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Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bin Laden 'is still in Pakistan' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8096552.stm

bin Laden US Leon Panetta CIA Pakistan

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is still hiding in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta has said.
Argos Media

Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...18zubaydah.html

CIA US Torture Abu Zubaydah Al-Qaeda

shared by Argos Media on 18 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.
  • The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show.
  • Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.
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  • Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”
  • A footnote to another of the memos described a rift between line officers questioning Abu Zubaydah at a secret C.I.A. prison in Thailand and their bosses at headquarters, and asserted that the brutal treatment may have been “unnecessary.”
  • In March 2002, when Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan after a gunfight with Pakistani security officers backed by F.B.I. and C.I.A. officers, Bush administration officials portrayed him as a Qaeda leader. That judgment was reflected in the Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.The memo summarizes the C.I.A.’s judgment that Abu Zubaydah, then 31, had risen rapidly to “third or fourth man in Al Qaeda” and had served as “senior lieutenant” to Osama bin Laden. It said he had “managed a network of training camps” and had been “involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by Al Qaeda.”
  • The memo reported the C.I.A.’s portrayal of “a highly self-directed individual who prizes his independence,” a deceptive narcissist, healthy and tough, who agency officers believed was the most senior terrorist caught since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
  • His interrogation, according to multiple accounts, began in Pakistan and continued at the secret C.I.A. site in Thailand, with a traditional, rapport-building approach led by two F.B.I. agents, who even helped care for him as his gunshot wounds healed.
  • A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.
  • The legal basis for this treatment is uncertain, but lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters were in constant touch with interrogators, as well as with Mr. Bybee’s subordinate in the Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, who was drafting memos on the legal limits of interrogation.
  • Through the summer of 2002, Abu Zubaydah continued to provide valuable information. Interrogators began to surmise that he was not a leader, but rather a helpful training camp personnel clerk who would arrange false documents and travel for jihadists, including Qaeda members.
  • He knew enough to give interrogators “a road map of Al Qaeda operatives,” an agency officer said. He also repeated talk he had heard about possible plots or targets in the United States, though when F.B.I. agents followed up, most of it turned out to be idle discussion or preliminary brainstorming.At the time, former C.I.A. officials say, his tips were extremely useful, helping to track several other important terrorists, including Mr. Mohammed.
  • But senior agency officials, still persuaded, as they had told President George W. Bush and his staff, that he was an important Qaeda leader, insisted that he must know more.“You get a ton of information, but headquarters says, ‘There must be more,’ ” recalled one intelligence officer who was involved in the case. As described in the footnote to the memo, the use of repeated waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was ordered “at the direction of C.I.A. headquarters,” and officials were dispatched from headquarters “to watch the last waterboard session.”
  • The memo, written in 2005 and signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that the waterboarding was justified even if the prisoner turned out not to know as much as officials had thought.
  • And he did not, according to the former intelligence officer involved in the Abu Zubaydah case. “He pleaded for his life,” the official said. “But he gave up no new information. He had no more information to give.”
  • Since 2002, the C.I.A. has downgraded its assessment of Abu Zubaydah’s significance, while continuing to call his revelations important. In an interview, an intelligence officer said that the current view was that Abu Zubaydah was “an important terrorist facilitator” who disclosed “essential raw material for successful counterterrorist action.”
Argos Media

Yemen Dispute Slows Closing of Guantánamo - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24yemen.html

