History > 2007 > USA > Terrorism (II)

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

shortly after his capture

during a raid in Pakistan in March, 2003.

Photograph: Associated Press

NYT    March 14, 2007

Suspected Leader of Attacks on 9/11 Is Said to Confess

NYT        15.3.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15gitmo.html

Australian Gitmo detainee gets 9 months

30.3.2007
AP
USA Today

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — A U.S. military judge accepted an Australian's guilty plea to supporting terrorism in a deal that will send the Guantanamo detainee to jail at home for less than a year, but requires silence about any alleged abuse while in custody.

David Hicks, whose charge carried a maximum penalty of life in prison, had his sentence capped at nine months on Friday by part of the plea agreement that was kept secret from a panel of military officers who recommended a longer sentence.

In the first conviction at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II, the 31-year-old kangaroo skinner and confessed Taliban-allied gunman told Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann that he agreed to plead guilty because prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him.

Speaking in a deep voice, Hicks said he faced damning evidence taken from "notes by interrogators" that he had been shown.

The former outback cowboy, who acknowledged aiding al-Qaeda during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, showed little emotion as he confirmed to the judge that he conducted surveillance on the former U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

The panel of officers flown to Guantanamo for sentencing Hicks deliberated for two hours before approving a sentence of seven years — what they had been told was the maximum allowed under the plea deal. After they left the courtroom, Kohlmann revealed all but nine months would be suspended.

Asked if the outcome was what he was told to expect, Hicks said, "Yes, it was."

The plea deal will send Hicks to a prison in Australia within 60 days. His sentence begins immediately, but commanders of the U.S. military prison where he has been held for five years say there will be no change in his detention conditions before his departure.

"I don't think David's going to be able to show any real emotion until he gets off the plane in Australia," said his lawyer, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori. "I don't think until he leaves here will it be a reality, and that's why I hope it's as soon as possible."

Hicks expressed regret for his actions in a statement read by Mori, who described his client as an immature adventurer who had tried to enlist in the Australian army but was rejected for lack of education.

"He apologizes to his family, he apologizes to Australia and he apologizes to the United States," Mori said.

The lead prosecutor, Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail, said Hicks deserved the maximum punishment for betraying the freedoms he was raised with in Australia. He argued al-Qaeda gave him advanced training because his Western features made him a valuable operative.

"Today in this courtroom we are on the front line of the war on terrorism, face to face with the enemy," said Chenail, who referred to Hicks by his alias "Muhammad Dawood."

"Muhammad Dawood will always be a threat unless he changes his beliefs and his ideology," he said.

Under his plea deal, Hicks stipulated that he has "never been illegally treated by a person or persons while in the custody of the U.S. government," Kohlmann said. In the statement read by Mori, Hicks thanked U.S. service members for their professionalism during his imprisonment.

Furthermore, the judge said, the agreement bars Hicks from suing the U.S. government for alleged abuse, forfeits any right to appeal his conviction and imposes a gag order that prevents him speaking with news media for a year from his sentencing date.

Hicks previously reported being beaten and deprived of sleep at the prison erected for terrorism suspects held at this U.S. Navy base.

Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union suggest the government aimed to prevent the release of damaging allegations.

"If Mr. Hicks' treatment was not illegal, he should be allowed to describe it so the world can judge for itself," he said.

U.S. officials have been accused by human rights groups of permitting torture of detainees in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

Hicks, who was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001, entered a guilty plea Monday night but he was not formally convicted until Kohlmann accepted his plea at Friday's session.

Australia's conservative prime minister, John Howard, who supports the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, has faced growing pressure for Hicks, one of the first detainees to arrive at the camp in January 2002, to be returned home ahead of elections later this year.

Defense attorneys secured the plea agreement through negotiations with "convening authority" Susan Crawford, the official appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to oversee the tribunals, according to the chief prosecutor Air Force Col. Morris Davis.

Mori, Hicks' defense attorney, declined to comment on any role the Australian government played in the discussions.

Critics said the pace of developments for Hicks, the first detainee to face prosecution under new tribunals at Guantanamo, suggested he was benefiting from political pressure.

"Mr. Hicks' military commission was like a train hurtling toward judgment," said Hina Shamsi of Human Rights First. "It was propelled by political considerations of a U.S. ally and nothing was allowed to stand in its way."

Davis, whose office plans to prosecute about 75 Guantanamo detainees, said politics did not influence their treatment of Hicks' case and that he was satisfied with the fairness of the first completed commission. But he said he hoped Hicks' short sentence would not set a precedent.

"I think David Hicks is very fortunate he's getting a second chance," he told reporters. "I think that he's learned a lesson from this and he'll make the most of that second chance."

At the hearing, Hicks wore a gray suit with a maroon tie, his hair newly shorn. He previously wore a tan prison uniform and his hair hung below his shoulders. His lawyers said he had kept his hair long to help block out the round-the-clock lighting in his cell.

Hicks had also been charged with supporting terrorist acts. That count was dismissed as part of the agreement.

Under the deal, he will also be required to cooperate with U.S. and Australian authorities to share his knowledge of al-Qaeda and a militant Pakistani group, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which helped him travel to Afghanistan to attend terrorist training camps.

"Any failure to cooperate with U.S. or Australian law enforcement may delay your release from confinement," Kohlmann warned.

Another condition calls for Hicks to hand over to the Australian government any proceeds from selling the rights to his life story.

In the days before his arraignment Monday, Hicks' lawyers said their client was severely depressed and eager to leave Guantanamo. He spent the last few months alone in a small, solid-walled cell. His father, Terry Hicks, suggested he pleaded guilty only to escape the isolated prison.

Hicks is the only detainee who has been formally charged under a new military tribunal system. Prosecutors say they plan to charge as many as 80 of the 385 men now held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which in June struck down the previous military tribunal system at Guantanamo as unconstitutional, is considering a challenge to the revised tribunals. Some members of Congress have vowed to repeal the law that eliminates detainees' access to U.S. courts.

Australian Gitmo detainee gets 9 months, UT, 30.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-30-guantanamo-hicks_N.htm

Australian marks

first Guantanamo conviction

30.3.2007
AP
USA Today

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — An Australian detainee held for five years at Guantanamo Bay was found guilty Friday of providing material support for terrorism, marking the first conviction at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II.

David Hicks, a 31-year-old Muslim convert, faces a prison sentence of up to seven years under a plea agreement revealed Friday that also requires Hicks to drop any claims of mistreatment by the U.S. government since he was captured in Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo Bay, said the judge, Marine Corps Col. Ralph Kohlmann.

The plea agreement also calls for an unknown portion of the sentence to be suspended.

Hicks had pleaded guilty to the charge Monday night but was not convicted until Kohlmann accepted his plea during Friday's session.

The agreement calls for Hicks to be returned to Australia within 60 days of his sentencing, which is expected within days. The U.S. government had previously agreed to let him serve any sentence in Australia.

Hicks, 31, was dressed for the hearing in a gray suit with a dark tie and with his hair newly cut short. The former outback cowboy and kangaroo skinner who aided al-Qaeda during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan showed little emotion as he confirmed to the judge that he conducted surveillance on the former American Embassy in Kabul.

Hicks could have been sentenced to life in prison. He had been also charged with supporting terrorist acts but that count was dismissed as part of the agreement.

Hicks, who had complained of abuse in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, agrees as part of the deal that he has "never been illegally treated by a person or persons while in the custody of the U.S. government," Kohlmann said.

He will also be required to cooperate with U.S. and Australian law enforcement authorities or risk having his sentence in Australia extended.

Another condition of the plea agreement calls for him to hand over to the Australian government any proceeds from telling the story of his activities in Afghanistan and his capture.

    Australian marks first Guantanamo conviction, UT, 30.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-30-gitmo-hicks_N.htm

Report: Some Unjustly Labeled Terrorists

March 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:37 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Businesses checking customers' names against a Treasury Department terrorist watch list are sometimes denying services to innocent people, according to a report released Tuesday by civil rights lawyers.

The 250-page list, posted publicly on a Treasury Department Web site, is being used by credit bureaus, health insurers and car dealerships, as well as employers and landlords, according to the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The list includes some of the world's most common names, such as Gonzalez, Lopez, Ali, Hussein, Abdul, Lucas and Gibson, and companies are often unsure how to root out mismatches. Some turn consumers away rather than risk penalties of up to $10 million and 30 years in prison for doing business with someone on the list, the group said.

''Much of (this screening) is overbroad and unnecessary, and increasingly denies Americans services, livelihoods, and their good name based on opaque determinations and administrative fiat,'' the report said.

One California couple, Tom and Nanci Kubbany, were denied a loan to buy a home when his credit report came back with an alert saying his middle name, Hassan, was an alias for one of Saddam Hussein's sons.

