| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 9:20 am Post subject: Agencies Mum On Israel Inquiry |
| Agencies Mum On Israel Inquiry
http://www.the-signal.com/News/ViewStory.asp?storyID=4752
5/29/2004
Leon Worden City Editor
While seven lower-level Army reserve guards have been charged in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, including one who has already pleaded guilty, government officials remained tight-lipped Friday about the fate of four higher-ups who evidently remain free despite allegations that they orchestrated the torture.
John B. Israel, 48, of Canyon Country, is one of the four men identified in an Army report as having been ?directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.? A civilian, Israel worked as an interpreter under contract with Army intelligence.
Israel returned to Santa Clarita around April 1 and has not responded to messages left this week at his home. His wife said Wednesday he has not yet hired an attorney.
Defense Department and Justice Department officials pointed fingers at each other when asked Friday which agency is following up on Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba?s call for a formal inquiry into Israel?s activities.
?The lead agency is the Department of Justice,? said a Defense Department spokesman who refused to provide his name.
The Washington Post reported last week that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation of an unidentified civilian contractor with ties to Abu Ghraib.
However, Justice Department spokesman Robert Nardoza told The Signal on Friday that his office is not conducting an investigation. He referred inquiries to the Defense Department ?because they are investigating it.?
Vartan Djihanian, press deputy to U.S. Rep. Howard ?Buck? McKeon ? Israel?s congressional representative and a House Armed Services Committee member ? said he has been unable to learn what agency may be conducting an inquiry.
Staff members of the House Armed Services Committee were equally in the dark.
The unnamed Defense Department spokesman did say Army investigators ?will leave no stone unturned to make sure it doesn?t happen again? but refused to disclose whether current investigations include the activities of civilian contractors like Israel.
An Iraqi-born American linguist, Israel is one of two high-level civilians Taguba accused of responsibility for the actions of prison guards.
The other civilian is Steven A. Stephanowicz, sometimes spelled Stefanowicz, a 34-year-old ex-Navy reservist from Philadelphia who worked under contract as an interrogator.
Stephanowicz?s attorney, Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., did not return calls Friday. The Washington Post quoted him May 11 as saying his client?s conduct at the prison ?was both appropriate and authorized.?
Submitted in early March, Taguba?s report on abuses at Abu Ghraib paints a picture of a prison where military police units lacked training and civilian contractors lacked supervision.
Although military police are barred by policy from participating in interrogations by military intelligence personnel, Taguba found that intelligence officers and other interrogators ?actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.?
From October to December, setting ?conditions for favorable interrogation? at Abu Ghraib meant things like sodomizing detainees and forcing them to masturbate.
In Senate testimony, Taguba said the guards considered the two civilian intelligence experts, Israel and Stephanowicz, ?as competent authority? to give instructions.
In his report, Taguba determined that Stephanowicz ?instructed MPs, who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by ?setting conditions? which were (not) authorized.?
?He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,? Taguba wrote.
He said Israel claimed not to have observed abusive interrogations despite several witness statements to the contrary.
Taguba recommended that Stephanowicz be fired and Israel be reprimanded, and that both men be subjected to a formal military inquiry.
Civilian contractors who commit crimes while working overseas for the military can be prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 1999.
The law applies to military personnel and civilian employees who ?(engage) in conduct outside the United States that would constitute an offense punishable by imprisonment for more than one year if the conduct had been engaged in within the ... United States.?
?If it (the investigation of Israel) goes through the (Department of Justice), then it will be handled through that law,? said Djihanian, McKeon?s spokesman.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has said civilian contractors could be prosecuted for violations of civil rights and anti-torture statutes.
Signal staff writer Judy Ann Mook contributed to this story. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 9:31 pm Post subject: AP: Intelligence Agents Encouraged Abuse |
| AP: Intelligence Agents Encouraged Abuse
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040529/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_intelligence_abuse
2 hours, 52 minutes ago
Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show.
Court transcripts and Army investigator interviews provide the broadest view of evidence that abuses, from forcing inmates to stand in hoods in 120-degree heat to punching them, occurred at a Marine detention camp and three Army prison sites in Iraq (news - web sites) besides Abu Ghraib.
That is the prison outside Baghdad that was the site of widely published and televised photographs of abuse of Iraqi detainees by Army troops.
Testimony about tactics used at a Marine prisoner of war camp near Nasiriyah also raises the question whether coercive techniques were standard procedure for military intelligence units in different service branches and throughout Iraq.
At the Marines' Camp Whitehorse, the guards were told to keep enemy prisoners of war — EPWs, in military jargon — standing for 50 minutes each hour for up to 10 hours. They would then be interrogated by "human exploitation teams," or HETs, comprising intelligence specialists.
"The 50/10 technique was used to break down the EPWs and make it easier for the HET member to get information from them," Marine Cpl. Otis Antoine, a guard at Camp Whitehorse, testified at a military court hearing in February.
U.S. military officials say American troops in Iraq are required to follow the Geneva Conventions on POWs for all detainees in Iraq. Those conventions prohibit "physical or moral coercion" or cruel treatment.
The Army's intelligence chief told a Senate panel this month that intelligence soldiers are trained to follow Geneva Convention rules strictly.
"Our training manuals specifically prohibit the abuse of detainees, and we ensure all of our soldiers trained as interrogators receive this training," Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander told the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites).
The Marine Corps judge hearing the Camp Whitehorse case wrote that forcing hooded, handcuffed prisoners to stand for 50 minutes every hour in the 120-degree desert could be a Geneva Convention violation. Col. William V. Gallo wrote that such actions "could easily form the basis of a law of war violation if committed by an enemy combatant."
Two Marines face charges in the June 2003 death of Nagem Sadoon Hatab at Camp Whitehorse, although no one is charged with killing him. Military records say Hatab was asphyxiated when a Marine guard grabbed his throat in an attempt to move him, accidentally breaking a bone that cut off his air supply. Another Marine is charged with kicking Hatab in the chest in the hours before his death.
Army Maj. Gen. George Fay is finishing an investigation into military intelligence management and practices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq. Alexander and other top military intelligence officials say they never gave orders that would have encouraged abuses.
"If we have a problem, if it is an intel oversight problem, if it is an MP (military police) problem, or if it's a leadership problem, we have to get to the bottom of this," Alexander told the Senate panel.
Most of the seven enlisted soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib abuses say they were encouraged to "soften up" prisoners for interrogators through humiliation and beatings. Several witnesses also report seeing military intelligence operatives hit Abu Ghraib prisoners, strip them naked and order them to be kept awake for long periods.
Other accusations against military intelligence troops include:
_Stuffing an Iraqi general into a sleeping bag, sitting on his chest and covering his mouth during an interrogation at a prison camp at Qaim, near the border with Syria. The general died during that interrogation, although he also had been questioned by CIA (news - web sites) operatives in the days before his death.
_Choking, beating and pulling the hair of detainees at an Army prison camp near Samarra, north of Baghdad.
_Hitting prisoners and putting them in painful positions for hours at Camp Cropper, a prison at Baghdad International Airport for prominent former Iraqi officials.
