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Sami Al-Arian’s long-delayed freedom

September 4, 2008

Nicole Colson reports on a proud victory for the family of witch-hunt victim Dr. Sami Al-Arian.

Socialist Worker, September 4, 2008

Sami Al-ArianSami Al-Arian

IN A long-overdue victory, Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian was released on bail September 2 and reunited with members of his family for the first time since his arrest in early 2003.

“[I]t feels very unbelievable and surreal that he’s finally with us after more than five-and-a-half years of being apart and of only being able to see him behind glass. It’s breathtaking, really,” his daughter, Laila Al-Arian, described her feelings to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman.

“And the whole time, we–me and my siblings–just kept telling each other, ‘Is this a dream? Is this real?’ We couldn’t believe it. And even when we first heard the news, we were a bit skeptical, because we’ve been in this situation so many times, where we thought my father would finally be released, and he wouldn’t. So we kind of held back our happiness and joy until he was finally with us.”

Sami Al-Arian is the former University of South Florida professor who has been the victim of an ongoing government witch-hunt since the Bush administration, in the days following the September 11 attacks, accused him of using an Islamic think tank and a Muslim school and charity as a cover for raising funds to finance “terrorism” through the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Though then-Attorney General John Ashcroft held up Al-Arian’s arrest as an essential part of the “war on terror” here at home, after a six-month trial costing more than $50 million, a Florida jury in 2006 refused to find Al-Arian guilty of a single count of the 17 charges against him.

What you can do

Visit the Free Sami Al-Arian Web site to get regular updates about his case and learn more about what you can do to protest the government’s continued persecution of Dr. Al-Arian.

You can send donations to help the Al-Arian family defray the costs of more than five years of legal defense to: Liberty Defense Fund, P.O. Box 1211, 24525 E. Welches Road, Welches, OR 97067.

The documentary film USA v. Al-Arian can be viewed on the Internet at the LinkTV Web site.

Facing the prospect of a lengthy and costly retrial, not to mention further separation from his wife and children, Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty to a single count of the least-serious charge against him in exchange for what was supposed to be a minor additional sentence and voluntary deportation.

Instead, before his scheduled release date, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg had Al-Arian moved to Virginia to try to compel his testimony in an unrelated investigation of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)–despite an explicit agreement with Florida prosecutors, recorded in court transcripts, that Al-Arian would be exempt from all future testimony.

Because of his continued refusal to testify, Al-Arian has had his prison stay extended first with civil, and then criminal contempt charges. But according to his defense lawyers and family, the government’s request of his testimony is nothing more than a trap–designed to keep Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely on contempt charges if he refuses to testify, or allow government prosecutors a reason to charge him with perjury if he were to testify.

As Laila Al-Arian noted on Democracy Now, “[W]hat we’ve learned along the way [about Gordon Kromberg]…is that he’s not really interested in the truth. What he’s interested in really is retrying the case that the government lost so badly in Florida.”

Continued . . .

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Pakistan reacts with fury after up to 20 die in ‘American’ attack on its soil

September 4, 2008
· Children reported dead in assault near Taliban base
· Raid was gross violation, says foreign ministry

Pakistan

Relations have become increasingly fraught between the US and Pakistan, which is struggling to control Islamist militants. Photograph: John Moore/EPA

The war in Afghanistan spilled over on to Pakistani territory for the first time yesterday when heavily armed commandos, believed to be US Special Forces, landed by helicopter and attacked three houses in a village close to a known Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold.

The surprise attack on Jala Khel was launched in early morning darkness and killed between seven and 20 people, according to a range of reports from the remote Angoor Adda region of South Waziristan. The village is situated less than one mile from the Afghan border.

Local residents were quoted as saying that most of the dead were civilians and included women and children. It was not known whether any Taliban or al-Qaida militants or western forces were among the dead.

Furious official Pakistani condemnation of the attack followed swiftly, amid growing concern that the Nato-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan could spread to Pakistan, sparking a region-wide conflagration.