In another case, a Sacramento man could only collect money wired to him through Western Union after providing his ID, Social Security number and place of birth, because his first and middle names, Mohammed Ali, were on the list, the report said.

The screening may be legitimate in some cases, the lawyers acknowledged, but they encouraged greater government regulation to prevent ensnaring those who simply share a name with a listed individual.

Calls and e-mail messages seeking comment from the Treasury Department were not immediately returned Tuesday.

------

On the Net:

Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/   

Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area: http://www.lccr.com/ 

    Report: Some Unjustly Labeled Terrorists, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorist-List.html

Plea of Guilty From Detainee in Guantánamo

March 27, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, March 26 — In the first conviction of a Guantánamo detainee before a military commission, an Australian who was trained by Al Qaeda pleaded guilty here Monday to providing material support to a terrorist organization.

The guilty plea by the detainee, David Hicks, was the first under a new military commission law passed by Congress in the fall after the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration’s first system for trying inmates at Guantánamo.

The guilty plea is sure to be seen by administration supporters as an affirmation of its efforts to detain and try terrorism suspects here, although the government’s detention policies still face significant legal and political challenges.

The plea by Mr. Hicks came after an extraordinary day in a pristine red, white and blue courtroom here. Earlier the military judge had surprised the courtroom with unexpected rulings that two of Mr. Hicks’s three lawyers would not be permitted to participate in the proceedings, leaving only Maj. Michael D. Mori of the Marine Corps at the defense table.

After several acrimonious sessions in which Major Mori claimed that the judge, Colonel Ralph H. Kohlmann of the Marines, was biased, the judge insisted that he was impartial and the hearings came to a close.

But in the evening Judge Kohlmann called the court back into session, saying he had been approached by lawyers who said Mr. Hicks was now prepared to enter a plea.

Mr. Hicks, a stocky 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner who has been held at the prison for five years, was accompanied by guards to a defense table, and Major Mori said he was now prepared to plead guilty to one of two specifications in the charges against him.

That charge described Mr. Hicks’s stay in a Qaeda training camp where, it said, he learned kidnapping techniques and was trained in how to fight in an urban environment. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Hicks, who was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, had never shot at Americans there but that he had taken part in other activities, including collecting intelligence on the American embassy there.

Australia officials, who have described Mr. Hicks as a “lost soul” and “soldier wannabe,” had been pressing the United States to resolve the case, and a prosecutor said Mr. Hicks would probably be back there within a year. Major Mori had waged an unusual campaign to rally support for Mr. Hicks in Australia.

During the plea, Judge Kohlmann led Mr. Hicks through a brief session in which he asked whether the earlier dispute about whether his lawyers were authorized to participate in the proceedings had influenced his decision to plead guilty.

“No, sir,” Mr. Hicks, dressed in a tan prison uniform, answered calmly several times.

The road to Mr. Hicks’s guilty plea was long and fraught with legal and diplomatic strife.

The Pentagon had originally hoped to begin trying detainees in the spring of 2002, but the Bush administration’s system for military tribunals has been the subject of lengthy legal challenges. The Supreme Court struck down the administration’s first plan for tribunals last June, ruling that a principal flaw was that the president had established them without Congressional authorization.

In October, Congress enacted a new law providing for military tribunals, but lawyers for detainees and other critics have challenged it as establishing a trial system that does not afford defendants the same protections as civilian courts. Critics note, for example, that the rules allow for the use of evidence obtained by coercion.

In addition to the legal challenges, the policy of holding “enemy combatants” without charges for as long as five years has drawn international protest, including from allies of the United States.

The Hicks case has drawn particular criticism in Australia, where Mr. Hicks, a high school dropout, turned to Islam after unsuccessfully trying to join the army and then joining an evangelical church.

On Monday, after Mr. Hicks’s guilty plea, the judge adjourned the case for further proceedings this week, evidently so that the lawyers could settle on what specific acts he may acknowledge. The sentence will be decided by a five-member military commission.

Lawyers have suggested that he might serve out the remainder of any sentence in Australia. Asked whether Mr. Hicks might be back in Australia by the end of the year, a military prosecutor said, “The odds are pretty good.”

Mr. Hicks’s arraignment Monday was the first public proceeding under the new tribunal rules. The hearing quickly turned fractious, especially after the judge disqualified the two lawyers.

Mr. Hicks appeared startled as his long-awaited day before the tribunal turned into something a free-for-all, rather than the orderly arraignment that had been anticipated.

“I am shocked because I just lost another lawyer,” Mr. Hicks said, after the judge said that one of his two civilian defense lawyers, Joshua L. Dratel, had not complied with the judge’s rules for handling a military commission case. Mr. Dratel, a well-known lawyer in Manhattan, has been a central player in the Hicks case.

“Right now you do not represent Mr. Hicks,” said Judge Kohlmann, the presiding judge of the new military commission organization, who assigned himself to the Hicks case.

Referring to the Bush administration’s previous plan for military commission trials struck down by the Supreme Court, Mr. Dratel said in the courtroom before he left that Monday’s events showed that the new commission process was as problem-plagued as the old one.

“You cannot predict from one day to the next what the rules are,” Mr. Dratel said.

The judge rejected each assertion that he was acting arbitrarily or was biased. In an even tone, but with a flushed face that suggested irritation, he methodically moved through the day’s events, turning aside each defense complaint. The defense claims, he said “do not raise matters that would cause a reasonable person to question my impartiality.”

Even before Monday’s hearing, the case against Mr. Hicks had been marked by an unusual public dispute between Mr. Hicks’s military lawyer, who has openly attacked the tribunals, and the military prosecutor.

And Monday, Major Mori was also critical of the judge, saying that some of his rulings seemed aimed at helping the government prove its case against Mr. Hicks. Major Mori said some rulings appeared to be “fixing the rules to fix their mistakes.”

Judge Kohlmann said his rulings had been impartial, aimed only at assuring that the case moved ahead professionally and quickly.

New Detainee at Prison Camp

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) — American authorities have transferred a man suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks in East Africa to the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, the Pentagon said Monday.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the man, Abdul Malik, had admitted involvement in a 2002 attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, that killed more than a dozen people, and in the attempted downing of an Israeli airliner near Mombasa.

“He came into U.S. custody this year,” Mr. Whitman said. “He was picked up in East Africa.”

Mr. Whitman would not provide the nationality of the suspect.

    Plea of Guilty From Detainee in Guantánamo, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/washington/27gitmo.html?hp

Detainee’s Lawyers Seek Removal of Prosecutor

March 26, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, March 25 — As American officials prepare for the reopening on Monday of the military commissions that will try some of the detainees here, a dispute over the proper role of military defense lawyers in the planned war crimes trials is intensifying.

Defense lawyers for the Australian detainee David Hicks have filed a motion to disqualify the chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis. In the proceeding Monday, Mr. Hicks, 31, is to be the first of the Guantánamo detainees to be formally arraigned under a Military Commissions Act passed by Congress last year.

The defense lawyers claimed in a motion that Colonel Davis violated rules of professional conduct with a blistering attack this month on Mr. Hicks’s military defense lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori of the United States Marine Corps. They asked that Colonel Davis, an Air Force lawyer who supervises the Guantánamo prosecutors, be removed from any role in the Hicks case.

This month, Colonel Davis suggested that Mr. Hicks’s military lawyer, Major Mori, might have violated the law with public criticism of the military commissions that has included calling them kangaroo courts.

Colonel Davis was combative on Sunday, saying, “I did nothing wrong,” and saying that he was simply trying to define the boundaries of appropriate conduct for military lawyers in the commissions process.

Defense lawyers and American lawyers who have been following the dispute say the public battle over the role of military lawyers could shape how aggressive other military defense lawyers will be as the commissions’ proceedings accelerate.

An Australian lawyer who is part of the defense team, David H. B. McLeod, declined to discuss in detail the misconduct accusations. “The public will make up its own mind about Colonel Davis,” he said.

But Colonel Davis suggested that his public criticism of Major Mori was part of a more combative public stance by the Guantánamo prosecutors. “They’ve done a very effective job of telling their story, and we’ve done a very poor job of telling ours” in the past, Colonel Davis said.

Major Mori has suggested that Colonel Davis was trying to intimidate him after seven visits to Australia that helped spur support for the Hicks case, which has become a cause in Australia and an irritant in American-Australian relations.

The prosecutors here also confirmed reports Sunday that in January they had discussed the possibility of a guilty plea by Mr. Hicks, presumably in exchange for an agreement that Mr. Hicks would be able to serve his time in Australia or be freed after serving more than five years as a detainee here.

