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| Sami al-Arian (Arab American News) |
When Jose Padilla was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft interrupted his meetings in Moscow to announce that the United States had nabbed a suspected al Qaeda operative who had intended to blow up a radiological device, or "dirty bomb," in the United States.
But when Padilla soon goes to trial, the government could have considerable trouble proving the case and supporting what Ashcroft then billed as a "significant step forward in the war on terrorism."
Indeed, the allegations of a dirty bomb plot are nonexistent in the government's court papers, and the two sources who made those allegations most likely will not be witnesses for the prosecution. And even the federal judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, said during a recent pretrial hearing that the indictment is "very light on facts."
Jury selection is currently underway in Miami and is expected to last a couple of weeks. Because of the publicity surrounding the case, Cooke allowed an unusual number of peremptory strikes against potential jurors. The judge also has to rule on several big motions outstanding, including whether to honor a request from lawyers for Padilla's codefendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, to sever their trials from Padilla's. The three men have been accused of running a "North American support cell" that fed into a global network of operational and support members of al Qaeda who were conspiring to create "violent jihad."
But the lack of specifics about what particular plots the men had initiated in the United States will become the central defense message from lawyers for the three defendants.
"The question is," says University of Richmond constitutional law professor Carl Tobias, "whether the government can connect all the dots in terms of conspiracy and persuade the jury."
The Padilla case is a big test case for the government because Padilla is the first U.S. citizen to be tried in federal court on post-9/11 terrorism charges, says Tobias. There's another thorny issue the government must contend with. Padilla has claimed that he was tortured during military interrogations while he was held at a naval brig after his arrest. Padilla didn't have a lawyer during those interrogations, and his statements will not be introduced into the record in this trial. "Padilla's lawyer will try to raise that," says Tobias, "and the government will avoid it if at all possible."
The trial could be all the more unpredictable, says Tobias, because the government is charging that Padilla was part of a vast international conspiracy, but many of the details are classified.
"A lot of the evidence," says Tobias, "we don't even know about."
consortiumnews.com
Editor’s Note: Former Army Sgt. Sam Provance was one of the heroes of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the only uniformed military intelligence officer at the Iraqi prison to testify about the abuses during the internal Army investigation. When he recognized that the Pentagon was scapegoating low-level personnel, he also gave an interview to ABC News.
For refusing to play along with the cover-up, Provance was punished and pushed out of the U.S. military. The Pentagon went forward with its plan to pin the blame for the sadistic treatment of Iraqi detainees on a handful of poorly trained MPs, not on the higher-ups who brought the lessons of “alternative interrogation techniques” from the Guatanamo Bay prison to Abu Ghraib.
The Congress, which was then controlled by the Republicans, promised a fuller investigation. Provance submitted a sworn statement. But Congress never followed through, leaving Provance hanging out to dry. Then, in February 2007, he went to a special screening of the documentary, “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” and learned more than he expected about why the scandal died:
For those of you who have not heard of me, I am Sam Provance. My career as an Army sergeant came to a premature end at age 32 after eight years of decorated service, because I refused to remain silent about Abu Ghraib, where I served for five months in 2004 at the height of the abuses.A noncommissioned officer specializing in intelligence analysis, my job at Abu Ghraib was systems administrator (“the computer guy”). But I had the misfortune of being on the night shift, saw detainees dragged in for interrogation, heard the screams, and saw many of them dragged out. I was sent back to my parent unit in Germany shortly after the Army began the first of its many self-investigations.
In Germany, I had the surreal experience of being interrogated by one of the Army-General-Grand-Inquisitors, Major General George Fay, who showed himself singularly uninterested in what went on at Abu Ghraib.
I had to insist that he listen to my eyewitness account, whereupon he threatened punitive actions against me for not coming forward sooner and even tried to hold me personally responsible for the scandal itself.
The Army then demoted me, suspended my Top Secret clearance, and threatened me with ten years in a military prison if I asked for a court martial. I was even given a gag order, the only one I know to have been issued to those whom Gen. Fay interviewed.
But the fact that most Americans know nothing of what I saw at Abu Ghraib, and that my career became collateral damage, so to speak, has nothing to do with the gag order, which turned out to be the straw that broke this sergeant’s back.
