'Ramadi Madness': Scene by scene:

Scene 12: Titled 'Bloodclot': Nighttime outdoors. A detainee who appears to have been shot is moaning. Soldier holding a gun looks at the camera and says, "This (expletive) shot at me." Soldier appears to kick wounded detainee.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/...scene_0305.html

http://tinyurl.com/5493m

Creating Another Fallujah Horror Show:

Two new pictures of Zarqawi issued as net tightens:

They became public as the city of Samarra was surrounded by United States troops and Iraqi army soldiers after intelligence reports that Zarqawi was hiding in the insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...08/ixworld.html

http://tinyurl.com/5ojqy

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/08/opi.../edtorture.html

Torture by proxy

http://metimes.com/articles/normal.php?Sto...09-024637-6537r

Analysis: Rendition a routine practice

Probe: Leaders Didn't Order Prison Abuse
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 9, 2005

Filed at 7:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A comprehensive U.S. military review of prisoner interrogation policies and techniques for the global war on terrorism concluded that no civilian or uniformed leaders directed or encouraged the abuse of prisoners, officials familiar with the review said Wednesday.

However, the review concluded that, in hindsight, the failure to provide commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan with specific and early guidance on interrogation techniques was a ``missed opportunity.''


It also found, in the cases of detainee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the dissemination of approved interrogation policy to commanders in the field was generally poor. And in Iraq in particular it found that compliance with approved policy guidance was generally poor.

The review was done last summer by Navy Vice Adm. Albert T. Church and is to be made public at a congressional hearing on Thursday. Officials familiar with Church's findings agreed to discuss his report only condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release it.

The Church probe was among several triggered by disclosures last spring of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq. Church was directed to look at how interrogation policies were developed and implemented from the start of the terror war in the fall of 2001.

Church did not directly investigate the Abu Ghraib matter, which has been investigated by others.

A Democratic congressional aide who read the report said it links the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a lack of communication of interrogation policies to troops on the ground and poor ``unit cohesion.''

The aide, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity, said the report doesn't blame senior defense officials for the mistreatment of detainees in U.S. military facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/A...oner-Abuse.html

March 10, 2005
Senate Committee Holds Hearing on Prisoner Abuse
By DAVID STOUT

ASHINGTON, March 10 - Some senators reacted with skepticism today as a high-ranking Navy officer told them that abuses in the questioning of prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the result of any policy decision, "written or otherwise."

Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, the service's inspector general, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "the vast majority" of detainees had been treated "humanely and appropriately" by American military people serving under difficult and dangerous conditions.

Admiral Church, who conducted an exhaustive review of interrogation techniques used in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he had concluded that "there was no policy, written or otherwise, at any level that directed or condoned torture or abuse. There was no link between the authorized interrogation techniques and the abuses that, in fact, occurred."

The admiral did conclude that senior officials were to blame for not establishing clear interrogation policies, leaving lower-ranking commanders to develop some practices that were not appropriate.

But that finding did not seem to satisfy the committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.

"In the end, I conclude that the Defense Department is not able to assess accountability at senior levels," Mr. Levin said, "particularly when investigators are in the chain of command of the officials whose policies and actions they are investigating."

Admiral Church's is the latest of several inquiries into the abuse of prisoners held by the American military. He said new procedures were now in place to clarify commanders' responsibilities for the handling of prisoners and to spell out prohibitions against tactics of intimidation, like the use of muzzled dogs in the presence of people to be questioned.

Another Democrat on the committee, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said Admiral Church's findings did not amount to "the thorough, complete, no-holds-barred report that many of us expected."

The panel's chairman, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, said he planned to hold at least one more hearing, and that the degree of blame to be assigned to high-level officials had yet to be determined. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has come under fire, and some lawmakers have said he should step down.

But a Republican panel member, Senator Jim Talent of Missouri, signaled that, as far as he is concerned, little if any blame rests on American shoulders. "If our guys want to poke somebody in the chest to get the name of a bomb maker so they can save the lives of Americans, I'm for it," Mr. Talent said. "If the Department of Defense wants to investigate me for that, and have 15 investigations and call me inhumane, fine."

A prominent Democrat on the committee, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, agreed with Admiral Church's conclusion that the incidents of abuse, however deplorable, were few, at least in terms of statistics. "Seventy cases out of 50,000 detainees is about one-tenth of 1 percent," the senator said.

Lawmakers in both parties have condemned the most flagrant abuses, at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and elsewhere, and have agreed that it has damaged the United States' standing in the world.

Responding to a question from Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, on whether he had found any evidence that some commanders "preferred to look the other way" rather than investigate possible abuse, Admiral Church said. "We did not find that."

But Senator Reed was clearly dissatisfied with the scope of Admiral Church's inquiry, particularly his decision not to interview L. Paul Bremer III, the former civilian administrator in Iraq, but to interview his military assistants instead.

"Admiral, that seems to be a stunning omission," Mr. Reed said. To interview Mr. Bremer's military aides instead "seems to be woefully inadequate, with all due respect," the senator said.

"I accept the criticism, sir," the admiral replied, explaining that his assignment was to try to determine how the interrogation techniques were developed and "I didn't need to interview Ambassador Bremer to determine that."

Later, at a Pentagon news conference, Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said United States forces "will continue to wage the war on terrorism aggressively, including capturing, detaining and interrogating enemy fighters."

"That said, we are also committed to the humane treatment of all individuals in our custody," Mr. Waxman said. "These two objectives - effective and aggressive pursuit of terrorists and the humane treatment of detainees - are not mutually exclusive, they're mutually reinforcing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/politics/11cnd-abuse.html

Critic Unsatisfied by Prison Abuse Probe

Updated 4:40 PM ET March 10, 2005

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...88obtcg0&src=ap

By ROBERT BURNS

WASHINGTON (AP) - A military review concluding that blame for wartime prisoner abuse lay mostly with low- and midlevel soldiers has failed to quiet critics who say Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior leaders should be held to account.

There's a big problem, one senator said Thursday, when investigators are "in the chain of command of the officials whose policies and actions they are investigating."

In presenting the results of his investigation to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church said Thursday there was no single explanation for the mistreatment of Iraqi, Afghan and other prisoners under the control of U.S. military personnel. And he said there was no evidence to indicate Rumsfeld or any other senior civilian or military authority directed, approved or encouraged a policy of prisoner abuse.

Church said he did not focus on senior official accountability because that had been assessed in earlier investigations. But that did not satisfy some senators who believe Rumsfeld should take blame for creating an environment in which mistreatment of prisoners might appear to be tolerated.

"So there's been no assessment of accountability of any senior officials, either within or outside of the Department of Defense, for policies that may have contributed to abuses of prisoners," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat.

"I can only conclude that the Defense Department is not able to assess accountability at senior levels, particularly when investigators are in the chain of command of the officials whose policies and actions they are investigating," he added.

Church, a former Navy inspector general, is now director of the Navy staff at the Pentagon. A 21-page summary of his findings was made public, but the Pentagon said it did not intend to release the full report. Church said many of the details underlying his conclusions are classified.

Asked later at a Pentagon news conference whether he saw any reason not to release his full report publicly, Church said that as long as classified information was removed, "that would be fine."

The human rights group Amnesty International USA criticized Church's report as being too easy on top officials.

"The Church report should be published in full, and the record of senior officials thoroughly examined by an independent commission of inquiry," said Alexandra Arriage, Amnesty International's director of government relations.

Church's report, which is at least the sixth senior-level assessment of issues related to the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, also failed to put to rest a political debate over the White House's decision not to afford Geneva Convention protections to some enemy fighters, including the Taliban army that fought in Afghanistan.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, questioned the wisdom of deciding that certain categories of enemy fighters should be ineligible for Geneva Convention protections.

"I worry, admiral, very much that if we decide that a certain country's military personnel are not eligible for treatment under a convention that we signed," McCain said, "then wouldn't it be logical to expect then they would declare, as the North Vietnamese did, that American prisoners are not eligible for protection under the Geneva Conventions?"

Church said that he believes President Bush made the right call on that issue.

