Free Republic

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...

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 10 - Journalists remember him as Jack, an eccentric, heavily armed and at times, it seemed, dangerously unbalanced, middle-aged former American Special Forces soldier, who appeared in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. Surrounded by armed Afghan guards and rumors that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, he quickly rose to prominence. In the next two years, he was interviewed by Fox and CBS News, helped write a book called "The Hunt for bin Laden" and said he had discovered evidence in Afghanistan that linked Iraq to Al Qaeda. This week, Jack, a convicted felon...

KABUL - An American journalist inmate at an Afghan jail block seized by prisoners said Taliban militants held there threatened on Tuesday to behead him and told him he would die if an attempt were made to end the siege by force. Emmy award-winning documentary maker Edward Caraballo, 44, from New York, was one of three Americans jailed in 2004 after being convicted of running a private jail and illegally detaining and torturing men in a freelance war on terror. Speaking by mobile phone from Pul-i-Charkhi jail on the outskirts of Kabul, Caraballo told Reuters he was barricaded in...

Tin SoldierAn American Vigilante In Afghanistan, Using the Press for Profit and Glory By Mariah Blake In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months conducting a series of raids with his team, which he called Task Force Saber 7. By late June, he claimed to have captured the...