Yemen US Guantanamo Ali Abdullah Saleh Terrorism

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The Obama administration’s effort to return the largest group of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen, their home country, has stalled, creating a major new hurdle for the president’s plan to close the prison camp in Cuba by next January, American and Yemeni officials say.
  • The Yemeni government has asked Washington to return its detainees and has said that it would need substantial aid to rehabilitate the men. But the Obama administration is increasingly skeptical of Yemen’s ability to provide adequate rehabilitation and security to supervise returned prisoners. In addition, American officials are wary of sending detainees to Yemen because of growing indications of activity by Al Qaeda there.
  • The developments are significant for the Obama administration because the 97 Yemeni detainees make up more than 40 percent of the remaining 241 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The question of what to do with them “is integral to the process of closing Guantánamo,” said Ken Gude, an associate director at the Center for American Progress who has written about closing the prison camp.
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  • Some Republicans in Congress have mounted stiff resistance to closing Guantánamo, and officials in some American communities, fearing that terrorism suspects could be tried or held in their courts or prisons, said they would fight any such plans. Also, while some European governments have promised to resettle detainees, specific agreements have been slow in coming.
  • The Yemenis not only are the biggest group of detainees, but also are widely seen as the most difficult to transfer out of Guantánamo. Other countries are wary of many of the Yemeni detainees because jihadist groups have long had deep roots in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world and the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father. If the Yemenis are not sent home, there may be few other options for many of the 97 men, detainees’ lawyers and human rights groups say.
  • The Bush administration also failed to reach a deal with President Saleh, but the Obama administration had hoped to get increased cooperation from Yemen, which critics say has a history of coddling Islamic extremists and releasing convicted terrorists. Complicating the task is the fact that security in Yemen has been deteriorating for more than a year, with several terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing outside the American Embassy compound in September that killed 13 people.
  • Perhaps a dozen or more Yemeni detainees could face prosecution in the United States, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was charged in the Bush administration’s military commission system with being a coordinator of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
  • David H. Remes, a lawyer for 16 Yemeni detainees, said it appeared that many of the men might remain in American custody. “Unless President Obama reconsiders his decision to close Guantánamo,” Mr. Remes said, “the Yemeni detainees would have to be brought to the U.S. and put in some sort of prison.”
  • The complexities of the issues surrounding the detainees are a reflection of Yemen’s tangled domestic and international problems. It is a state that often appears on the verge of chaos. A weak central government is fighting a persistent insurgency in the north, restive separatists in the south and a growing Qaeda presence.
  • Some Yemeni officials say President Saleh, a wily former army officer, has used the internal threats — and perhaps even nurtured them — to press the United States and Yemen’s neighbor Saudi Arabia for more aid.As a result, people who have discussed the detainee issues with Yemeni officials say the Obama administration’s frustration with the Yemeni government may be well founded.
  • One senior Yemeni official, she said, seemed to suggest that Yemen would require a huge payment from the American government to resettle the detainees. A proper rehabilitation program, the official claimed, could cost as much as $1 million for each detainee, totaling nearly $100 million.
Pedro Gonçalves

SPIEGEL Interview with Pervez Musharraf: Obama 'Is Aiming at the Right Things' - SPIEGE... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,628960-2,00.html

Pakistan US India Afghanistan Taliban Pervez Musharraf Mullah Omar Military bin Laden

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
  • SPIEGEL: Is Pakistan now paying for its earlier failures? Why didn't you eliminate the Taliban leadership when they came to Pakistan at the end of 2001 -- above all the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's highest decision-making council, in the Pakistani city Quetta? Musharraf: The Quetta Shura never existed. Do you really think there is an assembly in a kind of a house where they come and discuss things in something like a regular consultation? Mullah Omar never was in Pakistan and he would be mad if he appeared there. He is much safer in Afghanistan.
  • SPIEGEL: Over the last eight years, Pakistan has received about $10 billion in military aid from the US. Apparently you didn't spend all that money on the war on terror -- some went to secure your eastern border with India. Is that true? Musharraf: Half of it, $5 billion, was reimbursed to us for services we had already rendered to the US. You have to understand how the Pakistan army operates: The divisions keep moving. If we buy new tanks for $250 million, then they will be deployed in Peshawar as part of the war on terror, but they will also go to the eastern border. But why do you care about that? Why, for heaven's sake, should I tell you how we spent the money? SPIEGEL: The American government would surely be interested in knowing. Musharraf: I also told the Americans that it has nothing to do with them. We are not obligated to give out any details. Maybe I should have said at the time: Ok, you want us to support you, give us $20 billion a year and don't ask what we are doing with it.
  • Musharraf: I do agree, they do not accept this war as their war. This has something to do with history. Please understand the reason, and you should blame the US for it. From 1979 to 1989, we fought a war with the US in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. And we won mainly because of ISI. Otherwise, the Soviet Union could not have been defeated in Afghanistan. But then the US left us all alone with 30,000 mujahedeen brought by them. Even Osama bin Laden was brought by the US, who else? They all came to fight the Soviet Union. So, did anybody in Washington develop a strategy for what to do with these people after 1989? No, nobody helped Pakistan for the next 12 years until 2001. We were left high and dry, with 30,000 mujahedeen holed up, no rehabilitation, no resettlement for them. No assistance was given to Pakistan -- instead sanctions were imposed against us. Fourty F-16s, for which we had paid money, were denied to us. Four million Afghan refugees had also come to Pakistan. The mujahedeed coalesced into al-Qaida and our social fabric was being completely destroyed. This is why the people of Pakistan felt used by the Americans, and this is why Pakistanis dislike the US and this war.
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  • SPIEGEL: A few weeks ago, you visited New Delhi and said India and Pakistan have done enough damage to each other and that it is time to find a solution. Do you view yourself as as a future ambassador for peace between the two countries? Musharraf: If the Pakistan government wants me and if the Indians also trust me, then I can be of some use.
Pedro Gonçalves