Church's investigation focused on the Pentagon's development of interrogation policies and techniques and the extent to which that process could be linked to the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other acts of mistreatment documented in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Even in the absence of a precise definition of `humane' treatment, it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level," Church concluded.

Earlier military investigations of prison abuse also refrained from harsh criticism of senior leaders, in line with the Pentagon's explanation that the dozens of incidents of confirmed prisoner abuse were the work of low-level soldiers and a few inattentive midlevel officers.

Some Republicans chafed at the criticism of the U.S. military.

"If our guys want to poke somebody in the chest to get the name of a bomb maker so they can save the lives of Americans, I'm for it," said Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo. "I don't need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn't do it."

Church acknowledged that he could not point to a clear explanation of why prisoners were abused.

"If approved interrogation policy did not cause detainee abuse, the question remains: What did?" he wrote in the summary. He offered three contributing factors:

_Most of the documented cases of abuse happened not in prisons but on the battlefield at what the military calls the "point of capture," where Church said "passions often run high" as soldiers find themselves face-to-face with captured fighters. "Discipline was lacking in some instances," he wrote.

_Lower- and midlevel commanders failed to react to early warning signs of abuse. Church said he could not provide details because they are classified secret, but he said such warning signs were present, particularly at Abu Ghraib, and should have prompted action to prevent further abuse.

_There was a breakdown of good order and discipline in some field units. "This breakdown implies a failure of unit-level leadership to recognize the inherent potential for abuse," to recognize and alleviate stress on troops handling prisoners, and to provide oversight.

The Church report: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/detainee_investigations.html

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil/news

I think that the reason there were so many separate investigations (each charged with different tasks) was so that they can say we don't need an independent investigation we have already had 6 investigations. Yada, Yada, Yada. They did the same thing with the vote tallies in Florida in 2000. When we wanted all of the votes counted they kept repeating their mantra that the votes had been counted 3 times when in reality the votes had never all been counted.

March 11, 2005
Pentagon Seeks to Transfer More Detainees From Base in Cuba
By DOUGLAS JEHL

ASHINGTON, March 10 - The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials.

The transfers would be similar to the renditions, or transfers of captives to other countries, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, but are subject to stricter approval within the government, and face potential opposition from the C.I.A. as well as the State and Justice Departments, the officials said.

Administration officials say those agencies have resisted some previous handovers, out of concern that transferring the prisoners to foreign governments could harm American security or subject the prisoners to mistreatment.

A Feb. 5 memorandum from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls for broader interagency support for the plan, starting with efforts to work out a significant transfer of prisoners to Afghanistan, the officials said. The proposal is part of a Pentagon effort to cut a Guantánamo population that stands at about 540 detainees by releasing some outright and by transferring others for continued detention elsewhere.

The proposal comes as the Bush administration reviews the future of the naval base at Guantánamo as a detention center, after court decisions and shifts in public opinion have raised legal and political questions about the use of the facility.

The White House first embraced using Guantánamo as a holding place for terrorism suspects taken in Afghanistan, in part because the base was seen as beyond the jurisdiction of United States law. But recent court rulings have held that prisoners there may challenge their detentions in federal court.

Indeed, the Pentagon has halted, for the last six months, the flow of new terrorism suspects into the prison, Defense Department officials said. In January, a senior American official said in an interview that most prisoners at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were not being regularly interrogated.

The proposed transfers would represent a major acceleration of Pentagon efforts that have transferred 65 prisoners from Guantánamo to foreign countries. The population at Guantánamo includes more than 100 prisoners each from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a senior administration official said, and the United States might need to provide money or other logistical support to make possible a large-scale transfer to any of those nations.

Defense Department officials said that the adverse court rulings had contributed to their determination to reduce the population at Guantánamo, in part by persuading other countries to bear some of the burden of detaining terrorism suspects.

Under the administration's approach, the State Department is responsible for negotiating agreements in which receiving countries agree "to detain, investigate, and/or prosecute" the prisoners and to treat them humanely.

"Our top choice would be to win the war on terrorism and declare an end to it and repatriate everybody," a senior Defense Department official said in an interview. "The next best solution would be to work with the home governments of the detainees in order to get them to take the necessary steps to mitigate the threat these individuals pose."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that future transfers into Guantánamo remained a "possibility," but made clear that the court decisions and the burdens of detaining prisoners at the American facility had made it seem less attractive to administration policymakers than before.

"It's fair to say that the calculus now is different than it was before, because the legal landscape has changed and those are factors that might be considered," a senior Defense Department official said.

In addition to working to transfer prisoners to their home countries, either to face charges there or simply to be kept in detention, officials also hope to shed dozens of prisoners whose cases are being studied by special review boards.

Those three-member military boards began working in earnest in January to determine which prisoners are no longer a threat, have no information of value and may be released outright.

At its peak, the population at Guantánamo exceeded 750 prisoners. But the last time prisoners were transferred there was on Sept. 22, 2004, when a group of 10 was transferred from Afghanistan. The United States has already dispatched 211 Guantánamo prisoners, releasing the majority of them. Sixty-five have been transferred to the custody of other counties, including 29 to Pakistan, 5 to Morocco, 7 to France, 7 to Russia, and 4 to Saudi Arabia.

The administration's policy of detaining suspected terrorists at Guantánamo has relied on declarations that the detainees are unlawful "enemy combatants," based on assertions that they did not serve in a conventional army, and thus did not qualify for the protections listed in the Geneva Conventions.

Administration lawyers argued successfully in lower federal courts that United States laws, including access to the courts, did not apply because Guantánamo is part of Cuba.

But last June, the Supreme Court ruled that United States law applied to Guantánamo and that prisoners there could challenge their detentions in federal courts.

In August, a federal district judge ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to Guantánamo prisoners and that the special military commissions to try war crimes were unconstitutional. The government's appeal of that ruling is scheduled to be heard next month.

Even as it moves to reduce the population at Guantánamo, the Pentagon has asked Congress for another $41 million in supplemental financing for construction there, including $36 million for a new, more modern prison and $5 million for a new perimeter fence.

The purpose, Defense Department officials said, was to provide a secure, humane detention facility for a remnant of the current population who are expected to remain there for the foreseeable future.

As many as 200 of those now at Guantánamo will most likely remain there indefinitely, the officials said, on grounds that they are too dangerous to be turned over to other nations or would probably face mistreatment if returned to those nations.

Each of the roughly 540 prisoners at Guantánamo have gone before a three-member military board, to have their status as enemy combatants reviewed. A final review has been completed in 487 cases; of those, all but 22 were found to have been properly classified, a status leaving them subject to possible war crimes charges.

Unlike the Pentagon, the C.I.A. was authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks to transfer prisoners from one foreign country to another without case-by-case approval from other government departments. Former intelligence officials said that the C.I.A. has carried out 100 to 150 such transfers, known as renditions, since Sept. 11.

By contrast, the transfers carried out by the Pentagon are subject to strict rules requiring interagency approval. Officials said that the transfers do not constitute renditions under the Pentagon's definition, because the governments that accept the prisoners are not expected to carry out the will of the United States.

Indeed, officials have been concerned that transfer of some detainees could threaten American security because they might escape from foreign prisons or the foreign governments might free them.

The White House has said its policy prohibits the transfer of prisoners to other nations if it is likely they will be tortured, and administration officials said the interagency review is intended in part to enforce that standard. Transfers have been approved by the State Department to countries including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, identified in the department's own human rights reports as nations where the use of torture in prisons is common.

Administration officials said that American diplomats in those countries were responsible for monitoring agreements to make sure prisoners were not mistreated. The senior Defense Department official said that the difficulty of "gaining effective and credible assurances" that prisoners would not be mistreated had been "a cause of some delay in releasing or transferring some detainees we have at Guantánamo."

It is possible that Guantánamo inmates could petition a federal court to stop a transfer to a country where they did not want to be sent. But there is little if any precedent to suggest how the courts would rule.

In November, a lawyer for Mamdouh Habib, a prisoner who claimed he had been tortured in Egypt before being transferred to Guantánamo, asked a federal district court to stop the Bush administration from returning him to Egypt. Before the court ruled, he was sent to Australia in January and freed.


