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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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February 13th,
2007 - Ex-CIA Contractor Gets 8 Years for Prisoner Abuse |
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Ex-CIA Contractor Gets 8 Years
for Prisoner Abuse By Gene Cherry Reuters Tuesday, February 13, 2007; 6:04 PM Raleigh, North Carolina - A
former CIA contractor who was the first civilian charged with detainee abuse
in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was sentenced on Tuesday to more
than eight years in prison for assaulting an Afghan prisoner who later died. David Passaro, a former
Special Forces medic, was convicted last August in a case that raised
questions about the treatment of war detainees by U.S. interrogators. U.S. District Judge Terrence
Boyle sentenced Passaro to 100 months in prison on a felony count of assault
causing serious injury and six months each on three misdemeanor counts of
simple assault, to run concurrently, for a total of eight years and four
months. Passaro was convicted of
beating Abdul Wali, who died of his injuries two days after a June 2003
interrogation. Prosecutors said Passaro hurt the prisoner so badly that he
pleaded to be shot to end his pain. "I didn't show Wali the
compassion he deserved," Passaro told Boyle in the federal court in
Raleigh, North Carolina. "I'm ashamed of it." The indictment said Passaro
worked at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan that was frequently subjected
to rocket attacks and Wali was a suspect in the attacks. During trial, Passaro's
lawyers portrayed their client as someone who went out of his way to offer
care to Wali. They said Passaro even performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
in an unsuccessful attempt to revive him. Guidelines given to U.S.
interrogators have been an issue since a scandal broke over the abuse and
humiliation of prisoners by Americans at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. Prisoners released from the
U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the United States is holding
suspected Taliban and al Qaeda members, also say they were tortured or
abused. Critics say U.S. government
guidelines on what constitutes torture, issued since the September 11
attacks, have created a climate in which abuses of detainees have flourished. In a letter to the judge,
the former governor of Afghanistan's Kunar province, Said Fazel Akbar, said
the prisoner's death did "tremendous damage" to the credibility of
the American-led coalition there and was used as propaganda by al Qaeda and
Taliban forces. "The distrust of the
Americans increased, the security and reconstruction efforts of Afghanistan
were dealt a blow, and the only people to gain from Dave Passaro's actions
were al Qaeda and their partners," he wrote. Although the government for
a sentence of 11 1/2 years, U.S. Attorney George Holding applauded the
sentence. "Passaro's conduct was
truly a heinous crime," he said. "It is an affront and insult to
every man and woman serving overseas trying to bring freedom and the rule of
law to those who are oppressed." © 2007 Reuters External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/13/AR2007021300901.html |