Hundreds of prisoners of the US War of Terror languish in prisons around the world, in Guantanamo and on the US mainland. Some have been there as long as 12 years, some have sentences that extend beyond the span of their life; many have never been charged with a crime and more than half the prisoners who remain in Guantanamo have had their original charges dropped or have served their full sentence, but are barred by US law from being repatriated to their homeland and therefore can not be released. Even the few prisoners in Guantanamo who are considered ‘high value’ are mostly charged with thought crimes, plans that were never carried out in any significant detail. In many cases, the leads that initially brought them to the attention of the FBI or CIA have proved to be inaccurate.
Amina Masood Janjua is a Pakistani woman whose husband was abducted from the streets of Rawalpindi by Pakistani President Musharraf’s thugs shortly after 9/11. Masood Janjua was an honest citizen going about his business, and his wife has been looking for him ever since. He wasn’t the only one picked up this way, but his wife Amina was the one who started an organization to advocate for the hundreds of men disappeared in Pakistan after 911. In the early days of the War on Terror, hundreds of men were pulled from the streets and countryside of Pakistan to feed the US government’s insatiable appetite for Terrorists. Some were sent directly to Guantanamo; some were moved here and there before being sent to Guantanamo; some were deposited more or less permanently in one of several prisons at the US base in Bagram, in a secret prison in Pakistan or somewhere else in Libya, Syria, Thailand elsewhere into a secret array of American prisons. Teenagers have been picked up on the Afghan border and sold to ‘the Americans’ as terrorists, who must have figured out it wasn’t true in some cases because 50 of them remain in the Bagram prison though after 5-10 years they have never been charged with a crime.
And then there are the residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) in Pakistan, subject to ongoing surveillance, missile strikes and bombings by U.S. Predator drones. The FATA is something like a combination of Pine Ridge Reservation with Gaza. Indigenous peoples who live there have, since the British Raj, been allowed to keep their tribal culture and their ‘sovereignty’ in exchange for giving up their rights as citizens of Pakistan. They are governed by a Federal Agent who makes final decisions on the distribution of social resources, food, medicine and guns, and who oversees the tribal justice system with the power to intervene at any time, pass judgement on any individual and determine a sentence. Currently, due to the ongoing violence that has spilled over from the Afghan war (Taliban on the ground and drone strikes from above), citizens of Pakistan from outside the region are not permitted to enter the FATA region, and those who live there cannot leave without passing through government checkpoints. Not surprisingly, they are generally apprehended by their fellow countrymen with fear and loathing, and pity.
One hundred and sixty six men remain in Guantanamo. There are a handful of so called ‘high value’ prisoners whose cases are deemed to be related to actual terrorist attacks. But all were severely tortured at secret prisons when first detained, and a number of them have cases based on crimes that were nothing more than loose talk, association with the wrong people and/or claims that are clearly contradicted by the evidence that has unfolded while they were in custody. Eighty Six of them have been cleared for release, but are retained in detention for political reasons. At least 28, but possibly over 100 of the prisoners are on a life threatening hunger strike. They are choosing death over spending the rest of their lives in torment. At this time, 11 are being force-fed. Even death is denied them. Their lawyers, who complained on their behalf, have been denied access to them. Non-military flights to Guantanamo have been canceled. The office created by Obama in the early days of his presidency to close Guantanamo has itself been closed, and new monies have been allocated to expand the Guantanamo Prison facilities.
In the US ‘homeland’, Muslims, including immigrants and African Americans from impoverished neighborhoods; people who are naive, ignorant, immature, along with recent immigrants whose cultural habits and political stances do not fit a jingoistic standard of normalcy and patriotism, are accused of thought crimes or manipulated into participating in fake crimes after being targeted for sting operations that resemble the cons used to part old people, the disabled or other potentially needy or naive people from their money, then incarcerated with lengthy sentences made possible by a so called ‘terrorism enhancement’ to whatever ‘crime’ they are alleged to have committed.
Men like Yassin Aref, a Kurdish refugee from Northern Iraq, have been targeted due to possible social contacts made in their home countries and imprisoned for long periods of time despite having committed no crime. Yassin’s name and phone number were found in a private phone book picked up in ‘terrorist hideout’ near his home town after it was bombed by American forces during the Iraq War. Could someone there have known him? Of course, this is a land of small villages where everyone is connected one way or the other. Like many college students, Yassin worked for a political organization which promised sovereignty for his Kurdish homeland, a popular stance in Kurdistan, particularly after the scorched earth policies of Saddam Hussein in the region. Yassin gave rides once or twice to a man who was later designated a ‘terrorist’ by the US government.
