posted May 12, 2004 05:27 PM
AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - Jordanian state television aired Monday what it said were confessions by captured militants tied to al Qaeda who said they had planned deadly chemical attacks that could have killed thousands of people.
Authorities had already reported the plot earlier this month, but the confessions shown on a prime-time broadcast provided further details of the planned attacks.
The arrested militants, who included Syrians, said they were ordered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused by Washington of being a top al Qaeda supporter, to attack targets that included the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and intelligence headquarters.
The head of the group, Azmi Jayousi, said that he first met Zarqawi during his training in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and met him again in Iraq without giving any dates.
"I pledged allegiance to Zarqawi and after the fall of Afghanistan I met him again in Iraq," said Jayousi, who had clearly identifiable bruises on his face and palm.
"Zarqawi commissioned me to go to Jordan to wage military action," Jayousi said in the 20-minute broadcast where he calmly recounted how he carefully planned with his accomplices the chemical attacks using trucks.
A narrator, without any detailed explanation, said at least 80,000 people would have been killed in the attack by toxic fumes spreading over a radius of more than three miles. The high figure cited was symptomatic of the high tension prevailing in the kingdom, with wide media coverage of raids and street checks.
Jayousi said he set up a chemical factory near the northern city of Irbid, close to the Syrian border, and received $170,000 in financing and logistic aid along with fake passports and forged banknotes from Suleiman Darwish, an alleged Zarqawi aide living in Syria.
The broadcast showed graphic pictures of the location of the alleged chemical plants and the trucks that were to be used in the attacks. It did not say what type of chemical explosives were being prepared.
Another captured militant shown on television was a Syrian national, Annas Sheikh Amin, 18, who said he went to Afghanistan where he was trained at a Qaeda camp before heading to Jordan.
Jordanian Hussein Sharif said he was driven by a fervent belief that the attacks would promote the cause of Muslims.
"I agreed to this operation because I thought it would serve Islam," a bearded Sharif said.
Security sources said al Qaeda had sought to punish Jordan for supporting Washington's efforts to pacify post-war Iraq, and was incensed over covert aid Jordan had given to the U.S. military campaign there.
Jordanian officials said ten days ago they had found explosive-carrying cars believed to have been loaded by an underground group linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Jayousi said he planned the attack with trucks laden with 20 tons of explosives. King Abdullah said after the arrest of the group earlier this month that it had had saved "thousands of lives"
Jordanian intelligence officials have often boasted in recent years that their efforts have foiled plots by al Qaeda-linked militants to launch deadly attacks on Western targets and government installations.
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GENEVA (May 11) - Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested ''by mistake,'' according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday. It also says U.S. officers mistreated inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison by keeping them naked in dark, empty cells.
Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment ''was the wrongdoing of a few.''
While many detainees were quickly released, high-ranking officials in Saddam Hussein's government, including those listed on the U.S. military's deck of cards, were held for months in solitary confinement.
Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, including the military intelligence section at Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport and the Tikrit holding area, according to the report.
The 24-page document cites abuses - some ''tantamount to torture'' - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of ''imminent execution.''
''These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'''
High-ranking officials were singled out for special treatment, according to the report, which the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed as authentic after it was published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
''Since June 2003 over a hundred 'high value detainees' have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight,'' says the report. ''Their continued internment several months after their arrest in strict solitary confinement constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions.''
It did not say who the detainees were, but an official who discussed the report with the Red Cross told The Associated Press they include some of the 55 top officials in Saddam's regime named in the deck of cards given to troops.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said detainees held at Baghdad International Airport include many of the 44 ''deck of cards'' suspects already captured. It was not clear if Saddam was at the airport, but the Red Cross has said it visited him in coalition detention somewhere in Iraq last month.
The high-value detainees were deprived of any contact with other inmates, ''guards, family members (except through Red Cross messages) and the rest of the outside world,'' the report says.
Those whose investigations were near an end were said to be allowed to exercise together outside the cells for 20 minutes twice a day.
The report says some coalition military intelligence officers estimated ''between 70 percent and 90 percent'' of the detainees in Iraq ''had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units.''
The agency said arrests tended to follow a pattern.
''Authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,'' the report says.
''Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people,'' it says. ''Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles.''
It was unclear what the Red Cross meant by ''mistake.'' However, many Iraqis have claimed U.S. forces arrested them because of misunderstandings, bogus claims by personal enemies, mistaken identity or simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
One former detainee who claims he was abused, Haider Sabbar Abed, said he was arrested in July when the driver of the car he was in was unable to produce proper papers at a U.S. checkpoint. He was not released until April 15.
