The Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera has aired an audiotape purportedly recorded by Osama bin Laden's top deputy in the al-Qaida terror network, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The voice on the tape calls Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf a traitor and urges all Muslims in Pakistan to overthrow his government, which it accuses of working for Americans.
The speaker, whose voice is described as sounding like that of al-Zawahiri on previous tapes, called on Pakistani soldiers to disobey the president's orders.
The tape was broadcast as Pakistani troops are battling hundreds of suspected al-Qaida fighters and their local allies in a semi-autonomous tribal region near the Afghan border. It is Pakistan's biggest military operation ever against suspected al-Qaida targets on its soil.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani army's latest deadline for the surrender of al-Qaida fighters and their release of 14 hostages passed early, Thursday. Tribal elders who have been trying to negotiate the release of the hostages for three days have reportedly been given more time. The hostages include 12 soldiers and two local officials.
Rebel tribesmen protecting the besieged fighters had been threatened with serious consequences if they failed to surrender the militants and release the hostages.
By Daniel Schorr
WASHINGTON - A Texas Democratic fundraiser, speaking not for attribution, told me about the lunch he recently had at the home of former President Clinton in the New York suburbs. Clinton recounted his last meeting with President Bush over coffee, just before the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001.
The outgoing president counseled his successor that he would face five challenges in the international arena - the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, the Al Qaeda terrorist threat, a nuclear-armed North Korea, the India-Pakistan confrontation, and the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq.
Clinton was surprised at Bush's response. He said he disagreed with Clinton's order - that he considered Saddam Hussein to be the primary threat that he would have to deal with.
The story casts a light - as it probably was intended to do - on the current controversy over whether President Bush allegedly neglected the war on terrorism in his single-minded preoccupation with bringing down Saddam Hussein, the man who plotted the assassination of his father.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said in his memoir that from the first meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) 10 days after the inauguration, the White House seemed obsessed with Saddam Hussein as "a bad person who needed to go."
The White House dismissed O'Neill as a disgruntled employee. But now we have the dramatic account of Richard Clarke, who served as antiterrorism coordinator for 10 years under four presidents. In his newly published memoir, Clarke says that ousting Hussein was "Topic A" from the first NSC meeting, just as O'Neill had said, and there was little discussion of why the Iraqi dictator was being targeted.
Clarke wrote that the day after Sept. 11, 2001, the president pulled him and a small group of aides into the Situation Room, closed the door and said, "Go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this." Clarke said he replied, "But Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."
"I know, I know," Mr. Bush is quoted. "But see if Saddam is involved. Just look. I want to know any shred."
The Bush administration has been saturating the airwaves with denials of Clarke's charges. But they seem to fit with the public statements of the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, seeking to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.
The great concern in the White House is that the Saddam fixation to the neglect of the terrorist threat may end up as a campaign issue. And it well may.
Filed at 12:22 p.m. ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A large explosion destroyed a hotel in central Baghdad on Wednesday night, and rescuers pulled bodies from the rubble. Witnesses said it was a bomb blast.
Two U.S. soldiers tried to help pull bodies from the wreckage, but angry Iraqis pushed them back.
Flames shot skyward, and heavy smoke rose behind Baghdad's central square. Trees were on fire, and flames jumped to nearby buildings. Eight cars were on fire, and one vehicle was hurled by the blast into a store.
Ambulances raced to the scene.
The explosion occurred behind Firdaus Square, where a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein was felled April 9 with the help of U.S. Marines who had just entered the center of the Iraqi capital.
The area of the blast, Karrada, is a mix of residential and commercial buildings.
The blast shook the nearby Palestine Hotel, where many foreign contractors and journalists are based.
Army counterintelligence agents improperly tried to gather information on civilian participants at a University of Texas conference on Islam, the Army acknowledged on Monday.
Two agents of the Army's Intelligence and Security Command from Fort Hood went to the law school on Feb. 9, seeking information on people who attended a conference titled "Islam and the Law: The Question of Sexism."
Conference organizers and civil rights activists accused the Army of spying on the conference and using tactics meant to stifle free speech.
The Army is prohibited from investigating civilians unless the FBI waives its jurisdiction or requests assistance, and that was not done, said Deborah Parker, a spokeswoman for the Army Intelligence and Security Command, based at Fort Belvoir, Va.
"It was a lapse in judgment," Parker said. "It was not something that was done maliciously."
The conference, which had taken place a week earlier, was open to the public. Conference organizers said they refused to give the agents a list of participants and a video of the event.
Maunica Sthanki, co-chairwoman of the UT Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild, said the conference did not merit military suspicion.
"The message I think that the Army and the government are sending is that anybody who chooses to learn about Islam is going to be investigated," she said. "I don't think the American public should accept that message of fear, and that's why the issue isn't over."
Douglas Laycock, an associate dean for research at the law school, said the Army agents overreacted. "You can't be suspicious of everyone who attends an academic conference," he said.
An Army statement said the agents were acting on a report by two Army lawyers who attended the conference in preparation for an assignment to southwest Asia, where they were assigned to deal with legal issues involving the U.S. military and the Muslim population.
The lawyers reported suspicious behavior by a conference participant who persistently questioned their identity, occupation and status, the statement said. Army personnel are required to report such reactions, Parker said.
However, the agency's Fort Hood detachment did not first check with command headquarters at Fort Belvoir, which would have checked with the FBI, Parker said.
Rene Salinas, a spokesman for the bureau's San Antonio field office, said the FBI is not investigating the conference.
Parker said the Army is reviewing whether disciplinary action will be taken against the counterintelligence agents.
J298 student Veronica San Millan is from Spain. In this blog, she gives her analysis of the attacks and the political aftermath.
Excerpt:
Right after the bombing, which costed 200 deaths as of today, ETA was sentenced as responsible for the attacks. Why? For the past 40 years this has been a habit.
But people were skeptical of whether or not ETA was involved. This terrorist attack was not ETA’s style and during the last year more than 200 people related to the organization had been captured. Therefore, it was really hard to believe that ETA had the capacity and infrastructure to perform an attack like 11M.
SPAIN BEFORE 11M
Before the terrorist attacks happened, the election estimations pointed to PP (Partido Popular- “central”-right wing party) as the winners with absolute majority again (it would be their third presidency in a row). Those voting for PP would have supported increased employment rates, improvement in the economy and a very harsh anti-terrorist policy towards the Bask country, historically, the only major threat posed to Spain. The Bask terrorist organization: ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) claims the independence of the territory which was a main target during Franco’s regime.
PP’s opponents reject the abuse of power and its unilateral decisions. PP cut the budget for social services, increased the price of housing and centralized the powers, degradating the autonomic competences (equal to state power). This was for some already enough to desire a change, but then in November 2002 PP made an awful decision regarding the Prestige Case; a petrol cargo boat that sank in the Spanish Atlantic coast and affected the marine life and the fish market of a vast zone. But the climax for the opposition was achieved when the Government decided to become an ally of Bush’s campaign against Iraq. The gigantic demonstrations by the people of Spain and the disagreement of the Parliament was not enough to prevent J.M. Aznar of being in Bush’s VIP group of friends and hopefully gaining a piece of the pie with the reconstruction of the country
SPAIN IN 11M
Right after the bombing, which costed 200 deaths as of today, ETA was sentenced as responsible for the attacks. Why? For the past 40 years this has been a habit.
But people were skeptical of whether or not ETA was involved. This terrorist attack was not ETA’s style and during the last year more than 200 people related to the organization had been captured. Therefore, it was really hard to believe that ETA had the capacity and infrastructure to perform an attack like 11M.