Military officials say they're investigating all of those incidents.
One focus of the incident at Qaim is Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshover, an interrogator with the Army's 66th Military Intelligence Group. Welshover told The Associated Press on Friday: "I am not at liberty to discuss any of the details."
Welshover was part of a two-person interrogation team that questioned former Iraqi Air Force Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57. Military autopsy records say Mowhoush was asphyxiated by chest compression and smothering.
Army officials say members of a California Army National Guard military intelligence unit are accused of abusing prisoners at a camp near Samarra, north of Baghdad. The New York Times has reported those accusations include pulling prisoners' hair, beating them and choking them to force them to give information.
The Red Cross complained to the military in July that Camp Cropper inmates had been kept in painful "stress positions" for up to four hours and had been struck by military intelligence soldiers.
One of the military intelligence soldiers interviewed in the Abu Ghraib probe claimed some prisoners were beaten before they arrived at Camp Cropper.
Cpl. Robert Bruttomesso of the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion told Army investigators he reported that abuse to his chain of command. The report of his interview, obtained by The Associated Press, does not include details on what action, if any, Bruttomesso's commanders took. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 12:14 am Post subject: ABUSING PRISONERS WAS STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE |
| Just saw the following on the AOL newsgroups:
Message 1 of 1 Subject 11 of 50
Subject: ABUSING PRISONERS WAS STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Date: 5/27/04 10:03 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: RT218
MsgId: <20040528010307.15012.00005942@mbs-r04.aol.com>
New Photos Show Abu Ghraib Tactics
NBC, MSNBC News
Wednesday 26 May 2004
Naked Iraqis interrogated aggressively in images.
WASHINGTON - A series of photographs obtained exclusively by NBC News depicts what sources said was the aggressive interrogation of three naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the detention facility outside Baghdad that is at the center of the scandal over U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi detainees.
In one of the photos, a U.S. soldier can be seen pressing his knee into the neck of one of the three prisoners, who have been forced to huddle together on the floor.
Sources told NBC News that some of the men in the photos were U.S. military intelligence officers who appeared to be directing the interrogation. One of the men identified as a military intelligence officer appears to have thrown an unidentified object at the prisoners.
The involvement of military intelligence officers in encouraging abuse of detainees has emerged as a central question in the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Military police are responsible for guarding prisoners but are not supposed to be involved in interrogations.
But a report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's investigation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, quoted the testimony of a sergeant at the prison who said military intelligence officers lobbied guards to abuse detainees to 'loosen them up' for interrogation.
Seven soldiers have been court-martialed in the scandal, one of whom has pleaded guilty. The facility's commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, could face administrative action or criminal charges and has been suspended from command.
Standard operating procedure?
It was not clear to what extent the new photographs, which were provided to NBC News on condition that their source not be revealed, showed standard procedures at Abu Ghraib.
NBC News' Robert Windrem reported from New York that the prisoners were being interrogated in connection with the shooting of a military police sergeant by a detainee, not as part of an intelligence interview.
That could suggest that the interrogation session was not representative of normal tactics used at the prison, where hundreds of photographs and video clips have depicted U.S. guards abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners.
Taguba's report blamed, in part, a confused chain of command after Nov. 19, when the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade was given responsibility for Abu Ghraib and authority over the 800th Military Police Brigade. He reiterated that guards should play no role in the interrogation of prisoners.
Members of Congress from both parties complained Wednesday that while an expanded report by Taguba was delivered as promised, as many as 2,000 pages considered vital to the investigation were missing.
Congressional sources told NBC News that the missing documents included a written report from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller that apparently lays out aggressive interrogation tactics for Abu Ghraib. Miller was recently reassigned to Iraq after spending 17 months as commander of operations at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Also missing was key testimony from Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, the sources said.
Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for the Defense Department, characterized the missing documents Wednesday as insignificant, saying the information was 'available otherwise.'
Abuse could be widespread
Former Vice President Al Gore, meanwhile, demanded Wednesday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials resign for encouraging policies that led to the abuse, which could be more widespread than previously known.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that an Army synopsis of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan showed a pattern of abuse involving more military units.
The summary, dated May 5, was prepared by the Criminal Investigation Command at the request of Army officials, according to the newspaper. It outlines the status of investigations into 36 cases, including the continuing probe at Abu Ghraib, the paper said.
The Iraq cases date to April 2003, the Times reported. In an incident reported to have taken place last month, a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on 'blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia,' the paper said.
One of the oldest cases listed in the May 5 document involves the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2002, the paper said.
The document said enlisted personnel from a military intelligence unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., and an Army reserve military police unit from Ohio were thought to have been 'involved at various times in assaulting and mistreating the detainee,' according to the Times.
Members of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, which is part of the California National Guard, were accused of abusing Iraqi detainees last spring in Samarra, north of Baghdad, the Times reported.
The Army summary said the unidentified enlisted personnel 'forced into asphyxiations numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information' over a 10-week period, according to the paper.
-------
By MSNBC.com's Alex Johnson with NBC's Jim Miklaszewski in Washington and Robert Windrem in New York. Reuters contributed to this report.
Message 1 of 2 Subject 2 of 50
Subject: CACI in hot water
Date: 5/28/04 10:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: BikerNeena
MsgId: <20040529010408.06028.00008389@mbs-m03.aol.com>
Its time to pay the piper.
CACI Faces New Probe Of Contract (washingtonpost.com)
CACI Faces New Probe Of Contract
Interrogators Hired Under Army IT Deal
... CACI shares have fallen 18 percent since April 30, the Friday before reports broke that one of its interrogators, Steven A. Stefanowicz, was implicated in an Army investigation into abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
CACI chief executive J.P. "Jack" London said the GSA is investigating how the company was able to use an information technology contract to hire and supply civilian interrogators to the Army. "That's the scope, at least at this point, of their investigation," London said in a conference call with analysts.
"If there have been some mistakes on our part from the contracting side, inadvertently, we will work diligently to correct them," London said. "We anticipate that the government will accept our efforts to remedy these problems and that either any suspension or debarment actions will not be needed."
The GSA sent a letter to CACI on Wednesday requesting information about the contract, said Mary Alice Johnson, a GSA spokeswoman. "The suspension and debarment official of GSA . . . asked CACI to come in and talk," Johnson said. "Some things have come to that individual's attention and he has asked the company to come in and discuss them."
London said CACI is aware of four other investigations into the company's involvement at Abu Ghraib in addition to the GSA's. Those include inquiries by the Army's Office of the Inspector General, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the military intelligence investigation led by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and the Interior Department's inspector general.
An Army report on Abu Ghraib accused Stefanowicz of encouraging soldiers to set conditions for interrogations and said he "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." Stefanowicz's lawyer has said his client was wrongly accused.
CACI's interrogation work for the Defense Department was done under a contract managed by the Interior Department. The contract was a blanket-purchase agreement, a type of contract that is large and vaguely worded to give agencies flexibility and to speed up purchases. CACI's contract was designed for purchases of information technology services and equipment, but the Interior Department's contracting officer approved an Army request to use the contract to buy interrogation services.