After seeing first-hand that the investigation wasn't going to go anywhere and that no one else I knew from the intelligence community was being candid, I allowed myself to be interviewed by American and German journalists. Sadly, you would have had to know German to learn the details of what I had to say at that time about the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Later, Republican Congressman Christopher Shays, who was then chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, invited me to testify on Feb. 14, 2006, so my sworn testimony is on the public record. [See: www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/06214-usls-provance-statment.pdf]
On June 30, 2006, dissatisfied with the Pentagon’s non-responsiveness to requests for information on my situation, the Committee on Government Reform issued a subpoena requiring then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to produce the requested documents by July 14. I heard nothing further. I guess he forgot. I guess Congress forgot, too.
Thanks largely to a keen sense of justice and a good dose of courage on the part of pro bono lawyers and congressional aides, I made it through the next two and a half years of professional limbo, applying my computer skills to picking up trash and performing guard duty. Instead of a prison sentence, I was honorably discharged on Oct. 13, 2006 and began my still-continuing search for a place back in the civilian world.
Producers for Rory Kennedy’s documentary “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” were among the journalists who interviewed me—discreetly—in Germany. On Feb. 12, 2007 I attended a screening of that documentary. What happened there bears telling.
Surreal Event
Walking into the fancy government building to see the documentary proved to be a bizarre experience. Hardly in the door, I saw a one of the guests shaking his head, saying in some wonderment, “The young woman at the front desk greeted me with a cheerful smile; Abu Ghraib? she said. Right this way, please.”
The atmosphere did seem more appropriate for an art show than a documentary on torture. People were dressed to the nines, heartily laughing, and servers with white gloves were walking about with wine and hors d’oeuvres.
I managed to find one other person who was also in the film, former Gen. Janis Karpinski, with whom I shared the distinction of having been reduced in rank because we refused to “go along to get along.”
I had wanted to talk to her ever since the abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light. We’ve been on the same page from the beginning. She seemed happy to meet me as well, but so many others wanted her attention that serious conversation was difficult.
Everyone shuffled into the theater and Gen. Karpinski’s and my presence there was announced briefly during the introductions. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the showing was to be followed by a discussion led by Sen. Edward Kennedy (who was there from the start) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (who arrived only after the introductions).
It was largely because of the interest that Sen. Kennedy took in the Army’s retaliation against me that I escaped the Army’s full wrath for truth telling. And Sen. Graham initially had approached me when he heard of my situation, not even realizing at the time that I was from South Carolina. So I was looking forward to what I expected would be an unusual bipartisan challenge to the practice of torture.
Flashback
When the lights dimmed and the documentary started, I began to be affected more emotionally than I had expected.
It was the words of the other soldiers that touched me most deeply, because I could relate to them; I knew those soldiers on one level or another. I got worried I might not make it through the screening, that I would break down right there.
Ironically, it was my anger at their plight that kept me composed. Everything in the film was all too familiar to me. The soldiers explaining they were just following the orders of their supervisors; the higher-ups vigorously shifting blame from themselves onto soldiers of lesser rank—the whole nine yards.
And to see those Iraqi faces again—the broken hearts and ruined lives of innocent Iraqi citizens detained, abused, tortured. And the systematic cover-up, with the Army investigating itself over and over again, giving the appearance of a “thorough” investigation.
After the film, Senators Kennedy and Graham took seats on the stage to begin their discussion. I was shocked to see it descend into heated debate.
Sen. Graham began saying things that I couldn’t believe I was hearing. He made a complete 180-degree turn on the issue of torture from when I had spoken to him on the phone not long after the Abu Ghraib scandal was exposed.
Now he was portraying Abu Ghraib as a place where only a handful of soldiers resided (you’ve heard of them, the so-called “rotten apples).” I felt betrayed.
Worse still, the only officer Graham saw fit to criticize (he assumed in absentia) was Gen. Karpinski. And he laid it on thick, asserting forcefully that she should have been court-martialed because she was the reason things went awry.
The senator argued that Karpinski (who was responsible for overseeing 17 prisons with military police, most of whom had not been trained in detention operations) should have driven from her headquarters to Abu Ghraib for random middle-of-the-night checks. He then saw fit to contrast her behavior with what Graham described the due diligence he exercised nightly as an Army lawyer in checking the “dormitory.” (sic)
...and sick. Anyone who knows much about Abu Ghraib knows that all kinds of Army brass lived and worked there, and that it was host to visits by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. pro-consul Paul Bremer, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Gen. Geoffrey Miller (in charge of “Gitmo-izing Abu Ghraib), Gen. Barbara Fast, and even National Security Council functionary Frances Townsend.
They were all there. I don’t know how many, if any, saw fit to check the “dormitory.”