However, president Aznar appeared on TV claiming that it was ETA who had performed the attacks. Even the King Juan Carlos (who hadn’t made an appearance since the unsuccessful coup d’etat of 1981) expressed his condemnation to the terrorist attack, also making a special reference to the Bask separatist issue.
People began taking to the streets and I thought to myself: Four more years of PP because it has been the strongest party against ETA and people feel safer by electing them.
But everything turned upside-down with the unreliable evidence found in a van close to one of the stations where one of the trains exploded. A videotape with verses of Al Quran and some Arabic scripts were found. It was not very significant proof, but it opened a new door: The possibility of it having been the attack of an Extremist Islamic Organization, which people translate into being Al Qaeda, which people then relate with the War in Iraq, and people then wonder: Why did we put ourselves in other’s business? And suddenly we realize, well, we didn’t, Aznar did.
SPAIN BETWEEN 11M AND 14M
The first 24 hours after the bombings was a time of confusion and emotions, but regardless, there is not excuse for misinformation. The Spanish Government manipulated conspired and occulted information. They continued pointing ETA as target number one, even after the letter sent to Al Qud in which an unknown Islamic group assumed responsibility for the acts. And even after an anonymous voice from ETA called to TeleMadrid TV station to refute PP’s accusation and sent two letters to the Gara newspaper, the publication they usually get in touch with to confirm their responsibility of terrorist attacks, PP still accused ETA of committing the attacks.
The Government was not only being dishonest to those families who had lost loved ones, but also denying the truth to a whole country. People started taking to the streets again to demand the truth from Aznar before casting their vote. When five people were arrested because of a possible link to the attacks PP couldn’t hide the truth anymore, even if it meant losing the elections.
THE DETAINEDS:
Three Moroccans: Jamal Zougam, Mohamad Bekkali and Mohamed Chaoui, appear in recorded conversations from Al Qaeda cells in Spain and might possibly be related to the attacks on 9/11.
Two Spanish of Indian origin: Vinay Kohly and Suresh Kuma, whose names were related to the cell phone cards left in the bag where the bomb that didn’t explode was located.
To these men who have already been captured and to those who will be in the coming months of investigation, the “Parties Law” will be applied. The Parties Law was approved in 2002 by the attorney super hero Baltasar Garzon. The law essentially persecutes and removes the parties that might be a threat to the Constitution. But in the cases that follow 11M, the time of interrogation and detention will increase up to 5 days without a warrant.
THE EXPECTED CHANGE OF 14M
The night before 14M I went to sleep with the resignation of the fact that many people in my country cared more about their growing bank accounts than about social justice. But I hoped that the bloody images on TV and the solidarity people had with the innocent civilians and their families would awake people’s consciousness to vote against an unfair government that perpetuates the inequalities and only seeks international popularity. Unfortunately 200 dead and 1500 injured people were needed for this awakening to happen. But 14M was a day full of hope for Spain and the rest of the world too. Change is possible and the goals for social justice are now closer with a socialist government in power. But there is still a lot to work ahead of us.
Please read this for background.
WASHINGTON -- At a National Press Club "Newsmaker" luncheon today, Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, charged that Bush Administration policies in a post-9/11 world jeopardize the freedom of all Americans. U.S. government detentions of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violate America's most basic notions of fundamental fairness, he said.
"Hundreds of people called enemy combatants by the U.S. government languish in legal limbo at Guantánamo Bay," Romero said. "With no access to the courts, or legal counsel, these policies are fundamentally lawless and trespass on our most deeply held values of fairness and basic due process."
ACLU's Romero Calls Government's Policies on Guantánamo 'Fundamentally Lawless'
U.S. Veterans and Families of Guantánamo Detainees
Join Romero in Briefing After Newsmaker Address
WASHINGTON -- At a National Press Club "Newsmaker" luncheon today, Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, charged that Bush Administration policies in a post-9/11 world jeopardize the freedom of all Americans. U.S. government detentions of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violate America's most basic notions of fundamental fairness, he said.
"Hundreds of people called enemy combatants by the U.S. government languish in legal limbo at Guantánamo Bay," Romero said. "With no access to the courts, or legal counsel, these policies are fundamentally lawless and trespass on our most deeply held values of fairness and basic due process."
Immediately following the Newsmaker speech, the ACLU held a press briefing with several families of men detained at Guantánamo. The families are from Great Britain, France and Germany. Also present at the briefing and sharing ACLU's concerns that the government's policies are violating U.S. and international laws were Michael T. McPhearson, a Persian Gulf War veteran, and Ellen Barfield, an Army veteran who is currently Vice-President of Veterans for Peace.
"As a former combat veteran I am deeply concerned that the U.S. government's policies at Guantánamo will place our troops currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan into harm's way," McPhearson said. "If the U.S. fails to honor and uphold its legal obligations under the Geneva Conventions that declare specific legal protections for prisoners of war, what is to stop other nations from mistreating our servicemenbers who may be captured in the future?"
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that detainees may be held indefinitely, even if eventually charged and acquitted. Indeed, he has also said that if the government determines that any individual is a continuing threat, detainees may be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. More than 600 people from 44 countries, including teenagers, are being held by the U.S. at Guantánamo.
The ACLU is part of a broad-based coalition that filed a friend-of-the-court brief before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees.
Romero spoke about the recent legal complaint saying that "this isn't about serving terrorists with legal papers, as President Bush said. This is about serving people not charged with justice, demonstrating conduct, procedures and principles befitting one of the great democracies in the world."
The brief calls for a review of the legality of the government's detention of these prisoners and argues that under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights they cannot be detained indefinitely at Guantanamo without some review of their legal status. Arguments on Guantanamo procedures are scheduled for arguments before the Supreme Court on April 20th. In a related matter, the Supreme Court is scheduled on April 28th to review the President's authority to designate an American citizen an enemy combatant and detain him indefinitely. The Court is expected to render decisions on both legal matters by the end of the term in June.
Romero took the helm of the ACLU in September 2001, a week before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Recognizing the risks to America's freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act, he has led the organization in a nationwide initiative asserting that America can be both safe and free. Romero, an attorney with a history of public-interest activism, also presided over the most successful membership drive in the ACLU's 82-year history. In his first year, 75,000 individuals became card-carrying members of the organization for the first time, with membership now exceeding 400,000.
The ACLU has also published a new report that details how a series of policy directives by the Bush Administration has created a "parallel" system of justice in America - a system that fails to provide the safeguards necessary to ensure due process: http://www.aclu.org/conductunbecoming
A news release about the Guantánamo case is online at: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=14705&c=206
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Three British prisoners released last week from Guantanamo Bay have revealed the full extent of British government involvement in the American detention camp condemned by law lords and the Court of Appeal as a 'legal black hole'.
Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, the so-called 'Tipton Three', speaking for the first time since their release at a secret location in southern England, have disclosed to The Observer the fullest picture yet of life inside the camp on Cuba where America continues to hold 650 detainees.
After more than 200 interrogation sessions each, with the CIA, FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency, MI5 and MI6, America has been forced to admit its claims that the three were terrorists who supported al-Qaeda had no foundation.
PLUS the full Observer interview 'How We Survived Jail Hell'
Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons
The Observer's David Rose hears the Tipton Three give a harrowing account of their captivity in Cuba
Sunday March 14, 2004
The Observer
Three British prisoners released last week from Guantanamo Bay have revealed the full extent of British government involvement in the American detention camp condemned by law lords and the Court of Appeal as a 'legal black hole'.
Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, the so-called 'Tipton Three', speaking for the first time since their release at a secret location in southern England, have disclosed to The Observer the fullest picture yet of life inside the camp on Cuba where America continues to hold 650 detainees.
After more than 200 interrogation sessions each, with the CIA, FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency, MI5 and MI6, America has been forced to admit its claims that the three were terrorists who supported al-Qaeda had no foundation.
But fearful of reprisals - the extreme right wing BNP has a stronghold in their hometown of Tipton in the West Midlands, and their families have warned them they may not be safe back at home - they all declined to be photographed, and are choosing a new location in which to rebuild their lives.
During an extraordinary 12-hour interview with The Observer last Friday, two days after their release from Paddington Green police station where they were held after being flown home from Cuba, the three men revealed that they were interrogated by MI5 almost immediately after first arriving at Guantanamo Bay - in the cases of Iqbal and Rasul, on 15 January 2002, and in Ahmed's case three weeks later.
The British Government has repeatedly claimed it has been trying to use diplomatic pressure to introduce more legal process at Guantanamo, including an opportunity for detainees to show that imprisonment is unjustified.
But the picture painted by the three released prisoners is of a Security Service which saw them as mere 'interrogation fodder', and questioned them repeatedly throughout their 26-month stay.
Among other disclosures, the three men revealed:
· How early in their ordeal they survived a massacre perpetrated by Afghanistan's Northern Alliance troops who herded hundreds of prisoners into lorry containers and locked them in, so that people started to suffocate. Iqbal described how only 20 of 300 prisoners in each container lived, and then only because someone made holes in its side with a machine gun - an action which killed yet more prisoners;
· The existence of a secret super-maximum security facility outside the main part of Guantanamo's Camp Delta known as Camp Echo, where prisoners are held in tiny cells in solitary confinement 24-hours a day, with a military police officer permanently stationed outside each cell door. The handful of inmates of Camp Echo include two of the four remaining British detainees, Moazzem Begg and Feroz Abbasi, and the Australian, David Hicks;
· That they endured three months of solitary confinement in Camp Delta's isolation block last summer after they were wrongly identified by the Americans as having been pictured in a video tape of a meeting in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden and the leader of the 11 September hijackers Mohamed Atta. Ignoring their protests that they were in Britain at the time, the Americans interrogated them so relentlessly that eventually all three falsely confessed. They were finally saved - at least on this occasion - by MI5, which came up with documentary evidence to show they had not left the UK;
· That their first interrogations by British investigators - from both MI5 and the SAS - took place in December 2001 and January 2002 when they were still being held at a detention camp in Afghanistan. Guns were held to their heads during their questioning in Afghanistan by American soldiers, and physical abuse and beatings were rife. At this point, after weeks of near starvation as prisoners of the Northern Alliance, all three men were close to death.
The Court of Appeal criticised the absence of any legal due process at Guantanamo as a 'legal black hole' in a case brought on behalf of Abbasi last year, while the laws lord, Lord Steyn, has described the camp in a speech as a 'monstrous failure of justice'.
In public, the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has spoken of his constant pressure on America to improve both physical and legal conditions, urging them not to deny terror suspects a fair trial.
But the released prisoners told The Observer how MI5 interrogators, in sessions lasting many hours, tried repeatedly to extract information they did not have about Islamic groups in Britain and their supposed links with al-Qaeda.
Ahmed described an interrogation session which took place before he left Afghanistan by an officer of MI5 and another official who said he was from the Foreign Office: 'All the time I was kneeling with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head.
'The MI5 says: "I'm from the UK, I'm from MI5, I've got some questions for you," he told me: "We've got your name, we've got your passport, we know you've been funded by an extremist group and we know you've been to this mosque in Birmingham. We've got photos of you."' In fact, none of these claims was true.
The three men said that as far as they could see, there were few if any genuine terrorists at Guantanamo Bay: perhaps at worst, a few mullahs who had been loyal to the Taliban.
They voiced grave fears for the future of Begg and Abbasi, who are due to face trials by American military commissions, saying that their own experience of the Guantanamo interrogation and intelligence gathering process was 'almost a recipe' for other miscarriages of justice.
Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman said he could not comment on the men's claims to have been interrogated by British officials while they were still in Afghanistan, saying he could not get access to the relevant files.
Whitehall security sources confirmed that MI5 has had regular access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: 'I can say that the purpose of our being given access to detainees in US custody is to gather information relevant to British national security,' said one source.
Washington Post, by Fareed Zakaria
Does it matter whether the carnage in Madrid last week was the act of the Basque terrorist organization, ETA, or of al Qaeda? Of course there are important differences. ETA is a local organization, al Qaeda a global one. The former is secular, the latter religious. But they have something in common that is revealing about the nature of terrorism. Both groups had political agendas, but as their political causes have lost steam, they are increasingly defined almost exclusively by a macabre culture of violence.
All That's Left Is Violence
By Fareed Zakaria
Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page B07
Does it matter whether the carnage in Madrid last week was the act of the Basque terrorist organization, ETA, or of al Qaeda? Of course there are important differences. ETA is a local organization, al Qaeda a global one. The former is secular, the latter religious. But they have something in common that is revealing about the nature of terrorism. Both groups had political agendas, but as their political causes have lost steam, they are increasingly defined almost exclusively by a macabre culture of violence.
"The purpose of terrorism," Vladimir Lenin once said, "is to terrorize." Like much of what he said, this is wrong. Terrorism has traditionally been used to advance political goals. That's why a rule of terrorists used to be: "We want a few people dead and a lot of people watching." Terrorists sought attention but didn't want people to lose sympathy for their cause.
Yet with many terrorist groups -- like ETA, like al Qaeda -- violence has become an end in itself. They want a lot of people dead, period.
Some in Spain have argued that if an Islamic group proves to be the culprit, Spaniards will blame Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. It was his support for America and the war in Iraq that invited the wrath of the fundamentalists. But other recent targets of Islamic militants have been Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, not one of which supported the war or sent troops into Iraq in the after-war. Al Qaeda's declaration of jihad had, as its first demand, the withdrawal of American troops from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden does not seem to have noticed, but the troops are gone -- yet the jihad continues. The reasons come and go, the violence endures.
The Middle East scholar Giles Keppel makes an analogy between communist groups and Islamic fundamentalists. In the 1940s and 1950s, communist groups were popular and advanced their cause politically. By the 1960s, after revelations about Joseph Stalin's brutality, few believing communists were left in Europe. Facing irrelevance, the hardcore radicals in the movement turned to violence, hoping to gain attention and adherents by daring acts of bloodshed. Thus the proliferation of terror by groups such as the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Similarly, Islamic fundamentalism tried for decades to gain popular support and topple the regimes of the Middle East. When this tactic failed, radicals like bin Laden turned to terrorism.
ETA follows this pattern. Having been founded to protest the brutal suppression of the Basques under Francisco Franco's reign, it has foundered as Spain became democratic and provided the Basques with increasing levels of autonomy. Almost every demand of Basque nationalists has been met over the last decade. Basques run their own region (through a mainstream, non-violent nationalist party), collect their own taxes, have their own police, speak their own language and broadcast their own television and radio programs. As a result support for ETA is down to 5 percent at most. Support for its political sympathizers, the political party Batasuna, hovers under 10 percent. In fact support for Basque nationalism itself has waned considerably. In the last election, 60 percent of Basques voted for parties that did not espouse Basque nationalism.
