Battling Terrorism

AP Exclusive: Documents say detainee near insanity

AP Exclusive: Documents say detainee near insanity
Yahoo News
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as "enemy combatants" for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.

The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.

"I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we're working with borrowed time," an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. "I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me."

Yale Law School's Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic received the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by two attorneys Jonathan Freiman and Tahlia Townsend, representing another detainee, Jose Padilla. The Lowenstein group and the American Civil Liberties Union said the papers were evidence that the Bush administration violated the 5th Amendment's protections against cruel treatment. The U.S. military was ordered to treat the American prisoners the same way prisoners at Guantanamo were treated, according to the documents.

However, the Guantanamo jail was created by the Bush administration specifically to avoid allowing detainees any constitutional rights. Administration lawyers contended the Constitution did not apply outside ...

The real message of Bin Laden's bizarre video rant

Osama's Vision of the Future
Slate
By Anne Applebaum

Osama's Vision of the Future

And now, ladies and gentlemen, time for a quiz. Three guesses as to who said this:

And Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; and the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa; all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.

Photo: Slate.com

Osama Bin Laden in a recently released video

Dennis Kucinich? Naomi "No Logo" Klein? Daniel "Dany the Red" Cohn-Bendit? If you guessed "none of the above," you are either an astute observer of the anti-globalization movement, or you have already read a transcript of Osama Bin Laden's latest video production. If so, you will also know that Bin Laden, after denouncing the "capitalist system," which "seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations," calls for Americans to convert to Islam because, among other things, taxes are lower in Islamic states. It's a genuinely bizarre, almost ridiculous document—and before it is forgotten in the coming debate on Gen. David Petraeus' Iraq report, it's worth spending a few minutes, on the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, trying to understand what it might mean.

I am not alone, I should note, in wondering whether a man who is supposedly hiding in the Hindu Kush could possibly care about the "insane taxes and real estate mortgages" endured by Americans. A number of commentators are suspicious about the video, in which Bin Laden has dyed his beard jet black—either a sign he intends to renew his jihad or evidence that the tape, though authenticated by the CIA, is fake. Others wonder whether the speech, which makes approving references to the wisdom of Noam Chomsky yet garbles the chronology of the Vietnam War, might actually have been written by Adam Gadahn, an American who does English-language propaganda for al-Qaida, has been indicted for treason, and now features on a Department of Justice "wanted" Web site, along with Bin Laden himself.

Real or fake, the message might still hint at the direction in which al-Qaida propaganda, or at least al-Qaida propaganda designed for the Western market, is now heading. In a recent Slate piece, Reza Aslan eloquently described how the organization's list of alleged "grievances"—which now include global warming, corporate capitalism, and African poverty, as well as the American bases in Saudi Arabia—weave "local and global resentments into a single anti-American narrative, the overarching aim of which is to form a collective identity across borders and nationalities." But the narrative clearly isn't meant for only the Arab world. On the contrary, perhaps it's time to take the main message seriously: Clearly, al-Qaida's long-term goal is to convert Americans and other Westerners to its extreme version of Islam.

Before you fall over laughing, think again. It would only take a very few such converts to do a lot of damage. The results of the Soviet Union's massive propaganda campaign on behalf of world Marxist revolution were also numerically small, but at the time, they were considered very effective: the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Italian Red Brigades, the Weather Underground. There are always disaffected young people—Gadahn is a former fan of "death metal" rock bands—and they're always looking for a cause. Conversion in general is increasingly common across Europe. Some 4,000 Germans were found to convert annually in a recent study, and if only 0.1 percent of them choose the jihadist version of Islam, that's enough to cause trouble.

For, as news from Germany well illustrates, there is nothing quite so passionate as a recent convert. At least two of the men recently arrested and accused of plotting to bomb American interests in Germany were ...

Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties

Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties
MSNBC
Associated Press

Cases show fraud exposers have been vilified, fired, or detained for weeks

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

Photo: John David Mercer / AP

Robert Isakson filed a whistleblower suit against a contractor in 2004 alleging the company bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars. A judge later threw out a $10-million ruling in his favor.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was ...

Why Do They Hate Us?

Why Do They Hate Us?
Source: MSN Slate
By Reza Aslan
(Author of No god but God:
The Origins, Evolution,
and Future of Islam)

Strange answers lie in al-Qaida's writings.

Why do they hate us?

Americans have been asking this question for nearly six years now, and for six years President Bush and his accomplices have been offering the same tired response: "They hate us for our freedoms." With every passing year, that answer becomes less convincing.

Part of the problem has to do with the question itself. Who exactly are they? Are we referring to al-Qaida and its cohorts? Are we talking about Iran, Syria, and the other nation-states whose interests in the Middle East do not properly align with America's? Or perhaps we mean Hamas, Hezbollah, or the myriad religious nationalist organizations across the Muslim world that share neither the ideology nor the aspirations of global, transnational groups like al-Qaida, but that have nevertheless been dumped into the same category: them.