Against the backdrop of growing pressure from Australia to get Mr. Hicks’s case moving, his arraignment is to be the first under the military commissions law passed after the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration’s plan for trying Guantánamo detainees last June.

Because of delays from litigation over the commissions and the complexities in setting up the commission process there is some urgency in the administration to show that the commissions process can work. “The administration would like to at least get the machinery rolling,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a military law expert in Washington. The Hicks case, he said, “is to show that this plane will fly.”

Mr. Hicks is charged with providing material support for terrorism. He trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but officials have said he did not fire any shots in the war there.

There was initially broad hostility to him in Australia, but a movement has built support for Mr. Hicks, a onetime kangaroo skinner. Some Australian officials have characterized him as more of a “lost soul” or a “soldier wannabe” than a hardened terrorist. The movement was spurred in part by Major Mori, who has become something of an Australian media celebrity.

The dispute at the center of the current maneuvering began this month when Colonel Davis criticized Major Mori in an Australian newspaper. He said that “in the U.S. it would not be tolerated having a U.S. marine in uniform actively inserting himself into the political process.”

He also suggested that Major Mori might have violated a provision of military law that makes it a crime for a military officer to use “contemptuous words” about the president, vice president, secretary of defense or other top public officials.

    Detainee’s Lawyers Seek Removal of Prosecutor, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/world/26gitmo.html?hp

9/11 remains possibly used to pave roads

Sat Mar 24, 2007 1:14AM EDT
Reuters
By Edith Honan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Debris that may have contained bits of bone from victims of the World Trade Center attacks was used to fill potholes and pave city roads, according to court papers filed on Friday.

The charge was made in an affidavit filed in Manhattan federal court in an ongoing case filed in 2005 by family members of those killed in the attacks against the city. They say the city did not do enough to search for remains, denying victims a proper burial.

Eric Beck, a construction worker employed at the Fresh Kills landfill in the borough of Staten Island, where the rubble was taken after the Twin Towers fell, said in his affidavit that the process of sifting through the debris was rushed.

Beck said he saw sanitation workers removing small pieces of debris containing possible bone fragments and loading them "onto tractors, and using it to pave roads and fill in potholes, dips and ruts."

Kimberly Miu, a spokeswoman for the city's legal office, declined to comment on the latest filing, saying it would be inappropriate to talk about a pending motion.

The WTC Families for Proper Burial, the group that filed the suit, has also battled the city over how to honor the 2,749 people who died in the attacks on the Twin Towers.

Some relatives of victims have opposed any effort to rebuild on Ground Zero, calling it sacred ground and saying it would disrespect those who perished there.

Construction of the planned memorial and skyscraper has repeatedly been delayed, in part due to concerns expressed by victims' families.

The remains of about 40 percent of the victims were never recovered, and hundreds of bone fragments have been discovered in and around Ground Zero in the last six months, the lawsuit says.

    9/11 remains possibly used to pave roads, R, 24.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2341843920070324

New to Job, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo

March 23, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

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.

The base at Guantánamo holds about 385 prisoners, among them 14 senior leaders of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who were transferred to it last year from secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Under the Pentagon’s current plans, some prisoners, including Mr. Mohammed, will face war crimes charges under military trials that could begin later this year.

“The policy remains unchanged,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Even so, one senior administration official who favors the closing of the facility said the battle might be renewed.

“Let’s see what happens to Gonzales,” that official said, referring to speculation that Mr. Gonzales will be forced to step down, or at least is significantly weakened, because of the political uproar over the dismissal of United States attorneys. “I suspect this one isn’t over yet.”

Details of the internal discussions on Guantánamo were described by senior officials from three departments or agencies of the executive branch, including officials who support moving rapidly to close Guantánamo and those who do not. One official made it clear that he was willing to discuss the internal deliberations in part because of Mr. Gonzales’s current political weakness. The senior officials discussed the issue on ground rules of anonymity because it entailed confidential conversations.

The officials said Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice expressed their concerns about Guantánamo in conversations with Mr. Bush and others, including Mr. Gonzales, beginning in January and onward. One widely discussed alternative would move the prisoners to military brigs in the United States, where they would remain in the custody of the Pentagon and would be subject to trial under military proceedings. There is widespread agreement, however, that moving any detainees or legal proceedings to American territory could bring significant complications.

Some administration lawyers are deeply reluctant to move terrorism suspects to American soil because it could increase their constitutional and statutory rights — and invite an explosion of civil litigation. Guantánamo was chosen because it was an American military facility but not on American soil.

Placing the detainees in military brigs on United States territory might fend off some of those challenges. The solution may eventually require a new act of Congress establishing legal standing for the detainees and new rules for their trial and incarceration if brought to the United States.

Mr. Gates’s criticism of Guantánamo marks a sharply different approach than the one taken by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld. It also demonstrated a new dynamic in the administration, in which Mr. Gates was teaming up with Ms. Rice, who often was at loggerheads with Mr. Rumsfeld. The State Department has long been concerned about the adverse foreign-policy impact of housing prisoners at Guantánamo.

In the end, Mr. Gates did succeed in killing plans to build a $100 million courthouse and detention complex at Guantánamo, after he argued that the large and expensive project would leave the impression of a long-lasting American detainee operation there and that the money could be more effectively spent elsewhere by the Pentagon. Mr. Gates approved a far more modest facility at one-tenth of the cost.

The setback in his effort to close Guantánamo was described by senior Pentagon officials as Mr. Gates’s only significant failure during an effort in his first three months in office to shift course from policies pursued by Mr. Rumsfeld. The outcome suggests that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales remain committed to a detention plan that has become one of the most controversial elements of the administration’s counterterrorism program.

Mr. Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lee Anne McBride, said via e-mail that “we don’t discuss internal deliberations.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he ultimately wants to shutter the detention operations at Guantánamo. But he has also said it is not possible to do so any time soon.

State Department and Pentagon officials have said that even close allies are uncomfortable with American policies toward Guantánamo, making it more difficult in some cases to coordinate efforts in counterterrorism, intelligence and law enforcement.

More than 390 detainees have been transferred abroad from the Guantánamo facility since it was opened amid global controversy in 2002. Last year, 111 detainees were transferred out, and 12 more have been this year. About 20 of those repatriated to home countries have been picked up again in sweeps of terrorism suspects or have been killed or captured in battle, Pentagon officials say.

Many countries do not want to take back the detainees held at Guantánamo. Some home nations will not guarantee that returning detainees would be assured humane treatment and fair trials, while others will not guarantee that detainees viewed by American officials as still dangerous would not be set free.

Mr. Gates’s challenge has sent a ripple through the White House, because it forced officials to confront the question of whether Mr. Bush was actually moving to fulfill his stated desire to close the detention facility. Officials who advocate shutting down Guantánamo, including some at the Pentagon and the State Department, said an underlying motivation of those who want to keep the center open is that closing it would be seen as a public admission of an incorrect policy — something the Bush administration is loath to do.

Neither Mr. Gates nor Ms. Rice have made public their comments to Mr. Bush. “Nobody is going to be insubordinate with the president,” said one senior administration official involved in the discussions. “You know the saying: ‘One war, one team.’ ”

But in a recent Pentagon news conference, Mr. Gates did speak about his concerns over Guantánamo in general terms.

“I think that Guantánamo has become symbolic, whether we like it or not, for many around the world,” Mr. Gates said at the time. “The problem is that we have a certain number of the detainees there who often by their own confessions are people who if released would come back to attack the United States. There are others that we would like to turn back to their home countries, but their home countries don’t want them.”

He said officials “are trying to address the problem of how do we reduce the numbers at Guantánamo and then what do you do with the relatively limited number that would be irresponsible to release.”

“And I would tell you that we’re wrestling with those questions right now,” he continued.

In an interview on Thursday, Gordon England, the deputy secretary of defense who is Mr. Gates’s point man on detention issues, suggested that the long-term answer to Guantánamo might be creating some new international legal structure or set of multilateral agreements to manage captured members of global terrorist organizations.

“I don’t know the alternative unless the international community, frankly, develops an alternative,” Mr. England said. “It is not a U.S. problem. It is an international problem to be dealt with.”

Mr. England said American government officials had “an extraordinarily high degree of confidence from the information available” that many Guantánamo detainees were “going to damage the country, so you just can’t let them go.”

“So,” he added, “this is difficult. I know it’s onerous. I know there are a lot of questions about it. We deal with it the best we can. But at the end of the day, we are not going to put the country or our citizens in jeopardy.”

    New to Job, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo, NYT, 23.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/washington/23gitmo.html?hp

Qaeda Operative Confesses Role in Cole Bombing

March 20, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

A top operative of Al Qaeda has acknowledged his role in the bombings of two American embassies in Africa in 1998 and in the attack on the destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000, according to a hearing transcript released yesterday by the Pentagon.

