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-Caveat Lector- http://www.bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidDate=2004-10-14&hidType=RIN&hidRecord=0000000000000000024795
US treatment of detainees violates int'l law: HR
Wednesday October 13 2004 11:07:19 AM BDT
Oct 12: The United States is violating international law by holding prisoners in its war on terror incommunicado and in secret hiding places, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be published on Tuesday calling for an end to such practices.
The New York-based rights organization profiles 11 al Qaeda suspects being detained without concern for their rights under international law in a 46- page report.
They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected architect of the Sept. 11 attacks; Abu Zubaydah, reputedly a close aide of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden; Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, who might have been a Sept. 11 hijacker if he had not failed to get a U.S. visa, and Hambali, an alleged al Qaeda ally in Southeast Asia.
"Those guilty of serious crimes must be brought to justice before fair trials," Reed Brody, special counsel with Human Rights Watch, said in a statement, adding that if the United States ignores international law, "it abandons its ideals and international obligations and becomes a lesser nation." The rights group said international treaties ratified by the United States prohibit holding prisoners incommunicado and in secret locations.
The Geneva Conventions require that the International Committee of the Red Cross have access to all detainees and that information on them be provided to their relatives. Under international human rights law, detainees must be held in recognized places of detention and be able to communicate with lawyers and family members, it said.
U.S. officials say the detentions are essential to confronting terrorism and that many of those held have provided valuable intelligence that has foiled planned attacks. Human Rights Watch called on the United States to grant unrestricted access to the International Committee of the Red Cross to all detainees held in anti-terrorist operations.
REUTERS, NEW YORK/ Independent
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=WORLD&oid=61504
CIA holds top Al Qaeda suspects in Jordan – paper
JERUSALEM - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is holding top al Qaeda suspects in a secret Jordanian jail where they are subjected to interrogation methods banned in the United States, an Israeli newspaper said on Wednesday.
But a Jordanian security official dismissed as "totally baseless" the story in the Haaretz daily, which attributed its information to international intelligence sources. A CIA official in Washington declined to comment.
The newspaper said at least 11 men held incommunicado in Jordan include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington, and Hambali, accused of being al Qaeda's ally in southeast Asia.
"Their detention outside the U.S. enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods banned by U.S. law and to do so in a country where cooperation with Americans is particularly close, thereby reducing the danger of leaks," Haaretz said.
But the Jordanian official, who declined to be named, said: "The allegations that surface every now and then that the U.S. runs secret detention centers in the kingdom are totally baseless and seek to undermine the country's favorable human rights image abroad."
International human rights groups have accused the United States of circumventing guidelines on interrogation by shipping al Qaeda suspects to allied states where such legal scrutiny is lacking.
Washington insists its interrogators operate within the law. U.S. officials say incommunicado detentions in secret locations are essential for security and that many suspects held have provided valuable intelligence that has foiled planned attacks.
Jordan is seen as a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror.
In Rumsfeld's War, a book drawing on declassified Pentagon documents, Washington Times correspondent Rowan Scarborough said Jordanian interrogators had helped U.S. counterparts in handling al Qaeda suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"U.S. interrogators are known to threaten some detainees with shipping them off to Jordan if they don't cooperate," Scarborough said. "Like other Middle Eastern countries, Jordan uses physical means to coerce confessions and vital intelligence information." Reuters/abs-cbnNEWS.com
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=WORLD&oid=63190
Bush picks Gonzales to replace Ashcroft
WASHINGTON - President Bush nominated as his new attorney general on Wednesday the top White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, a son of migrant workers who rose to become a Bush confidant and helped shape legal opinions about prisoner treatment in the war on terror.
Gonzales, who has also been considered a potential Bush pick for the US Supreme Court, is expected to face questions at his Senate confirmation hearing on allegations that Bush administration legal opinions contributed to the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Gonzales wrote a memo in 2002 calling parts of the Geneva Conventions on prisoner treatment obsolete.
The Senate confirmation hearing is expected to delve into what role Gonzales played in writing a legal opinion that outlined rules for the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civil-liberties groups have said this opinion contributed to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a charge denied by the administration.
"Congress should look very carefully at Mr. Gonzales's role in the downward spiral of legal violations that led to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib," said Reed Brody, counsel at Human Rights Watch, a watchdog group that monitors human rights violations globally.
A January 2002 memo relating to the treatment of prisoners is also expected to draw questions at the confirmation hearing. In that document, Gonzales argued the requirements of obtaining information from would-be terrorists rendered obsolete the Geneva Conventions' strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners.
It also "renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms and scientific instruments," the document said. Conservative groups were generally welcoming of Gonzales becoming attorney general. They have been wary of talk that he might be nominated to the Supreme Court
Bob wrote:"wired money earlier this year to three collaborators of Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed" not to KSM himself, reputed to be in US custody
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:In a message dated 11/10/04 2:45:34 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_1-11-2004_pg1_4
3754 01/11/2004
EUROPEAN UNION / SPAIN
TRAFFIC
FRANCE PRESS
According to 'El Pais', ten Pakistani arrested in Barcelona had been financing contributions to Al Quaeda through drug sales. They netted on the average 18,000 euros (23,000 US dollars) a day. There were several transfers to Kalid Sheik Mohammed, reputed to be one of the 'brains' behind September 11th.