The GSA, in addition to the Interior Department, has oversight over the contract because it monitors large blanket-purchase agreements for federal supplies and services.
Johnson said companies are required to notify contracting officials if their government clients are requesting products or services that fall "outside the scope of their contract." She said that there is no set penalty for contractors that do not comply, but that GSA can impose a range of enforcement actions, including temporary and permanent suspensions.
Federal laws require agencies to award contracts to companies that have records of integrity and business ethics. Contracting officers must consider criminal, civil or administrative violations or complaints in deciding whether to ban a company from federal work.
"When the government's overhead agency says [a contract can be used] to buy apples and oranges, you can't say, 'Oh, we'd like to buy a chair,' " said Daniel J. Guttman, a fellow at the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. "Technically that's against the law. . . . It's basically a blatant avoidance of the competitive process."
Other experts said contractors and agencies commonly ignored such restrictions and, until now, such violations got little attention.
"This is an issue that comes up all the time and it frankly makes government contractors uncomfortable. If your customer comes to you and says they want to buy something, you're not going to say you won't sell it to them," said Terry L. Albertson, a lawyer with Crowell & Moring LLP who specializes in government contracts.
Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis with the Teal Group Corp., a consulting firm in Fairfax, said that in the past it would be rare for a company to be barred for such a violation. "But nonetheless this investigation and this announcement create a lot of uncertainty about the company," he said.
Brett B. Lambert, executive vice president of DFI International Inc., a defense consulting and research firm, predicted that only a part of the company would be barred from government work if the GSA takes action. He said that is unlikely given how such incidents have been handled in the past.
WorldCom Inc. (now MCI Inc.) wasn't hurt much when it was suspended from getting new federal contracts for five months last year after it admitted violations of accounting rules. During that period it still received contracts under a waiver.
CACI, which got 92 percent of its revenue from federal clients in 2003, has 6,300 employees, more than half of whom work in the Washington region.
Staff writer Renae Merle contributed to this report.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraq Prison Guards Heeded SCV (Santa Clarita Valley) Translator
http://www.the-signal.com/News/ViewStory.asp?storyID=4733
5/28/2004
Leon Worden City Editor
When Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee that two professional civilian contractors gave direction ? if not exactly orders ? to the guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, one of the civilians he referred to was a 48-year-old Santa Clarita resident.
John Benjamin Israel, an Iraqi-born American interpreter from Canyon Country, was ?either directly or indirectly responsible? for the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees, according to Taguba?s classified report on the improper interrogation tactics at the prison outside Baghdad.
Taguba completed the report in early March, and it was mistakenly released in late April.
Israel could not be reached Thursday. On Wednesday, his wife, Roza Israel, refused to discuss the allegations.
?I?m instructed not to say anything until we get an attorney,? she said.
Israel came to Santa Clarita from San Fernando around 1995 with Roza and their three daughters. They purchased their current home shortly after it was built seven years ago.
While one neighbor described Israel on Wednesday as a loner, others said Thursday that he is friendly and mild-mannered.
?He seems to be a very nice man. It seems so out of character that he would be accused of that,? said Blanche Muscia, who lives next door and frequently chats with Roza.
?He usually doesn?t speak until he?s spoken to,? Muscia said. ?I don?t think he has it in him to hit a man.?
John Israel reportedly told Army investigators he arrived in Iraq on Oct. 14 to work as an interpreter at Abu Ghraib under contract for Army intelligence. Muscia said Israel was back home in Santa Clarita the first week of April.
?He was an interpreter,? the neighbor said. ?I assumed he (served as) a go-between between the Americans and the Iraqis.?
Muscia said that prior to October, she knew Israel as ?a computer guy,? but he seemed to like his new job.
?I saw him a few weeks ago and he said he was going back to Iraq,? she said. ?I asked him why. It?s so dangerous. He said he needed the money.?
?He was really bent on going back. He said, ?I want to help my people. It?s my duty to try to help them.??
?He?s a Christian,? she added.
But Israel didn?t return to Iraq. By late April the so-called Taguba report had gone public and the Senate was gearing up for hearings.
Taguba?s report names only one interpreter ? John Israel ? and one interrogator, Steve Stephanowicz, a 34-year-old Philadelphia native recently living in Australia.
In his May 11 Senate testimony, Taguba said he ?personally interviewed a translator and I also personally interviewed an interrogator, both civilian contractors? ? referring to Stephanowicz, who did the interrogating, and Israel, who did the translating.
Taguba said the prison guards considered the two men their superiors, although the pair didn?t command any U.S. troops.
?They were not in any way supervising any soldiers, (military police) or otherwise,? Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee. ?However, the guards, those who were involved, looked at them as competent authority as in the manner by which they described them ? as ?the MI? (military intelligence officer), or by name, or by function.?
Taguba testified that the civilian interrogator and interpreter answered to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, which answered to a lieutenant colonel, Steve L. Jordan, who answered to the brigade commander, Col. Thomas M. Pappas.
?That was the chain (of command), sir,? Taguba told Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii.
In his classified report, Taguba said the responsibility for the ?sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses? of prisoners, including stripping them naked and handcuffing them in painful positions, fell on the four men. He said Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz and Israel ?were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib,? and he recommended ?immediate disciplinary action ... as well as the initiation of (an) inquiry to determine the full extent of their culpability.?
?At the end of the day,? Taguba told the Senate panel, ?a few soldiers and civilians conspired to abuse and conduct egregious acts of violence against detainees and other civilians outside the bounds of international law and the Geneva Convention.?
The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 1999 allows for the prosecution of civilian contractors who commit crimes while working overseas for the military. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said civilian contractors involved in the mistreatment or murder of Iraqi prisoners could be prosecuted for civil rights violations and for breaking anti-torture laws.
A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Howard ?Buck? McKeon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and John Israel?s congressional representative, referred questions to the Army?s public affairs office.
?We believe that we are a democratic country and we will let the DOD (Department of Defense) investigation follow its proper course to get to the bottom of it,? McKeon spokesman Vartan Djihanian said.
An Army public affairs official wasn?t sure who is investigating civilian contractors implicated in the prison scandal.
?My best guess, and it?s only a guess, is that it would be the Army?s Criminal Investigation Command or the Department of Justice,? Army spokeswoman Deborah Parker said.
Justice officials did not return calls.
Reporting from inside Abu Ghraib prison earlier this month, a correspondent for the London Telegraph confirmed that Israel had left Iraq and reported that Stephanowicz was on leave from CACI International Inc., a private intelligence firm based in Richmond, Va., ?pending inquiries that could lead to criminal charges being brought against them.?
Israel worked through SOS Interpreting Ltd., a New York-based translation service whose stated specialties include intelligence, counterintelligence, force protection and ?psychological operations? for government agencies. SOS is under contract with Titan Corp. of San Diego to provide linguistic services at Abu Ghraib.
An SOS executive told The Signal on Thursday that Israel still works for the company and could not be contacted.
?We are not providing access to John Israel at this point,? Chief Financial Officer Bruce Crowell said in a phone message.