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Bin Laden attacks Obama policies - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...200963123251920623.html

bin Laden Obama US Richard Holbrooke Ayman al-Zawahiri

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 04 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • "Obama and his administration have sowed new seeds of hatred against America.  "He has followed the steps of his predecessor in antagonising Muslims ... and laying the foundation for long wars."
Pedro Gonçalves

Al Qaeda Looking to Rebrand - 0 views

www.brandchannel.com/...-Qaeda-Looking-to-Rebrand.aspx

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Branding

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 16 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • "After (Osama) bin Laden's death and the Arab Spring, the name (al Qaeda) seems to have negative connotations and baggage,"
  • the number of jihadists going to Pakistan since bin Laden died has decreased, but there has been uptick of such travelers to Yemen and “the number of foreign fighters in Yemen now exceeds 1,000.” That would put the number in Yemen at “more than four times the number of al Qaeda members believed to be in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” Fox adds. Somalia is also considered a hotbed with more than 750 foreign fighters now training there.
  • "The al Qaeda core is no longer beneficial to be associated with ... because their main leader is gone," said Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, director of homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, according to Fox. "One thing about AQAP is it's got remarkable name recognition, which can serve to help recruiting.”
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Pakistan army warns PM Gilani over criticisms - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-asia-16511826

Pakistan

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 11 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • The army warned of "serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences" after the PM criticised military leaders in a media interview. Meanwhile, Mr Gilani has sacked his defence secretary, who is seen as having close ties to the military.
  • On Monday Mr Gilani was quoted telling China's People's Daily Online that Pakistan's army chief and head of intelligence acted unconstitutionally by making submissions to a Supreme Court inquiry which has been rocking the government.
  • A senior official told AFP news agency that the defence secretary, retired general Naeem Khalid Lodhi, had been removed from his post for gross misconduct. The sacking is likely to heighten frictions with military leaders. Many observers believe Gen Lodhi lost his job after writing to the Supreme Court saying the government had administrative, but not operational, control of the army.
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  • Last month Mr Gilani said conspirators were plotting to bring down his government, without specifically blaming the military. That prompted army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani to dismiss coup rumours.
  • The Supreme Court is investigating an anonymous memo which sought US help to avert a possible military coup in Pakistan following the killing by US forces of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in May. It is not clear who wrote the memo or conveyed it to the Americans.
  • The scandal has already cost Pakistan's former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, his job. He denies any role in the memo, as does President Asif Ali Zardari. He could be forced to quit if the trail is found to lead to his door. The Supreme Court investigation aims to get to the bottom of the scandal. Mr Zardari's government is also on a collision course with the judiciary, which wants to reopen old corruption cases in which the president argues he is innocent.
Pedro Gonçalves