Meanwhile dozens of immigrants and poor African Americans, who constitute the majority of indigenous Muslims in this country, have been targeted, manipulated into committing or attempting to commit a crime, then imprisoned as terrorists. Men desperate or naive enough to take the provocateur’s bait, are conned and confused and recorded for the convenience of the courts by provocateurs who profit handsomely from their work. The provocateurs, often petty criminals, are bankrolled by the FBI, moved from job to job when they are successful and absolved of any prior or concurrent crimes they may commit. Not a bad deal for a sociopath with a criminal record and a taste for good living.
Aafia Siddiqui
In one unusual case, a Pakistani National named Aafia Siddiqui, a woman who had lived in the US for more than 10 years during which she earned a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (the physical underpinnings of learning), was abducted in Pakistan near her parents home, where she had been staying, and incarcerated somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, later released in the Afghan city of Ghazni, only to be immediately rearrested, was later convicted of a crime that she may or may not have committed in attempting to escape after the second arrest. I say ‘may or may not have committed’ because the testimony against her is not corroborated by a single iota of material evidence. The original charges against her, which date back to a time shortly preceding her arrest in Pakistan, seem to be based on the testimony of one or more high profile 9/11 suspects who may have met her at some point or may have been told her name by their interrogators, and the testimony of an abusive ex-husband.
Saturday, March 30th, was the anniversary of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s initial abduction. There is a lot of mystery around this event, and the American Government persists in denying they held her for the 5 years that she was missing. However, Aafia Siddiqui had her 3 young children with her at the time of their abduction. When the middle child, Miriam, who was 4 years old at the time of her abduction, was dropped off near her mother’s family home in Karachi shortly after the time of her trial, she spoke only American English. The older boy, 6 or 7 at the time of his abduction, was with her Dr. Siddiqui when she was arrested the 2nd time in Ghazni, but she did not appear to recognize him. He too is now living with his Grandmother and Aunt in Karachi. He has required special support to deal with with traumatic memories of years in prisons, and has needed surgeries to realign his hips, dislocated and misaligned due to long periods in restraints during a time of rapid growth. The baby, less than a few months old at the time of their disappearance in March 2003, has not been seen since.
The U.S. authorities adamantly deny having held Dr. Siddiqui prior to her arrest in Ghazni in 2008. However, they also contend that, after being shot and mortally wounded by U.S. soldiers (in self defense), she unleashed a verbal torrent off vulgar anti-American expletives in English, wherein the word “F*#!” appeared more than once. This, admittedly unseemly, behavior would seem very odd if she really had not been in the company of Americans for the previous 5 years. Had she been in hiding in a remote Baloch village with the womenfolk, or dealing daily with conservative Islamist clerics, plotting the ruin of the United States, a country where she had lived for most of her adult life, and where, if not a citizen, she was engaged in numerous good works and charitable projects, where, in fact, she is accused of wanting to convert as many people as possible to her beloved Islam, would she have the habit of expressing outrage in the common vernacular of the United States?
There were a number of psychological analyses prior to Dr. Siddiqui’s trial because of her paranoia and inability to relate appropriately to her surroundings. Initially, she was declared incompetent to stand trial but later, based on new testimony and the reversal of the state psychologist’s initial report the decision was set aside. The psychologist who changed his mind testified that, after he saw the government denial that they had ever held her, he came to the conclusion that she was a malingerer rather than a person suffering severe PTSD, as in his initial conclusion. Dr. Siddiqui’s family and her lawyers all firmly believe her story. Evidence, including the return of her daughter and and some memories that her son has, along with testimony by the Pakistani government official responsible for her initial abduction, has emerged to support her claims.
Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a jury on all counts but without premeditation. And yet, the judge sentenced her with the ‘terrorism enhancement’ to 86 years, more than the future length of her life for crimes that would normally entail a 10-12 year sentence. The chain of accusations on which the terrorism enhancement was based were not clearly articulated in court as charges, and therefore could not be challenged. Dr. Siddiqui is currently incarcerated in Carswell Medical Center in Texas, a hospital prison with a record of patient abuse. Letters sent to her are returned. Calls are not received.
The prison says that she refuses all of her mail and her phone calls. Given her state of despair at the time of her conviction, it is possible this is true. However, it would seem questionable in light of the way the mental health issues were handled at her trial. A healthy person would not refuse all mail and phone calls. If she is psychologically disturbed enough to be doing that, then she should not have been deemed competent to stand trial at that time as she was not malingering. Even if she were disturbed at the time of her trial, a retreat from all outside contact would indicate a deterioration in her condition and an environment not conducive to the restoration of her mental health. I suppose a sentence in a mental hospital that lasts as long as twice your remaining lifespan would fit that description, but is it not a cruel and unusual punishment? And then again, maybe they are stretching the truth to hide a different kind of cruel and unusual treatment.