It is in this context that ETA announced in 2000 the "reactivation of armed struggle" after a 14-month cease-fire. In the next two years it launched 87 bombings and assassinations, in which 38 people were killed. But because of effective police work by Spain and France, ETA's attacks dropped to 20 in 2002, with five deaths, and so far this year there have been 17 hits, in which three people were killed.
In the past ETA hit only Spanish politicians, policemen and other symbols of Spanish rule. Now it targets civilians indiscriminately. In its region, it murders Basques who dare speak out against secession, firebombs bookstores and intimidates the press, creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear.
"Violence has become ETA's main rationale," a former separatist who renounced ETA told the Financial Times in 2002. "The exercise of violence creates antibodies. ETA's new recruits can digest barbaric acts that would have been unthinkable under Franco: the torturing of town councillors, the killing of children, of traffic wardens and local policemen. ETA now is led by its most extreme elements, those who are prepared to go furthest in all this senseless killing."
ETA's goal -- the creation of a single Basque nation -- is not as fantastical as is al Qaeda's dream of a restored caliphate. But given that part of the Basque lands it wants to unify are in France, and none of the French Basques have any interest in this plan, it is utterly unrealistic. The goals are now charades, excuses for bloodletting.
Spanish authorities have estimated that the number of ETA's hard-core activists is well under 100. Most estimates of serious al Qaeda operatives are in the hundreds. Technology means that small numbers can still do great harm -- as last week's tragedy amply illustrates. But that should not obscure the reality that this violence is a sign of weakness.
That's why Friedrich Engels, a shrewder observer than Vladimir Lenin, wrote to Karl Marx in 1870, "Terror is for the most part useless cruelties committed by frightened people to reassure themselves."
comments@fareedzakaria.com
Some Muslim groups seeking to build mosques to accommodate their growing numbers of followers are encountering vehement opposition in communities across the nation.
In some cases, the conflicts are similar to those that for decades have pitted residents against expansion plans by large churches. Neighbors in communities from New Jersey to Arizona have protested Muslim groups' proposals for mosques by raising classic "not-in-my-backyard" arguments that have focused on the sizes of planned buildings, parking, lighting and other factors that can affect property values.
Muslims see new opposition to building mosques since 9/11
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
Some Muslim groups seeking to build mosques to accommodate their growing numbers of followers are encountering vehement opposition in communities across the nation.
In some cases, the conflicts are similar to those that for decades have pitted residents against expansion plans by large churches. Neighbors in communities from New Jersey to Arizona have protested Muslim groups' proposals for mosques by raising classic "not-in-my-backyard" arguments that have focused on the sizes of planned buildings, parking, lighting and other factors that can affect property values.
But the debates over mosques in several U.S. cities during the past two years occasionally have led to name-calling and allegations of bigotry — a reflection of some residents' mistrust of Muslims since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by radical Muslims. (Related story: Texas mosque vandalized)
Last year in Voorhees, N.J., a suburb of Philadelphia, a Muslim group's proposal to turn a commercially zoned building into a mosque led anonymous critics to distribute fliers that warned residents that extremists "with connections to terrorists" might worship there. The fliers also claimed that the mosque run by the Muslim American Community Association, a group of about 15 families, would attract hundreds of worshipers for prayers five times a day.
After local churches and synagogues joined the Muslim group in denouncing the allegations, some residents raised objections about the parking, traffic and landscaping plans, says the Rev. Melanie Morel Sullivan of the Unitarian Universalist Church in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J. Sullivan's congregation organized a multifaith coalition to help the Muslim group.
Some of the mosque's critics "got media savvy," Sullivan says, because most residents didn't believe the mosque would pose a threat. The critics "realized they weren't gaining any media points by saying things like, 'The mosque would harbor terrorists.' They maintained there was no prejudice and that some of their best friends are Muslims."
In November, members of the local zoning board unanimously approved the mosque plan after their attorney told them that there was no legal reason to reject it.
Zia Rahman, a Voorhees resident since 1979, led the quest for a mosque and says he has no ill will toward his neighbors who fought the plan. "We are all part of the same community," Rahman says. "There is so much that they did not know about this religion. The mosque will promote deeper understanding."
The Muslim Civil Rights Center in Hickory Hills, Ill., has received several recent reports of opposition to planned Islamic centers, says Ahmad Tansheet, the center's community outreach coordinator. "It's kind of new after Sept. 11," he says of the heightened tension. "We don't have statistics because it's something new. I hope ultimately it will die down."
Even before the attacks, building a mosque in America "wasn't the easiest thing" to do, says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on Islamic-American Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Now, he says, it can be more difficult. "Usually there's a lot of talk of parking and traffic and other things that are sometimes seen as a smoke screen for the real issue," Hooper says. "You'll also get overt bigotry coming to the surface."
Muslims increasing in number
The new conflicts over mosques come as Islam is gaining adherents in the USA.
Islamic groups generally agree that the number of U.S. Muslims who associate with a mosque is about 2 million, up from about 500,000 two decades ago. (Islamic groups estimate that, in all, there are 6 million to 7 million Muslims in the USA.) There are more than 1,200 U.S. mosques; 60% of those opened during the past 20 years.
For years, new Muslim congregations bought old churches or schools and put mosques in them, says Ahmed ElHattab, director general of the Islamic Society of North America Development Foundation in Plainfield, Ind. Now, ElHattab says, mature congregations want their own spaces specifically designed as mosques with traditional architecture such as domes, minarets and large prayer rooms. Usually, ElHattab says, communities welcome mosques.
Like those seeking to open churches and synagogues, Muslims who want to open mosques in residential areas are protected by a law Congress passed in 2000 that bans cities from using zoning laws to fight such plans. But the act doesn't immunize houses of worship from land-use codes as long as the codes don't discriminate against religious groups.
Conflicts across the nation
Since 9/11, there have been several conflicts over mosques besides the one in Voorhees:
•In the Village of Morton Grove, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, a Muslim group, residents opposed to a proposed mosque and local officials are in a legal fight that is being watched by civil rights lawyers at the U.S. Justice Department.
The Muslim Education Center has operated a grade school in Morton Grove since 1989. On the Muslim Sabbath each Friday, students, parents and other community members worship in the school's gym. In November 2002, Muslim leaders proposed building a mosque on school grounds. Although the village denied the permit, neighbors opposed to the mosque plan weren't satisfied. They sued the village in September to try to force officials to ban the services.
The group's Web site accused the city of allowing the school to become a "regional Mega-Mosque." The group wants the city to enforce a zoning law that bans worship services without a special permit. The Muslim group fought back in October with a lawsuit against the city. The lawsuit claims that requiring a permit to worship violates federal law.
"The neighborhood group wants the village to shut them down," says John Mauck, a lawyer who represents the Muslim center. "That's a denial of free exercise of religion."
Village officials say they do not intend to prohibit prayer, but say they denied the mosque a building permit because its plans had insufficient parking. "The vast majority of people in Morton Grove aren't bigoted, and they don't like the way their village is coming across," says Ted Hadley, a lawyer for the village. "The whole issue is whether they have enough parking." The parties in the dispute are in mediation.
•A proposed mosque in Scottsdale, Ariz., is prompting "for sale" signs in a neighborhood near the McDowell Mountains. A Muslim group that owns 3.38 acres applied to build a mosque less than a week before the 9/11 attacks. In January, after several hearings were held and plans were redrawn, the mosque got permission to build. Neighbors say they opposed the mosque and its planned 35-foot minaret for aesthetic reasons only.