The operative, Walid bin Attash, who is also known as Khallad, made his statement, according to the transcript, to a combatant status review tribunal on March 12 at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The tribunal will determine whether Mr. bin Attash has been properly designated an enemy combatant, which would make him subject to indefinite military detention. He may also be charged with war crimes before a separate tribunal known as a military commission.

During the status review tribunal, an official whose name was not released asked Mr. bin Attash to outline his role in the three attacks.

“Many roles,” Mr. bin Attash said, according to the transcript and apparently speaking through a translator. “I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives. I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation. Buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation.”

He added that he had been with Osama bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, at the time of the attack on the Cole.

“And at the time of the embassy attacks?” an unidentified member of the tribunal asked.

“I was in Karachi meeting the operator, the guy that basically did the operation a few hours before the operation took place,” Mr. bin Attash replied.

There was no indication in the transcript that Mr. bin Attash, one of 14 “high value” detainees transferred to Guantánamo from secret C.I.A. prisons last year, was speaking under duress. In contrast to a hearing involving Khalid Shaikh Mohammed released last week, there was no indication that Mr. bin Attash claims he was mistreated while in C.I.A. custody.

The broad outlines of Mr. bin Attash’s admissions were consistent with the findings of the Sept. 11 commission and other sources, but it is possible that Mr. bin Attash misstated or inflated his role.

The hearing last week lasted about a half-hour, according to the transcript. It included a presentation of a two-page summary of unclassified evidence against Mr. bin Attash. The tribunal indicated that it would also hear classified evidence in a closed hearing.

The unclassified summary said that Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali, who received a life sentence from a federal court in New York in 2001 for his role in the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, had received instructions from Mr. bin Attash. It was not clear, however, whether the “operator” Mr. bin Attash referred to last week was Mr. al-’Owhali. The embassy bombings killed 224 people.

The summary also said that statements, notebooks, forged documents and telephone numbers linked Mr. bin Attash to the attack on the Cole. Seventeen American sailors were killed in the attack and 39 wounded.

Under the rules of the status review tribunals, detainees are not entitled to lawyers. They are aided instead by personal representatives provided by the military. According to Mr. bin Attash’s representative, an Air Force major whose name was not released, Mr. bin Attash did not dispute the essence of the charges.

Referring to an interview in February, the representative said, according to the transcript: “Facts of the operations are correct and his involvements are correct, but the details are not correct. Detainee did not wish to correct the details.”

Mr. bin Attash himself nonetheless addressed the tribunal to take issue with some details.

For instance, the summary said that a notebook seized from another Qaeda operative contained a phone number that was also stored in a phone belonging to Mr. bin Attash, who was seized in Pakistan in 2003. Mr. bin Attash said he did not have a phone at the time.

John Sifton, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, questioned why the government had shifted tactics in responding to the embassy bombings. Four men were convicted for their roles in those bombings in federal court in Manhattan in 2001.

“What does it mean to treat something as a crime in 1998 but as part of armed conflict in 2007?” Mr. Sifton asked.

Margot Williams contributed reporting.

    Qaeda Operative Confesses Role in Cole Bombing, NYT, 20.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/washington/20cole.html

Hussein Hamdan, 19,

repeatedly slashed his forearms

“just to make a statement.”

He says he wants to wage jihad against “Jews or Americans.”

The New York Times

  A New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks on U.S.        NYT        16.3.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/world/middleeast/16jihad.html
 

Senators say

U.S. should examine detainee treatment

Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:32PM EDT
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators who observed the military hearing of an Al Qaeda suspect at the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said on Friday the man's allegations of mistreatment should be investigated.

"To do otherwise would reflect poorly on our nation," said Sens. Carl Levin and Lindsey Graham in a statement.

The suspect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, claimed responsibility during the hearing for the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon, as well as direct involvement in other attacks and plots.

The tribunal "was presented with a written statement from (Mohammed) alleging mistreatment during his captivity prior to arriving at Guantanamo," said the senators.

"Allegations of prisoner mistreatment must be taken seriously and properly investigated."

A Pakistani national, Mohammed is among 14 prisoners identified by U.S. authorities as "high-value" terrorism suspects and transferred to Guantanamo last year from secret CIA prisons abroad.

Levin and Graham said they watched the proceeding on closed circuit television in a room adjoining the hearing site. The hearing was held on March 10 to determine whether Mohammed meets the U.S. definition of an enemy combatant.

Levin, a Michigan Democrat, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, is a committee member.

The president of the three-member military panel has said Mohammed's statement would be reported for "any investigation that may be appropriate."

    Senators say U.S. should examine detainee treatment, R, 16.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1642544820070317

A New Face of Jihad

Vows Attacks on U.S.

March 16, 2007
The New York Times
By SOUAD MEKHENNET and MICHAEL MOSS

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs.

In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. “Allah-u akbar,” the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall.

The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda.

He has solid terrorist credentials. A former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia who was killed last summer, Mr. Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia along with Mr. Zarqawi in the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, Laurence Foley. Just four months after arriving here from Syria, Mr. Abssi has a militia that intelligence officials estimate at 150 men and an arsenal of explosives, rockets and even an antiaircraft gun.

During a recent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Abssi displayed his makeshift training facility and his strident message that America needed to be punished for its presence in the Islamic world. “The only way to achieve our rights is by force,” he said. “This is the way America deals with us. So when the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave.”

Mr. Abssi’s organization is the image of what intelligence officials have warned is the re-emergence of Al Qaeda. Shattered after 2001, the organization founded by Osama bin Laden is now reforming as an alliance of small groups around the world that share a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam but have developed their own independent terror capabilities, these officials have said. If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has acknowledged directing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a string of other terror plots, represents the previous generation of Qaeda leaders, Mr. Abssi and others like him represent the new.

American and Middle Eastern intelligence officials say he is viewed as a dangerous militant who can assemble small teams of operatives with acute military skill.

“Guys like Abssi have the capability on the ground that Al Qaeda has lost and is looking to tap into,” said an American intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr. Abssi has shown himself to be a canny operator. Despite being on terrorism watch lists around the world, he has set himself up in a Palestinian refugee camp where, because of Lebanese politics, he is largely shielded from the government. The camp also gives him ready access to a pool of recruits, young Palestinians whose militant vision has evolved from the struggle against Israel to a larger Islamic cause.

Intelligence officials here say that he has also exploited another source of manpower: they estimate he has 50 militants from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries fresh from fighting with the insurgency in Iraq.

The officials say they fear that he is seeking to establish himself as a terror leader on the order of Mr. Zarqawi. “He is trying to fill a void and do so in a high-profile manner that will attract the attention of supporters,” the American intelligence official said.

Mr. Abssi has recently taken on a communications adviser, Abu al-Hassan, 24, a journalism student who dropped out of college to join Fatah al Islam. His current project: a newsmagazine aimed at attracting recruits.

The arc of Mr. Abssi’s life shows the allure of Al Qaeda for Arab militants. Born in Palestine, from which he and family were evicted by the Israelis, Mr. Abssi, 51, said he stopped studying medicine to fly planes for Yasir Arafat. He then staged attacks on Israel from his own base in Syria. After he was imprisoned in Syria for three years on terrorism charges, he said he broadened his targets to include Americans in Jordan.

The Times arranged to speak with Mr. Abssi through a series of intermediaries, who helped set up meetings in his headquarters at the Nahr al Bared refugee camp. Mr. Abssi, a soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair, was interviewed in a bare room inside a small cinderblock building on the edge of a field where training was under way. About 80 men were in the compound, performing various tasks, including one who manned an antiaircraft gun. As Mr. Abssi spoke, two aides took notes, while a third fiddled with a submachine gun. A bazooka leaned against the wall behind him.

In a 90-minute interview, his first with Western reporters, Mr. Abssi said he shared Al Qaeda’s fundamentalist interpretation and endorsed the creation of a global Islamic nation. He said killing American soldiers in Iraq was no longer enough to convince the American public that its government should abandon what many Muslims view as a war against Islam.

“We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn’t it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children?” Mr. Abssi said. “It is our right to hit them in their homes the same as they hit us in our homes.

“We are not afraid of being named terrorists,” he added. “But I want to ask, is someone who detonates one kilogram a terrorist while someone who detonates tons in Arab and Islamic cities not a terrorist?”

When asked, Mr. Abssi refused to say what his targets might be.

[This week, Lebanese law enforcement officials said they arrested four men from Fatah al Islam in Beirut and other Lebanese cities and were charging them with the February bombing of two commuter buses carrying Lebanese Christians. Mr. Abssi denies any involvement and says he has no plans to strike within Lebanon.]