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Nearly twelve years have passed since 9/11/01 when the US began building the myth of a fanatical gang of international terrorists targeting the United States with mayhem and murder. After seven years of fear and loathing, a new president came into office on a wave of hope. Yet, Guantanamo is still open for business and the remaining residents are farther than ever from release, as are most of the CIA Black Sites. Rendering of prisoners is rare, but the program still exists. U.S. Drone attacks in the FATA have increased exponentially, while only a handful of the ‘disappeared’ have been returned to their families. When Bagram is returned to the Afghans, the unindicted Pakistani youth will remain in the custody of their American jailers. New cases based on FBI sting operations are regularly heard in the Federal Courts resulting in convictions and unusually lengthy sentences, often in Communication Management Units where the prisoners are held in virtual solitary confinement at locations far removed from their families. The Obama White House has released formal justifications for executing American citizens without trial.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui remains in Carswell FMC where she has been joined by Lynne Stewart, a 73 year old America lawyer who has selflessly defended the poor and the disenfranchised and those who have been fodder for the FBI terrorist franchise throughout her career. Lynne Stewart, convicted of a technical legal violation in her defense of one of her clients, was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Currently, she is suffering from stage 4 cancer, but the authorities say she cannot have a ‘compassionate release’ for treatment. It will only be available when they are sure she is going to die within a few months. I guess it is an equal opportunity victory that at least 2 women have joined the thousands of men tortured and persecuted in this War of Terror.
But here in the land of democracy and freedom, where we preach about opportunity for all, where we righteously condemn other countries for unequal treatment of women, where we talk endlessly about freedom and justice, it’s time we take a look at what is really going on and who we really are. Perhaps then we will set aside ‘hope’ and start thinking about active change. Until then we are all prisoners of The War on Terror.
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Judy Bello is active with the Upstate (NY) Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. She traveled to Pakistan with the CodePink Peace Delegation last Fall. The Coalition is planning, Resisting Drones, Global War and Empire, a weekend of networking, education and action in Syracuse, NY April 26-28. You can learn more about the weekend events at http://upstatedroneaction.org
Flames have enveloped all floors of the highest building in the North Caucasus, southern Russia. All people have managed to leave the building. The Grozny-city complex in the Chechen Republic includes luxury apartments and a 5-star hotel.
The local emergency service said the call about the fire on between the 4th and 5th floors was received at around 18:00 PM local time (14:00 GMT).
According to witnesses’ pictures that immediately started to appear on Twitter, all stories of the building are covered with flames.
At the same time there have been reports suggesting that the fire started on the top floor and the bottom floor was on fire as well.
All people have managed to leave the the 145-meter skyscraper ; one woman was seen to be supported by others, witnesses said. Local police confirmed no one was injured.
Fire units and ambulances have arrived at the scene. Nearly 300 people are involved in extinguishing the fire. The area around the Grozny-City complex has been cordoned off.
In two hours the fire has completely engulfed three sides of the skyscraper from the top to bottom as the flames spread rapidly due to the plastic trimming on the building. It has also reached the world’s largest clock face, located near the apex of the building.
Firefighters have managed to extinguish the flames on the lower floors. However, the fire has spread very quickly, making it difficult to tackle the blaze from the ground. Helicopters have been sent from the southern city of Pyatigorsk to help out, but have not received the go-ahead for lift-off.
“We are ready, but the helicopters won’t be able to maneuver between the buildings, which are packed tight,” said emergency ministry official Aleksandr Barsuk.
A criminal case has been launched in connection to the violation of fire safety rules. According to the initial version the cause of the fire was a short circuit, LifeNews tabloid reported citing a local police source.
“According to preliminary information, the cause of the fire in the skyscraper was a short circuit. A more concise report will be done after experts examine the building,” the source told the tabloid.
In the burning skyscrapers called “Olympus” is an apartment belonging to French film star and tax exile Gerard Depardieu. LifeNews tabloid reports local administration confirmed the Frenchman’s apartment is on the 27th floor, facing the so-called “heart of Grozny”- central mosque.
“The fire has completely enveloped the right-hand side of the skyscraper. Both the wall and the window of the actor’s apartment have been damaged,” the tabloid quoted a local police source as saying.
The head of Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov granted the actor the status of “Chechen’s honorable resident” and presented an apartment in Grozny-City shortly after the Frenchman was granted Russian citizenship.
The Grozny-City complex was partly open in 2011. It consists of seven skyscrapers both condominiums and a hotel: one 40-storey (currently on fire), one 30-storey, three 28-storey and two 18-storey buildings. The completed complex would boast 1000 apartments.
“We will reconstruct the building, and make it more beautiful with help from Allah,” said Kadyrov on his Instagram account.
The Obama administration has been ordered by a federal judge to declassify the government’s file on a former detainee after officials tried to claim that doing so would require too much work.
Mohammed Sulaymon Barre of Somaliland, who was held at Guantánamo until December 2009, filed a motion to compel the government to disclose the information officials had collected on him.
The government responded by saying it could not meet the request because of the time it would take to sift through the file and redact portions of it.