But what is most surprising about this question is how little interest anyone seems to have taken in examining the answers that are already on offer in multiple languages, through various media outlets, and on the Internet, from the very they who allegedly hate us so much. A spate of books has appeared over the last year, gathering the words of America's enemies. The first and best of these is Messages to the World, a collection of Osama Bin Laden's declarations translated by Duke University professor Bruce Lawrence, in which Bin Laden himself dismisses Bush's accusation that he hates America's freedoms. "Perhaps he can tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example?"

Photo: Amazon

Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (Paperback) by Osama bin Laden (Author), Bruce Lawrence (Editor), James Howarth (Translator), Osama bin Laden (Author), Bruce Lawrence (Author), James Howarth (Author)

Photo: Amazon

The Al Qaeda Reader (Paperback) by Raymond Ibrahim (Editor)

Now comes a second, more complete collection, The Al Qaeda Reader, edited and translated by Raymond Ibrahim, a research librarian at the Library of Congress. Unlike Lawrence, Ibrahim includes writings from both Bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. And while both volumes provide readers with a startling series of religious and political tracts that, when taken together, chart the evolution of a disturbing (if intellectually murky) justification for religious violence, Ibrahim's collection is marred by his insistence that his book be viewed as al-Qaida's Mein Kampf.

The comparison between the scattered declarations of a cult leader literally dwelling in a cave and the political treatise of the commander in chief of one of the 20^th century's most powerful nations may be imprecise, to say the least. But Ibrahim's point is that we can learn about al-Qaida's intentions by reading their words, that a book like this can help Americans better understand the nature of the anger directed toward them.

In the most general sense, this is certainly true. But whether a hodgepodge of ...

UK terror charges dropped against doctor

UK terror charges dropped against doctor
Yahoo News
By DENNIS PASSA, Associated Press Writer

BRISBANE, Australia - An Indian doctor was freed from custody after Australia's chief prosecutor said Friday that a charge linking him to failed terrorist bombings in Britain was a mistake.

Prosecutors withdrew the charge against Mohamed Haneef in the Brisbane Magistrates Court after a review of the evidence by the federal Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg found that his office should never have recommended it.

AP Photo: In this undated photo provided by Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef is seen. Australia's top prosecutor on Friday, July 27, 2007 dropped a terror charge against Haneef, who was accused of supporting June's failed bomb attacks on London and Glasgow, Scotland.

"Mistakes are embarrassing. You're embarrassed if you do something wrong," Bugg told reporters in Canberra. "I'm disappointed that it's happened and I will first thing next week try and obtain a better understanding of how it came about."

The government responded by saying Haneef, 27, would be freed from custody while Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews considers whether he will change his decision to revoke the doctor's visa.

Haneef was released from prison in the eastern city of Brisbane. His lawyer Peter Russo would not say where Haneef planned to live while the government reviewed whether to reinstate his visa.

Andrews said Haneef was free to stay where he liked as long as he reported daily to a government official.

His wife, Firdaus Arshiya, told reporters in Bangalore, India, that she hoped her husband would fly home within days.

"I'm happy he's been proved innocent," she said.

E. Ahmed, India's junior foreign minister, said India would support Haneef's request for a bridging visa so that he could leave Australia on his own accord, rather than be deported.

Haneef has been in custody since July 2, when he was arrested at Brisbane International Airport as he was about to fly to India.

Haneef had been charged with providing reckless support to a terrorist organization because he gave his mobile phone SIM card to his second cousin, Sabeel Ahmed, in July last year. He had faced up to 15 years in ...

TSA: Terrorists may be conducting dry runs

TSA: Terrorists may be conducting dry runs
MSNBC
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Airport security officers around the nation have been alerted by federal officials to look out for terrorists practicing to carry explosive components onto aircraft, based on four curious seizures at airports since last September.

The unclassified alert was distributed on July 20 by the Transportation Security Administration to federal air marshals, its own transportation security officers and other law enforcement agencies.

The seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included “wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances,” including block cheese, the bulletin said. “The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern.”

Security officers were urged to keep an eye out for “ordinary items that look like improvised explosive device components.”

The 13-paragraph bulletin was posted on the Internet by NBC Nightly News, which first ...

Bin Laden appears in new al-Qaida video

Bin Laden appears in new al-Qaida video
Yahoo News
Associated Press

Photo: AP Photo
Timeline shows some of the purported audio and video messages by al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri in 2007 and amount of time it took for the terror network to release them to the world; two sizes; 2c x 4 3/4 inches; 96.3 mm x 120.7 mm; 3c x 3 3/4 inches; 146 mm x 95.3 mm

CAIRO, Egypt - A new al-Qaida videotape posted Sunday on a militant Web site featured a short, undated clip of a weary-looking Osama bin Laden praising martyrdom.

The bin Laden clip, which lasted less than a minute, was part of a 40-minute video featuring purported al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan paying tribute to fellow militants who have been killed in the country. It was posted by the group's media production wing.

Bin Laden glorified those who die in the name of jihad, or holy war, saying even the Prophet Muhammad "had been wishing to be a martyr."

