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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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December 10th,
2005 - Pentagon IDs Suspected Terror Accomplice |
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Pentagon IDs Suspected
Terror Accomplice Detainee’s lawyer denies accusation, alleges torture By Phil Hirschkorn Cable Network News December 10, 2005 New York - The Pentagon
recently filed court papers identifying a 27-year-old Ethiopian national as
an accomplice of terror suspect Jose Padilla. But as Binyam Ahmed Muhammad
waits for his case to be referred to a military panel, he claims the charges
against him are based on coerced confessions and torture. The Pentagon's court papers
allege that Muhammad, a detainee at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, joined Padilla in early 2002 in Pakistan. There, they allegedly
proposed to al Qaeda leaders that they travel to the United States to
detonate a "uranium-enhanced" explosive device, possibly in
Washington. Padilla, 35, is the accused
American al Qaeda operative confined as an "enemy combatant" for
more than three years in a Navy brig in South Carolina. A federal grand jury
in Miami, Florida, indicted him last month on terrorism charges unrelated to
the alleged "dirty bomb" plot. Lawyer: Charges are ‘rubbish’ Muhammad's attorney says the
allegations raised in the Pentagon's court papers are false. "It's absolute rubbish
in my opinion," said London attorney Clive Stafford Smith, who
represents Muhammad and more than 30 other Guantanamo detainees as the legal
director of Reprieve, a British human rights organization. "He has no idea who
Jose Padilla is. He was never knowingly in the same place as him," Smith
said. Padilla's alleged accomplice
has never been publicly named by Justice Department officials. However, the
government's allegations against Muhammad are detailed in an unclassified
military combatant review board report viewed by CNN and in the terrorism
conspiracy charges made public by a military commission last month. In the indictment returned
November 17, Padilla is accused of conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim
people in a foreign country, conspiring to provide material support to
terrorists and providing material support to terrorists. He was added as a defendant
to an existing case against four other men accused of forming a "North
American support cell" of a global "violent jihad" movement. The indictment, however,
made no mention of the "dirty bomb" allegations the Bush
administration cited initially to detain Padilla. Padilla is formally charged
with little more than attending al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in
1999 and 2000. Muhammad is not mentioned in the indictment. From Ethiopia to Pakistan Muhammad's path to
Guantanamo Bay began in Ethiopia. When he was 14 his parents fled the
nation's civil unrest and made their way to England, where they sought
political asylum. Three siblings went to the
United States and eventually became naturalized citizens. In 1994 Muhammad
was granted permission to remain in England while his asylum claim was
considered. He lived in an apartment in
northwest London, attended classes at a local college, worked at an Islamic
heritage center and practiced kickboxing. As Smith explains it, based
on information gathered at five meetings with his client at Guantanamo,
Muhammad was a recent convert to Islam, trying to kick a drug habit, when he
traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the summer of 2001. "He wanted to see the
Taliban with his own eyes," Smith said, referring to the fundamentalist
Muslim regime that controlled Afghanistan and gave safe harbor to al Qaeda
before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S. government alleges
in its conspiracy charge, filed November 8, that Muhammad attended the terror
group's al Farooq camp, later received explosives training and took up arms
with the Taliban. "I am not saying he
never went to any Islamic camp," Smith said. "He didn't go to any
camp to blow up Americans." In Afghanistan, the
government alleges Muhammad met top al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah, who
allegedly sent him to Pakistan to learn to assemble remote-controlled
detonators for bombs to be used against U.S. forces. En route to Pakistan with
Abu Zubaydah, Muhammad allegedly met Padilla at a madrassa, or religious
school, according to the military's charges. ‘Dirty bomb’ discussed? Inside a Pakistan safe
house, the trio allegedly discussed the "dirty bomb" and other
alleged terrorist attacks in the United States - attacking subway trains,
blowing up a gas tanker or spraying cyanide in nightclubs, according to the
military. Muhammad and Padilla found
instructions to assemble their radioactive "dirty bomb" on the
Internet, the government alleges. In early April 2002,
according to the government, Muhammad and Padilla met top al Qaeda planner
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Karachi, Pakistan, and were given a different
mission - blowing up apartment buildings by tapping into the natural gas
lines attached to their heating systems. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
allegedly gave Muhammad $6,000 and Padilla $10,000, and the pair headed to
the Karachi airport, according to the military charges. Smith said Muhammad, who
couldn't speak Arabic at the time, denies ever meeting Zubaydah or Khalid
Shaikh Muhammad. Zubaydah was captured in
Pakistan and turned over to the United States in March 2002; Padilla was
arrested upon his arrival back in the United States two months later. Khalid
Shaikh Muhammad was captured in early 2003. Muhammad held since 2002 Muhammad was taken into
custody at the Karachi airport on April 10, 2002, when he tried to board a
flight for Zurich with a friend's British passport. Muhammad said he had lost
his travel documents. Muhammad said he was detained
in Pakistan for 3-1/2 months and interrogated by British and American agents. "I refused to talk in
Karachi until they gave me a lawyer," Muhammad said, according to
Smith's notes of their meetings. FBI agents replied,
"The law has been changed. There are no lawyers. You can cooperate the
easy way or the hard way," Muhammad told his lawyer. Muhammad said his Pakistani
jailers used a leather whip on him and beat him with its handle and once
pressed a semi-automatic gun into his chest. In July 2002 Muhammad was
moved to Morocco, where he claimed he was held for 18 months in small cells,
never saw the sun, was repeatedly interrogated and then was tortured. There
were beatings, times when he was handcuffed for hours with headphones blaring
rock music by Aerosmith and rap music by Tupac Shakur. Harsher tactics
followed, his lawyer said. Torture alleged "He was tortured with
razor blades to his genitals," Smith said. "My client, who is not
stupid, was willing to say whatever they wanted him to say." Muhammad told Smith that his
interrogators instructed him to follow a script. He was shown a photograph of
Padilla. "They said if you say
this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this
torture will stop," Muhammad told Smith. "I eventually repeated
what was read out to me." In January 2004 Muhammad was
sent back to Afghanistan, held in a Kabul jail for five months and, in May
2004, moved to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. During his incarceration at
Bagram last year, Muhammad claimed, he was forced to sign a false confession
he did not write. "The story was
something like this: First, Jose Padilla and I were meant to have good
connections, because we both spoke English. We were meant to have been
hanging out together," Muhammad said, according to Smith's notes of
their meeting. "By the time I was in Bagram, I was telling them whatever
they wanted to hear." Details come to light On June 1, 2004, then-Deputy
Attorney General James Comey held a news conference and publicly announced
what the Justice Department called a "Summary of Jose Padilla's
Activities With Al Qaeda." The six-page, single-spaced
document remains the most detailed account to date of the alleged "dirty
bomb" and apartment bombing plots. The accusations largely relied on
Padilla's statements while in military custody and interrogations of Zubaydah
and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, the U.S. government said. The document refers to two
accomplices, fugitive Adnan Elshukrijumah, a Saudi who is wanted by the FBI,
and his replacement, who was not named but "corroborated" the plot.
That was Muhammad, according to the Pentagon's charges, which name Padilla as
Muhammad's co-conspirator. "He clearly was a
source, but he was just telling them what they told him to say," Smith
said. "I would like some answers from the U.S. as to where they got this
evidence, because I am confident we will find all this evidence was exacted
at the tip of a razor blade." In September 2004 Muhammad
was sent to Guantanamo. Two months later the military's status review
tribunal determined he was properly designated an "enemy combatant"
and "an individual who was part of a supporting the Taliban or al Qaeda
forces." External link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/09/padilla.accomplice/ |