Torture Works?
During the discussion/debate, Sen. Graham seemed to be speaking in support of virtually everything that we opposed – and that had been exposed in the documentary – throwing all reason out the window. He dropped a bombshell when he began defending the practice of torture itself, using the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as an example. He cited the “good stuff” gleaned from treating him that way, as if to say, “it works!”
This raised again the question in my mind about just what kind of person professionally tortures somebody, and what kind of mentality would approve of it? (I found myself almost wishing such people could hear the screams—almost, because I would not wish that on my worst enemy.)
The obvious answer is: Sadists. Which is what the administration called the military police in the infamous photographs. And what was seen in them was small stuff compared to what else happened—and continued to happen even after the abuses at Abu Ghraib were exposed.
Benjamin Thompson, a former U.S. Army specialist at Abu Ghraib, has told Reuters that exposure of the scandal “basically diverted everyone’s attention away from anything that was not in the photographs... as long as we didn’t stack people and make pyramids, we were doing a great job.”
This reminds me of my wonderment at President George W. Bush’s public advocacy last fall of the “alternative” interrogation procedures in what clearly is one of his favorite CIA programs. Perhaps better than others I can imagine what has been tucked under the rubric of “alternative” techniques, the alleged success of which the President has advertised and has been picked up in the captive corporate media.
At one point Sen. Graham asked the audience who among us considered Army specialist Joe Darby a hero. Darby was the one who initially gave the Abu Ghraib photos to Army investigators. Pausing just a few seconds, Graham used the momentary silence as a cue to continue talking about how the American people really don’t care about torture.
For me, the worst part is that I have found this to be generally true. It is more convenient for people not to care. By and large, they are far more prepared to accept official explanations than to take the trouble to find out what is really going on. For, if they found out, their consciences might require them to do something about it.
Sen. Graham’s demeanor was downright eerie in the way he chose to relate to the crowd…beaming with a kind of delight and mocking the outrage that he must have seen building.
This reminded me of my experience in Iraq, where I would hear soldiers discussing their abuse of detainees. It was always cast as a humorous thing, and each recounting won the expected—sometimes forced—laugh.
But now I am in Washington, I thought. Has everyone been bitten by the torture bug? I was sickened to watch a senior senator and lawyer flippantly dismiss what happened at Abu Ghraib, and act as though he knew more about the abuses than the people, like me, who were there.
Sadly, Graham is not the first elected official who has become part of the problem rather than the solution.
Audience Unrest
Unrest was spreading in the audience to the point where some were threatened with ejection. People were yelling at Sen. Graham from all over the theater and for a moment I thought a riot might ensue.
But Sen. Kennedy’s response pierced the darkness with the white-hot light of truth. Clearly, he was just as uncomfortable as most of the rest of us at what we had just witnessed, and he spoke in a straightforward way against what is just plain wrong.
For me, his comments came in the nick of time. I was beginning to feel not only betrayed, but a little crazy. Was this really happening? Later, I was happy to be able to shake Sen. Kennedy’s hand as he left the theater.
At the end, producer Rory Kennedy brought a portable microphone to Gen. Karpinski where she sat in the audience and, directing her attention back to the stage, explained to Sen. Graham that Karpinski was present and that it seemed only fair to give her a chance to comment on his remarks about her.
She rose and, in quiet but no uncertain terms, accused Graham and the general officers involved in Abu Ghraib of “cowardice.” Then she noted that as a South Carolinian she intended to work very hard to ensure that he would not be the senior senator beyond January 2009.
As to the merits of his charges against her, Gen. Karpinski revealed that she had actually pressed hard to be court-martialed and to appear before a jury of her peers, to get the whole truth up and out. She explained that the Army refused her request, presumably because a court martial might jeopardize the Pentagon’s attempt to restrict blame to the “few bad apples.”
Graham was initially taken somewhat aback, but he recovered quickly. He offered no apology. Rather, he attempted to trivialize what had just happened with the jovial remark, “Well, I guess I lost your vote!” Smirk. Smirk.
Make that two votes.
Afterwards, it was back to high-society small talk and wine, while I looked for someone to really talk to. A reporter who has been covering the issue from the start sought me out and told me something that made me want to cry.
“You know we’ve talked over the years and I have followed your case, but I just want to tell you that I have found everything you’ve said to me all along to be true.”
For so long people have tried so hard to discredit either me or my testimony. Now the dust had settled for a moment; it was encouraging to know the truth can still stand tall.