Fertile Soil for Militants

Inside the Palestinian camp, Mr. Abssi seems to be building his operation with little interference.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, says the government does not have authority to enter a Palestinian camp — even though Mr. Abssi is now wanted in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria on terrorism charges.

To enter the camps, he said, “We would need an agreement from other Arab countries.” He said that instead the government was tightening its cordon around the camp to make it harder for Mr. Abssi or his men to slip in and out.

Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have long been fertile ground for militancy, particularly focused on the fight against Israel. But militants in those camps now have a broader vision. In Ain el Hilwe camp, an hour’s drive south of Beirut, another radical Sunni group, Asbat al Ansar, has been sending fighters to Iraq since the start of the war, its leaders acknowledged in interviews.

“The U.S. is oppressing a lot of people,” the group’s deputy commander, who goes by the name of Abu Sharif, said in a room strewn with Kalashnikovs. “They are killing a lot of innocents, but one day they are getting paid back.” A leading sheik in the camp, Jamal Hatad, has a television studio that broadcasts 12 hours a day with shows ranging from viewer call-ins to video of Mr. bin Laden’s statements and parents proudly displaying photographs of their martyred children.

“I was happy,” Hamad Mustaf Ayasin, 70, recalled in hearing last fall that his 35-year-old son, Ahmed, had died in Iraq fighting American troops near the Syrian border. “The U.S. is against Muslims all over the world.”

On the streets of the camp, one young man after another said dying in Iraq was no longer their only dream.

“If I had the chance to do any kind of operation against anyone who is against Islam, inside or outside of the United States, I would do the operation,” said Mohamed, an 18-year-old student, who declined to give his last name.

Hussein Hamdan, 19, who keeps a poster of Osama bin Laden in the bedroom he shares with two sisters, is a street tough attuned to religious fundamentalism. He dropped out of school at age 10, spent 18 months in jail on assault charges, and in March — “just to make a statement,” he said — took a razor and repeatedly slashed both his forearms. “I want to become a mujahedeen and go to jihad in any country where there are Jews or Americans to fight against them,” he said.

Lebanon has increasingly become a source of terror suspects. One of the Sept. 11 hijackers came from Lebanon, as did six men charged with planting bombs on German trains last summer. Two other Lebanese men and a Palestinian were among those accused last spring of plotting to blow up the PATH train tunnels beneath the Hudson River.

The Killing of Innocents

Mr. Abssi said he derived much of his spiritual guidance from Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Bukhari, a ninth-century Islamic scholar. A recent study by the Defense Department’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y., listed Mr. Bukhari among the 20 Islamic scholars who had greater influence today among militant Arabs than Mr. bin Laden.

“Originally, the killing of innocents and children was forbidden,” Mr. Abssi said. “However, there are situations in which the killing of such is permissible. One of these exceptions is those that kill our women and children.”

“Osama bin Laden does make the fatwas,” Mr. Abssi said, using the Arabic word for Islamic legal pronouncements. “Should his fatwas follow the Sunnah,” or Islamic law, he said, “we will carry them out.”

His closest known association with Mr. Zarqawi involved the killing of Mr. Foley. In previously undisclosed court records obtained by The Times, Jordanian officials say that Mr. Abssi helped organize the assassination, working closely with Mr. Zarqawi.

A senior administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, Mr. Foley was leaving his home in Amman on Oct. 28, 2002, when he was shot at close range by a man who had hidden in his garage. Seven bullets from a 7-millimeter pistol struck his neck, face, chest and stomach, the Jordanian government said in court papers.

Eleven men were charged in the case, and two men have been hanged, including the gunman, Salem Sa’ad Salem bin Saweed. According to the court records, Mr. Saweed met Mr. Abssi five years earlier in Syria, where they became friends and “arranged military operations against American and Jewish interests in Jordan.” Mr. Zarqawi provided the $10,000, along with $32,000 more for additional attacks, the court papers say. But in meeting Mr. Saweed, Mr. Zarqawi told him to work through Mr. Abssi, who helped the gunman with money, logistics and training in weapons and explosives.

Mr. Saweed and an accomplice in Jordan chose Mr. Foley as a target by watching his neighborhood for cars bearing diplomatic plates.

A Valid Target

In the interview with The Times, Mr. Abssi acknowledged working with Mr. Zarqawi. He said he played no part in Mr. Foley’s death, but considered him a valid target. “I don’t know what Foley’s role was but I can say that any person that comes to our region with a military, security or political aim, then he is a legitimate target,” he said.

[Mr. Foley’s widow, Virginia Foley, said Wednesday that she thought her husband’s killers had either been killed or jailed. “I’m appalled and surprised that there is still somebody out there,” she said, when told of Mr. Abssi’s current activities.]

The American intelligence official said the prosecution of Mr. Foley’s killers was under the control of the Jordanians.

At the time of Mr. Foley’s death, Mr. Abssi had been in jail for two months, having been arrested on charges of plotting attacks inside Syria. He ultimately served three years in prison, says Mounir Ali, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information.

Mr. Ali denied recent reports in Lebanon that Syria sent Mr. Abssi to that country to stir trouble there. “This accusation is baseless,” Mr. Ali said. “After he was set free he restarted his terrorist activities by training elements in favor of Al Qaeda.”

He said Syria sought his arrest in late January, but discovered Mr. Abssi had “disappeared, and no one knew where he went.”

Late last November, Mr. Abssi moved into the Palestinian camp here, seized three compounds held by a secular group, Fatah al Intifada, raised his group’s black flag, and issued a declaration saying he was bringing religion to the Palestinian cause. Mr. Abssi reappeared on Jordan’s radar in January when police had a three-hour battle with two suspected terrorists in the northern Jordanian city of Irbid, killing one of the men. Authorities say they learned that Mr. Abssi had sent the men. A short while later, Lebanese authorities picked up two Saudi Arabian men leaving Mr. Abssi’s camp, and learned both men had fought in Iraq. Two more men were found leaving the camp in February, General Rifi said.

General Rifi said officials were trying to learn as much as possible about Mr. Abssi’s operation from sources and surveillance, but it was clear that their information was limited. In questioning people, security officials are showing a photograph of Mr. Abssi that is 30 years old, though it displays his most distinctive feature — two moles, one on each side of his nose.

The apparent inability to apprehend Mr. Abssi provokes fury in the men who are hunting him. A security official in one of the countries where he is wanted scowled when asked why Mr. Abssi was operating freely: “I can go lots of places to grab people, but I can’t grab him.”

In the interview with The Times, Mr. Abssi said he had been largely warmly received in the Palestinian camp, and that he was optimistic about his cause. “One of the reasons for choosing this camp is our belief that the people here are close to God as they feel the same suffering as our brothers in Palestine,” he said.

“Today’s youth, when they see what is happening in Palestine and Iraq, it enthuses them to join the way of the right and jihad,” he said. “These people have now started to adopt the right path.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, and Margot Williams from New York.

    A New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks on U.S., NYT, 16.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/world/middleeast/16jihad.html?hp

Mohammed

Said to Confess to Other Acts

March 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and a central role in 30 other attacks and plots in the U.S. and worldwide that killed thousands of victims, said a revised transcript released Thursday by the U.S. military.

''I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,'' Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.

''For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head,'' he added.

Mohammed's claimed involvement in the 2002 slaying of the Wall Street Journal reporter was among 31 attacks and plots -- some of which never occurred -- he took responsibility for in a hearing Saturday at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said.

It released the bulk of the transcript late Wednesday, but held back the section about Pearl's killing to allow time for his family to be notified, said Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that it had learned that the transcripts released Wednesday evening had blacked out the reference to Mohammed's confession about the Pearl slaying. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Mohammed has long been a suspect in the slaying, which was captured on video.

Sealing a legacy of historical notoriety, Mohammed portrayed himself as al-Qaida's most ambitious operational planner in a confession to a U.S. military tribunal that said he planned and supported a series of terrorist attacks, topped by 9/11. The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 -- which killed nearly 3,000 -- to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine, according to an account released by the Pentagon.

Many plots, including a previously undisclosed plan to kill several former U.S. presidents, were never carried out or were foiled by international counterterror authorities.

''I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,'' Mohammed said in a statement read Saturday during a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed's confession was read by a member of the U.S. military who is serving as his personal representative.

The Pentagon had released a 26-page transcript of the closed-door proceedings on Wednesday night. Some material was omitted, and it wasn't possible to immediately verify details. The document refers to locations for which the United States and other nations have issued terrorism warnings based on what they deemed credible threats from 1993 to the present.

Whitman said authorities would decide how credible it is that Mohammed participated in so many plots if he is tried by a military tribunal, which many expect will eventually happen.

''These are his words.'' Whitman said.