U.S. District Chief Judge Royce Lamberth rejected the administration’s argument, and said he was “troubled by the government’s apparent lack of urgency in issuing public versions of classified materials filed in Guantánamo proceedings.”
Lamberth added: “The government’s arguments are unavailing and largely boil down to this: ‘Declassification is complicated and time consuming and we already have a lot of work—please don’t pile on.’”
Barre (a.k.a. Mohamed Saleban Bare) was arrested and detained in November 2001 while living as a UN-designated refugee in Karachi, Pakistan. He became a suspect in the eyes of the U.S. because of his alleged ties to Al-Wafa, a Saudi foundation accused of terrorist activities, and because of his job at Dahabshiil Company, a Somali-based financial institution that allegedly sent money to and from customers in Pakistan. Sulaymon maintained that he had done nothing wrong and was picked up because U.S. forces were paying bounties for the capture of alleged enemies.
His detention included being held at military bases in Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan, before being transferred to Guantanamo, where he claims he was tortured. Upon his release, he told Agence France-Presse, “Guantánamo Bay is like hell on Earth…. In the cold they let you sleep without a blanket. Some of the inmates face harsher torture, including with electricity and beating…. Some of my colleagues in the prison lost their sight, some lost their limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed. I’m OK compared to them.”
They are essentially dead men who just happen to breathe. That is the grim assessment of the legal representative for the inmates in the American concentration camp, otherwise known as Guantanamo Bay.
More than 11 years after this penal colony was opened on the American-occupied territory of Cuba, there remain some 166 prisoners who live in a nightmarish world of indefinite detention.
Hundreds of others have been ground through the machine, spewed out like human waste. Denial of human freedom is torture; denial of any sense of when that torture ends adds a whole new barbarous dimension of cruelty.
American vanity likes to indulge in berating other countries for human rights violations: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are paraded in the American media as pariah states, accused of failing international legal standards. In the past, the Soviet Union and its system of gulags was a particular favourite feature for Americans to contrast their supposed freedoms. How the ‘high and mighty’ self-proclaimed moral titans now stand exposed as hypocrites, charlatans and low-life perverts.
Thanks to the suffering of prisoners at Guantanamo, the world is seeing some shocking home truths about the real nature of American government and its formerly grandiose pretensions. Without Guantanamo, the world may have been duped a little longer by the American art of deception. But not anymore. The American style of dictatorship has everything that the old Soviet system had, but with an added insidious trait – the American delusion of exceptionalism.
Think about it. In Guantanamo, they have been rendered from all over the world by their captors like so many wild animals, physically and mentally tortured, humiliated and defiled. Most of them are Muslim, coming from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where the US has been waging its permanent charade ‘War on Terror’ since 2001.
Such is the cruel vindictiveness of their captor country that these men’s only freedom – to read their holy Korans in the solitude of their cells – has been denied to them. More. Their sacred beliefs have been stomped on. Not only have their captors incarcerated their bodies; their tormentors want to hunt down their victims’ inner-most thoughts. This is taking human barbarity to scientific levels of depravity where the human spirit is sought out to be murdered.
Ninety percent of the Guantanamo hostages – a more appropriate description than ‘inmate’ – have never been charged with any offence. They are being held merely on the basis of suspicion by an American government that has lost all credibility and moral bearing in the eyes of the world.
For nearly 50 days now, 26 of the men at Guantanamo have been on a hunger strike. It is the only freedom left to these men. To refuse the most basic means of subsistence. That length of time without food is pushing the human body into a fatal condition. The muscles have been eaten away now by the body’s own metabolism to survive against deprivation; at this stage, the last vital organ of the brain becomes internally digested.
‘These men have figured out that probably the only way for them to go home – cleared or not – is in a wooden box,’ said their American-military appointed defence lawyer, Lt Col Barry Wingard, in a recent interview with Russia Today.
Wingard, who has been granted only limited access to consult with the prisoners said that he was shocked by the ‘animal cage’ conditions of the men when he last saw them three weeks ago. ‘They will never get a trial based upon the evidence that is against them,’ adds Wingard.
Let’s recap. Hundreds of men – in all probability innocent of suspected wrongdoing – are held for up to 11 years without charge, tortured and denied proper legal support – all perpetrated by the government of the US that proclaims to be the world’s standard bearer of democratic and human rights and international law. This is the same government that has overseen the invasion and illegal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, murdering millions of innocents, in the name of establishing democracy and international law.
But don’t confuse. Guantanamo is not a vile contradiction of America’s lofty claims. It is in fact a microcosm of the reality of how truly barbaric the American government has become.
Five years ago, when Barack Obama was running for the US presidency, the closure of Guantanamo was a central promise. To the credit of the American people, they voted him into the White House in order to tear down this abomination of human rights and international law and all the associated torture that it represented under Bush and the neocons.