Neil A. Lewis and Tim Golden contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/politics...artner=homepage

Same old crap

The public doesn't hold this administration accountable for anything.

March 11, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Fine Rendition
By MICHAEL SCHEUER

ashington

AS Congress and the news media wail about the Central Intelligence Agency's "rendition" program - its practice of turning suspected terrorists over for detainment and questioning in third countries - it is time to focus on the real issue at hand. A good starting place is Page 127 of the tablets on which are inscribed the scripture handed down by the 9/11 commission.

Here we find a description of a 1998 conversation between National Security Director Samuel Berger and his counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, about the capture of Abu Hajer al Iraqi, the "most important bin Laden lieutenant captured thus far." According to the report, Mr. Clarke commented to Mr. Berger "with satisfaction that August and September had brought the 'greatest number of terrorist arrests in a short period of time that we have ever arranged or facilitated.' " Part and parcel of this success, the men make clear, were the renditions of captured Qaeda terrorists.

Neither Mr. Clarke nor Mr. Berger were C.I.A. officers. They were senior White House officials who - in consultation with President Bill Clinton - set America's Al Qaeda policy from 1993 to 2001. They told the C.I.A. what to do, and decided how it should pursue, capture and detain terrorists. They knew that Abu Hajer al Iraqi was being brought to the United States for trial, and they knew - and approved - of the rendition of his compatriots to Egypt and elsewhere. Having failed to find a legal means to keep all the detainees in American custody, they preferred to let other countries do our dirty work.

Why does this matter? Because it makes clear that in dealing with detainees in 1998, and today as well, the C.I.A. is following orders from the president and his National Security Council advisers. Likewise, in 1998 and today, the agency is executing operations under those orders only after they are approved by a vast cohort of lawyers at the security council, the Justice Department and the C.I.A. itself.

I know this because, as head of the C.I.A.'s bin Laden desk, I started the Qaeda detainee/rendition program and ran it for 40 months. And in my 22 years at the agency I never a saw a set of operations that was more closely scrutinized by the director of central intelligence, the National Security Council and the Congressional intelligence committees. Nor did I ever see one that was more blessed (plagued?) by the expert guidance of lawyers.

For now, the beginning of wisdom is to acknowledge that the non-C.I.A. staff members mentioned above knew that taking detainees to Egypt or elsewhere might yield treatment not consonant with United States legal practice. How did they know? Well, several senior C.I.A. officers, myself included, were confident that common sense would elude that bunch, and so we told them - again and again and again. Each time a decision to do a rendition was made, we reminded the lawyers and policy makers that Egypt was Egypt, and that Jimmy Stewart never starred in a movie called "Mr. Smith Goes to Cairo." They usually listened, nodded, and then inserted a legal nicety by insisting that each country to which the agency delivered a detainee would have to pledge it would treat him according to the rules of its own legal system.

So as the hounding of C.I.A. and the calls for its officers' blood continue, a few things must be made clear - all the more so if the government is really considering the renditions of many detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. First, the agency is peculiarly an instrument of the executive branch. Renditions were called for, authorized and legally vetted not just by the N.S.C. and the Justice Department, but also by the presidents - both Mr. Clinton and George W. Bush. In my mind, these men and women made the right decision - America is better protected because of renditions - but it would have been better if they had not lacked the bureaucratic and moral courage to work with Congress to find ways to bring all detainees to America.

Second, the rendition program has been a tremendous success. Dozens of senior Qaeda fighters are today behind bars, no longer able to plot or participate in attacks. Detainee operations also netted an untold number of computers and documents that increased our knowledge of Al Qaeda's makeup and plans.

Third, if mistakes were made, like the alleged cases of innocent detainees, they should be corrected, but the C.I.A. officers who followed orders should not be punished. Perfection is never attainable in the fog of war, and any errors should not distract from the overwhelming success of the program.

All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women of the agency who executed these presidentially requested and approved operations, often at the risk of their lives. Unfortunately, rather than receiving thanks, the C.I.A. officers are again learning the usual lesson: to follow orders, make America safer and prepare to be abandoned and prosecuted when the policy makers refuse to defend their own decisions.


Michael Scheuer is the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/opinion/11scheuer.html

Army, CIA Agreed on 'Ghost' Prisoners

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A16


Top military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Keeping such "ghost" detainees is a violation of international law.

Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who was second in command of the intelligence gathering effort at Abu Ghraib while the abuse was occurring, told military investigators that "other government agencies" and a secretive elite task force "routinely brought in detainees for a short period of time" and that the detainees were held without an internment number, and their names were kept off the books.

Guards who worked at the prison have said that ghost detainees were regularly locked in isolation cells on Tier 1A and that they were kept from international human rights organizations.

Jordan, in a statement that was included in the abuse investigation of Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, said that it was difficult to track ghost detainees and that he and other officers recommended that a memorandum of understanding be drafted between his 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the CIA and the 800th Military Police Brigade "to establish procedures for a ghost detainee." An Army major at the prison "suggested an idea of processing them under an assumed name and fingerprinting them," but Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the top military intelligence officer there, "decided against it."

Instead, Jordan's statement said, Pappas "began a formalized written MOU [memo of understanding] procedure" in November 2003, with the CIA and members of Task Force 1-21, "and the memorandum on procedures for dropping ghost detainees was signed."

In his statement to investigators, also obtained by The Post, Pappas said that in September 2003, the CIA requested that the military intelligence officials "continue to make cells available for their detainees and that they not have to go through the normal inprocessing procedures." Pappas also said Jordan was the one who was facilitating the arrangement with the CIA.

Defense Department officials have said that there were as many as 100 ghost detainees held in prisons in Iraq but that the detainees slipped through the cracks and were not part of any official agreement. A Navy report issued yesterday said there was evidence of about 30 ghost detainees, but Pentagon officials said they could find no evidence of a signed agreement.

The Army has resolved not to allow ghosting at its detention facilities. The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday released edited versions of some of the documents, but the names of the officers were omitted from them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar10.html

Senators Question Absence of Blame in Abuse Report

By Josh White and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A17


Senators expressed dismay yesterday that no senior military or civilian Pentagon officials have been held accountable for the policy and command failures that led to detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Navy admiral who wrote the most recent review of U.S. detention policies was largely unable to say where that accountability should lie.

Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III's review of interrogation policy and detention operations did not place specific blame for the confusing interrogation policies that migrated from Washington to the battlefield, and he told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing that no high-level policy decisions directly led to the abuse. But Church said he did not interview top officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, nor did he make conclusions about individual responsibility, saying it was not part of his mission.

Still, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, one of the officers in charge of detention operations in Iraq at the time of the abuse, said yesterday that she has been issued an administrative reprimand, the first such action against a top officer since the abuse allegations surfaced last year.

So far, only a handful of enlisted soldiers have faced courts-martial for their actions at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, while others have faced administrative punishment. The main open question in the abuse cases is how far up the chain of command official discipline or criminal charges will reach.

Church's report called the development of interrogation policies for use in the fight against terrorism a series of "missed opportunities" to eliminate confusion and clearly spell out doctrine. But his report concluded that even clear policies might not have stopped dozens of abuse cases.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, said a "major gap" in Church's report and in nine other Pentagon reviews is the issue of senior-leadership responsibility for the creation of an environment that contributed to or condoned abusive behavior.

In a sparsely attended hearing -- only 10 of the 24 panel members were there -- senators from both parties, including Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), offered strong criticism of the findings. Sen. James M. Talent (R-Mo.), praising the report, said he did not "need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn't do it."

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman, said there will be at least one more hearing to examine culpability. "There has not been a finality in terms of the assessment of accountability of either senior policy people or senior officers," he said.

Human rights organizations also assailed the report, again calling for an investigation not subordinate to Rumsfeld. "This report strains credibility," said Reed Brody, special counsel at Human Rights Watch. "Unfortunately, the United States continues to do what every dictatorship and banana republic does when its abuses are discovered: Cover up and shift blame downwards."

Asked at a Pentagon news conference about those criticisms, Church dismissed them as coming from people who had not read the report, most of which remains classified. "I don't believe anybody can call this a whitewash," he said. "The facts are what the facts are."

Church said his report's reference to "missed opportunities" should be read as "lessons learned," suggesting that no one specifically need be held to account.