Another SOS official said Israel is on temporary assignment.
?It is true that John Israel works here,? Crowell said in a subsequent telephone interview. ?We are not at liberty to make any further comments, other than what we have said in a prepared statement.?
The statement said, ?SOS Interpreting Ltd. is a subcontractor to Titan (Corp.), responsible for employing, and then secunding (sic) to Titan and ultimately the Army, interpreters. SOS understands that the government is conducting reviews that may relate to issues regarding this subcontract. SOS intends to cooperate with the Army and Titan. It would be premature to comment further at this time.?
Crowell declined to answer questions about his company?s employment requirements. In its online job postings, SOS tends to advertise for U.S. citizens or longtime U.S. residents, and it pays about $75,000 for translation work overseas.
Public records show Israel owns his home. His 1993 bankruptcy was discharged in 2002.
Although prison translators require a U.S. security clearance, an Army spokeswoman couldn't corroborate Israel's citizenship and referred questions about his nationality to Titan.
A Titan executive said Israel is a U.S. citizen and he dismissed the current chatroom ?buzz? that he might be a foreign agent.
?I do know he?s an American,? Titan spokesman Will Williams said. ?Because of his last name, I have never in my life seen so much speculation. ... He?s just an American interpreter working for a subcontractor.?
One inconsistency in Taguba?s report is the listing of Israel as an employee of both Titan and CACI. He was not directly employed by Titan, and a personnel executive with CACI said Thursday she was unfamiliar with him.
The London Telegraph said three CACI contractors are still working with 30 military intelligence interrogators at Abu Ghraib and another six are employed as screeners to process detainees and determine whether they have any intelligence value. About 20 contract employees from SOS and Titan are still working at the prison as linguists.
Col. Foster Payne, newly in charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib, defended the use of civilian contractors.
?They?re professionals in their own right,? Payne told The Telegraph. ?They have wide experience in the field and contribute to the team.?
?We?ve taken the actions of two people (Israel and Stephanowicz) and now we?re questioning whether we need to use contractors,? Payne lamented.
The scandal prompted a complete troop overhaul in February. The Telegraph reported that the ?abuse appears to have been stamped out? although a tour of the facility revealed that living conditions were still ?miserable and highly dangerous.?
Signal staff writers Lila Campuzano, Burt Stillar, Judy Ann Mook, Brandon Lowrey and Diana Sevanian contributed to this story.
Additional material (related to John Israel) appears at the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/28/scv-man-john-israel-linked-to-iraq-prison-torture-abuse.php
http://www.the-signal.com (another article by Leon Worden appears at www.the-signal.com tomorrow):
SCV Man Linked to Iraq Abuse
5/27/2004
Leon Worden City Editor
A Canyon Country man is one of four people accused of being responsible for
abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
An Army report implicates John B. Israel, a 48-year-old civilian
contractor hired by the Army as a translator, as “either directly or
indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.”
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba’s report on the abuse of prisoners — the
so-called “Taguba Report” — also accuses Israel of lying to Army
investigators about witnessing improper interrogations.
The report shows there was a breakdown in command authority and a
blurring of the lines between interpreting and interrogating at the prison.
It quotes military prison guards as saying both military intelligence
officers and civilian contractors encouraged abuses, including stripping
prisoners naked and handcuffing them in painful positions.
In his report, Taguba calls for a formal inquiry to determine the guilt
of intelligence personnel at the prison. He writes:
“Specifically, I suspect that Col. Thomas M. Pappas, LTC Steve L.
Jordan, Mr. Steven Stephanowicz, and Mr. John Israel were either directly or
indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and strongly recommend
immediate disciplinary action ... as well as the initiation of (an) inquiry
to determine the full extent of their culpability.”
Pappas was the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
Jordan is the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing
Center. Stephanowicz is a civilian interrogator working under contract.
Taguba recommended that a formal reprimand go into Israel’s personnel
file because he lacked the required security clearance and he wrongfully
denied having seen interrogation processes that violated the Interrogation
Rules of Engagement.
According to The New York Times, Israel told Army investigators in a
brief written statement that he arrived in Iraq on Oct. 14 and served as a
translator for military intelligence. Asked if he had “witnessed any acts of
abuse,” he wrote, “No I have not.”
According to the Taguba report, several witnesses said he did.
Israel is believed to have returned to the Santa Clarita Valley from
Iraq about a month ago.
Contacted by The Signal at their home in a newer Canyon Country
neighborhood, Israel’s wife, Roza, acknowledged hearing about the
allegations but refused to comment on them.
“I’m instructed not to say anything until we get an attorney,” she said
Wednesday. “I haven’t even had an opportunity to discuss it with (John).”
Her husband is out of town until next week and has not yet hired an
attorney, she said.
Born in Baghdad in 1955, Israel is described as an Iraqi-American
Christian. His home was still decorated for Christmas on Wednesday. The
Israels have lived in Santa Clarita with their three daughters for about 10
years and in their current house for a portion of that time.
A neighbor described them as loners who live modestly.
“They keep to themselves,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be
identified. “They’re flat-out unfriendly.”
“It’s pretty scary living next door to somebody accused of that, with
the state that the world is in,” she said. “It’s disturbing.”
The New York Times said Israel traveled Monday to the Washington, D.C.,
offices of his employer, SOS Interpreting Ltd. His continued employment
could not be verified Wednesday.
Based in New York, SOS is a 15-year-old company that, according to its
online job posting for an Arabic linguist, specializes in translation,
interpretation and foreign language training as well as “intelligence,
counterintelligence, psychological operations, counterterrorism,
counter-narcotics, peacekeeping and civil affairs, force protection, private
security” and related information services. Its job listings call for
applications from U.S. citizens.
SOS performed translating services for the Army Intelligence and
Security Command at Abu Ghraib. On Monday the company issued a statement
saying it “fully intends to cooperate with the Army and with Titan.”
Titan Corp. is a San Diego-based defense firm that subcontracted the
translation work to SOS. Titan President Gene Ray expressed his company’s
“distress and dismay over the horrific events at the Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq” in a May 7 statement.
“To clarify inaccuracies in a number of news media reports,” his
statement said, “Titan’s role in Iraq is to serve as translators and
interpreters for the U.S. Army. The company’s contract is for linguists, not
interrogators.”
Only one of the 15 Titan and SOS translators working at Abu Ghraib last
fall possessed the necessary security clearance, the Taguba reported
indicated.
Titan has fired one interpreter, Adel L. Nakhla, of Gaithersburg, Md.,
whom Taguba named as a suspect.
Shareholders of Titan, a public company listed on the New York Stock
Exchange, will vote June 7 on a planned takeover by Lockheed Martin Corp.
The merger was delayed pending the outcome of an internal investigation into
alleged payments by Titan or its subsidiaries to foreign officials.
On May 17, Titan announced it has won a four-year contract potentially
worth $15 million to provide intelligence services to the Navy's Space and
Naval Warfare Systems Command Systems Center in San Diego.