Owais Ahmed Ghanisaid, the governor of North-West Frontier province, adjoining South Waziristan, said 20 people had died and called for retaliation. “This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan expect that the armed forces … would rise to defend the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply,” he said.

The foreign ministry in Islamabad termed the incursion “a gross violation of Pakistan’s territory” and a “grave provocation” which, it said, had resulted in “immense” loss of civilian life.

“Such actions are counterproductive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they may fuel the fire of hatred and violence we are trying to extinguish.”

“This is a very alarming and very dangerous development,” said a former senior Pakistani official. “We have absolutely been telling them [the US] not to do this but they ignored us.”

US and Nato commanders say Taliban and al-Qaida fighters use the unruly, semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan to stage attacks on coalition forces inside Afghanistan and create “safe havens” where they are immune from attack. Nato and civilian casualties in Afghanistan have reached record levels in the past 12 months in the face of a spreading Taliban offensive.

US forces have used missile-carrying drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – to attack militant targets inside Pakistan in the past. But yesterday’s assault, involving up to three helicopters and infantry commandos, marked the first time the fight has been taken directly to the enemy on Pakistani soil.

Major-General Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistan army, said Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) had carried out the raid. “Two helicopters of Isaf landed very early in the morning and conducted a raid on a compound there. As per our report, seven civilians were killed in this raid.”

But a Nato spokesman denied involvement. “There has been no Nato or Isaf involvement crossing the border into Pakistan,” a Nato spokesman, James Appathurai, said. There were unconfirmed reports that the incursion was carried out by US Special Forces, which are not under Isaf command and can operate independently. A US military spokesman at the Bagram base near Kabul did not deny an attack had occurred but declined to comment.

Tensions between Pakistan’s new civilian government and the US have been running high following American accusations that rogue elements in Pakistan’s top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, were feeding classified information on coalition troops to Taliban fighters. Washington has also repeatedly accused Islamabad of failing to do enough to curb militant activity.

The strains have been exacerbated by a political crisis in Pakistan following last month’s forced resignation of President Pervez Musharraf and the collapse of a power-sharing agreement between the ruling Pakistan People’s party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister. An election to find a replacement for Musharraf is scheduled for Saturday, with the PPP chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, expected to win.

In a further sign of instability, militants opened fire yesterday on prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s car, in an apparent assassination attempt, near Islamabad. The assailants, firing from a roadside embankment, hit the driver’s side window twice. Gilani was not in the car at the time.

Today he was due to meet David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who is visiting Pakistan.

• Watch John D McHugh’s video on the struggle for power and influence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region

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Posted in Pakistan, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, War Criminals | 3 Comments »

POLITICS: Why Its Iraqi “Client” Blocked U.S. Long-Term Presence

September 3, 2008

Analysis by Gareth Porter |  IPS News, Sep 1, 2008

WASHINGTON,- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signaled last week that that all U.S. troops — including those with non-combat functions — must be out of the country by the end of 2011 under the agreement he is negotiating with the George W. Bush administration.

That pronouncement, along with other moves indicating that the Iraqi position was hardening rather than preparing for a compromise, appeared to doom the Bush administration’s plan to leave tens of thousands of military support personnel in Iraq indefinitely. The new Iraqi moves raise the obvious question of how a leader who was considered a safe U.S. client could have defied his patron on such a central U.S. strategic interest.

Al-Maliki declared Aug. 25 that the U.S. had agreed that “no foreign soldiers will be in Iraq after 2011”. A Shiite legislator and al-Maliki ally, Ali al-Adeeb, told the Washington Post that only the Iraqi government had the authority under the agreement to decide whether conditions were conducive to a complete withdrawal. He added that the Iraqi government “could ask the Americans to withdraw before 2011 if we wish.”

It was also reported that al-Maliki has replaced his negotiating team with three of his closest advisers.