Robert Hart, whose home is north of the mosque site, says he and his neighbors would have opposed any building that wasn't a single-family house. He says the view and the pristine desert preserve define the neighborhood. "The (local) newspaper made it out like it was a Muslim thing. Honest to God, it was not," says Hart, who has decided to move.
Tarif Jaber, who is managing the mosque project for the Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley in Scottsdale, says aesthetic objections "don't tell the whole story" of the opposition. "Remember, we did this right after 9/11. A lot of people began to associate this religion with violence. ...We assure them that we are good neighbors."
Local religious groups stepped forward to help. Rabbi Charles Herring of Temple Kol Ami of Phoenix say residents rarely are happy to host a religious institution. "In this case, I sensed something that went beyond simple housing values. It was really an undercurrent of anti-Islamic feeling. I was not pleased."
•A small mosque in Marietta, Ga., has held open houses to get to know its neighbors since its plan for a new mosque was rejected. For seven years, the mosque has operated out of a house, says Amjad Taufique, one of the mosque trustees. In December 2002, the trustees went before the local zoning board to seek a variance for a new mosque with 70-feet minaret. Taufique figured it wouldn't be an issue because local churches have steeples that tall.
The board denied the request by a 5-2 vote. Board member W.O. Wilkerson, who voted to approve the mosque, says that "it was voted against purely because they were Muslims. The neighbors ... said they didn't want Muslims in the neighborhood. ... If we're going to talk about having a country of laws, we better live by that."
Board Chairman James Mills says he voted against the plan because the group had not adequately explained what it planned to do. Neighbors "were reacting because of the lack of communication," Mills says. "It had nothing to do with them being Muslim."
But Taufique says that at the public hearing, "people yelled and screamed and went ... totally out of control. ... People were really concerned about who we are and what we were doing in the neighborhood. They were scared."
Last year, the Muslim group bought property next to its current location. Taufique says the group might try again. "We think this can be worked out."
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spain's interior minister Saturday announced the arrest of five suspects in the Madrid bombings, including three Moroccans.
The other two are Spaniards of "Hindu" origin, minister Angel Acebes said.
The five were arrested in connection with a cell phone inside an explosives-packed gym bag found on one of the bombed commuter trains.
The suspects "could be related to Moroccan extremist groups," the minister said. "But we should not rule out anything. Police are still investigating all avenues. This opens an important avenue."
The re-election campaign of President George Bush provoked a new controversy yesterday, with a television ad campaign using a picture of an olive-skinned man to illustrate terrorism.
As a voiceover warns that Mr Bush's presumptive opponent, John Kerry, is soft on terrorists, a split-screen shows people at an airport, and a young man with flickering eyes who turns menacingly towards the camera.
Election ad 'plays on fear of Arabs'
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday March 13, 2004
The Guardian
The re-election campaign of President George Bush provoked a new controversy yesterday, with a television ad campaign using a picture of an olive-skinned man to illustrate terrorism.
As a voiceover warns that Mr Bush's presumptive opponent, John Kerry, is soft on terrorists, a split-screen shows people at an airport, and a young man with flickering eyes who turns menacingly towards the camera.
The ads are the most aggressive so far - targeting John Kerry by name. Arab Americans said the campaign played on racism and fear, and could inflict further damage on a community marginalised after September 11.
"When they turn around and say John Kerry would be soft on terror, they don't use a picture of Osama bin Laden. They use a young good-looking, Middle Eastern male turning around looking furtively," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, which called on the Republicans to change the ads.
Amid the furore, there were suggestions yesterday that Mr Bush's strategists are seeking such controversies to shore up Christian Right support.
Although the first round of the campaign ads last week were criticised for images of flag-draped coffins at the charred shell of the World Trade Centre, such imagery has played well to Mr Bush's core supporters. So has Mr Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.
Meanwhile, Mr Bush has been assiduous in courting the party right. On Thursday, he addressed an evangelical Christian convention, putting himself firmly in their camp by reiterating his opposition to stem cell research, abortion and same sex marriage.
In preying on bigotry, Republicans may have calculated there was little need to court the Arab American vote. A new poll yesterday put Mr Bush's approval rating at just 32% among the sizeable Arab communities living in swing states such as Ohio and Michigan.
Salah Hassan looks sad and very tired. The Al Jazeera cameraman, a 33-year-old father of two, is recounting his tale of incarceration in a soft and matter-of-fact tone. Sipping tea in the lobby of the hotel that serves as Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, he explains how on November 3 of last year he raced to the site of a roadside bomb attack on a US military convoy in Dialah, near the eastern Iraqi city of Baquba. While he was interviewing people at the scene, US troops who had previously taken photographs of Hassan at other events arrested him, took him to a police station, interrogated him and repeatedly accused the cameraman of knowing in advance about the bomb attack and of lying in wait to get footage. "I told them to review my tapes, that it was clear I had arrived thirty or forty minutes after the blast. They told me I was a liar," says Hassan.
Al Jazeera Goes to Jail
by CHRISTIAN PARENTI
[from the March 29, 2004 issue]
Salah Hassan looks sad and very tired. The Al Jazeera cameraman, a 33-year-old father of two, is recounting his tale of incarceration in a soft and matter-of-fact tone. Sipping tea in the lobby of the hotel that serves as Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, he explains how on November 3 of last year he raced to the site of a roadside bomb attack on a US military convoy in Dialah, near the eastern Iraqi city of Baquba. While he was interviewing people at the scene, US troops who had previously taken photographs of Hassan at other events arrested him, took him to a police station, interrogated him and repeatedly accused the cameraman of knowing in advance about the bomb attack and of lying in wait to get footage. "I told them to review my tapes, that it was clear I had arrived thirty or forty minutes after the blast. They told me I was a liar," says Hassan.
From Baquba, Hassan says he was taken to the military base at Baghdad International Airport, held in a bathroom for two days, then flown hooded and bound to Tikrit. After two more days in another bathroom, he was loaded onto a five-truck convoy of de-tainees and shipped south to Abu Ghraib, a Saddam-built prison that now serves as the American military's main detention center and holds about 13,000 captives.
Once inside the sprawling prison, Hassan says, he was greeted by US soldiers who sang "Happy Birthday" to him through his tight plastic hood, stripped him naked and addressed him only as "Al Jazeera," "boy" or "bitch." He was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for eleven hours in the bitter autumn night air; when he fell, soldiers kicked his legs to get him up again. In the morning, Hassan says, he was made to wear a dirty red jumpsuit that was covered with someone else's fresh vomit and interrogated by two Americans in civilian clothes. They made the usual accusations that Hassan and Al Jazeera were in cahoots with "terrorists."
While most Abu Ghraib prisoners are held in large barracks-like tents in open-air compounds surrounded by razor wire, Hassan says he was locked in a high-security isolation unit of tiny cells. Down the tier from him was an old woman who sobbed incessantly and a mentally deranged 13-year-old girl who would scream and shriek until the American guards released her into the hall, where she would run up and down; exhausted, she would eventually return to her cell voluntarily. Hassan says that all other prisoners in the unit, mostly men, were ordered to remain silent or risk being punished with denial of food, water and light.
Elsewhere in Abu Ghraib, Hassan's colleague Suheib Badr Darwish was also in lockup. He had been arrested in Samarra on November 18 and, according to a colleague of his at Al Jazeera, Darwish was badly beaten by US troops.