The Associated Press contributed to this story. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 1:29 pm Post subject: Israel Hires Ex-O.J. Prosecutor |
| http://www.the-signal.com/News/ViewStory.asp?storyID=4755
Israel Hires Ex-O.J. Prosecutor
Canyon Country man is ?just a translator? and had ?no say-so in anything? at Abu Ghraib, wife says
5/30/2004
Leon Worden City Editor
John B. Israel has hired a prominent Los Angeles law firm to fend off allegations that he shared responsibility for the abuse last fall at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Israel, 48, of Canyon Country, hired attorney Christopher Darden and an associate late last week, his wife told The Signal on Saturday.
She said her husband will not be a scapegoat.
Darden, a onetime Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, is best known for having been a prosecutor in the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson. Darden subsequently went into private practice.
Darden said he is "not making any statements whatsoever at this time."
From Oct. 14 until earlier this year, Israel was a civilian contractor for Army intelligence at the prison. He is one of four men accused by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba as having been ?directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.?
But his wife, Roza Israel, said he had no authority there.
?He?s just a translator,? she said Saturday at her home. ?He is not an interrogator. He has no say-so in anything.?
She said the blame is being misdirected.
?If they need to find a scapegoat, it?s not going to be him,? she said. ?His job was translating. That?s it.?
She refused to disclose Israel?s whereabouts other than to say he is in the United States. Last week his employer, SOS Interpreting Ltd., with offices in New York City and Fairfax, Va., said he was unavailable.
Roza Israel said her husband ?went (to Iraq) to serve his country, to protect our children, your children, everyone?s children.?
?It didn?t work out that way,? she said.
They have three daughters.
?The truth will come out soon,? she said, adding, ?I don?t like the media to make a big issue out of nothing.?
Roza said her family has lived in Santa Clarita since 1988. They have owned their current home since it was built in 1996.
She wouldn?t say what her husband did for a living prior to his translating job at Abu Ghraib.
A neighbor said she knew him as ?a computer guy? before October and described him last week as ?a very nice man.? She said he wanted to return to Iraq when they last spoke in late April.
?He was really bent on going back. He said, ?I want to help my people. It?s my duty to try to help them.? He?s a Christian,? the neighbor said.
Israel was born in Baghdad in 1955. He is a U.S. citizen, said a spokesman for Titan Corp., an intelligence firm that subcontracted the prison translation work to SOS.
Taguba recommended a formal inquiry to determine the extent of Israel?s culpability. Defense Department and Justice Department officials could not confirm Friday that any investigation is underway. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 1:44 pm Post subject: Re: Some U.S. prison contractors may avoid charges |
| Civilian contractors suspected in abuses in a legal gray area
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040529-9999-1n29law.html
By David Washburn and Bruce V. Bigelow
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS
May 29, 2004 An untested law that experts say contains significant loopholes appears to be the best weapon the Justice Department has to prosecute civilian contractors allegedly involved in the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Although one U.S. soldier has been convicted and six others face military charges of assault, mistreatment and indecent acts for suspected actions at the prison near Baghdad, the legal standard is far less certain for prosecuting American civilian contractors who are implicated. Legal experts say the statute that most probably would apply to civilian contractors, including those from San Diego's Titan Corp., is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000. However, the government has yet to convict anyone under the law, and its authors say it wasn't written with a case like this in mind. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced May 21 that the Justice Department was investigating the involvement of civilian contractors in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Later that day, Titan fired Adel L. Nakhla, a linguist identified as a suspect in an Army report on the prison abuses. Nakhla told Army investigators that he witnessed abuses by military personnel, and The Wall Street Journal has reported that he admitted to sexually humiliating prisoners. There is less information on John B. Israel, a Titan subcontractor identified in the Army investigation as "either directly or indirectly" responsible for some abuses. Titan officials have declined to comment, except to say they will take necessary action if their employees are found to have engaged in any wrongdoing. Two laws that aim to prevent wartime atrocities, the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991 and the War Crimes Act of 1996, can be applied to civilian contractors, say legal experts and human-rights advocates. But experts say those laws carry a relatively high threshold and convicting civilians could be difficult under either act if the contractors played only supporting roles in the abuses. It is also highly unlikely that Iraqi courts have jurisdiction over U.S. contractors. The workers are protected by what is known as a status-of-forces agreement, which basically says U.S. contractors are immune to the Iraqi legal process, said David Hammond, a partner at Washington, D.C.-based Crowell & Moring, a firm specializing in government contract law. That leaves the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which enables the Justice Department to prosecute U.S. civilians who commit crimes on foreign soil while employed by the Pentagon or while accompanying military personnel. But using the act to prosecute civilian abusers of Iraqi prisoners was not something congressional sponsors considered when they drafted the legislation. "The last thing we envisioned was a case like this," said Michael Brumas, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who wrote the bill. Sessions, a former U.S. attorney, sponsored the legislation in 2000 after a judge ruled that there was no applicable law for prosecuting an Army sergeant's husband accused of molesting his stepdaughter at a U.S. base in Germany. The law has gone untested since President Clinton signed it in October 2000, with the first case to be prosecuted under the act scheduled to begin July 13 before U.S. District Judge Nora Manella in Los Angeles. Latasha Lorraine Arnt, 24, was indicted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act for second-degree murder after the stabbing death of her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Matthias A. Arnt III, at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Because she was a civilian accompanying her husband overseas, Arnt could not be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Legal experts point to caveats in the law that could pose problems for the Justice Department in the Iraq contractor cases if prosecutors decide there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. For example, the law applies only to felony crimes that would carry a sentence of more than a year in prison if they were committed in the United States. If there were clear and convincing evidence of physical abuse by the contractors, the government could bring felony charges. But evidence on the contractors thus far seems murky, Hammond and others said. "If all someone did was interpret, then how do you deal with that person?" asked Michael Nardotti Jr., a former judge advocate general of the Army. "Is strictly the humiliation of a prisoner enough for a felony?" Military law is much clearer, and specifically addresses criminal behavior during interrogations. Nardotti said the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which covers the soldiers involved in the abuses, allows for charges such as cruelty, maltreatment and dereliction of duty. Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits received the maximum sentence of a year in prison and a bad-conduct discharge May 19 for his role in the abuse after pleading guilty on all three military charges at a special court-martial held in Baghdad. As part of his plea, Sivits agreed to testify against other soldiers charged in the mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. However, there are no parallels in federal law covering civilians, Nardotti said. Justice Department representatives declined to answer questions concerning the investigation or which statutes government lawyers might use to prosecute the contractors. Legal experts say another loophole in the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act is that the law covers contractors only for the Defense Department. That omission is important because U.S. authorities are investigating at least two cases involving Central Intelligence Agency contract interrogators. "Obviously, (the act) was passed to plug a hole," Hammond said. "It plugged it for (the Defense Department), but doesn't appear to plug it for other agencies." This could pose a problem if the Justice Department decides to prosecute civilian interrogators working for CACI International, a Virginia-based defense contractor, who have been implicated in the abuses. It appears the Army hired the interrogators under an umbrella contract issued by the Interior Department. However, the experts said the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act most probably applies because the interrogators were clearly accompanying military personnel. "I think the statute has to be read in a common-sense way," said Eugene Fidell, a military law expert at the Washington-based law firm of Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell. "The Army was sufficiently involved in this contract. The Army was the user of the services." Also, the law may not apply to third-country nationals working as contractors, such as Titan linguists from Jordan, Egypt or even Canada. With more than 20,000 contractors working in Iraq, the Defense Department should have anticipated such issues, said Daniel Guttman, a lawyer and fellow at the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. Failure to do so is an example of the poor planning for postwar Iraq, he said. "It's one thing not to have intelligence on the ground for (weapons of mass destruction), but we have plenty of lawyers in Washington who knew for years that this was a problem that we needed to address," Guttman said. U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., has proposed legislation that would close some of the loopholes. Also, the Defense Department in March proposed a rule change that would "address issues related to contract performance outside the United States." However, Guttman and others are not sure how the rule could be applied to cases like the Abu Ghraib abuses. "This is going to be a fascinating chapter in the legal history of the war on terrorism," Fidell said.