These moves blindsided the Bush administration, which had been telling reporters that a favourable agreement was close. The Washington Post reported Aug. 22 and again Aug. 26 that the agreement on withdrawal would be “conditions-based” and would allow the United States to keep tens of thousands of non-combat troops in the country after 2011.

The administration had assumed going into the negotiations that al-Maliki would remain a U.S. client for a few years, because of the Iraqi government’s dependence on the U.S. military to build a largely Shiite Iraqi army and police force and defeat the main insurgent threats to his regime.

But that dependence has diminished dramatically over the past two years as Iraqi security forces continued to grow, the Sunni insurgents found refuge under U.S. auspices and the Shiites succeeded in largely eliminating Sunni political-military power from the Baghdad area. As a result, the inherent conflicts between U.S. interests and those of the Shiite regime have been become more evident.

Continued . . .

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The Dark Side Of The “Free World”

August 31, 2008


By Rob Gowland | Information Clearing House

The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, published in mid-July, is written by US journalist Jane Mayer, whose specialty is writing about counter-­terrorism for The New Yorker.

The book has particularly peeved the CIA and its boss in the White House for, apparently, Ms Mayer has had access to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross issued last year labelling the CIA’s interrogation methods for “high-level Qaeda prisoners” as “categorically” torture. In consequence, the Bush administration officials who approved these methods would be guilty of war crimes.

The book says the Red Cross report was shared with the CIA, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

It would not be the first time of course that US authorities (civil, intelligence or military) have indulged in or turned a blind eye to torture or other forms of horrifying brutality.

One thinks of their blood-soaked activities to thwart the former Communist Resistance leaders from gaining political power in Western Europe after WW2, or their even more bloody destruction of democracy in Guatemala or Chile, El Salvador and pre-Castro Cuba.

The many atrocities by US forces in Korea and Vietnam were far too numerous to be the work of “rotten apples”; they were clearly the result of US government and military policy, just like the actions of the US military in charge of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.

A society that bases itself on force and brutality, on state terrorism, while simultaneously indulging in the most hypocritical lip-service to the ideals of humaneness and justice, cannot but find excuses for torture.

Only last year or the year before, Amnesty International — an organisation not noted for being hostile to the USA — stated that the procedures in many US civilian jails amounted to torture. Military prisons operated by the US in other countries must surely be hell on earth.

Red Cross representatives were only permitted to interview high-level “terrorist” detainees in late 2006, after they were moved to the military detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until then, while the prisoners were being “interrogated” in the CIA’s secret prisons, the Red Cross was not given access to them.

It is now well known that these secret prisons are located in US client states, some in Eastern Europe where anti-Communist regimes are all too willing to co-operate with their US backers, and some in states like Egypt that are equally dependent on US support. Significantly, they all practice torture.

We have all seen the images from Guantánamo Bay of prisoners, shackled and manacled, stumbling along with a guard on either side. But all the time, the particularly frightening threat hangs over them of being taken from there and returned to one of the secret prisons away from any prying eyes.

In testimony to the Red Cross, Abu Zubaydah, the first major Al Qaeda figure the United States captured, told how he was confined in a box “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the foetal position” and was one of several prisoners to be “slammed against the walls”.

The CIA has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were water-boarded, a form of torture in which water is poured in the nose and mouth of the victim to simulate the sensation of suffocation and drowning.

The Pentagon and the CIA have both defended water-boarding on the same grounds: “because it works”, the torturer’s classic justification. Jane Mayer’s book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been water-boarded at least ten times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.

The Red Cross report says that another high level prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the attacks of September 11, 2001, told them that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been “kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room”.

A New York Times article on the report says the prisoners considered the “most excruciating” of the methods was being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. This is a well-known torture technique that has severe physical effects on the victim’s body.

According to The New York Times article, eleven of the 14 prisoners reported to the Red Cross that they had suffered prolonged sleep deprivation, including “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day”.