"I don't think you can hold anybody accountable for a situation that maybe if you had done something different, maybe something would have occurred differently," he said. "It's a lesson learned that we need to capture and think about for the future."

Appearing with Church at the Pentagon were several other senior officials, who outlined a number of changes in policy, training and organization that the Army and the Defense Department have made to guard against future abuse. Among them are new Army regulations clarifying permissible interrogation techniques, the role of military police in interrogations and the handling of reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Senior Army and defense officials said Karpinski has been issued an official letter of reprimand from the Army leadership, a form of administrative punishment that can end a military career. Karpinski said she has not seen a copy of the letter but understands that it does not hold her responsible for the Abu Ghraib photographs or abusive acts, instead alleging deficiencies in her leadership.

Karpinski said she will fight the reprimand and maintains that problems at the facility stemmed from intense pressure and direction from high-ranking military intelligence officials. She said she believes Church's report, and the ones that preceded it, are flawed.

"The members of the Senate Armed Services Committee know that all these investigations are incomplete," Karpinski said. "I don't think people in this administration want them to get to the bottom of this."

Defense officials said investigators are still looking into the culpability of commanders as senior as Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led troops in Iraq during the time of the abuse. Army officials said Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, who was in charge of intelligence operations under Sanchez, has been cleared by commanders and is awaiting assignment to a new command.

Though the status of the investigations is unclear, an Army official said decisions and actions are imminent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar10.html

March 11, 2005
Deportation Case Focuses on Definition of Torture
By NINA BERNSTEIN

New Jersey case before a federal court of appeals has linked the Bush administration's methods of interrogating prisoners in anti-terrorism efforts to a sharp change in the standards of humanitarian law at home, possibly affecting the chances of hundreds of immigrants to win protection from deportation under the Convention Against Torture.

In 2002, the Bush administration sharply narrowed the definition of torture, as part of its aggressive approach to terrorism. In allowing use of harsher interrogation techniques, it said that torture required a "specific intent" to inflict severe pain, not merely the infliction of severe pain.

At the same time, though, many immigrants have sought to win the right to stay temporarily in the United States by asserting that they face the likelihood of torture in their native lands. And now Napoleon Bonaparte Auguste, a Queens man with a cocaine conviction who is facing deportation to Haiti from a jail in New Brunswick, N.J., is arguing that that narrowed definition of torture could wrongly lead to his deportation.

Mr. Auguste's motion, filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, argues that in upholding his deportation in January, a three-judge panel of the court wrongly bowed to the narrow definition of torture in a 2002 Justice Department memorandum.

That memo was withdrawn and replaced on the Justice Department's Web site late last December, after its disclosure caused a public outcry. But human rights lawyers say the memo's definition of torture is still haunting immigration case law. Mr. Auguste's request for a rehearing by the full court is an uphill battle, since such rehearings are rarely granted.

No one disputes that for ex-convicts like Mr. Auguste, 28, who completed a 10-month jail sentence for the attempted sale of cocaine, deportation to Haiti is a grim prospect. Under Haitian policy, federal and immigration courts have found, deportees with a criminal record are placed in indefinite preventive detention, without food, water or toilets, in cells so crowded that they cannot lie down; prisoners are subjected to police beatings, and sometimes are burned with cigarettes, choked, hooded and given electric shocks. Some have died in custody.

But is that tantamount to torture under the law? The answers have varied in the last four years. The Third Circuit panel, while likening the conditions to "a slave ship," ruled in January that indefinite detention in Haiti did not constitute torture because Haitian officials intended the detention to prevent crime, not specifically to inflict severe pain and suffering amounting to torture.

Their holding, the judges acknowledged, was "in tension" with the language of another Third Circuit panel's decision in a torture claim case, directly rejecting the "specific intent" interpretation. To resolve the contradiction, Mr. Auguste's motion seeks a rehearing in his case before all the appellate judges of the circuit, which covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The motion is drawing unusual attention from scholars of human rights law because it comes amid reports that the Central Intelligence Agency, under a secret presidential directive, has been transferring terror suspects to be interrogated in foreign countries known for torture.

Anti-torture laws bar the United States from handing over people, even criminals, to countries where they are likely to experience torture.

Torture is defined in the law as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, with the acquiescence of a public official, whether for interrogation, punishment, intimidation, coercion, "or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind." The law explicitly rules out making exceptions during wartime or public emergency, but it excludes from the definition of torture suffering that is accidental or the consequence of a "lawful sanction."

Based on the 2003 decision rejecting specific intent, other courts granted protection to Haitians in cases like Mr. Auguste's last year. Only a rehearing by the full court can resolve the conflict, said Renee C. Redman, one of Mr. Auguste's lawyers and the director of the International Institute of Connecticut.

"This is a byproduct of the attorney general's efforts to sign torture out of existence," she said.

Even in Haitian cases very similar to Mr. Auguste's, interpretation has fluctuated sharply since 1999, when the United States fully enacted domestic laws enforcing a version of the international Convention Against Torture, which it ratified in 1994.

By late 2001, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is run by the Justice Department, had ruled in several such cases that indefinite detention in Haiti was torture under the law, halting the deportations. But in 2002, narrower definitions took hold, said Lori A. Nessel, a legal scholar at Seton Hall University who has tracked the shifting immigration decisions.

Professor Nessel, who also directs the university's Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, was one of several scholars who said there was a sudden convergence between a longer-standing domestic agenda of quicker deportation of illegal immigrants and "criminal aliens," and the administration's resolve to "take the gloves off" in seeking intelligence that could prevent terrorist attacks. She said it not only affected ex-convicts, but women fleeing harm based on their sex, like genital cutting, rape and domestic violence, who often do not fit asylum categories.

Among those denied protection, for example, was Takky Zubeda, a woman who had fled from Congo to New York after being raped by the soldiers who decapitated her father and brother. But in 2003, Ms. Zubeda won an appeal to the Third Circuit appellate court, which rejected a "specific intent" requirement.

Those advocating restrictions on immigration embraced the tougher requirements for protection, arguing that thousands had used frivolous petitions to delay deportation. In 2003, some Republican lawmakers in Congress, led by John N. Hostettler, an Indiana congressman who is chairman of the House subcommittee on immigration, tried to change anti-torture laws to allow the deportation of criminals and terrorist suspects to countries where they were likely to be tortured.

The State Department opposed such a change, saying it would violate international and domestic law. Immigrants who pose risks to national security or society can be detained if they cannot be deported, officials said, and deported as soon as conditions in their countries improve.

Mr. Auguste, who has not been in Haiti since he was 11, said he just wanted to stay in jail in New Jersey.

"I'm very, very afraid," he said. "As far as me being detained in the United States of America, it's O.K. because I broke the law. But to be detained and tortured out there, where I don't have no family, no friends, from what I read, they might as well just kill you instead."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/nyregion...ml?pagewanted=2

Abu Ghraib, Whitewashed Again
Whitewash is typical of the reports issued by the Bush
administration on the abuse, humiliation and torture of
prisoners at camps run by the military.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/opinion/11fri2.html?th

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n...curity_cia_dc_1

Senate Intelligence Chief Defends CIA on Torture

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n...curity_cia_dc_2

Senate Intelligence Chief Denies CIA Tortured

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/t...0050328sifton_1

GIs Against Torture

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-715166.php

Children were held at Abu Ghraib, transcript reveals

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-pent11.html

Probe blaming GIS for jail abuse fails to silence Rumsfeld foes

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/4274567/detail.html

documents Show Children Held at Abu Ghraib
ACLU Releases Hundreds of Pages

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Iraq/Secrecy...l?oneclick=true

Secrecy undermines value of US abuse report

--------------------
Torture by Proxy
--------------------


March 11 2005

President Bush declared in his State of the Union address, "Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture." Considering what's come to light since then, the most charitable conclusion is that Bush is completely out of the loop.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editor...0,4002618.story

This is disgusting.

We have lost our moral clarity with the Bush Administration. This clarity had helped us cultivate an international policy respected throughout the globe - with the appointment of John Bolton - US multilateral affairs is dead.



