad that the appeals court did not dismiss the case and that
it "limited the government's efforts to have a rule that would allow the
executive branch to lock people up indefinitely."

The case might now be argued on its merits, Dunham said, at least on the issue
of how the government decided to classify Hamdi as an enemy combatant.

Wilkinson's ruling said the government wants to file "a sealed declaration
discussing the military's determination to detain petitioner Hamdi as an enemy
combatant" and how the military decides who should be placed under Defense
Department control. The appeals court ruled that Doumar must make the factual
decision on whether the process was appropriate.

But the court warned Doumar that "allowing alleged combatants to call American
commanders to account in federal courtrooms would stand the warmaking powers of
Articles I and II [of the Constitution] on their heads." And the ruling reminds
the lower court judge, "It has long been established that if Hamdi is indeed an
'enemy combatant' who was captured during hostilities in Afghanistan, the
government's present detention of him is a lawful one."

Dunham has not contested that premise. Instead, he has argued that a prisoner at
least has a right to know how or why he is labeled an enemy combatant.

Wilkinson's opinion noted that issue as well. "The Supreme Court has shown great
deference to the political branches when called upon to decide cases implicating
sensitive matters of foreign policy, national security, or military affairs," he
wrote. "This deference extends to military designations of individuals as enemy
combatants in times of active hostilities."

Although the 4th Circuit's opinion of how Doumar should rule seemed clear, "all
of the issues remain in the case," Fidell said. "What are the facts? What's the
procedure? What is the level of detention? It's all still there. The way the
wind is blowing in Richmond is not the end of the weather report."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


July 13, 2002; Page A14

ITALY PROBING SOURCE OF FALSE DOCUMENTS
Counterfeiters Suspected of Ties to Al Qaeda

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service

MILAN -- False documents that Italian police seized from suspected terrorist
sympathizers in Italy on Thursday will be compared to similar papers in the
hands of U.S. investigators probing the Sept. 11 attacks to see whether they
were all printed in Italy, investigators here said.

Investigators have long believed that Italy is a major logistics center for
militant Islamic groups across Europe, especially in the production of
counterfeit passports and identity cards. But authorities have yet to establish
a link between the counterfeiting operations and the men who carried out the
Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Many of the more than 380 al Qaeda suspects being interrogated at the U.S. naval
base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were captured with counterfeit personal documents;
people arrested in Europe also were carrying them. Officials said they hope that
understanding where the documents were made and how they were distributed will
bring important insights into the network's global operations.

The documents were seized during a raid on apartments here and in other northern
Italian cities. Police also arrested nine Arab suspects.

According to police, two of the men had been arrested, sentenced and jailed for
several months earlier this year but were released under Italy's generous parole
system. The two men, identified as Muhammad and Said Kazdari, are Moroccan. The
pair also manufactured false papers for stolen cars, police said.

Thursday's raids were the latest in a series across Italy. They took place
during intense intelligence agency and police investigations into what role
Islamic militants based in Italy might have played in the Sept. 11 conspiracy
and into plots to stage attacks inside Italy.

When three senior Italian investigators visited the United States in June, FBI
officials gave them testimony from a detained terrorism suspect about plans to
blow up a Venice church or bomb St. Peter's Square in Vatican City two months
before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Italian police also have
interrogated eight inmates at the holding pens for al Qaeda suspects at
Guantanamo Bay.

The information on pre-Sept. 11 plots surprised the Italians, who had operated
under the assumption that militant organizations here provided help for groups
elsewhere, but that Italy itself was not a target. No attack clearly traced to a
Middle Eastern group has occurred in Italy since 1993.

"We clearly underestimated their activities," said a leading investigator in
Milan.

DIGOS, the police anti-terrorist Special Operations Directorate, released a
report this week that warned of a possible terrorist operation in Venice. Police
fanned out in the canal city, some of them moving about in small submarines. The
alarm followed word of plots against the old Jewish ghetto area in Rome and a
church in Bologna where in a Renaissance fresco, the prophet Muhammad is
depicted as suffering in hell.

Investigators in Rome and Milan have begun to worry that Italy's high profile in
the global war on terrorism, including sending troops to Afghanistan, is making
the country a target of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, as well as
freelancers.

"There is danger that groups or individuals who want to be candidates to join
Qaeda might go into action," said Stefano Silvestri, who heads the Institute of
International Affairs, a Rome research organization. "They would not have to be
given orders by anyone."

Italian police have arrested about 30 al Qaeda suspects since September.
Officials said there has been a clandestine influx of Islamic militants into the
country escaping the war in Afghanistan.

Milan investigators suggested that some of the nine suspects arrested Thursday
had contacts with al Qaeda operatives in the past. In particular, they cited
contacts with Abdelkader es-Sayed, also known as Abu Saleh. An Egyptian citizen,
he fled Italy in July 2001. According to London newspaper reports, he was killed
in the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

He had been granted political asylum in Italy, despite reports that he organized
the 1997 massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt. Bin Laden sent Abu Saleh to
Italy to recruit, organize cells, oversee counterfeiting and whip up enthusiasm
for terrorist operations, a senior investigator in Milan said.

A January 2001 wiretap showed that Abu Saleh and a Tunisian associate discussed
false documents designed to ease entry into the United States, investigators
here said. At one point, Abu Saleh hushed the Tunisian, saying, "If you have to
speak to me about these things, you should come to me and speak in my ear. This
subject is secret, secret, secret."

Milan officials also linked Abu Saleh to Essi Sami Ben Khemais, regarded by
Italian investigators as a major al Qaeda organizer in Europe. In February, a
court convicted Ben Khemais, an Algerian, of arms trafficking, manufacturing
false papers and arranging illegal immigration. He was sentenced to five years
in prison.

Increasingly, police attention in Italy has turned toward potential terrorist
activities inside the country. The three Italian officials who went to the
United States in June learned of testimony from a Pakistani named Chisthi
Goulam, who was jailed more than a year ago there for carrying false documents.

According to one of the prosecutors, Goulam, who traveled occasionally to Italy,
knew of a plan to detonate a bomb in St. Peter's Basilica last summer. The plot
was called off in July 2001. The prosecutor cautioned that Goulam is the only
source of that information.

In March, police in Rome arrested three Iraqis, an Algerian and a Tunisian on
charges of weapons smuggling. A warrant signed by Rome prosecutor Franco Ionta
said the group transferred their activities from Algerian terrorist
organizations to al Qaeda, to destroy the "non-believer international" composed
of Israel and the United States.

The arrests were the fruit of a two-year investigation, in which wiretaps
indicated the suspects planned to use cyanide in operations. "Cyanide?" said one
of the Iraqis during a taped conversation. "That's poison!"

Police wonder if this related to an apparent plot, uncovered in February this
year, to poison the water supply of the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Nine Moroccans
were arrested in connection with the suspected assault, which included possibly
injecting cyanide into water pipes running to the embassy building on Via
Veneto.

Investigators said they remained unsure about the role of the Moroccans, who had
maps of the embassy.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

Tuesday, July 9, 2002

Editorial--

STILL NO LAWYERS

A year ago it would have been unthinkable for the American government to hold
indefinitely U.S. citizens whom it was unprepared to charge with crimes and not
permit those detainees access to lawyers. Today, however, Jose Padilla and Yaser
Esam Hamdi are both sitting in military brigs, still unable to communicate with
attorneys or defend themselves in court. Neither character, to be sure, evokes
much sympathy: Mr. Hamdi was caught fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan,
while Mr. Padilla is suspected of involvement in a nascent plot to set off a
dirty bomb. But the government's position that these offenses need not be
substantiated, or even alleged, in court before either man can be indefinitely
imprisoned is enormously dangerous. That danger exists even if it arises from
the cases of men who may need to be locked up.

Messrs Hamdi and Padilla are imprisoned on nothing more than the government's
claim that they are enemy combatants. According to the government, the president
alone has the power during wartime to designate people, including citizens, as
enemy fighters subject to detention until the end of hostilities. Courts, in the
government's view, have no power to review these designations; at most they have
the power only to rubber-stamp the reasonableness of the president's judgments,
using only information that the government itself supplies. Moreover, the
determination of when a war begins and ends is the president's to make, too. To
make matters more Kafkaesque, those he designates as enemy combatants cannot
meet with lawyers, so even if they had a legal forum in which to challenge his
judgment they would have no practical ability to tell their side of the story.

The result is that they wait -- and wait -- in prison while those attempting to
represent them fight the government in court without their input. Any day now,
for example, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals may rule on whether Mr. Hamdi can
meet with a federal public defender. And an attorney for Mr. Padilla is
currently fighting with government lawyers over which court should hear his
claims and who may assert them on his behalf. If they lose, what will prevent
detentions of more Americans without charge, hearing or representation?

There are no easy answers to the question of what rules should govern these
cases, and the government has some strong precedents affirming its right to hold
enemy combatants, even if they are citizens. But the right answer cannot be that
the president's power to detain Americans during wartime answers to no
meaningful oversight by the courts and that detainees have no chance to be
heard. The government's adopting such a hard-line position only ensures that a
cloud of lawlessness will hover over detentions that need not be controversial.

The alternative would be for the government, instead of resisting meaningful
review by the courts, to embrace it as the key to legitimizing wartime
detentions. The courts are likely to be extremely deferential; what court is
going to order Mr. Padilla released, for example, if the government shows the
link to al Qaeda that Attorney General John Ashcroft has alleged? The
government, in other words, could surely get the results it needs without taking
positions fundamentally hostile to the checks and balances of democratic
government. Instead, both Mr. Padilla and Mr. Hamdi are being denied what have
long been presumed to be birthrights of American citizens: the right not to be
held without the assistance of counsel or on the say-so of a single branch of
government. With every day that passes, the needless deprivation becomes more
injurious.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

Editorial--

June 28, 2002; Page A28

THE HAMDI CATCH-22

At oral arguments Tuesday in the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the government
appeared to soften somewhat its profoundly dangerous position that the president
can unilaterally designate an American citizen as an enemy combatant and then,
with no judicial review, lock that person up forever. On the surface, the case
of Yaser Esam Hamdi -- a probable American citizen who was captured in
Afghanistan and is being held without charge by the military in Virginia --
involves only whether Mr. Hamdi can meet with an attorney, as a lower court has
ordered. But because of the government's extreme position in the case before the
Richmond- based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, much more is at stake than whether
a single Taliban fighter gets to talk with a public defender.

The attorney for the government, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement, did not
forswear the notion -- advanced in earlier briefs -- that the courts have no
power to second-guess the president. But he seemed principally interested in
urging that the scope of any judicial review be limited, implying a certain
recognition that there would be some. The judges seemed to be groping toward
some type of minimal proceeding as well. And considerable deference to the
president here is appropriate. Detaining enemy fighters is part of conducting
warfare, and the judiciary is ill positioned to oversee the prosecution of a
war.

At the same time, review needs to be muscular enough for the courts to fulfill
their own duty: ensuring that Americans are not being held in violation of the
Constitution. For that to happen, the detainee must have some opportunity to
present his own story and to challenge the government's account. This does not
necessarily mean a full-blown trial, nor that the courts cannot accommodate the
government's security needs. But the courts must hear meaningfully from both
sides -- a requirement that necessitates Mr. Hamdi's access to counsel.

Yet access to counsel is what the government is striving most mightily to
prevent. Such a meeting, the government contends, would interfere with efforts
to interrogate Mr. Hamdi. And because enemy combatants have no constitutional
right to meet with counsel, Mr. Clement argued, a lower court erred when it
ordered access. The lower court ruling does have a serious technical problem:
that the judge didn't even bother to hear from the government before issuing his
ruling. But Mr. Clement's reasoning is dangerously circular. If Mr. Hamdi can't
meet with a lawyer because he's an enemy combatant, and he can't challenge his
designation as an enemy combatant without meeting with a lawyer, he's stuck --
irrespective of whether or not he's being lawfully held.

In Mr. Hamdi's case, the government would likely have no trouble demonstrating
to any court that Mr. Hamdi is an enemy fighter. But what if the government made
a mistake? As Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III noted at argument, the danger
of mistakes in a war such as this one, where fighters intermingle with villagers
and don't wear uniforms, is real. Under the government's standard, an American
citizen detained in a misunderstanding would have no ability to clear things up.
Where the indefinite detention of Americans without charge is at stake, the
courts cannot adopt standards or procedures that are so deferential they amount
to rubber-stamping the president's determinations.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

June 27, 2002; Page B07

COURT DENIES LAWYER ACCESS TO MAN IN BRIG
Hamdi Attorney Said to Lack Key Status

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal public defender's attempt to gain access to an American-born man
captured in Afghanistan and being held in a Navy brig failed yesterday when a
federal appeals court ruled that the lawyer had no standing to enter the case.

In issuing its limited opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not
rule on the government's claim that Yaser Esam Hamdi, captured in November and
being held in the brig at Norfolk, is an "enemy combatant" and not entitled to a
lawyer or other constitutional rights.

The Richmond-based court still has the opportunity to tackle that issue,
however, because another attempt to speak to Hamdi, filed by his father, is
pending. The father's case was argued in front of a 4th Circuit panel on Tuesday
by the same federal public defender's office, with no date set for a ruling.

In the meantime, lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the California man who was
captured alongside Hamdi, may get to visit Hamdi before his own attorney does.
In a hearing last month, Lindh's lawyers said they had received FBI reports
indicating that Hamdi had information that would help Lindh's case. Lindh,
unlike Hamdi, is facing criminal charges, including conspiring to commit murder
and terrorism.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he is inclined to allow Lindh's
attorneys to meet with Hamdi, and on Tuesday, Lindh's counsel sent a letter to
the government demanding access to Hamdi. A Justice Department spokesman said
Ellis would have to decide the matter.

Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender, first began trying to see
Hamdi after he was moved from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Norfolk in April. Hamdi
had been treated as an Afghan prisoner until he told investigators that he was
born in Louisiana. The military then moved him.

Dunham, at the time, thought Hamdi might face criminal charges, just as Lindh
does. "We started making inquiries when we thought they were holding him without
pressing charges," Dunham said. "We thought there was going to be a criminal
prosecution."

But the Justice Department has instead declared Hamdi an enemy combatant, and he
is being interrogated by military and intelligence officers. The government
won't allow Hamdi to meet or speak with anyone else. On May 10, Dunham sought
access to the detainee, filing a motion in federal court in Norfolk as Hamdi's
"next friend," a designation often used by guardians of children or
incapacitated adults who need legal relief.

U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar then appointed Dunham as Hamdi's attorney
and ordered the government to grant Dunham access. The government appealed.

While both sides were filing briefs and arguing that case, Hamdi's father, Esam
Fouad Hamdi, filed his own action, also as a next friend. Esam Hamdi asked
Doumar to appoint his son a lawyer. Doumar appointed Dunham and again ordered
the government to grant him access. The government again appealed, with the
solicitor general arguing last week that "there is no right . . . for an enemy
combatant to meet with counsel concerning his detention."

The appeals court did not address that issue yesterday. The three-judge panel
dealt only with Dunham's original attempts to reach Hamdi. In a ruling written
by Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, the court said a next friend "must have
some significant relationship with the real party." The ruling hints that
Hamdi's father does have standing as a next friend.

The government was expected to use the same legal argument in a brief last night
involving Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man arrested in Chicago and being
detained in a brig in South Carolina after authorities said he was planning to
detonate a "dirty bomb." He also has been declared an enemy combatant and denied
access to a lawyer.

Dunham said he is still Hamdi's attorney because Doumar appointed him in the
father's case, although he acknowledges that no one has spoken to Hamdi and
knows for sure whether he wants a lawyer. That's where Lindh's case intersects
with Hamdi's.

George Harris, one of Lindh's attorneys, told Ellis that he wanted to meet with
Hamdi. Ellis said, "Unless I am really moved by some reason why the national
security is really affected by having Mr. Harris go down and meet with him, I am
likely to let it happen."

Ellis told Harris to contact Dunham. Dunham said he agreed to let Lindh's
attorneys interview Hamdi, as long as he is present. Lindh's attorneys declined
to comment.

"One could ask," Dunham said, "if the man has exculpatory evidence, why they
won't open up the door so the defense lawyer can see him. And if they're going
to let the defense lawyers in, why won't they let me in?"

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

June 26, 2002; Page A14

JUDGES CONSIDER SUSPECT'S RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer

RICHMOND, June 25 -- A panel of federal appeals judges today repeatedly
questioned the Bush administration's authority to detain Yaser Esam Hamdi, a
U.S.-born prisoner captured in Afghanistan, without having to present evidence
that he has taken up arms against the United States.

Hearing arguments in a case to determine whether Hamdi has a right to see an
attorney, the three-member panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
interrogated Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement about the government's
sweeping claim that it can detain "enemy combatants" without a court hearing and
can deny them access to legal advice indefinitely.

In the ongoing war on terrorism, Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III told
Clement, "It is more difficult to determine who is a combatant and who is a
villager. One seems to melt into the other. You are saying the judiciary has no
right to inquire at all into someone's stature as an enemy combatant?"

But Wilkinson and the other two judges had equally harsh questions for Hamdi's
attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Geremy Kamens, whose office
precipitated the case by demanding to see Hamdi.

How, the judges asked, can the U.S. government be expected to effectively
conduct a war if their basic battlefield decisions -- who to capture, how long
to question them -- are second-guessed by lawyers thousands of miles away?

"Since time immemorial in the course of war, one side to a conflict has detained
someone who has been captured from the other side in that conflict and tried to
gather intelligence from them that would save American lives," Wilkinson said.
"Isn't that intelligence gathering necessary to save American lives? What about
that violates the American Constitution?"

The outcome of Hamdi's case could have wide-ranging implications for the Bush
administration's war on terror.

In legal briefs, government lawyers claim sweeping authority to declare anyone
an enemy combatant, whether they are U.S. citizens or not and regardless of
whether they were captured abroad or on U.S. soil. Such detainees have no rights
to attorneys in U.S. courts, they argue.

The government's arguments suggest they may seek similar authority over Jose
Padilla, the Brooklyn native who was arrested last month in Chicago after
intelligence suggested he was participating in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb"
in the United States. Padilla, who now calls himself Abdullah al Muhajir, has
also been declared an enemy combatant and is being held in South Carolina --
which also is in the 4th Circuit.

Wilkinson was highly critical of U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar, who last
month granted the public defender's request to see Hamdi and ordered military
officials to grant him unmonitored discussions with his counsel.

At today's hearing, Wilkinson questioned how Doumar, sitting in Norfolk where
Hamdi is being held in a Navy brig, could make what Wilkinson said was a
momentous decision in a perfunctory way. "Can you see why I am bothered by
that?" Wilkinson asked Hamdi's attorney.

In response to the sometimes withering questioning, Clement defended the
government's authority to detain and interrogate battlefield prisoners, saying
that interference from U.S. court proceedings would hamper the military's
ability to interrogate prisoners like Hamdi about future terrorists acts aimed
at the United States.

"Are we really going to call as a witness a U.S. military official who right now
is on the front waging a war, and call him back to Norfolk so he can be a fact
witness?" Clement asked. "Deference, a proper respect for the military's
judgment about who is an enemy combatant, a judgment the military has been
making for two centuries, avoids that parade of horribles."

Likewise Hamdi's attorney insisted on his client's basic right to counsel,
saying repeatedly that "this case is about the indefinite detention of a U.S.
citizen." Kamens urged the panel to uphold Doumar's ruling.

The judges adjourned the 90-minute hearing without indicating when they would
rule.

U.S. forces captured Hamdi in Afghanistan in November. He was held in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, but was transferred to Norfolk Naval Station when he revealed that he
was born in Louisiana. Hamdi's parents are Saudi and Hamdi lived most of his
life in Saudi Arabia, but his family says Hamdi never renounced his U.S.
citizenship.

The U.S. legal system has struggled for weeks to determine exactly what Hamdi's
rights are.

Last month, Hamdi's court-appointed public defender demanded to see his client,
saying it was impossible to represent Hamdi without talking to him.

Military officials say Hamdi is a prisoner of war, classifying him as an "enemy
combatant" who can be held indefinitely without an attorney or a hearing.

They say Hamdi could use contact with an attorney to pass messages to potential
terrorists. Holding him for further interrogation allows military officials to
seek information about -- and possibly prevent -- future terrorist attacks, they
say.

In late May, Doumar agreed with Hamdi's lawyers, ruling that the Constitution
guarantees Hamdi the right to private, unmonitored meetings with legal counsel.
He ordered such a meeting within three days, but gave government attorneys time
to appeal.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


Opinion Column

EVEN A 'BAD MAN' HAS RIGHTS

By Gary Solis
Tuesday, June 25, 2002; Page A19

On May 8, FBI agents arrested Jose Padilla, aka Abdullah al Muhajir, a former
Chicago gang member and convict, and a U.S. citizen. In announcing Padilla's
arrest, the attorney general and the director of the FBI informed America that
Padilla had been on a quest for a "dirty bomb" -- a conventional explosive laced
with radioactive material, detonation of which would spread radiation over a
large area. The president informed us that Padilla is a bad man and that he is
classified an "enemy combatant." A month after his arrest, Padilla was
transferred from Department of Justice confinement to the Navy brig at
Charleston, S.C., where he remains in open-ended military custody. His
incarceration without charges, his isolation from legal counsel and his being
foisted upon the military should raise alarms, as should the case of Yasser Esam
Hamdi, another U.S. citizen.

A perplexing question: What is an "enemy combatant" in the context of these two
cases? In Vietnam, I knew what an enemy combatant was. He was the fighter across
the paddy who was firing at me. But Padilla hardly fits that description. One
may argue that he was trained and sent to us by al Qaeda, unquestionably our
enemy in the war against terrorism. Even presuming that is true (does the
attorney general's assertion automatically make it so?), Padilla had no weapon,
no criminal conspiracy is alleged, no incriminating documents have been
revealed, and he surely was not shooting at anyone. So, how is he an enemy
combatant? Yes, one can be the enemy despite lack of weapon and uniform, but
what evidence can we point to in Padilla's case?

Until now, as used by the attorney general, the term "enemy combatant" appeared
nowhere in U.S. criminal law, international law or in the law of war. The term
appears to have been appropriated from ex parte Quirin, the 1942 Nazi saboteurs
case, in which the Supreme Court wrote that "an enemy combatant who without
uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by
destruction of life or property [would exemplify] belligerents who are generally
deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoner of war, but to be offenders
against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals."

But that description hardly fits Padilla; he didn't come to the United States
secretly, he passed through no lines, and as a U.S. citizen he is not within a
military tribunal's jurisdiction. The term "enemy combatant" is simply lifted
from a Supreme Court opinion and applied to Padilla and Hamdi because it makes
them sound like they ought to be held incommunicado, without charges and without
representation. It is a term without prior legal meaning, manufactured from
commonly used military words, "enemy" and "combatant." In the Padilla and Hamdi
cases, the term seriously misleads.

One must look beyond Padilla-Hamdi, the individuals, and consider the larger
issues applicable to all American citizens, even those we are told are bad
people, issues such as those contained in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
Padilla-Hamdi should have years to consider their acts from the inside of prison
cells -- if they are convicted of criminal acts in a court of law. Taliban and
al Qaeda prisoners captured in Afghanistan, conversely, are non-U.S. citizens
without Padilla-Hamdi's claims to our constitutional rights. U.S. constitutional
protections need not be accorded foreign enemy prisoners.

The Justice Department makes no secret of why it has not charged Padilla or
Hamdi, nor why they are kept from their lawyers. The Justice Department wants to
wring from them every whisper of information that may bear on the war, a
reasonable enough goal. To charge them would require in-court arraignment, which
would publicly cement their legal rights -- not something conducive to
productive interrogation. To grant them a lawyer would lead to a similar
informational dead end. Yet charges within a reasonable period and legal
representation are what the Constitution guarantees every American citizen, bad,
good or bomber. The Justice Department cannot credibly fight terrorism at the
cost of basic constitutional rights. If Padilla and Hamdi may be held in
isolation in the name of terrorism, with no opportunity to defend themselves,
who else might be subject to similar treatment? If "enemy combatant" is an
undefined criminal category invoked by government officials free of judicial
scrutiny, who else might be so nominated?

Finally, why is Padilla in a military brig? Is his military custody a violation
of the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal law that prohibits the military from
executing civilian law? The military did not investigate or seek Padilla. He is
a civilian, not a prisoner of war and, enemy combatant or not, he is outside the
jurisdiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Nor is he in pretrial
confinement, because no military trial is envisioned. What is the military
supposed to do with him -- and when? Unfortunately for the image of U.S.
military justice, many will presume the military can hold anyone for an
indefinite period without charges; after all, isn't that what they do to
soldiers, sailors and Marines?

That is not what the military does, and years have been spent trying to erase
that outdated image. Thanks to the Justice Department, the military is
positioned to appear fast and loose with service personnel's rights. Justice has
done the military no favors by saddling it with Padilla. Nor do the Justice
Department's actions serve the Constitution.

The writer, a retired Marine, teaches the law of war at Georgetown University
Law Center.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

June 21, 2002; Page A12

HAMDI'S RIGHT TO LAWYER ARGUED TO APPEALS COURT
Brief Filed for American-Born Detainee

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer

Whether Yaser Esam Hamdi is an "enemy combatant" or not, he is entitled to a
lawyer and a chance to hear the government's proof against him, a federal public
defender argued yesterday in a brief to an appeals court.

Hamdi, 21, was captured in Afghanistan with retreating Taliban forces in
November, and he has been in U.S. custody ever since. He was moved from
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Navy brig in Norfolk after disclosing that he was
born in Louisiana and might be a U.S. citizen.

When Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. tried to meet with him last month, the
government resisted, saying that Hamdi is an enemy combatant and that he is not
entitled to a lawyer and does not enjoy other constitutional rights.

In a brief filed Wednesday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, the Justice Department said that a federal judge in Norfolk was wrong
to appoint Dunham to represent Hamdi and that the court "may not second-guess
the military's enemy combatant determination."

The solicitor general argued that allowing a prisoner to have access to a lawyer
"would directly interfere with -- and likely thwart -- ongoing efforts of the
United States military to gather and evaluate intelligence about the enemy."

The government also said it was entitled to use the "enemy combatant" label
regardless of whether someone is captured on the battlefield -- as were Hamdi
and John Walker Lindh, the Californian captured with Taliban fighters -- or in
this country, as was Jose Padilla, who is being held on suspicion of plotting to
set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" for the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Last night, Dunham said that he didn't necessarily disagree that an enemy
combatant doesn't enjoy the same rights as a civilian defendant but that there
needs to be some showing of proof that the prisoner was a combatant.

The public defender's team contends that the government is trying to forestall a
hearing on Hamdi's status to the point of preventing him from having a lawyer.

"The Executive Branch of the Government does not have the authority to detain an
American citizen incommunicado and to unilaterally withdraw from the courts the
power to inquire into the propriety of his detention," Assistant Federal Public
Defender Robert J. Wagner wrote in his brief to the 4th Circuit.

"A contrary conclusion would eliminate any limitation upon [the government's]
power to indefinitely detain any American citizen, under a state of war or
peace, as long as the military determines that the detainee is an enemy."

Wagner said that until there is a finding that Hamdi was an enemy combatant in
Afghanistan, any discussion of "the treatment afforded to enemy combatants under
the Law of War is irrelevant."

The brief cites a 1942 case involving German prisoners who challenged their
detention, in which the government said a presidential proclamation barred
detainees from any access to the courts. The Supreme Court ruled that the courts
were at least available to determine whether the proclamation applied to a
particular prisoner.

In a 1946 case involving an American prisoner who fought for the Italian army in
World War II, Wagner said, the soldier was granted a lawyer and an evidentiary
hearing to establish his status as an enemy soldier.