The New York Times reported that a CIA spokesman had confirmed that Red Cross workers had been “granted access to the detained terrorists at Guantánamo and heard their claims”.

The same CIA spokesman said the agency’s interrogations were based on “detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice” and had “produced solid information that has contributed directly to the disruption of terrorist activities”. There’s that justification of torture again.

Bernard Barrett of the International Committee of the Red Cross declined to comment on the book when asked by The New York Times. He did not deny any of the book’s claims, but regretted “that any information has been attributed to us” because, it seems, the International Committee of the Red Cross “believes its work is more effective when confidential”!

He went on to say: “We have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them.”

So that’s OK then.

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Stars, Stripes, War and Shame

August 31, 2008

By MISSY COMLEY BEATTIE | Counterpunch, August 30 / 31, 2008

The Pentagon says “only” five civilians were killed Friday, a week ago, by US aerial bombardment. According to Afghan officials and a United Nations report, 90 Afghan civilians died, 60 of whom were children.

Just days after this carnage, the Democrats, so many dressed in red, white, and blue, opened their convention in Denver. In the wake of the barbarity in Afghanistan and the continued suicide bombings in Iraq, the revelry and flag waving in Colorado seemed inappropriate. Sure, I understand that hope was and is in the air, but I reached for the remote and powered off.

Thursday night, I tuned in to hear a sweet, young voice, pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of American. “With freedom and justice for all.”

Freedom and justice are concepts we can no longer take for granted. They aren’t guaranteed by stars, stripes, and platitudes. The truth is that George and Dick have sucked the life out of our Constitution, aided by Congressional Republicans and Democrats as well as too many among the electorate who are guilty by reason of fear or complacency.

The events of 9/11 sent masses rushing to either purchase or dust off their Bibles and reference scripture for guidance and to to justify “an eye for an eye.” Never mind that we leveled a country with no link to those who used our commercial airplanes as weapons. The attack on our soil provided the neocons the excuse they needed to implement their plan for domination of Earth’s bounties. Add to this the groupies convinced that George Bush was chosen by God to be president at this particular time of crisis. That Bush himself believed this should have been a red-flag warming that the path he demanded we follow would lead us, not to an Eden of security and prosperity but, to a miasma of endless conflict and contempt from most of the world.

The warmongers forgot the song learned in childhood:

“Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

The lyrics crawl through my consciousness as war rages on and candidates for the highest office in our land spar in their own war of words for the power prize, which is the authority to declare war. To John Bomb Bomb McCain, war is something about which to joke, promote, and accelerate. He reminds us repeatedly of his years as a tortured prisoner of war. Yet he never mentions the targets whose eyes he didn’t see–all those Vietnamese peasants, men, women, and children, whose bodies he melted. For Barack Obama who opposed the invasion of Iraq but, without fail, has voted to fund it, the prudent foreign policy strategy is to send more troops to the “right” hotspot, Afghanistan. Russia must love this.

Monday is the beginning of the Republican version of Denver. When McCain, who seems to have a “thing” for beauty queens, speaks, we’ll probably hear about that trip he’s going to take to the “gates of hell.” Also, he’ll offer the usual “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here,” and “if we leave too soon, they’ll follow us home,” and that we “must achieve victory.”

But no one is defining victory, so allow me: Victory is pledging allegiance to peace.

Imagine if we had a candidate who said:

So much of the history of our country has been sanitized. The truth is that we have battled unnecessarily, illegally, immorally. We have sent our sons and daughters to die, to return maimed, to sustain traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder while destroying the lives of those we call the enemy, the other. We have invaded for resources that we call our “interests” and for superior positioning. Just to show we can. Just to show our might. Not to defend ourselves. I say no more. Not on my watch. As your president, I pledge allegiance to the people. I pledge allegiance to peace.