March 11, 2005
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL
Abu Ghraib, Whitewashed Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/opinion/...print&position=

It was good to learn yesterday that the military commander in Iraq has issued definitive rules about how to treat captives in American prison camps. Unfortunately, that was about the only good news in the newest Pentagon report on prisoner abuse, actually a 21-page summary of a larger, classified study by the Navy inspector general of interrogation rules in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just consider that it took more than a year after the military says it first learned of the nightmare at Abu Ghraib to issue the new rules. And don't ask what they are, because they're classified. The report spoke of the regulations approvingly. But its author, Vice Admiral Albert Church III, now director of the Navy staff, admitted yesterday that, well, he had not actually read them.

This whitewash is typical of the reports issued by the Bush administration on the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners at camps run by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency. Like the others, the Church report concludes that only the lowest-ranking soldiers are to be held accountable, not their commanders or their civilian overseers.

It conveniently ignores President Bush's declaration that terrorists are not covered by the Geneva Conventions and that Iraq is part of the war against terror. Mr. Bush later said the conventions would cover Iraqi military prisoners, but the Church report said military commanders in Iraq had never been given guidance on handling prisoners, a vast majority of whom were not soldiers. Still, the report tossed this off as merely a "missed opportunity." It overlooked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of interrogation techniques for Guantánamo that violated the Geneva Conventions. It glossed over the way military lawyers who were drafting later rules were ordered to ignore their own legal opinions and instead follow Justice Department memos on how to make torture seem legal.

The Church report said that "none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater." Admiral Church and his investigators must have missed the pictures of prisoners in hoods, forced into stress positions and threatened by dogs. All of those techniques were approved at one time or another by military officials, including Mr. Rumsfeld. Of course, no known Pentagon policy orders the sexual humiliation of prisoners. But that has happened so pervasively that it clearly was not just the perverted antics of one night shift in one cellblock at Abu Ghraib.

The Church report said assessing the personal responsibility of Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials had been the job of another panel headed by a former defense secretary, James Schlesinger. Well, not exactly. That group, appointed by Mr. Rumsfeld, found "both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels" for Abu Ghraib. But the panel declined to name names.

Who will? Not the Pentagon, clearly. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans another hearing or two, but that's inadequate. Congressional leaders could open a serious investigation, but have shown no interest, although they are issuing subpoenas on steroid use by baseball players.

We're not holding out much hope that the White House will step into the breach because Mr. Bush has rewarded many of the officials responsible for the prison policies - one of them now serves as attorney general. Still, the only real solution is for Mr. Bush to follow the American Bar Association's advice and appoint an independent, bipartisan commission.

Here Sy Hersh details the secret program Rumsfeld concocted to torture prisoners...

It is also disgusting becuase it is clear that this interrogation/torture took place and was approved at the highest levels of government.

Bush himself knew of the program and if he knew and did not stop he is as guilty as anyone...

THE GRAY ZONE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.
Issue of 2004-05-24
Posted 2004-05-15

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can "expletive deleted" anyone.”

The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration’s search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness. One officer described him to me that fall as “kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors.” In November, the Washington Post reported that, as many as ten times since early October, Air Force pilots believed they’d had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles. There were similar problems throughout the world, as American Special Forces units seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval from local American ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of command.

Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate “high value” targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror. A special-access program, or sap—subject to the Defense Department’s most stringent level of security—was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps. America’s most successful intelligence operations during the Cold War had been saps, including the Navy’s submarine penetration of underwater cables used by the Soviet high command and construction of the Air Force’s stealth bomber. All the so-called “black” programs had one element in common: the Secretary of Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the normal military classification restraints did not provide enough security.

“Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target—a standup group to hit quickly,” a former high-level intelligence official told me. “He got all the agencies together—the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.—to get pre-approval in place. Just say the code word and go.” The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program, the former intelligence official said.

The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me. They created code words, and recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from America’s élite forces—Navy seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and the C.I.A.’s paramilitary experts. They also asked some basic questions: “Do the people working the problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we need dead drops for the mail? Yes. No traceability and no budget. And some special-access programs are never fully briefed to Congress.”

In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military’s facilities at Guantánamo, Cuba. They carried out instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap command center in the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical to the “white,” or overt, world.

Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “completely read into the program,” the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep the operation protected. “We’re not going to read more people than necessary into our heart of darkness,” he said. “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’”

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. The office was new; it was created as part of Rumsfeld’s reorganization of the Pentagon. Cambone was unpopular among military and civilian intelligence bureaucrats in the Pentagon, essentially because he had little experience in running intelligence programs, though in 1998 he had served as staff director for a committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned of an emerging ballistic-missile threat to the United States. He was known instead for his closeness to Rumsfeld. “Remember Henry II—‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” the senior C.I.A. official said to me, with a laugh, last week. “Whatever Rumsfeld whimsically says, Cambone will do ten times that much.”

Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He shared Rumsfeld’s disdain for the analysis and assessments proffered by the C.I.A., viewing them as too cautious, and chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the C.I.A.’s inability, before the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction. Cambone’s military assistant, Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, was also controversial. Last fall, he generated unwanted headlines after it was reported that, in a speech at an Oregon church, he equated the Muslim world with Satan.

Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of all special-access programs that were relevant to the war on terror. Those programs, which had been viewed by many in the Pentagon as sacrosanct, were monitored by Kenneth deGraffenreid, who had experience in counter-intelligence programs. Cambone got control, and deGraffenreid subsequently left the Pentagon. Asked for comment on this story, a Pentagon spokesman said, “I will not discuss any covert programs; however, Dr. Cambone did not assume his position as the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence until March 7, 2003, and had no involvement in the decision-making process regarding interrogation procedures in Iraq or anywhere else.”

In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror. “It was an active program,” the former intelligence official told me. “It’s been the most important capability we have for dealing with an imminent threat. If we discover where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United States—and do so without visibility.” Some of its methods were troubling and could not bear close scrutiny, however.

By then, the war in Iraq had begun. The sap was involved in some assignments in Iraq, the former official said. C.I.A. and other American Special Forces operatives secretly teamed up to hunt for Saddam Hussein and—without success—for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But they weren’t able to stop the evolving insurgency.

In the first months after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and his aides still had a limited view of the insurgency, seeing it as little more than the work of Baathist “dead-enders,” criminal gangs, and foreign terrorists who were Al Qaeda followers. The Administration measured its success in the war by how many of those on its list of the fifty-five most wanted members of the old regime—reproduced on playing cards—had been captured. Then, in August, 2003, terror bombings in Baghdad hit the Jordanian Embassy, killing nineteen people, and the United Nations headquarters, killing twenty-three people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the U.N. mission. On August 25th, less than a week after the U.N. bombing, Rumsfeld acknowledged, in a talk before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, that “the dead-enders are still with us.” He went on, “There are some today who are surprised that there are still pockets of resistance in Iraq, and they suggest that this represents some sort of failure on the part of the Coalition. But this is not the case.” Rumsfeld compared the insurgents with those true believers who “fought on during and after the defeat of the Nazi regime in Germany.” A few weeks later—and five months after the fall of Baghdad—the Defense Secretary declared,“It is, in my view, better to be dealing with terrorists in Iraq than in the United States.”

Inside the Pentagon, there was a growing realization that the war was going badly. The increasingly beleaguered and baffled Army leadership was telling reporters that the insurgents consisted of five thousand Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein. “When you understand that they’re organized in a cellular structure,” General John Abizaid, the head of the Central Command, declared, “that . . . they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you’ll understand how dangerous they are.”

The American military and intelligence communities were having little success in penetrating the insurgency. One internal report prepared for the U.S. military, made available to me, concluded that the insurgents’“strategic and operational intelligence has proven to be quite good.” According to the study:

Their ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable targets and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking surveillance and reconnaissance. Inside information has been passed on to insurgent cells about convoy/troop movements and daily habits of Iraqis working with coalition from within the Iraqi security services, primarily the Iraqi Police force which is rife with sympathy for the insurgents, Iraqi ministries and from within pro-insurgent individuals working with the CPA’s so-called Green Zone.