The public defender's office also rejects the government's assertion that
allowing Hamdi a lawyer would interrupt intelligence gathering or might allow
Hamdi to pass messages to enemy colleagues. The brief notes that Hamdi has been
held for more than six months and that the government has "had ample time to
interrogate him. . . . Further, [the government's] argument that their
interrogation must be ongoing and continuous proves too much, because it would
justify the detention of a detainee for an indefinite period of time."

The two sides will get a chance to argue the case Tuesday before a three-judge
panel of the 4th Circuit. The appeals court intervened, at the government's
request, after U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar in Norfolk entered an order
allowing Dunham to see Hamdi. The Justice Department has already announced that
it does not intend to charge Hamdi in civilian criminal court.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

June 20, 2002; Page A01

'COMBATANTS' LACK RIGHTS, U.S. ARGUES
Brief Defends Detainees' Treatment

By Tom Jackman and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers

Prisoners declared enemy combatants do not have the right to a lawyer and the
American judiciary cannot second-guess the military's classification of such
detainees, the Justice Department argued yesterday in a brief to an appeals
court.

The filing in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the U.S.-born man captured with
Taliban forces and being held at a Navy brig in Norfolk, provides the most
forceful enunciation yet of the Bush administration's position that those
declared enemy combatants in the war on terrorism have no right to counsel and
can be held indefinitely. The strongly worded brief signed by Deputy Solicitor
General Paul D. Clement also argues that the civilian courts have no standing to
intervene.

The document signals the government's intent to assert broad presidential
authority in the cases of terrorist suspects apprehended overseas. It raises the
likelihood that similar authority will be sought in the case of Jose Padilla, a
Brooklyn, N.Y., native arrested in Chicago in May on suspicions that he was
planning to participate in a "dirty bomb" attack. Padilla, also known as
Abdullah al Muhajir, has been declared an enemy combatant.

Hamdi, 21, was captured in Afghanistan in November and later transferred to
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he revealed to investigators that he was born in
Louisiana, prompting his transfer to Norfolk. Although his parents are Saudi and
although Hamdi lived most of his life in Saudi Arabia, his family said he never
renounced his U.S. citizenship.

The government's position was outlined in a 46-page filing with the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. It came in response to a ruling by a
federal judge in Norfolk that allowed Hamdi to see Federal Public Defender Frank
W. Dunham Jr., who had filed a motion seeking access to the detainee.

"There is no right under the laws and customs of war for an enemy combatant to
meet with counsel concerning his detention, much less to meet with counsel in
private, without military authorities present," the Justice Department wrote.

"The court may not second-guess the military's enemy combatant determination.
Going beyond that determination would require the courts to enter an area in
which they have no competence, much less institutional expertise, intrude upon
the Constitutional prerogative of the Commander in Chief . . . and possibly
create 'a conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to
enemies of the United States,' " the brief said, citing a 1950 Supreme Court
ruling.

Some legal scholars yesterday compared the filing to arguments used by the
government during World War II to intern thousands of Japanese Americans as
alleged security threats, and they warned that President Bush is seeking
unfettered authority to lock up U.S. citizens with no external review.

"This is really an astounding assertion of authority," said David Cole, a
Georgetown University law professor. "It's not just that you have no right to a
lawyer, it's that you have no right to even have a hearing. . . . If that is
true, then there is really no limit to the president's power to label U.S.
citizens as bad people and then have them held in military custody
indefinitely."

Dunham, who has until tomorrow to respond, agreed. "It is scarier than the dirty
bomb," he said. "Now the government can label somebody something and then throw
the key away forever. . . . The idea that a court can't inquire into these
detention situations, to determine whether they are reasonable or not, is
downright scary to me."

Others, however, said the government was well within its rights to detain
combatants in a time of war. The fact that the current conflict involves an
undeclared war that is not against a specific country should not undermine the
government's ability to apprehend those who intend to do harm, they said.

"In ordinary wars, the courts would not even look at a case like this, but in
this rather peculiar war, the issues are less clear," said Ruth Wedgwood, a law
professor and terrorism expert at Yale University. "But this case is very much a
battlefield capture, so that should make it easier. . . . I think the chances
are very good that the court will defer to presidential authority on this."

The Justice Department noted that Hamdi was captured with military forces in
Afghanistan and that detaining him and other soldiers served the purpose both of
preventing them from fighting again and of obtaining information from them. In
the nine months since the conflict began, the enemy combatant tag has been
placed on only three Americans: Hamdi, Padilla and John Walker Lindh, who has
been charged in civilian criminal court and afforded rights unavailable to the
others.

The government also argued that allowing a prisoner to have access to a lawyer
"would directly interfere with -- and likely thwart -- ongoing efforts of the
United States military to gather and evaluate intelligence about the enemy."

Such intelligence probably has prevented additional harm to the United States,
and allowing lawyers access may enable prisoners to pass secret messages to the
enemy about military facilities or operations and undermine the military's
authority, the brief says.

The filing also asserts the government's right to declare a prisoner an enemy
combatant whether that person was captured on the battlefield -- such as Hamdi
and Lindh -- or anywhere else, such as Padilla.

Writing that enemy combatants have no right to counsel, the Justice Department
says: "That is true with respect to enemy combatants who are captured and
detained on the battlefield in a foreign land; enemy combatants who are captured
overseas and brought to the United States for detention . . . and enemy
combatants who are captured and detained in this country."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 20, 2002; Page A22

Editorial--

THE I-SAID-SO TEST

"A court's inquiry should come to an end once the military has shown ... that it
has determined that the detainee is an enemy combatant. ... [T]he court may not
second-guess the military's enemy-combatant determination."

THESE WORDS were not written by some petty dictator whose kangaroo courts
rubber-stamp his every whim and whose whims may include locking up citizens he
regards as enemies. They were filed yesterday by the U.S. Department of Justice
before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond in the case of Yaser Esam
Hamdi. Mr. Hamdi is probably an American citizen, captured in Afghanistan and
currently held without charge at a military base in Norfolk. He is not a
sympathetic character, but that should not obscure the extraordinary power
President Bush is claiming for himself in Mr. Hamdi's case: the right to detain
without trial American citizens forever with no meaningful judicial review.

The government's aggressive position in this matter is unnecessary. There is
little doubt a court would find Mr. Hamdi, as the government alleges, an enemy
combatant, and there is clear precedent for holding such combatants even if they
are U.S. citizens. It is unclear how such precedents should be applied in the
context of an undeclared war of indefinite duration against a non-state actor, a
subject that will require careful balancing over time. But only the most
doctrinaire civil libertarian would demand the release at this stage of someone
bent on doing great harm to this country.

But instead of establishing in court that Mr. Hamdi is being held lawfully, the
government is fighting with all its strength to keep Mr. Hamdi from challenging
his detention at all. For starters, it is holding him incommunicado and has
prevented him from talking to a lawyer -- contending that access to counsel
would interfere with his interrogation. When Federal Public Defender Frank
Dunham sought to challenge Mr. Hamdi's incarceration for him, a judge ordered
that he be allowed to speak to Mr. Hamdi. But the government persuaded the 4th
Circuit to step in, arguing that Mr. Dunham -- never having met Mr. Hamdi --
could not properly file an action on his behalf; a classic Catch-22, since the
government won't let him meet his would-be client. Mr. Dunham responded by
filing an action on behalf of Mr. Hamdi's father. The judge once again ordered
that he be allowed to meet with Mr. Hamdi. But the government asked the 4th
Circuit to intervene again.

In its argument this time, the Justice Department acknowledges formally that the
courts retain the authority to review a petition challenging the legality of a
citizen's detention -- a basic tenet of U.S. liberty. But it contends that
military detainees, even citizens, have "no right of access to counsel to
challenge their detention." Moreover, the role of the courts in considering any
challenges is "extremely narrow"; generally, a court "should accept the
military's determination that a detainee is an enemy combatant." At most, "a
court could only require the military to point to some evidence supporting its
determination." The court cannot look beyond the evidence the government claims
to have.

If this is correct, any American could be locked up indefinitely, without a
lawyer, on the president's say-so. You don't have to believe that Mr. Hamdi is
innocent to see grave peril in this. The Constitution's checks and balances
don't contemplate blind trust in the wisdom or good faith of the president. And
the courts must not acquiesce in Mr. Bush's claim that they are powerless to
ensure the lawfulness of presidential behavior.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 17, 2002; Page A04

ASHCROFT'S HIGH PROFILE, MOTIVES RAISE WHITE HOUSE CONCERNS

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer

The series of dire announcements last Monday about the alleged "dirty bomb" plot
began, as these things often do, with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

Peering grimly into a Russian camera and bathed in an eerie red glow, Ashcroft
broke away from meetings in Moscow to announce that the United States had
"disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot" that could have caused "mass death and
injury."

Only after Ashcroft's initial statement did Americans learn that Jose Padilla,
arrested on May 8, was alleged to be merely in the initial planning stages of a
plot and would not be charged with any crime. His research on radiological
weapons, U.S. officials said, consisted largely of surfing the Internet.

The handling of the announcement earned Ashcroft a rare rebuke in the form of
leaks from the White House -- where surprised aides viewed his remarks as
alarmist -- and crystallized an issue that has simmered for months in the Bush
administration and the Justice Department:

Is Ashcroft's profile too high?

"The idea has been for the attorney general to be the bull's-eye for the
administration, where he's doing things for the administration and he's willing
to take the heat," said an administration official. "But the complaint is that
he tends to announce every little thing. . . . It's not clear anymore whether
that should continue."

In the Bush administration's war on terrorism, Ashcroft has served as the de
facto minister of fear, issuing dire warnings of terrorist threats and
announcing stringent new security measures with whirlwind frequency. At the same
time, the former senator from Missouri and onetime presidential candidate has
taken the time to visit cities from Pittsburgh to Phoenix, where he supports
local efforts against terrorism or announces the latest crime initiative.

With such visibility comes the credit for the successes of the war on terror,
and the political hits for controversial new policies that some say restrict
civil liberties.

He has announced most of the key Justice Department terror prosecutions since
Sept. 11, including actions against suspected 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui
and John Walker Lindh, who is charged with conspiracy to kill Americans as a
Taliban combatant. In the last two weeks alone, Ashcroft unveiled rules rolling
back decades-old restrictions on FBI spying and launched a secretive program to
fingerprint and catalogue about 100,000 visa holders.

"He's basically been the heat shield for the administration," said Jeff Lungren,
spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-
Wis.).

But Ashcroft's consistently high visibility, from news conferences on C-SPAN to
regular appearances on "Larry King Live," has increasingly troubled some aides
in the White House and other parts of the administration, who fear the attorney
general is stealing attention from President Bush, several sources said.

His profile has been the subject of sometimes heated debate within the
administration, those sources said, with some arguing that Homeland Security
Director Tom Ridge or FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III should take more of the
spotlight. Even within the Justice Department, some officials have advocated a
lower profile for the attorney general.

"I think he will come to the conclusion," a White House official said last week,
"that he doesn't need to be making every announcement."

Ashcroft's visibility has also fed speculation, denied by his aides, that he is
eyeing another run for office.

Added to the mix is Ashcroft's controversial political history, which has
provided ammunition to Democrats and civil liberties advocates who argue that
the administration has played politics with aspects of the terrorism war.

"He's so fearless with the political rhetoric that he forgets he's the nation's
chief law enforcement officer," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the
American Way and one of Ashcroft's most outspoken detractors in Washington. "If
there's anybody who should speak in calm and reassuring terms, it should be John
Ashcroft. But he doesn't get that."

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Ashcroft is in "a
tricky position."

"You're bearing news on a fairly regular basis that is going to raise hackles
and bring a bad reaction, especially when you come to it as somebody whose
confirmation was so contentious," Ornstein said.

But in the Padilla case, he added, "there's no question that Ashcroft went too
far in the claims he made and the way he made them. It runs the risk of damaging
the credibility of the whole administration and the president."

In his first months in office, after bitterly contentious confirmation hearings
in January 2001, Ashcroft mostly laid low.

A deeply conservative Republican, Ashcroft was portrayed by advocacy groups and
Democrats as an antiabortion and pro-gun extremist with a record of racial
insensitivity. His early public appearances on civil rights, the environment and
other issues were aimed in part at softening that image, even as he made
conservative policy decisions on guns and other issues in private.

The Sept. 11 attacks changed the strategy. Emboldened by a cause and focused on
preventing further assaults, Ashcroft became perhaps the most visible face of
the federal government's domestic reaction to the al Qaeda hijackings, presiding
over almost daily briefings on the Sept. 11 probe and leading the drive to enact
new anti-terrorism legislation.

He also served as a cudgel to complainers in Congress, suggesting to the Senate
Judiciary Committee in December that those who criticized administration
policies were aiding the terrorist cause.

Ashcroft's schedule has not been confined to terrorism. He has spoken in front
of conservative religious groups. He also has participated in news conferences
about criminal cases of local, rather than national, interest, including an
April event announcing a drug bust in Pennsylvania.

"You want to use the attorney general for announcements that are truly worthy of
that office," said a former high-ranking Justice official. "You don't want to
have the attorney general get out there as often as he's been out there, because
it generates the kind of questions now being asked: What is the motive behind
this appearance?"

Consider one week in Ashcroft's schedule: On Tuesday, April 16, he held a news
conference decrying a Supreme Court ruling on child pornography and joined Bush
in endorsing a crime victims constitutional amendment.

Wednesday brought an appearance with the immigration commissioner to announce
border reforms. That Friday, Ashcroft posed for photographs in Washington with
the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, then jetted to Pittsburgh in the afternoon
for the drug- bust announcement. Only reports of a terrorist threat to U.S.
banks kept Ashcroft from leaving the next day for Russia.

That trip was postponed until this month, which led to the Moscow announcement
of Padilla's arrest. A U.S. citizen who allegedly met with senior al Qaeda
leaders overseas, Padilla has not been charged with a crime but has been
transferred to military custody.

White House officials, who prize discretion and loyalty to Bush, typically
review both the substance and form of high-profile announcements from Cabinet
departments. They said they were taken by surprise at the way the Padilla case
was handled. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz appeared to play down
some aspects of the Ashcroft statement. "We didn't even know that Ashcroft was
going to make the announcement that way," a senior administration official said.

Another White House official said frustration around the West Wing last week was
aimed more at the Justice Department than at the attorney general personally.

"The most common phrase around here was, 'What were they thinking?' " the
official said. "It seems he was not well served. It didn't demonstrate the best
judgment. It would have been more than appropriate to have that announcement
made back in Washington."

Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said that Padilla was a "very
dangerous man" and that Ashcroft and other administration officials "did their
best to share important information with the public about the threat posed by an
al Qaeda operative." She pointed out that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
publicly supported the way the announcement was handled.

Victoria Toensing, a Washington lawyer and former Justice Department
counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration, said the complaints
about the Padilla case are unfair.

"Can you imagine the criticism if he had not told us about the arrest of
somebody who wanted to potentially detonate a bomb in Washington, D.C.?"
Toensing said. "But now they're criticizing him for doing just that. . . . This
is a case where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, so you might as
well go ahead and do the right thing."

Underlying much of the grumbling over Ashcroft's profile are questions about his
motives. His elevated stature has kept alive speculation that Ashcroft, a former
senator, governor, state attorney general and presidential hopeful, might be
weighing another run for political office.

His aides have repeatedly dismissed speculation that Ashcroft is aiming for the
presidency or vice presidency, or that he would like to recapture the Senate
seat he lost in 2000 to the widow of Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who was killed
in a plane crash shortly before the election.

On his most recent appearance with Larry King, Ashcroft called his current job
"a great opportunity" but conceded that he missed the "camaraderie" of being a
senator.

"I miss the people of the Senate," Ashcroft said. "Obviously, I've had some hard
knocks from senators, but they're great people in the United States Senate."

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

Sunday, June 16, 2002; Page A07

MUSLIM LINKED TO 'DIRTY BOMB' SUSPECT IS HELD

MIAMI, June 15 -- A South Florida Muslim leader with ties to "dirty bomb"
suspect Jose Padilla has been arrested by a federal counter-terrorism task force
and is being held on an alleged immigration violation, Immigration and
Naturalization Service spokesman Rodney Germain said today.

Adham Hassoun, 40, was one of the leaders of the al-Iman mosque in Broward
County, which Padilla attended when he was converting to Islam in the early and
mid-1990s. Hassoun also is the founder of the Florida chapter of a large Muslim
charity, Benevolence International Foundation. U.S. officials alleged in court
documents in April that the Illinois-based foundation has been intimately
connected to Osama bin Laden for years and has moved large sums of money to fund
the operations of his al Qaeda network around the world.

FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said Hassoun was arrested Wednesday by the South
Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes the FBI, the INS and other
law enforcement agencies.

Padilla, who is being held at a Navy brig in South Carolina, is accused of
plotting with al Qaeda leaders to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United
States.

-- Manuel Roig-Franzia

* * *


Sunday, June 16, 2002; Page A21

AL QAEDA AIMS TO DESTABILIZE SECULAR NATIONS
Attacks Planned on U.S. Targets

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

A small cadre of al Qaeda leaders has refined the terrorist organization's
strategy to use small-scale attacks to destabilize -- and ultimately overthrow
-- the secular governments in Islamic countries while continuing to plan larger,
sophisticated attacks on American targets, according to current and former
senior officials at the CIA and FBI.

The car bomb attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, on Friday is
part of what U.S. analysts believe is al Qaeda's strategy since being driven
from its headquarters in Afghanistan.

The smaller attacks, once directed at targets worldwide, have been revised to
use recruits prepared to die in strikes against American, Western and Jewish
targets in countries where the population is Muslim but the government is
secular.

The goal is to overthrow the government of nations such as Pakistan, Egypt and
Jordan and establish a "Muslim state in the heart of the Islamic world,"
according to a recent book by Ayman Zawahiri, former head of Egyptian Islamic
Jihad and since 1998 considered Osama bin Laden's top deputy and chief of policy
and strategy.

At the same time, U.S. officials said, al Qaeda continues to plan larger,
sophisticated attacks on U.S. targets in the United States and abroad.

"Some [attacks] are franchised," carried out by recruits with some al Qaeda
assistance, "while some are boutiques," meaning they are conducted by members of
bin Laden's network, one official said.

Attacks on U.S. targets, such as the World Trade Center and Pentagon, are aimed
at killing large numbers and destroying the U.S. economy. They continue to be
preceded by years of planning and with direct participation of al Qaeda
lieutenants, officials said.

At the heart of al Qaeda is a core group that might not be as large as
previously estimated, one senior analyst said. "We may discover there are not
that many people in top positions," a former senior intelligence official said
after talking with colleagues currently in government.

The senior analyst put the core number at "16 to 18 with some now dead and
others in jail." However small the group, the core leadership still has the
ability to reach out: There are hundreds if not thousands of Islamic extremists
who have networked after training at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan from the
mid-1990s through early 2001. They meet in Pakistan, the analyst said.

That is one of the lessons intelligence officials have drawn from the case of
Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen who was arrested in Chicago last month on
suspicion he was conducting reconnaissance for a possible attack using a
radioactive bomb.

His arrest showed that recruits are still joining al Qaeda and that the network
continues to provide training and money even though its base in Afghanistan no
longer exists, officials said.

"They are still operating," a senior administration official said. "In Padilla's
case, we were able to catch him, a low-level operative. But we can't assume that
we will catch all of them."

The goal and al Qaeda's new tactics for achieving it were most recently outlined
in Zawahiri's 100-page treatise in late 2001 after the United States began its
Afghan military operations.

Faced "with the tremendous increase in the number of its enemies, the quality of
their weapons, their destructive powers," Zawahiri called for a concentration on
"martyrdom operations as the most successful way of inflicting damage against
the opponent and the least costly to the [terrorists] in terms of casualties."

"To strike at the Americans and the Jews in our countries," Zawahiri wrote,
would not only hurt the United States but also expose "the regime before the
Muslim people when this regime attacks us to defend its U.S. and Jewish masters,
thus showing its ugly face, the face of the hired policeman who is faithfully
serving the occupiers and the enemies of the Muslim nation."

The April 11 truck bombing attack in Tunisia against a synagogue and the May 8
attack on a busload of French visitors to Karachi, both attributed to al Qaeda,
illustrate what Zawahiri was talking about.

From reviewing old FBI and CIA documents being provided to the joint House-
Senate intelligence committee investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, analysts
have learned how the narrow core of al Qaeda operated.

Analysts now see bin Laden more as a spiritual leader of al Qaeda and less as a
day-to-day planner. Religious approval is also still sought from Sheik Omar
Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric imprisoned for plotting to bomb New York
landmarks.

Below Zawahiri, the senior policy and operations adviser, have been the top
military planners such as Muhammad Atef, reportedly killed last November by U.S.
bombs. Atef not only approved operations but also traveled to the sites as plans
were being made. For example, he was in Kenya while a surveillance team was
photographing the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, which was bombed in 1998.

Immediately below Atef was a group of lieutenants, often with military or police
training, who served as recruiters and trainers for the camps in Afghanistan and
on occasion as technicians at the scene of an operation. Ali Mohamed, the
onetime Egyptian policeman who was a Green Beret in the U.S. Army, taught
surveillance in the Afghan camps and supervised the team that in 1994
photographed the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

Abdel Rahman's son, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, worked in the bin Laden Afghan camps
as an instructor in explosives and prepared the bomb used on the embassy in
Nairobi.

At a slightly lower level have been a group of operational planners such as
Ramsi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who
planned 1995 attacks on U.S. airliners and is now in prison. Yousef built the
bombs himself and helped recruit lower-level personnel who were prepared to die
in the operations.

Abu Zubaida, now being held at an unknown location after being captured in
Pakistan, served as a recruiter for the Afghan camps and in the late 1990s sent
fighters who finished their courses back to their home countries, some with
money and instructions to meet others and carry out millennium bombing plots.

Clues were available, officials said. For example, in early 1995 the FBI
interrogations of Abdul Hakim Murad, who was caught in the Philippines after a
fire revealed Yousef's plot, led to Yousef's capture.

Yousef had earlier contacts with Ali Mohamed and Wadih el Hage, two Egyptian-
born American citizens. The two were interviewed by the FBI in 1994 as potential
suspects in the first World Trade Center bombing; in 1997 they went before a
federal grand jury in New York that was investigating terrorism and lied about
their al Qaeda activities.

It was only years later that they were caught and sent to prison in 2001 for
their roles in the Kenyan bombing.

Yousef, who was born in Kuwait, used Khalid Sheik Mohammed, another Kuwaiti-born
terrorist and a relative, in the Pacific bombing plot. Mohammed has since been
linked to the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. Mohammed's older brother was an al Qaeda member. Another brother died
in Pakistan when a bomb he was making exploded prematurely.

Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mohammed Rahman are among the
dozen or so members of the core al Qaeda group still unaccounted for. While they
and the others remain at large, a major threat to the United States remains,
analysts believe.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 15, 2002; Page A01

A BOMB SUSPECT'S SEARCH FOR IDENTITY
In Padilla's Metamorphosis Into Al Muhajir, Fla. Provided a Turning Point

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers

SUNRISE, Fla. -- Sometimes the young man with the faintest hint of a mustache
and the thick, dark eyebrows said he was black. Sometimes Hispanic.

He was Jose, then Ibrahim, then Abdullah. Catholic, then Muslim. A defiant
street tough, then a compliant religious student.

Whether he was searching for an identity or trying to conceal one, the man born
Jose Padilla lived in a state of perpetual and often dramatic evolution. Yet
little in the itinerant history of this son of Puerto Rican immigrants would
foreshadow his becoming an object of national fascination, an enigmatic figure
accused of plotting with al Qaeda to terrorize his fellow Americans.

If Padilla created any legacy in his 31 years, it was one of underachievement.
The man who became Abdullah al Muhajir -- the man who federal authorities
believe was scouting out possibilities involving a radioactive "dirty bomb" --
had failed in school, dabbled clumsily in Chicago street gangs, built a record
of mostly minor crimes and held a series of minimum-wage jobs.

Many facts of his life, and of the plot he stands accused of abetting, remain
unknown. But the road that led him to Egypt, then Pakistan, then Switzerland and
then to his arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8 goes back
to South Florida.

He was making $5.60 an hour chopping tomatoes and onions at a Taco Bell north of
Miami when he took the name Ibrahim and gravitated toward the Muslim faith in
1993, according to the restaurant's manager, Mohamed Javed.

Padilla's attraction to Islam coincided with a time of upheaval in South
Florida's Muslim community, as the moderate temperament of its mosques and
Islamic institutions became mingled with new anti-American vitriol and talk of
jihad.

An early tutor in his adoptive religion was Raed Awad, the leader at the time of
the al-Iman mosque in Sunrise, a suburb northeast of Fort Lauderdale where
Padilla lived. Awad was also a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, a group
based in Texas whose assets have been frozen by the Bush administration because
of allegations that it channels money to the Islamic Resistance Movement, or
Hamas, which the United States has listed as a terrorist group.

Another influential figure in the community was Adham Hassoun, who founded the
South Florida chapter of a large Muslim charity, Benevolence International
Foundation. U.S. officials alleged in court documents in April that the
Illinois-based foundation has been intimately connected to Osama bin Laden for
years and has moved large sums of money to fund the operations of his al Qaeda
network around the world.

The foundation's Florida office was a five-minute drive from the Taco Bell where
Padilla worked.

Although it is unclear whether Padilla and Hassoun ever met, extremists gained a
foothold in the Muslim community of the early- and mid-1990s by focusing largely
on young people and recent converts, according to Walid Phares, a Florida
Atlantic University professor who specializes in international terrorism.
Padilla was both.

Hassoun gave speeches at the University of Miami, saying Muslims had a duty to
participate in religious wars and to kill infidels, recalled Diana Elson of
Coral Gables, Fla., who heard him speak at the university's Institute for
Retired Professionals. Elson remembers being chilled by the message.

The radicals' voices "were unstoppable," said Phares. "They became actual
spiritual leaders and motivators."

Coincidence or not, it was the same area that most of the hijackers who took
part in the Sept. 11 attacks would pass through a half- decade later. Last
summer, a dozen of the conspirators lived briefly in South Florida apartments,
many of them in Broward County, where Sunrise is located.

Earlier, as he studied and worshiped with Awad at the al-Iman mosque in Sunrise,
Padilla also took courses at one of the area's most liberal Muslim schools, the
Darul Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines. Padilla did not speak Arabic
and would have been hardly noticeable during the Saturday morning classes if it
had not been for his distinctly conservative attire, said Maulana Shafayat
Mohamed, leader of the Darul institute.

Padilla almost always wore an Arab shawl on his head, Mohamed said, "like Yasser
Arafat."

By then, Padilla had officially changed his name to Ibrahim and embraced his new
faith with a fervor that startled his mother, Estella Ortega-Lebron. A former
neighbor in Chicago, Nelly Ojeda, recalled that Ortega-Lebron said she thought
her son had joined a cult.

A Boy Called 'Pucho'

He had traveled far from his Roman Catholic roots. As a child

growing up in Chicago, Padilla went to Mass every Sunday at St. Sylvester's with
his mother and siblings, former neighbors said. Padilla had been born in
Brooklyn, but the family had spent most of the first five years of his life in
his mother's native Puerto Rico before moving to Chicago in 1975.

Padilla's father, Jose Osvaldo Padilla, is deceased, though the date of his
death is unclear. Padilla's mother had a child with Ojeda's brother, who lived
with her in Chicago. Their son, Ilan Ojeda, 24, is being held in a Broward
County jail on an attempted murder charge after being arrested, one week before
his brother's May 8 arrest, for allegedly stabbing a man with a pair of scissors
during a fight outside a Sunrise convenience store.