Actually, we do have aspirants who have said as much. Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney certainly are transformational choices. Bob Barr, the Libertarian, gets it, too, when he says that war “should be the last rather than the first resort.” But our corporate media give them little credibility and even less airtime.

So, we wait. Some wave their flags and hope while others feel despair and shame at what continues to be done in our names.

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com

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Extraordinary Rendition, Extraordinary Mistake

August 31, 2008

Sangitha McKenzie Millar | Foreign Policy In Focus, August 29, 2008

Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen, was living in Sydney with his wife and four children when he took a trip alone to Pakistan to find a home for his family. When Habib boarded a bus for the Islamabad airport to return home, Pakistani police seized him and took him to a police station, where he was subjected to various crude torture techniques, including electric shocks and beating. At one point, he was forced to hang by the arms above a drum-like mechanism that administered an electric shock when touched. Pakistani police asked him repeatedly if he was with al-Qaeda, and if he trained in Afghanistan. Habib responded “No” over and over until he passed out.

After 15 days in the Pakistani prison, Habib was transferred to U.S. agents who flew him to Cairo. When he arrived, Omar Solaimon, chief of Egyptian security, informed him that Egypt receives $10 million for every confessed terrorist they hand over to the United States. Habib stated that during his five months in Egypt, “there was no interrogation, only torture.”  His skin was burned with cigarettes and he was threatened with dogs, beaten, and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. During this time, he heard American voices in the prison, but Egyptians were in charge of the torture. In Michael Otterman’s book American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond (Pluto Press 2007), Habib said he was drugged and began to hallucinate: “I feel like a dead person. I was gone. I become crazy.” He remembers admitting things to interrogators, anything they asked: “I didn’t care … at this point I was ready to die.”

He was transferred back to the custody of U.S. agents in May 2002. They flew him first to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and then to Kandahar. After several weeks, American agents sent Habib to Guantánamo Bay. Three British detainees who have since been released from the prison described Habib as being in a “catastrophic state” when he arrived. Most of his fingernails were missing and he regularly bled from the nose, mouth, and ears while he slept.

Habib was held at Guantánamo Bay until late 2004, when he was charged with training 9/11 hijackers in martial arts, attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, and transporting chemical weapons. A Chicago human rights lawyer took his case and detailed all of Habib’s allegations of torture in court documents. After the case garnered national attention through a front page story in The Washington Post, Habib became a liability for the U.S. government. Rather than have his testimony on the torture he suffered in Egypt become a matter of public record, U.S. officials decided to send him back to Sydney in January 2005 – over three years after seizing him in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, Habib’s case isn’t unusual. There’s substantial evidence that the United States routinely and knowingly “outsources” the application of torture by transferring terrorism suspects to countries that frequently violate international human rights norms. As details of the extraordinary rendition program have emerged, politicians, journalists, academics, legal experts, and policymakers have raised serious objections to the policy. It has captured the attention of U.S. legislators, and both the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations as well as the House Committee on the Judiciary have held hearings to analyze the policy and examine related cases. Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, expressed concern that “rendition, as currently practiced, is undermining our moral credibility and standing abroad and weakening the coalitions with foreign governments that we need to effectively combat international terrorism.” As the public continues to learn more about the program, calls to end extraordinary rendition have increased, and the next presidential administration will likely be forced to take a stand one way or another on the issue.

Continued . . .

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Afghan official ‘saw bodies of 50 children’ killed in US strike

August 30, 2008

Source: The Daily Star, August 30, 2008

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

KABUL: An Afghan politician told AFP Friday how he had helped dig out the bodies of women and children after US-led air strikes a week ago, reiterating with another official that around 90 civilians were killed.

The US-led coalition disputes the number and says only five civilians died along with 25 Taliban. US officials have also reportedly questioned the figure because of a lack of physical evidence.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Associated Press, US defense officials said that the Afghan and UN counts of the civilians killed in the raid were overstated. The sources said that the US administration was pushing for a joint probe into the incident in order to reconcile the conflicting accounts of the incident.