David Washburn: (619) 542-4582; david.washburn@uniontrib.com
| Alpha wrote: | Some U.S. prison contractors may avoid charges
Interior Department hired Abu Ghraib interrogators; Loophole tangles prosecution; Army chain of command blurred in civilian abuses
By Scott Shane
Sun National Staff
Originally published May 24, 2004
The U.S. civilian interrogators questioning prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq work not under a military contract but on one from the Department of the Interior, a bureaucratic twist that could complicate any effort to hold them criminally responsible for abuse of detainees or other offenses.
The unexpected role of the Department of the Interior, usually associated not with wartime intelligence-gathering but with national parks, grew out of a government plan to cut costs. But in practice, it may have increased costs and reduced scrutiny, said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution.
"You're placing a military interrogation task under Smokey the Bear," Singer said. "You can't have good oversight."
What's more, legal experts say, contractors for nonmilitary agencies such as the Department of the Interior may be able to escape prosecution for crimes they commit overseas because of an apparent loophole in the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. The law, passed in 2000, applies only to contractors with the Department of Defense - a flaw some members of Congress want to remedy.
Michael J. Nardotti Jr., a Washington lawyer who served as judge advocate general of the Army from 1993 to 1997, said the law is untested and that it is uncertain whether a court would stretch the law to cover an Interior Department contractor working on Army assignments.
What is certain, Nardotti said, is that a contractor charged with a crime would use the issue to challenge the prosecution.
The Iraq war and its aftermath have focused attention on the extraordinary expansion of the work performed by federal contractors, often in sensitive security and intelligence roles. U.S. security contractors in Iraq, who do everything from guarding U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III to advising Iraqi police, number more than 20,000, making them the second-largest security force after the U.S. military.
Many military officers and outside experts say that using contractors as interrogators is a bad idea no matter what agency hires them, because they are not subject to military discipline and control.
Questions of command
"I would never have tolerated civilian contractors working as interrogators," says Army Col. Charles Brule, a Rhode Island reservist who worked at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002. "Who do they answer to? What's the chain of command?"
Congress has also expressed concern about contract interrogators. A defense spending bill passed Thursday by the House would require the Pentagon to disclose in greater detail the work of contractors in Iraq, and Senate Democrats have said they might propose legislation banning contractors from interrogating prisoners.
Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat, pressed top Army officials on the issue at a hearing last week. "The contractors seem to be outside of the line of command," he said. "And as a result, some things they do are not known by us."
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller replied that "no civilian contractors had a supervisory position. It's the military ... who sets the priorities and ensures that we meet our standards."
But in the case of the contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib, the chain of command is especially blurry, because it ends with an obscure Department of the Interior office 70 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz.
The interrogators work for CACI International, a global government contractor based in Arlington, Va., with more than $1 billion a year in revenue. And CACI's contract is with the Interior Department's National Business Center, which for the past four years has run the contracting office at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Ariz., said Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby.
Quimby said the arrangement was a result of federal efforts in the 1990s to "streamline and reduce duplication," by having agencies with particular skill at administrative functions such as payroll or contracting handle those jobs for other agencies.
Thus, with efficiency in mind, the Fort Huachuca Contract Administration Office was gradually transferred from the Army to the Department of the Interior between 1998 and 2001.
"Now the Army comes to that office when it needs services," Quimby said.
In 2001, the Interior Department contracting office awarded a "blanket purchase agreement" to a company called Premier Technology Group for services to be provided to the Army. Last year, CACI International acquired Premier Technology.
The blanket purchase agreement allows the Department of the Interior to purchase services from CACI International without going through a new round of competitive bidding for each new job. Since 2001, the department has approved 81 "delivery orders" under the Premier Technology-CACI contract, including 11 for services in Iraq.
Most of the services relate to information technology, but at least two involve the provision of interrogators, Quimby said - one for $19.9 million covering "interrogation support" and another for $21.8 million labeled "human intelligence support."
Under those contracts, Army officials have said that CACI has provided 27 interrogators to work in detention centers in Iraq. Several work at Abu Ghraib, and one - a 34-year-old Navy veteran named Steven Stefanowicz - is sharply criticized in an Army investigative report on the prisoner abuse.
Stefanowicz instructed military police officers to "facilitate interrogations" in such a way that "he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," says the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. It also declares that Stefanowicz "made a false statement to the investigation team regarding the locations of his interrogations, the activities during his interrogations, and his knowledge of abuses."
Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., an attorney representing Stefanowicz, said his client denies doing anything wrong at Abu Ghraib. "Anything he did there was both appropriate and authorized, and he did not do anything wrong, nor is he aware of any wrongdoing by any other CACI employee," Hockeimer said.
CACI International did not respond to a request for comment, but company officials say they have seen no evidence of wrongdoing by employees.
Taguba's report recommends that Stefanowicz be fired, reprimanded and stripped of his security clearance. The report does not suggest criminal charges.
Apparent loophole
Technically, Stefanowicz and other CACI workers are not Defense Department contractors - and thus do not appear to be covered by the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. Two congressmen submitted legislation last week designed to plug such loopholes in the law.
"Pentagon contractors working in Iraq are operating in a legal fog, where they are not accountable to Iraqi laws, U.S. laws or military laws governing our troops," Rep. David E. Price, a North Carolina Democrat, said in a statement about the amendment he proposed along with Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican.
Their bill would extend the law to contractors with any federal agency, as long as they are "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense." But even if it passes, the amendment would not apply to crimes committed before it takes effect.
Singer, of the Brookings Institution, said the Interior Department's role began with an attempt to be frugal. But by involving two Cabinet departments and having a contractor provide services for years without new bidding, the government has almost certainly increased costs, he said.
"There is no competition and no oversight," Singer said. "The free market can be a wonderful mechanism. But not if you do everything possible to ensure that it won't work."
Quimby, the Interior Department spokesman, sounded frustrated that his agency has been dragged into the prison scandal.
"The Army set the requirements for the contract," he said. "The Army pays for the contract. The Army benefits from the contract.