Pakistanis held in Spain funded Al Qaeda
MADRID: Ten Pakistanis arrested in Barcelona in mid-September were believed to have funded Al Qaeda operatives by transferring ill-gotten money to Pakistan from Spain, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Sunday.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_1-11-2004_pg7_47
The paper, citing sources close to the investigation, reported that the men had wired money earlier this year to three collaborators of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suspected of planning the September 11 attacks. The paper did not name the collaborators but said that they had been arrested in a swoop earlier this year in Pakistan, which had left one of them dead. Spanish authorities had detained the Pakistanis on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organisation and it is believed that the men could have made up to 18,000 euros ($23,000) per day from drug trafficking, stolen bank cards and counterfeit passports. The newspaper reported that part of the money was sent to Karachi and Islamabad to fund terrorist activities. The men were arrested on September 15 and were found in possession of several kilogrammes of cocaine, 18,000 euros in cash as well as videos which showed some of them calling for holy war. afp(Agence France Presse)
The strange story of Aafia Siddiqui
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: Aafia Siddiqi, the highly-qualified 29-year old Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist wanted by the FBI for her alleged membership of Al Qaeda, once flew from Quetta to Monrovia, Liberia's capital, on a gem-smuggling assignment.
According to a detailed profile published by a Boston magazine, until the FBI called her a terrorist, she was living a normal life in Boston with her children and her doctor husband. In reality, the article by Katherine Ozment says, she was a high-profile Al Qaeda operative. She often travelled to Monrovia on her secret missions and would be driven to Hotel Boulevard, where other Al Qaeda figures had stayed, and taken good care of until the deal was done. The man who would drive her from the airport to the hotel, a 60-minute drive, would later become the chief informant in a United Nations-led investigation. He described her as a quiet woman who wore a traditional headscarf and kept mostly to herself. She spent the week holed up in her room, making trips into town for small errands.
On one of her trips to Monrovia in June 2001, she left as quietly as she had entered, but with a large parcel containing gems from Africa's illegal diamond trade. They would be used as a convenient, hard-to-trace way of funding Al Qaeda's global terror operations. She was not seen again in Monrovia, but earlier this year, one of the men who had seen her in Liberia noticed a photograph of her and recognised the person. At a news conference in May this year, US Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that the FBI was looking for seven people with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. MIT graduate and former Boston resident Aafia Siddiqui was the only woman on the list. After her photos appeared on television, the informant picked up the phone and dialled investigators at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is examining Africa's illegal diamond trade. The informant was convinced that the woman in the photographs was the woman who had come to Liberia.
Her family denies she was ever in Liberia, with her family's attorney, Elaine Whitfield insisting, Aafia Siddiqui was here in June 2001. And I can prove it. If she can prove Siddiqui wasn't in Liberia that week, she'll damage one of the most puzzling cases of alleged terrorism to emerge from 9/11. The claim that Siddiqui was involved in diamond trading is another in a series of sometimes surprising, sometimes vague accusations by government officials. In Siddiqui's case, the allegations have been further clouded by the often inaccurate, even hyperbolic descriptions of her by the media, says the article.
To those who knew her, Aafia Siddiqui was a kind, quiet woman living the normal life of a Pakistani expat in Boston. To the FBI, which displayed her photograph at that press conference in May, she was a suspected terrorist with ties to a chief mastermind of 9/11 - and the knowledge, skills, and intention to continue Al Qaeda's terror war in the United States and abroad. Could one woman embody such diametrically opposed identities? Who is the real Aafia Siddiqui? And where has she gone? the writer asks.
Born in Karachi on March 2, 1972, Aafia was one of three children of Mohammad Siddiqui, a doctor trained in England, and Ismet, a homemaker. Mohammed, Aafia's brother, is an architect living in Houston with his wife, a paediatrician, and their children. Fowzia, Aafia's sister, is a Harvard-trained neurologist who was working at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore until she decided to go back to Pakistan. Aafia was a graduate of MIT. She moved to Texas in 1990 to be near her brother and had good enough grades after spending a year at the University of Houston to transfer to MIT. Siddiqui's fellow students say she was a quiet, studious woman who was devout in her religious beliefs but not a fundamentalist. She often wore a headscarf but didn't cover her face.
While at MIT Siddiqui apparently joined an association for Muslim students. She wrote three guides for members who wanted to teach others about Islam. On the groups website, Siddiqui explained how to run a daw'ah table, an informational booth used at school events to educate people about, and persuade them to convert to, Islam. Other references, however, reveal a passion for Islam that could be called hardline. In one of her pamphlets she wrote, May Allah give this strength and sincerity to us so that our humble effort continues, and expands until America becomes a Muslim land.