While in Chicago, Padilla and his family lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the
second floor of a three-story rowhouse in Logan Square, on the city's west side.
He was close to his mother, said Ojeda, who lived in the same building. The kids
gave Padilla the nickname "Pucho" because he had chubby cheeks, and the name
bounced off the walls of the Darwin Elementary School, where he went.

"He wasn't remarkable in any way," said Craig Tatar, assistant principal at
Darwin. "He was intelligent but didn't live up to his potential, unfortunately."

The family lived in a neighborhood where packs of teens ruled the streets and
gang recruitment was a rite of spring, Tatar said. Violent gang rivalries
reached an apex while Padilla was in elementary school, Tatar said, though he
doesn't believe Padilla became involved until high school. Padilla soon joined a
west side gang called the Maniac Latin Disciples.

"People used to stay away from him because they knew he was a gangbanger," said
a 16-year-old boy who knows some of Padilla's former gang associates.

Padilla's criminal troubles began to mount. He learned the local drill, almost
always using phony names after being arrested, but he was sloppy. Sometimes, he
even used his family's North Albany Street address with the fake names.

In 1985, when he was 15, he was involved in a street scrap in which a youth was
stabbed to death. Padilla bungled his escape, running past an unsuspecting
police officer who stopped him to find out why he was in such a hurry. He hadn't
stabbed anyone, but he was sent to the juvenile center for three years.

After he got out, he was busted for stealing doughnuts from a convenience store
and punching out the owner; there were trespassing and marijuana infractions,
plus an arrest for holding up traffic by flashing gang signs.

His schooling appears limited. Three of his high school years were spent in the
juvenile center, where he took courses at an alternative school, though it's
unclear whether he earned a diploma. When he filed name-change paperwork in
1994, he listed his job title as "maintanace" in big, uneven, childlike
handwriting.

From Ibrahim to Abdullah

After his family resettled in Florida, in 1990, Padilla took jobs at the

desperate end of the economic scale. He made $200 a week working at the Hilton
in Sunrise and, later, on the banquet setup crew at the Holiday Inn in nearby
Plantation. His salary at the Hilton suggests that he worked in the food and
beverage department, housekeeping or laundry, said Rick Welch, the hotel's
current general manager.

Padilla's propensity for violence persisted. In October 1991, he fired a shot at
a motorist during a road rage incident. The motorist, who was not injured, took
down Padilla's license plate number, and it did not take police long to find
him.

He served 10 months, between October 1991 and August 1992, in a Broward County
jail. While there, he was charged with assault after a shoving incident with a
guard that was broken up by other guards.

After getting out, he lived with his girlfriend, Cherie Maria Stultz, and took
the job at Taco Bell, where she had been working for several months. Javed said
he did not know that Padilla had a criminal record when he hired him, but the
manager remembered Padilla as a good worker who "did anything we asked him to
do. . . . We didn't see any signs of any aggressiveness or hostility."

In early 1993, after about six months on the job, Padilla told Javed that he had
taken the name Ibrahim. Javed, the founder of a Muslim school in Sunrise, knew
his employee had taken the shahadah oath, a declaration of faith that marks a
conversion to Islam. But Javed refused to change Padilla's name tag because the
name change was not yet official, and Padilla accepted the decision without
argument. Stultz, who is from Jamaica, converted around the same time, taking
the name Marwah, Javed said.

Padilla quit a few months later but didn't say why, Javed said. Several months
after that, he said, Stultz quit, too. Later, Javed would hear periodically
about his former employees attending mosques and Islamic institutes in
neighboring communities.

Padilla went on to work briefly with the maintenance crew at the Coral Ridge
Country Club, according to court records. It is his last known job.

He and Stultz married in 1996, in a simple courthouse ceremony in Broward County
presided over by a deputy clerk of court. On the marriage license, Padilla's
race was listed as black.

The couple moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the Inverrary Club apartments,
a neat, gated complex in a shabby neighborhood of Lauderhill. Their unit faced a
lake and cost $560 per month.

The complex had a mixture of newcomers -- recent arrivals from Haiti, Cuba,
Puerto Rico and the countries of South America. But the couple had few neighbors
who matched their new identity. "We have a couple of Muslims there -- not a
lot," said Lynn Zovluck, who managed the legal department of the complex's
property management company.

The marriage foundered sometime after Padilla and Stultz moved into the
apartment. They separated in 1998, and Padilla disappeared from Stultz's life.

Stultz moved to nearby Davie. The landlord at her apartment complex said he
never saw her husband after the separation. "She was always here by herself,"
said Steven Harbin, who manages the Nova Arms apartment complex, where Stultz
lived from sometime in 1999 until February.

Many months after they separated, Stultz called her mother-in-law to say that
she was filing for divorce. That was when she learned that he had gone to Egypt.
Awad, the former imam in Sunrise, told the Florida Sun-Sentinel that Padilla was
continuing his religious education at Al-Azhar University in Egypt. The
university, whose faculty includes a large percentage of fundamentalists, offers
scholarships to non-Arabs.

She "had no idea where he was," said Linda Smith, a Miami attorney who
represented Stultz in their divorce, which became final last year.

Shortly after arriving in Egypt, Padilla married an Arab woman and fathered two
children, according to U.S. officials. When Stultz spoke with Padilla's mother,
she gave her an address on Mustafa Basha Street in Cairo. But people living on
that street said they didn't know the woman.

From there, Padilla's travels were outlined by U.S. officials:

He traveled periodically in the Persian Gulf area. Late last year, while U.S.
troops fought in Afghanistan, he went to Pakistan and met for the first time
with Abu Zubaida, the senior field operations officer for al Qaeda.

There, investigators believe, he learned how to wire explosives and used the
Internet to study techniques for making "dirty bombs."

In March, Padilla met for a second time with Abu Zubaida and other al Qaeda
leaders to plan an exploratory mission to the United States. Padilla left
Pakistan in April, flying to Zurich and staying there for three days before
returning to Egypt, officials said. A month later, he left for the United
States, flying again through Zurich and landing in Chicago, where federal agents
were waiting for him. He is now being held at the Naval Consolidated Brig in
Charleston, S.C.

Before he was captured, though, Padilla might have done a favor for his al Qaeda
friends. He acquired a replacement passport using the name Padilla in March
after reporting that his had been either stolen or lost, officials said. If the
report was a ruse and Padilla actually gave his original passport to someone
else, it would be a big gain for any terrorist group looking to gain easy access
to the United States, a senior analyst said.

But even as he clung to his birth name on an official document, Padilla was
establishing a new identity for himself, adopting another Arabic name, with a
surname that means "immigrant."

Ibrahim had vanished, going the way of Jose. He is Abdullah al Muhajir, for now.

Goldstein reported from Washington. Staff writers Robert E. Pierre and Nancy
Trejos in Chicago, Howard Schneider in Cairo, Walter Pincus in Washington,
special correspondent Catharine Skipp in Florida and researcher Margot Williams
contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

Friday, June 14, 2002; Page A10

MILITARY TRIBUNAL WON'T TRY PADILLA, JUSTICE DEPT. SAYS

Associated Press

The United States will not bring American terrorist suspect Jose Padilla before
a military tribunal, the Justice Department told lawmakers yesterday, according
to congressional and Bush administration officials.

The Justice Department, making its case in a closed meeting of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, said the United States can hold Padilla until President
Bush decides the war against terrorism is over.

"They say it's not punitive, it's just purely prevention to stop him from
attacking us," said one congressional official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity. "He's going to stay in the can until we're through with al Qaeda."

Government officials had said there were no plans to put Padilla before a
tribunal. Officials told the Judiciary Committee that the decision is now final.

Padilla, a Muslim convert and former Chicago gang member, is being held by the
military. He is suspected of being part of a plot to detonate a radiological
weapon -- or "dirty bomb" -- in the United States, but he has not been charged.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 13, 2002; Page A11

LAWMAKERS QUESTION CIA ON DIRTY-BOMB SUSPECT

Administration Officials Wonder if Ashcroft
Was Unduly Alarmist in Arrest Announcement

By Susan Schmidt and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Staff Writers

The House Intelligence Committee summoned CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday
for a closed-door briefing on the apprehension of an American citizen suspected
of scouting targets in the United States for an al Qaeda attack.

The appearance came amid questions from lawmakers about the extent of the threat
posed by Jose Padilla, who was arrested last month on suspicion that he was
involved in an al Qaeda plot to explode a "dirty bomb" in the United States.
Such a bomb uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material.

Several members of the committee declined to disclose what they were told by
Tenet but at least part of their interest appeared to be in resolving questions
of how far the plot had progressed. Some administration officials have privately
voiced concern that an initial briefing by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft on
Monday may have been unduly alarmist.

"We work very hard to inform yet not alarm," a senior administration official
said. "It wasn't clear that it needed to be done in that way, at that level. It
was not the most artfully done. The story became a lot of bigger than any of us
thought it would."

Tenet's briefing came on a day of assorted developments in the war on terrorism.
A U.S. law enforcement official identified an associate of Padilla, being held
by Pakistani authorities, as Benjamin Ahmed Mohammed.

In Germany, meanwhile, authorities said they received intelligence of a possible
al Qaeda threat to shoot down civilian airliners, while officials in India said
they had evidence of an imminent al Qaeda attack on financial institutions in
Bombay.

The German warning was triggered after a civilian intercepted radio traffic in
the Middle East, in which someone was overheard talking about the possibility of
attacks on airliners in Germany, said Udo Buehler, spokesman for the Hesse state
criminal investigation agency.

Police in France also arrested five people yesterday connected to the
investigation into Richard C. Reid, a British citizen accused of trying to
detonate homemade bombs hidden inside his sneakers aboard an international
flight that was diverted to Boston. Authorities believe the suspects, two
Pakistanis and three North Africans, assisted Reid in Paris shortly before he
boarded the flight, originally destined for Miami.

Padilla, who also has been using the name Abdullah al Muhajir, was arrested May
8 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. U.S. officials said he was
dispatched by senior al Qaeda operatives after meeting with them in March.
Officials said he and associates picked up in Pakistan were considering various
sites and weapons.

A senior Pakistani security official familiar with the case said yesterday that
Padilla spent less than a week in Karachi with al Qaeda officials before
embarking on a five-week journey that would take him to Zurich, Cairo and then
to the United States. As a foreigner staying in a moderately priced hotel, he
came to the routine attention of Pakistan's intelligence operatives, the
official said, and was interviewed as well as watched.

But the visitor was not found to be suspicious, nor was he on any watch list
that U.S. agents shared with Pakistan, according to this official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity. On the shadow scale Pakistan security services employ to
rank people they have investigated -- white, gray and black -- al Muhajir was
designated the lowest level of "white," the official said.

Ashcroft, who made a stop in Bern, Switzerland yesterday, said Swiss authorities
aided in the apprehension of Padilla. Swiss authorities are investigating
Padilla's activities during several days there this spring.

On Monday, Ashcroft revealed the capture of Padilla from a television studio in
Moscow. More than an hour elapsed before law enforcement officials in Washington
held a press conference that tamped down to some degree the suggestion of any
immediate threat.

Asked about the handling of the news of Padilla's arrest, White House spokesman
Ari Fleischer told reporters, "I'm not in the second-guessing business. I'm in
the business of explaining to you what the administration did, why we did it. I
think the administration looks at this as an issue where the country was
protected, and that's what we're focused on."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has said that Padilla was sent by
high-ranking al Qaeda officials to "plan further deeds," but said the extent of
the actual bomb plot amounted only to "some fairly loose talk."

Some lawmakers have questioned why the Justice Department waited a month to make
what seemed a breathless announcement about Padilla's apprehension, suggesting
that his capture may have been touted to counter criticism being leveled at
intelligence agencies for pre-Sept. 11 blunders.

Fleischer flatly rejected those suspicions. "These very few people who want to
make such outlandish political accusations represent the most cynical among the
most partisan and they're not to be taken seriously," he said.

A motion filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan by Padilla's attorney
accuses the government of violating Padilla's constitutional rights, and holding
him at a naval installation in Charleston, S.C., based on evidence that is "weak
at best."

The motion was unsealed yesterday after sections were redacted, apparently for
reasons of national security. It petitions the court to order Padilla's release
or, short of that, permit him access to counsel, telephone calls and personal
visits.

In her petition for a writ of habeus corpus, attorney Donna R. Newman calls into
question the credibility of Abu Zubaida, a captured Al Qaeda operative who,
according to U.S. officials, provided some of the information that led
authorities to Padilla. "The only result of his information has been fear among
the citizens of the United States," Newman wrote.

Staff writers Mike Allen, Steve Fainaru and Dana Priest contributed to this
report. Special correspondent Khan reported from Karachi.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 13, 2002; Page A36

Editorial--

DETAINING AMERICANS (CONT'D)

The Bush Administration is at least candid in its description of its detention
of Jose Padilla, the American citizen arrested in Chicago on suspicion of being
part of an al Qaeda plot to set off a dirty bomb. "We are not interested in
trying him at the moment or punishing him at the moment," said Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld. "We are interested in finding out what he knows." President
Bush described the Brooklyn native as "a threat to the country [who] is now off
the street, where he should be." If Mr. Padilla is, as Mr. Bush said, "a bad
guy," then it's a relief to have him behind bars. That said, we had thought that
it took more than the determination by the president that someone was a "threat
to the country" before an American could simply disappear and be locked up
without charge or trial or prospect of release.

The government may be right that an American citizen working with al Qaeda can
be held as an enemy combatant for the duration of the war on terrorism. As a
legal matter, the contention has precedent in prior conflicts, though how to
apply those precedents during an undeclared war against a non-state actor when
the administration itself seems to regard the conflict as never-ending is no
easy question. International law permits the detention of captured enemy
soldiers, even those who have committed no crimes, and it would be reckless of
the government simply to release people bent on detonating dirty bombs. The
question is not whether the government can detain an enemy combatant bent on
doing America great harm but whether it can designate anyone it chooses as such
a person without meaningful review.

The government's position would be easier to swallow were it not actively
seeking to frustrate judicial review of the president's designations. When the
government detains a citizen as an enemy combatant, that person must be
permitted to consult with counsel and challenge the lawfulness of the detention
in court. Without that, every citizen is at the mercy of presidential whim.
Formally, the government recognizes that federal courts have jurisdiction to
consider the legality of detentions -- including military detentions -- in this
country. Yet in Mr. Padilla's case -- as in that of Yaser Esam Hamdi, another
detainee with likely citizenship -- it has thrown procedural obstacles in the
way of efforts to adjudicate detentions. After whisking Mr. Padilla to military
custody in South Carolina from civilian custody in New York, it has prevented
him from consulting with the lawyer who had been appointed to represent him.
Similarly, the government refused to let Mr. Hamdi meet with a federal public
defender interested in representing him. And when that lawyer sought to file a
case on his behalf anyway, the government then contended in a Kafkaesque twist
that, having had no prior relationship with Mr. Hamdi, the lawyer could not do
so.

The idea of indefinite detentions of Americans who have not been convicted of
any crime is alarming under any circumstances. Without the meaningful
supervision of the courts, it is a dangerous overreach of presidential power. If
such a thing were happening in any other country, Americans would know exactly
what to call it.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 12, 2002; Page A01

AL MUHAJIR ALLEGED TO BE SCOUTING TERROR SITES

U.S. Says Al Qaeda Had Instructed Suspect

By Susan Schmidt and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers

The American citizen suspected of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb on
U.S. soil met in late March with senior al Qaeda officials, who sent him to
scout possible U.S. sites for attacks with "dirty bombs" or conventional
explosives, senior intelligence officials and investigators said yesterday.

Those officials believe that Abdullah al Muhajir was intending to return to
Pakistan with the reconnaissance information before proceeding with the plot.

At the behest of the al Qaeda terrorist network, al Muhajir, an American ex-
convict, set off on a five-week journey that culminated in his arrest May 8 at
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Along the way, al Muhajir, 31, spent
several days in early April in Zurich, then traveled to Cairo, where he spent a
month with his two children and Egyptian wife. While there, he was under close
scrutiny by U.S. authorities tipped to his existence by a captured al Qaeda
leader, Abu Zubaida.

Investigators are trying to piece together how a Brooklyn-born American of
Puerto Rican descent, who served time as a juvenile in connection with a street
gang slaying in Chicago and had numerous confrontations with Florida police as
an adult, became an Islamic fundamentalist and an alleged operative for Osama
bin Laden's network.

Yesterday, new details emerged yesterday about al Muhajir's life in the United
States, including his conversion from Roman Catholicism to Islam in the mid-
1990s. The leader of the Darul Uloom Institute, a school in Pembroke Pines,
Fla., where al Muhajir studied Islam in 1995, described him as an extremely
observant Muslim who stood out at the relatively liberal facility.

To date, al Muhajir has not been charged, but is being held in a South Carolina
military brig as an "enemy combatant." Officials believe he has information that
could help in the war on terror.

"He knows a lot, but so far he has not cooperated," one senior official said
yesterday.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said on CBS's "Early Show" that al
Muhajir "clearly had associates, and one of the things we want to ask him about
is who those associates were and how we can track them down."

Wolfowitz said al Muhajir "came into this country with the intention, by various
means -- not just the dirty-bomb idea -- of killing hundreds and maybe thousands
of Americans." Wolfowitz said al Muhajir intended to obtain radioactive material
within the United States "from places like university labs."

President Bush signed the order Sunday transferring al Muhajir from a New York
jail, where he had been secretly held for a month as a "material witness" in the
war on terrorism. Yesterday Bush described al Muhajir, who was born Jose
Padilla, as one of many "would-be killers" in U.S. custody.

"This guy Padilla's a bad guy and he is where he needs to be -- detained," said
Bush, vowing that the U.S. would "run down every lead" to catch his
confederates.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, speaking with reporters at the International
Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, said al Muhajir "was involved with al Qaeda
in very serious terrorist plots."

U.S. officials said another al Qaeda associate involved in the alleged plan is
being held by Pakistani authorities.

In a separate development, officials in Morocco said yesterday that they have
arrested three Saudi nationals who were planning attacks on U.S. and British
warships in the Straits of Gibraltar.

Al Muhajir's undoing came as a result of information that interrogators obtained
from Zubaida, who was captured in Pakistan March 28. That information dovetailed
with suspicions al Muhajir had previously raised at the U.S. consulate in
Karachi, Pakistan.

Al Muhajir's journey to the Middle East may have begun at two mosques in
Florida's Broward County. Darul Uloom Institute was one of the places where he
attended Saturday morning courses in 1995.

"He used to dress with a shawl over his head. He always had his head covered,"
said Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, leader of the institute. "It is very unique. It
is one out of a million who would do that."

Al Muhajir used the name "Ibrahim" during the three to six months that he
attended, Mohamed said; the name also appears on marriage records. "He used to
come, but he just disappeared. I am so baffled," he said. "He was a very quiet,
quiet guy."

The institute is known for its liberal approach to Islam. It is more inclusive
of women than mainstream Islam and encourages more interaction with the
community at large.

Mohamed said he was contacted last May by al Muhajir's former wife, Cherie
Stultz, who requested counseling. Mohamed said that Stultz told him that she and
al Muhajir had divorced, and that he had married an Arab woman and moved to
Egypt. His former wife also went by the name Marwah, Mohamed said.

Mohamed said he did not know when al Muhajir converted to Islam, and Florida
officials said they were uncertain as well. Al Muhajir, while still Jose
Padilla, served nearly a year in jail between 1991 and 1992 for an incident
during which he fired a gun at another motorist. Earlier, as a teenager in
Chicago, he spent several years in juvenile detention for his role in a gang
killing, law enforcement officials said.

"We do not have any documents that support that this conversion took place in
our jail," Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said yesterday, adding that his
staff keeps detailed records about religious requests made by inmates.

Jenne said he is providing the FBI with the names of Padilla's cellmates, a list
of his visitors and a list of imams who were authorized to enter the jail during
the period al Muhajir was incarcerated there.

Al Muhajir left the United States, apparently for good, in 1998, living for most
of the next two years in Egypt with his second wife. He fathered two children
there, according to U.S. officials. They said he also has a child in the United
States.

In Egypt, al Muhajir "spent time dealing with Islamic extremists," one senior
official said.

Members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad make up a sizable part of the al Qaeda
network's core group. The two groups merged in 1998.

Al Muhajir began traveling throughout the Middle East in 2000, one official
said, including trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan and a pilgrimage to Mecca. In
November and December of 2001, U.S. investigators believe, he first met with
Zubaida, by then the senior field operations officer for al Qaeda, whose leaders
were under attack in Afghanistan.

Al Muhajir began learning how to wire explosives and scoured the Internet to
learn about constructing radioactive bombs, U.S. officials said. Al Muhajir met
with Zubaida and other al Qaeda leaders in March, before undertaking his
exploratory trip to the United States.

Major al Qaeda operations, such as the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania, were preceded by extensive reconnaissance, which included
photographing possible targets and recording the comings and goings of those who
worked there.

Al Muhajir and at least one other associate who accompanied him suggested more
conventional plots against the United States as well. These included the idea of
bombing gas stations, hotels and other civilian targets, one U.S. official said.

Whatever assets al Muhajir brought to al Qaeda, his American passport was an
extraordinary prize. A U.S. citizen could slip through the security cordon
immigration authorities threw up after Sept. 11, escaping not only increasingly
challenging visa requirements but also some of the suspicion that would greet
foreign travelers arriving from Pakistan.

But the passport also may have contributed to his undoing. In February, Muhajir
walked into the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a lawless city of 14 million, where,
according to sources in Pakistan, he reported his passport stolen and sought a
replacement at a window reserved for American citizens.

A new passport was issued the next month, but a suspicious consular official
turned over the application to a security officer.

"After the passport was issued . . . the consulate officer just felt there was
something odd about the case and raised it to the attention of the regional
security officer," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters
yesterday.

The security office investigated al Muhajir's activities in Pakistan, and shared
the information with FBI agents and intelligence officers who have set up shop
in the fortress-like Karachi consulate. By the third week in April, FBI and CIA
agents were looking for al Muhajir based, in part, on sketchy information
provided by Zubaida.

Law enforcement officials said al Muhajir was monitored jointly by CIA officers
and FBI agents throughout his journey to Chicago, and was subjected to extra
security scrutiny before entering the United States. Intelligence sources said
that U.S. authorities began tracking him in Cairo.

When he was arrested at O'Hare, al Muhajir told authorities that he had returned
to the United States to visit his mother in Florida and his son, who lives
elsewhere, officials said. He also told them that he had never been in
Afghanistan, which they knew to be untrue, the officials said.

Staff writers Dan Eggen in Washington, Manuel Roig-Franzia in Florida, and
Kamran Khan and Karl Vick in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


June 11, 2002; Page A10

AL QAEDA SUSPECT ENTERS LEGAL LIMBO
Few Precedents Available for Case, Experts Say

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Abdullah al Muhajir, the alleged al Qaeda associate suspected of plotting to set
off a radioactive bomb in the United States, has entered a legal Twilight Zone
in which few precedents are available for guidance, experts said yesterday.

Al Muhajir's designation as an "enemy combatant" allows authorities to detain
and question him -- for now -- without charging him with a crime. By
transferring him from Justice Department custody to a high- security Navy brig
in Charleston, S.C., the government hopes to continue to interrogate al Muhajir
while sharply restricting his access to the defense attorney he had in New York,
legal authorities said.

But civil liberties groups and specialists in international law said al
Muhajir's U.S. citizenship will limit the government's ability to detain him
incommunicado and without trial.

"It's going to be hard for the government to keep holding this guy," said Peter
Spiro, an international law professor at Hofstra University. "This is a case
that poses a new designation for which there is no clear precedent: the 'enemy
combatant' who is a U.S. citizen."

Al Muhajir cannot be tried before the kind of military tribunal that President
Bush contemplated in his presidential order in November. It bars U.S. citizens
as defendants at such proceedings.

Sources said that a New York federal judge, acting at a secret hearing shortly
after al Muhajir's May 8 arrest, ordered him held as a material witness in a
grand jury probe of al Qaeda.

The judge had scheduled a hearing for today into al Muhajir's status as a
material witness, the sources said. But al Muhajir refused to testify before the
grand jury, forcing officials to scramble to construct a criminal case against
him, an official said. Eventually they decided against that course of action to
avoid bringing into court the sources who had incriminated al Muhajir, the
official said.

Officials then were left with only a few options: releasing him and keeping him
under surveillance, or granting him immunity from prosecution and compelling him
to testify.

Both options were rejected, and this weekend Bush chose a separate course --
holding al Muhajir for a time in a military prison. On Sunday night, Bush signed
documents listing al Muhajir as an "enemy combatant." He was moved to South
Carolina the same day.

Government officials say the designation gives them the right to hold him in
military custody without charges, at least temporarily.

The case that most closely resembles al Muhajir's is that of Yaser Esam Hamdi,
21, a Saudi student who was captured in Afghanistan last year and taken to the
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. But after investigators determined he was
born in Louisiana, he was transported to the brig at a Navy base in Norfolk and
designated an "enemy combatant."

Last month, the federal public defender's office convinced a federal judge that
as a putative U.S. citizen, Hamdi deserves the right to a lawyer and an inquiry
into his detention.

But U.S. officials appealed that ruling, and at a hearing before the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond last week, government attorneys said
allowing a lawyer to represent him would complicate interrogators' ability to
question Hamdi about al Qaeda. Hamdi's appeals case is still pending, and its
resolution likely will play a role in what happens to al Muhajir, attorneys
said.

"It clearly will happen at some point soon that a lawyer will walk into federal
court and file a 'habeas corpus' motion" demanding a hearing into the reason for
al Muhajir's imprisonment, said Michael F. Noone, an international law
specialist at Catholic University. "There's a fundamental distinction under U.S.
law between an American citizen and an alien."

Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompsonyesterday cited two legal precedents for
holding al Muhajir. One is a 1942 U.S. Supreme Court case that established --
but only implicitly, in vague language - - that a U.S. citizen who had joined a
German military plot to sabotage American facilities could be tried as an
"unlawful combatant."

The other case cited by Thompson was a 1946 appeals court decision that
established that a U.S. citizen of Italian descent who was captured after
joining the Italian army during World War II could be held in this country as a
prisoner of war.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized officials' decision to give al
Muhajir special status as a military detainee.

"If the government has sufficient evidence of criminal conduct of a U.S.
citizen, then it should charge him in U.S. courts," the group said in a
statement.

But Ruth Wedgwood, a Yale University expert on international law who generally
supports the Bush administration's anti-terrorism stances, said officials are on
solid legal ground holding al Muhajir as an "enemy combatant," just as the Union
imprisoned captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

Under international law, Wedgwood said, "if you've declared yourself an
adversary of the U.S., then that's an entirely different legal paradigm."

Staff writers Steve Fainaru and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


Right to Lawyer Argued At Hearing on Detainee

June 5, 2002; Page B02

a Washington Post Staff Writer

RICHMOND, June 4 -- An American-born man captured with Taliban fighters in
Afghanistan has a constitutional right to see a lawyer while he is being held in
a Navy brig in Norfolk, the prisoner's court- appointed attorney told a federal
appeals court today.

Appearing before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Federal Public Defender
Frank W. Dunham Jr. said he had been denied permission to visit or even take
pens and paper to Yaser Esam Hamdi, 21, who was born in Louisiana but raised in
Saudi Arabia.

Dunham asked the three-judge panel to uphold a U.S. District Court judge's order
last week giving him access to Hamdi. Government lawyers appealed the order,
contending that Hamdi was an unlawful enemy combatant with the Taliban and can
be held indefinitely without charges or advice from an attorney. They say a
lawyer would hamper interrogators' ability to learn about Osama bin Laden's al
Qaeda network and protect national security.