Into his second administration, Obama has reiterated that Guantanamo is here to stay. How is that for a brazen betrayal and snub to democratic demand of the people? Appropriately, Obama has outdone Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co. The imperialist permanent war on the world is being stepped up and expanded to target Syria, Iran, China and Russia and whomever else dares to stand in the way of American hegemony. Obama’s wielding of secretive executive powers to execute any one, any time, any place in the world exceeds the fantasies of the Bush neocons.
The abomination that is Guantanamo is therefore an important moment of truth as to how far America has gone down the road to all-out fascism.
Ironically, it is men who have been deprived of everything even to the point of death who are exposing this powerful truth.
In his upcoming Israel visit, US President Barack Obama will spend just a few hours in Palestinian Ramallah and the rest of the 3-day tour visiting grave of Zionism founder Theodor Herzl, a Holocaust memorial and an anti-missile system, among other Israeli sites.
During the visit that begins on Wednesday, Obama will spend “just a few hours” in the Palestinian Authority base of Ramallah, and the rest of his three-day stay in al-Quds (Jerusalem), where he plans to visit an “official” so-called Holocaust memorial, a partially US-built Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile site and Herzl’s grave, The Los Angele Times reports on Friday.
In visiting the grave site of the Zionism founder and the Holocaust spot, Obama intends to highlight the point he made during his widely publicized Cairo speech in 2009, when he urged his Egyptian audience to accept the Zionist regime’s right to exist while denouncing efforts to deny the increasingly suspicious Holocaust story, the report states, citing US and Israeli officials. … Full article
The pervasive news surrounding the confirmation hearing of John Brennan, Obama’s nominee for CIA director, is paralleled by another, related story that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media. That is the story of the man called Abu Zubaydah, whose alleged torture testimony, obtained by the CIA while Brennan was the head of the agency’s Terrorist Threat Center, built the foundation for the official account of 9/11. This week I spoke to Lee Hamilton, former vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, about the serious problems that the government’s new stance on Zubaydah creates for the 9/11 Commission Report.
As stated in my last article on the subject, Zubaydah is at the center of an unraveling of the official account of the 9/11 attacks.[1] His extensive torture at the hands of the CIA during Brennan’s tenure, which included at least 83 water-boarding sessions, hanging the man naked from the ceiling, slamming him against a concrete wall, and other atrocious experimental techniques, was said to produce valuable evidence about al Qaeda. However, the government now claims that Zubaydah was never a member or associate of al Qaeda and therefore he could not have known any of the information that the 9/11 Commission attributed to him.
From the start of our conversation, Hamilton told me that he was having trouble remembering Zubaydah. That was odd considering that an article he and Thomas Kean wrote for the New York Times in 2008, describing how the CIA obstructed the 9/11 investigation, referred several times to Zubaydah specifically.[2] The article claimed that “Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives.” Kean and Hamilton further wrote that, “in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah.”
These requests from the 9/11 Commission should have resulted in the release of some revealing records. That is, while John Brennan was leading the CIA’s Terrorist Threat Center, the agency videotaped the torture of Zubaydah and others, and proceeded to intentionally withhold that information from the 9/11 Commission. Brennan and CIA director George Tenet were almost certainly involved in the decisions regarding that obstruction. The two men had worked closely together for years. As CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, Brennan often communicated directly with Tenet, avoiding the usual chain of command. At the time, as an apparent favor to the Saudis, CIA analysts were discouraged from questioning Saudi relationship to Arab extremists.[3] It seems that Brennan and Tenet had a tendency to protect some terrorist suspects and cover-up the agency’s treatment of others.
It was revealed that when Brennan was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in 2005, the CIA had destroyed the torture tapes, most of which featured Zubaydah.[4] Describing the CIA’s obstruction, Hamilton wrote — “The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Not satisfied with this response, we decided that we needed to question the detainees directly, including Abu Zubaydah and a few other key captives.”[5]
Therefore Hamilton remembered very clearly, in 2008, that he had asked the CIA at least twice, in a potentially contentious manner, for information specifically about Zubaydah. Having not received that information, Hamilton asked the CIA for the opportunity to question Zubaydah directly. The CIA not only denied these requests, it denied the Commission access to the interrogators who compelled the alleged testimony. Despite such memorable denials, however, Hamilton cannot seem to recall anything about Zubaydah at all other than his feeling that Zubaydah did not play a significant part in the 9/11 Commission Report. He told me “I’m a little fuzzy on this but the information that we had from him was not critical to our report.”[6]
Reasons for Hamilton’s new, unconvincing amnesia on the subject might include that the U.S. government recently backed off its claims about this “detainee,” who has been imprisoned by the U.S. for eleven years without charges. The retractions about Zubaydah create a tension with the 9/11 Commission Report that reveals an obvious need to revise the report.
