posted March 25, 2005 12:47 AM              

ZUMApress.com


Mohammad Munim Al-Izmerly's family displays a portrait of him in May. The scientist died in 2004 under suspicious circumstances while in American custody.

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More on the Search for WMD:
· Timeline of the Hunt
· Duelfer's Report to the CIA

More News on Iraq:
· New Questions Arise for Blair
· Five Killed by Friendly Fire

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NEW YORK (March 24) - The U.S. Army says it has reopened an investigation into the suspected bludgeoning death of a key Iraqi government scientist in American custody, a chemist who allegedly experimented with poisons on prisoners in the days of Saddam Hussein.

Mohammad Munim al-Izmerly, 65, is the only known weapons scientist among at least 96 detainees who have died in U.S. custody in Iraq. Questions have surrounded the death ever since his body was dropped off at a Baghdad hospital in February 2004, two weeks after he died.

When it first came to light in press reports last May, the U.S. military, newly under fire for prisoner abuse in Iraq, refused to answer queries about the chemist's death. Now, months later, the Army says an investigation has begun.

"The case was initially closed, but after further investigative review a determination was made to reopen the investigation,'' Army spokesman Christopher Grey told The Associated Press.

The Pentagon would say nothing about the timetable or thrust of the inquiry. But Rod Barton, an Australian member of the CIA-led teams that questioned al-Izmerly and other weapons scientists, says such prisoners may have been beaten during the futile U.S. hunt for banned arms in Iraq.

When al-Izmerly's body was delivered to Al-Kharkh Hospital, the Americans enclosed a death certificate saying he died of "brainstem compression,'' without saying what caused it, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported after viewing the document last year. A subsequent Iraqi autopsy determined he was killed by a blunt trauma injury, a blow to the head, Iraqi doctors told Baghdad reporters.

New details are emerging about the role al-Izmerly played in Iraq's weapons underworld.

In contrast to a "distinguished chemistry professor,'' the portrayal in one press report last May, U.S. weapons investigators now say al-Izmerly was an early leader of Iraq's effort to make chemical arms, and an assassination specialist who once devised a "poison pen.''

The Egyptian-born scientist had been in U.S. detention since April 2003. His family was allowed to visit him in January 2004 at the Baghdad airport, where he was believed held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention center for "high-value detainees.''

A month later they were notified by the Red Cross he was dead. His son, Ashraf, 22, told reporters that when he went to the hospital morgue to claim the remains, zipped up in a U.S. body bag, he saw an injury to the head. The dated death certificate indicated the Americans had held the body for 17 days.

The family commissioned an autopsy, which found the cause of death to be a blow to the head, the reports from Baghdad said. "It was definitely a blunt trauma injury,'' the Los Angeles Times was told by Dr. Kais Hassan, who performed the autopsy at Iraq's Forensic Medical Institute.

Army spokesman Grey said the Army's Criminal Investigation Command lists al-Izmerly's death in an "undetermined cause'' category because the body was released before Army investigators learned of the case, and no U.S. autopsy was performed.

Ashraf al-Izmerly, contacted this week by the AP, said he was aware of the reopened investigation, but couldn't immediately discuss the case further. Because of apparently new Iraqi Health Ministry rules, an AP reporter was not allowed to speak with Dr. Hassan.

The scientist's family, who gave no indication they were aware of the nature of his work, said last year they believed the U.S. military was covering up the circumstances of al-Izmerly's death.

There have been other cases in which the U.S. military attributed to natural causes detainee deaths later found to have been caused by brutal American treatment. One-quarter of the detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan have been investigated as possible criminal homicides, according to U.S. government data reported by AP last week.

Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the arms-hunting Iraq Survey Group, didn't respond to AP queries about what he knew of al-Izmerly's death. But Barton, one of his former subordinates, has spoken out.

The Australian microbiologist says he was told in February 2004, while working with Duelfer's group in Baghdad, that al-Izmerly died of a brain tumor. But "I had suspicions that this person had actually been beaten to death in the prison,'' Barton said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp. interview last month.

He said he saw two other detainees, also weapons hunters' interrogation subjects, with face injuries he thought were the result of beatings.

Contacted by the AP, Barton wouldn't elaborate on his suspicions, citing the sensitivity of testimony on the weapons hunt he is to give to the Australian Senate next week.

Al-Izmerly figures prominently in Duelfer's final report of Oct. 6, as a "mentor'' to Iraqi chemists trying to make poison gas for military use in the 1970s, as leader of the effort to produce mustard gas, and in the 1980s as chief of an Iraq Intelligence Service chemical section.