The study concluded, “Politically, the U.S. has failed to date. Insurgencies can be fixed or ameliorated by dealing with what caused them in the first place. The disaster that is the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of the insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it behooves the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the sad but unvarnished fact that most Iraqis do not see the Governing Council”—the Iraqi body appointed by the C.P.A.—“as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the true power is the CPA.”

By the fall, a military analyst told me, the extent of the Pentagon’s political and military misjudgments was clear. Donald Rumsfeld’s “dead-enders” now included not only Baathists but many marginal figures as well—thugs and criminals who were among the tens of thousands of prisoners freed the previous fall by Saddam as part of a prewar general amnesty. Their desperation was not driving the insurgency; it simply made them easy recruits for those who were. The analyst said, “We’d killed and captured guys who had been given two or three hundred dollars to ‘pray and spray’”—that is, shoot randomly and hope for the best. “They weren’t really insurgents but down-and-outers who were paid by wealthy individuals sympathetic to the insurgency.” In many cases, the paymasters were Sunnis who had been members of the Baath Party. The analyst said that the insurgents “spent three or four months figuring out how we operated and developing their own countermeasures. If that meant putting up a hapless guy to go and attack a convoy and see how the American troops responded, they’d do it.” Then, the analyst said, “the clever ones began to get in on the action.”

By contrast, according to the military report, the American and Coalition forces knew little about the insurgency: “Human intelligence is poor or lacking . . . due to the dearth of competence and expertise. . . . The intelligence effort is not coördinated since either too many groups are involved in gathering intelligence or the final product does not get to the troops in the field in a timely manner.” The success of the war was at risk; something had to be done to change the dynamic.

The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention and interrogation center at Guantánamo, who had been summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison interrogation procedures. The internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General Antonio Taguba in February, revealed that Miller urged that the commanders in Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence in charge of the prison. The report quoted Miller as recommending that “detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.”

Miller’s concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to “Gitmoize” the prison system in Iraq—to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,” the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets”—prisoners in Iraqi jails—“than people who can handle them.”

Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’s auspices. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers—military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply,” the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. “And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and it’s to be kept within Defense Department channels.”

The military-police prison guards, the former official said, included “recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.” He was referring to members of the 372nd Military Police Company. Seven members of the company are now facing charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. “How are these guys from Cumberland going to know anything? The Army Reserve doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

As shocking as this is, it is what it is: "Nobody cares!"

This entire torture scandal should have sunk Bush. Yet it didn't. Torture is here, out of the closet, now just hope it doesn't happen to you.

StillMadAtBush,

Your post implies the torture scandal is finished, it isn't.
It's morphed to detainees being sent to several other countries where torture
is common place, and leaves our CIA and DOD with nearly lily white hands.

No it's not finished. In fact I think it will accelerate. The administration has been waved forward and the torture of non-US citizens is not something Bush & Co. will be held accountable too. Ergo it's a torture feast sans the cameras.

Its not over...

Rumsfeld cleared in prison abuse scandal; activists decry findingBy PAUL KORING

Friday, March 11, 2005 Page A12

Globe and mail

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's top brass were exonerated yesterday of accusations that they ordered, or turned a blind eye to, the brutal torture and humiliation of detainees at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

But although Vice-Admiral Albert Church reported no blood on the hands of the U.S. high command, his findings failed to persuade many of those who believe President George W. Bush has set a permissive and extralegal tone for the war on terrorism.

The unclassified 21-page summary of a 400-page secret report confirms that at least six detainees have died in more than 70 proven cases of abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq, and reveals that the U.S. military was holding an estimated 50,000 detainees in shadowy circumstances as of last September.

Otherwise, however, it sheds little new light on the prison horrors.

Advertisements

"This looks like another whitewash. Almost a year after the Abu Ghraib pictures, we still haven't had an independent investigation into the widespread prison abuse by someone not appointed by or subordinate to Secretary Rumsfeld," said Reed Brody, a special counsel for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.

U.S. courts dealt another setback to the administration's handling of detainees on Monday, when a federal judge rejected a government effort to indefinitely imprison a U.S. citizen without charge by claiming that he is an enemy combatant.

The move would be a "betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties," U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd ruled. He gave the government 45 days to charge or release Jose Padilla, who is alleged to have plotted to detonate a so-called dirty bomb to spread radioactive debris.

Human Rights Watch said Mr. Bush's administration is undermining international respect for rights, and urged the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to condemn "disappearances, torture and other mistreatment of detainees by the United States in its global war on terror."

"It's not just the reputation of the United States that suffers, but international respect for human rights in general is damaged," spokeswoman Joanna Weschler said in Geneva.

Vice-Adm. Church's report found that rules were slack and that the military failed to spot warning signals that things might be going wrong at Abu Ghraib.

But "even in the absence of a precise definition of 'humane treatment,' it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theatre," he concluded.

Some of Mr. Bush's staunchest supporters appeared to be in denial about Abu Ghraib, a year after the horrific pictures of abuse and sexual humiliation emerged.

"I don't need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn't do it," said Senator Jim Talent, a Republican from Missouri. "Everything about the culture and the training in the military and at home works against that. That's why the terrorists are attacking us -- because we're not the kind of society that would do that."

Mr. Talent seemed to come close to endorsing physical abuse of detainees.

"Speaking for myself, if our guys want to poke somebody in the chest to get the name of a bomb maker so that they can save the lives of Americans, I'm for it," he said.

Others were not so sanguine. Democrat Senator Carl Levin noted acidly that the scope of Vice-Adm. Church's investigation didn't include detention and interrogation practices by the Central Intelligence Agency.

He also said that exonerating top leaders sends the wrong message to Americans and the rest of the world.

"This failure of accountability of senior leaders sends the wrong signal to our troops and to the American people. It harms the United States's standing as a nation of laws, and it undermines the high standards of our armed forces," Mr. Levin said.

Vice-Adm. Church also confirmed the existence of so-called ghost detainees, a practice in which the CIA detains suspects without documenting them.

Print this article E-mail this article Comment to the Editor

Bush and cheny are responsible for this mess. After all they are the Chief and the vice chief. Suddenly responsibility doesn't fall on their shoulders!

The Rendering

U.S. knowingly sending prisoners to be tortured in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan

By Chris Floyd

In the heady months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the chickenhawks of the Bush Regime were eager to flash their tough-guy cojones to the world. Led by the former prep-school cheerleader in the Oval Office, swaggering Bushists openly bragged of "kicking ass" with macho tactics like torture and "extraordinary rendition."
http://207.44.245.159/article8232.htm

Global sheriff is slowly gaining on the US and its cavalier way with the law

Simon Tisdall

In the opinion of many legal experts, the US government broke international law when it waged war on Iraq without explicit UN backing. Unrepentant, it has reserved the right to take similar action again, unilaterally if need be. But another key pillar of global jurisprudence - laws concerning individual liberty, dignity and human rights - is proving harder for Washington to ignore: like a sheriff with a posse of deputies, international law is slowly catching up with the Bush administration.
http://207.44.245.159/article8238.htm

Prisoners at Abu Ghraib included children, commander says:

Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of the prison told investigators, according to a transcript.
http://207.44.245.159/article8234.htm

Further Evidence of Brutal U.S. Army Abuses :

The latest chapter in the torture and abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody includes a report of a formal agreement between the Army and the CIA to hide "ghost detainees" and an atmosphere of "releaseaphobia" that prevented innocent detainees from being freed.
http://207.44.245.159/article8235.htm

The Resort to Torture :

A recently released army documents detail ongoing sadistic abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi Prisoners of War (POW) and Iraqi detainees by US and British forces in occupied Iraq.
http://207.44.245.159/article8215.htm

Pentagon gets out the whitewash:

Pentagon not to blame for abuse:

The report resisted faulting senior military and civilian commanders for the abuse, although it acknowledges they failed to take swift action when torture allegations first came to light.
http://about.upi.com/products/perspectives...10-064724-7595R

===

Democrats slam report that clears Pentagon:

Democrats on Thursday lambasted a Pentagon investigation into abuses at Abu Ghraib and other US military prisons, which found that no Pentagon policy was responsible for abusive treatment of prisoners.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0dc91e80-9191-11d...000e2511c8.html

http://tinyurl.com/4jzw2

===

British agents 'broke rules' in Abu Ghraib:

British intelligence officers sometimes broke the Geneva Convention while interrogating terror suspects held overseas in controversial US-run prisons, MPs warned today.
http://207.44.245.159/article8239.htm

March 12, 2005
Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner.

The reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, provide the first official account of events that led to the deaths of the detainees, Mullah Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar, at the Bagram Control Point, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The deaths took place nearly a year before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Among those implicated in the killings at Bagram were members of Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C. The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there.

The reports, from the Army Criminal Investigation Command, also make clear that the abuse at Bagram went far beyond the two killings. Among those recommended for prosecution is an Army military interrogator from the 519th Battalion who is said to have "placed his penis along the face" of one Afghan detainee and later to have "simulated anally sodomizing him (over his clothes)."

The Army reports cited "credible information" that four military interrogators assaulted Mr. Dilawar and another Afghan prisoner with "kicks to the groin and leg, shoving or slamming him into walls/table, forcing the detainee to maintain painful, contorted body positions during interview and forcing water into his mouth until he could not breathe."

American military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths of Mr. Habibullah, in an isolation cell on Dec. 4, 2002, and Mr. Dilawar, in another such cell six days later, were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.

But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. Last fall, Army investigators implicated 28 soldiers and reservists and recommended that they face criminal charges, including negligent homicide.

But so far only Private Brand, a military policeman from the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cincinnati, and Sgt. James P. Boland, from the same unit, have been charged.

The charges against Sergeant Boland for assault and other crimes were announced last summer, and those against Private Brand are spelled out in Army charge sheets from hearings on Jan. 4 and Feb. 3 in Fort Bliss, Tex.

The names of other officers and soldiers liable to criminal charges had not previously been made public.

But among those mentioned in the new reports is Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, the chief military intelligence officer at Bagram. The reports conclude that Captain Wood lied to investigators by saying that shackling prisoners in standing positions was intended to protect interrogators from harm. In fact, the report says, the technique was used to inflict pain and sleep deprivation.

An Army report dated June 1, 2004, about Mr. Habibullah's death identifies Capt. Christopher Beiring of the 377th Military Police Company as having been "culpably inefficient in the performance of his duties, which allowed a number of his soldiers to mistreat detainees, ultimately leading to Habibullah's death, thus constituting negligent homicide."

Captain Wood, who commanded Company A in Afghanistan, later helped to establish the interrogation and debriefing center at Abu Ghraib. Two Defense Department reports have said that a list of interrogation procedures she drew up there, which went beyond those approved by Army commanders, may have contributed to abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Past efforts to contact Captain Wood, Captain Beiring and Sergeant Boland, who were mentioned in passing in earlier reports, and to learn the identity of their lawyers, have been unsuccessful. All have been named in previous Pentagon reports and news accounts about the incidents in Afghanistan; none have commented publicly. The name of Private Brand's lawyer did not appear on the Army charge sheet, and military officials said neither the soldier nor the lawyer would likely comment.

John Sifton, a researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said the documents substantiated the group's own investigations showing that beatings and stress positions were widely used, and that "far from a few isolated cases, abuse at sites in Afghanistan was common in 2002, the rule more than the exception."

"Human Rights Watch has previously documented, through interviews with former detainees, that scores of other detainees were beaten at Bagram and Kandahar bases from early 2002 on," Mr. Sifton said in an e-mail message.

In his own report, made public this week, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III cited the deaths of Mr. Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar as examples of abuse that had occurred during interrogations. Admiral Church said his review of the Army investigation had found that the abuse "was unrelated to approved interrogation techniques."

But Admiral Church also said there were indications in both cases "that medical personnel may have attempted to misrepresent the circumstances of the death, possibly in an effort to disguise detainee abuse," and noted that the Army's surgeon general was reviewing "the specific medical handling" of those cases and one other.

The most specific previous description of the cause of deaths of the two men had come from Pentagon officials, who said last fall that both had suffered "blunt force trauma to the legs," and that investigators had determined that they had been beaten by "multiple soldiers" who, for the most part, had used their knees. Pentagon officials said at the time that it was likely that the beatings had been confined to the legs of the detainees so the injuries would be less visible.

Both men had been chained to the ceiling, one at the waist and one by the wrists, although their feet remained on the ground. Both men had been captured by Afghan forces and turned over to the American military for interrogation.

Mr. Habibullah, a brother of a former Taliban commander, died of a pulmonary embolism apparently caused by blood clots formed in his legs from the beatings, according to the report of June 1, 2004. Mr. Dilawar, who suffered from a heart condition, is described in an Army report dated July 6, 2004, as having died from "blunt force trauma to the lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease."



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/politics...artner=homepage

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=5163

Latest Abuse Investigation Reports a Whitewash
Jim Lobe

Chained, Kicked And Beaten To Death By U.S. Soldiers:

Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.
http://207.44.245.159/article8252.htm

War crime claims:

Massey claims, he and his men had killed 30 Iraqi civilians. He says he and the others are guilty of war crimes.
http://207.44.245.159/article8250.htm

Abu Ghraib, whitewashed again:

This whitewash is typical of the reports issued by the Bush administration on the abuse, humiliation, and torture of prisoners at camps run by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file...n/edprison.html

http://tinyurl.com/6ntxy

Guantánamo jail switch planned :

US inmates face threat of worse abuse under scheme to send them to prisons in their own countries
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story...1435896,00.html

Mistreatment of Muslim inmates cited:

The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General said yesterday it had ''found a disturbing pattern of discriminatory and retaliatory actions against Muslim inmates" by the warden and guards at an unnamed federal prison
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washingt..._inmates_cited/

http://tinyurl.com/45hmb

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics...059&partner=AOL

Judge Blocks the Transfer of 13 Detainees from Guantanamo

March 13, 2005
Judge Blocks the Transfer of 13 Detainees From Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 12 - A federal judge on Saturday prohibited the government from transferring 13 Yemeni prisoners from the military's detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, until a hearing could be held on their lawyers' fear that they might face torture if sent to another country.

The ruling by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of United States District Court was the first action on at least five emergency petitions filed since Friday by lawyers for Guantánamo detainees after they learned from news reports that the government is seeking to transfer hundreds of prisoners to their home countries.

"We're relieved," said Marc Falkoff, a lawyer for the Yemenis. "If they were moved, the jurisdiction of the court over the case would effectively be dissolved."

Barbara Olshansky, deputy director for litigation at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who helped coordinate the detainees' legal representation, said she expected lawyers for all the detainees to file similar actions by Sunday. She said she would seek an order on behalf of several hundred detainees whose names are not known to the lawyers.

The judge's order puts at least a temporary roadblock in the way of the administration's plans to transfer at least half of the 540 detainees at Guantánamo to prisons in other countries, chiefly Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen.

John Nowacki, a Justice Department spokesman, said late Saturday that government lawyers were reviewing the ruling and had no immediate comment.

The government argues that all the prisoners were members of the Qaeda terrorist network or the Taliban in Afghanistan, or have ties to those groups. Mr. Falkoff said that after talking to his clients during two weeklong visits to the detention center and reviewing government documents, he did not believe they were terrorists.

He said he believed one was an aid worker, another was a medic and a third was a 17-year-old who had traveled to Afghanistan to teach children the Koran. He acknowledged that he did not have independent corroboration for their stories.

The ruling bans any transfer of the Yemenis until a hearing can be held on their lawyers' request for at least 30 days' notice before any transfer takes place. Ms. Olshansky said the notice would permit the lawyers to determine whether their clients willingly accepted the transfer to a prison in their home countries, or whether they feared they would be tortured or indefinitely detained without trial.

"We want to find out where they're being sent and ask them if they want to go there," she said. "If the answer is yes, fine."

Also on Saturday, the Defense Department announced that it had transferred three detainees from Guantánamo to Afghanistan, Maldives and Pakistan for release, bringing the number of detainees who have left the naval base to 214. A tribunal reviewing the status of detainees found that they no longer qualified as enemy combatants, according to a department statement that provided no other details about the transfers, citing "operational and security considerations."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13gitmo.html?