Her husband Amjad Khan turns out to have been more fundamentalist in his religious beliefs than her and wanted to return to Pakistan to raise the children in an Islamic way while Aafia wanted to stay in America. According to Hasan Abbas, now a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and the author of the recently published Pakistan's Drift into Extremism, remembers the story of the couple's marital troubles differently. He was told she was more extreme in her views than her husband. Siddiqui ordered the Quran and other Islamic books to be distributed to prisons and on school campuses. Boxes of them would arrive at the local mosque, and she would come pick them up. Siddiqui's missionary work stemmed from her belief that it was her duty to bolster the Muslim community around her. She was always very frustrated here that Muslims were not addressing the needs of their community, says a woman who was a student of Siddiqui's. She said we needed to be doing more to help our people and that we needed to address the needs of the community. She says Siddiqui wanted her husband to use his medical skills to help the less fortunate.
In July 2001, two Saudi nationals, Abdullah Al Reshood and Hatem Al Dhahri, took over Khan and Siddiqui's lease when the couple decided to move. During that time, Al Reshood received a $20,000 wire transfer from the Saudi government. The money, a Saudi official later explained, was sent by the Saudi government to Al Reshood to pay for medical treatment for his wife. Siddiqui and her husband were by now being watched by the FBI for having used a debit card to buy night-vision goggles, body armour, and military manuals from American websites, and for donating to charities the FBI watches closely. When questioned, Khan told authorities he had purchased the military items for big-game hunting in Pakistan, saying goggles and armour weren't available there. Siddiqui, who was questioned only incidentally, was quickly released. Shortly after that, citing the difficulty of living as Muslims in the United States after 9/11, the couple returned to Pakistan. They stayed in Pakistan for a short time, then returned to the United States. They remained here until 2002, then moved back to Pakistan. The tension between the couple had continued to grow and finally reached breaking point in August 2002. Siddiqui was eight months pregnant with their third child, and she and Khan were now estranged. She and the children stayed at her mother's house, while Khan lived elsewhere in Karachi.
One day, Khan came over to Aafia's parents' house bearing a letter explaining that he was going to divorce Siddiqui. He started reading the letter, and a heated argument began between Khan and Siddiqui's parents. The fight was too much for Siddiqui's father who had a heart attack and died. Within weeks, Siddiqui gave birth to a son. Siddiqui stayed at her mother's house for the rest of the year, returning to the United States without her children around December 2002 to look for a job in the Baltimore area, where her sister had begun working at Sinai Hospital. The real purpose of her trip, the FBI suspects, was to open a post office box for Majid Khan, a purported Al Qaeda operative who allegedly had plans to blow up gas stations and fuel tanks in the Baltimore-Washington area. Siddiqui's family contends that her trip to Baltimore was for the sole purpose of finding a job, and that if she did open a post office box it was for the replies she hoped to get.
According to the article, Months later, the FBI would make its most devastating claim against Siddiqui. It was still dark on the morning of March 1, 2003, when Pakistani authorities arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a known September 11 mastermind, at a Karachi safe house. The arrest made news around the world. It also presaged the extraordinary vanishing act of Aafia Siddiqui and her three small children. It seems Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave up Aafia's name as being a major Al Qaeda operative. However, one of her defenders says Siddiqui's identity was likely stolen. Aafia was, I think, probably a pretty naive and trusting person and my guess is it would be pretty easy for somebody who wanted to steal an identity to just steal it. About a month after his capture in the spring of 2003, she disappeared. The last her mother remembers, Siddiqui was piling herself and her children, then seven, five, and six months old, into a taxi headed to the railway station, the first step of what she said was her planned trip to visit an uncle in Islamabad. Her mother said goodbye to her daughter and grandchildren - and hasn't seen them since.
What happened to Aafia Siddiqui and her children that day is anyone's guess. Siddiqui's mother, Ismet, claims that a few days after Siddiqui's disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house in a leather suit and helmet and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again. A report in the Pakistani Urdu press said that Siddiqui and her kids had been seen being picked up by Pakistani authorities and taken into custody. Even a spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry and two unnamed US officials confirmed this in the press. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials mysteriously backtracked, saying it was unlikely that Siddiqui was in custody. Ismet, hysterical, decided to board a plane to the United States in an attempt to find her daughter. When official-looking men greeted her at JFK Airport in New York, she thought they were there to help her find her daughter, according to the article. Siddiqui's sister Fowzia picked up Ismet and took her back to Baltimore. There was a knock at the door. It was the FBI serving a subpoena for Ismet Siddiqui to come to Boston to testify before a grand jury. In the days after Ismet was served the subpoena, she, Fowzia, and her son Mohammed all spoke at length with agents from the FBI and US Attorney's Office. Aafia Siddiqui had been missing for more than a year when the FBI put her photographs on its website. It was May 26, and Ashcroft and Mueller told the press that Siddiqui was an Al Qaeda facilitator.
According to the article, the rumour among well-informed Pakistanis is that she is dead. If Siddiqui was captured, why would she be killed? Generally, terrorism suspects are captured and paraded before the press to show that the government is doing its job. The fact that Siddiqui has been missing so long does not bode well for her reappearance. And the children? One thing is clear so far, Muzamal Suherwardy says. Where she is, her children are there with her.
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/
Please let us stay on topic and be civil.
OM
Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/
Please let us stay on topic and be civil.
OM
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