When Did the American Empire Start to Decline? | Stephen M. Walt - 0 views

walt.foreignpolicy.com/...erican_empire_start_to_decline

US Iraq Iraq War Iran

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • the Clinton administration entered office in 1993 and proceeded to adopt a strategy of "dual containment." Until that moment, the United States had acted as an "offshore balancer" in the Persian Gulf, and we had carefully refrained from deploying large air or ground force units there on a permanent basis. We had backed the Shah of Iran since the 1940s, and then switched sides and tilted toward Iraq during the 1980s. Our goal was to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, and we cleverly played competing powers off against each other for several decades. With dual containment, however, the United States had committed itself to containing two different countries -- Iran and Iraq -- who hated each other, which in turn forced us to keep lots of airplanes and troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did this, as both Kenneth Pollack and Trita Parsi have documented, because Israel wanted us to do it, and U.S. officials foolishly believed that doing so would make Israel more compliant during the Oslo peace process. But in addition to costing a lot more money, keeping U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the long term also fueled the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was deeply offended by the presence of "infidel" troops on Saudi territory, and so the foolish strategy of dual containment played no small role in causing our terrorism problem. It also helped derail several attempts to improve relations between the United States and Iran. Dual containment, in short, was a colossal blunder.
  • But no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse. And that is precisely what George W. Bush did after 9/11. Under the influence of neoconservatives who had opposed dual containment because they thought it didn't go far enough, Bush adopted a new strategy of "regional transformation." Instead of preserving a regional balance of power, or containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the United States was now going to use its military power to topple regimes across the Middle East and turn those countries into pro-American democracies. This was social engineering on a scale never seen before. The American public and the Congress were unenthusiastic, if not suspicious, about this grand enterprise, which forced the Bush administration to wage a massive deception campaign to get them on board for what was supposed to be the first step in this wildly ambitious scheme. The chicanery worked, and the United States launched its unnecessary war on Iraq in March 2003.
  • wrecking Iraq -- which is what we did -- destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and improved Iran's geopolitical position. The invasion of Iraq also diverted resources away from the war in Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to re-emerge as a formidable fighting force. Thus, Bush's decision to topple Saddam in 2003 led directly to two losing wars, not just one. And these wars were enormously expensive to boot. Combined with Bush's tax cuts and other fiscal irresponsibilities, this strategic incompetence caused the federal deficit to balloon to dangerous levels and helped bring about the fiscal impasse that we will be dealing with for years to come.
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  • when future historians search for the moment when the "American Empire" reached its pinnacle and began its descent, the war that began 21 years ago would be a good place to start.
Argos Media

SPIEGEL Interview with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari: 'Nuclear Weapons Are Not K... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,623134,00.html

Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari

shared by Argos Media on 06 May 09 - Cached
  • SPIEGEL: The Taliban is increasingly calling on the poor to follow them and to chase away the landlords and feudal lords. Are the Islamists in the process of transforming themselves into a social movement that pits Pakistan's underprivileged against the rich elite, who have opposed land reform? Zardari: I don't see that. In regions of the northwest border provinces, there is no feudalism because there is no land available that would be sufficient for agriculture -- it is all mountainous terrain. There are old families and there is a tribal chief system that relies on tribal laws that has been indigenous for centuries. The Taliban have superiority of numbers and arms and are more aggressive, so they sometimes overpower the local authority.
  • It would be a great gesture if Osama bin Laden were to come out into the open in order to give us a chance of catching him. The question right now is whether he is alive or dead. The Americans have told me they don't know. They are much better informed and they have been looking for him for a much longer time. They have got more equipment, more intelligence, more satellite eavesdropping equipment and more resources on the ground in Afghanistan, and they say they have no trace of him. Our own intelligence is of the same opinion. Presumably, he does not exist anymore, but that has not been confirmed.
  • SPIEGEL: Why do you leave the elimination of top terrorists in the Pakistani tribal areas to the Americans, whose drone attacks are extremely unpopular amongst the populace? Why don't you handle this yourselves? Zardari: If we had the drone technology, then we would. It would be a plus. We have always said that we don't appreciate the way the Americans are handling it. We think it is counterproductive. But it is mostly happening in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- for all intents and purposes no man's land.
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  • SPIEGEL: What are you hoping will happen during your visit with US President Barack Obama this week?
  • Zardari: That is a million dollar question. And I am hoping the answer will be billions of dollars, because that is the kind of money I need to fix Pakistan's economy. The idea is to request that the world appreciate the sensitivity of Pakistan and the challenges it faces and to treat us on par with General Motors, Chrysler and Citibank.
  • our wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated by terrorists, feared that your country's nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists. Do you share this fear? Zardari: If democracy in this country fails, if the world doesn't help democracy -- then any eventuality is a possibility. But as long as democracy is there, there is no question of that situation arising. All your important installations and weaponry are always under extra security. Nuclear weapons are not Kalashnikovs -- the technology is complicated, so it is not as if one little Taliban could come down and press a button. There is no little button. I want to assure the world that the nuclear capability of Pakistan is in safe hands.
Argos Media