"But when there's a media inquiry," Quimby said, "it's an Interior Department contract." | | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 2:17 pm Post subject: Briton says he was held in Israeli dungeon |
| Sound familiar (to Abu Ghraib)?:
Briton says he was held in Israeli dungeon
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv and Duncan Campbell
Friday May 28, 2004
The Guardian
A British journalist released from Israeli custody yesterday said that he had been held in a dungeon with excrement on the walls following his arrest on suspicion of espionage.
Peter Hounam was detained on Wednesday by the Israeli security agency on suspicion that he had obtained classified information from Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli technician who was jailed after revealing Israel's nuclear capabilities to the world.
The journalist was released on condition that he leave Israel within 24 hours, and will not be allowed to return .
Speaking outside the Jerusalem jail where he had been held, Hounam said Israel should be ashamed of itself for arresting him. He complained of being kept overnight in solitary confinement in a "dungeon with excrement on the walls" and limited to two hours' sleep.
Hounam, 60, said he was questioned for more than four hours by Israeli security. "They accused me of spying on nuclear secrets and aggravated espionage. It is laughable," he said.
Senior sources at the security agency Shin Bet said that Hounam had organised a covert operation to interview Mr Vanunu in breach of his release regulations.
After 18 years in prison, Mr Vanunu was released last month, but was forbidden from speaking about his work at Israel's nuclear reactor and from contact with foreigners.
Hounam was the Sunday Times journalist who interviewed Vanunu in 1986 and then published his revelations of Israel's nuclear programme.
According to Shin Bet, Hounam paid an Israeli woman, Yael Lotan, £1,000 to interview Mr Vanunu on his behalf. Hounam, with the help of BBC employees, edited and duplicated the tapes.
Shin Bet said they had retrieved five copies of the interview but were not sure if other copies had been smuggled out of the country or distributed via the internet.
Shin Bet's source said that the interview focused on Mr Vanunu's history, from his childhood to his work at Israel's nuclear facility in the Negev desert.
The tapes were still to be analysed to see if Mr Vanunu revealed any secrets or broke Israeli law, the source said. Mr Vanunu could be made to return to prison if he is deemed to have broken any of the conditions for his release.
Hounam denied that Mr Vanunu had passed on any secrets. "All the information that Mordechai Vanunu knew about in 1986 was published at the time," Hounam said. "He has no more secrets, and it's time the authorities here realised that."
He added: "The key fight is the fight to get Mordechai Vanunu the right to leave this country, start a new life in America, if that's where he wants to go, and stop these ridiculous restrictions."
Seeking to track to down all copies of the interview, Shin Bet also detained Chris Mitchell, a BBC journalist, as he tried to leave Israel with tapes of the interview.
Hiyari Sadi, a British free lance journalist, "consented" to give Shin Bet his copies of the interview, the security sources said.
Hounam was arrested in Tel Aviv on Wednesday as he was on his way to meet a peace activist. He has been in Israel since Mr Vanunu's release, working with a television crew making a film for the BBC about the case.
Mr Vanunu is barred from leaving Israel for at least a year and is staying in St George's Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem. He has received death threats and is anxious to settle in the US with his adoptive parents.
Yesterday Hounam's wife, Hilarie, said from the couple's home in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, that he was "overjoyed" to be released. She said she believed the arrest sprang from the Israeli authorities' continuing campaign against Mr Vanunu. "They know he has no more secrets," she said. "It's vengeance, isn't it?"
Hounam angered the Israeli authorities by publishing the identity of the Mossad agent who lured Mr Vanunu to Italy where he was kidnapped, drugged, bound and shipped back to Israel. In his book, The Woman from Mossad, Hounam identified the woman as Cheryl Bentov and tracked her down to Florida.
Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty International researcher, witnessed Mr Hounam's arrest in the garden of the Jerusalem Hotel.
"Peter Hounam was brought into the garden by five plain-clothes members of the security forces or police," she said. "He broke away from them and ran over to my table. He looked very concerned and just had the time to tell me: 'I am being arrested, please tell the Sunday Times, please let people know'."
The Foreign Press Association, which represents international news organisations in Israel, welcomed Hounam's release but said the arrest of journalists was "a most dangerous threat to any democracy".
Hounam's lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, called the detention a farce, and said he had not violated any of the restrictions on Mr Vanunu. "He was arrested as part of the security establishment's never-ending obsession with Vanunu," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1226520,00.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 6:33 pm Post subject: Abu Ghraib, John Israel and the Right to Due Process |
| Abu Ghraib, a Local Resident and the Right to Due Process
http://www.the-signal.com/News/ViewStory.asp?storyID=4747
5/28/2004
Editorial from The Signal: The Newspaper's Opinion
It?s not the sort of local connection that a community likes to have to an international news story, but here we are:
John B. Israel, a 48-year-old Santa Clarita resident, has been accused of being one of those responsible for the U.S. military?s abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Israel is a civilian interpreter employed by SOS Interpreting Ltd. He, along with one other civilian contractor and two military officers, has been identified by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba as being ?either directly or indirectly responsible? for the mistreatment of prisoners by U.S. guards.
The accusation was made in the so-called ?Taguba report,? which was completed by Taguba in March and mistakenly released in April.
This week, we learned that one of the four whom Taguba described as being part of the chain of command that led to the abuses is actually a resident of our own town.
You won?t find that piece of information on the tourism brochures any time soon.
Taguba, in May 11 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Israel and the other civilian contractor did not have official authority to command the soldiers, but that ?the guards, those who were involved, looked at them as competent authority...?
Taguba also testified that the two civilians answered to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, which answered to a lieutenant colonel, Steve L. Jordan, who answered to the brigade commander, Col. Thomas M. Pappas.
Damning statements, yes?
That would be the appearance. However, it is important to remember something that often seems lost on our 24-hour-news-cycle society:
The presumption of innocence.
It is certainly within the realm of possibility that John Israel bears responsibility for the soldiers? abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners. But it is also possible that he is innocent ? scapegoats, after all, are in high demand these days.
We will not judge either Israel or those who accuse him at this stage. We are obligated to report to you everything that we can possibly find out regarding this story ? it is, after all, a local link to a series of incidents that have dominated world news in recent weeks.
Regardless, though, Mr. Israel, like anyone, is entitled to due process ? and none of us should forget that.
Articles about John Israel appear at the following URL:
http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/iraq/ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 7:19 pm Post subject: torture approved |
| Subj: marteling goegekeurd; torture approved
Date: 5/31/04 12:07:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: foppe
ABC News Poll
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i10abcnews.htm
ABC News Poll: Majority of Republicans Say Abusing Prisoners Is Okay, Half Of Bush-Brand Say Flat-Out Torture Is Just Fine With Them
Go Ahead, Try And Tell Me They Are Not The Nazis
by John S. Ashton
MAY 27, 2004 – Deem whoever you want a terrorist and round them up. Lock them up without having to prove they even did anything for as long as you feel like without letting them talk to a lawyer or even their own family. Send them off to camps.
And then, forget even the most basic human rights and morality and flat-out torture these “suspects.”