Gregory Garre, assistant U.S. solicitor general, argued that Dunham has no
standing to represent Hamdi because they had no previous relationship and have
never met.

Hamdi's father, who lives in Saudi Arabia, has not signed papers authorizing
Dunham to represent Hamdi. But Dunham attributed the lack of family
authorization to language differences and geographic distance, and he said the
father is prepared to sign the documents.

"If the petitioner said, 'Get out of here, you Christian infidel, I don't want
anything to do with your system,' we'd be out of there in a heartbeat," Dunham
said. "We're only here to give this person the rights our Constitution gives to
every U.S. citizen."

Whether Hamdi is a U.S. citizen remains unclear two months after he was
separated from 384 other detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and shipped to
Norfolk because authorities tracked down his Baton Rouge birth certificate.

Citizenship is granted to everyone born in the United States, as Hamdi was while
his father, Esam Hamdi, was working in the country on a petrochemical project.
When Yaser Hamdi was 3, the family returned to Saudi Arabia, which does not
recognize dual citizenship. But Esam Hamdi maintains that his son never
renounced his U.S. citizenship, according to Najeeb al Nauimi, a Qatari lawyer
who says he was given power of attorney by the relatives of 70 detainees,
including Hamdi.

"If they're detaining a U.S. citizen this way, what will happen to the rest who
are still in Guantanamo?" he said. "They'll never see their families again."

Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III asked Garre why the government objected to
Hamdi's seeing a lawyer when prisoners John Walker Lindh, an American caught
with Taliban fighters, and Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen accused of
conspiracy in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, have attorneys.

"The significant difference is, those individuals have criminal charges against
them," Garre said. "This is an individual detained as an enemy combatant."

When Wilkinson asked him how long the government wants to detain Hamdi without
charges, Garre replied, "While there are active hostilities, at the very least."

Dunham argued that foreigners facing charges on U.S. soil and U.S. citizens held
anywhere by the government have a constitutional right to counsel. "Prisoner-of-
war cases are not really applicable here because we don't have a war," he said.

Wilkinson looked surprised, and he interjected, "Are you saying that despite the
fact this is a denominated war on terrorism, that 3,000 American citizens were
killed, soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan, and we don't have a war?"

Dunham replied that Congress has not declared war and that he would not concede
that Hamdi was an enemy combatant. "He could have been selling lemonade and hot
dogs," he said.

Nauimi, the Qatari lawyer, said Hamdi went to Afghanistan in a rite-of-passage
trip to help refugees and was planning to return to Saudi Arabia a few days
after Sept. 11. He said Hamdi was not fighting alongside Taliban troops but
hiding behind their lines, fearing that Northern Alliance troops were hunting
down Arabs, whom they blamed for killing their leader.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

June 3, 2002; Page E09

FEDERAL CONTRACTS
States News Service

(...)

Kellogg Brown & Root of Arlington won a $7 million contract from the Navy for
construction of a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

(...)

* * *


June 2, 2002; Page A11

LAWYER: MOST CUBA DETAINEES NOT TERRORISTS
Young Men Moved by Arabic TV, 'Religious Fervor'
Into Trip to Afghanistan, He Says

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Most detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no affiliation
with al Qaeda or the Taliban and are largely young Arab men who rushed to
Afghanistan with visions of assisting the needy or fighting American troops,
according to a lawyer who represents scores of the captives.

Inflamed by televised images of deprivation, the men now detained left jobs and
families to go to Afghanistan, said Najeeb Al-Nauimi, a lawyer who represents
about 60 of the 384 captives at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Once in
Afghanistan, the great majority never touched a gun or got anywhere near Osama
bin Laden's training camps, he said.

"Many of my clients are 20- to 24-year-olds who saw images being shown over and
over on [Arabic television network] al- Jazeera of the bombardments of Afghan
children, and they were moved by emotions of religious fervor," said Al-Nauimi,
a former Qatari justice minister. "They were under intense propaganda, and for
them bin Laden is a kind of Billy the Kid."

Al-Nauimi's account could not be corroborated; parts of it have appeared in some
Middle Eastern news outlets, and at least one U.S. law firm that represents
Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo Bay has made some similar claims. It is
difficult to assess Al-Nauimi's assertions because the Pentagon has released
virtually no information about the detainees.

Experts and government officials caution that terrorists have often used
charitable work as cover, and many Muslim philanthropic groups have been
exploited as fronts for terror financing.

Marine Maj. Riccoh Player, a Pentagon spokesman, raised questions about Al-
Nauimi's account.

"A reasonable person would observe that these guys were picked up in an area
where there was a conflict or a prison uprising, and that they likely were
engaged in something nefarious," Player said. "They're still being interrogated,
so I can't go any further than that."

Patrick Clawson, a Middle East expert at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, agreed that once the Afghan war began last October, some Arab media
outlets stoked anti-American fervor and thousands of Arabs rushed to
Afghanistan. But he added that many were responding in part to Muslim clerics'
exhortations to make war on the Americans there.

"It's putting a benign spin on things to say they were there largely to do
charitable work," Clawson said. "Many had dreams of making jihad against
America. While they might have been incompetent combatants, if things had worked
out differently they might be back home now bragging about their war stories."

Indeed, the U.S. military targeted young Arab men who volunteered to fight in
Afghanistan during the U.S. bombing campaign last fall. U.S. military planners
saw the Taliban militia's 55th Brigade, a seasoned assault force of several
thousand Arabs and other foreigners, as the striking arm of Osama bin Laden's
force in Afghanistan.

Legal experts said that if Al-Nauimi is correct, many prisoners in Cuba are
unlikely to be charged with crimes. The detainees' attorneys may try to use
these accounts and international law in an attempt to free them. But, the
experts add, the U.S. government has no obligation to do so.

"International legal principle is simple," said Michael Glennon, an expert in
international law at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. "Prolonged
arbitrary detention is unlawful."

But federal courts are "highly unlikely" to force the Bush administration to
release them, Glennon said. The courts are loath to reverse a government action
concerning events overseas and involving matters of national security, he said,
especially if Congress has implicitly given approval.

Al-Nauimi is visiting Washington to argue his clients' case to Pentagon
officials, and said he has held off filing a lawsuit on their behalf. As head of
an international team of attorneys from several Arab nations, he could put
pressure on the Bush administration at a time when it seeks the Muslim world's
favor.

The lawyer said his research -- based largely on conversations with detainees'
families -- shows that the Guantanamo Bay captives fall into three general
categories. The first comprises "Arab Afghans," al Qaeda members or sympathizers
who have fought in Afghanistan for years. Many are fugitives from their native
countries, wanted for crimes such as terrorism and subversion. He said he
believes none of his clients is in this category.

The second group are devout Muslims who spent their summer holidays in
Afghanistan doing charitable work such as building mosques, helping refugees and
feeding orphans. They were following a tradition of carrying out such efforts
during vacations, but found themselves trapped in Afghanistan after Sept. 11.

One example from this group, he said, is a sickly, unemployed Qatari man who
traveled to Afghanistan in July to help assist refugees. When the war broke out,
the man, whom Al-Nauimi declined to identify, telephoned his family to say
fellow aid workers had helped move him by car and camel. He was later captured
in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and taken to Cuba.

Men in the third category grew enraged after Sept. 11 at the plight of Afghan
refugees or civilians injured by U.S. warplanes. The victims' stories were
recounted on Arab television networks such as al- Jazeera, which is based in
Qatar. Al-Nauimi said many of his clients seized on the idea of going there.

"In Islam, if a Muslim state is under attack, and a jihad [struggle or holy war]
is declared, it's an obligation to go help," either militarily or by charitable
acts, he said.

By Al-Nauimi's telling, 5,000 Arab men rushed to Pakistan and then Afghanistan
at the time the U.S. assault began. Al-Nauimi said that while some of his
clients may have wanted to fight the Americans, the vast majority never did.

Lawyers for a number of the Guantanamo inmates say that after the rapid U.S.
victory in Afghanistan, troops began offering bounties for captured al Qaeda and
Taliban fighters. Tribesmen along the Afghan-Pakistan border handed over
hundreds of Arabs to U.S. Special Forces, the attorneys said.

Three hundred teachers from Saudi Arabia took vacation from government jobs and
trekked to Afghanistan in October and November but hastily went home after the
fighting started, Al-Nauimi said. Some were arrested in Pakistan but bribed
their way out, he said.

In all, 295 made their way back. In the end, Pakistani police turned over the
other five to the Americans, he said.

One was Anwar Hamdan Al-Nur, who, in a letter to his family transmitted by the
International Committee for the Red Cross and produced by Al-Nauimi, expressed
concern about a workaday matter that would seem of little consequence to
hardened jihadists.

"If my vacation time is used up, tell my superiors I have a reason," he
instructed his family in a letter from his Guantanamo Bay cell. "Maybe you can
get it extended for me. Please speak to my bosses. Call [school supervisor]
Mahmoud and tell him to give me the reserve vacation I deserve."

The captives' absence from work has become a matter of some gravity for their
families. David Henderson, a consultant to a separate legal team that represents
11 Kuwaitis at Guantanamo Bay, said that their relatives in Kuwait are falling
behind on mortgage payments and household bills.

The usually generous Kuwaiti government insists that relatives of anyone
detained in a foreign country present documents outlining formal charges before
they can collect benefits. But the United States has not charged any detainee,
making it difficult for families to stave off creditors, Henderson said.

The detainees' letters offer glimpses of life in the prison camp.

One note, from an inmate named Khalid bin Suleiman Arbaish, recounted his
joining a week-long prisoners' hunger strike in February to protest conditions
at the facility.

"I've discovered I'm a real man," he told his family. "I can sustain hardship,
and be patient, with God's will. . . . Don't be upset for me. I'm happy and
busy, my friends and I."

Al-Nauimi said he will raise questions about many captives' guilt during his
upcoming meeting with Pentagon officials. He said he may cite the case of Abdul
Razeq, 25, an Afghan who was arrested by U.S. troops and flown to Guantanamo
Bay. In an account first described by Newsweek magazine and partially confirmed
by Al- Nauimi, Razeq was flown back to Afghanistan and placed in a locked
hospital room after U.S. interrogators established he was emotionally disturbed.

"It took them four months to figure out he was mentally unstable," Al- Nauimi
said. "What about the innocent ones?"

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

June 1, 2002; Page A18

Editorial--

CIVICS LESSONS FOR PROSECUTORS

THE JUSTICE Department this week suffered a pair of well- deserved setbacks when
its aggressive legal tactics following the Sept. 11 attacks came up against
federal judges. In New Jersey, Chief Judge John Bissell of the federal district
court slapped down the government's effort to maintain secrecy for its
deportation proceedings related to the investigation. In Norfolk, Judge Robert
Doumar ordered that a battlefield detainee named Yaser Esam Hamdi -- who was
born in Louisiana and is likely an American citizen -- must be given access to a
lawyer. It should not take federal judges to teach the government such civics
lessons. But the government doesn't seem to be learning from repeated judicial
rebuke.

The decision in New Jersey is not the first time the government's secrecy policy
has been held unconstitutional. Since the attacks, the government has detained
large numbers of Arabs and Muslims whose deficient immigration status has come
to light during the probe. It has applied a set of rules to these cases unlike
any others in immigration court: "no visitors, no family, no press." The cases
are kept off of the dockets of the immigration courts. And while they involve no
classified information, so-called special interest cases, for all public
purposes anyway, don't officially exist. Earlier this spring, a federal court in
Michigan forced the government to open the case of a detainee named Rabih
Haddad. Now another court has agreed that the policy cannot be squared with
traditional notions of open government. How many judges have to declare the
policy unlawful before the government stops closing cases with no individual
showing that any information within them is sensitive?

Still more disturbing is the fact that the government of the United States needs
to be told by a federal judge that a likely citizen of this country -- being
held indefinitely and without charge -- must be able to talk to an attorney. Mr.
Hamdi was captured by the military in Afghanistan and initially detained at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was brought to America when his likely citizenship
became evident, and he has been held incommunicado in Virginia ever since. The
government contends that allowing him "any contacts with outsiders" -- by which
it means lawyers -- could "interfere with the success of the interrogation
effort." But Judge Doumar rightly insisted that "fair play and fundamental
justice" require that people jailed in America get lawyers. Highlighting the
radicalism of the government's current posture, he noted that the government
"could not cite one case where a prisoner of any variety within the jurisdiction
of a United States District Court, who was held incommunicado and indefinitely,
and who had filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, was denied access to
an attorney or the right to file such a petition." He ordered that Mr. Hamdi
have access to the federal public defender and an interpreter "without military
personnel present, and without any listening or recording devices of any kind
being employed in any way."

Faced with such a dressing down, the government, we would have hoped, would back
down and let the man talk with a lawyer. Even terrorist masterminds prosecuted
in this country have gotten to do that, after all. Yesterday, however, the
government filed an emergency petition to stay the ruling -- and block Mr.
Hamdi's access to counsel further -- while it appeals. The court of appeals late
yesterday granted a temporary stay while it considers the issue. The government
is arguing, in effect, that it can hold someone as long as it wants without
either charging him or ruling out charges, and that Mr. Hamdi has no right to
assistance from counsel in challenging the legality of his incarceration. Here's
hoping the court of appeals shows as much backbone as Judge Doumar.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


U.S. SEEKS TO BLOCK DETAINEE-LAWYER MEETING

Saturday, June 1, 2002; Page A20

By Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court yesterday to stop an
American- born man who was captured with Taliban fighters and is being held in a
Navy brig in Norfolk from meeting with his attorney.

A federal judge in Norfolk ruled this week that Yaser Esam Hamdi, 21, who was
born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia, has a constitutional right to meet
with Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. No charges have been filed
against Hamdi, and Dunham has filed suit to force the government to explain why
he is being held.

In response to an emergency appeal from the solicitor general's office, the 4th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed last night to stop the meeting until it can
hear arguments Tuesday morning.

The solicitor general's office argued in its appeal that U.S. District Judge
Robert G. Doumar improperly strayed into foreign policy issues. Allowing a
lawyer to talk to an "unlawful combatant" could damage interrogators' efforts to
learn about the Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist network, the government
argued.

"The relationship of trust and dependency between detainees and the military
that is key to . . . intelligence-gathering efforts may be destroyed, and
critical, life-saving intelligence may be lost," the Justice Department lawyers
wrote.

A department spokesman declined to comment on the filing.

But Dunham said he expects the 4th Circuit to uphold Doumar's order.

"They've provided absolutely no evidence that seeing counsel would interfere
with the interrogation," said Dunham, who was asked by the court to represent
Hamdi. Furthermore, "inherent in [a judge's] decision to appoint counsel is the
right to see counsel. We don't believe that a decision to appoint counsel can be
appealed."

Hamdi, initially held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with the other prisoners from
Afghanistan, was moved to Norfolk Naval Station in April after investigators
learned that he was born in Baton Rouge. His citizenship remains unclear.

Hamdi also came up at yesterday's hearing for the American man captured with the
Taliban, John Walker Lindh, who faces charges of conspiring to kill U.S.
nationals abroad and aiding terrorist organizations. Lindh's attorneys want to
talk to Hamdi, who was at the Mazar-e Sharif prison with Lindh, because Hamdi
has talked to government investigators and provided information that could help
clear Lindh.

After exacting assurances from Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis that Hamdi
would remain in this country until Lindh's trial in August, U.S. District Judge
T.S. Ellis III told Lindh's attorneys to try to set up an interview with Hamdi.
If the 4th Circuit reverses Doumar's order, however, prosecutors might fight
such a meeting.

Ellis also gave both sides until mid-June to work out their fight over a defense
request to subpoena seven military witnesses who saw Lindh while he was being
held in Afghanistan and on two Navy ships. Lindh's attorneys say their testimony
would help persuade Ellis to throw out incriminating statements Lindh made to
Army interrogators, Navy doctors and, most importantly, an FBI agent. Lindh
could face life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors have agreed not to fight the subpoenas of 30 government employees,
but Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy I. Bellows insisted that the remaining seven
are irrelevant or unnecessary.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


April 30, 2002; Page A01

BRITISH TO TURN OVER PRISONERS TO AFGHANS

By Bradley Graham, Washington Post Staff Writer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5114-2002Apr29.html

Britain has decided to treat al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured by its
forces in Afghanistan as prisoners of war and turn them over to the interim
Afghan government, underscoring differences between Britain and the United
States over how to deal with the captives under international law.

Briefing reporters on the decision yesterday, British representatives said it
was driven largely by practical considerations, notably the lack of sufficient
ground forces in Afghanistan to conduct legal hearings for case-by-case
judgments about the appropriate status of individual prisoners.

But by planning to surrender captives to Afghan instead of to U.S. authorities,
the British government signaled lingering reservations about the Bush
administration's approach. It put the United States at odds with its closest
ally in the war on terrorism and could complicate efforts by U.S. authorities to
interrogate and prosecute al Qaeda or Taliban fighters captured by the British.

The administration also was further isolated in its policy to classify the
detainees as "unlawful combatants" rather than as prisoners of war under the
Geneva Conventions. Under the policy, the administration has placed hundreds of
prisoners in indefinite detention without charge and is preparing to prosecute
some before military tribunals.

The policy has drawn sharp objections from human rights groups and some foreign
governments for flouting international law.

"The British make the point that they'll be holding their prisoners only
temporarily," said Michael Noone, a professor of international law at Catholic
University. "That makes a lot of sense and will create a problem for the United
States in justifying its interpretation of the Geneva Convention."

Britain's plan to turn over prisoners to Afghan authorities contrasts with the
policy of another major U.S. ally, Canada, whose troops in January transferred
three detainees to U.S. custody.

The British decision was prompted by the arrival in Afghanistan this month of
1,700 British troops to assist U.S. forces in the hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda
fighters. Although the British have yet to capture any enemy fighters, the
likelihood of doing so is increasing as they join U.S. troops in a new sweep
through rugged terrain in eastern Afghanistan bordering on Pakistan.

"As a matter of policy it's been decided that every detainee we take will be
treated as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention," an unidentified
British official told reporters yesterday at Bagram air base north of Kabul, the
Afghan capital. "We believe our interpretation is correct, and I'm sure the
Americans believe theirs is correct."

The British position does include some leeway for exceptions, particularly if al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or one of his top lieutenants is captured, British
officials said, although just what would happen in such cases was unclear.

Some officials noted that in all likelihood, the capture of bin Laden or other
senior al Qaeda figures would be accomplished with at least some U.S. military
involvement. The fate of enemy fighters captured during joint U.S.-British
operations would be left up to the highest person on the chain of command,
presumably an American, the officials said.

Official U.S. reaction to the British decision was reserved. Military and
administration spokesmen sought to place it in the best possible light and
portrayed it as Britain's alone to make.

"The Brits did talk to us before they announced their approach," a senior
administration official said. "And we have no problem with it. We all have the
same goal, which is to bring terrorists to justice, although the approaches may
differ."

The administration's own efforts to craft a prisoner policy have been troubled
from the start. Originally, President Bush decided in mid-January to deny the
captives coverage under international conventions and not declare them prisoners
of war.

A month later, he reversed himself -- at least in principle -- declaring that
the Geneva Conventions did apply to members of Afghanistan's vanquished Taliban
militia. But in practice, administration officials said, all Taliban as well as
al Qaeda captives would be considered "unlawful combatants" not entitled to
formal POW status and prisoner rights under the conventions.

While the conventions call for legal hearings for captured combatants whose
legal status is ambiguous, administration officials made clear they considered
such hearings unnecessary.

U.S. authorities maintain that captives in American custody are being treated
humanely and are receiving most of what would they would be eligible for as
formal prisoners of war. The United States is holding about 300 terrorist
suspects, all flown in from Afghanistan, at its Navy base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and 255 in Afghanistan, most of them in the southern city of Kandahar. A
smaller number are being held at Bagram.

The question of turning prisoners over to the United States has sparked
controversy in Britain, primarily because of British opposition to the death
penalty. Some British lawyers argue that, under the European Convention on Human
Rights, which Britain has signed, it would be illegal for British soldiers to
transfer captives to the United States without a U.S. pledge not to execute
them.

Several British officials yesterday sought to play down U.S.-British
differences, noting that like the United States, Britain had decided not to
accord captives POW status but only treat them as POWs. But the anonymous
British official who spoke to reporters in Bagram made clear that a fundamental
difference exists in legal regard for the captives.

"We believe it is not clear whether they are legal or illegal combatants,
whereas the U.S. has taken the view that they are illegal combatants," the
official said.

Under the Geneva Conventions, a country that transfers a war prisoner still has
responsibility for ensuring proper treatment of the prisoner. British officials
said they had received assurances from the Afghan interim administration that
prisoners would be properly treated.

[ Correspondent T.R. Reid in London contributed to this report. ]

* * *


May 30, 2002; Page A07

ACCESS TO LAWYER ORDERED FOR DETAINEE
Judge Rules on U.S.-Born Man Captured in Afghanistan and Held in Norfolk

By Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writer
An American-born man captured with Taliban fighters and being held without
charges in a Navy brig in Norfolk must be allowed to meet privately with a
lawyer, a federal judge ruled yesterday, although he gave the Justice Department
until Saturday to appeal his decision.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, 21, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, was captured in
Afghanistan and sent initially to Guantanamo Bay. But the Department of Defense
transferred him to the brig at the Norfolk Naval Station in April after learning
that he was born in Louisiana.

Government lawyers contend that Hamdi, who dropped out of a Saudi university, is
an unlawful enemy combatant who can be held indefinitely without being charged
or given a lawyer. They told U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar that keeping
Hamdi isolated while he is interrogated is vital to efforts to protect national
security and learn more about the al Qaeda terrorist network.

But Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. filed suit May 10, demanding
that the government either charge Hamdi with a crime or let him go. After he was
formally appointed to represent the detainee, Dunham also asked for access to
his new client.

"How do you represent somebody when you can't talk to the client?" he said. "You
don't really have a lawyer if you can't talk to him."

Dunham added: "To me this is scary stuff. This guy is a U.S. citizen and
according to the government he can be held for life without ever seeing a judge
or a lawyer."

Doumar, presiding in Norfolk, agreed that the Constitution guarantees Hamdi the
right to consult a lawyer, and he gave government lawyers until June 13 to
explain in writing why Hamdi is being held without charges.

It's not clear what the solicitor general's office, which argued the case, will
do next. "We're reviewing the decision and have not made a decision on an
appeal," said Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra.

Doumar scheduled a hearing for June 20, which would make Hamdi the first -- and
perhaps the only -- detainee to get a day in court to argue that he is being
unfairly held. A federal court in Los Angeles rejected an earlier suit filed on
behalf of the detainees, saying it did not have jurisdiction over foreigners
being held in Cuba.

But the Norfolk naval base is clearly part of Doumar's domain, and Hamdi's claim
on the courts would be even stronger if he does turn out to hold U.S.
citizenship by virtue of his birth in Baton Rouge.

Legal analysts said government lawyers will have trouble finding a judge willing
to deny Hamdi access to a lawyer.

"Very few rights are absolute. However, the right to a lawyer is seen as one of
the most important because you need a lawyer to assert your other rights," said
American University law professor Ira P. Robbins.

Although some have argued that Civil War-era prison camps provide legal
precedent for holding Hamdi without charges or a lawyer, others point out that
the situations are quite different. The historical example involved thousands of
citizens in armed rebellion against their government, and President Abraham
Lincoln had formally suspended some legal rights. But Hamdi is just one of two
people in the current situation who might be U.S. citizens.

"The longer the detention, the less sympathy the government is going to find for
this enemy combatant argument," said Hofstra University law professor Peter J.
Spiro. "In some ways, [government officials] probably wish they had never picked
this guy up."

Hamdi's case may have repercussions for the other American-born man captured in
Afghanistan. Attorneys for John Walker Lindh asked this week for access to Hamdi
because they believe that Hamdi has evidence that would help their client defend
himself against charges of conspiring to kill Americans abroad and aiding
foreign terrorist groups.

The judge in that case, T.S. Ellis III, said Tuesday that he was inclined to
order the government to give Lindh's team access to Hamdi.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


May 30, 2002; Page A24

Letter to the editor--

PRISONERS DYING IN AFGHANISTAN

A May 24 news story "Another Chance at Freedom in Afghanistan" reported that
more than 50 prisoners may have died since the fighters surrendered to the U.S.-
supported Afghan Northern Alliance in November. The United States could and
should have prevented these unnecessary deaths.

When Physicians for Human Rights visited the Shebergan prison in January, we
reported on the deplorable conditions there: severe crowding, nonexistent
sanitation, inadequate food and medical supplies -- all resulting in epidemic
illness and deaths.

At the time of our visit, U.S. military authorities had just spent three weeks
controlling access to the prison while conducting interviews with the prisoners
and selecting those they wished to move to other prisons in Afghanistan or to
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Meanwhile the rest, many forcibly conscripted, lived in
squalor without due process under the control of Afghan warlord Gen. Abdurrashid
Dostum.

The Bush administration has denied responsibility for alleviating gross human
rights violations at the prison. Yet the Geneva Conventions are clear that
prisoners captured in multinational conflicts cannot be handed over to the
national authority unless that authority is capable of fulfilling support
obligations. If the acting authority is not capable -- and the Afghan
authorities are not -- the responsibility remains with the international
coalition. U.S. refusal to support an expanded international security force,
while continuing to allow renegade local commanders to wield power in prisons
and elsewhere, does not bode well for a stable and secure Afghanistan.

JOHN HEFFERNAN

Washington

The writer is a research consultant for Physicians for Human Rights.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


May 28, 2002, Page A04

GROUP CRITICIZES U.S. ON DETAINEE POLICY
Amnesty Warns of Human Rights Fallout

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer

U.S. moral authority to criticize human rights abuses abroad has been undermined
by the Bush administration's failure to guarantee the rights of foreigners
detained in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and its "selective
adherence" to international law, Amnesty International charged in a report to be
released today.

"In suggesting that national security may require compromises on human rights
here at home, the U.S. government risks signaling its allies that 'anything
goes' in their own human rights practices," Amnesty said in a summary document
prepared for release with its 2002 annual report.

A list of "Eight Significant Human Rights Failings," compiled by the
organization's U.S. branch, includes the administration's authorization of
military tribunals to try alleged terrorists; selective application of Geneva
Convention guarantees for prisoners held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba; and the indefinite detention of foreigners held without charge or
access to counsel.

The 300-page report, which assesses human rights in 152 countries, also repeats
past years' criticism of the use of the death penalty in the United States and
elsewhere. It notes that 74 countries or territories had abolished the death
penalty by the end of last year. An additional 15 had abolished it for all but
exceptional offenses such as "wartime crimes," and 22 had abolished it in
practice by not executing anyone for the past 10 years.

At least 3,048 persons were executed in 31 countries in 2001, Amnesty reported.
The vast majority of executions -- 2,468 -- took place in China. "During the
government's national 'strike hard' campaign," Amnesty said of China, "at least
1,781 people were executed between April and July 2001 -- more than the total
number of people executed in the rest of the world in the previous three years."

After China, the three countries with the most executions were Iran (139), Saudi
Arabia (79) and the United States (66).

The death penalty is among several items on the "Eight Failings" list that are
cumulative and include charges predating the Bush administration. The report
accuses the U.S. government of failing to prosecute or extradite accused
torturers who it knows are traveling through or living in this country, despite
an eight-year old provision in U.S. law allowing such prosecutions.

