London suspect in CIA torture claim

[cal04]

A FORMER London student accused of terrorism claims he was tortured under the CIA’s policy of flying prisoners to countries that use extreme interrogation techniques. The Pentagon alleges that Binyam Mohammed plotted to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in America and received instructions from Al-Qaeda’s senior leaders, including the architect of the 9/11 attacks. The 27-year-old, from Notting Hill, west London, faces a trial before a military court at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He could be jailed for life. Mohammed’s lawyers, however, say he is the first British resident to become a victim of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme which came under scrutiny last week as Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, toured Europe. The lawyers claim the allegations against Mohammed are based on a confession extracted through torture in a Moroccan jail — and accuse the British authorities of being complicit in his ordeal.

In a diary written by Mohammed and seen by The Sunday Times, he claims two British officials knew in advance of his transfer to Morocco and says his interrogators told him they were being assisted by MI5. Mohammed is thought to have been flown in and out of north Africa on two private jets, reportedly operated by the CIA, which have landed at UK airports more than 150 times, according to official records. The indictment against Mohammed accuses him of attending terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 2001, including one alongside Richard Reid, the failed airline shoe-bomber. The Pentagon claims he was introduced to Abu Zubaydah, Al-Qaeda’s chief recruiter, with whom Mohammed discussed making an “improvised dirty bomb”. It is alleged that the Londoner, who claimed asylum in Britain in 1994 after fleeing Ethiopia, later met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, in Karachi, Pakistan.

The Al-Qaeda chief allegedly briefed him on a “mission” to blow up New York apartment blocks but he was arrested at Karachi airport in April 2002 as he attempted to fly to London. Although his claims cannot be verified — and Al-Qaeda terrorists are coached to make false allegations of torture if captured — Mohammed’s diary tells a different story. He admits going to Afghanistan but denies meeting any Al-Qaeda leaders. While he was held in Pakistan, Mohammed claims he was met by two Britons, who he believes to be MI6 officers. “They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it,” he writes. “I initially took one. ‘No, you need a lot more. Where you’re going you need a lot of sugar.’ . . . One of them did tell me that I was going to get tortured by the Arabs.”

A few weeks later, Mohammed claims he was handed to a team of Americans “dressed in black, with masks, wearing what looked like Timberland boots”. He was stripped naked, photographed, given an enema and put on a plane with shackles, earphones and a blindfold. A report in The Washington Post last week attributed a virtually identical procedure to the CIA’s “Rendition Group”. On July 22, 2002 — the day that Mohammed claims he was moved to Morocco — flight logs show a Gulfstream V private jet, registration number N379P, was at Rabat airport.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1920255,00.html

[grytpype]

1. Jesus H. Christ.

I can't stand this anymore.

[Up2Late]

2. Same story from The Observer, this is why Padilla charges were dropped!!!

(This is getting serious, it says that a LOT of "...the CIA's clandestine operational arm..." are "...thinking about trying to resign altogether.")

MI6 and CIA 'sent student to Morocco to be tortured'

An Ethiopian claims that his confession to al-Qaeda bomb plot was signed after beatings, reports David Rose in New York

Sunday December 11, 2005
The Observer

An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies. Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.

After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources.

Western agencies believed that he was part of a plot to buy uranium in Asia, bring it to the US and build a 'dirty bomb' in league with Jose Padilla, a US citizen. Mohammed signed a confession but told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, he had never met Padilla, or anyone in al-Qaeda. Padilla spent almost four years in American custody, accused of the plot. Last month, after allegations of the torture used against Mohammed emerged, the claims against Padilla were dropped. He now faces a civil charge of supporting al-Qaeda financially.

A senior US intelligence official told The Observer that the CIA is now in 'deep crisis' following last week's international political storm over the agency's practice of 'extraordinary rendition' - transporting suspects to countries where they face torture. 'The smarter people in the Directorate of Operations know that one day, if they do this stuff, they are going to face indictment,' he said. 'They are simply refusing to participate in these operations, and if they don't have big mortgage or tuition fees to pay they're thinking about trying to resign altogether.'

<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1664612,00.html?gusrc=rss>
(more at link above)

[CJCRANE]

3. The big question for me is:

how effective is torture in extracting useful information?

If the answer is - not very effective - then it seems this is counterproductive, wasting time abusing innocent people (or at least innocent of the grand schemes they're forced to admit to), and just creating a bigger backlash against the West.

[Up2Late]

4. The more this kind of stuff comes out, the more and more convinced...

...I'm becoming that what this war was REALLY about was, that a small group arrogant rich-boys, who never learned the lessons of the Vietnam War, were still trying to prove that they were right, and we were wrong to pull out of Vietnam the way we did.