(Afghan courts permit 'sunglasses' on the defendants? )
Posted on 09/15/2004 7:26:39 AM PDT by evets
KABUL (Reuters) - Three Americans have been sentenced to up to 10 years in jail after being found guilty by an Afghan court on charges including torture, running a private prison and illegal detention.
Jonathan "Jack" Idema, a former U.S. Green Beret, was arrested in July along with another ex-serviceman, Brent Bennett, and documentary film-maker Edward Caraballo.
They had denied the charges and insisted they were in Afghanistan with U.S. and Afghan government sanction to help track down al Qaeda and Taliban extremists.
"I apologize that we tried to save these people," Idema told reporters immediately after the verdict.
"We should have let the Taliban murder every ... one of them," he said bitterly.
Idema and Bennett were each sentenced to 10 years in jail and Caraballo to eight. Four Afghan co-defendants received sentences ranging from one to five years.
John Edwards Tiffany, a lawyer for Idema, said they planned to appeal.
"Justice was not served today," Tiffany said. "I blame the U.S. government, the Bush administration and the Afghan legal system, which is not anywhere near where it needs to be."
Idema told the court earlier that he had been issued with a passport by a special U.S. agency that he declined to name and had a visa for Afghanistan similar to those given to special forces operatives.
Speaking under an oath he swore on the Koran -- to applause from the gallery -- Idema insisted he had been operating with official U.S. and Afghan sanction.
"I swear in the name of Allah to tell the truth and nothing but the truth," he said.
He did not give details on why he thought the FBI had set him up, or what their motive might be.
Other media have reported that Idema saw himself as a bounty hunter, and was after the fortune U.S. authorities have placed on Osama bin Laden's head.
SET UP
Shortly before the verdict was read, Idema told reporters that he had been set up, saying the U.S. government had abandoned them as soon as accusations of torture were made.
"No one tortured anyone," he added.
The Idema case came to light in the wake of scandals over U.S. treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Afghan authorities said Idema had entered the country illegally, was running a private prison, had tortured and illegally detained Afghans and had harmed relations between Afghanistan and the U.S.
Earlier, the judge rejected an appeal by the defendants' lawyers to dismiss the case on the grounds the court was not up to international standards.
They said the judicial process they had experienced so far scarcely met Afghan standards, let alone international ones.
"This is so far removed from what I am used to," Tiffany told reporters during a recess.
Idema has insisted since his arrest that he was operating for the U.S. government on anti-terror activities, claiming to have been in contact with officials working for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
He said he was gathering intelligence in the hunt for bin Laden and other al Qaeda officials, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and believed to be hiding somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Pentagon has denied that.
Wednesday, Idema arrived at the court wearing a khaki military-style shirt with a U.S. flag on the right shoulder, dark sunglasses and a black-and-white Arabic style scarf favored by U.S. special forces in the region.
His lawyers showed the court a video of the three arriving in Kabul and being spoken to at the airport by senior Afghan officials including Kabul police chief Baba Jan -- proof, they said, that their mission was a legal one.
This is crap!
I can tell you from personal experience - that is a lie. There is no visa or passport required for US military personnel - especially for US Special Forces...
Someone screwed up... but who?
Afghan courts, a work in progress.
Ahh they would'nt cover up any prison scandals would they?
THE UNTOLD STORY OF ABU GHRAIB
FEMALE GENERAL ACCUSED
IN FEDERAL LAWSUIT OF BEING AT
PRISON “WATCHING AND LAUGHING”
AS INMATES TORTURED – ONLY
ENLISTED PERSONNEL HAVE BEEN
COURT-MARTIALED THUS FAR – IS
THIS ANOTHER CASE OF “DIFFERENT
SPANKS FOR DIFFERENT RANKS?”
Remember when Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the former commander of U.S. Army military police at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was rushing from one TV appearance to the next, all the time proclaiming her ignorance of what really had gone on there?
“I don’t want to be made a scapegoat,” the fierce-looking female brass hat proclaimed. “I would have stopped the abuse if I’d known about it.”
Well, we think old William Shakespeare was right when he wrote: “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
ACCUSED BY ONE OF THE VICTIMS
The “other shoe” has finally dropped, but Karpinski has no comment for the media. The Pentagon is likewise silent. And the “politically-correct” mainstream media – save the Associated Press in one story filed from Washington on July 28 – has been reluctant to look into this potentially explosive story.
In a devastating deposition, made on video and under oath, Saddam “Sam” Saleh Aboud says that he saw Karpinski present during beatings he endured at the American-run prison.
During one of the assaults, he said, his hood came off and he saw a female officer present during his torture session.
“Sam,” who was naked, said the woman was “watching and laughing” as he was being beaten in Tier 1A.
“He knew she was a supervisor because she had a star on her hat and she was in an American uniform,” human rights attorney Michael Hourigan said. “Sam told me the other soldiers would defer to her.”
Hourigan said his client identified Karpinski after he was shown a picture of the general in an American news magazine.
NO MOTIVE TO LIE ABOUT KARPINSKI’S PRESENCE
It would seem “Sam” has no motive to implicate Gen. Karpinski herself, as his lawsuit protests his treatment at the hands of his American jailers at Abu Ghraib.
If the Iraqi didn’t actually see a female general present, why would he accuse her? He would have nothing more to gain, as he already had fingered interrogators and alleged torturers among the Americans who ran that part of the prison.
Karpinski’s behavior right after the first pictures of abuses at Abu Ghraib made “front-page news” in the United States caused more than a few observers to ask: “What is she trying to hide?”
We don’t really know, but, in the spirit of fairness, invite Karpinski to utilize equal space on our pages to explain her reaction to the accusation against her.
NO OFFICERS PUNISHED TO DATE
Once again, only enlisted members have been court-martialed in this case. Does the old axiom “rank has it privileges” apply here?
“Different spanks for different ranks” is not an unknown phenomenon in today’s military. Some might say it is the rule and not the exception.
Whatever is happening here, the public deserves to know the extent of the cover-up. And those guilty of making the United State’s mission in Iraq all the more difficult in front of the Arab world, should be disciplined regardless of the rank on their collar.
To our readers who will accuse us of “going soft” on the Iraqis, we ask: “Do you think photos of female soldiers dragging naked Iraqi male prisoners around by a dog collar, or forcing them to lie in their own excrement, will help or hurt our troops when they fall into enemy hands?
We rest our case.
Military Corruption dot com
This political correctness at its most pathetic level. Letting Americans be tried in an Afghan court is masochistic. It's like the perpetual guilt of the "wine & cheese" set. Oh yeah, I'm sure the Afghans see this as a sign of strength!
Possibly the first real "victims" of the nitwits abusing (NOT TORTURING) prisoners at Abu Garab (and then taking PHOTOS). This is a real shame.
If these putzes are there without the sanction of our gov/military, then let the Afghans have their way with them.
What right do they have do detain, let alone interogate people?
You play international bounty hunter, ya takes yer chances.
OTOH, if someone did sanction them, and are now denying it, let them name the people who approved this get dragged down with them.
With the politically correct mess that we euphemistically refer to as the war against terrorism, I don't care about niceties. These people are Americans and if they screwed up let Americans deal with them. When you mention "rights"...maybe they have the right of doing for themselves what their government seems incapable of doing.
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