It also accuses the United States of continuing to export electronic, mechanical
and chemical equipment manufactured for law enforcement purposes but used in
other countries as implements of torture, and of imprisoning noncriminal asylum
seekers here. U.S. failure to ratify key international treaties, including the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the administration's "unsigning" of
the International Criminal Court statute this month "undermine global consensus
on human rights and set dangerous precedent for other countries to 'unsign'
treaties," the Amnesty summary said.

But the most pointed criticism concerns administration actions taken after Sept.
11. "We have certainly spoken on each of these issues at one time or another,"
William F. Shulz, the executive director of Amnesty International USA said in an
interview, "but we've never put them together before." Shulz said the
organization decided to use the occasion of its annual report release because
"the U.S. government needs to recognize that its own record cannot be
compromised . . . if it intends to remain a global leader on human rights."

An earlier Amnesty document released this spring compared post- Sept. 11 arrests
by the Justice Department to the infamous "Palmer Raids" of 1920, in which
thousands of immigrants were arrested for suspected subversion after a
Washington bombing and about 500 were eventually deported "not for the bombing,
but for their political associations."

With an estimated 1,200 persons detained in the first two months after Sept. 11
alone, the Justice Department has declined to release information about them.
"As in the Palmer Raids," the earlier report said, "the government seems to have
dispensed with developing probable cause before arresting individuals, and
instead has used pretexts -- usually of routine immigration violations -- as
justification for detaining hundreds of people about whom it has only the
faintest suspicion."

Many of those detained, it said, were initially held without charges for several
weeks. New regulations have increased the government's power to detain any
immigrant, without a hearing or opportunity to respond to charges, who is
declared a "suspected terrorist."

Amnesty has charged that the United States has failed to comply with
international law in its detention of hundreds of foreign suspects at
Guantanamo. "The cusp of the issue for us . . . is not treatment of the
prisoners," Shulz said, "but the determination of their status." Since it has
not declared the detainees prisoners of war, a categorization that would limit
the extent to which they can be interrogated and the length of time they can be
held, their status must be determined by an independent tribunal, he said.

Shulz said the organization expects some U.S. backlash over the report. "Amnesty
is used to not being popular," he said. "There has always been some excuse for
why human rights needs to take second place or even third or fourth place to
other concerns. . . . Today the excuse is national security.

"We would say that just as support for human rights advances economic interests,
so it similarly advances national security interests. That formula . . . is
obviously one that has not been crystallized in policymakers' minds or in the
minds of the American public."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

May 26, 2002; Page A12

DETAINEES SAY THEY WERE CHARITY WORKERS
Attorneys for 11 Kuwaitis Held in Cuba Offer Documents to Back Up Lawsuit

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Attorneys for 11 Kuwaiti men held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba have
released letters and documents to support their claim that at least some of them
were innocent aid workers swept up in mass arrests that followed the U.S. attack
in Afghanistan.

The documents also show that these prisoners have few complaints about their
treatment in Cuba.

"I will return as soon as [the Americans] ascertain I came for relief purposes
to assist the poor," detainee Abdullah Kamal Al-Kandari, 28, a technician with
the Kuwaiti waterworks, wrote to his family in a letter released by the
Washington law firm Shearman & Sterling. "I eat the best food, sleep on the best
bed and am in comfort. I am not being tortured. I would like you to be patient
and pray for me."

The information in the letters transmitted by the International Committee of the
Red Cross could not be independently verified. A Pentagon spokesman declined to
comment on the letters and the attorneys' assertions.

But Pentagon officials have said they likely will release some of the 384
detainees to their home countries if investigators determine they have done no
wrong. Sources knowledgeable about the interrogations in Cuba said some
detainees appear to be young men who were doing genuine philanthropic work when
captured.

"Some charitable types got swept up in the whirlwind," one informed source said.
"We're trying to differentiate who's who. Some bad guys used charity as a ruse."
Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and elsewhere have used religious charitable
work as a cover for terrorist activity.

Earlier this month Shearman & Sterling sued in federal court here on behalf of
the 11 men and their families, asking that the prisoners receive legal counsel
and family visits, or be returned to Kuwait. U.S. officials say the federal
courts lack jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay because the base is leased from
Cuba.

"It's hard to prove these men's innocence, but based on our review, we'd be
surprised if they're guilty," said lawyer Thomas B. Wilner, part of the team
representing the Kuwaitis. "In any case, they're entitled to due process, and
denying them that sets a dangerous precedent that could endanger U.S. citizens."

The attorneys said they researched the backgrounds of all 11 detainees and
contended that none had any extremist ties or had expressed any interest in al
Qaeda.

Instead, the attorneys said, all of them left families and jobs temporarily last
summer to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan for charitable work mandated by
their Muslim religion. They were involved in digging wells, building mosques,
helping orphans and resettling refugees. Most traveled there before the Sept. 11
attacks, but others made the trip later.

The families provided permission slips from employers of some of the men
granting them leave to do the charity work in Afghanistan.

"It is the will of God that placed me in this strange situation," Kuwait Airways
engineer Fouad Mahmoud Al-Rabiah, 43, wrote to his family. "As you know, I
travelled to deliver relief materials to the Afghan refugees on the Iran-Afghan
border and some hospitals in Kandahar. . . . The situation in the country turned
upside down from one day to the next, and every Arab citizen became a suspect."

"Now I am detained by the American troops, and thanks to God, they are a good
example of humanitarian behavior," wrote Al- Rabiah, who earned a master's
degree in aviation management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in
Daytona Beach, Fla. "I do not suffer from any disease, or even a scratch."

The lawyers documented a number of philanthropic causes that Al- Rabiah has
actively supported in recent years, such as delivering kidney dialysis machines
to needy Muslims in Bangladesh two years ago. Others of the 11 had built mosques
and dug wells in Somalia, and spent years helping Muslim refugees in Bosnia.

Omar Rajab Amin, 34, a supervisor of groundskeepers at Kuwaiti halfway houses,
had collected money from friends and family to distribute as alms for Afghan
orphans, and he planned to return quickly to Kuwait to be present at the heart
surgery of his 5-year-old son, his family said. When the U.S. air raids began,
he gathered with other Kuwaiti aid workers to trek to Pakistan, where he was
arrested by Pakistani tribesmen and turned over to U.S. soldiers.

"Don't worry if you couldn't deliver any money to the poor there," relatives
wrote him in Cuba. "All the people who gave you money said they don't care for
the money, but want your safe return."

Some of the Kuwaiti families learned their relatives had been captured when they
were alerted to a Web site on which a researcher, who visited a Pakistani prison
where some were temporarily held, posted lists of captives' names and pictures.

The attorneys said that, based on a number of Middle East media reports and a
few short telephone calls to the 11 men's families, they believe the Kuwaitis
were arrested en masse by tribes on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border
that were given bounties by U.S. forces seeking al Qaeda fighters.

"The Arabs gathered in places that they believed to be safe, and sought
assistance from villagers on their way back across the border," the family of
waterworks employee Al-Kandari wrote. "Unfortunately, the villagers sold them to
the Pakistani authorities, who turned them over to the Americans."

The lawyers included in their court filing copies of leaflets that U.S. forces
allegedly distributed in the region, saying, "Get wealth and power beyond your
dreams: Help the anti-Taliban force rid Afghanistan of murderers and terrorists.
. . . This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe
for the rest of your life."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


May 24, 2002; Page A24

ANOTHER CHANCE AT FREEDOM IN AFGHANISTAN
Hundreds of Taliban Fighters Released From Crowded Jail

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service

SHEBERGAN, Afghanistan, May 23 -- Inside Shebergan Prison today, 512 men
squatted expectantly, clutching plastic bags containing their few belongings.
Some coughed incessantly, others were too weak to walk unaided.

Outside, hundreds of relatives had waited eagerly all morning. When the iron
gates finally opened, the prisoners surged to freedom with a shout, and the
families rushed forward in a confused melee, frantically calling out their
names.

Gul Mohammed Aniba, a white-bearded farmer from Uruzgan province in southern
Afghanistan, spotted his son Mohammed, 25, and burst into tears. The young man
was gaunt and trembling, and the old man tried to cover him with a shawl.

"Allah be praised, Allah be praised," Aniba murmured over and over as he hugged
his son and wept.

The released prisoners were all Taliban fighters who had surrendered or been
captured in November during a final clash between rival Afghan troops in the
northern province of Kunduz. Most were in their twenties; many had been forcibly
conscripted or had taken up arms after the U.S.-led coalition began its assault
in October.

This was the fourth batch of Taliban detainees to be freed in the past several
months from Shebergan, a town in northern Jowzjan province. More than 3,500
fighters were held there initially, and prison authorities said 1,200 remain
inside.

The release was a hushed, formal event attended by numerous government officials
and monitored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been
providing food and medical care at the overcrowded facility for the past month.

As the prisoners squatted inside the compound, the deputy provincial governor
made a short speech, telling them that they, too, were victims of a foreign
terrorist movement and that the time had come to lay down arms and return to
normal life.

"You must promise not to fight again. Go home, go back to your jobs and land,
join your families and tell them the fighting is over in Afghanistan," said the
deputy, who gave his name as Paiwan. A few men started to clap, then the mass of
bewildered prisoners broke into cheers.

During their last morning in prison, the men were allowed to speak with several
visiting journalists. They said they had been well treated, but that conditions
were so crowded at first they had to sleep standing up.

"We were never beaten or chained, but there were 80 of us in one room, and
sometimes we almost starved," said Abdul Qalaq, 50, a farmer from Helmand
province who said he was seized by the Taliban and taken north to fight in
October. "Today I am so happy that it is like coming home from Mecca."

Khushal, 20, a villager from the eastern province of Khost, said he joined the
Taliban voluntarily after the coalition bombing "because they were good people,"
but that he had suffered greatly in the months since. His hands shook and his
legs were covered with purple dye, which he said was medicine to combat lice.

"I was sad because the Americans defeated the Taliban, but it has been hard
here," he said. "At first they only gave us bread and cheap rice. Later on, they
started releasing people, and it was better. But my family still does not know
where I am, and I miss my mother."

Some foreign governments and international human rights groups have criticized
conditions at Shebergan, which was far too small and poorly equipped to handle
so many people. One European Union official recently compared the prison to
Auschwitz, the World War II concentration camp.

Shebergan is one of a number of detention centers around Afghanistan that have
housed Taliban prisoners in the past six months. It is under the control of Gen.
Abdurrashid Dostum, the longtime regional militia commander who now is deputy
defense minister.

Prison officials said they had done their best under extremely difficult
circumstances, with few resources to feed and shelter thousands of prisoners who
suddenly arrived, many wounded or suffering from diseases. Officials have said
as many as 50 prisoners have died.

"The Taliban looted everything, and there was no money left to run the prison,"
said Gen. Jura Beg Muradi, a security official here. "We had no foreign help
until last month, but we gave them three meals a day, blankets and hot water.
Conditions in the prison were better than many people have on the outside."

Muradi said the prisoners were mostly young Afghans, and many were ill and
frightened when they arrived. He said all the hardened Islamic fighters or
foreigners captured by coalition troops had been taken to a military fort, Qala-
i-Jhangi, which was the scene of a violent uprising in November.

"We met with the prisoners and talked to them. General Dostum told us we should
treat them like guests," Muradi said. "By the end, we were like brothers. One of
them even kissed my hand when he left."

On their last morning in prison, many of the detainees joked and held hands with
their guards, though others were too dazed and sick to do anything but stare.
Officials at first tried to release the prisoners one by one by calling out
their names; after a few minutes, they gave up and simply opened the gates.

With a roar, the men began trotting, then stampeding to freedom, some limping
while others held them up. As they spotted their relatives, some hugged and
danced; others stood still and wept. Then they raced for buses that were waiting
to transport them to distant provinces.

Within an hour, the field was empty except for a handful of elderly men and
women. Many had journeyed hundreds of miles to meet prisoners who never
appeared. Some thrust crumpled notes into journalists' hands. A few kept staring
at the prison gates, now closed again, calling out their sons' names in vain.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


Wednesday, May 15, 2002; Page A13

Federal prosecutors continued to resist allowing any contact between attorneys
for John Walker Lindh and the military detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base in
Cuba, filing a motion yesterday that could set up a possible confrontation with
the judge in charge of the case.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said last week that he was leaning toward
ordering a one-way video conference hookup that would allow the defense team to
interview at least some of the 14 detainees who may have evidence that could
help clear Lindh of charges that he conspired to kill Americans abroad and aided
terrorist organizations.

But the government's 11-page filing yesterday reiterated the argument that
Lindh's attorneys should submit written questions that Department of Defense
interrogators would then ask. This time, the prosecutors offered to provide
videotapes of the sessions and to have the interrogators ask follow-up questions
for the defense. But they said live interviews would pose too great a risk to
national security because censors would not be able to stop classified
information from being revealed.

Attorneys for Lindh, 21, who was captured with Taliban fighters last fall, have
asked for face-to-face interviews with detainees, including suspected members of
al Qaeda and the Taliban. Ellis plans to hold a hearing on the issue at the end
of May.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


Friday, May 10, 2002; Page A24

CIA FAILS IN BID TO KILL AFGHAN REBEL WITH A MISSILE

By Walter Pincus and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers

The CIA fired a missile from an unmanned Predator aircraft over Afghanistan
Monday in an unsuccessful attempt to kill a factional leader who has vowed to
attack U.S. service personnel and oust the interim Afghan government of Hamid
Karzai, according to administration sources.

The targeting of a meeting of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his top aides outside
Kabul was based on information he was plotting attacks against Americans,
officials said.

Hekmatyar is a Pashtun who, as leader of a hard-line Islamic party, Hezb-e-
Islami, has frequently changed his loyalties over the past 20 years. Anti-
Americanism has been one of his few lasting positions, sources said. U.S.
officials and Afghanistan's interim leadership allege Hekmatyar has ties to al
Qaeda.

The CIA missile strike against Hekmatyar represented an escalation in a
confrontation that has been brewing for the past two months between the United
States and Hekmatyar. It came a week after British forces established a field
operating base on Hekmatyar's home turf of Logar province, to the southeast of
Kabul.

Hekmatyar's presence in the area worries the U.S. military because of the threat
it presents to the weak central government in the capital and because it is in
the same region as U.S.-led military operations against al Qaeda and Taliban
fighters along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.

CIA operators of the Predator were trying to hit "a group of people from his
organization, not specifically aiming to kill Hekmatyar," a senior
administration official said. "Sadly," the official added, "he survived."

The attack, which was first reported in yesterday's New York Times, was planned
without any consultation with the Karzai government, one administration source
said.

Hekmatyar returned to Afghanistan in February after years of exile in Iran. He
had been asked to leave by Iran, which was about to play host to Karzai and his
senior cabinet members. On the eve of Karzai's visit, Hekmatyar called for the
removal of the interim leader and for Afghans to attack Americans.

In the last two months, Hekmatyar worked to revitalize his party and is "thought
to have developed links to al Qaeda and Taliban groups," according to a Bush
administration official. He has been accused of being behind a series of
bombings in Kabul in March aimed at destabilizing the Karzai government in
advance of the return of the exiled former Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah.

He also was said to have been involved in the attempted assassination of the
interim Afghan defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, last month. That attack, in
which a bomb detonated as Fahim's convoy passed, killed four bystanders and
wounded 18. An Afghan defense ministry spokesman said at the time that the
Karzai government has not made any direct links between Hekmatyar and the
attempted assassination. "But there's no doubt that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has a
close relationship with al Qaeda and the Taliban," the spokesman said.

In the 1970s, Hekmatyar formed his hard-line Islamic group with aid from
Pakistan's intelligence services. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in
1979, he gained increased funding and arms for anti-Soviet guerrilla operations
from Arab countries and the United States through Pakistani intelligence and the
CIA. He was one of the most influential factional leaders and during this time
had contact with Mohammad Omar, who emerged as an enemy of Hekmatyar when he
became leader of the Taliban after the Soviets were defeated.

During the 1980s, Hekmatyar was accused of fighting the Soviets as well as some
of his supposed allies from the Northern Alliance, particularly the group's
Tajik commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud. He served as prime minister briefly in 1995
before going to Iran.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan sees Hekmatyar as an ally of al Qaeda. "He has
been actively involved in trying to undermine the political process in
Afghanistan," a State Department official said yesterday. "Hekmatyar has never
been a force for stability in Afghanistan," said Haron Amin, the senior Afghan
diplomat in Washington.

Gul Haidar, an ethnic Tajik who commands the Kabul government's forces in
southeastern Afghanistan, where Hekmatyar appears to be strongest, said in an
interview earlier this week, "Al Qaeda and Hekmatyar are the same to me."

In Afghanistan yesterday, British forces said they discovered a large weapons
cache in caves in eastern Afghanistan, apparently belonging to al Qaeda or the
Taliban.

British Royal Marine Lt. Col. Ben Curry said engineers opened one of four caves
and found about 30 truckloads of 12.7mm machine gun ammunition and 82mm mortar
shells, the Reuters news service reported. Antitank ammunition was also
discovered.

The caves were in the mountains of Paktika province, where British forces have
been hunting for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters for 10 days.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

RELATIVES OF 11 KUWAITI DETAINEES FILE LAWSUIT

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 4, 2002; Page A16

Relatives of 11 Kuwaiti nationals detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, have filed a federal lawsuit contending that the men were mistakenly
rounded up by tribesmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan who were paid bounties by
U.S. forces to locate Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers.

Meanwhile, one of the prisoners held at the U.S. detention facility has been
flown back to Afghanistan because he is suffering from what appears to be an
emotional breakdown, military sources said.

Attorneys for families of the 11 Kuwaiti men asked a federal judge in the
District to hold hearings into the fairness of the detentions. The complaint,
filed on Wednesday, said the men had been working in Pakistan and Afghanistan as
volunteers in hospitals, orphanages and water treatment facilities when they
were captured in January and February.

"The family members believe that none of the Kuwaiti detainees is or ever has
been a member or supporter of al Qaeda or the Taliban, or of any terrorist
organization," the complaint said. "Several of the families . . . received
letters from several of the Kuwaiti detainees after they were taken into custody
by the United States expressing the sentiment, 'Thank God I am now with the
Americans,' and a confidence that they would soon be able to return home to
their families."

The complaint asks that the U.S. government provide the names of the Kuwaitis
being held, and hold hearings on their cases or transfer them to Kuwaiti
custody.

Justice Department officials declined comment on the suit and the Kuwaiti
embassy did not respond to inquiries.U.S. officials have said that federal
courts in this country have no jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay, which is part
of Cuba.

U.S. officials declined to name the captive who was flown back to Afghanistan,
or to say what would happen to him there. They said that he remains in U.S.
custody for now, but declined to specify the type of facility in which he was
being held or whether he would be released.

"We have said before that at any given time transfers or releases could occur"
from Guantanamo Bay, a military official said.

U.S. military officials have said in the past that several detainees there were
suffering from acute emotional distress.

In early February, military doctors at the prison camp said they were
prescribing medication to two detainees for psychiatric illnesses. One was a
manic-depressive who had become psychotic, and the other was suffering from
post-traumatic stress syndrome from being in battle. Military sources said a
handful of other prisoners were exhibiting symptoms of emotional disturbance as
well.

Officials said doctors at the camp have tried to relieve such detainees'
discomfort through counseling, but have been hampered by language difficulties.
That raises the possibility that the return of the detainee this week was in
part an effort to place him in a setting where he could communicate more easily
with other people. U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan have many more
linguists fluent in Arabic and other languages of the region than does the
Guantanamo Bay base.

The total number of detainees in the newly constructed prison at the base rose
to 363 yesterday when U.S. military jets brought another 32 captives from
Afghanistan to Cuba. About 170 detainees still in Afghanistan are expected to be
flown to Guantanamo Bay in coming weeks, officials said.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


U.S. MILITARY TRANSPORTS PRISONER BACK TO AFGHANISTAN
Several Detainees Said to Suffer Acute Emotional Stress

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 3, 2002; 12:33 PM

One of the 332 al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba
was flown back to Afghanistan because he is suffering from what appears to be an
emotional breakdown, military sources said.

U.S. officials declined to name the captive or to say what would happen to him
after he was flown by military transport plane from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to
Afghanistan. They said that at least initially he remained in American custody,
but declined to specify the type of facility in which he was being held, or
whether he would be released.

"We have said before that at any given time, transfers or releases could occur"
from Guantanamo Bay, a military official said.

U.S. military officials have said for months that several of the detainees there
were suffering from acute emotional stress.

In early February, military doctors at the prison camp said they were
prescribing medication to two detainees for psychiatric illnesses-- one was a
manic-depressive who cycled into a psychotic state, and the other was suffering
from post-traumatic stress syndrome from battle and was "acting out." Military
sources said a handful of additional prisoners were exhibiting symptoms of
emotional distress, as well.

Officials said doctors at the camp also have tried to relieve their discomfort
through counseling, but have been hampered in part because of language
difficulties. That raises the possibility that the return of the detainee this
week was in part an effort to place him in a setting where he could communicate
more easily with other people. The U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan have
many more linguists who are fluent in Arabic and other languages of the region
than does the Guantanamo Bay base.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday U.S.-based attorneys filed a petition in federal court
in Washington on behalf of 11 Kuwaiti nationals who are being held in Guantanamo
Bay and who say they are being held unfairly.

The attorneys, from the law firm Shearman & Sterling, say that they were
retained by families of the prisoners. The families assert their relatives were
working in Pakistan and Afghanistan as aid volunteers, and were mistakenly
rounded up by local tribesmen who were paid bounties to produce Taliban and al
Qaeda sympathizers.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


TRANSFER OF CAPTIVES TO CUBA BASE RESUMED

Reuters
Thursday, May 2, 2002; Page A13

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, May 1 -- The U.S. military flew a planeload of al Qaeda
and Taliban captives from Afghanistan to the Navy base here today after a two-
month hiatus that allowed the construction of a new prison.

The flight of 32 heavily guarded detainees arrived at the base in mid-afternoon,
resuming transfers that were suspended in mid-February. The shackled prisoners
joined 300 already held at Guantanamo.

"The plane arrived without incident," said Marine Capt. Ricco Player, a Defense
Department spokesman.

The initial phase of the new Camp Delta, with 408 protected cells, was recently
completed. The 300 prisoners who had been housed in outdoor chain-link cells at
the temporary Camp X-Ray were moved into the more permanent facility on Sunday
and Monday.

More than 200 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects are still being held by the United
States in Afghanistan. Many are expected to be moved to Cuba.

None of the captives held in Afghanistan and Cuba has been charged with a crime,
but the Pentagon has left open the possibility that at least some will face
military trials authorized by President Bush in connection with the Sept. 11
attacks.

The new camp is made up of solid cells in rows that look like long mobile homes.
Unlike Camp X-Ray, which was closed after the prisoners were moved, the new
facility has running water and toilets that flush.

Another 204 cells are set to be finished by the end of May.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


TERROR SUSPECTS DETAINED IN GITMO TRANSFERRED TO NEW PRISON

By Tom Hays
Associated Press
Posted April 29 2002, 4:19 PM EDT

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Under stringent security, guards transferred
300 suspects of the war on terrorism from makeshift cells at Camp X-ray to a
permanent new facility at Camp Delta, military officials said Monday.

The transfer, which the media was banned from covering, began Sunday and was
completed Monday.

"This operation was done under very heavy security and I am pleased to announce
that there were no accidents or injuries," said Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, in
charge of the detention operation in Guantanamo Bay. "It was done in a very
professional manner."

Baccus refused to say how the 300 accused Taliban or al-Qaida fighters were
transferred to their new prison but said it was similar to the way the men were
taken from the airstrip when they arrived at this U.S. base in eastern Cuba to
Camp X-ray.

When the first detainees arrived in January, the media was given access to their
arrival and were allowed to watch as the men were searched, manacled and put
aboard buses to Camp X-ray.

The new dlrs 16.4 million seaside facility contains 408 cells and could
eventually be expanded to more than 2,000 cells.

Camp Delta will give detainees metal beds with foam mattresses, flush toilets
and wash basins in each cell, and exercise areas. In Camp X-ray, detainees had
foam pads on a concrete floor and either used buckets or had to be led from
their cells to use portable toilets.

The opening of the new camp, originally set for April 12, was delayed because of
last-minute changes, on which officials refused to elaborate.

Bacchus said journalists were not allowed to watch the transfer because of
"operational security" issues. Journalists were taken to Camp Delta after the
transfer was completed Monday. But they were forced to stand more than 200 yards
away and, because of camouflage netting shrouding the fence, could see only the
roof tops of the cells.

At X-ray, journalists could see the detainees in their cells.

Earlier this month, the military withdrew media access to a field hospital where
detainees receive medical care. Previously, journalists were allowed to
routinely tour the compound.

Camp X-ray is expected to be retired now.

Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

* * *



AL QAEDA INTERROGATIONS FALL SHORT OF THE MARK

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 21, 2002; Page A01

The effort to obtain information from al Qaeda and Taliban fighters detained at
the U.S. Navy base in Cuba has been hampered by inexperienced interrogators and
linguists, military bureaucracy and squabbles among private language
contractors, according to sources familiar with the government's mission there.

With many of its best interrogators and speakers of Middle Eastern dialects
dispatched to Afghanistan, the military has been forced to rely on
someunderqualified officers whoare overmatched by captives trained in methods of
evasion, according to people familiar with the interrogations. In a few cases,
young questioners in uniform were conducting some of their first interrogations.

"Some of the interrogators are very inexperienced, nervous," said one linguist
stationed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where 299 detainees are being
questioned. "They twist their pen 2,000 times a minute. The detainee is in full
control. He's chained up, but he's the one having fun."

Compounding the problem is a lack of familiarity with Middle Eastern terrorism
among officers of the military's Miami- based Southern Command (Southcom), which
at times has impeded the flow of key intelligence to Guantanamo Bay
interrogators, sources said. That has occasionally limited questioners' ability
to pursue lines of inquiry with the detainees, they said.

Moreover, two companies that have supplied linguists for some of the
interrogations have squabbled bitterly with each other,according to
knowledgeable officials in the public and private sectors.

These assessmentsby military officers and private contractors are the first
glimpse of obstacles facing interrogators at Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray, the
hastily built military jail where the Pentagon is holding some of its fiercest
enemy captives.

Officials are trying to shake loose critical information to thwart future acts
of terror, and perhaps build criminal cases against the fighters. It is
difficult to determine the extent to which these linguistic and bureaucratic
problems have hindered theintelligence-gathering effort, but they suggest that
the United States is woefully short of some of the skills needed in the war on
terror.

Army Col. Ron Williams, spokesman for Southcom, said that problems with
interpreters and interrogators are temporary, and denied that any of them have
been unable to handle the captives.

"I don't know of cases where the detainee was in charge," Williams said. "He may
not give up information. It's a mano a mano thing." Rookie interrogators are
getting better, he said, adding that "it takes a while to be competent in any
field."

Williams strenuously denied that Southcom has in any way stalled the movement of
intelligence data to interrogators.

"In today's world, moving intelligence information is almost instantaneous," he
said. "They build databases over in Afghanistan, and it's shared by us, by
Washington. Everybody knows the same things."

But he acknowledged that interrogators sometimes don't receive answers to
intelligence queries they send up the chain to Southcom if they are deemed
irrelevant.

Williams also conceded that Guantanamo Bay interpreters, along with linguists
throughout the U.S. intelligence community, lack facility with the widely
varying regional dialects of Arabic and other languages used by detainees,
because military linguistic programs have deemphasized them for a decade.

A spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not respond to
requests for comment.

20 Prisoners Cooperate

Even critics of the Guantanamo Bay interrogations said thatmost of

the American personnel there are motivated and competent, and that some are top
quality. U.S. officials say the interrogations have yielded a number of
successes -- some made public and some kept secret -- that likely have prevented
terrorist attacks.