In the intelligence role and earlier, ex-colleagues told interrogators, al-Izmerly was head of human experiments, testing substances for use on assassination targets by giving poisoned food or injections to some 100 political and other prisoners, the Iraq Survey Group reported.

This CIA account said al-Izmerly admitted administering poisons to 20 human subjects, but he said it was under orders from above. How many may have died is not reported.

One informant cited in the U.S. report said al-Izmerly in the 1980s ordered the fashioning of a poison-tipped pen for use in assassinations, and personally filled it with snake venom. It wasn't clear whether such pens were ever used.

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Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi in Baghdad and John J. Lumpkin in Washington contributed to this report.

03/24/05 23:10 EST

Copyright 2005 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

posted March 26, 2005 06:01 PM              

I never gave my opinion. I posted this to see what other peoples views were and also because I know it sure as hell would of not have been on the news here anyways. If I wanted to give my opinion I would have obviously posted something. And even if I had an opinion whether it was good or bad...it would be my problem.

posted March 26, 2005 11:30 PM              

here is some good news out of the war on terror, that you wont hear about in the leftist media!!!

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U.S. forces thwart major escape in southern Iraq
By Albert Eisele

CAMP BUCCA, IRAQ -- U.S. military police Friday thwarted a massive escape attempt by suspected insurgents and terrorists from this southern Iraq Army base that houses more than 6,000 detainees when they uncovered a 600-foot tunnel the detainees had dug under their compound.
"We were very close to a very bad thing," Major Gen. William Brandenburg said Friday after troops under his command discovered the tunnel that prisoners had painstakingly dug with the help of makeshift tools.
Within hours of the discovery on the first tunnel, a second tunnel of about 300 feet was detected under an adjoining compound in the camp, which holds 6,049 detainees.
http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/032305/escape.html

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Pentagon Will Not Try 17 G.I.'s Implicated in Prisoners' Deaths
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: March 26, 2005

ASHINGTON, 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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/politics/26abuse.html?hp&ex=1111813200&en=8313799397cbbde3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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No US pact with Israel on settlement growth: Rice
Web posted at: 3/27/2005 3:39:18
Source ::: Agencies
WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied in comments published yesterday that the United States had agreed to expansion of Jewish settlements but said the details of Israel’s peace plan obligations to a “settlement freeze” were still being studied.

The only US “commitment or assurance” is an April 14 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which President George W Bush said the final borders of a promised Palestinian state must take into account demographic realities on the ground, Rice told the Washington Post.

Rice underlined that there was no US support for new building within settlements, but swiftly added that the meaning of “settlement freeze” required of Israel under the internationally drafted roadmap peace plan of 2003 was still up for discussion. “There is no agreement that you can build some, it’s one way or another,” she said.

“There is at this point a desire to understand that better, so that we can understand better what a settlement freeze might really mean.”

In a follow-up phone call to the Post, Rice added that the US administration had had “discussions about steps toward a settlement freeze” but “we’ve never reached closure on that — it’s complicated”.

posted March 27, 2005 12:23 AM            

It's all OK with me that this scum of the earth is dead. He is reputed to have worked on chemical weapons and injected Saddam's prisoners with poisons.

"NEW YORK -- The U.S. Army says it has reopened an investigation into the suspected bludgeoning death of a key Iraqi scientist in American custody, a chemist who allegedly experimented with poisons on prisoners in the days of Saddam Hussein."

"In contrast to a "distinguished chemistry professor," the portrayal in one press report last May, U.S. weapons investigators now say al-Izmerly was an early leader of Iraq's effort to make chemical arms, and an assassination specialist who once devised a "poison pen."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/24/153828.shtml

As for the rest, we no longer need to give terrorist prisoners time outs in the corner, over or under heat them, keep them up past their bedtimes, embarrass them or annoy them with unpleasant music to get them to talk.

Since American courts have now ruled that starving people and denying them water is not torture and is neither cruel or unusual punishment or otherwise illegal, we can simply strap them to a gurney in a dark room. Gee, no muss, no fuss and best of all, the NY Times reports that it's not at all unpleasant. In fact it produces a state of euphoria...kind of like a couple of hits of Colombian Gold. Just in case they're wrong about that, we can expect terrorist prisoners to get hungry and thirsty after a week or so and start talking. After that, it's Big Mac's all around. I wonder why we didn't think of that sooner?

posted March 27, 2005 12:53 AM              

quote:

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Yeah, I dreamed last night that Al-Izmerly slipped on the soap in the shower.
But Bush is responsible because it was Rumsfeld's soap.--jwhop

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posted April 01, 2005 01:31 AM              

quote:

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no.....ive got it on good authority that the subjects of your posts are all found at ihateamerica.com

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03/24/05 23:10 EST