"The happy (man) is the one that God has chosen him to be a martyr," added bin Laden, who was shown outdoors wearing army fatigues and looking tired.

British, Australian police charge two over failed car bombs

British, Australian police charge two over failed car bombs
Yahoo News
By JENNIFER QUINN, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - An Indian doctor arrested the same day his brother allegedly drove a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas bombs into Glasgow's main airport was charged Saturday with a terrorism offense. A distant cousin in Australia was also charged in the failed attacks in London and Glasgow.

Sabeel Ahmed, of Liverpool, was charged with having information that could prevent an act of terrorism, the Metropolitan Police said in a news release.

Ahmed is the third person to be charged in connection with the alleged plot in London and Glasgow. His brother, Kafeel, is believed to have set himself on fire after crashing into the airport and is in a Scottish hospital with critical burns.

Photo: AP Photo
This undated photo made available on Sunday, July 8, 2007, by B. R. Ambedkar Medical College, BRAMC in Bangalore, India, shows Indian doctor Sabeel Ahmed. Ahmed, 26, who was arrested in Liverpool in connection with the foiled terror attacks in London and Glasgow on June 29 and 30. The records showed Ahmed graduated from the college. (AP Photo/B.R.Ambedkar Medical College, HO)

Muhammad Haneef, 27, a distant cousin who once shared a house with the brothers in Britain, was charged Saturday in Brisbane, Australia, with supporting a terrorist group. Bilal Abdullah, a 27-year-old Iraqi doctor, was charged last week by British police with conspiring to set off explosions.

Australian police charged Haneef with providing support to the bomb plot by giving his SIM card to Sabeel and Kafeel Ahmed when he left Britain for Australia in July 2006. Haneef faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted.

British police tracked a SIM card found on one of the men accused in the failed bomb attacks to Haneef, and alerted their Australian counterparts. Haneef was arrested July 2 while trying to leave the eastern city of Brisbane for India on a one-way ticket.

Prosecutor Clive Porritt said Haneef would have known about the Ahmed brothers' alleged links to terrorism.

"These are people who he lived with, may have worked with, and certainly associated with," Porritt told the Brisbane Magistrates Court during a daylong bail hearing.

But defense lawyer Stephen Keim said Haneef only left the SIM card with Sabeel Ahmed so his cousin could take advantage of a special deal on his mobile phone plan.

"For some reason he should have been aware that something was going to happen when the rest of the world didn't," Keim said. "It is not suggested that he is anything other than a foolish dupe who should have been more suspicious."

Eight people were detained immediately after the botched attacks; one of them, the only woman, was freed on Thursday.

It was not immediately clear whether the SIM card was used in ...

U.S. troops battle Iraqi police, gunmen

U.S. troops battle Iraqi police, gunmen
Yahoo News
By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces battled Iraqi police and gunmen Friday, killing six policemen, after an American raid captured a police lieutenant accused of leading an Iranian-backed militia cell, the military said.

Photo: AP Photo
Iraqis stand at the site of an explosion in the Amin neighborhood of eastern Baghdad

Seven gunmen also died in the fight, a rare open street battle between American troops and policemen. Washington has demanded the government purge its police force of militants, and U.S. and Iraqi authorities have arrested officers in the past for militia links. But the Bush administration said in an assessment Thursday that progress on that front was "unsatisfactory."

The lieutenant was captured before dawn in eastern Baghdad, but the soldiers came under "heavy and accurate fire" from a nearby Iraqi police checkpoint, as well as intense fire from rooftops and a church, the military said in a statement.

As the Americans fired back, U.S. warplanes struck in front of the police position, without hitting it directly, "to prevent further escalation" of the battle, it said. There were no casualties among the U.S. troops, but seven gunmen and six of the policemen firing on the Americans were killed, the statement said.

The captured lieutenant was a "high-ranking" leader of a cell suspected of helping coordinate Iranian support for Shiite extremists in Iraq as well as carrying out roadside bombings against mortar attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, the military said. The lieutenant is believed to be linked to the Quds Force, a branch of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, it said.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which controls the police, said he had no immediate information on the clash and refused to comment.

The U.S. military accuses Iran's Quds Force of organizing Shiite militants into so-called "special groups" and arming them with weapons and explosives — including a particularly deadly form of roadside bombs called explosively formed penetrators. Iran denies the claims.

Infiltration by Shiite militias is pervasive in the Iraqi police, fueling a deep mistrust of ...

US House votes for troop pullout

US House votes for troop pullout
BBC News, UK

The United States House of Representatives has voted in favour of pulling most combat troops out of Iraq by April next year.

The legislation calls for the Pentagon to begin withdrawing combat troops within four months.

Photo: Getty Images
Some Republicans have broken ranks with the President on Iraq

The vote comes despite President George W Bush's threat to veto any timetable.

Correspondents say the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, is hoping to pressure the Senate to approve a similar timeline.

It is the third time this year the House has voted to end US military involvement in Iraq.

Two previous efforts either failed in the Senate or were vetoed by President Bush.

The latest attempt would allow some US forces to stay in Iraq to train the Iraqi army and ...