In one grueling, hours-long session in February, a pair of Arabic- speaking FBI
agents patiently pried loose information from one detainee that led to a
worldwide alert for Fawaz Yahya Al-Rabeei, a Yemeni national, and 16 other al
Qaeda members suspected of plotting an attack in the United States or Yemen.

Last week, U.S. prosecutors who charged American Taliban fighter John Walker
Lindh with conspiracy to murder Americans said in court papers that at least 20
of the detainees have given statements to interrogators.

But little other information has emerged about what is being learned at
Guantanamo Bay and how the interrogations are conducted.

Camp X-Ray opened in January on a dusty, windswept field next to a rock-crushing
operation at the U.S. naval base. The prisoners, flown by military transport
jets from Afghanistan, are housed in chain-link pens and taken one by one to
"interrogation booths" in two plywood huts. There their ankle chains are looped
through bolts in the floor while they are questioned.

Controversy has dogged the operation since its inception. Human rights groups
raised questions about the detainees' treatment, arguing that they should be
deemed prisoners of war. But the government maintains that the captives are
treated humanely, with access to food and medical care.

Officials said many of the captives are likely to be held indefinitely, and a
more permanent prison is under construction.

For decades, U.S. intelligence officials have increasingly relied on electronic
eavesdropping and satellite imagery, and interrogation skills have slowly
withered, experts said. While many of the 30 or so interrogators and an equal
number of interpreters in Cuba are highly skilled, others lack the street smarts
or strength of personality to manage an emotional confrontation, several sources
said.

"A few of the interrogators just didn't have what it takes," said William
Tierney, a former Army intelligence officer who worked as a contract Arabic
linguist at Camp X-Ray for six weeks before losing his job in a dispute with
superiors. "You have to be in control in an interrogation, and that just isn't
their personality. . . . Some younger interrogators addressed the detainees like
they were friends at the malt shop."

Cultural Misstep

One interrogator persisted in asking Taliban detainees for details

about their wives, despite admonitions from others that Afghan men are likely to
view such queries as insulting and would refuse to cooperate. That was the
result.

One source who worked at Camp X-Ray said it was a mistake to assign women as
interrogators; because of their religious and cultural beliefs, some detainees
refuse to communicate with women on personal subjects. "You put a woman in front
of him, he'll say, 'Go to hell,' " the source said.

Among the deficient interpreters Guantanamo Bay are some whose regular
intelligence jobs involve interpreting taped foreign telephone conversations day
after day, sources said. A number of them find it hard to engage in the
sometimes emotionally charged interrogations, sources said, where they must
mimic the interrogators' tone of voice -- yelling when they yell, whispering
when they whisper.

One interpreter repeatedly interrupted an interrogator to remind him that he had
previously posed the same questions earlier in that session -- not realizing
that it is a common tactic for interrogators to double back for more detail or
to test the captive's truthfulness.

In what some people called a cultural misstep, one of the contractors, Fairfax-
based BTG,assigned an Iranian American man who speaks Farsi to interpret
thereplies of Afghan detainees who speak Dari. While the two languages are
similar, they are different enough that the choice helped spark angry debate on
the interrogation team, sources said.

"There's an animosity of culture between Iranians and many Afghans," said one
source. "Afghans aren't going to cooperate."

Wil Williams, a BTG spokesman, denied there were any such problems, adding that
there are now sufficient Dari speakers in Cuba.

Operation 'Successful'

BTG is locked in bitter disputes with its smaller competitor, Maine-

based Worldwide Language Resources, which also has employees in Cuba. One
conflict arose when BTG successfully discredited a Worldwide employee who had
worked with BTG a few weeks earlier but had been dismissed after a series of
arguments, sources said. The Worldwide employee was removed from Guantanamo Bay.

"Yes, there's friction between the companies," said Larry Costa, Worldwide's
president. "When one of my guys shows up on the island and three hours later BTG
has him run off, yes."

BTG's Williams denied that his company played a role in the removal of the man,
and declined to comment on the corporate struggles.

Ron Williams of Southcom said the acrimony between the two firms has not harmed
the intelligence-gathering effort, which he added has improved with the arrival
last month of Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey as head of the
interrogation unit, known as Joint Task Force (JTF) 170.

"This operation has been very successful," Col. Williams said. "With the
[creation] of JTF 170, the senior leadership being put on the ground, and the
maturing of that task force, it's getting even better."

By all accounts, interrogators at Guantanamo Bay face a daunting challenge.
Employed by the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other military units
around the world, half have been assigned to gather information for use in
possible criminal trials or military tribunals, and half are seeking
intelligence for use in the military's war on terrorism, sources said.

In a variety of ways, the message that interrogators transmit to the detainees
is this: The sooner you give us verifiable information, the sooner you'll know
when you can leave here.

The interrogators script out an approach based on a psychological profile of
each prisoner, deciding beforehand whether the order of the day will be yelling,
an offer of cigarettes or a debate about the Koran.

"You try to help them find a plausible way they can explain to themselves
ratting out their buddies," one source said.

Gleaning a Detail

The first step in persuading an al Qaeda detainee to talk is breaking

down the alibi he gave U.S. questioners in Afghanistan to explain why he was
captured in the battle zone. Many offer a variation on two cover stories -- that
they were in Afghanistan to find a wife, or were teaching the Koran in a remote
village and lived in a spare room off a mosque -- suggesting the fighters had
prepared their stories in advance.

The goal is to get the detainee talking, about even the most minor matters.

"Just being kind can help," one source said. "It often breaks through their
security training because they don't expect it. . . . If I have to stand on my
head and whistle 'Dixie' to get them to talk, I do it."

An interrogator will often spend hours asking whether a source knows any al
Qaeda or Taliban fighters from lengthy lists of names. Oddly, after enough time,
sometimes even the most hardened captive will own up. Then the questioner has
what he has been waiting for: a detail to focus on.

The record, sources said, was a seven-hour interrogation.

The captives, who are held in open-air pens, quiz each other as they return from
interrogation and their leaders are known to try to keep track of what
information each detainee has divulged, sources said.

All the while, the information is entered into databases and meshed with other
intelligence from Afghanistan and around the world. One avenue that has proved
helpful is tracking the detainees through the clerics they follow, and matching
them with others following the same leader.

But military sources said interrogators sometimes don't receive answers when
they direct intelligence-related questions to Southcom, where officials have
next to no experience with Osama bin Laden and Muslim extremists.

"It's a problem of having an operation [at Guantanamo Bay] that is outside the
theater in which it originated" -- Afghanistan -- said one military officer.
"There's been a lot of wheel-spinning at Southcom."

Another military officer with close ties to Southcom said that the interrogation
process "would have been far superior" if it were being run by a different
military unit, Central Command. That Tampa- based outfit is responsible for the
Middle East, and is both prosecuting the war in Afghanistan and questioning
hundreds of other detainees there.

Southcom's Williams said his command is working closely and cooperatively with
the Middle East experts at Central Command. "We're on the phone with Centcom all
the time," he said, "and there's absolutely no turf problem."

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Brooke A. Masters contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *

DETAINEES OFFER GLIMPSE OF LIFE IN N.Y. FACILITY
3 in Sept. 11 Probe Say They Were Abused in Top Security

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01

NEW YORK, April 16 -- Inside the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan
Detention Center in Brooklyn, dozens of detainees held for months in connection
with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have been confined to their cells nearly 24
hours a day.

The lights are always on, making it difficult to sleep. The prisoners are
subject to body cavity searches after each meeting with their attorneys. They
are transported in shackles, handcuffs and waist chains. In some cases, the
detainees have been subject to harassment by prison guards and rough treatment
that has left them bloodied.

The conditions were described by three detainees recently released from the
Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) who offered a rare glimpse of life inside
the federal prison's maximum security unit, supposedly reserved for some of the
most important suspects in the government's terrorism investigation.

The facility, run by the Bureau of Prisons, has come under scrutiny recently
because the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General is conducting a
"review" to determine whether authorities violated the civil rights of detainees
held at MDC and another facility, the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, N.J.

Immigration lawyers and advocates have lodged repeated allegations of civil
rights violations involving the detainees at MDC, who over time have numbered
perhaps several dozen of the more than 1,200 people picked up in the
government's dragnet after Sept. 11.

The detentions are part of a Justice Department strategy to disrupt terrorism
using any legal means available. However, as months have passed, hundreds of
detainees, most of Arab and South Asian descent, have been charged only with
immigration violations and have been released or deported, or have left the
country voluntarily.

The investigation has also led to growing complaints about civil liberties
violations. A legal group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, announced today
that it planned to file a class action lawsuit Wednesday against Attorney
General John D. Ashcroft, other senior federal officials and unnamed MDC
corrections officers who allegedly committed abuses against detainees.

"These are people who want to be heard, and what they want heard is that
American democracy has failed them," said William Goodman, legal director for
the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The main thing they want understood is
that they have identified a policy on the part of the American government to
look at Muslim males and call them terrorists whether they were or not, and in
almost every circumstance, they were not."

Although the Justice Department has conducted its investigation in total
secrecy, the government has announced no terrorism-related charges against any
of those held under maximum security conditions at MDC. In fact, it is unclear
why the three detainees who spoke to The Washington Post or others at MDC had
been placed in the Special Housing Unit rather than other facilities where
hundreds of detainees connected to the investigation have been kept in
conditions that are far less restrictive.

Officials with the Bureau of Prisons, the Immigration and Naturalization Service
and the Justice Department declined to comment on specific cases. One U.S.
official said the decisions on where and how detainees would be confined were
made at "the highest levels of the Justice Department" and were evaluated case
by case.

The decisions, the official said, depended on several issues, including the
nature of the evidence that had been gathered, available space in the detention
facilities and whether the detainee presented a flight or safety risk. One U.S.
official noted that two years ago at another federal facility, the Metropolitan
Correctional Center in Manhattan, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden
stabbed a guard in the eye with a sharpened comb, leaving the victim in a coma.

Anser Mehmood, 42, a Pakistani immigrant, said that shortly after his arrival at
MDC, prison guards shoved his face into the wall, bloodying his lip, and
threatened to kill him if he spoke.

After he was strip-searched, Mehmood said, a guard asked him: "Do you know why
you're here?"

"Yes. I overstayed my visa," Mehmood said he replied.

"No," the guard told him. "You are a World Trade Center suspect."

Authorities later provided an affidavit from an FBI agent stating that Mehmood
should be held because of evidence gathered in the investigation, including the
fact that Mehmood, a truck driver, had canceled a delivery to Washington after
the Sept. 11 attacks, and that a teacher of Mehmood's son had once informed a
supervisor that Mehmood's son stated there was plutonium at his residence.
Mehmood said the trip had actually been canceled by a client and that, in fact,
police came to his home last year after his son reported seeing bullets, not
plutonium, and left after discovering harmless cylindrical pieces of brass in
his basement.

Mehmood said he was held for 123 days in the Special Housing Unit before being
cleared by the FBI and moved into the general population, a transition he
described as "going from hell to heaven. When I came out, it was like I was a
human being again."

On April 4, he was transferred from MDC to Passaic County Jail to await
deportation after a judge sentenced him to time served for overstaying his visa
and purchasing a fake Social Security card that he used to gain employment.

Syed Amjad Jaffri, 38, a Pakistani immigrant, said last week that he is still
not certain why he was sent to MDC after investigators arrived at his Bronx
apartment in late September. Jaffri, who said he held Canadian residency status
and was close to obtaining Canadian citizenship, admitted that he had been
working in the New York area at the time, selling surgical and dental supplies
in violation of his tourist visa.

He said that while searching his apartment, investigators found a stun gun that
belonged to one of his landlord's sons and materials for a home course in
private investigation that he had ordered via a television advertisement.

Jaffri said he was brought to MDC in a motorcade that included police cars with
sirens blaring. With shackles around his ankles and his hands cuffed to a heavy
chain around his waist, Jaffri said, he was seized by MDC guards and thrown face
first into a wall. The impact, he said, bloodied his mouth and loosened his
teeth.

On April 1, Jaffri was released and deported to Canada, where he was
interviewed. Displaying the teeth he said were loosened by the attack, Jaffri
said that prison authorities denied his requests to see a dentist or receive a
painkiller.

Daniel Dunne, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, referred questions about
cases related to the terror investigation to the Justice Department. But he said
that the Bureau of Prisons investigated all allegations of staff misconduct.

Jaffri said he was placed alone in one of the small cells that prison officials
referred to as "holes." The cell had one window that had been painted over,
blocking the view outside. He received his meals through a slot in the door. He
said for the first month and a half he was not allowed to shave and was given
"two squares" of toilet paper a day.

Jaffri said the lights in his cell were on constantly, making it difficult to
sleep. At night, he said, alarms went off frequently, waking the detainees, and
guards often dragged heavy chains across the door.

Shakir Ali Baloch, 39, a Canadian citizen and a native of Pakistan, offered a
similar description of life inside the Special Housing Unit. Baloch said he was
taken into custody by FBI and INS officials in late September while attending
classes in Queens to gain his taxi license.

Baloch said he had entered the country illegally from Canada and had illegally
purchased a fake Social Security card to acquire a driver's license. But he said
he is still unsure why authorities decided to put him in MDC.

He said he suspects it had something to do with a paperback military novel
investigators found while searching his apartment. The novel, he said, featured
an advertisement on the back for another book and had a photograph of Osama bin
Laden.

"I think the book was the biggest reason," Baloch said during an interview this
week inside the Passaic County Jail, where he was transferred after months at
MDC. Baloch was deported to Canada one day after the interview.

Baloch said he was kept in solitary confinement until Feb. 14, when he was moved
into the general population at MDC. There, he had access to television, books
and newspapers and was allowed to make phone calls.

Asked whether he was angry about the way he had been treated, Baloch said: "No,
I'm not angry. I just want to go home."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


U.S. CONCLUDES BIN LADEN ESCAPED AT TORA BORA FIGHT
Failure to Send Troops in Pursuit Termed Major Error

By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present
during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit
U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al
Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive
evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted
communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the
cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there
remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is
persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military
chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the
United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S.
Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational
commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass
the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing
second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach
fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as
first-line combat units.

In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to
promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape
of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon
enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no
commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first
Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had
the big picture," one defense official said.

The Bush administration has never acknowledged that bin Laden slipped
through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft
began bombing on Nov. 30. Until now it was not known publicly whether the
al Qaeda leader was present on the battlefield.

But inside the government there is little controversy on the subject.
Captured al Qaeda fighters, interviewed separately, gave consistent
accounts describing an address by bin Laden around Dec. 3 to mujaheddin, or
holy warriors, dug into the warren of caves and tunnels built as a redoubt
against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. One official said "we had a good
piece of sigint," or signals intelligence, confirming those reports.

"I don't think you can ever say with certainty, but we did conclude he was
there, and that conclusion has strengthened with time," said another
official, giving an authoritative account of the intelligence consensus.
"We have high confidence that he was there, and also high confidence, but
not as high, that he got out. We have several accounts of that from people
who are in detention, al Qaeda people who were free at the time and are not
free now."

Franks continues to dissent from that analysis. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley,
his chief spokesman, acknowledged the dominant view outside Tampa but said
the general is unpersuaded.

"We have never seen anything that was convincing to us at all that Osama
bin Laden was present at any stage of Tora Bora -- before, during or
after," Quigley said. "I know you've got voices in the intelligence
community that are taking a different view, but I just wanted you to know
our view as well."

"Truth is hard to come by in Afghanistan," Quigley said, and for confidence
on bin Laden's whereabouts "you need to see some sort of physical concrete
proof."

Franks has told subordinates that it was vital at the Tora Bora battle,
among the first to include allies from Afghanistan's Pashtun majority, to
take a supporting role and "not just push them aside and take over because
we were America," according to Quigley.

"Our relationship with the Afghans in the south and east was entirely
different at that point in the war," he said. "It's no secret that we had a
much more mature relationship with the Northern Alliance fighters." Franks,
he added, "still thinks that the process he followed of helping the
anti-Taliban forces around Tora Bora, to make sure it was crystal clear to
them that we were not there to conquer their country . . . was absolutely
the right thing to do."

With the collapse of the Afghan cordon around Tora Bora, and the decision
to hold back U.S. troops from the Army's 10th Mountain Division, Pakistan
stepped in. The government of President Pervez Musharraf moved thousands of
troops to his border with Afghanistan and intercepted about 300 of the
estimated 1,000 al Qaeda fighters who escaped Tora Bora. U.S. officials
said close to half of the detainees now held at the U.S. base at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, were turned over by the Pakistani government.

Those successes included none of the top al Qaeda leaders at Tora Bora,
officials acknowledged. Of the dozen senior leaders identified by the U.S.
government, two are now accounted for -- Muhammad Atef, believed dead in a
Hellfire missile attack, and Abu Zubaida, taken into custody late last
month. But "most of the people we have been authorized to kill are still
breathing," said an official directly involved in the pursuit, and several
of them were at Tora Bora.

The predominant view among the analysts is that bin Laden is alive, but
knowledgeable officials said they cannot rule out the possibility that he
died at Tora Bora or afterward. Some analysts believe bin Laden is
seriously ill and under the medical care of his second-in- command, Ayman
Zawahiri, an Egyptian-trained physician. One of the theories, none
supported by firm evidence, is that he has Marfan syndrome, a congenital
disorder of some people with bin Laden's tall, slender body type that puts
them at increased risk of heart attack or stroke.

The minority of U.S. officials who argue that bin Laden is probably dead
note that four months have passed since any credible trace of him has
surfaced in intelligence collection. Those who argue that he is probably
alive note that monitoring of a proven network of bin Laden contacts has
turned up no evidence of reaction to his death. If he had died, surely
there would have been some detectable echo within this network, these
officials argue.

In public, the Bush administration acknowledges no regret about its
prosecution of Tora Bora. One official spokesman, declining to be named,
described questions about the battle as "navel-gazing" and said the
national security team is "too busy for that." He added, "We leave that to
you guys in the press."

But some policymakers and operational officers spoke in frustrated and even
profane terms of what they called an opportunity missed.

"We [messed] up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting the
Afghans do all the work," said a senior official with direct
responsibilities in counterterrorism. "Clearly a decision point came when
we started bombing Tora Bora and we decided just to bomb, because that's
when he escaped. . . . We didn't put U.S. forces on the ground, despite all
the brave talk, and that is what we have had to change since then."

When al Qaeda forces began concentrating again in February, south of the
town of Gardez, Franks moved in thousands of U.S. troops from the 101st
Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division. In the battle of Shahikot
in early March -- also known as Operation Anaconda -- the United States let
Afghan allies attack first. But when that offensive stalled, American
infantry units took it up.

Another change since Tora Bora, with no immediate prospect of finding bin
Laden, is that President Bush has stopped proclaiming the goal of taking
him "dead or alive" and now avoids previous references to the al Qaeda
founder as public enemy number one.

In an interview with The Washington Post in late December, Bush displayed a
scorecard of al Qaeda leaders on which he had drawn the letter X through
the faces of those thought dead. By last month, Bush began saying that
continued public focus on individual terrorists, including bin Laden, meant
that "people don't understand the scope of the mission."

"Terror is bigger than one person," Bush said March 14. "He's a person
that's now been marginalized." The president said bin Laden had "met his
match" and "may even be dead," and added: "I truly am not that concerned
about him."

Top advisers now assert that the al Qaeda leader's fate should be no
measure of U.S. success in the war.

"The goal there was never after specific individuals," Gen. Richard B.
Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. "It was to
disrupt the terrorists."

Said Quigley at the Central Command: "There's no question that Osama bin
Laden is the head of al Qaeda, and it's always a good thing to get rid of
the head of an organization if your goal is to do it harm. So would we like
to get bin Laden? You bet, but al Qaeda would still exist as an
organization if we got him tomorrow."

At least since the 1980s, the U.S. military has made a point of avoiding
open declaration of intent to capture or kill individual enemies. Such
assignments cannot be carried out with confidence, and if acknowledged they
increase the stature of an enemy leader who survives. After-action
disclosures have made clear, nonetheless, that finding Manuel Noriega
during the Panama invasion of 1989 and Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian
Gulf War were among the top priorities of the armed forces.

The same holds true now, high-ranking officials said in interviews on
condition that they not be named. "Of course bin Laden is crucial," one said.

In Britain, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told BBC radio yesterday that
bin Laden's capture "remains one of the prime objectives" of the war.

Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


JUSTICE SAYS IT WON'T CHARGE U.S. CITIZEN MOVED FROM CUBA
Man in Custody as Government Deliberates What to Do

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 9, 2002; Page A10

Justice Department officials have decided not to charge the American-born
prisoner who was transferred from a U.S. military prison in Cuba to a Navy brig
in Norfolk last week, concluding that the U.S. government lacks enough
incriminating information about him to support a criminal prosecution, officials
said.

That leaves the detainee, Yaser Esam Hamdi, 22, in legal limbo as government
lawyers try to determine whether there is a way to charge him under U.S.
military law. Another option is to turn him over to authorities in Saudi Arabia,
where he has lived most of his life, government officials said.

Hamdi was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan five months ago while fighting
for either al Qaeda or the Taliban. Since then, he has told interrogators he was
born in Louisiana. Federal agents recently located his birth certificate in
Baton Rouge, and last week authorities flew him on a heavily guarded military
transport to the Norfolk Naval Base.

International lawyers said the fact that Hamdi is a U.S. citizen grants him a
number of rights not available to the 299 detainees still held at the Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base -- and also limits the U.S. government's ability to hold him.
Government officials did not describe the legal basis they would cite for
detaining a U.S. citizen who has not been charged.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference
yesterday that military officials are deliberating how to handle Hamdi's case.

"At some point the lawyers will decide what they want to do with him," Rumsfeld
said. "They'll either keep him and try to get information from him, or they'll
send him back home because he's not interesting, or they'll try him under one of
the alternative opportunities we have: The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the
criminal justice system or a military commission." Trying to explain the legal
underpinnings that officials would cite for Hamdi's detention, he said: "The
lawyers think about all those niceties."

Hamdi cannot be tried before a military commission or tribunal because the
presidential order that established those panels restricted them to non-U.S.
citizens.

Detlev Vagts, an international law specialist at Harvard University, said it is
legally conceivable that Hamdi would be charged with some violation of the laws
of war -- such as attacking civilians without a military purpose -- but that it
could be difficult, especially because the U.S. government apparently has little
information about him.

"This case just boggles the mind, the whole idea you would hold an American
citizen indefinitely while you figure out what to do with him," Vagts said. "One
is supposed to be brought before a magistrate within 48 hours, under U.S. law."

A senior defense official said the government is confident it is on firm legal
footing in continuing to detain Hamdi but offered no further details.

"We're detaining him because he was an enemy combatant, and he was captured on a
battlefield," the official said. "To release captives so they can participate in
terrorist attacks makes no sense."

But as a citizen, Hamdi or his family may be able to file a petition in federal
court asking a judge to rule on the propriety of his detention, lawyers said.

Human rights advocates said they were uneasy about the idea of sending Hamdi
back to Saudi Arabia.

"We would be concerned if people were being returned against their will to their
home country, especially if they faced ill treatment or torture, which could be
the case in Saudi Arabia," said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty
International. Saudi officials have long denied they torture terrorism suspects.

Another American, John Walker Lindh, faces criminal charges in federal court in
Alexandria stemming from his service with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Much of that
case is based on incriminating comments Lindh allegedly made to U.S.
interrogators and in a television interview after his capture.

Staff writer Brooke A. Masters contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


DETAINEE MOVED FROM CUBA TO VA. BRIG
Officials Say Man Is Likely U.S. Citizen

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 6, 2002; Page A08

A 22-year-old man captured in Afghanistan was flown yesterday from a U.S.
military prison in Cuba to Virginia after American officials determined he is
probably a U.S. citizen, officials said.

Yaser Esam Hamdi is being held at the U.S. Naval Brig at the Norfolk Naval
Station, where he will remain until Justice Department officials decide what to
do with him. It is possible he will be charged with crimes pertaining to his
alleged involvement with al Qaeda or the Taliban, as was another American
captured in Afghanistan, the California-born John Walker Lindh, officials said.

Hamdi was first flown yesterday to Dulles International Airport on a C-130
transport plane carrying military police officers and then was flown to Norfolk.

Officials said it could be weeks or months before the government decides how to
handle his case, but they said one likely course is that he would be charged
with some of the same crimes as Lindh, including conspiracy to murder Americans
abroad or conspiracy to provide material assistance to terrorist groups. Both
men were captured at the same Afghan prison uprising last November in which a
CIA officer was killed.

Hamdi told interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base that he was born in
Louisiana. Federal agents recently located his birth certificate in Baton Rouge.
He said his family moved him to Saudi Arabia when he was a toddler.

Officials said they have not confirmed he is a citizen, but the Pentagon
released a statement yesterday saying that "given the likelihood that Hamdi is
an American citizen, it was deemed appropriate to move him to the United
States."

"As a captured enemy combatant," the statement continued, "Hamdi remains in the
control of the Department of Defense." Officials said he likely will be
transferred to the custody of the Justice Department and could be tried in
federal court in Alexandria or Norfolk.

A military official said Hamdi is being held in a cell separate from other
inmates and is under 24-hour observation. "He is being treated in accordance
with the principles of the Geneva Conventions," the official said.

Staff writer Brooke A. Masters contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


>>> Some Detainees May Be Held Even if Acquitted

Article 8 of 26 found

John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer March 29, 2002; Page A7
Section: A Word Count: 513

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that some al Qaeda
and Taliban fighters could continue to be imprisoned even after being
tried and acquitted by U.S. military tribunals, if U.S. officials
still believed they were dangerous terrorists. Human rights
organizations expressed concern about the policy. But they said it is
defensible under international law as long as the U.S. government
places a time limit on its detention of prisoners who have not been
charged with a

* * *


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A430-2002Mar21.html

TRIBUNAL RULES AIM TO SHIELD WITNESSES
Judges, Prosecutors May Be Anonymous

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 22, 2002; Page A01

Special military tribunals unveiled by the Bush administration yesterday will
feature unprecedented security precautions to guard against retribution,
including the possibility that some witnesses will testify from remote locations
or with electronically altered voices, officials said.

Judges and prosecutors at the tribunals, which will be reserved for a small
number of high- ranking al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, may remain anonymous
throughout the trials, officials said as they formally released regulations they
have been developing for the past four months.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who announced the guidelines yesterday at
a Pentagon news conference, said the rules achieve a balance between the need to
be fair to terror suspects and the need to protect U.S. security.

"We have made every reasonable effort to establish a process that is just, one
that protects both the rights of the defendant to a fair trial but also protects
the rights of the American people to live as they were meant to live, in freedom
and without fear of terrorists," Rumsfeld said.

Officials said there are no candidates for trial before a tribunal yet. The vast
majority of captives, they said, will be released if they are found innocent,
sent to their home countries for trial or detained indefinitely without charges
if the United States considers them too dangerous to release but lacks enough
evidence to prosecute them.

The security arrangements were among the few new details of the tribunal plan --
one of the most closely scrutinized parts of the U.S. anti-terror effort -- to
emerge at Rumsfeld's briefing yesterday. Earlier this week, officials outlined a
complex set of regulations based on both the military and civilian legal
systems.

Specifically, defendants will have the right to see evidence against them,
unless it is classified, and will be provided military counsel. A two-thirds
majority of judges will be required for conviction, but a unanimous vote will be
necessary to impose the death penalty.

Yesterday's announcement reignited protests from human rights groups that the
procedures are unfair. The activists focused on the indefinite detentions and
the fact that appeals of convictions would be made to panels named by the
secretary of defense, not to federal courts.