For example, in response to the habeas corpus petition filed by Zubaydah’s defense team, the government stated that it does not contend that Zubaydah had “any direct role in or advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”[7] The same response states that the government no longer claims that Zubaydah was ever “a member of al-Qaida or otherwise formally identified with al-Qaida.” But footnote 35 to Chapter 5 of the 9/11 Commission Report states the exact opposite. According to this footnote, “Abu Zubaydah, who worked closely with the al Qaeda leadership, has stated that KSM originally presented Bin Ladin with a scaled-down version of the 9/11 plan, and that Bin Ladin urged KSM to expand the operation with the comment, ‘Why do you use an axe when you can use a bulldozer?’”[8] That’s pretty extensive and intimate knowledge for someone who was never associated with al Qaeda.
In our talk, I reminded Hamilton that Zubaydah was mentioned over 50 times in the 9/11 Commission Report, and that his alleged torture testimony, along with that of KSM and Ramsi bin Alshibh (both of whom Zubaydah identified as being involved in the attacks), produced the foundation of the official account of 9/11. Creating the background for the official myth about al Qaeda, Hamilton’s report called Zubaydah an “Al Qaeda associate,” a “long-time ally of Bin Ladin,” a “Bin Ladin lieutenant,” and an “al Qaeda lieutenant.”[9] Despite these important references, Hamilton told me that he just couldn’t remember Zubaydah, saying “my recollection is really quite vague with regard to him.”
To refresh his memory further, I reminded Hamilton that nine separate dates of Zubaydah’s interrogation were referenced in his report. After these reminders, Hamilton said that he still had to “stretch his imagination to remember” him. It seems that if Hamilton had read my article on Zubaydah, which I had sent to him over a week before he agreed to meet and eleven days before we talked, his memory would have returned easily. Instead, Hamilton’s inability to stretch his imagination on the subject was reminiscent of the “failure of imagination” excuse used by the 9/11 Commission when it proposed an overall explanation for the events of 9/11.
Because the government no longer contends that Zubaydah was in any way associated with al Qaeda and now says that he had no knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, I asked Hamilton if he had an opinion on how Zubaydah could have known so much about al Qaeda as stated in his report. Bluntly stating “No,” Hamilton suggested that he was not concerned with these contradictions.
Our discussion went into the recent conviction of John Kiriakou, the CIA’s Chief of Counterterrorist Operations in Pakistan after 9/11, who was originally said to be responsible for the capture and initial interrogations of Zubaydah. Interestingly, Kiriakou’s story has evolved much like that of the official account concerning Zubaydah. According to people who would know, with regard to Zubaydah “Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.”[10]
Kiriakou has since been heralded as a whistleblower. And he recently said that, for embracing torture, John Brennan is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. Kiriakou claimed that he has known Brennan since 1990 and has worked for him twice. While in the CIA, Kiriakou noted, Brennan “would have had to have been intimately involved in—not necessarily in carrying out the torture techniques, but in the policy, the torture policy.”[11] It is true that this would seem to make Brennan an especially poor choice but today it is clear that those who engaged in torture, and those who used alleged torture testimony to create false reports, will not be held accountable.
This week I also spoke to Brent Mickum, Zubaydah’s attorney. Unlike Hamilton, Mickum was very straightforward and convincing. The information he possesses suggests that Zubaydah was a victim of false claims from the beginning. Mickum believes there may be alternative reasons why his client, who does not support the murder of innocents or suicide attacks and who repeatedly refused to join al Qaeda, was chosen to become the first, experimental, torture victim. Mickum expects Zubaydah to be charged sometime this year but cannot say what the charges will be. The evidence no longer supports claims that Zubaydah conspired with al Qaeda in any way. Additionally, he cannot be charged as an enemy combatant through the 2006 Military Commissions Act considering that he was captured and tortured years before that law was enacted.
With this in mind, I asked Lee Hamilton if Abu Zubaydah should be allowed to tell his own story now that his illegal detention and torture have proven to be based on falsehoods. Hamilton said that he would not take a stand on the subject one way or another. This refusal is yet another reason to suspect that Lee Hamilton will never come clean on the 9/11 Commission’s use of unreliable torture testimony.
Although Hamilton has repeatedly stated publicly that he believes torture is immoral and that the U.S. must take a strong stance against it, his actions and his work speak otherwise. The glaring problem he faces now is that it is the 9/11 Commission Report that stands as the definitive argument supporting the use of torture. After all, if not for the alleged torture testimony of Abu Zubaydah and the people he reportedly identified (KSM and Ramsi bin Alshibh in particular) Hamilton’s report would have little evidentiary basis. Consequently, as the U.S. government strains to come up with charges to apply to Zubaydah after disclaiming his connections to al Qaeda, the Commission’s report remains at risk of being further challenged by whatever charges are ultimately filed.