The Bush/Limbaughians have spoken. According to a just released ABC News poll (see: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Polls/torture_poll_040527.html), “most Republicans, 55 percent, say physical abuse is acceptable …”
And this number is not just Bush-brand Republicans but all Republicans, including moderates. When you just pull out the pro-war Bushies, it gets even better.
“Among Americans who strongly feel the war was worth fighting, half say torture is acceptable…”
Half say torture is acceptable. Not just abuse – such as sleep depravation, hooding, noise-bombing, punching, kicking, and sexually humiliating. No, that was what was considered only “abuse” in this poll.
No, half of pro-war, Bush/Limbaugh-brand Americans say all-out “torture is acceptable.”
Those who argue against comparisons between the current administration and its supporters and 1930’s Nazi Germany make the case that our present government may be rolling over constitutional rights and launching offensive wars, but they would never become as horribly cruel and amoral as the Nazi’s did.
It wasn’t enough when our President made comments that led to death threats against three innocent American women for merely criticizing his policies. Remember the Dixie Chicks?
It wasn’t enough when he passed an act that said he can discard all constitutional protections at his whim, merely by calling someone a terrorist.
No, it wasn’t even enough when he set up camps, of course just outside the country, as Hitler did in Poland, to keep the true nastiness elsewhere.
No, none of these direct parallels were enough.
And Democrats – and Independents – are not innocent either.
According to the poll, 40 percent of Independents think “torture is acceptable,” and 27 percent of Democrats “agree.”
Overall, the poll says 35 percent of Americans think torture is acceptable. One out of three of us. About ¼ of Democrats, 4 in 10 Independents, and 4 in 10 Republicans. Of the Bush-brand among us – the pro-war types – half say torture is acceptable.
On the good news side, 2/3 of Americans deem abuse unacceptable in all cases, including 75% of Democrats. And majorities of Independents and Republicans (when moderate, non-Bushie type Republicans are included) oppose torture.
But come on folks. 50 percent of Bush-brand, pro-war Americans think not just some abuse – such as hooding, kicking, punching, sleep-depriving – but flat out torture is just fine with them? And not much less than half of Independents and Republicans are fine with it as well?
Torture?!
And no, it doesn’t really matter who we are talking about getting tortured or what they were or weren’t involved in.
As ABC reports, “…views on torture and physical abuse are virtually identical whether the targets are suspected terrorists, or suspects in recent attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.” So there you have that: not only don’t they have to be known terrorists, they don’t have to even be suspected terrorists for these people to be okay with torturing them. As long as someone somewhere feels like suspecting someone of something, half of Bushies say it is okay to torture them.
As Independents, we at The Moderate Independent welcome a variety of views and readers. We welcome Conservative Independents, Liberal Independents, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, people of any beliefs or partisan persuasion who are looking for news coverage that puts truth and what is best for America above all else.
More on webpage.........
MAIN PAGE
A nation is no more moral than its constituent citizenry
and while most Americans claim to be "religious",
moral they are not. They have yet to aspire to goodness
and morality (Justice and Mercy) to the same degree
as they have aspired to their material comforts.
Altruism is not one of our virtues........ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 9:19 pm Post subject: When torture fails, murder follows.... |
| Subj: When torture fails, murder follows....
Date: 5/31/04 12:43:12 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: LAdams
When torture failes, murder follows....
Subj: From Fran
Date: 5/31/04 11:30:41 AM Central Daylight Time
From: Frances
Washington Post reports that BushCo. sometimes murders its prisoners when torture doesn't work.
That's it. My line in the sand has finally been crossed. Lemme outta here. It's just a matter of time before BushCo's political opponents start disappearing during the night. I am looking for some other country to live.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
=========================================
The Homicide Cases
Washington Post
The Homicide Cases (washingtonpost.com)
Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A22
PRESIDENT BUSH'S persistence in describing the abuse of foreign prisoners as an isolated problem at one Iraqi prison is blatantly at odds with the facts seeping out from his administration. These include mounting reports of crimes at detention facilities across Iraq and Afghanistan and evidence that detention policies the president approved helped set the stage for torture and homicide. Yes, homicide: The most glaring omission from the president's account is that at least 37 people have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that at least 10 of these cases are suspected criminal killings of detainees by U.S. interrogators or soldiers.
The deaths reveal much about the true nature of the still-emerging prisoner scandal. First, only a minority of them occurred at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad; nine of the 10 homicides acknowledged by the Pentagon occurred elsewhere. Second, the administration has done its best to cover up the killings: They have been reported only after news of them leaked to the media, and details about most of them are still undisclosed.
No one has been criminally charged in any of the cases, even though some date to December 2002. Investigations have been shoddy and secretive. And no senior officer or administration official has accepted responsibility or been held accountable for allowing unlawful killings to take place under his or her command. Had it not been for the leak of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, which record less serious crimes, it is probable that none of the deaths in Iraq would have become public knowledge.
Take the case of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, the former chief of Iraqi air defenses, who died Nov. 26 at a detention facility at Al Qaim, northwest of Baghdad. After his death the Pentagon released a statement reporting that "it appeared Mowhoush died of natural causes." That was a lie. In fact, according to an autopsy report, Gen. Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression." According to documents first obtained by the Denver Post, two soldiers slid a sleeping bag over him and rolled him repeatedly from his back to his stomach; one then sat on his chest and covered his mouth. Only after the Denver Post's report last week did the Pentagon acknowledge the truth and say that a homicide investigation was underway.
Or take the case of two Afghan detainees who died at Bagram airbase in December 2002. In March 2003 the New York Times reported that their deaths had been ruled homicides; only then did the Pentagon say that an investigation was underway. But no further information became available about the case until this month, when the Times learned that the prisoners died while being interrogated by personnel from the same intelligence unit that later served at Abu Ghraib. After 17 months, no one has been charged or otherwise held responsible for the deaths, nor are Pentagon officials able to plausibly explain why there has been no conclusion to the investigation.
Nine of the 10 homicides acknowledged by the Pentagon occurred "either before or during interrogation sessions that may have led to the detainee's death," a senior official told a briefing last week. Those interrogations were conducted by various units; at least one was in the hands of the CIA. But all were operating under loosened rules for interrogations developed at the Pentagon after 2001, after Mr. Bush's decision that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to detainees in Afghanistan. Techniques approved for use, such as sensory deprivation and shackling, played a role in several of the homicides. For example, a detainee named Abdul Jaleel, held by Special Forces in Asad, Iraq, died on Jan. 11 after he was gagged and shackled by his hands to the top of his door cell.
It is horrifying to contemplate that U.S. interrogators have tortured and killed foreign prisoners and that their superiors have ignored or covered up their crimes -- and yet that is where the available facts point. Pentagon officials say they will pursue investigations vigorously and that those guilty of crimes will be brought to justice. It is essential to the preservation of this country's fundamental values that they do so. It is essential also to examine the consequences in the field of policy decisions made by the most senior officials in Washington. But the sorry record of the Bush administration -- and the president's own refusal to speak the truth about it -- suggests that justice will require vigorous and sustained intervention by outside parties, beginning with Congress. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