Obama stands firm on closing Guantánamo | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...barack-obama-guantanamo-close

US Guantanamo Torture Obama Dick Cheney

shared by Argos Media on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • Barack Obama today laid out a broad case for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and banning the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have been condemned as torture – while accusing his opponents of wanting to scare Americans to win political battles.In a grand hall at the US national archives, standing directly in front of original copies of the US constitution and declaration of independence, Obama said the current legal and political battles in Washington over the fate of the 240 prisoners there stemmed not from his decision to close the facility, but from George Bush's move seven years ago to open it.
  • Obama stressed at several points that his administration would never free dangerous terrorists into the US, an effort to counter the Republican party's central argument against the closure. He said US prisons were tough and safe enough to handle the most vicious al-Qaida terrorist suspects now held at Guantánamo."I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people," Obama said. "Al-Qaida terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture – like other prisoners of war – must be prevented from attacking us again."
  • Shortly after Obama spoke, Dick Cheney gave a rebuttal at a conservative Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. The former vice-president defended many of the Bush administration policies Obama is now unraveling, and mentioned either "September 11" or "9/11" 25 times.Cheney said Saddam Hussein had "known ties" to terrorists, an apparent rehashing of the widely discredited Bush administration effort to link the Iraqi dictator to the September 11 2001 hijackers."After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalised," Cheney said."In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralising as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists."
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  • Obama today said that indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and the prison's harsh interrogation methods had undermined the rule of law, alienated America from the rest of the world, served as a rallying cry and recruiting symbol for terrorists, risked the lives of American troops by making it less likely enemy combatants would surrender, and increased the likelihood American prisoners of war would be mistreated. The camp's existence discouraged US allies from cooperating in the fight against international terrorism, he said."There is also no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world," he said. "Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law."
  • Obama said his administration would try in US courts those who had violated US criminal laws; try in military commissions those who violated the laws of war; free those ordered released by US courts; and transfer at least 50 people to foreign countries for detention and rehabilitation.
  • He noted that an estimated 14% of suspects freed from Guantánamo returned to the battlefield, but blamed that on the Bush administration's slipshod process of selecting which to let loose.
  • Meanwhile only three people had been tried by the Bush military commissions in seven years, but Bush had released 525 detainees from the prison.
  • He acknowledged that a number of Guantánamo prisoners could not be prosecuted yet posed a clear threat to the US: those who had trained at al-Qaida camps, commanded Taliban troops, pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and sworn to kill Americans."These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States," he said.
  • Obama defended his decision to release justice department memos detailing the Bush administration's legal rationale for waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other harsh interrogation techniques. He said those techniques had already been publicised and he had already banned them."In short, I released these memos because there was no overriding reason to protect them," he said. "And the ensuing debate has helped the American people better understand how these interrogation methods came to be authorised and used."He defended his decision not to release photographs of US-held prisoners similar to those taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He said he feared they would inflame world opinion against the US and endanger US troops.
Pedro Gonçalves

Saddam's weapons bluff aimed at Iran: FBI reports | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE56113O20090702

Iraq US Iraq War Iran Saddam Hussein

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 02 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader. "Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction. He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said.
  • The FBI reports, released on Wednesday, said Saddam asserted that he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for blocking the return of UN weapons inspectors who were searching for WMD. "In his opinion, the UN inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq,"
  • Saddam, identified as "High Value Detainee #1," shared Bush's hostility toward the "fanatic" Iranian mullahs,
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  • Saddam also denied any connections to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who he called a "zealot," and cited North Korea as his most likely ally in a crunch, according to the documents.
Pedro Gonçalves

Barack Obama heads to Saudi Arabia at start of short Middle East tour | World news | gu... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ing-abdullah-saudi-arabia-tour