Mohammed, known as KSM among government officials, was last seen haggard after his capture in March 2003, when he was photographed in a dingy white T-shirt with an over-stretched neck. He disappeared for more than three years into a secret detention system run by the CIA.

In his first public statements since his capture, his radical ideology and self-confidence came through. He expressed regret for taking the lives of children and said Islam doesn't give a ''green light'' to killing.

Yet he finds room for exceptions. ''The language of the war is victims,'' he said.

He also said some people ''consider George Washington as hero. Muslims many of them are considering Osama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence.''

In laying out his role in 31 attacks, his words drew al-Qaida closer to plots of the early 1990s than the group has previously been linked, including the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing in which six people died.

Six people with links to global terror networks were convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison for that attack.

Mohammed made clear that al-Qaida wanted to down a second trans-Atlantic aircraft during would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid's operation.

President Bush announced that Mohammed and 13 other alleged terror operatives had been moved from secret CIA prisons to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay last year. They are considered the 14 most significant captures since 9/11.

The military began the hearings last Friday to determine whether the 14 should be declared ''enemy combatants'' who can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals.

If the 14 are declared enemy combatants, as expected, the military would then draft and file charges against them. The detainees would be tried under the new military commissions law signed by Bush in October.

The military barred reporters or other independent observers from the sessions for the 14 operatives and is limiting the information it provides about them, arguing that it wants to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information.

Legal experts have criticized the U.S. decision, and The Associated Press filed a letter of protest, arguing that it would be ''an unconstitutional mistake to close the proceedings in their entirety.''

The transcripts refer to a claim by Mohammed that he was tortured by the CIA, although he said he was not under duress at Guantanamo when he confessed to his role in the attacks. The CIA has said its interrogation practices are legal, and it does not use torture.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, questioned the legality of the closed-door sessions and whether the confession was actually the result of torture.

''We won't know that unless there is an independent hearing,'' he said. ''We need to know if this purported confession would be enough to convict him at a fair trial or would it have to be suppressed as the fruit of torture?''

In listing the 28 attacks he planned and another three he supported, Mohammed said he tried to kill international leaders including Pope John Paul II, President Clinton and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

He said he planned the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya.

He also said he was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia. In 2002, 202 were killed when two nightclubs there were bombed.

Other plots he said he was responsible for included planned attacks against the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building and New York Stock Exchange in New York City, the Panama Canal, and Big Ben and Heathrow Airport in London -- none of which happened.

The Pentagon also released transcripts of the hearings of Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh. Both refused to attended the hearings, although al-Libi submitted a statement claiming that the hearings are unfair and that he will not attend unless it is corrected.

''The detainee is in a lose-lose situation,'' he said.

Al-Libi, whose name means he is a Libyan, reportedly masterminded two bombings 11 days apart in Pakistan in December 2003 that targeted Musharraf for his support of the U.S.-led war on terror.

Binalshibh, a Yemeni, is suspected of helping Mohammed with the 9/11 attack plan on New York City and Washington and is also linked to a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport. His hearing was conducted in his absence.

------

Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek, Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

Detainee transcripts:

www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant_Tribunals.html

    Mohammed Said to Confess to Other Acts, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Terrorist-Confession.html?hp

Suspected Leader of Attacks on 9/11 Is Said to Confess

March 15, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, long said to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to them at a military hearing held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Saturday, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon yesterday. He also acknowledged full or partial responsibility for more than 30 other terror attacks or plots.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” he said.

In a rambling statement, Mr. Mohammed, a chief aide to Osama bin Laden, said his actions were part of a military campaign. “I’m not happy that 3,000 been killed in America,” he said in broken English. “I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids.” [Excerpts, Page A23.]

He added, “The language of war is victims.”

Though American officials had linked Mr. Mohammed to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to several others, his confession was the first time he spelled out in his own words a panoply of global terror activities, ranging from plans to bomb landmarks in New York City and London to assassination plots against former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II. Some of the plots he claimed to plan, including the attempt on Mr. Carter, had not previously been publicly disclosed.

Mr. Mohammed indicated in the transcript that some of his earlier statements to C.I.A. interrogators were the result of torture. But he said that his statements at the tribunal on Saturday were not made under duress or pressure.

His actions, he said, were like those of other revolutionaries. Had the British arrested George Washington during the Revolutionary War, Mr. Mohammed said, “for sure they would consider him enemy combatant.”

The hearing also summarized some of the evidence the Pentagon says supports the designation of Mr. Mohammed as an enemy combatant, including a computer hard drive containing information about the Sept. 11 hijackers, letters from Mr. bin Laden and the details of other plots. It was seized, the government says, when Mr. Mohammed was captured.

Mr. Mohammed spoke before a combatant status review tribunal that has the narrow task of determining whether President Bush had properly designated him an enemy combatant. Mr. Mohammed’s confession will almost certainly be used against him if and when he is tried for war crimes by a military commission.

Parts of the transcript were redacted by the military, and there were suggestions in it that Mr. Mohammed contended he was mistreated while in the custody of the C.I.A. after his arrest in 2003. He was transferred to military custody at Guantánamo Bay last year.

By tribunal rules, Mr. Mohammed was aided by a “personal representative,” not a lawyer. His attempt to call two witnesses was denied. And the tribunal indicated that it would consider classified evidence not made available to Mr. Mohammed.

Combatant status review tribunals are informal hearings created in response to a 2004 decision by the United States Supreme Court to judge whether prisoners at Guantánamo were properly designated as enemy combatants and subject to indefinite detention. Unlike the military commissions that hear war crimes charges, the combatant status review tribunals offer minimal procedural protections and are not recognizably judicial.

In the past, the hearings have been partly open to the press. But a series of recent hearings, involving some of the 14 so-called high-value detainees transferred to Guantánamo from secret C.I.A. prisons last year, were closed. In addition to the Mohammed transcript, the Pentagon yesterday also released transcripts of the hearings of Abu Faraj al-Libbi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, top Qaeda operatives.

Mr. Libbi did not attend his hearing, and in a statement contained in the transcript he said he would refuse to do so until he could be tried according to accepted judicial principles in the United States. He said he had not been granted a lawyer and could not introduce witnesses in his defense.

“If I am classified as an enemy combatant,” he said in the statement, “it is possible that the United States will deem my witnesses are enemy combatants and judicial or administration action may be taken against them. It is my opinion the detainee is in a lose-lose situation.”

The tribunals in all three cases reserved judgment on the question of whether the men were indeed properly classified as enemy combatants, but there is little doubt that the president’s designation will be affirmed.

The prisoners may appeal the conclusions of the tribunals to a federal appeals court in Washington. While not contesting his own guilt, Mr. Mohammed asked the United States government to “be fair with people.” He said that many people who had been arrested as terrorists in the wake of 9/11 were innocent.

Mr. Mohammed’s representative, an Air Force lieutenant colonel whose name was not released, read a statement on Mr. Mohammed’s behalf “with the understanding he may interject or add statements if he needs to.”

In the statement, Mr. Mohammed described himself as the “military operational commander for all foreign operations around the world” for Al Qaeda.

He also took responsibility for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali.

Mr. Mohammed also outlined a vast series of plots that were not completed. Among his targets, he said, were office buildings in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York; suspension bridges in New York; the New York Stock Exchange “and other financial targets after 9/11”; the Panama Canal; British landmarks including Big Ben; buildings in Israel; American embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan; Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia; airliners around the world; and nuclear power plants in the United States.

He said he managed “the cell for the production of biological weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on dirty-bomb operations on American soil.”

Mr. Mohammed also said that he had taken part in “surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American presidents, including President Carter.” He added that he was responsible for an assassination plot against President Clinton in the Philippines in 1994.

But Mr. Mohammed interrupted his representative to clarify that he was not solely responsible for a 1995 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Philippines.

“I was not responsible,” Mr. Mohammed said, “but share.”

American officials and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan have said that Mr. Mohammed took part in killing Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in Pakistan in 2002. Though Mr. Mohammed referred to Mr. Pearl in passing in the transcript, he did not confess to the killing. He did say that he had plotted to assassinate President Musharraf.

At the end of the recitation, Mr. Mohammed was asked, “Were those your words?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Later, he said: “What I wrote here, is not I’m making myself hero, when I said I was responsible for this or that. But you are military man. You know very well there are language for war.”

It is not clear how many of Mr. Mohammed’s expansive claims were legitimate. In 2005, the Sept. 11 commission said that Mr. Mohammed was noted for his extravagant ambitions, and, using his initials, described his vision as “theater, a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star, the superterrorist.”

Mr. Mohammed declined to speak under oath, saying his religious beliefs prohibited it. But he said he was telling the truth.