“I saw with my own eyes bodies of 50 boys and girls under 15 years of age,” said Herat provincial councillor Naik Mohammad Ishaq.

“I saw 19 women and seven men. I helped locals to dig them out [of rubble] the first day,” he told AFP.

He said he went to the area of the August 22 strikes in the district of Shindand hours after the attack and he was told that more bodies had been found the day after, taking the toll to 91.

“We lined up the bodies of 76 civilians the first day in the local mosque and the Afghan intelligence department took a video recording as proof that most of them were women, children and all civilians,” he said.

Ishaq said, however, that he did not have pictures of the dead.

The head of a delegation sent by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate also defended the toll figure, similar to one reached by a United Nations team.

“There is no doubt that 90 civilians were killed in the US-led air strike,” said Mohammad Eqbal Safi, the head of the Lower House’s national defense committee.

The team had a list of the names and ages of all those killed, he said, and had interviewed locals and seen eight houses that were destroyed as well as fresh graves.

He claimed body parts – which he said were from civilians – were still at the site when his team arrived two days later.

The 2:00 a.m. strikes had hit people ahead of an event due the following day to mark the anniversary of the death of a fellow villager, Safi said.

“It was public knowledge that it was a gathering for the ceremony and there were no Taliban there.”

Safi said locals believed “agents” had deliberately given wrong information to the US-led and Afghan troops involved in the operation. – AFP

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A UK Window on CIA Abuses

August 30, 2008

The Case of Binyam Mohamed

By JOANNE MARINER | Counterpunch, August 29, 2008

Britain’s High Court will hold a hearing to assess whether the UK government should be ordered to hand over secret documents to lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee. The detainee in question, Binyam Mohamed, faces possible charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism before a military commission at Guantanamo.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian national and former UK resident, was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002. Transferred to US custody, he was reportedly rendered by the CIA to Morocco, detained there secretly for over a year, and then moved for several months to a secret CIA detention site in Afghanistan. He then spent a few months in military detention at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and was ultimately brought to Guantanamo Bay in September 2004.

Mohamed claims that he was brutally tortured during his time in secret detention, and that the evidence that will likely be used to prosecute him is a result of that torture. He also claims that the UK government has information that supports his claims of abuse.

Last week, in an important judgment, the UK High Court ruled in Mohamed’s favor. It found that the British government was under a legal obligation to disclose to Mohamed’s counsel the information it possesses relating to Mohamed’s whereabouts, treatment, and interrogation between April 2002 and May 2004. The court emphasized that this information is “not merely necessary but essential” to Mohamed’s defense against military commission charges.

While the court stopped short of ordering the foreign secretary to hand over the information—allowing additional time for the national security implications of disclosure to be considered—it will reach the mandatory disclosure question at its hearing this week.

From Britain to Pakistan to the Prison of Darkness

Binyam Mohamed came to Britain in 1994, when he was a student, after having spend a short period in the United States. He converted to Islam while in the UK, and in mid-2001 he left the UK for Pakistan and Afghanistan. He claims that he traveled to the region because he wanted to kick a drug habit.

The military commission charges that have been sworn against Mohamed allege that he attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, and later received training in building remote-controlled explosive detention devices in Pakistan. While living at an Al Qaeda safe house in Lahore, Pakistan, the charges say, Mohamed allegedly agreed to be sent to the United States to conduct terror operations.

Mohamed was arrested at the Karachi airport on April 10, 2002, as he attempted to leave Pakistan to fly to London. Although he was initially detained in Karachi, he claims that he was interrogated there by US agents. The UK High Court has also confirmed that a British agent visited Mohamed in Pakistani custody on May 17, 2002.

Mohamed claims that he was rendered by the CIA to Morocco in July 2002. There, he claims, he was beaten, repeatedly cut on his genitals, and threatened with rape, electrocution and death. Interrogators reportedly asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, based on information that his lawyers believe came from British sources.