Europeans Investigate CIA Role in Abductions
Suspects Possibly Taken To Nations That Torture
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 13, 2005; Page A01


MILAN -- A radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was walking to a Milan mosque for noon prayers in February 2003 when he was grabbed on the sidewalk by two men, sprayed in the face with chemicals and stuffed into a van. He hasn't been seen since.

Milan investigators, however, now appear to be close to identifying his kidnappers. Last month, officials showed up at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy and demanded records of any American planes that had flown into or out of the joint U.S.-Italian military installation around the time of the abduction. They also asked for logs of vehicles that had entered the base.

Italian authorities suspect the Egyptian was the target of a CIA-sponsored operation known as rendition, in which terrorism suspects are forcibly taken for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced.

The Italian probe is one of three official investigations that have surfaced in the past year into renditions believed to have taken place in Western Europe. Although the CIA usually carries out the operations with the help or blessing of friendly local intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities in Italy, Germany and Sweden are examining whether U.S. agents may have broken local laws by detaining terrorist suspects on European soil and subjecting them to abuse or maltreatment.

The CIA has kept details of rendition cases a closely guarded secret, but has defended the controversial practice as an effective and legal way to prevent terrorism. Intelligence officials have testified that they have relied on the tactic with greater frequency since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Bush administration has received backing for renditions from governments that have been criticized for their human rights records, including Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, where many of the suspects are taken for interrogation. But the administration is getting a much different reception in Europe, where lawmakers and prosecutors are questioning whether the practice is a blatant violation of local sovereignty and human rights.

There are many practical and legal hurdles to filing criminal charges against U.S. agents, including the question of whether they are protected by diplomatic immunity and the matter of determining their identity. However, prosecutors in Italy and Germany have not ruled out criminal charges. At the same time, the European investigations are producing new revelations about the suspected U.S. involvement in the disappearances of four men, not including the Egyptian, each of whom claims they were physically abused and later tortured.

In Germany, a 41-year-old man, Khaled Masri, has told authorities that he was locked up during a vacation in the Balkans and flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2004, where he was held as a suspected terrorist for four months. He said that only after his captors realized he was not the al Qaeda suspect they were looking for did they take him back to the Balkans and dump him on a hillside along the Albanian border. He recalled his captors spoke English with an American accent.

German prosecutors, after several months of scrutinizing his account, have confirmed several key parts of his story and are investigating it as a kidnapping.

"So far, I've seen no sign that what he's saying is incorrect. Many, many pieces of the puzzle have checked out," said Martin Hofmann, a Munich-based prosecutor overseeing the investigation. "I have to try to find out who held him, who tortured or abused him, and who is responsible for this."

In Sweden, a parliamentary investigation has found that CIA agents wearing hoods orchestrated the forced removal in December 2001 of two Egyptian nationals on a U.S.-registered airplane to Cairo, where the men claimed they were tortured in prison.

One of the men was later exonerated as a terrorism suspect by Egyptian police, while the other remains in prison there. Details of the secret operation have shocked many in Sweden, a leading proponent of human rights.

Although Swedish authorities had secretly invited the CIA to assist in the operation, the disclosures prompted the director of Sweden's security police last week to promise that his agency would never let foreign agents take charge of such a case again.

"In the future we will use Swedish laws, Swedish measures of force and Swedish military aviation when deporting terrorists," Klas Bergenstrand, the security police chief, told reporters. "That way we get full control over the whole situation."

Clues to a Mystery


In Milan, the Egyptian-born cleric attracted the attention of counterterrorism police soon after arriving in Italy in 1997 from Albania. Known as Abu Omar, his full name was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. He was 42, a veteran fighter from the wars in Bosnia and Afghanistan and a wanted man in Egypt, where authorities had charged him with belonging to an outlawed Islamic radical group.

Nasr frequently preached at two mosques in Milan that have long attracted religious and political extremists, according to Italian and U.S. officials. One of the mosques, a converted garage on Viale Jenner, is classified as a financier of terrorism causes by the U.S. Treasury Department, which has accused it of supporting "the movement of weapons, men and money around the world."

Nasr reinforced the mosque's reputation by preaching angrily against the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and handing out vitriolic pamphlets criticizing U.S. policy in the Middle East. Italian counterterrorism police tapped his home telephone and kept him under surveillance.

"He was the kind of person who, let's put it this way, did not speak diplomatically," said Abdelhamid Shaari, president of the Islamic Cultural Center at Viale Jenner, who denies that either the mosque or the center sponsor terrorism or illegal activity. "When he attacked America, he did not speak in half-measures. He got right to the point."

When Nasr vanished, his family and mosque leaders reported it as a kidnapping, after a witness said she saw the abduction. The witness, a recent immigrant, said she was scared to repeat her story to the police, however, leading some investigators to speculate that Nasr had disappeared on his own and gone to Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

Italian police opened a missing person investigation, but the case stalled for more than a year. That changed in April 2004, when Nasr's wife unexpectedly received a telephone call from her husband. He told her he had been kidnapped and taken to a U.S. air base in Italy. He said he was then flown to another U.S. base, before being taken to Cairo.

The call was recorded by Italian police, who had kept the wiretap on Nasr's home telephone in place. Although transcripts have not been made public, Nasr's colleagues at the mosque said he reported that he had been tortured and kept naked in subfreezing temperatures in a prison in Cairo.

During the phone call, Nasr told his wife that he had been let out of prison in Egypt but remained under house arrest. His relatives have said they believe he was imprisoned again shortly afterward when news of the recorded conversation was reported by Italian newspapers.

The existence of the wiretap is revealed in sealed Italian court papers reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents, dated in the spring of 2004, include a judge's authorization to continue the wiretap and show that investigators were pursuing the theory that covert agents -- possibly from the United States, Italy or Egypt -- were behind the kidnapping.

Italian investigators have since determined that 15 agents, some of them CIA operatives, were involved in Nasr's abduction, according to reports in Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian daily. Investigators were able to trace calls made by the agents by linking calls made by the same phones near the mosque and Aviano Air Base on the day Nasr vanished, the newspaper reported.

The investigation is being led by Armando Spataro, a well-known counterterrorism prosecutor whose office has also built a hard-nosed reputation for winning convictions in cases involving the Mafia and political corruption. Spataro, who has worked closely with U.S. officials in the past on terrorism cases, confirmed that he visited Aviano last month but declined to comment further.

Capt. Eric Elliott, a U.S. military spokesman at Aviano, said Spataro met at the base for several hours with Italian military officials, who then forwarded a request for records to their American counterparts. Elliott declined to describe the records being sought, citing "an active investigation."

The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to answer questions about whether American agents were involved in Nasr's disappearance. "We do not comment on intelligence matters," said Ben Duffy, an embassy spokesman.

Italian opposition lawmakers have demanded answers from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government on whether Italian agents or intelligence services played a role. But government ministers have remained tight-lipped.

Shaari, the director of the Islamic cultural center in Milan, said some Muslims are worried they could be kidnapped, too.

"If they can take Abu Omar, then they can take anyone," he said. "This is an extremely dangerous precedent, both for the Muslim community and for Italy, as a democratic and free state."

Claims Corroborated


In late December 2003, Khaled Masri got into a bitter argument with his wife in their home town of Ulm, Germany. They agreed he should get away for a few days, so he bought a bus ticket for Skopje, Macedonia.

At the Macedonian border on New Year's Eve, immigration officials took a close look at his passport and detained him, without explanation. Other agents later interrogated him and pressed him to admit he was a member of al Qaeda, according to accounts Masri gave his attorney and German prosecutors.

Masri protested his innocence, but was kept under guard in Macedonia for three weeks. He said that one day in late January 2004, he was beaten, stripped, shackled and put on a plane that took him to Afghanistan. There, he was kept in a cell under dismal conditions, deprived of water and repeatedly interrogated. Only after going on a hunger strike, he said, did his captors relent; he was flown back to the Balkans in May 2004.

He said he was released near an Albanian border checkpoint, where guards returned his passport and cash. By the time he made it home, even his wife was reluctant to believe his story, thinking he had left her for another woman, according to his attorney.

German police have questioned Masri several times and said they had found his