Afghanistan to release US "vigilante"

The Afghan government has granted amnesty to Jack Idema, the last "mysterious" ex-special forces caught on a vigilante mission in Afghanistan. Idema, if readers will recall, was detained after having been charged with kidnapping and running a private prison. He claimed at the time he was working for the Pentagon, which the Defense Department vigorously denied. They later admitted having "taken" a man that Idema handed over to them.

According to BBC, NATO was even fooled by Idema and his friends Edward Caraballo and Brent Bennett, who had uniforms and allegedly special passports and visas.

Idema claimed the FBI was out to get him, and sued the US government in 2005 to secure his release. His case was moving through the court system in the US when word came from Kabul earlier this month that he would be released.

Captured in 2004, Idema claims he was tortured by US and Afghan captors, and it is known that he lived through a rebellion in Policharki prison, a notorious facility in Kabul. According to AP:

Idema's lawyer, John E. Tiffany, said the U.S. government coordinated Idema's amnesty to avoid having to respond to the allegations of torture and government misconduct.

"The Aghan government doesn't do anything unless the United States government tells them to do it," Tiffany said. "They got caught with their pants down. Finally, a federal judge with courage and intellect said, 'Hey, wait a minute. Let's look at this."

"They would like nothing more than never having to respond," Tiffany said. "If they have to respond to a laundry list of areas that the judge very clearly laid out, you put yourself of great risk of taking positions that will be exposed as lies."

Government attorneys said that's not the case. The State Department learned that Idema's amnesty was final on March 15, nearly a week before Sullivan's order, according to court documents.

Idema was captured in 2004 along with fellow Americans Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo. Idema and Bennett a former U.S. soldiers. Caraballo was an investigative journalist. Bennett and Caraballo have since been released.

Tiffany said Tuesday he did not know whether Idema has been freed. An Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Idema remains in Policharki, the main prison in Kabul.

The Justice Department said in court documents that Idema was holding up his own release by refusing to leave Afghanistan without Bennett's dog.

More material here.

No. 343: American's ordeal at Camp Cropper

The Times just published a story on Donald Vance, ex-Navyman working for security contractor in Iraq, who eventually came to denounce the firm's suspect activity to the FBI. He was imprisoned in April 15, 2006, only to be released on July 20. More Kafkaesque than actual Kafka.

He kept notes in his military-issue Bible, at the suggestion of the Camp Cropper psychologist who encouraged him to treat the imprisonment as a "mission" or a "game".



His story is chilling and provokes the question, "if this is how they can treat an American citizen, what about everybody else?"

Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel were permitted at their hearings only because they were Americans, Lieutenant Fracasso said. The cases of all other detainees are reviewed without the detainees present, she said. In both types of cases, defense lawyers are not allowed to attend because the hearings are not criminal proceedings, she said.

Lieutenant Fracasso said that currently there were three Americans in military custody in Iraq. The military does not identify detainees.

Australian held, tortured for 18 mos. in Kurdistan

The Australian newspaper reported the rather incredible emerging details of the story of Australian Ahmed Jamal, who according to his family disappeared 18 months ago during a trip to the Middle East to search for a wife. Since September 2004, he has apparently been in the custody of the Kurdish Intelligence Agency, the Asayesh.

Australian consular officials only met with Jamal 10 days ago and have confirmed that he was tortured during his year and-a-half in prison. According to The Australian, he is depressed, suffering memory loss and skin rashes, and is still being threatened by prison authorities.

It is unclear how or when he might be released from custody.

Jamal's brother was previously detained in Lebanon on terrorism-related charges. But there appears to be no legal pretext for Ahmed Jamal's continuing detention.

The Australian Foreign Ministry's lack of concern over Jamal has raised criticism from civil liberties groups, who claim that the case of Douglas Wood, the Australian engineer who was kidnapped in Iraq was given much more attention.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq, remains largely autonomous from the rest of Iraq. Rumors have abounded of kidnappings in Northern Iraq and secret prisons in the cities of Arbil and Suleimaniyah.

Briton in British custody in Iraq for 9 months

The Guardian reported that the UK apprehended a dual Iraqi/UK citizen in October, 2004 in Iraq and have kept him in custody for the past 9 months without a hearing. A lawyer working on his behalf was able to petition in a London court yesterday that this detention was illegal. Hilal Abdul-Razzaq Ali al-Jedda, 47, believes he is being held for his friendship with a man British authorities allege is a bombmaker. Al-Jedda's lawyer argued that his client's "internment" was in breach of the European convention on human rights (which the Blair government has "opted out of" since 9-11). The judgement is scheduled for next month. Meanwhile Al-Jedda waits in Shu'aiba detention centre near Basra.