I ended up hanging out with Janis Karpinski and later walking her to the Metro station. I gave her a big hug and told her I’d always be her soldier. Then, as she went down the escalator I saluted her, and she returned my salute.
“Thank you,” she said. “Anytime, General!” I replied. Anytime.
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| MSNBC.com |
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - An Australian accused of helping the Taliban fight the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan pleaded guilty Monday to providing material support for terrorism, a step lawyers said would assure his transfer from Guantanamo to a prison in Australia.
David Hicks, 31, was the first of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees to make such a plea at this U.S. Navy base since the first terror suspects were brought here in 2002. On Monday, he also became the first detainee to face prosecution under revised military tribunals set up after the Supreme Court found the Pentagon’s previous system for trying Guantanamo prisoners unconstitutional.
He could be sentenced by the end of the week, military officials said. Defense attorneys said a gag order by the military judge prevented them from discussing details of the plea until a sentence is announced and it could not be immediately determined whether there was a formal plea bargain.
“If I was a betting man, I’d say the odds are good” that Hicks will be home by the end of the year, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals, told reporters after Hicks entered his plea.
In the days leading up to the hearing, defense attorneys said Hicks did not expect a fair trial and was severely depressed and considering a plea deal to end his five-year imprisonment at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
The United States has agreed to let Hicks serve any sentence in Australia.
‘First step’
“This is the first step toward David returning to Australia,” said David McLeod, an Australian attorney for Hicks.
The heavyset Hicks appeared at his hearing wearing a khaki prison jumpsuit. The Muslim convert shaved his beard before his arraignment but kept the long hair that his attorney says he uses to block the constant light in his cell.
His father Terry Hicks had an emotional reunion with his son before the arraignment Monday. But he already had boarded a plane to leave Guantanamo when he was told an evening session would be held and was not in the courtroom when his son entered his pleas.
Hicks’ military attorney, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori, told the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, that his client was pleading guilty to one of two counts of providing material support for terrorism and not guilty to the other. Asked by Kohlmann if this was correct, Hicks said solemnly: “Yes, sir.”
According to the charge sheet, Hicks spent weeks trying to join the fight in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban against invading U.S. forces and their Northern Alliance allies, the charge sheet says, but the Taliban’s lines collapsed barely two hours after he reached the front. He was armed with grenades and an assault rifle and his menial assignments along the way included guarding a tank.
The count he pleaded guilty to says he intentionally provided support to a terror organization involved in hostilities against the United States. He denied the charge that he supported for preparation, or in carrying out, an act of terrorism.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, but Davis has said he would seek a sentence of about 20 years. He said the five years Hicks has spent at Guantanamo could be considered in the ultimate sentence.
The United States is holding about 385 prisoners at Guantanamo. Among them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an al-Qaida member who during a so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunal earlier this month confessed to planning the Sept. 11 attacks and other terror acts. That military panel determined he was an enemy combatant who could later face charges.
Unlike the alleged terrorist mastermind, Hicks has been depicted by the U.S. military in its charge sheet as a minor figure.
Kohlmann, wearing a black robe over his uniform, ordered attorneys to attend a closed session Tuesday in a hilltop courthouse on the base in southeast Cuba to specify the acts to which Hicks is pleading guilty. The judge will also make sure Hicks understands the consequences of the plea, officials said.
A panel of military tribunal members convened for the Hicks case must travel to Guantanamo to approve any sentence, a development that could come this week.
“We’re anticipating in the next few days bringing this to a conclusion,” Davis said.
Outcry in Australia
In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he expected Hicks would return soon to Australia, where an outcry over his continued detention has cost Prime Minister John Howard support ahead of elections due this year.
“I am pleased for everybody’s sake that this saga ... has come to a conclusion,” Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
But Sen. Bob Brown, leader of the minor opposition Greens party, said Hicks made the plea so he could get out of Guantanamo Bay and his guilt would remain in doubt.
“He’s pleaded guilty but under circumstances that wouldn’t hold up in an Australian court and that debate will fly home with Hicks,” Brown said.
The plea announcement marked a dramatic conclusion to the first hearing under revised military tribunals.
Defense lawyers and human rights groups say the new system, approved by the U.S. Congress last year, is also flawed because it does not offer the same protections as U.S. courts.
“In a narrow sense, David Hicks was not legally coerced today to issue a plea, but he was operating in the background of a highly coercive system that has held him for five years and did little today to restore his faith ... in the legitimacy of the system,” said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch.