“To be or accept the tribunal as to be, I’ll accept it,” he said. “That I’m accepting American Constitution, American law or whatever you are doing here. That is why religiously I cannot accept anything you do.”

He added: “When I not take oath does not mean I’m lying.”

Mr. Mohammed, 41, is an ethnic Pakistani who grew up in Kuwait and graduated from North Carolina State Agricultural and Technical State University in 1986. He was captured on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and was held in the secret C.I.A. prison system, where he is believed to have been subjected to harsh interrogation.

In a long monologue that fills about four single-spaced pages of the transcript, Mr. Mohammed said his motives were military ones.

“If America they want to invade Iraq they will not send for Saddam roses or kisses, they send for a bombardment,” he said. “I consider myself, for what you are doing, a religious thing as you consider us fundamentalist. So, we derive from religious leading that we consider we and George Washington doing the same thing.”

He pleaded on behalf of some of his fellow detainees. “I’m asking you again to be fair with many detainees which are not enemy combatant,” Mr. Mohammed said. “Because many of them have been unjustly arrested.”

The unclassified part of the hearing lasted for a little more than an hour, according to the transcript.

Near the end, Mr. Mohammed summed up. “The American have human right,” he said. “So, enemy combatant itself, it flexible word.”

“War start from Adam when Cain killed Abel until now,” he said.

Margot Williams contributed reporting.

    Suspected Leader of Attacks on 9/11 Is Said to Confess, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15gitmo.html?hp

Taking Responsibility for Attacks

March 15, 2007
The New York Times
 

In a statement to a military tribunal, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed took responsibility for 31 terror attacks or attempts, including the following:

1. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

2. The 9/11 attacks, from A to Z.

3. The shoe bomber operation to down two American planes.

4. A 2002 shooting in Kuwait that killed an American marine.

5. The Bali nightclub bombing that killed more than 180 in 2002.

6. Planning attacks against several prominent American skyscrapers.

7. Planning to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers.

8. Planning to bomb the Panama Canal.

9. Planning to assassinate several former American presidents, including President Carter.

10. Planning to bomb several New York landmarks, including the stock exchange and suspension bridges.

11. Planning to destroy several London landmarks, including Heathrow Airport and Big Ben.

12. Planning to destroy buildings in the Israeli city of Eilat, using planes leaving Saudi Arabia.

13. Planning to destroy Israeli and American embassies around the world.

14. Sending fighters into Israel to conduct surveillance on strategic targets.

15. Bombing a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, frequented by Israeli travelers.

16. Launching a Russian surface-to-air missile at an El Al airliner leaving Mombasa.

17. Conducting surveillance on nuclear power plants in the United States.

18. Planning to hit NATO headquarters in Brussels.

19. Planning to bomb 12 American aircraft full of passengers.

20. An assassination attempt on President Clinton in the Philippines in 1994 or 1995.

21. Shared responsibility for an assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in the Philippines.

22. Planning the assassination of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.

23. Attempting to destroy an American oil company in Sumatra owned by the Jewish former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.

    Taking Responsibility for Attacks, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15glist.html

Excerpts

‘I Don’t Like to Kill Children’

March 15, 2007
The New York Times

Following are excerpts from the testimony of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on March 10 in a Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing provided by the United States government. Parts were edited out. Mr. Mohammed’s statements, parts in English and parts in Arabic through a translator, came in response to instructions that he could say “whatever you’d like to say so long as it’s relevant”:

Many Muslims, that Al Qaeda or Taliban they are doing. They have been oppressed by America. This is the feeling of the prophet. So when we say we are enemy combatant, that right. We are. But I am asking you again to be fair with many detainees which are not enemy combatant. Because many of them have been unjustly arrested. Many, not one or two or three. Cause the definition you which wrote even from my view it is not fair....

Because war, for sure, there will be victims. When I said I’m not happy that 3,000 been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids. Never Islam are, give me green light to kill peoples. Killing, as in the Christianity, Jews, and Islam, are prohibited. But there are exception of rule when you are killing people in Iraq. You said we have to do it. We don’t like Saddam. But this the way to deal with Saddam. Same thing you are saying. Same language you use, I use. When you are invading two-thirds of Mexican, you call your war manifest destiny. It up to you to call it what you want. But other side are calling you oppressors. If now George Washington. If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain. For sure he, they would consider him enemy combatant. But American they consider him as hero.

    ‘I Don’t Like to Kill Children’ , NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15gtext.html

Hearings set

for "high-value" Guantanamo inmates

Fri Mar 9, 2007 7:21AM EST
Reuters
By Andrew Grey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military officials will start hearings on Friday for 14 prisoners transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret CIA jails, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Reporters will not be allowed at the hearings at the prison camp in Cuba and will have to rely on edited transcripts, defence officials said on Tuesday, citing concerns that the suspects could reveal sensitive security information.

"I think everybody recognizes that these individuals are unique for the role that they have played in terrorist operations and in combat operations against U.S. forces," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

A rights group condemned the hearings, which are also closed to defence lawyers, as "sham tribunals" and complained that they could consider evidence obtained through coercion.

The 14 suspects were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from overseas CIA prisons in September.

They include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and an Indonesian man known as Hambali, who is accused of planning the 2002 bombings that killed more than 200 people in Bali, Indonesia.

The Pentagon also announced that the latest annual reviews of every detainee's case had identified 55 inmates who could be transferred to their home countries.

AWAITING TRANSFER

The prison camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay holds about 385 suspects accused of fighting for al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated Islamist militant movements.

Indefinite detention and allegations of mistreatment at Guantanamo, which the U.S. military denies, have tarnished the image of the United States abroad. Many countries, including U.S. allies, have called for the camp to be closed.

More than 80 inmates are now awaiting transfer while the United States tries to work out arrangements with their home nations, the Pentagon says.

Lawyers for some of the Guantanamo prisoners said in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday that the suspects had been unlawfully detained for more than five years and deserved at least a hearing to challenge their confinement.

The hearings due to begin at Guantanamo on Friday, known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), are to determine whether the 14 suspects should be designated enemy combatants. Such hearings were not previously closed to outside observers.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents one of the 14, Pakistani national Majid Khan, condemned the hearings and complained that their client had not had access to a defence lawyer.

"Any suggestion that Khan's CSRT proceedings would comport with our values and traditional notions of justice is demeaning to all Americans," the New York-based rights group said.

"We might expect this in Libya or China, but not America."

U.S. officials suspect Khan has had links with alleged September 11 mastermind Mohammed, according to Khan's Pakistani lawyer.

The hearings take place before a three-member panel of military officers. The Pentagon said it would release a transcript of each hearing together with an unclassified summary of the case against the suspect.

"The transcript of the proceedings will have to be redacted for any matters of national security," Whitman said.

Defence officials did not intend to release the name of the inmate under review in the transcript but, following complaints from reporters, said they would reconsider that plan.

(Additional reporting by Jane Sutton in Miami)

    Hearings set for "high-value" Guantanamo inmates, R, 9.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSSIB92889020070309

Former Navy sailor arrested on terror charge

8.3.2007
By Dennis Wagner, The Arizona Republic
USA Today

PHOENIX — A former U.S. sailor was arrested Wednesday on charges that he took part in a conspiracy to kill military personnel by giving suspected terrorists information about American ship movements in the Middle East in 2001.

Hassan Abujihaad, 31, who served aboard the destroyer USS Benfold from 1998 to 2002, also allegedly sent e-mails to a terrorist website, according to the Justice Department. The e-mails applauded Osama bin Laden and praised al-Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Abujihaad, formerly known as Paul Hall, was arrested in Phoenix, FBI spokeswoman Deb McCarley said. He will be sent to Connecticut to face charges in federal court.

According to court records, Abujihaad linked up by Internet with British nationals Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan through a London organization known as Azzam Publications. Ahmad and Ahsan also are under federal indictment. The government says Azzam had an intelligence and fundraising role in terrorism.

Scotland Yard agents searched Ahmad's residence in 2003 and found classified information about a Navy battle group. According to court records, Abujihaad had sent detailed intelligence from the Benfold to Azzam in 2001, nine months after the Cole attack, which killed 17 sailors.

Abujihaad's messages allegedly said the battle group would pass through the entrance to the Persian Gulf, in 19 days, adding: "They have nothing to stop a small craft with RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) etc. except their Seals' stinger missiles … Please destroy message."

Abujihaad received an honorable discharge from the Navy in 2002, according to an FBI affidavit. Abujihaad's alleged role was first reported in news media 27 months ago, but no charges were filed at the time. Thomas Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, wouldn't comment on what delayed the indictment.