[5] Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Stonewalled by the C.I.A
[6] Notes from my talk with Lee Hamilton, February 7, 2013
[7] Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn v. Robert Gates, Respondents Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Opposition to Petitioner’s Motion for Discover and Petitioner’s Motion for Sanctions. Civil Action No. 08-cv-1360 (RWR), September 2009
Venezuela’s acting President Nicolas Maduro says ‘far-right’ figures in the United States have plotted to assassinate opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Maduro gave the announcement in a televised speech on Wednesday.
“We have detected plans by the far-right, linked to the groups of (former Bush administration officials) Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, to make an attempt against the opposition presidential candidate,” Maduro stated.
According to Venezuela’s opposition party, Capriles did not register his candidacy in person on March 11 over information he had received about being the target of a planned attack. Aides to Capriles delivered the registration papers instead of him.
Venezuela is preparing for presidential election on April 14 to vote for a replacement for late President Hugo Chavez.
On March 8, Maduro was sworn in as acting president, pledging to push ahead the former leader’s agenda.
Before Maduro’s inauguration, over 30 world leaders paid tribute to Chavez at a high-profile funeral.
Chavez passed away on March 5 at the age of 58 after a two-year battle with cancer.
The late Venezuelan leader started the Bolivarian Revolution to establish popular democracy and economic independence and to equitably distribute wealth in Latin America.
Chavez was one of the key players in the progressive movement that has swept across Latin America over the past few years.
TEHRAN – Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has defended an agreement between Iran and Argentina to set up an international “truth commission” to investigate the bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people, the Buenos Aires Heraldreported on Friday.
Fernandez has said, “My commitment with this case is to know the truth, not only what happened abroad but what happened here too. I want to know who were the ones to cover up, to hide evidence; I deserve to know it as an Argentinean and the victims and their families deserve it too.”
According to the report, she has also condemned the “complicity” of Jewish community leaders in the AMIA attack.
Argentina’s Congress approved an agreement with Iran to probe the AMIA bombing on Thursday.
The two governments signed a memorandum of understanding in January on how to deal with the attack in which Argentine court authorities have accused a number of Iranians of involvement. Iran has denied any link to the bombing.
The pact signed with Tehran has been criticized by Israel and Jewish groups, who fear it could end up weakening the case against Iran. They also see it as a diplomatic victory for Iran.
The agreement stipulates that a commission – made up of five foreign legal experts – will outline plans for Argentine judicial officials to travel to Tehran to question Iranians accused of having links to the attack.
Commission members will analyze the documents presented by both nations’ judicial authorities and “issue a report containing recommendations on how to proceed with the case” according to the memorandum.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez had previously said it could shed new light on the case after years of deadlock.
Fernandez has close ties with other Latin American leaders who are on good terms with Tehran, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Her supporters have hailed the memorandum of understanding as a historic opportunity.
Argentina’s Senate also approved the agreement last week.
For more than eleven years, Israel has been wildly celebrating the success of its 9/11 operation against the United States of America. The latest example: Israeli children recently dressed up as the burning Twin Towers, complete with impaled exploding airplanes, to celebrate the bizarre Jewish holiday known as Purim.
Purim exalts and commemorates an ancient operation very much like 9/11. It glorifies the deceptions of Esther, who concealed her Jewish identity to seduce the King of Persia, then slyly tricked him into slaughtering 75,000 people deemed “enemies of the Jews.”
In other words, Purim celebrates Jews lying, secretly penetrating the highest levels of government, and manipulating the leaders of an empire into mass-murdering perceived “enemies of the Jewish people.” That is exactly what the neoconservative Likudnik extremists – Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, and the rest – did on September 11th, 2001. The only difference is that these modern, neocon Esthers would eventually kill millions of innocent people, not just 75,000.
And if they succeed in tricking the US into attacking Iran on behalf of Israel, thereby launching World War III, today’s neocon Esthers could kill tens or even hundreds of millions.
The Israeli schoolchildren dressed up as the burning Twin Towers are not the first Zionists to wildly celebrate Israel’s biggest-ever attack on America. That honor belongs to the “dancing Israelis,” five Mossad spies who set up their cameras in Liberty State Park, across the harbor from the World Trade Center, early in the morning of September 11th, 2001, and pointed those cameras at the as-yet-undamaged Twin Towers. (Their video of the first plane hitting the North Tower has never been publicly released.)
When the planes hit the Towers, the “dancing Israelis” went wild. They began leaping, cavorting, and high-fiving each other. As the Towers burned, the “dancing Israelis” took pictures of each other holding up burning cigarette lighters in front of the burning Towers. And when the Towers were blasted to powder in explosive controlled demolitions, the “dancing Israelis” went crazy with joy. Their plan had succeeded.
