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Top al-Qaeda aide captured May 09, 2005 IRAQ says security forces have captured a key aide to the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A government statement today said Amar al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Abbas, was captured three days ago in Baghdad. It said he helped plan an attack on Abu Ghraib prison in April in which up to 60 insurgents attacked a US base with suicide car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, wounding at least 20 US troops and 12 detainees. Zubaydi was also involved in a string of car bombings in Baghdad in April, the...

FORT STEWART, Ga. - A soldier who said he refused to return to duty because he opposes the war in Iraq left his unit as its job became more dangerous, his commanding officer testified Thursday. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, an infantryman with the Florida National Guard, is charged with desertion after failing to return to his unit in Iraq after a two-week furlough in October. He said his experiences in Iraq turned him against the war, and he claims he deserted his unit partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners. Capt. A.J. Balbo, the lead prosecutor, said in his...

HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 10 — A German court today began a retrial of Mounir el-Motassadeq, the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the disclosure that the United States will for the first time share evidence about the plot. Mr. Motassadeq's conviction was thrown out in March by an appeals court, which said that critical evidence had been withheld by American authorities. After having been sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mr. Motassadeq was freed in April. The decision by the United States to offer limited cooperation to the Germans introduces a combustible element to...

Iraqi forces seize suspected insurgents By Omar Anwar BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. helicopters have killed several suspected insurgents and seized 131 more in a dawn raid, capturing tons of explosives earmarked for attacks on the holy city of Kerbala, officials say. "It was a surprise operation based on intensive surveillance by military intelligence," Defence Minister Hazim al-Shaalan told Reuters on Saturday. "It was very successful." Earlier this week Iraqi police commandos said they killed 85 militants in a raid on a suspected insurgent training camp near Baghdad, hailing it as a breakthrough against the insurgency. Shaalan...

WASHINGTON, March 25 - Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army. Investigators had recommended that all 17 soldiers be charged in the cases, according to the accounting by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. The charges included murder, conspiracy and negligent homicide. While none of the 17 will face any prosecution, one received a letter of reprimand and another was discharged after the investigations. To date, the military has...

ROME (AP) - An Italian prosecutor is investigating whether U.S. agents played a role in the alleged abduction from Milan of a suspected Islamic militant, according to news reports. The 41-year-old imam, identified as Abu Omar, disappeared in the northern Italian city in February 2003. Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro is looking at whether he was seized in a CIA operation and flown to Egypt for interrogation, the Corriere della Sera and other newspapers have reported. Last week, the prosecutor visited a joint U.S.-Italian air base in Aviano to find documents on air and vehicle traffic that might shed light on...

HUMAN rights groups filed a lawsuit against the United States Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday on behalf of eight men allegedly tortured by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.Anthony Romero, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , said Mr Rumsfeld bears "direct responsibility" because he "personally signed off" on policies guiding prisoner treatment. It is the latest in a number of lawsuits resulting from the abuse scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. The ACLU said yesterday’s suit alleged the eight men suffered physical and psychological injuries while incarcerated in US detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. It alleges that...

Seeking to link the U.S. military command to the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American Civil Liberties Union and a human rights organization sued Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and three Army commanders Tuesday on behalf of former detainees, charging that the military authorized illegal interrogation techniques. The federal lawsuit charges that Rumsfeld ordered the "abandonment of our nation's inviolable and deep-rooted prohibition against torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners. The lawsuit was filed in on behalf of four Iraqis and four Afghanis by the ACLU and the group Human Rights First. The...

New allegations of prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been revealed in Army documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union.The documents show photographs of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing with hooded and bound detainees during mock executions.   The photos were taken at a base in southern Afghanistan (Fire Base Tycze) between December 2003 and February 2004.  Some members of the infantry regiment said they took the pictures for fun and destroyed some of them after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq to avoid another public outrage. The Afghanistan incident triggered an Army investigation.  Army...