In December, the case against Abujihaad apparently received a boost after the arrest of Derrick Shareef, 22, of Genoa, Ill. Shareef, who lived with Abujihaad in 2004, was accused of planning to use grenades to attack a mall. An informer who became acquainted with Shareef helped the FBI set up a sting against Abujihaad.

Amid reports in 2004 of Ahmad's arrest, Abujihaad turned to the Council on American-Islamic Relations for support. Deedra Abboud, then executive director at the council's Arizona office, said at the time that Abujihaad told her he sent e-mails critical of U.S. foreign policy to Azzam, but denied divulging classified information.

Contributing: The Associated Press.

    Former Navy sailor arrested on terror charge, UT, 8.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-07-navy-terror_N.htm

U.S. taking aim at border tunnels

8.3.2007
USA TODAY
By Mimi Hall

The United States is stepping up a high-tech effort to combat the labyrinth of tunnels built by Mexican drug cartels that could someday become conduits for terrorists.

"The threat posed by tunneling is a serious and growing concern for United States' national security," according to the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology directorate, in a request to businesses that asks for development of a tunnel-detection project.

Homeland Security is offering $3 million over the next two years to companies that can come up with new and better detection systems.

The effort is the latest by the government to use technology to tighten security along the nation's borders, at airports and seaports.

Along land borders, Homeland Security is setting up new technology under the Secure Border Initiative. The program, which could cost $7.6 billion or more over the next five years, will give border agents new high-definition cameras and sensors that can pick up cross-border traffic. The department also is using unmanned aerial vehicles to nab smugglers.

As those efforts, combined with the hiring of thousands more Border Patrol agents, have discouraged land crossings, smugglers increasingly are going underground, building deeper tunnels that are difficult to detect.

Many of the more than 40 tunnels found under the U.S.-Mexican border since Sept. 11, 2001, are what agents call "gopher holes" — small, shallow, hand-dug passages.

A half-dozen more are far more troublesome. Outfitted with water pumps, ventilation systems, electricity and rails to move drugs and people efficiently, the tunnels can be 80 feet underground.

Undetected tunnels are "an unchecked entryway into the United States," says Frank Marwood, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on the government's San Diego-based Tunnel Task Force.

The military now helps Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Agency find tunnels. Much of the work is classified. But in some cases, seismic detectors are used to try to find cavities underground.

Marwood says the tunnels are now used mostly by drug cartels. "We don't know what price it would take for a cartel to allow somebody from a terrorist organization to use a tunnel," he says. "I hope we never find out."

    U.S. taking aim at border tunnels, UT, 8.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-07-immigration-tunnels_N.htm

Editorial

The Must-Do List

March 4, 2007
The New York Times
 

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

•

Our list starts with three fundamental tasks:

Restore Habeas Corpus

One of the new act’s most indecent provisions denies anyone Mr. Bush labels an “illegal enemy combatant” the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court. The arguments for doing this were specious. Habeas corpus is nothing remotely like a get-out-of-jail-free card for terrorists, as supporters would have you believe. It is a way to sort out those justly detained from those unjustly detained. It will not “clog the courts,” as Senator Graham claims. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has a worthy bill that would restore habeas corpus. It is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States’ credibility.

Stop Illegal Spying

Mr. Bush’s program of intercepting Americans’ international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant has not ceased. The agreement announced recently — under which a secret court supposedly gave its blessing to the program — did nothing to restore judicial process or ensure that Americans’ rights are preserved. Congress needs to pass a measure, like one proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, to force Mr. Bush to obey the law that requires warrants for electronic surveillance.

Ban Torture, Really

The provisions in the Military Commissions Act that Senator McCain trumpeted as a ban on torture are hardly that. It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured. It allows the president to decide in secret what kinds of treatment he will permit at the Central Intelligence Agency’s prisons. The law absolves American intelligence agents and their bosses of any acts of torture and abuse they have already committed.

•

Many of the tasks facing Congress involve the way the United States takes prisoners, and how it treats them. There are two sets of prisons in the war on terror. The military runs one set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The other is even more shadowy, run by the C.I.A. at secret places.

Close the C.I.A. Prisons

When the Military Commissions Act passed, Mr. Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. He cast this as a great victory for national security. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world. The prisons should be closed.

Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’

The United States has to come clean on all of the “ghost prisoners” it has in the secret camps. Holding prisoners without any accounting violates human rights norms. Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American-run prisons.

Ban Extraordinary Rendition

This is the odious practice of abducting foreign citizens and secretly flying them to countries where everyone knows they will be tortured. It is already illegal to send a prisoner to a country if there is reason to believe he will be tortured. The administration’s claim that it got “diplomatic assurances” that prisoners would not be abused is laughable.

A bill by Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, would require the executive branch to list countries known to abuse and torture prisoners. No prisoner could be sent to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country’s government no longer abused its prisoners or offered a way to verify that a prisoner will not be mistreated. It says “diplomatic assurances” are not sufficient.

•

Congress needs to completely overhaul the military prisons for terrorist suspects, starting with the way prisoners are classified. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared all members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be “illegal enemy combatants” not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or American justice. Over time, the designation was applied to anyone the administration chose, including some United States citizens and the entire detainee population of Gitmo.

To address this mess, the government must:

Tighten the Definition of Combatant

“Illegal enemy combatant” is assigned a dangerously broad definition in the Military Commissions Act. It allows Mr. Bush — or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job — to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States.

Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo, where far too many remain to this day. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges.

Under legal pressure, Mr. Bush created “combatant status review tribunals,” but they are a mockery of any civilized legal proceeding. They take place thousands of miles from the point of capture, and often years later. Evidence obtained by coercion and torture is permitted. The inmates do not get to challenge this evidence. They usually do not see it.

The Bush administration uses the hoary “fog of war” dodge to justify the failure to screen prisoners, saying it is not practical to do that on the battlefield. That’s nonsense. It did not happen in Afghanistan, and often in Iraq, because Mr. Bush decided just to ship the prisoners off to Gitmo.

•

Prisoners designated as illegal combatants are subject to trial rules out of the Red Queen’s playbook. The administration refuses to allow lawyers access to 14 terrorism suspects transferred in September from C.I.A. prisons to Guantánamo. It says that if they had a lawyer, they might say that they were tortured or abused at the C.I.A. prisons, and anything that happened at those prisons is secret.

At first, Mr. Bush provided no system of trial at the Guantánamo camp. Then he invented his own military tribunals, which were rightly overturned by the Supreme Court. Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act, which did not fix the problem. Some tasks now for Congress:

Ban Tainted Evidence

The Military Commissions Act and the regulations drawn up by the Pentagon to put it into action, are far too permissive on evidence obtained through physical abuse or coercion. This evidence is unreliable. The method of obtaining it is an affront.

Ban Secret Evidence

Under the Pentagon’s new rules for military tribunals, judges are allowed to keep evidence secret from a prisoner’s lawyer if the government persuades the judge it is classified. The information that may be withheld can include interrogation methods, which would make it hard, if not impossible, to prove torture or abuse.

Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence

The military commission rules define this sort of secret evidence as “any information or material that has been determined by the United States government pursuant to statute, executive order or regulation to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.” This is too broad, even if a president can be trusted to exercise the power fairly and carefully. Mr. Bush has shown he cannot be trusted to do that.

Respect the Right to Counsel

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration allowed the government to listen to conversations and intercept mail between some prisoners and their lawyers. This had the effect of suspending their right to effective legal representation. Since then, the administration has been unceasingly hostile to any lawyers who defend detainees. The right to legal counsel does not exist to coddle serial terrorists or snarl legal proceedings. It exists to protect innocent people from illegal imprisonment.

•

Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantánamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

    The Must-Do List, NYT, 4.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/opinion/04sun1.html

Man gets 5 years for NYC bomb plot

Non daté
Sans doute 2.3.2007
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up a New York subway station next to the Macy's flagship department store was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.

James Elshafay, along with Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Matin Siraj, had been caught with crude diagrams of the Herald Square subway station on Aug. 27, 2004 — the eve of the Republican National Convention. Prosecutors said the men wanted to avenge the abuses of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

When the two were arrested, authorities said, they hadn't obtained explosives and had not been linked to known terrorist groups.

Elshafay, the son of an Egyptian father and an Irish mother, agreed to cooperate with investigators, pleaded guilty and testified last year against Siraj, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

At Siraj's trial, Elshafay said he was taking medication for depression and schizophrenia at the time, and that after meeting Siraj at an Islamic bookstore, they hatched an initial scheme — later abandoned — to blow up the four bridges connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn and New Jersey.

When asked about Siraj's reaction to the conversation about the bridges, Elshafay said, "He smiled." Siraj had caught the attention of undercover police with his anti-American rants after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

    Man gets 5 years for NYC bomb plot, UT, 2.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-02-nyc-sentencing_N.htm