Unfortunately for them – and for Israel – their wild celebrations did not go unnoticed. An American woman called the police, who arrested the four Mossad operatives, confiscated the thousands of dollars in cash stuffed in their socks, and held them for weeks. During their incarceration, the Israeli spies repeatedly failed lie detector tests. Nonetheless, they were secretly sent back to Israel, at the request of the Israeli government, by Israeli dual citizen and US Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff.
Later, back in Israel, the “dancing Israelis” went on television and admitted their complicity in 9/11, but denied having planted the explosives that destroyed the Twin Towers, saying: “We were only there to document the event.” (How did they know there would be an event to document?)
Another Israeli who visibly could not contain his joy at the success of 9/11′s “Operation Esther” was Benjamin Netanyahu. When the once and future Israeli Prime Minister was asked about his reaction to 9/11, he said: “It’s very good!” Then, catching himself, he added that while it wasn’t exactly good, it was certainly good for Israel.
Netanyahu would never stop bragging about how wonderful 9/11 was. Seven years after the attack, he was still saying: “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.” (Ha’aretz, Apr 16, 2008 – “Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel”.)
Netanyahu wasn’t the only high-level Israeli caught celebrating 9/11. Another culprit was the legendary Mossad spy chief, Mike Harari.
On September 11th 2001, as the dancing Israelis danced and Netanyahu chortled, “retired” Israeli Mossad Chief Mike Harari was in Bangkok, Thailand organizing a huge party to celebrate the success of his 9/11 operation. During the merry-making, Harari bragged to one of his associates, Dmitri Khalezov, that he, Harari, had been responsible for 9/11. (You can listen to my radio interview with Khalezov at http://noliesradio.org/archives/29582 .) Khalezov’s testimony is supported by documents showing the fake IDs Harari was using in Thailand.
All of the Israeli celebrations of 9/11 – so far – have been unofficial. But the Israeli government is on the record officially applauding another of its many attacks on the US: The 1954 Lavon Affair, otherwise known as Operation Susannah. In that covert operation, Israeli Mossad operatives, disguised as Egyptians, bombed American targets in Egypt. When the Israeli terrorists were caught by the Egyptian authorities and prosecuted, Israel denied any involvement and complained that the whole thing was an anti-Semitic smear. But later, as the Zionist website Wikipedia admits: “In March 2005, Israel publicly honored the surviving operatives, and President Moshe Katsav presented each with a certificate of appreciation for their efforts on behalf of the (Israeli) state, ending decades of official denial by Israel.”
When will Israel officially award a Certificate of Appreciation to its Mossad operatives who blew up the Twin Towers and WTC-7 and killed almost 3,000 Americans in order to launch a series of US wars against Israel’s enemies?
Not for another few decades, we may safely surmise.
When Israel finally does admit its responsibility for 9/11, and lavish honors on the Mossad terrorists responsible, will it be during Purim – the holiday honoring Jews who seduce gentile rulers and manipulate them into mass-murdering their enemies?
On the annual Jewish celebration of the Biblical slaying “of their foes seventy and five thousand,” at least one Israeli family seems to think it’s funny to reenact the murder of 3,000 in New York on September 11, 2001. Angrily reacting to the story, 6 Degrees no Bacon, a Jewish entertainment blog, appears to be unaware that these are not the first Israelis to be so provocatively indifferent to American suffering on 9/11:
People all over Israel are celebrating Purim this weekend, and much like Halloween, the dress-up holiday is a perfect opportunity for parents to show off their creativity and then display it on their poor kids.
The winners of the contest for Costume of Poorest Taste are definitely 7-year-old twins Ilay and Nehoray, who dressed up as the burning World Trade Center towers with the planes still in them on 9/11. At least they spared us the jumpers.
Publication of the picture on the Israeli news website Ynet prompted widespread condemnation. How would Israelis feel if Americans dressed up as a burning Tel Aviv bus, or Europeans wore a “train to Auschwitz” costume? some asked.
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Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Excerpts of an interview with the Syrian President featured in a new documentary on the conflict by the filmmaker Hubert Seipel.
The interview was conducted in English but later overdubbed in German for broadcast on the network ARD. This clip is from the documentary in which Mr. Assad’s remarks can be heard in the original English.
The filmmaker said that he wanted to speak directly to Mr. Assad because “misinformation and psychological warfare make up a large part of the Syrian civil war.” He said that he was frustrated by watching Syria’s war unfold in YouTube clips selectively edited by the two sides. So, he said, “my intention was just to let Mr Assad speak about his point of view, so that our viewers can make their own judgment.”
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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In his upcoming Israel visit, US President Barack Obama will spend just a few hours in Palestinian Ramallah and the rest of the 3-day tour visiting grave of Zionism founder Theodor Herzl, a Holocaust memorial and an anti-missile system, among other Israeli sites.
TEHRAN – Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has defended an agreement between Iran and Argentina to set up an international “truth commission” to investigate the bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people, the Buenos Aires Herald reported on Friday.
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