Human rights groups said it is a stretch to assert captives can be held without
trial for the possibly endless duration of the U.S. war on terrorism. "We're
concerned about this," said Vienna Colucci, a spokesman for the human rights
group Amnesty International. "Those in custody should be charged or released."

But Pentagon officials said international law gives them the right to hold some
captives indefinitely.

"When somebody's trying to kill you or your people, and you capture them, you
can hold them," said William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel, who
led the four-month, interagency effort to draft the procedures. "We are within
our rights, and I don't think anyone disputes it, that we may hold enemy
combatants for the duration of the conflict. And the conflict is still going and
we don't see an end in sight right now."

Michael H. Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights,
said the appeals process is flawed.

"History tells us there is value in having an independent branch of government
reviewing the actions of the executive branch," he said. "They're saying, 'Trust
us, we'll be so fair there won't be any problem.' But it's too much to expect
there will never be a case that should be overturned."

But the tribunal guidelines were praised by congressional leaders of both
political parties as a much improved version of the executive order establishing
the tribunals that President Bush issued in November.

The public should not be concerned that the procedures to be used in the
tribunals differ in some respects from the rules in ordinary U.S. criminal
trials and in military courts-martial, Rumsfeld said. "The commissions are
intended to be different," he said.

Security is one major difference. Rumsfeld said protecting courtroom personnel
will be a paramount concern from the beginning. He noted that federal judges who
have presided over major terrorist cases in New York are still under 24-hour-a-
day protection by U.S. marshals years after the trials ended.

"That is unacceptable," Rumsfeld said. The identities of the jurors in those
cases were not revealed.

The new guidelines also allow for closing portions of the proceedings to the
public, and to the defendant, if classified information is to be divulged or if
it is necessary to protect court personnel.

Rumsfeld said the administration has not yet decided where the tribunals will be
held. But sources said the likely location is the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, where 300 captured al Qaeda and Taliban combatants are imprisoned.
Among the reasons for that decision, the sources said, is the base's secure and
remote location, which allows the U.S. military to restrict access to a
courtroom.

Pentagon officials said it may be a long time before detainees are taken before
tribunals, partly because of the difficulty in gathering sufficient information
to construct criminal cases. The great majority of the prisoners are being
"singularly uncooperative" in interrogations, Haynes said.

Haynes also said the Pentagon will guard against top commanders exercising any
influence on judges.

"I can assure you that is something we will continue to be vigilant about," he
said. "I'm not concerned at all that the commissions will do anything other than
do what the president has also instructed them to do, and that is a produce a
full and fair trial."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57339-2002Mar20.html

U.S. ADDS LEGAL RIGHTS IN TRIBUNALS
New Rules Also Allow Leeway on Evidence

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 21, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration has settled on a complex set of military tribunal
regulations more advantageous to al Qaeda and Taliban defendants than the
guidelines President Bush originally issued in November, knowledgeable sources
said yesterday.

The new rules would require a unanimous vote of judges to impose the death
penalty on convicted terrorists -- not the two-thirds vote Bush had suggested in
his Nov. 13 executive order establishing the tribunals. And while the
president's original order barred appeals after conviction, the new regulations
allow military officers to review a tribunal's decision on appeal.

Yet the new rules, scheduled to be announced today, also give prosecutors more
leeway than they would have in criminal courts. Hearsay or secondhand evidence
could be used in the new tribunals, for example, although it is barred in
ordinary criminal trials and courts-martial.

Bush's original order brought a barrage of criticism from human rights groups
and European officials who said it could violate the rights of suspects brought
to trial by the United States. In the four months since, experts from the White
House, the Defense Department and the Justice Department have been slowly
working out the details of what could become one of the most controversial
aspects of the U.S. war on terrorism.

Despite the furor, many U.S. officials have concluded that there may be little
use for the tribunals because the great majority of the 300 prisoners being held
at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are low-ranking foot soldiers,
sources said. The tribunals are planned only for relatively high-ranking al
Qaeda and Taliban operatives against whom there is persuasive evidence of
terrorism or war crimes.

"The world now will begin to see what we meant by a fair system that will enable
us to bring people to justice [but] at the same time protect citizenry," Bush
told reporters yesterday.

Administration officials have other plans for many of the relatively junior
captives now at Guantanamo Bay: indefinite detention without trial. U.S.
officials would take this action with prisoners they fear could pose a danger of
terrorism even if they have little evidence of past crimes.

Human rights groups expressed differing opinions about the new tribunal rules.
All contended that some provisions still violate the rights of prisoners, but
some expressed relief that the regulations had been softened since Bush
announced them.

The tribunals, sometimes called "commissions," will resemble military courts-
martial in composition. They will have three to seven members.

In cases where the death penalty is not a possibility, defendants can be
convicted by a two-thirds vote. Those convicted in tribunals will be allowed to
ask a review panel appointed by the president -- consisting of three people, one
of whom will be a military judge -- to reconsider their cases. Defendants will
not be allowed to appeal to the federal courts.

The rules of evidence governing cases before the tribunals will be considerably
looser than they are in U.S. criminal courts. In ordinary criminal cases, a
witness cannot offer hearsay evidence -- information based on what someone else
has said. But hearsay testimony will be allowed before military tribunals,
sources said, because the government must show only that the evidence has
"probative value to a reasonable person."

In criminal trials, prosecutors must establish a "chain of custody" for
evidence, such as documents or fingerprints, to prove that police handled it
properly after obtaining it.

But in terrorism cases brought before tribunals, which may involve papers or
computer disks retrieved by U.S. soldiers from rubble- strewn al Qaeda hide-outs
in Afghanistan, prosecutors need not establish chain of custody. "It's not like
we have a crime scene where a bloody glove got left behind," said one source
knowledgable about the government's deliberations.

The trials will be open to the public, and the defendants will be able to hear
the evidence against them. But the hearings can be closed -- even to the
defendants -- if classified information is used or the discussion could endanger
national security. In such cases, defense lawyers with security clearances could
still be present, but would not be allowed to reveal the secrets to their
clients.

Any alleged terrorists whom the president ultimately brings before the new
tribunals likely would face charges of violating the laws of war, such as
conducting hostilities while posing as a civilian, or committing crimes against
civilians, sources said. Bush also likely would file conspiracy charges against
such suspects, allowing prosecutors to use evidence involving one member of al
Qaeda against others.

The human rights group Amnesty International said the new regulations violate
suspects' rights in many ways. The worst provision, the group said, is that
convictions could be appealed only to higher panels also named by the president,
rather than independent judicial bodies -- a practice it said was "deeply
troubling."

Human Rights Watch expressed misgivings about the same provision. "In America,
we've never let our political leaders decide who is guilty," said the group's
Washington representative, Tom Malinowski. "That's been a fundamental principle
since 1789."

Even so, he added that the milder rules "go a long way to meet the concerns of
human rights groups. . . . It will help the Bush administration climb out of the
deep hole it dug for itself . . . last fall."

Ruth Wedgwood, an international law expert at Yale University who supports
Bush's plan, said administration officials have been judicious and concerned
with the nation's security throughout the process.

"The time [government attorneys] have taken on this shows the seriousness with
which they were taking on the criticism," she said. "This was clearly very
carefully done."

In general, sources said, there will be four categories of prisoners: those
deemed innocent and released; those repatriated to their countries for trial;
those tried before military tribunals; and those detained without charge. Human
rights groups have expressed concerns about the last group.

U.S. officials will rely in part on decisions by European human rights courts
that allowed British authorities to detain Irish Catholic and Protestant
militants for long periods of time if they were deemed dangerous but not
necessarily guilty of a crime, sources said. Those courts allowed the detentions
as long as British officials periodically reviewed the cases.

International law allows for such indefinite detention only in cases of national
emergency, and administration attorneys view the current situation -- with a
danger of clandestine terrorists possibly wielding weapons of mass destruction
-- as exactly that, legal sources said.

Another legal precedent for this type of detention without criminal charge is
the practice of involuntary hospitalization of mentally ill people who pose a
danger to themselves and others, legal sources said.

"In a state of real emergency, various liberties can be suspended," said one
attorney who advised the administration on the rules.

Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


March 15, 2002; Page A03

FROM VEIL OF SECRECY, PORTRAITS OF U.S. PRISONERS EMERGE

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

Some appear to be naive teenagers whipped into religious frenzy and dispatched
to holy war by wily elders. Others are seasoned thugs who drilled intensively at
Osama bin Laden's camps in the sinister arts of murder with bare hands and
construction of hairbrush bombs.

Now they're all tossed together in three U.S. prisons surrounded by razor wire:
300 at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and 244 at two camps in Afghanistan
awaiting transfer to the Caribbean prison for questioning in new windowless
plywood interrogation huts.

Citing security concerns, U.S. officials have refused to reveal the detainees'
identities, nationalities and other details -- when they know them. Officials
admit they are befuddled about the real identities of dozens of the detainees.
But in piecing together the information available from officials in their home
countries and other sources, part of the portrait of the Guantanamo Bay inmates
has emerged.

Together the prisoners may be a rich source of intelligence on the past and
future operations of the al Qaeda terrorist network, but only if their U.S.
captors, working against the clock but under strict U.S. rules of interrogation,
can elicit the information they need.

One unidentified Guantanamo Bay prisoner, for example, provided investigators
with the crucial piece of information that led to last month's government terror
alert when he told them that Feb. 12 was the possible date of an attack in
either the United States or Yemen.

Among the prisoners who U.S. officials consider a potential intelligence catch
is Abdul Aziz, a Saudi who was a ranking al Qaeda financial official. He is
alleged to have funneled large sums of money to bin Laden through a Persian Gulf
charity called Wafa, which had the ostensible mission of distributing food and
medicine to the poor in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Other prisoners lack such credentials. One of those may be Murat Kurnaz, 19, a
Turkish citizen who lived in Germany and loved to walk his Rottweiler and lift
weights, friends said. But he fell under the sway of a radical imam and flew to
Pakistan in a rush of religious fervor a few weeks after the September attacks,
his parents told German reporters. Their last contact was an odd call in which
he said he had found "the true Islam." He was captured last month with the
Taliban.

U.S. officials decline comment about the location of specific detainees, so it
is not clear whether Aziz and Kurnaz, among other captives whose names have
surfaced, have been taken to Cuba or remain in Afghanistan.

Of the 544 U.S. prisoners, Taliban officers from Afghanistan constitute the
largest group. The second-largest group comes from Saudi Arabia -- about 100,
evenly split between Cuba and Afghanistan. The captives at Guantanamo Bay's Camp
X-Ray come from 26 nations, and include 30 Yemenis, 25 Pakistanis, eight
Algerians, three Britons and small numbers from Russia's breakaway Chechnya
province, France, Belgium and Australia.

Kuwaiti officials have said at least six of their citizens are at the camp. A
Swede, Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, 22, was visited in his cell last week by a
diplomat from his home country who carried a recorded message from the captive's
father.

According to Arabic newspapers, U.S forces in Afghanistan are holding nationals
from several Central Asian republics, as well as Jordan, Syria, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia and some Kurds from Iraq, although
officials of some of those governments say they know nothing about such
detentions.

But U.S. officials say that the identities of many of the detainees remain
unclear, and that many of them have given multiple names and stories.

During a visit to the camp March 3, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said
investigators have taken DNA samples from U.S. prisoners in Cuba and Afghanistan
to compare specimens in the event any of them are released and rearrested.

Some Camp X-Ray guards told reporters in Cubalast month that they are under
orders to ensure that none of the CIA, FBI and military interrogators even
touches a detainee during questioning. The standing orders are implicit on palm-
sized "Rules of Engagement" cards given to military police officers as reminders
of their mission. The orders begin with a bold-faced directive: "The Physical
Security of U.S. Forces and Detainees in U.S. Care is Paramount."

U.S. officials decline to describe in detail how they decide which detainee will
be sent to which prison. Besides Camp X-Ray and the U.S. Special Forces
detention facility at the former Soviet air base in Bagram, the Americans
operate a prison in Kandahar.

U.S. interrogators also search for terrorist suspects by sifting through
information about thousands of detainees at other prisons in the region, some in
Pakistan, and one a decrepit detention camp in Shebargan, Afghanistan. Human
rights groups complain that the more than 3,000 prisoners there lack adequate
food, medical care and sanitation and are left in the bitter cold day and night.

One prisoner already known to be at Camp X-Ray is the Taliban army's former
chief of staff, Fazel Mazloom. Some Afghans consider him a suspect in planning
al Qaeda's murder of the popular Northern Alliance leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud,
days before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Another captured Taliban official is well known to American viewers of all-news
cable networks: the bushy bearded Abdul Salam Zaeef, the regime's former
ambassador to Pakistan. Yet another Taliban representative believed held by the
Americans is Awal Gul, who helped bin Laden move to Afghanistan from Sudan in
the 1990s and was considered a close associate.

The United States also is believed to be holding three former Taliban officials
who human rights groups want investigated for allegedly brutalizing Taliban
opponents during their reign, actions that potentially could result in war
crimes charges. Nurullah Nuri was once the governor of northern Afghanistan, and
Mohammad Fazel was the Taliban's deputy defense minister. The third, known by
the single name Dadaullah, allegedly rampaged through central Afghanistan last
year, destroying villages and executing hundreds of civilians.

A potential star witness for the Americans -- or possible defendant if he
refuses to talk -- is an Egyptian, Ahmed Abdel Rahman. He is the son of Omar
Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric convictedin 1995 of conspiring to blow up New
York landmarks. The son was captured in Kabul in November.

Among the eight Algerians in Cuba are six that were picked up by U.S. forces in
Bosnia, far from the fighting in Afghanistan. The six had all traveled to Bosnia
in the 1990s to join the Muslim resistance against the Serbs, remained there and
married Bosnian women. All worked for Islamic charities, some of which are
suspected of secretly advancing extremist agendas.

The leader of the six was alleged to be Bensayah Belkacem, a sometime trinket
salesman whose cellular telephone conversations were taped by U.S. officials as
he allegedly called al Qaeda operatives to plan a bombing of the U.S. Embassy in
Sarajevo. He and the five others -- including an Arabic teacher and a mechanic
-- were detained by Bosnian authorities in October.

In December, when judges there determined they had no grounds to hold them,
their Bosnia captors released them. But by prior arrangement with the Americans,
the six were met at the jailhouse door and whisked away to Cuba.

Another Guantanamo Bay prisoner drawing notice is David Hicks, 26, an Australian
high school dropout who traveled the world as an adventurer with various Muslim
militant groups. He began his Cuban stay loudly proclaiming his desire to kill
Americans, but has since calmed down, according to guards.

Three young men of Moroccan descent -- Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, 27, and Reswad
Abdulsam, 30, of Spain; and Hassan Maimoundi of Denmark -- are also alleged to
be in Camp X-Ray, according to published reports.

Six men from France also are locked up there, all of whom were born to North
African parents who lived in working-class slums and all of whom trained at al
Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, according to foreign press reports.

One, Khaled ben Mustapha, 30, worked as a computer technician in Paris and
disappeared in July after a family argument, according to French newspapers.
Another, Khalid Ridouane, 34, is an alleged Muslim extremist arrested at the
1998 World Cup in Paris after a search of his home yielded bomb components and
military uniforms. Charges stemming from the search later were dropped.

Five young men from Britain are at X-Ray, too, including Feroz Abbasi, 22, from
the London suburb of Croydon, and Jamal Udeen, 35, a Web site designer from
Manchester. The other three are chums from the impoverished West Midlands town
of Tipton. Ruhal Ahmed, 20; Asif Iqbal, 20; and Shafiq Rasul, 24, are graduates
of the same high school and played on the same soccer team, Tipton United.

The families of Iqbal and Rasul, who are asking a federal judge in Washington to
hold a hearing into their detention, deny the pair are Muslim extremists.

But British papers tell another story. Rasul was drawn into radical Islam after
a visit to Pakistan for a wedding, they said. After being inflamed by visions of
jihad by an elderly imam, he and Iqbal began to argue with their immigrant
families for, in their eyes, acting too British, published reports said.

In October, weeks after the al Qaeda attacks, Rasul traveled to Pakistan and
told his parents he wanted to take a computer course there. Iqbal went to
Pakistan with his father about the same time, to set up an arranged marriage. On
Oct. 7 he told his father he was going to a nearby city to visit friends, and,
leaving behind his passport and cash, said he would return in a few days.

The next thing their families heard was that they had been arrested with al
Qaeda members in Afghanistan. Surely, their families told reporters, these young
men, interested in designer clothes and holidays on the Canary Islands, had been
brainwashed, or perhaps used as human shields by terrorists.

Staff writer Steve Fainaru and research editor Margot Williams contributed to
this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


March 14, 2002; Page A12

U.S. TOLD TO RULE ON DETAINEES' STATUS

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

A panel of the Organization of American States tentatively ruled yesterday that
the U.S. government must hold hearings to determine whether the suspected 300 al
Qaeda and Taliban detainees at a U.S. naval base in Cuba deserve to be deemed
prisoners of war.

The Bush administration has refused to take that step. The OAS's Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights rendered the initial finding on an emergency basis in
response to a Feb. 25 petition filed by a human rights group, the New York-based
Center for Constitutional Rights. The group asked the panel to intervene in a
variety of ways to protect the detainees' rights.

State Department officials could not be reached for comment. In the past, they
have pointed out that the U.S. government is not obligated to follow the
commission's rulings.

Human rights groups concede that the petition, which could take years to be
fully litigated, could place public relations pressure on the Bush
administration, but Washington will not acknowledge any legal impact.

But Michael Ratner, the center's vice president, said that "failure to abide by
the commission's recommendation would be a lawless act."

The Geneva Conventions require that in cases in which doubt exists, prisoners
captured in war must be taken before a "competent tribunal" to determine whether
they are POWs. The Bush administration has decided the 300 captives at
Guantanamo Bay do not deserve POW status, saying there is no doubt on the matter
so no tribunal is necessary.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

* * *


March 1, 2002; Page A1

DETAINEES' PROTEST WINS U.S. REVERSAL
Cuba Inmates May Fashion Turbans

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

A hunger strike yesterday by almost two-thirds of the 300 al Qaeda and Taliban
detainees at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, called to protest two guards' removal
of a makeshift turban from a captive's head, prompted a rapid about-face by U.S.
military officials, who told the inmates they could indeed wear such a
headdress. The refusal to eat, along with a 45-minute demonstration in which 150
captives at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base tossed personal items out of their
pens and chanted "God is great" in unison, were the first organized acts of
defiance by the detainees.

Marine Gen. Michael Lehnert, who heads the Camp X-Ray prison, told the detainees
over loudspeakers late yesterday that he was reversing policy and allowing them
to wrap bedsheets around their heads as turbans. Such headgear is commonly used
in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"The general told them they would be allowed to fashion the headdress but that
we will still inspect them," said Marine Maj. Stephen Cox, a camp spokesman. "He
said their religion would be respected, and we understand the sacred nature of
the Koran."

The trouble started Tuesday, when a guard noticed that a detainee who was
praying had wrapped a bedsheet around his head. Military police have enforced a
rule since the camp opened in January that detainees may drape or fold towels
over their heads but, for security reasons, may not wrap sheets around their
heads. The fear is that a detainee could hide a weapon in the headgear,
officials said.

The guard told the detainee repeatedly to remove it, and then an interpreter was
called, and he was told the same thing repeatedly in his language. The detainee
did not comply, so two military police officers entered his pen and took it off.

Officials declined to identify the detainee by name or nationality.

Once word of the episode spread, dozens of captives refused to eat lunch and
dinner Wednesday. Officials said 107 ate no breakfast yesterday, and 194
boycotted lunch.

Around 9:45 a.m. yesterday, about half the inmates pushed their sleeping mats,
towels and other items through openings in their chain-link pens and chanted in
Arabic, "God is great" and "There is no God but God," two of the key prayers in
Islam. That in itself was a violation of prison rules, which prohibit inmates
from raising their voices.

Camp officials were at pains last night to praise the military police officer
who confronted the captive, but they said the episode was regrettable.

"He saw a security violation and did what he was trained to do," Cox said. "Was
the timing unfortunate? Yes." He added that training "into the finer points of
the Muslim religion" has been planned "so guards don't unknowingly cause a
confrontation."

Military officials also said the underlying cause of the protest was the rising
apprehension among all 300 captives about their ultimate fate, seven weeks after
the first group was flown from Afghanistan.

"They want to know what's going to happen to them," said Marine Capt. Joe
Kloppel, a spokesman for Camp X-Ray. "There are signs of rising tension,
including conversations among detainees that are overheard and statements
they've made" to U.S. personnel.

Among other things, inmates have taken to ignoring the taped calls to prayer
played over camp loudspeakers. Instead, they rotate duties among themselves in
leading the five-times-a-day prayers.

In his speech to them, Lehnert tried to address some of the prisoners'
fundamental areas of concern. "He said he didn't know what was going to happen
to them but that they would be judged fairly, at a time in the future," Cox
said.

"He also said that henceforth he will talk to the population every week, to
inform them of what he knows about their status."

After the speech, a smaller group of prisoners, numbering 88, refused to eat --
a sign that some of the tension had dissipated, officials said.

Some Muslims believe that turbans are required because the prophet Muhammad wore
them, but their use varies by region and ethnic group.

* * *


February 13, 2002; Page A16

EXTENDED DETENTION IN CUBA MULLED
Officials Indicate Guantanamo Bay Could Hold Tribunals, Carry Out Sentences

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

As the Bush administration nears completion of new rules for conducting military
trials of foreign detainees, U.S. officials say they envision the naval base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a site for the tribunals and as a terrorist penal
colony for many years to come. "It's become clear that some of the al Qaeda
detainees, even if they're not convicted of anything, will have to remain in
detention for quite some time" because of the continuing threat of terrorist
activity, said one knowledgeable source. Terrorists convicted at the military
tribunals also could be imprisoned at the base, which offers the government a
number of security advantages, officials said.

U.S. military officials have drawn up blueprints for a 408-bed, air-conditioned
prison building that would replace the clusters of temporary, open-air cells
occupied by 254 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan. U.S.
officials expect that once built, the semi-permanent structure would remain in
use for at least five years, sources said.

Since President Bush announced plans for the military tribunals Nov. 13, his
administration has scrambled to develop comprehensive regulations under which
the detainees would be tried and held. Rules under consideration would require a
unanimous vote of judges to impose a death sentence and would allow defendants
avenues for appeal, sources said.

Tom Malinowski, a Washington representative for Human Rights Watch, raised
questions about the prospect of extended detention of unprosecuted prisoners.
"It is a basic principle of law" that people shouldn't be jailed indefinitely
without charges, he said. Yet it could be argued that under international law,
detainees such as these could be held for the duration of a war, he added.

"The question is, which war?" he said. "Is it the war in Afghanistan, the one
against al Qaeda or the one against terrorism? That could be 50 years."

The Guantanamo naval base also is the front-runner to be the site where suspects
would be tried in tribunals, sources said. After early criticism from human
rights groups, U.S. officials have drawn up guidelines for trials that more
closely resemble criminal trials and military courts-martial.

In his Nov. 13 presidential order, Bush said convicted terrorists could receive
the death penalty with just a two-thirds vote of judges. But the latest draft of
the rules would require a unanimous vote, sources said.

Bush's initial directive ruled out appeals to any court, but the new guidelines
allow some appellate review, though the details remain hazy.

The Defense Department's office of general counsel is the lead agency fashioning
the guidelines, in consultation with the White House and the State and Justice
departments.

"The staffs are still working on it," a White House official said. "The plan
hasn't gotten to any decision-makers, like [Defense Secretary Donald H.]
Rumsfeld or Bush."

Suspects in any tribunal would have the right to hire private defense lawyers,
to present evidence and witnesses and avoid testifying, sources said. Hearsay or
second-hand evidence would be allowed at the tribunals, although it is barred in
both courts-martial and civilian trials.

The prosecutors and judges for the planned tribunals would come from the
military's judge advocate general's office, or JAG, sources said. "Insofar as
JAG officers are involved, they'll bring a JAG sensibility to the proceedings,
and they are very careful people," said Ruth Wedgwood, an expert on
international law at Yale University who supports the Bush tribunal plan.

"They're proud of having brought military justice to the point that it provides
up to and sometimes beyond" the protections afforded in civil justice. But
earlier in the deliberations, top officials in the Army, Navy and Air Force JAG
offices opposed military tribunals, saying they preferred that terrorism
suspects be prosecuted in ordinary criminal courts, a military official said.
White House officials responded that holding tribunals in U.S. federal
courthouses would present overwhelming security problems, the official said.

Administration officials expect that military tribunals would largely be open to
the public, except for portions that would be closed to hear classified
evidence. But one reason for holding the tribunals at Guantanamo Bay is that
access to the base -- and therefore to the hearing sites and prison -- is
strictly controlled by the U.S. military, knowledgeable attorneys said.

The base has similar advantages as a prison. Detaining war captives aboard ships
would violate the Geneva Conventions -- which Bush recently decided to apply to
Taliban fighters but not members of al Qaeda -- as would commingling them in
ordinary prisons with domestic criminals.

Military officials also cited dangers found in history: In World War II, when
435,000 captured German military personnel were held as prisoners of war in this
country, 2,222 escaped. Some blended into the population and were not located
for years, an unacceptable risk when it comes to al Qaeda fighters, U.S.
officials believe.

Guantanamo's unique legal status also is an attraction. It is Cuban territory
that is leased essentially in perpetuity to the United States under a series of
agreements.

"It is not in any federal judicial district, so it is not subject to habeas
corpus," the legal right for someone in custody to demand a hearing before a
judge to decide the legality of the detention, said a lawyer informed about the
government's deliberations.

Moreover, the administration believes that a 1950 U.S. Supreme Court decision
minimizes the chances a prisoner could file an appeal in federal court. The
ruling said that captured German soldiers, who had aided the Japanese military
after the armistice in Europe, had no legal right while outside the country to
demand a U.S. court hearing on their case.

But many of these deliberations remain murky, one informed lawyer said, because
"so much of all this is very, very, very closely held."

[ Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report. ]

* * *


>>> Bending the Geneva Rules

February 10, 2002; Page B6 Section: B Word Count: 534

PRESIDENT BUSH wants credit for saying that he will abide by the
Geneva Convention on treatment of captured enemy fighters. His
administration understands that such international law, to the extent
it can be followed without compromising U.S. security, is most of all
in the interest of U.S. troops, who operate all over the world. But
the president has interpreted the convention so narrowly that he will
not receive, nor does he deserve, the credit he seeks, and the risk to
U.S. fighters in

* * *


February 8, 2002; Page A1

BUSH SHIFTS POSITION ON DETAINEES
Geneva Conventions to Cover Taliban, but Not Al Qaeda

By John Mintz and Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writers

President Bush reversed himself yesterday and declared that captured combatants
who fought for Afghanistan's Taliban regime will be formally covered by the
Geneva Conventions. But the president refused to confer that status on detainees
who are members of the al Qaeda terrorist network. Bush drew the distinction
between the two groups on the grounds that the nation of Afghanistan was a party
to the Geneva Conventions, while Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network never signed
the global accords, White House officials said.

Bush's decision will have no practical effect on the 186 prisoners at the U.S.
naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, leaving the day-to-day conditions of their
captivity unchanged, officials said. Experts in international law added that the
decision to include Taliban fighters under the conventions will not alter their
legal prospects.

"This is meant simply as a gesture of respect to the Geneva Conventions," said
Ruth Wedgwood, an international law specialist at Yale Law School and a close
administration ally who urges a tough stance against terrorism suspects. "There
was concern we shouldn't be seen as deriding the conventions."

Bush's policy reversal came after protests from around the world and within his
administration. In a rare public split for an administration that has shielded
most policy in-fighting from public view, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had asked Bush to reconsider a month-old
decision on the detainees' coverage under the conventions.