In late January 2004, Mohamed says, he was sent to Afghanistan, where he was held in a secret CIA prison—called the “Prison of Darkness”—until May 2004. At that point, he was transferred to military detention, first at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo, where he remains.

According to the UK High Court, the military commissions case against Mohamed is based on confessions Mohamed made while in military custody—after May 2004—not on anything he said while being interrogated by the CIA. Mohamed claims, however, that it was the abuse in CIA custody that induced him to confess while in military custody, and so proof of those CIA abuses are crucial to his defense.

Refusal to Disclose

As part of a continuing effort to cover up the CIA’s misdeeds, US officials have refused to provide Mohamed or his lawyers any information whatsoever about his treatment or whereabouts from the time of arrest in April 2002 until he was transferred to Bagram in May 2004. To date, the UK government has similarly refused to provide Mohamed’s lawyers any such information, although it has acknowledged that some documents in its possession might be exculpatory.

In last week’s ruling, the High Court noted that the UK foreign secretary had acknowledged that Mr. Mohamed had established an arguable case that he had been subject to illegal rendition and torture. The court also found that the British security forces had facilitated Mohamed’s interrogations by supplying information and questions to US officials, even while they knew that Mohamed was being held incommunicado in a non-military detention facility overseas.

The court found, in short, that the relationship of the UK government to the US authorities with regard to Mohamed “was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.” Because the UK was in some way a participant, not simply an observer, the court held that the UK is legally obligated to provide Mohamed with information relating to his abuse.

Not only did the court deem this information to be “essential” to Mohamed’s ability to adequately defend himself, it emphasized the need for the government to provide the necessary information as soon as is practically possible. The reason for the hurried timing lies in the military commissions’ timetable. At present, military commission charges against Mohamed have been prepared, but the commission’s convening authority has not yet signed off on them. In order to potentially affect the charging decision, Mohamed has a important interest in getting exculpatory information to the convening authority before that decision is made.

The Prospect of Mandatory Disclosure

The UK court decried the fact that the US authorities have failed to provide this potentially exculpatory information to Mohamed’s counsel, particularly since both his counsel are security-cleared. But it recognized, as well, that the United States’ failure is no excuse for Britain’s inaction.

Unless the UK foreign secretary voluntarily provides the relevant documents to Mohamed’s counsel, the High Court will consider ordering disclosure. Such an order, which the court seems presently inclined to grant, would open an important crack in the wall of secrecy that surrounds the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation abuses.

Joanne Mariner is a human rights attorney.

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U.K. Government Must Provide Information About Rendition, Disappearance and Torture, Urges Amnesty International

August 30, 2008

CommonDreams.0rg

WASHINGTON – August 29 – Amnesty International today called on the government of the U.K. to give the lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, a former U.K. resident imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, information which it holds and which might help him to show that he has been a victim of torture and other ill-treatment in the U.S.-led program of renditions and secret detention.

“Providing this information would be a first step towards accountability for the U.K.’s involvement in the U.S. program of rendition and secret detention, as well as in the torture and other ill-treatment of terrorist suspects,” said Halya Gowan, a spokesperson on Europe at Amnesty International.

Binyam Mohamed was arrested at Karachi airport in April 2002 and transferred to U.S. custody three months later. In July 2002, he was transferred on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-registered plane to Morocco, where he was held for about 18 months. There, Binyam Mohamed reports he was tortured, including having his penis cut by a razor blade. He was allegedly subjected to further torture after his further rendition to the “dark prison” in Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2004. After five months, he was transferred to the U.S. airbase in Bagram, and suffered further alleged ill-treatment there. Binyam was transferred in mid-September 2004 to Guantanamo where he has remained ever since.

“Statements that Binyam Mohamed made in the course of his unlawful detention will form the basis of charges against him if he is tried before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay – a trial which would be unfair, and could involve charges which could be punishable by death. Any information the U.K. authorities have which relates to violations of his human rights or could affect Binyam Mohamed’s defense should be disclosed to his lawyers without any further delay,” said Gowan.