Meanwhile, on the outside, the network hired a top-flight lawyer named Hider Nur Al Mulha to start working Hassan's case through Iraq's largely wrecked court system. Eventually Hassan was brought before a panel of the Iraqi Governing Council's freshly minted Federal Supreme Court, which was set up alongside its war crimes tribunal for trying the likes of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. Salah Hassan, journalist, was the subject of the Court's first hearing. He was released for lack of evidence. After three more days in Abu Ghraib, this time in one of the prison's open-air camps, Hassan, still in his vomit-stained red jumpsuit, was dumped on a street just outside Baghdad on December 18. Darwish was released more than a month later, on January 25, again for lack of evidence.
Military officials did not respond to my requests for a tour of Abu Ghraib, nor were most of my numerous calls and e-mails about the cases of Hassan and Darwish returned. The one military spokesperson who did address relations with Al Jazeera on the record was Lieut. Col. Daniel Williams of the Coalition Joint Task Force 7; his comment was, "Al Jazeera is a welcome guest and professional news organization." As one source at the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority explained, "Anything about Al Jazeera is very sensitive, so any on-the-record comment would have to come from pretty far up in the hierarchy. Only a very senior person can deal with this." But repeated calls to the CPA's senior spokesperson, Dan Senor, produced no response.
Disturbingly, these two cases fit into a larger pattern of US government hostility toward Al Jazeera, provoked by the network's tough reporting on the Iraqi occupation. And this hostility is best viewed in the context of the escalating, multimillion-dollar regional media war between Al Jazeera and the US government.
Donald Rumsfeld has called Al Jazeera's coverage "outrageous" and "inexcusably biased" and implied that he'd like to see the satellite channel thrown out of Iraq. So far the American military has bombed the network's offices in both Baghdad and Kabul, killing one employee; arrested and briefly jailed twenty-one of Al Jazeera's reporters; and now has imprisoned and allegedly abused and humiliated Hassan and Darwish in ways that the UN convention on such matters would consider torture.
At the same time that the US military is harassing Al Jazeera reporters, other parts of the US government, including the State Department, are attempting to answer Al Jazeera in its own language and format. On February 14 the United States launched a nominally independent, US-funded Arabic-language satellite channel called Al Hurra, which means "the free one." The purpose of this effort is to address the lack of popular support for the US occupation in Iraq, as well as the deepening crisis of American legitimacy throughout the Arab world; polls from the region indicate that more and more people hate the United States every day.
Unlike other US-funded forays into Arabic-language media, Al Hurra, with an annual budget of $62 million, could be quite sophisticated and possibly effective in reshaping the beliefs of the politically important and demographically dominant Arab youth scene. The new channel has a stable of proven Arab journalists--one senior producer is a Palestinian who was poached from Al Jazeera, while the channel's top managers are Lebanese Christians with proven journalistic track records. On the other hand, the channel is based in Virginia, includes Colin Powell on its board of directors and its first broadcast was a pre-recorded interview with George W. Bush--none of which bode well for winning Arab hearts and minds.
Regardless of how well Al Hurra fares, Al Jazeera faces increasing obstacles to its reporting in Iraq as its correspondents are harassed, arrested, abused and killed by US troops.
So far, Al Jazeera's management has kept rather quiet about the cases of Hassan and Darwish. When I interviewed Ceddah Abdelhak, the channel's general manager in Baghdad, he insisted that the channel had publicized the cases, and he was clearly upset about the bad treatment of his staff. But other journalists in Baghdad say that Al Jazeera is under so much pressure from the Americans that its owners in Qatar are afraid the channel could be expelled from Iraq if they push too hard on any issue that upsets the CPA.
This is not an unfounded fear. According to sources that insisted on anonymity, the coalition called the network's managers in Iraq to the Republican Palace in Baghdad for a meeting in late January, at which the CPA's head counsel threatened Al Jazeera with expulsion if the network did not stop "destabilizing the occupation" with its tough reporting and intense editorial criticism. Allegedly, the CPA attorney explained that the coalition needed no legal justification to expel Al Jazeera and implied that US authorities were even pressuring the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, to rein in Al Jazeera, which, though run independently, is owned by the government of Qatar.
Another Al Jazeera adversary is the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which recently barred the network from covering its sparsely attended meetings. The IGC was much more aggressive with the next most prominent Arabic-language network, Al Arabiya, which it threw out of Iraq for two months beginning in late December of last year. During that suspension, Al Arabiya's equipment was seized and its journalists faced $1,000 fines or possibly a year in prison if they violated the sanction. The network's offense had been "incitement to murder" by playing a taped message from Saddam Hussein, who was then in hiding.
Arabs working for other media outlets have also been harassed by US troops. Mazen Dana of Reuters was shot and killed by an American soldier outside Abu Ghraib prison in August. Then, in January, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Falluja jailed and allegedly beat a three-man Arab-language crew, also from Reuters. The news agency immediately lodged a formal complaint with the US military, charging that its journalists had been abused while in detention. A Reuters freelancer told me that one of the journalists was later hospitalized.
Travel the roads of the so-called Sunni Triangle looking for action, and one can get plenty of comment about Al Jazeera from US troops who are lower down in the ranks. More than once I have met soldiers in the field who respond to requests for interviews or permission to enter their area of operations with, "As long as you're not Al Jazeera." One officer with the 82nd Airborne in Falluja claims that Al Jazeera filmed an attack on his unit in which one of his sergeants was impaled with debris from a bomb and then burned to death in the ensuing fire.
"We knew something was wrong when we saw people with cameras," explained the young lieutenant with a controlled bitterness. "Later my guys said they saw footage of it on Al Jazeera." When I pushed the lieutenant and his soldiers on this point, it was unclear whether the men had actually seen footage of the attack or just of the aftermath, and whether it was even on Al Jazeera.
A few events like this and the hatred for Al Jazeera builds into a slow-burning passion among the grunts. Stories of Al Jazeera's perfidy now circulate among the troops with the tenacity of urban myths. And while Al Jazeera programming includes Western-style fashion shows and mainstream business news, it also gives ample time to the views of anti-American Arab nationalists and political Islamists who hate and excoriate the occupation. Yet as several well-placed sources explained, while the fixers and reporters of Al Jazeera are connected enough and numerous enough that some of them could probably work with the resistance to film attacks as they happen, they do not, both because they fear expulsion and because of explicit orders from the network's highest echelons. Indeed, the coalition has not documented a single instance of an Al Jazeera journalist conspiring in an attack on the occupation.
The pressure on Al Jazeera may be having the desired effect. Average Iraqis increasingly dismiss its news as soft on the occupation. Al Jazeera's general manager himself says the network's coverage is now "more balanced" than it once was, because it gives increased airtime to US claims of steadily increasing peace, progress and prosperity. Al Jazeera's main spokesperson, Jihad Ballout, was more circumspect in his comments on relations with the Americans in Iraq. "This war has been very hard for all of the press to cover. This is to some extent due to the security concern of the US, the UK and the Iraqis, but it seems that Al Jazeera has gotten more than its fair share of attention. While we understand the security concerns, we believe the media should have the space to do its mandated job."
Today Hassan is back at work, as is Darwish. Al Jazeera is still in action, and Al Hurra is the public face of America's ideological offensive in the Middle East. Viewed from outside, the media environment in Iraq looks open and fair. But the continual abuse of Arab journalists is the more accurate core sample. Reading this political sediment one sees that the American project in Iraq is made of imperial ambition, not liberty and democracy. More broadly, the intimidation and mistreatment of Al Jazeera by the world's most powerful army should be seen as a threat to press freedom everywhere.
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
More on Camp X Ray from the Mirror of London
MY HELL IN CAMP X-RAY By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
FREEDOM: Jamal yesterday... but he will never forget camp horror
He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.
Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American base.
He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them.
Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.
Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.
A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.
But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.
Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.
The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.
Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away.
"I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother.
"It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block."
Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."
HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited with his family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone to Pakistan in October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to study Muslim culture.
He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was being driven to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because of his British passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and fell into US hands.
Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he walks because the shackles that bound him were too short.
As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal ring on the floor.
Jamal said: "Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor with your hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends told me he was kept like that for 15 hours once.
"Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and down a strip of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but in Delta you walked for around 15 minutes."
Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight."
He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 per cent of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran.
Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy". Jamal added: "In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour of Coca-Cola.
"We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they would often turn the water off as punishment.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion.
"The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date. They would open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time.
"We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which was disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had been frozen and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but there was waxy white stuff all over it and inside it would be black and brown.
"They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on never asking them for anything. I would not beg." Jamal said they were told they had no rights. "They actually said that - 'You have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog.
"He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog is member of the US army'.
"You would be punished for anything - for having six packets of salt in your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel through the cage if it wasn't wet, even for having your spoon and things lined up in the wrong order."
Being forced to use a bucket as a toilet in view of other inmates and guards was particularly embarrassing. Jamal said: "I never got used to it - we would all put our towels and clothes around us.
"But the Military Police up in the tower would see us and would shout to each other.
"We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning and none at all in solitary confinement.
"This was very tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray.
"Gradually the number of showers rose to three a week. They were always cold.
"You would be chained by two MPs while you were still in the cage before being taken off for what they called 'rec and shower'.
"You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower heads to make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes if he had put them up to protect his privacy."
Inmates were issued with "comfort items" - known as CIs - like shampoo, towels, a washcloth and boxer shorts. CIs would be removed as a punishment.
Jamal defiantly refused "treats", such as watching a James Bond film in a room dubbed The Love Shack by inmates.
He added: "Some people were given pizzas, ice-cream and McDonald's, but they didn't offer them to me. I guess they knew bribery would work with some and not with others."
To pass the time, inmates would chat to each other, pray, read the Koran and sing Islamic songs. In Camp X-Ray, they were given Mills and Boon-style romance novels in Arabic, which they refused to read.
Describing medical treatment, Jamal said he knew of 11 men who had legs amputated and two who lost toes and fingers. He was told that the Americans had removed far more tissue than was necessary.
HE added: "The man in the cell next to me had frostbite in two fingers and two toes. He also had it in his big toe, but they didn't treat that for a year by which time they had to cut off much more than was needed.
"All the men who had lost limbs complained they would chop them off high up and not bother to try to save as much as possible."
Jamal added that he didn't have close friends in Guantanamo, saying: "When I did meet the other Brits, we would reminisce about home - particularly the food.
"We were all obsessed with Scottish Highland Shortbread - we wanted some so much.
"One of the Brits told me he was asked why he was a Muslim, because he ought to be praying to the Queen."
Jamal, who is divorced with daughters aged three and eight and a son of five, is convinced his refusal to succumb to mind-games gave him the will to come through.
He said: "It was very, very hard at times, but I tried to think about nothing but survival.
"I kept my thoughts from home as much as possible because it would drive me crazy.
"About a year into my time, I had a dream. A voice said, 'You will here for two years'.
"In my dream I said, 'Two years! You're joking'. But when I woke up, I was calmer because at least that meant I would be getting out one day.
"I was sent to Guantanamo on February 11, 2002 and left on March 9, 2004, so I was there for just over two years, just like the voice in the dream said."
LONDON - A Briton released from the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he was beaten, humiliated and interrogated for up to 12 hours at a time during two years' detention.
In a newspaper interview headlined "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Jamal al-Harith said guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force "waded into inmates in full riot gear, raining blows on them" as punishment.
The water and food was foul at Guantanamo, and sometimes as punishment, water taps in the cells would be turned off, al-Harith, 37, said in the interview, which was published Friday in the Daily Mirror.
Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Claims Mistreatment
By AUDREY WOODS
The Associated Press
Friday, March 12, 2004; 1:31 AM
LONDON - A Briton released from the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he was beaten, humiliated and interrogated for up to 12 hours at a time during two years' detention.
In a newspaper interview headlined "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Jamal al-Harith said guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force "waded into inmates in full riot gear, raining blows on them" as punishment.
The water and food was foul at Guantanamo, and sometimes as punishment, water taps in the cells would be turned off, al-Harith, 37, said in the interview, which was published Friday in the Daily Mirror.
The U.S. military repeatedly has denied that Guantanamo prisoners have been mistreated. The U.S. government says the roughly 640 prisoners are at Guantanamo because of suspicions they have links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network.
Al-Harith arrived in Britain Tuesday night on a military flight with four other Britons freed from Guantanamo.
"He has been detained as an innocent person for a period of two years. He has been treated in a cruel, inhumane and degrading manner," his lawyer, Robert Lizar, told reporters.
He was regularly interrogated by FBI and CIA agents, and later Britain's MI5 intelligence agency, the newspaper said.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion," said al-Harith, 37, a convert to Islam. "We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning, and none at all in solitary confinement. This was tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray."
"The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not nearly as bad as the psychological torture," al-Harith told the paper.
The families of the returnees have said they were mistakenly caught up in the U.S. war on terrorism.
Al-Harith describes a stay in an isolation unit known as an ISO, where those accused of misbehaving were kept in solitary confinement with just a mat and towel.
The newspaper also carried an account of what led to al-Harith's arrest.
The paper said al-Harith went to Pakistan weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to learn about Muslim culture. Al-Harith was in Quetta near the Afghan border when the U.S. bombings against the Taliban began. He paid a driver to take him to Turkey, but was stopped in Afghanistan by an armed gang who accused him of being a spy after they saw his British passport and jailed him, according to the newspaper.
After the Taliban fell, he stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar arranging to go home but was picked up by the Americans and interrogated. He was finally sent to Guantanamo Bay, the newspaper said.
Al-Harith said he arrived at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba on Feb. 11, 2002.
"I tried not to think about my family for two years because it hurt so much," the paper quoted him as saying. "I tried to contain everything. It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."
The Mirror said al-Harith was divorced and has three children ages 3, 4 and 8.
The Justice Department wants to significantly expand the government's ability to monitor online traffic, proposing that providers of high-speed Internet service should be forced to grant easier access for FBI wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to documents and government officials.
A petition filed this week with the Federal Communications Commission also suggests that consumers should be required to foot the bill.
Law enforcement agencies have been increasingly concerned that fast-growing telephone service over the Internet could be a way for terrorists and criminals to evade surveillance. But the petition also moves beyond Internet telephony, leading several technology experts and privacy advocates yesterday to warn that many types of online communication, including instant messages and visits to Web sites, could be covered.
Easier Internet Wiretaps Sought
Justice Dept., FBI Want Consumers To Pay the Cost
By Dan Eggen and Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A01
The Justice Department wants to significantly expand the government's ability to monitor online traffic, proposing that providers of high-speed Internet service should be forced to grant easier access for FBI wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to documents and government officials.
A petition filed this week with the Federal Communications Commission also suggests that consumers should be required to foot the bill.
Law enforcement agencies have been increasingly concerned that fast-growing telephone service over the Internet could be a way for terrorists and criminals to evade surveillance. But the petition also moves beyond Internet telephony, leading several technology experts and privacy advocates yesterday to warn that many types of online communication, including instant messages and visits to Web sites, could be covered.
