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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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April 2nd,
2008 - U.S. and Britain at Odds Over Guantánamo Inmate News article by the New York
Times |
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U.S. and
Britain at Odds Over Guantánamo Inmate By Raymond Bonner New York Times April 2, 2008 London - The Bush administration
and the British government are at odds over how to treat one of the last two
British residents held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials from the countries
involved in the case and his lawyer say. Over objections from the
British government, the Pentagon plans to file terrorism-related charges
against the detainee, Binyam Mohamed. It is not clear what the
precise charges will be, but the Pentagon has said previously that Mr.
Mohamed was trained for months at camps run by Al Qaeda in 2001 and that he
was involved in preparing for attacks in the United States. American military
prosecutors have told the British government that they believe that they have
a strong case against him. Prosecutors have previously linked Mr. Mohamed to
Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, senior Qaeda members who were
subjected to waterboarding at secret locations, the director of the C.I.A.
said in testimony to Congress last month. But Britain has questioned
the fairness of the military commissions system under which Guantánamo
detainees are being tried, and is worried about what might be revealed about
its intelligence agencies if there is a trial, American and British officials
said. Mr. Mohamed’s case reflects
the quandary for the United States, Britain and other countries as they seek
to deal with men accused of having undergone terrorism training and who are
considered serious security threats. Mr. Mohamed was detained in
Pakistan in April 2002, and the C.I.A. secretly took him to Morocco, his
lawyers say. They say they will use a trial to try to elicit information
about the Bush administration’s policy of extraordinary rendition, in which
terrorism suspects are sent for questioning to other countries, including
some accused of torture, and about Britain’s possible involvement and
accusations that prisoners taken to other countries for detention were
tortured. “There is some discomfort
with what the defense will try to drag out,” a senior American official
involved in the negotiations with the British acknowledged in an interview
last weekend. The British and American officials who spoke of the case did so
on the condition of anonymity because diplomacy was involved and negotiations
were continuing. Late on Friday, lawyers for
Mr. Mohamed sent by fax an “extremely urgent” four-page letter to the British
Foreign Office. One of the lawyers provided a copy to The New York Times. The
lawyers sought information about Mr. Mohamed’s rendition to Morocco,
including the names of the American personnel involved, “so that they can be
traced and interviewed or subpoenaed.” This would be necessary to rebut the
American contentions that Mr. Mohamed had not been tortured, the lawyers
wrote. Mr. Mohamed, who is 29, says
he was tortured in Morocco. At one point, his interrogators sliced his chest
with a razor and then made cuts on his genitals, his lawyer Clive Stafford
Smith wrote in a recent book, “Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side:
Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay” (Nation Books). Mr. Mohamed told his
lawyer that an American servicewoman had photographed his injuries. His
injuries have not been independently confirmed. In their letter, the lawyers
also asked for information about whether the British intelligence agency MI6 was
involved in the interrogation of Mr. Mohamed in Morocco. The possibility that this
information will come out at a trial has the British government particularly
nervous, the American official said. The British Foreign Office
declined to comment on the letter. Mr. Mohamed, a native of Ethiopia, lived
in the Washington area for two years before he moved to Britain with his
parents and acquired legal residency. At 19, he was unemployed, drifting and
abusing drugs, he has told his lawyer. In the spring of 2001, he went to
Afghanistan. He says that he wanted to get off drugs and that the Taliban
rulers had a strict policy against drug use. American prosecutors have
said that he was trained at several Qaeda camps. In April 2002, he was
detained at an airport in Karachi, Pakistan, with a ticket back to Britain
and a false British passport. He said that his passport had been stolen and
that a friend had given him one. His lawyer said that Mr.
Mohamed was held in Pakistan for three months, during which he was interrogated
and tortured, then taken to Morocco, where he was held for 18 months, and
then taken to Guantánamo. At one time, 15 British
citizens or residents were held at Guantánamo, but 13 have been released. One
is to be sent to Saudi Arabia, leaving Mr. Mohamed’s status to be resolved. Charges were first filed
against him in 2005 but were dismissed after the Supreme Court ruled, in June
2006, that a system of military commissions in effect at that time was
unconstitutional. A trial now could be avoided
if Mr. Mohamed pleaded guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence, which the
prosecution is pursuing, said a person who has knowledge of the prosecutor’s
desire for a plea bargain. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because
talks about a plea bargain were continuing. Mr. Stafford Smith appears
to have anticipated this. “This gambit by the U.S. stands to embarrass the
U.K. deeply,” he wrote in another letter to the Foreign Office last week. Mr.
Mohamed would plead guilty to anything at this point to end his time at
Guantánamo, even “to being the pope,” Mr. Stafford Smith wrote. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/world/europe/02gitmo.html |