All over the world, the USA is being accused of torturing prisoners taken in the War on Terror. Just the allegations alone hurt this country and shift emphasis from the real villains -- terrorists who routinely murder civilians. Day after day, the left-wing media pound stories about America's mistreating of prisoners in Guantanamo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. Those reports are picked up worldwide and are used to incite anti-American feelings and even to recruit more terrorists. (Begin video tape) SEN. TED KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: By refusing to come clean and provide necessary documents and by discouraging responsiveness and candor from...

There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations. The four men are all retired military veterans: Capt. Bill Craun, Army Rangers; Sgt. Jim Errante, military police; Cpl. Ernest Colling, U.S. Army; and Will Hough, U.S. Marines. All went to Iraq months ago as private security contractors. "I...

An Afghan warlord who settled in Britain kept a human dog to bite his victims and waged a campaign of kidnap and torture against civilians, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. Faraydi Zardad, a veteran fighter against the Russians and the Taliban, was the commander of soldiers manning checkpoints on the Jalalabad road, the vital supply route between Kabul and Peshawar. He had complete authority in the area between 1992 and 1996 and "had a fearsome reputation for being cruel and merciless", the court was told. In the first prosecution of its kind Zardad, 41, who was arrested while living...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — U.S. forces abused several Kuwaiti prisoners now held at Guantanamo Bay by beating them with chains, sodomizing them and giving them electrical shocks, the detainees' lawyer said Monday.

Fair use for education/discussion purposes: Yahoo! News News Home - Help AFP CIA renditions of terror suspects are 'out of control:' report Sun Feb 6, 5:57 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites)'s 'rendition' of suspected terrorists has spiralled 'out of control' according to a former FBI (news - web sites) agent, cited in a report which examined how CIA (news - web sites) detainees are spirited to states suspected of using torture. Michael Scheuer a former CIA counterterrorism agent told The New Yorker magazine "all we've done is create a nightmare," with regard...

Global Day of Coordinated Actions on the 2nd Anniversary of the "Shock and Awe" Invasion of Iraq initiated by antiwar organizations worldwide including the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in the United States Antiwar actions in Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles and in other cities around the country and around the world will take place on March 19/20.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 - Michael Chertoff, who has been picked by President Bush to be the homeland security secretary, advised the Central Intelligence Agency on the legality of coercive interrogation methods on terror suspects under the federal anti-torture statute, current and former administration officials said this week.Depending on the circumstances, he told the intelligence agency, some coercive methods could be legal, but he advised against others, the officials said.Mr. Chertoff's previously undisclosed involvement in evaluating how far interrogators could go took place in 2002-3 when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division. The advice came in the form of responses...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing miniskirts and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man’s face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider’s written account. A draft manuscript obtained by the Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk. It’s the most revealing account so far of interrogations at...

Description: Clayton Swisher talks about the 2000 Camp David summit between Ehud Barak, Yasser Arafat, and Bill Clinton and argues that the popular understanding of what happened there is inaccurate. Mr. Swisher says that while Mr. Arafat is largely blamed for spoiling the negotiations, the U.S. and Israeli teams were just as, if not more, responsible for the talks falling apart. He also challenges reports that claim that Mr. Arafat was offered upwards of 98 percent of the occupied territories in exchange for peace. This event was held at American University in Washington, DC. Includes Q&A. Author Bio: Clayton Swisher,...

January 28, 2005 Detention Pentagon agreed deal to monitor freed four By Sean O’Neill, Richard Ford and Nicola Woolcock FRIENDS and relatives of the four Britons freed from Guantanamo Bay this week could also face intensive police monitoring, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said last night. People sharing an address with any of the four could be denied access to the telephone or internet and have to undergo body searches. Elaborating on powers announced by the Government this week, Mr Clarke said: “I accept that an individual is different to a family but where there is an individual deemed to...

As the Senate Judiciary Committee voted today on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, we hear a speech by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on torture from Guantanamo to Abu Gharib to Vietnam.Hersh is the author of 'Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Gharib.' He spoke last month at the Wise Free Synagogue in New York.'The amazing thing is that we have been taken over by a cult of eight or nine neo-conservatives that have somehow grapped the government.' 'Just how and why they did it so efficiently, we will have to wait for much later...