Posted on 08/22/2009 11:04:30 AM PDT by SolidWood
Contractor Raymond Azar is arrested in Afghanistan, hooded, stripped and flown to the U.S. His alleged crime? Bribery. A human rights activist calls the case 'bizarre.'
.........
Reporting from Alexandria, Va. - A Lebanese citizen being held in a detention center here was hooded, stripped naked for photographs and bundled onto an executive jet by FBI agents in Afghanistan in April, making him the first known target of a rendition during the Obama administration.
Unlike terrorism suspects who were secretly snatched by the CIA and harshly interrogated and imprisoned overseas during the George W. Bush administration, Raymond Azar was flown to this Washington suburb for a case involving inflated invoices.
Azar, 45, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit bribery, the only charge against him. He faces a maximum of five years in prison, but a sentence of 2 1/2 years or less is likely under federal guidelines.
Defense lawyers and prosecutors declined to comment on the case Friday.
But Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counter-terrorism director at Human Rights Watch, called the case "bizarre."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Justice Department lawyers have denied any misconduct in the case.
The Raymond Azars of this world are so much more dangerous than the Khaled Sheikh Mohammeds./sarc
Exactly like good little fascists always do, since their Dear Leader is doing it, they will simply ignore it.
A rendition?
This is most assuredly used incorrectly in this article.
Now, here we have an apparent embezzler...surely Obomba and his administration of crooked, marxist imbeciles can understand a crime such as this. They've been personally involved in similar crimes their entire lives.
Perhaps this will become SOP and we'll see them led out of the WH someday, with Obomba in the lead, handcuffed and hooded!
Slow news day. Interesting, however, that the crack investigative journalists in DC were not aware of this. Or perhaps they were, and didn’t want to report it because it doesn’t fit in with their BO the Messiah story line.
So it has.
Hoods? Naked photographs? Puppet government "extradition"?
None of this falls under any thing resembling Constitutional guarantees. And if you're going to charge him under U.S. law, then he falls under those guarantees.
For all of you on this thread approving of this, wait until the Obambi Commies start doing this to "Right Wing Extremists".
You can bet your butts that Eric Holder and his thugs are working on it right now.
When Habeas Corpus goes out the window, when government liars casually assert that stripping people naked "to check for weapons" is SOP and not intentionally dehumanizing, when people who are merely accused of something have hoods pulled over their heads - is that a normal procedure for the LAPD? The FBI? - then you can forget about babbling about 2nd Amendment rights and other such silly ideas. The Statists have won and they can do anything they damn well please, including conducting Soviet style Kangaroo courts and extra judicial kidnappings.
PROFIT SEEKING...!!! Oh yeah, baby, he’s gunna GET ITTTTTTT...!!!
His kids prolly sell LEMONAIDE...!! Juvie..!!!!
Somebody in the BAHAMAS is counting their money already, yes siree..!
Hey, this is a twofer —maybe after he gets there ($22 million later), he can get a fishy contract lodging the UIGHURS...?!?!?
hear, hear!
Bush’s fault?????
You don’t understand...corruption is OK if you’re the messiah...or the Antichrist, I guess.
Nothing at all ‘bizzare’ - he didn’t pay off the Chicago Mafia, and the Bamster was p*ssed.
Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager with a grade school education, is employed by Sima International, a Lebanon-based contractor that does work for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to court papers, on April 7, 2009, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by “at least eight” heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they had traveled for a meeting to discuss the status of one of his company’s U.S. government contracts. The trip ended with Azar alighting in manacles from a Gulfstream V executive jet in Manassas, Virginia, where he was formally arrested and charged in a federal antitrust probe....
According to papers filed by his lawyers, Azar was threatened, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and induced to sign a confession. Azar claims he was hooded, stripped naked (while being photographed) and subjected to a “body cavity search.”
On a ride to the infamous Bagram air base in Afghanistan...Azar contends that a federal agent pulled a photograph of Azar’s wife and four children from his wallet. Confess that you were bribing the contract officer, the agent allegedly said, or you may “never see them again.”...
Azar alleges that on arriving at Bagram he was shackled to a chair in an office for seven hours and not allowed to move. Then in the midst of a cold rainstorm he was taken to an unheated metal shipping container converted to use as a cell. The cell was brightly lit and although the outside temperature approached freezing, he was given only a thin blanket. He also claims that he was not permitted to sleep during his confinement at Bagram, which lasted over a day. Then he was told he was going to take a plane trip. His handlers would not tell him where he was going. He feared he was being dragged to Guantanamo, there to be “disappeared” and tortured. How else, he thought, could he explain the absence of Afghan authorities, the hooding and other techniques?
.....During the flight, according to papers filed by the Justice Department, Azar confessed to the charges against him—essentially that he was aware of corrupt payments made to a U.S. government contract agent to help Sima International secure or extend its contracts with U.S. government agents.
The decision to seize Azar in Afghanistan apparently was made in April 2009, six weeks into the Obama administration....”The United States views contract fraud as a very serious matter,” Public Affairs Deputy Director Gina Talamona
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/135514.html
Torture Obama can believe in
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.