'They put us in a cell and forgot about us'

American filmmaker of Iranian descent, Cyrus Kar, was freed over the weekend after 7 weeks of confinement in a dark, solitary cell in Camp Cropper, outside of Baghdad. After his family brought his story to the media, and the ACLU petitioned for a hearing on his behalf in Federal Court, he was freed. His passport was destroyed by FBI investigators, his clothes, a valuable ring, and over 20 hours of valuable footage for his historical documentary were all confiscated and destroyed. The ACLU says it will not drop its suit against the US government until Kar obtains a new passport and is allowed to travel home safely. According to the LA Times:

Kar, speaking to reporters, described long, frustrating days in solitary confinement with little information about his status or reason for being held. At the same time, Kar said he was well-treated while he was held and understood security concerns in war-torn Iraq.

"I don't hold anything against them for holding us," he said. "What I hold against them is they put us in a cell and forgot us."

[...]

"They knew from the get-go that we were nothing more than filmmakers," said Kar, who served in the Navy. "They saw my VA card in my wallet."

Kar called the circumstances of their May 17 arrest in the city of Balad "quite bizarre." He and Faraji had hired a taxi driver about an hour before the arrest. As the cab was waved through a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers, the driver pulled over and told authorities he had two Iranian filmmakers in his cab.

Iraqis sometimes suspect Iranian pilgrims and businesspeople of being spies for the religious regime in Tehran.

The soldiers searched the car and in the trunk found the three dozen washing machine timers. The driver admitted the timers were his, but the soldiers arrested all three men, handing them over to Americans.

Kar said he repeatedly asked to see someone from the embassy but no one came until Saturday.

He said he also asked for an attorney but never saw one.

Kar said he passed a lie detector test in which he was asked whether they belonged to the insurgency. His eight weeks of confinement were dull. He was not allowed to speak to any of the detainees that were housed with him, he said. He spent his days reading through the Geneva Convention, which he can now practically recite.

At a news conference Sunday in Los Angeles, Kar's cousin Shahrzad Folger said, "The three phone conversations he had with us" while he was detained provided "the most information he had been given the entire time."

[...]

For both Kar and Faraji, the experience was difficult and nerve-racking.

Faraji, who bathed himself in hot water for nearly 30 minutes after arriving at the hotel, said being locked up amid the squalor of Abu Ghraib shook his faith in the U.S.

At the prison, he said, he was housed in a tent surrounded by barbed wire. He slept on dirty slippers as men urinated in containers next to him.

The experience has left Kar, who had supported the war in Iraq, with a changed outlook on American policy. He said he still believes the U.S. should bring democracy to fascist states, "but it must be done by competent administrators."

American citizens held by US military in Iraq

The New York Times broke the amazing story of an American veteran held prisoner in Iraq by US forces. Cyrus Kar is a 44 year-old, Iranian-American filmmaker. He moved to the US when he was two years old, had served in the US Navy, and in May was in Iraq working on a film. According to various reports, the film was not even specifically about contemporary Iraq, it was an historical documentary about an ancient Persian king, Darius the Great.

Kar was captured shortly after he arrived in Baghdad in a taxi that allegedly had "several dozen" washing maching timers in the trunk, which are considered by the US "bomb making materials." Regardless of his potential guilt or innocence, he has not yet been able to meet with legal counsel, and he will be held during the "review process" that other Iraqis experience, which normally takes between 3 months and a year.

Apparently the other four people in custody holding American passports do not have the same background, they are more recently naturalized citizens of Iraq and Jordan. But the question remains, what rights to American citizens have when detained by their own military in a counter-insurgency situation in a foreign country? From the New York Times:

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, who are representing Mr. Kar's relatives, said they would file a lawsuit on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Washington, accusing the government of holding Mr. Kar in violation of American and international laws and seeking his release through a writ of habeas corpus.

"Saddam Hussein has had more due process than Cyrus Kar," said Mark Rosenbaum, the lead lawyer in the case. "This is a detention policy that was drafted by Kafka."

Colonel Skinner, the Pentagon spokesman, said any American civilians detained as a possible threat to the allied forces would eventually go before a board of three American officers, who would assess their cases and decide what to do with them. He said he did not know whether there was any specific time period by which such a review would be done.

"We have absolutely no desire to hold anyone longer than is necessary," Colonel Skinner said. "But you can't be wrong, either. We are talking about life-or-death issues. You have to absolutely be thorough."