The proposal by the Justice Department, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration could require extensive retooling of existing broadband networks and could impose significant costs, the experts said. Privacy advocates also argue that there are not enough safeguards to prevent the government from intercepting data from innocent users.
Justice Department lawyers argue in a 75-page FCC petition that Internet broadband and online telephone providers should be treated the same as traditional telephone companies, which are required by law to provide access for wiretaps and other monitoring of voice communications. The law enforcement agencies complain that many providers do not comply with existing wiretap rules and that rapidly changing technology is limiting the government's ability to track terrorists and other threats.
They are asking the FCC to curtail its usual review process to rapidly implement the proposed changes. The FBI views the petition as narrowly crafted and aimed only at making sure that terrorist and criminal suspects are not able to evade monitoring because of the type of telephone communications they use, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"Lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance is an invaluable and necessary tool for federal, state and local law enforcement in their fight against criminals, terrorists, and spies," the petition said, adding that "the importance and the urgency of this task cannot be overstated" because "electronic surveillance is being compromised today."
But privacy and technology experts said the proposal is overly broad and raises serious privacy and business concerns. James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a public interest group, said the FBI is attempting to dictate how the Internet should be engineered to permit whatever level of surveillance law enforcement deems necessary.
"The breadth of what they are asking for is a little breathtaking," Dempsey said. "The question is, how deeply should the government be able to control the design of the Internet? . . . If you want to bring the economy to a halt, put the FBI in charge of deploying new Internet and communications services."
Jeffrey Citron, chief executive of Internet phone provider Vonage Inc., said the FBI is overreaching. He said that he and other providers cooperate fully with law enforcement, and that if the FBI has ongoing concerns, it should strive to change the law governing wiretaps.
The FCC is in the midst of a wide-ranging review of how to regulate the fledgling Internet telephone industry. Chairman Michael K. Powell, responding to complaints from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, said last month that the FCC will also pursue a separate review of wiretapping rules.
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), enacted in 1994, required telecommunications companies to rewire their networks so police could have access for wiretaps and other surveillance measures. But law enforcement officials and privacy advocates have argued fiercely in recent years about whether, and to what extent, the law should apply to such newer-generation technologies as Internet telephone and broadband services.
The Justice proposal asserts that "CALEA was intended to protect the capacity of law enforcement to carry out authorized surveillance in the face of technological change, and CALEA contains no exemption for telephony services provided through broadband access."
Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel at the National Security Agency, said the petition ignores the intent and letter of the CALEA law, which specifically exempts "persons or entities insofar as they are engaged in providing information services." The Justice Department and FBI argue that Congress nine years ago had in mind simple data-storage services, and did not envision the kind of Internet-based communications technologies available today.
The problem the FBI faces is that it cannot identify and break down information that travels as packets of data over the Internet. Phone calls placed over the Internet are changed from voice signals into data packets that look much like other data packets that contain e-mail or instructions for browsing the Internet.
CALEA does not require telecommunications providers to break down and identify which is which, or to decode data that might be encrypted. The FBI wants Internet providers to be forced to do so, experts said.
Justice and FBI lawyers also asked the FCC to "permit carriers to have the option to recover some or all of their CALEA implementation costs from their customers." The petition argues that the actual costs to individual customers would be minimal, although no estimates are provided.
Internet service providers yesterday reacted with caution. Many said they had not yet studied the FBI petition, and want to be viewed as cooperating with law enforcement whenever possible.
David Baker, vice president for public policy at Internet provider EarthLink Inc. in Atlanta, said the FBI appears to be going beyond concerns over voice communications technology on the Internet and is instead "seeking to apply CALEA to all information services."
MADRID, March 11 — In the bloodiest terrorist attack on a European target, 10 bombs exploded during this morning's rush hour in three commuter train stations here. The Interior Ministry said more than 190 people were killed and more than 1,200 wounded.
Three other bombs were discovered and detonated by the police in the highly coordinated explosions, which went off within a 10-minute period.
As the country struggled to absorb the carnage just three days before general elections, Prime Minister José María Aznar appeared on television and called the attacks "mass murder." He vowed that Spain would never negotiate with "these assassins."
Mr. Aznar added, "March 11 now has it place in the history of infamy."
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Powerful explosions rocked several Madrid train stations during Thursday morning rush hour, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens, news reports said.
There was no claim of responsibility but police have been on alert for Basque separatist violence ahead of general elections Sunday.
News reports said two bombs went off in a commuter train arriving at bustling Atocha station in the Spanish capital.
LONDON, Thursday, March 11 — The police have freed all five Britons flown home from the jail at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, raising questions about why they were held for two years, and on Thursday a lawyer for one of the men denounced their captors.
The men were turned over to British custody on Tuesday, and by late Wednesday, the British police and prosecutors had released all of them without charge.
MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH
Associated Press Writer
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)--Mohammed Abul Abbas, head of a Palestinian splinter group and mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship in which an American tourist was killed, has died in U.S. custody in Iraq, Palestinian and U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The ship was commandeered by Abbas' small Palestine Liberation Front. Palestinian militants threw an elderly wheelchair-bound Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard.
Abbas was captured in Iraq in April by U.S. forces. Late Tuesday, officials in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Abbas had died in U.S. custody.
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 9, 2004; 5:19 PM
A federal judge in Alexandria today acquitted the final member of an alleged "Virginia jihad network," saying prosecutors had shown he was "very interested in violent jihad" but failed to prove that he fought with the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
Sabri Benkhala, 28, had been charged with supplying services to the Taliban and firing an AK-47 automatic rifle and a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan. If convicted, he would have faced a minimum of 30 years in prison.
After a one-day trial, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that the government had not proved the case to the legal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." Only one witness said Benkhala had gone to Afghanistan, she said, and she found that witness "simply not believable."
(03-09) 14:17 PST ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) --
A bomb exploded at a building housing a Masonic lodge Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding five others, reports said, months after four suicide attacks struck this city.
NTV television said police blamed the attack on a suicide bomber. CNN-Turk said a man chanting, "Allah, Allah," entered the building and detonated a bomb.
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 9, 2004; 2:21 PM
JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 9 -- The Indonesian Supreme Court has reduced the jail sentence for Abubakar Baasyir, a Muslim cleric named by security officials as the leader of a Southeast Asian terrorist network, allowing him to go free by early next month, a court official said Tuesday.
The judges slashed in half the three-year prison sentence imposed by a lower court but did not provide an explanation for their ruling.
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 9, 2004; 4:03 PM
CIA director George Tenet said today that he did not believe the administration had "misrepresented" intelligence about Iraq leading up to the war and that he privately corrected officials when he disagreed with what they were saying.
In a sometimes contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Tenet defended the administration's description of Iraqi threats against charges that President Bush and Vice President Cheney, in particular, exaggerated the threat and did not tell the American people that some of intelligence assessments included significant caveats or were disputed by some intelligence agencies.
By BETH GARDINER
Associated Press Writer
NORTHOLT, England (AP)--Police arrested five Britons as they returned to England late Tuesday from more than two years in U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The five were among nine Britons whose captivity at the U.S. military prison had proved a sticking point between the warm allies for more than two years.
The Royal Air Force C17 landed Tuesday night at Northolt Royal Air Force Base west of London. Armored police vans awaited the flight and took the prisoners away.
AP-NY-03-09-04 1500EST
President Bush will answer all the questions of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House spokesman said today, suggesting that the president will be more flexible in his approach to the commission.
Commission members said late last month that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the commission, saying that they would meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush would submit to only a single hour of questioning.