Saudi Arabia Pakistan Afghanistan Taliban

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Saudi Arabia could also help cut off large sums of money that flow to militants from wealthy Saudi donors and Islamic charities. Saudi Arabia has historical ties with the Taliban. The kingdom and Pakistan worked together to facilitate the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s and only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, recognised Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
  • Analysts say, however, that the US may be hoping for too much from the Saudis. Steve Coll, an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan who heads the New America Foundation, pointed out that the Saudis were unable to convince the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Americas | Guantanamo detainee arrives in NY - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8091013.stm

US Guantanamo Ahmed Ghailani Tanzania Dar es Salam Al-Qaeda

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The first Guantanamo detainee who is to be tried in a US civilian court has arrived in New York, officials say.
  • Ahmed Ghailani has been transferred to face charges in a New York court in connection with the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.
  • The BBC's Rob Watson says the case of Ahmed Ghailani is, in many ways, one of the least problematic for the administration. He was first charged in 1998 after an extensive FBI investigation and there is therefore plenty of evidence against him.
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  • The US government hopes to transfer some of the detainees to other countries but negotiations have proved difficult, particularly over the issue of whether the US is willing to also receive detainees. Congress has rejected an administration request for funding to close down Guantanamo, amid widespread opposition to bringing detainees on to the US mainland.
  • He was taken to Guantanamo with other "high value" detainees in late 2006.
  • "With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people," a statement by US Attorney General Eric Holder said.
  • According to the transcript of a closed-door hearing in March 2007, Mr Ghailani admitted delivering explosives used to blow up the US embassy in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.
  • He is alleged to have risen through the ranks of al-Qaeda to become a bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden.
Argos Media

Europe's 'Special Interrogations': New Evidence of Torture Prison in Poland - SPIEGEL O... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,621450,00.html

US CIA Torture Polan Szymany Stare Kiejkuty Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

shared by Argos Media on 28 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The current debate in the US on the "special interrogation methods" sanctioned by the Bush administration could soon reach Europe. It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is evidence of a secret prison nearby.
  • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, also known as "the brains" behind al-Qaida. This was the man who had presented Osama bin Laden with plans to attack the US with commercial jets. He personally selected the pilots and supervised preparations for the attacks. Eighteen months later, on March 1, 2003, Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by US Special Forces and brought to Afghanistan two days later. Now the CIA was flying him to a remote area in Poland's Masuria region. The prisoner slept during the flight from Kabul to Szymany, for the first time in days, as he later recounted:
  • There is now no doubt that the Gulfstream N379P landed at least five times at Szymany between February and July, 2003. Flight routes were manipulated and falsified for this purpose and, with the knowledge of the Polish government, the European aviation safety agency Eurocontrol was deliberately deceived.
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  • It was apparently here, just under an hour's drive from Szymany airport, that Sheikh Mohammed was tortured, exactly 183 times with waterboarding -- an interrogation technique that simulates the sensation of drowning -- in March, 2003 alone. That averages out to eight times a day. And all of this happened right here in Europe.
  • What the CIA did back then to prisoners in the Polish military airbase of Stare Kiejkuty, north of Szymany, had been authorized by the president. According to witnesses, Stare Kiejkuty housed a secret CIA prison for "high value detainees" -- for the most prominent prisoners of the war on terror.
  • A large number of Polish and American intelligence operatives have since gone on record that the CIA maintained a prison in northeastern Poland. Independent of these sources, Polish government officials from the Justice and Defense Ministry have also reported that the Americans had a secret base near Szymany airport. And so began on March 7, 2003 one of the darkest chapters of recent American -- and European -- history.
  • Stare Kiejkuty military base, known as a training camp for Polish intelligence agents.
  • Sheikh Mohammed said that they cut the clothes from his body, photographed him naked and threw him in a three-by-four-meter (10 x 13 ft) cell with wooden walls. That was when the hardest phase of the interrogating began, he claims. According to Sheikh Mohammed, one of his interrogators told him that they had received the green light from Washington to give him a "hard time":
  • "They never used the word 'torture' and never referred to 'physical pressure,' only to 'a hard time.' I was never threatened with death, in fact I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought to the 'verge of death and back again.'"
  • He says he was questioned roughly eight hours a day. He spent the first month naked and standing, with his hands chained to the ceiling of the cell, even at night.
  • the al-Qaida operative described how he was strapped to a special bed and submitted to waterboarding: "Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe. This obviously could only be done for one or two minutes at a time. The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the waterboarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe."
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