Following last week’s ruling by the High Court of England and Wales, that the United Kingdom has a duty to disclose this information to lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, today the High Court postponed its decision on an application made by the U.K. Foreign Secretary to be allowed to withhold this information. The Foreign Secretary claimed that its disclosure would damage the U.K.’s intelligence-sharing arrangements with the United States, and thus threaten the United Kingdom’s national security. The Foreign Secretary has been given another week to provide the court with a fuller explanation for continuing to withhold this information.

Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers need the information now, before a decision is taken about whether he should be tried by a military commission in the United States. It is essential to their claim that the information on which the charges against him are based was improperly obtained.

Recent revelations of secret detainee transfers through Diego Garcia, and around the Untied Kingdom’s involvement in the rendition and secret detention of U.K .residents Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, show that the United Kingdom can no longer hide its involvement in these human rights violations.

“Secrecy with the excuse of protecting diplomatic relations can no longer be used to justify the failure to investigate the involvement of U.K. agents in human rights violations,” Gowan said.

Amnesty International calls on the U.K. authorities to immediately instigate a genuinely independent and impartial public inquiry into all allegations of U.K. involvement in the renditions program.

BACKGROUND

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, claims that he was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. The detainee claims that statements he made–which, as the High Court affirmed, will form the basis of evidence against him if he is tried by a military commission -were the products of his unlawful detention, torture and ill-treatment.

In August 2007, after a sustained campaign by human rights activists and lawyers in the United Kingdom, the U.K. government requested the release from Guantanamo Bay a number of former U.K. residents, including Binyam Mohamed. Although three men were returned in December 2007, the U.S. authorities refused the request for the release and return of Binyam Mohamed. The U.K. authorities say that they are continuing to request the release and return of Binyam Mohamed.

The U.K. government has disclosed the information that it holds about Binyam Mohamed to the U.S. authorities; and the U.S. authorities have given the U.K. a promise that this information will be given to Binyam Mohamed’s military lawyer in the event that his case should be sent for trial before a military commission. But to date neither the United Kingdom nor the United States has disclosed that information–relevant to the rendition of Binyam Mohamed and his subsequent treatment in detention–to his lawyers.

Amnesty International believes that the military commission procedures at Guantanamo Bay are fundamentally unfair, and has called for the military commission system to be abandoned, and for all those still held at Guantanamo Bay to be released or given a genuinely fair trial before federal civilian courts without delay.

For more information, please visit Amnesty International’s website at www.amnestyusa.org or contact the AIUSA media office.

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Georgia is the graveyard of America’s unipolar world

August 30, 2008

Russia’s defiance in the Caucasus has brought down the curtain on Bush senior’s new world order – not before time

Seumas Milne |The Guardian, Thursday August 28 2008

If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia’s leaders reject their parliament’s appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia’s recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves.

The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable – and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband’s posturing yesterday in Kiev about building a “coalition against Russian aggression” merely looked foolish.

That this month’s events in the Caucasus signal an international turning point is no longer in question. The comparisons with August 1914 are of course ridiculous, and even the speculation about a new cold war overdone. For all the manoeuvres in the Black Sea and nuclear-backed threats, the standoff between Russia and the US is not remotely comparable to the events that led up to the first world war. Nor do the current tensions have anything like the ideological and global dimensions that shaped the 40-year confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union.

But what is clear is that America’s unipolar moment has passed – and the new world order heralded by Bush’s father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated “rogue states”, are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into “catastroika” and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.

Now, pumped up with petrodollars, Russia has called a halt to this relentless expansion and demonstrated that the US writ doesn’t run in every backyard. And although it has been a regional, not a global, challenge, this object lesson in the new limits of American power has already been absorbed from central Asia to Latin America.

Continued . . .

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