At the first session in Monday’s hearing, Hicks asked for more lawyers to help defend him, but Kohlmann instead ordered two civilian attorneys to leave the defense table, leaving the defendant with one attorney.
Kohlmann said the two civilian lawyers, including a Defense Department attorney, were not authorized to represent Hicks.
One of the lawyers, Joshua Dratel, said he refused to sign an agreement to abide by tribunal rules because he was concerned the provisions did not allow him to meet with his client in private.
Scolded by judge
“I’m shocked because I just lost another lawyer,” Hicks said after Dratel’s departure, drawing a scolding from the judge for interrupting as he explained the reasoning for removing the lawyers.
Mori challenged Kohlmann’s impartiality, arguing that his participation in the previous round of military trials that the Supreme Court last year found to be illegal created the appearance of bias.
A challenge of the reconstituted tribunal system is pending before the Supreme Court. Lawyers for detainees have asked the high court to step in again and guarantee that the prisoners can challenge their confinement in U.S. courts.
Lawmakers have also questioned the detainees’ lack of access to U.S. courts.
KSM was bound to a stiff wooden plank at a secret CIA black-site prison. Interrogators tilted one end of the platform so that his head was several inches below his feet. A rag was fixed in his mouth and cellophane was firmly wrapped over his face.
Slowly, water was poured over his mouth until he began to gag and lurch. Seconds before he blacked out, interrogators ripped off the plastic and pulled the rag from his mouth, allowing him to briefly catch his breath. After 2 1/2 minutes on the waterboard, CIA officials said he was "begging to confess". He admitted to 31 different plots - nearly every act of terrorism against the US since the early 1990s.
While his hand in 9/11 has been independently confirmed, his other claims are less believable. Former CIA field officer Robert Baer told Time: "(KSM) is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimises KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated."
Pearl's father told ABC News in the US the facts "don't match (KSM's) story". Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who knew Pearl well, said: "Anyone who saw the tape of Danny's murder could confess to those details." She added: "From everyone I've talked to in Danny's family there isn't closure ... there's not convincing evidence that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the killer."
KSM has also confessed to attempting to bomb the US's Plaza Bank headquarters prior to his arrest in March 2003. "I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the new (or second) wave of attacks against ... Plaza Bank, Washington state," he said during his recent Guantanamo tribunal hearing. This claim is also dubious. Plaza Bank was founded in early 2006.
Today, most of KSM's "facts" are inseparable from fiction. Sadly this was avoidable. Rather than stripping him naked, holding him in a dark cold cell for months on end, blasting loud music and strobe lights at him, threatening violence against his two sons, and nearly drowning him, US officials should have used non-abusive techniques proven to build trust. These methods yield reliable evidence.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the US domestic law enforcement agency that must obtain non-coerced evidence that stands up in US courts. Over time, the FBI has developed an array of non-violent interrogation techniques. FBI investigators methodically engage their suspects in conversation, supply incentives, then slowly vet and cross-check the information their suspects reveal. Rather than shave a Muslim's beard and abuse his Koran, they give devout men sweet figs and allow them to pray.
The FBI used rapport-building techniques before 9/11 to cultivate relationships with former al-Qa'ida operatives and unravel attacks such as the 1998 East African US embassy bombings.
"FBI agents, as officers of the court, know what the rules are," said former FBI interrogator Jack Cloonan to The American Prospect. "We have procedures to follow. We firmly believe in this thing called due process, and do not see it as something passe or something that should be seen as an impediment."
After 9/11, FBI methods were sidelined in favour of the CIA's tougher techniques. The decision to drop FBI methods will haunt the US for decades. By using FBI rapport-building methods - not CIA tortures - officials could have come closer to unlocking the truth from suspects such as KSM. According to Yosri Fouda, the only journalist to interview KSM before his 2003 capture, he was a "a power-hungry mastermind" who lived for the spotlight. Likewise, the 9/11 Commission report described KSM as a flamboyant character prone to exaggeration. Given KSM's boastful personality, officials should have known that torture - and its say-anything-to-stop-the-pain qualities - would be the worst way to get accurate intelligence.
By torturing him, the Bush administration slammed shut what could have been a window into the al-Qa'ida terror network. Now, the truth will remain hidden from both the US Government and from KSM's victims.
Michael Otterman is a visiting scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Sydney and author of American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib (Melbourne University Press).
WASHINGTON, March 22 — In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.
Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.
Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.
As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department continue to analyze options for the detention of terrorism suspects.
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
