Posted on 08/11/2004 4:47:39 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
The lawyer for Jonathan Keith ''Jack'' Idema said Tuesday that he doesn't think Idema can get a fair trial in an Afghan court.
Idema, who is from Fayetteville, has been held in an Afghan jail since his July 5 arrest on charges of kidnapping and torturing Afghan citizens. Two other Americans, Brent Bennett of Fayetteville and Ed Caraballo of New York, are being held with him.
Idema has been identified as the leader of the group. He has said he and the others were hunting down terrorists.
A hearing in a Kabul court for the three men was set to resume today, but has been rescheduled for Monday, said Idema's lawyer, John E. Tiffany of Bloomfield, N.J.
In the last hearing, on July 21, three of the seven men Idema is accused of holding in a makeshift jail described being beaten, held under water and left without food.
After that hearing, Idema, a former Green Beret, denied the allegations and said he and his men had arrested ''world-class terrorists.'' He said he was in daily contact with high-ranking U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Defense Department officials say Idema always initiated contact. They have repeatedly said the U.S. government never supported or sanctioned his actions.
Tiffany said Idema and the others charged cannot get a fair trial because the judge may have already made up his mind, due process has been abandoned and prosecutors are concealing evidence.
''I believe that it is nothing more than a political court,'' Tiffany said. ''That judge has been told this is how it will go down.''
Tiffany said due process is impossible, in part because he remains in New Jersey trying to gather evidence and overcome problems with money, a passport and security. He said he hopes to leave for Afghanistan soon.
''Getting to Afghanistan is not like getting on a plane and going to Florida or California,'' he said.
Tiffany said relatives of Idema and Bennett have pledged to help pay his expenses.
But even after he gets to Afghanistan, Tiffany said, he faces a lack of due process.
Idema, Bennett and Caraballo went to court two weeks after their arrests. By contrast, Tiffany said, it took four years for the World Court to bring former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic to trial for alleged war crimes and it could take years before ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein goes on trial.
''What is the emergency here in this particular case to rush these three Americans to justice?'' Tiffany asked. ''Can you imagine two weeks after your arrest the court wants to move forward with trial? It's outrageous. It's something that is so inconsistent with any reasonable system in which these three defendants can expect to have a fair trial.''
For Idema and the others to get justice, Tiffany said, the trial should be moved to the World Court or to a United States court, where defense lawyers would have access to the evidence and ample time to prepare their cases.
Afghanistan's criminal code has been in place only since February, he said. Before that, criminal law fell to the brutal Taliban regime.
Afghan court officials are either ignorant of the new laws or still adhere to old methods, he said.
Tiffany said Caraballo's lawyer, Michael Skibbie, told him he has been denied access to evidence found in the house where Caraballo, Idema and Bennett were arrested.
''Yet I'm hearing that the FBI is foraging through any evidence they might have,'' Tiffany said. ''For what purpose? Is the FBI actually assisting in the prosecution of my client?''
Tiffany said he believes Idema's allegations that the FBI railroaded him into a fraud conviction in 1994 because Idema refused to turn over his contacts while investigating Russian nuclear smuggling in Lithuania. Idema received a four-year prison term.
Tiffany also believes that the FBI was involved in having Idema arrested on July 5.
Skibbie maintains that Caraballo is a journalist whose only involvement in Afghanistan was to film a documentary about Idema that he has been working on for years.
Bennett is a former 82nd Airborne soldier from California who befriended Idema in Fayetteville about 18 months ago.
Of course as with anyone in trouble, his brother has set up a website to defend his brother, I understand but I think that may be hurting his brothers case.
Idema just seems like a less then good guy.
I must have missed this nuclear smuggling tidbit when the Dan Rather-CBS-private Prison stunt using Idema first came up, around the time of the TANG forgeries.
1995
25 January According to Talinn news broadcasts, Lithuanian border police, using U.S.-supplied stationary radiation detectors, seized two tons of radioactive wolfram hi dden in a secret compartment in a truck trailer. (The "wolfram" is tungsten, which has a short half-life, and probably was "infected" by a radioactive contaminant.) The incident occurred at the Lithuanian-Belorus border, and the truck' s owner and two other men were arrested. A similar incident occurred a week earlier at another border post but no details are available.
14 October Russian mafia figures reportedly were behind the 1993 theft of radioactive beryllium from a Russian nuclear laboratory and the failed attempt to sell the ma terial in the West, according to press reports. The theft, which was widely reported in 1993, was seized by police in Lithuania and remains today in the bank vault where it was first discovered. According to press, the smugglers were preparing to sell the beryllium to an Austrian middleman who in turn had a mystery buyer who reportedly was willing to pay as much as $24 million for the material. The buyer, although never identified, was said to be Korean. Beryllium, which is used in missile guidance system s, is a highly efficent neutron reflector, according to public statements by nuclear scientists.
11 November Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officials arrested two Lithuanian citizens in Smolensk for smuggling 10 kgs of "uranium-238" into Russia, according to Russian television rep orts. Three Russians also were arrested for attempting to sell the uranium. Both the Lithuanians and the Russians claimed that poverty had induced them to attempt to traffic in smuggled nuclear materials. According to press accounts, Russian authorities s tressed that the material was not weapons grade and had no commercial or industrial uses.
1996:
12 February Lithuanian authorities announced that they had arrested seven people and seized nearly 100 kg of radioactive material, according to press reports. The mate rial, believed to be uranium, will undergo further tests to ascertain its makeup and origin. It was emitting 14,000 microroentgens per hour. Some reports stated that the material was a component of a nuclear fuel assemply which has been missing from the n early Ignalina nuclear power plant for several years. The Ignalina plant manager claims that the seized material is not nuclear fuel or equipment used at his facility.
4 March UPDATE (12 February): According to press reports, Lithuanian officials have determined that the 100 kg of radioactive material seized last month from an armed gang is uranium-238. This material was stolen from a company responsible for maintenance at the nearby Ignalina nuclear power plant.
Thanks for finding those.
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