The president decided on Jan. 18 to deny the captives coverage under the
conventions and, more significantly, not to declare them prisoners of war. Human
rights groups and some foreign governments vociferously protested both
decisions.

Under the conventions, a government is obligated to hold legal hearings for
captured combatants whose legal status is ambiguous to determine whether they
are POWs.

But sources said the Bush administration has decided against holding such
hearings because the government has already decided that the captives are not
eligible for POW status. That status would grant them a range of additional
rights, including repatriation at the end of the conflict.

Twenty-eight additional captives were flown from Afghanistan to Cuba yesterday,
raising the number of detained Taliban and al Qaeda fighters there to 186. The
prisoner transfers resumed after a brief hiatus called by the Defense Department
to allow construction of additional cells at Guantanamo Bay's "Camp X-Ray."
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, announcing the decision on the Geneva
Conventions at an unscheduled afternoon briefing, said it will not change the
detainees' "material life on a day-to-day basis."

Administration officials say the treatment the prisoners have received in their
first month in Cuba has been humane and "consistent with" with the Geneva
Conventions.

Fleischer said the administration made the distinction between the Taliban and
al Qaeda fighters because bin Laden's followers constitute "an international
terrorist group, and cannot be considered a state party to the Geneva
Conventions." Afghanistan is a party to the conventions, he said, though the
United States did not "recognize the Taliban as the legitimate Afghani
government," he said. Pentagon and State Department officials had agreed with
Bush and other administration officials that none of the detainees should be
declared POWs. But Powell and Rumsfeld expressed fears that denying formal
coverage under the Geneva Conventions to the detainees could set a precedent and
create the risk that captured U.S. Special Forces and CIA operatives in some
future conflicts would be mistreated.

Administration officials added that European diplomats had expressed unease to
Powell about what they saw as a flouting of the Geneva Conventions, with some
calling the stance reminiscent of Bush's unilateral tendencies before he began
assembling his anti-terrorism coalition.

International law experts scrambled to understand the practical implications of
the odd legal limbo in which the Taliban fighters now find themselves -- covered
by the Geneva Conventions but not deemed POWs -- as human rights groups
continued to denounce Bush's decision not to recognize the detainees as POWs.

"We remain very concerned about this whole policy," said Vienna Colucci of
Amnesty International. "We're seeing a pick-and-choose approach to the Geneva
Conventions."

Added Tom Malinowski, a Washington representative of Human Rights Watch: "It's a
step forward to say the conventions apply to the conflict in Afghanistan. But
this is a strange decision. It gives the U.S. no extra flexibility [in its
treatment of detainees] but weakens its credibility."

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday expressed concern
that denying the detainees POW status may someday pose risks for U.S. service
members who are taken captive.

"My concern is the capture of our people by others, and the precedent that might
be set," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).

International law experts said they know of almost no cases in which combatants
were found not to be covered by the conventions. They struggled to figure out
why the administration has decided the issue that way.

"I suppose the administration has wanted to avoid raising the status of al Qaeda
fighters" by deeming them covered by the conventions, said Sean Murphy, an
expert on the Geneva Conventions at George Washington University.

"Maybe we don't want to declare that going after terrorists in Germany or
Singapore, say, is anything that falls under the rules of war in any way."

"I'm a little mystified by the decision," he added. "The more you appear to say
that people are not entitled to coverage under international rules," the more
Washington risks endangering U.S. forces.

White House officials said the decision was made after long discussions at two
National Security Council meetings, chaired by Bush, which included the views of
the Defense, State and Justice departments, as well as the opinions of other
officials.

"The biggest issue was whether the Geneva Conventions apply to a new kind of war
like this," a senior administration official said. "We are very much wedded to
the Geneva Conventions. They're good conventions. They protect our people."

[ Staff writers Steve Vogel and Alan Sipress contributed to this report. ]

* * *


February 7, 2002; Page A1

CAPTIVES RESIST U.S. QUESTIONING
Some Progress Reported in Gaining Intelligence at Cuba Base

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

[ Correction: PUBLISHED CORRECTIONS: In a Feb. 7 article on the U.S.
interrogations of Taliban and al Qaeda captives, Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert was
mistakenly identified as an Army officer. He is with the U.S. Marine Corps.
(Published 2/8/02) ]

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Many of the al Qaeda and Taliban captives imprisoned at
the U.S. naval base here are locked in a war of wills with their American
captors, resisting giving information as interrogators devise ways to get them
talking, such as engaging them in discussion about the Koran, U.S. government
officials said. At the same time, U.S. questioners have begun to make progress
in unearthing intelligence information from some of the alleged terrorist
prisoners, especially a few of the younger ones, sources said. Government
officials said the strategy is to make the detainees feel comfortable with their
treatment, while applying subtle psychological pressure.

Informed government officials said that U.S. personnel are carefully observing
the behavior of each of the 158 prisoners -- down to how much food they eat, and
how long they pace in their cells -- and that each presents a different
psychological profile.

"There are some very hardened, trained individuals who are watching us and
biding their time," said a knowledgeable U.S. government official. "Others are
just resisting."

The U.S. military has been interrogating 324 other prisoners in two prisons in
Afghanistan, and an undetermined number from that group were being flown to Cuba
yesterday aboard an Air Force C-17. Officials said most of the rest are likely
to be moved here in coming months. It is unclear how officials decide on whom to
move first. Of the 158 prisoners in Cuba, the largest group of about 50 are
Saudi.

Both the prisoners and the U.S. guards were extremely tense in the first weeks
after the first prisoners arrived Jan. 11, but the atmosphere soon eased once
U.S. officials allowed the detainees to start talking, U.S. personnel said.

Many captives speak in English or their own language. But officials said they
are wary that some of the most talkative and seemingly cooperative detainees are
angling to lull the Americans into slipping up somehow. Officials think that
while detainees may harbor fantasies of escape, the real goal of some is simply
to kill or maim a guard.

"Many have received training and are observing activities such as security
procedures," said Army Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, who runs the prison here.

"Many appeared disciplined and very patient." Some prisoners have defecated in
their prison jumpsuits in what U.S. military personnel have concluded were
efforts to infuriate their captors and establish their independence, sources
said.

U.S. officials keep a close eye on an Australian captive named David Hicks, 26,
who was arrested with al Qaeda forces late last year. A troublemaker in school,
he dropped out at 14 and was rejected by the Australian military as
semiliterate. At some point he converted to Islam. On one arm is a tattoo of a
cross that is covered by a tattoo showing a soldier with a gun. Hicks fought
with various radical Muslim movements around the world before moving to
Afghanistan to train with Osama bin Laden's followers.

U.S. officials think that despite his erratic behavior since his arrest, Hicks
is acting calculatedly to find some security gap, and possibly drawing on his
training by British mercenaries.

After his capture in Afghanistan, he gave some information about al Qaeda to
Australian interrogators. On the flight to Cuba, he somehow slipped his wrists
through his handcuffs, and military police officers had to bind his hands onto
his seat with duct tape.

When he first arrived at the prison, nicknamed Camp X-Ray, Hicks screamed at
guards that he wanted to kill them. But U.S. officials suspect that he was
testing his captors' responses, and that the calm he presents now is strategic,
as well. They note that he pays attention to the timing and procedures used in
the guards' rotation, informed sources said.

U.S. officials refuse to disclose details about their interrogation of the
detainees. But they privately acknowledge U.S. interrogators are likely to use
every psychological gambit legally available to get the prisoners talking to
their CIA, FBI and military questioners.

Psychological factors were apparently one reason for a recent change in the
procedure for transporting prisoners to the interrogation center a few hundred
yards away. In the early days, the prisoners were walked over. Then officials
said most should be carried over on stretchers, claiming their leg shackles made
the walks too time-consuming. Another reason appears to be that being carried
everywhere instills the sense of submission found in an invalid or a child,
government sources said.

"The idea is to slowly remove all the vestiges of [a detainee's] sense of power,
so they can no longer believe they're bulletproof, and in this case they're no
longer mujaheddin warriors," one experienced U.S. government interrogator said,
describing interrogations generally.

The goal is to get the prisoner comfortable enough to start talking, about any
subject, he said. Far from torturing the prisoners, as some human rights groups
have feared would happen, some of the U.S. personnel are stroking them
emotionally. Others, though, show a harsher face -- the "good cop, bad cop
routine," the source said.

"The one is hard to him, while the other wants to convince him that he's his
friend, like they're having a conversation over Turkish coffee in Kabul," the
source said. U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Wesam Kamhia, a Syrian-born Arabic
translator for the detainees, thinks -- but isn't sure -- he can distinguish the
hardened terrorists from the hapless hangers-on. The latter call him "brother,"
and beg approval to organize prison sports teams. "One asked, 'Can I just run?'
"

"But some look at me as a traitor, since I speak the language and have this
uniform on," Kamhia told Voice of America in an interview in English and Arabic
that ran only overseas. "You can see they're staring you down. You can see the
hatred in their eyes."

When the subject of the September attacks arises, "they pretend like they never
heard of it," Kamhia said. "I can't tell if they're lying or not."

"Some said they like it here," he said. "They thank the doctors [who treat them]
all the time. One said he's now in the U.S., 'land of liberty, land of
freedom.'"

But Kamhia wondered whether the prisoner was acting on an agenda to try to
please his captors. "I don't know what he meant by that," he said. In any case,
he said, they express few complaints about their living conditions. "They're
used to the heat," he said. "They do like the food. Some said they've never been
fed like that."

* * *


February 5, 2002; Page A2

ABA PROPOSES COURTS-MARTIAL LEGAL RIGHTS FOR TERROR SUSPECTS
Lawyers' Group Acts Despite White House Plea

By Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer

Rebuffing an appeal from the Bush administration, the nation's largest lawyers'
group resolved yesterday that any alleged terrorists tried by military
commissions should enjoy legal protections similar to those provided U.S.
servicemen in military courts-martial. Meeting in Philadelphia, the House of
Delegates of the 408,000- member American Bar Association voted, 286-147, that
those convicted by the commissions should have the right to appeal their cases
all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawyers' organization also urged consultation on the commissions between the
White House and Congress -- which so far has taken only a minor role in the
process -- and said U.S. policy on prosecuting terrorists should take into
account the possible impact of the commissions on the treatment of Americans
accused of crimes in other countries.

"The resolution basically says that if we have tribunals, let's have them
according to the American way," ABA President Robert Hirshon said. The practical
impact of the ABA's resolution is unclear. Some of the procedures it called for
-- such as a presumption of innocence for defendants and a unanimous verdict for
capital punishment -- already have been adopted by the administration, according
to draft versions of regulations for the commissions made available to reporters
in December.

If nothing else, the debate within the country's most prestigious legal
organization puts the commissions back in the spotlight. President Bush called
for the commissions in a Nov. 13 order, but the Defense Department has yet to
produce final regulations implementing a plan. In recent days, attention has
shifted to the treatment of suspected al Qaeda terrorists detained at the U.S.
Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The ABA acted despite heavy lobbying from administration officials who wanted
the organization to delay a debate pending the publication of final regulations
governing the military commissions. The ABA decided to take up the issue after
the White House could not say when those regulations would come out, Hirshon
said.

Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, in a speech to the delegates yesterday,
urged them not to appear to limit President Bush's options at a time when he
needs "our support and the flexibility to respond to circumstances we are still
attempting to comprehend." A motion to defer the subject indefinitely was
introduced, but failed by a vote of 233-205.

Relations already were cool between the ABA and the Bush administration, which
has said that it will not follow previous administrations' practice of asking
the ABA, which it considers a Democratic-leaning interest group, to review
candidates for federal judgeships.

A senior administration official dismissed yesterday's action by the ABA as
"premature" and "unnecessary," noting that the organization already had been
afforded the opportunity to present its views on military commissions to
Pentagon lawyers in early January.

As for the long-awaited Pentagon regulations, a person involved in the drafting
process said they are "very close to being done" but may have been "sidetracked"
by the debate over the Guantanamo prisoners. The Pentagon declined comment.

* * *


February 4, 2002; Page A3

MEDIA GIVEN A TOUR OF TENT HOSPITAL
U.S. Seeks to Show Detainees' Health, Dignity Respected

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The al Qaeda fighter with the bullet-shattered arm was
convinced the Navy surgeons about to operate on him had been given the mission
of executing him in his sleep. So when he groggily came to after the operation
in the prison hospital here, he could barely contain his shock at being alive.
"He expressed real surprise to be with us," said Navy Cmdr. Robert Metts, who
performed the hours-long procedure. Given the belief that the U.S. military is
conniving to murder Muslims, Metts continued, "they're very surprised by the
fact we're giving them the best medical care they've ever had. It doesn't jibe
with their expectations."

Metts was one of dozens of U.S. military medical professionals offered today for
interviews to 20 journalists on the second day of a well-orchestrated visit here
-- all part of the latest effort by the U.S. government to demonstrate to the
world that it is treating the detainees with humanity and dignity.

The reporters were given a tour of a state-of-the-art field hospital just
constructed to treat the 158 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters imprisoned at the
U.S. naval base here. Among the journalists were some from France, Germany,
Norway and Spain, all nations where the media and left-wing politicians have
accused the United States of brutality at the prison facility, called Camp X-
Ray.

Reporters from al- Jazeera, the Qatari television network that has drawn U.S.
government complaints for broadcasting anti-American diatribes, are scheduled
for one of the next rotations here.

The tour of the new hospital, the first given to reporters, revealed a medical
facility with a range of highly sophisticated machines and a well-trained staff
-- as well as armed military police standing at every cot, just in case a
patient makes a break for it or tries to attack medical personnel.

In small groups, the reporters were shuttled into a ward to view seven fighters
from Afghanistan, all wearing orange jump suits. All were recovering from badly
infected battlefield wounds and were lying shackled to their cots. Several were
speaking to doctors, interpreters and Red Cross observers; others were staring
at the tent ceiling. Some fidgeted with their antibiotic I.V. drips that
intertwined with their wrist and waist manacles.

"Do you feel pain?" a nurse asked one of the young, crew-cutted detainees as she
gently touched his toes, sticking out from a heavily bandaged foot. "No," he
replied.

Five times a day, one of the prostrate men will start chanting the call to
prayer from his bed, and the other patients join in, doctors said. Korans are
beside every bed. So far, doctors have performed 18 surgeries on six patients
and are treating two for malaria. Two others are taking medication for
psychiatric illnesses, doctors said -- one is a manic-depressive who cycled into
a psychotic state; the other is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome
from battle and is "acting out." The patients are continually signing informed-
consent forms and discussing their treatment with doctors through translators.
"We communicate the best we can so they understand what we're doing and to
eliminate any confusion so nobody jumps to any conclusions," said Navy Capt. Ted
Alford, the physician who helps run the hospital. "They're quiet and compliant."

One exception came when an Afghan fighter became agitated because he apparently
feared that a new intravenous line contained truth serum. The patient's arms
were restrained, MPs said. No interrogations are conducted during medical
treatment, and no truth serum is ever used, officials said.

Military officials are proud of the rapid construction of their tent hospital,
erected on a dusty field in four days. It is filled with dozens of beds, X-ray
equipment, a high- tech blood analysis laboratory and other gizmos. The staff of
150 was given the mission of providing care indistinguishable from that offered
to U.S. sailors and Marines here, officials said. If medical experts are needed
who are not on hand, they will be flown in, they said.

As part of its persuasion campaign, military officials today also offered for
interview a Muslim imam who as a Navy chaplain has ministered to the 158 men.
Besides helping U.S. commanders understand the prisoners' special needs -- he
persuaded them to distribute Korans in different languages and to let the
prisoners start regrowing their beards -- Lt. Abuhena Saiful-Islam also comforts
the captives.

"They want to talk to me on issues like what's going to happen to me, and what's
happening in Afghanistan?" Saiful-Islam said. "They want to understand how they
went wrong." Some, he said, were "misinformed" by their radical Muslim leaders
about concepts like jihad, Arabic for "struggle." Now, he said, "they say they
don't want to fight Americans."

U.S. commanders scrambled to address the imam's suggestion that the prisoners
are uniformly gentle and remorseful men.

"We don't want to lose sight of the fact that these are dangerous people," said
Marine Maj. Stephen Cox, a prison spokesman. "The chaplain provides for the
detainees' religious needs -- But remember, these people want to harm U.S.
personnel."

* * *


February 3, 2002; Page A3

AT CAMP X-RAY, A THAWING IN THE ANIMOSITY AND FEAR
Detainees Get More Comfortable, Talkative in Interrogation

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Army Pvt. Mitchell Jeffers says he can't help being
shocked by the odd, awkward interruptions in the war on terrorism that he
witnesses as he empties the bathroom buckets of the al Qaeda and Taliban
prisoners he is guarding at the U.S. naval base here. "So many of them keep
saying, 'Thank you, thank you' all the time," said Jeffers, a military police
officer from Fort Hood, Tex. "A lot of them seem to be really glad to be here
rather than in a war in Afghanistan."

It is strictly against regulations for military police officers such as Jeffers
to reply to the detainees' chitchat. But many of the Army and Marine Corps MPs
on duty say they are struck by how the grimness and tension of the first two
weeks of detention have lightened subtly. It means some captives are talking
more freely in interrogation, too, officers said.

It started about a week ago, when commanders at the prison facility, Camp X-Ray,
rewarded the prisoners' generally good behavior by saying they could converse
freely among themselves and with their guards. "It's like the Tower of Babel
here," an officer said, referring to the myriad languages spoken by the 158
prisoners from 28 countries brought here from Afghanistan.

The soldiers were interviewed within shouting distance of Camp X-Ray, which is
carved out of near-wilderness of low, scrubby hills near a junkyard filled with
abandoned cars.

Jeffers, a Tennessean, said he knows perfectly well that some captives who
engage him in conversation have an agenda. They may be hoping he'll lower his
guard or give them some special privilege, he reckons.

But others, especially some of the scores who are between the ages of 18 and 25,
appear to be warming up to their captors in recent days, military personnel
said. "Some of the younger ones in particular are loosening up in their
interrogation," an officer said. "They're relating to the interpreters who speak
their language and seem to be realizing we Americans are not as bad or scary as
they thought we were."

Top commanders at the base declined to discuss the progress of the
interrogations. "As long as we're getting information, we're going to ask them
questions," said Marine Brig. Gen. Michael R. Lehnert, who runs the detention
operation. He scoffed at critics' speculation that his personnel are mistreating
prisoners for information. "There is no torture, no whips, no bright lights, no
drugging," he said. "We are a nation of laws."

Holding a two-inch-thick book containing the rules of captivity under the Geneva
Conventions, Lehnert said, "We're complying wherever it is possible and
practical with the conventions. . . It's a work in progress."

He said he did not know when any new prisoners would be delivered because that
decision will be made in Washington.

Drop-offs by military transport jet ended more than a week ago because there was
no more space for new arrivals. But Navy Seabees construction crews working
almost around the clock in 10-hour shifts have laid concrete and wrapped metal
fencing to build 8-by-8-foot enclosures for 162 new prisoners.

Another reason for suspending the caravan of C-141s was that military
interrogators had not questioned all 158 arrivals, and commanders wanted them to
catch up before bringing in newcomers. Although interrogators lack enough
translators for some South Asian dialects, the questioning has sped up since
interrogators have a new, more spacious building with private rooms. The
cramped, steamy tents where they had done business slowed the process, officers
said.

Meanwhile, some military personnel here described tentative progress in the
interrogations.

Maryland Army National Guard Sgt. Karen Carr, a library computer specialist from
the Eastern Shore, helps keep the master computerized list of the 158 detainees.
She said many of them had given false names to interrogators in Afghanistan, but
a number have recently admitted their lies to interpeters here.

At times she and her colleagues catch them when visiting their cells and
offering to help send postcards to families back home -- that is when
discrepancies in the names often emerge. Moreover, she senses a recent thawing
in the animosity and fear of many captives.

"They're getting more comfortable," Carr said. "They're 'fessing up, and
sometimes they're spilling their guts."

Some U.S. soldiers wonder whether a few prisoners will turn out to be less than
the violent fanatics they have been called. In recent weeks, some camp personnel
have said David Hicks, 26, the Australian adventurer and kangaroo hunter
captured with the Taliban, was snarling nonstop threats against the guards,
saying he would kill an American before he left Cuba. But today, guards said his
rage has abated.

"We haven't had to calm him down at all lately," a guard said. "He knows what he
did -- he knows he messed up."

Australian officials said Hicks was cooperative in answering questions posed by
interrogators from his country aboard a U.S. military ship in the Arabian Sea a
few weeks back.

"The detainees are doing what they're told," Jeffers said. "Yes, they're
criminals and terrorists, but they're becoming more used to us every day. I
think some of them are not as bad as everybody's thinking." "Some of them are
making clear to us they like the conditions here," he said. "We [U.S. military
guards] want to get out our side -- we're not abusing these people."

* * *


January 29, 2002; Page A12

MOST DETAINEES ARE SAUDIS, PRINCE SAYS
Return to Kingdom Is Sought Bush Pledges Case-by-Case Decisions

By John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writer

A top Saudi Arabian official said yesterday that approximately 100 of the 158
suspected terrorists held by the United States in Cuba are citizens of the
desert kingdom, insisting that they be returned for interrogation and possible
prosecution. "We have found out about them, and they are around 100," Prince
Nayef, the Saudi interior minister, told the official Saudi Press Agency. "We
demand that they be subject to the kingdom's laws."

U.S. officials yesterday declined to confirm Nayef's numbers, the first to
describe the origins of large numbers of the detainees held at the U.S. Naval
Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Government officials decline to specify each of
the 158 al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners' home countries, but White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that they come from 30 nations -- a
tripling of the estimate by other officials only weeks before.

The detainees could become the latest source of friction in the post-Sept. 11
relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials have
chafed at what they consider Saudi foot-dragging in stopping the flow of funds
to terrorist groups. The Saudis have expressed frustration at what they consider
U.S. arrogance and President Bush's embrace of Israel in its struggles with
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

At a news conference yesterday, Bush responded to Nayef's demand by saying, "I
appreciate his request. "There's a lot of Saudi citizens that chose to fight for
al Qaeda and/or the Taliban that we want to know more about," Bush added. "We'll
make a decision on a case-by-case basis as to whether they go back to Saudi
Arabia or not."

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke reiterated administration officials' past
statements that they will contemplate returning many of the prisoners to their
home countries, but added, "we want to make sure these people are not . . . back
out on the roads doing what they've done," a reference to committing terrorist
acts.

Yesterday, Bush also said he spent the morning "discussing all the legal
ramifications" of his recent decision that the 158 prisoners should not be
covered by the Geneva Conventions. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have asked him to reconsider, and
representatives of the White House and several agencies met to hash out the
matter.

The decision, coming on top of Bush's stance that the detainees are not
prisoners of war, has sparked an outcry from human rights organizations and
European representatives.

Asked whether he believes the Geneva Conventions are outmoded, he replied: "The
Geneva Conventions are not outdated. . . . However I make my decision [on
whether they should be covered by the Geneva Conventions], these detainees will
be well treated.

"We are not going to call them prisoners of war in either case, and the reason
why is al Qaeda is not a known military," Bush continued. "These are killers.
These are terrorists. They know no countries. And the only thing they know about
countries is when they find a country that's been weak, and they want to occupy
it like a parasite."

Powell believes that declaring the prisoners do not fall under the Geneva
Conventions' protections could create risks for U.S. Special Forces and
intelligence operatives in the event they are captured while dressed in civilian
clothes, government officials said. Moreover, he believes the issue needlessly
inflames other governments, including some key U.S. allies, the officials said.

Human rights organizations are aghast at the decision.

"It's a legal impossibility not to be covered by the Geneva Conventions" once
one has been captured in a war, said Tom Malinowski, a Washington representative
for Human Rights Watch . "It's profoundly dangerous, because if they say the
conventions don't apply in this new war on terrorism, that implies they don't
apply to our forces either."

Peter Spiro, an expert in international law at Hofstra University, expressed
sympathy for the administration's position that it is difficult to apply the
Geneva Conventions' decades-old rules of war to this conflict.

"This war on terrorism isn't state-on-state," he said. "Al Qaeda could be better
compared to a drug cartel or an international crime syndicate, and drug
traffickers aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions."

But he said he can only guess why U.S. officials took the unusual step of
refusing to include the detainees under the conventions' coverage.

"They want to maintain their freedom of action" on a range of fronts, he said,
from maximizing their ability to submit the prisoners to prolonged interrogation
to avoiding a requirement in the conventions that captives receive legal
hearings before they can be denied POW status.

* * *


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=
A46833-2002Jan27&notFound=true

DEBATE CONTINUES ON LEGAL STATUS OF DETAINEES

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 28, 2002; Page A15

The Bush administration has ruled out any prospect of declaring that the al
Qaeda and Taliban prisoners being held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are
prisoners of war, but a debate will resume today at the top levels of the
government on whether to formally state that they are covered by the Geneva
Conventions, senior administration officials said.

Human rights groups criticized administration officials for what they consider a
hasty conclusion that the detainees are not POWs, but the activists added that
they welcome the stance adopted by the State Department and the Pentagon that
the 158 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay should be covered by the international
accords governing captured soldiers.

The latest developments in the detainees' legal status go back 10 days when
President Bush, without making any public announcement, decided that the
prisoners' involvement in terrorism disqualified them from POW status, officials
said.

Bush also apparently made a preliminary decision then that the detainees from
Afghanistan should not be covered under the Geneva Conventions. But in recent
days, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld have asked Bush to reopen that matter, officials said.

Powell and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have privately expressed fears that U.S.
Special Forces or spies who are captured in battle while dressed in civilian
garb could be mistreated if the United States refuses formally to extend Geneva
Conventions standing to the captives in Cuba, the officials said.

"They are not POWs; they will not be determined to be POWs," Rumsfeld told
reporters yesterday during a one-day trip to inspect the Guantanamo facilities.

There has been confusion within the administration in recent days on these
questions. Yesterday a White House official said Bush had decided on Jan. 18
that the conventions didn't apply to the Cuban prisoners, while top State
Department officials said Bush had expressed only an initial leaning toward that
view.

"It's not entirely clear whether the president made a decision or not, but some
people think he did," a senior administration official said. "In any case, [part
of] the decision is being reviewed, so it's not final."

Moreover, White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales wrote Bush a memo last week
mistakenly asserting that Powell opposed the president's decision that the
detainees aren't POWs. An administration official said the error was due to "a
misunderstanding among the lawyers."

Some officials suggested the confusion stemmed in part from the backward nature
of the discussions. "We already know the end point, which is they're not POWs,"
an official said. "We also know they'll be treated humanely. Now the question
is, why are they not POWs?" -- meaning, what legal reasons will the
administration provide for the decision?

Human rights advocates cited Geneva Conventions provisions saying that if there
is any doubt whether a detainee deserves POW status, then a "competent tribunal"
must decide. But Rumsfeld turned aside those objections yesterday, telling
reporters "there is no ambiguity in this case," meaning these prisoners are
plainly ineligible for POW standing.

"It's troubling that the detainees apparently are being declared ineligible for
POW status" without the required hearings, said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman
for the Amnesty International human rights group.

"An official can't simply say the Geneva Conventions don't apply," added Vienna
Colucci, another Amnesty activist. "The conventions apply to anyone taken out of
a conflict."

The stakes involved in declaring someone a POW are significant. In
interrogation, POWs need only respond with their name, rank and serial number,
although their captors can ask them further questions. At the end of a war, POWs
must either be repatriated or charged with a crime.

The significance of being covered by the conventions appears more symbolic.
Specialists in international law said that they know of few cases in which
combatants were de