** Been meaning to do a post on this for some time, so here go's: Lets get the news out there, check out the links at the bottom plus Rottweiler puppey - link on sidebar for more on this. Having read a few bits on various sites it makes me wonder where the human rights brigade are on this? Not a peep from the whiney lefties at the terrorist hugger group Liberty.
December, 2004
Kabul, Afghanistan
In a closed secret appeals court hearing in the new trial ordered in December 2004, a six judge panel, found Jack Idema and his team INNOCENT of all torture charges. This six-judge panel consisted of twice the judges normally sitting on the court and included two senior religious judges. They found them innocent after a video of Taliban Judge Mawlawi Sidiq was played in court.
Judge Sidiq stated during the tape that he “was never tortured, hung upside down, doused with water, or even slapped.” In fact, the Taliban Karzai appointee admitted that his ONLY complaint was that the SuperPatriots did not allow him to use the bathroom for more than twelve hours and this violated Islamic Law. The court also privately viewed pictures of Sidiq meeting with one of the world’s top terrorists, Gulbideen Hekmatyar, along with one of Sidiq’s brothers, Malikyar, the original terrorist Task Force Saber/7 was hunting.
Hekmatyar is best remembered for his bloody siege on Kabul and killing more than 20,000 civilians, women, and children with Russian Katucha rockets and tank shells. According to Peter Bergen, one of the world’s foremost authorities on terrorists, and author of HOLY WAR, INC based on his meeting with Osama bin Laden, Hekmatyar is an “ultra-Islamic Taliban” who once “slaughtered 36 men under the Command of Ahmad Shah Massoud… in July 1989,” and later killed “thousands of civilians in Kabul…” from 1992 onward (quoted from page 76, Holy War, Inc., cover photo courtesy of Peter Bergen).
Four of Jack’s Team were declared innocent of all charges by the Afghan Second Court, which granted a trial de novo (a new trial) and three of Jack’s men were ordered to be released immediately by the Appeals Court after hearing evidence from Afghan government police officers and learning that the FBI was present during torture sessions and seized evidence in the case for the second time.
During the hearing, Sherzai Ahmadi, one of Idema’s men, testified that he was beaten and drugged by NDS agents and “foreigners” at which time he woke up with purple ink on his thumb, indicating he had signed a statement. Ahmadi told the Court that he thought it was a dream. Ahmadi says he was given three blue tablets, believed to be Valium, for his torture injuries, then rendered incapable of resisting his fingerprint on a false statement.
Major Ezmerai, Idema’s close protection officer, testified that he was electrocuted, and showed the court the electrical burns on his palms, which were still present five months later. Even after repeated electrocution, Major Ezmerai, a Ministry of Defence employee and 15 year veteran of the Panshir Army and Northern Alliance, refused to sign any statement against his American co-defendants. Idema claims that the torture of his men occurred in the presence of American FBI agents and with the knowledge of the “highest levels of the FBI in Washington.”
Members of Idema’s team, including Major Ezmerai Amin, a commissioned officer in the Afghan Ministry of Defence were ordered released, as was Sohail Shohabi, a translator, and Sherzai Ahmadi, a house worker.
Lieutenant Wahid Rasuli, who the group refers to as “Zorro,” and is also a Ministry of Defence employee, refused to be released without Idema and the rest of the team, requesting the judges allow him to stay in prison with the Jack Idema and the two other Americans until the trials were completed. Rasuli told the judges, “in this group there is only one thing I have learned above all else, leave no man behind. I request to stay.” The judges granted his request. The Release Order frees the other three men with time served, which was apparently drafted with the idea of preventing future litigation for false imprisonment.
Attorney John Tiffany, who represented Jack Idema, the team’s leader, said, “the first trial was a sham. No prosecution witness gave testimony under oath, no cross-examination or questions of any kind were allowed, no defense witnesses were allowed, there was no discovery, and poor often completely erroneous, sometimes non-existent translation of the trial. The three Americans barely knew what was happening, and neither did their lawyers.”
The first trial was held from August to September of 2004. In July their torture immediately commenced at Saderat extreme interrogation facility. These men were severely injured. Caraballo’s foot was like a football, he had been the victim of Falaqua. Idema had both shoulders torn out–(torn rotator cuffs), a broken sternum, detached retinas in both eyes, 5 broken ribs, etc. So–they needed enough time to go by in order for the injuries they’d sustained to heal. Of course, the Taliban didn’t wanted their injuries to be apparent to either the Red Cross or the media that was present. I don’t know why, the American Consul Sandra Ingram had made sure that the medical reports were rewritten to soften the reports.
The verdict from the taliban judges in the first trial was ‘guilty’ in September. 10 years for Idema and Bennett, 8 years for Ed Caraballo. In spite of the second trial exonerating them in the second trial, they are still being held at Pulacharke prison at the behest of the American government, and they are considered “political prisoners”.
They have repeatedly been declared innocent of all charges since December of 2004.
On February 11, 2005, M. Cherif BASSIOUNI, the Independent Expert of the Commission on Human Rights On the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, issued an initial United Nations report on the Afghan court and justice system.
Drafted for the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the report was called a scathing indictment by the Afghan news services. However, it is not new news, or unexpected news. Everyone knows the Afghan justice system is simply broken. Run by judges with no formal education in law, and administered by people without a high school education, former Taliban officials and al-Qaida linked terrorists, have made their way back into Karzai’s government in a variety of areas, most importantly the legal arena. As a result, terrorists are going free every day to kill again. In the past 12 months more than 900 al-Qaida and Taliban fighters captured in 2001 and 2002 who’s defeat was paid for with the blood of American Special Forces and Special Operations troops, have been released by former Taliban Karzai officials. This is old news.
What is new, is the United Nation’s blistering attack on one specific judge, Abdul Baset Bakhtyari. In fact, the report was so damning that Bakhtyari, who relishes publicity, called a Press Conference in Kabul to denounce the United Nations’ report. The “former” Taliban Judge has been specifically accused of ignoring the law, taking bribes from terrorists, and running the National Security Court as though it was still the era of the Taliban.
The UN Report also slammed the NDS (National Security Court) for directly engaging in and authorizing torture, refusing to allow access to prisoners by the UN, and running a house of horrors. Interestingly enough, NDS is run by an American citizen, who holds secret dual citizenship, and is funded by the American FBI, NOT the CIA. Through this secret court and the secret SADERAT interrogation facility, the FBI is able to “render” subjects. Rendering is the removal of a suspect from US custody to foreign custody where they can be tortured by proxies of an American agency. While the CIA and Special Forces recently have been accused of this, the evidence shows that “rendering” has only been done to high-level foreign al-Qaida threats deemed to be an immediate and serious threat to US security interests and with immediate potential to inflict casualties on US citizens through imminent acts of terror. On the other hand, the FBI has engaged in rendering, through the Afghan NDS, and with the assistance of US Citizen Hamid Karzai (he did not give up his US Citizenship when he assumed the elected presidency, and secretly remains a US citizen with a special waiver from the US State Department).
The FBI’s use of rendering to interrogate suspects, especially low-level soldiers, may be one of the future targets of the UN special commission.
** Cao has a great deal of information at her site - link added to sidebar and some background bits at theodoresworld
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