In one operation, U.S. special operations troops detained nearly the entire male population of the village of Habbariyah, ranging in age from 81 to 13, apparently to prevent terrorists from slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia. The 79 men were held for weeks.
Language problems sometimes led to detainees' ''being slapped, roughed up, pushed around or pushed to the ground,'' according to the Red Cross report. ''A failure to understand or a misunderstanding of orders given in English was construed by guards as resistance or disobedience.''
The report says that in coalition prisons ''ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation'' of the inmates ''with their interrogators.'' The delegates saw detainees kept ''completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness.''
''Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities,'' the report says. ''The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process.'''
This apparently meant detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it says.
The report says the Red Cross found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation - including burns, bruises and other injuries.
Once detainees were moved to regular prison facilities, the abuses typically stopped, it says.
The report also cites widespread abuse of power and ill-treatment by Iraqi law enforcement officers under the coalition, including extorting money from people in their custody by threatening to hand them over to coalition authorities. Under the Geneva Conventions, the coalition is responsible for the Iraqi officers' behavior, the report says.
The Red Cross has emphasized that the report was only a summary of its repeated attempts in person and in writing from March to November 2003 to get U.S. officials to stop abuses. Those earlier interventions by the Red Cross far preceded the Pentagon's decision to investigate after a low-ranking U.S. soldier stepped forward in January.
The Geneva-based organization gave its report to coalition forces in February. The prisoner abuse erupted into an international scandal in recent days after the publication of disturbing photographs from Abu Ghraib.
The Red Cross said it wanted to keep the report confidential because it saw U.S. officials making progress in responding to their complaints. Still, the American reaction was far slower than that of British officials, according to the report.
It says the Red Cross informed the commander of British forces in April 2003 of ''ill-treatment'' by military intelligence personnel in interrogating Iraqis at Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. ''This intervention had the immediate effect to stop the systematic use of hoods and flexi-cuffs in the interrogation section of Umm Qasr.''
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A Times Editorial
Published January 23, 2004
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A year ago, President Bush used his State of the Union address to sound a frightening alarm about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The president told the nation that Iraq had amassed 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas. He also charged that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to acquire "significant quantities" of refined uranium and special aluminum tubes whose only practical use was as part of a program to develop nuclear weapons.
And he offered a chilling warning that only one vial from those vast stockpiles of weapons could "bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
That dire, detailed warning of a looming threat to our national security served as the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq. Of course, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind have been found there. No anthrax. No botulinum. No VX. In fact, U.S. weapons inspectors have not even found significant evidence of programs that might eventually have led to the development of weapons. And the allegations concerning Iraq's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program were proved to have been based on fraudulent evidence.
Yet, having staked the reputation of our government on his allegations against Iraq, President Bush hasn't even tried to explain, much less apologize for, the utter lack of evidence to support the stark charges he made a year ago. Instead, the president talked in this year's State of the Union address of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
Would the nation have been so quick to support the president's call to war on the basis of vague references to Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities"?
And is it any wonder that even those Iraqis who bitterly opposed Hussein are suspicious of U.S. motives now? Leaders of the Shiites, who suffered from decades of oppression under Hussein, don't trust the U.S. plan to select a new Iraqi government through a series of regional caucuses later this year. They demand direct, transparent elections. Leaders of the Iraqi Kurds, who were our allies in the battle to topple Hussein, don't trust U.S. assurances that they will receive an acceptable degree of autonomy under a new constitution.
When the Bush administration's prewar justifications collapsed, its postwar promises were inevitably called into question as well. The president and other administration officials now justify the war on humanitarian grounds: Hussein's horrific crimes against his own people demanded his removal from power. That is a compelling argument, but it is not the one the White House made prior to war. Nor is it one the White House has extended to other repressive regimes, including the other members of the "axis of evil" singled out in last year's State of the Union address. And North Korea and Iran really do have dangerous weapons programs.
The president made it clear Tuesday night that he doesn't think he owes the American people or the world an explanation for the exaggerated claims he made a year ago in building a pretext for war. Since then, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died in that war, and Iraq's future remains uncertain. American credibility has been a casualty, too.
As the president himself said with no apparent sense of irony: "For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible."
[Last modified January 23, 2004, 01:32:51]
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Lindaland
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posted May 12, 2004 04:41 PM
posted May 12, 2004 04:41 PM
posted May 12, 2004 04:46 PM
posted May 12, 2004 05:14 PM
posted May 12, 2004 05:35 PM
posted May 12, 2004 05:48 PM
posted May 12, 2004 06:43 PM
posted May 12, 2004 07:03 PM
Well said, Harpyr.