XPost: alt.activism.children, alt.activism.youth-rights, alt.politics.usa   
   XPost: alt.politics.bush   
   From: jei@vipunen.hut.fi   
      
     U.S. Colonel: Guantánamo has 'Failed to Prevent Terror Attacks'   
        By Martin Bright   
        The Observer U.K.   
      
        Sunday 03 October 2004   
      
        Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military   
   detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have   
   not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon   
   intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.   
      
        Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years   
   in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defense   
   Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.   
      
        Christino's revelations, to be published this week in Guantánamo:   
   America's   
   War on Human Rights, by British journalist David Rose, are supported by three   
   further intelligence officials. Christino also disclosed that the 'screening'   
   process in Afghanistan which determined whether detainees were sent to   
   Guantánamo was 'hopelessly flawed from the get-go'.   
      
        It was performed by new recruits who had almost no training, and were   
   forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained   
   to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'.   
      
        According to Christino, most of the approximately 600 detainees at   
   Guantánamo - including four Britons - at worst had supported the Taliban in the   
   civil war it had been fighting against the Northern Alliance before the 11   
   September attacks, but had had no contact with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.   
      
        For six months in the middle of 2003 until his retirement, Christino had   
   regular access to material derived from Guantánamo prisoner interrogations,   
   serving as senior watch officer for the central Pentagon unit known as the   
   Joint Intelligence Task Force-Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT). This made him   
   responsible for every piece of information that went in or out of the unit,   
   including what he describes as 'analysis of critical, time-sensitive   
   intelligence'.   
      
        In his previous assignment in Germany, one of his roles had been to   
   co-ordinate intelligence support to the US army in Afghanistan, at Guantánamo,   
   and to units responsible for transporting prisoners there.   
      
        Bush, Rumsfeld and Major General Geoffrey Miller, Guantánamo's former   
   commandant who is now in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have repeatedly   
   claimed that Guantánamo interrogations have provided 'enormously valuable   
   intelligence,' thanks to a system of punishments, physical and mental abuse and   
   rewards for for co-operation, introduced by Miller and approved by Rumsfeld.   
      
        In a speech in Miami, Rumsfeld claimed: 'Detaining enemy combatants... can   
   help us prevent future acts of terrorism. It can save lives and I am convinced   
   it can speed victory.'   
      
        However, Christino says, General Miller had never worked in intelligence   
   before being assigned to Guantánamo, and his system seems almost calculated to   
   produce entirely bogus confessions.   
      
        Earlier this year, three British released detainees, Asif Iqbal, Shafiq   
   Rasul Rhuhel Ahmed, revealed that they had all confessed to meeting bin Laden   
   and Mohamed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, at a camp in   
   Afghanistan in 2000. All had cracked after three months isolated in solitary   
   confinement and interrogation sessions in chains that lasted up to 12 hours   
   daily.   
      
        Eventually, MI5 proved what they had said initially - that none had left   
   the UK that year. Rasul had been working at a branch of Currys. The disclosures   
   come on the eve of a House of Lords appeal on the fate of the foreign terrorist   
   suspects held without trial in British prisons.   
      
        Tomorrow, the Lords will determine whether it was lawful for the   
   government   
   to opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights to allow for the   
   detention of the men at Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons. It is widely believed   
   that some of the men are held on evidence obtained from prisoners at   
   Guantánamo. An officer from MI5 admitted under cross-examination by lawyers   
   acting for the detainees that the British intelligence services would make use   
   of information obtained under torture by foreign governments.   
      
        A high court appeal in August found that it was lawful for the British   
   government to use information obtained under torture by foreign governments to   
   avert an imminent attack, but there was no evidence that it had done so in the   
   case of the detainees held in British jails.   
      
        Speaking at an Observer fringe meeting at the Labour party conference last   
   week, Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer backed the decision of the court but   
   said it was 'an almost impossible ethical question'.   
      
        While emphasizing that Britain repudiated the use of torture he said: 'We   
   cannot condone torture, but the basis of those incarcerations is protection of   
   other people. If we thought that 'X' was going to blow up the Tube and we   
   thought that information was obtained by a foreign intelligence service, can we   
   really say that we can't detain people because that information was obtained by   
   torture?   
      
        'That's the dilemma the government is faced with. The courts have taken   
   the   
   view as a matter of law, that we are entitled to rely on it and I have the   
   awful feeling that is probably the right conclusion.'   
      
      
      
        Go to Original   
      
        White House Backs Torture-Abroad Law   
        By Michelle Shephard   
        The Toronto Star   
      
        Friday 01 October 2004   
   'Rendition' bill angers Canadian Arar, bypasses U.S. interrogation restraints.   
      
        The White House has endorsed a proposed bill that would make it legal for   
   U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use   
   torture to extract information.   
      
        The "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" marks the first time the   
   U.S.   
   government has officially scripted its policy known as "extraordinary   
   rendition," whereby American authorities can circumvent their own restraints on   
   interrogations by sending suspects to countries known to employ harsh tactics.   
      
        Canadian Maher Arar alleges he was a victim of this practice, which is the   
   crux of the lawsuit he has launched against the U.S. government. Arar was   
   detained in New York on Sept. 26, 2002, on a stopover flight to Canada, and   
   after two weeks was quietly deported on a private plane to Syria, via Jordan.   
   He says he was questioned and tortured for almost two weeks, then held without   
   charges in deplorable conditions for a year.   
      
        "What does this mean for Canada? Should we keep maintaining the sharing of   
   information knowing now, publicly, that this is going to happen?" Arar said in   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)