Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
May 7, 2008
Pg. 14
Attorneys for an Ethiopian-born terrorism suspect are trying to prove that British and American agents tortured their client, thereby corrupting his prosecution by the United States.
By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Attorneys for a detainee held here as an alleged al Qaeda co-conspirator filed suit against the British government on Tuesday, claiming it would violate its own foreign policy by permitting a former resident to face war crimes trial here with evidence allegedly obtained by torture.
Pentagon officials have not yet charged Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammed, 29, with war crimes. In the last, aborted U.S. effort to stage military commissions, he was accused of planning to blow up a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in New York City. The suit seeks to extract from the British government any secret intelligence that the two war on terror allies may have exchanged in the case in a bid to prove any trial would be tainted by torture.
Pakistani security forces arrested Mohammed at the Karachi airport in April 2002. From there, his lawyers claim, he disappeared into a secret network of U.S. supported prisons -- including 18 months in Morocco between 2002 and 2004.
There, according to an affidavit his London lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, he confessed under torture to crimes he never committed.
''The torture included shackling, being suspended from walls and ceilings, brutal beatings and being cut all over his body with a scalpel, including his genitals,'' according to the 21-page petition filed Tuesday at the British High Court of Justice.
``Unsurprisingly, the claimant co-operated to avoid further torture.''
Under military commissions law, evidence obtained through coercion may be admitted at trial, if the military judge considers it necessary. But evidence from torture is banned, because it is illegal under both U.S. and international law.
It will be up to each detainee's judge to decide the distinction between the two once the trials get under way in the first exclusively U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
Mohammed lived seven years in London, starting at age 16. His family had fled his native Addis Ababa, first to the Washington, D.C., area, then to Britain.
He claims he never joined al Qaeda but confessed to crimes he never committed under torture. His lawyers say he traveled to Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on a religious journey to shake a drug habit.
His attorneys argue that the British government has evidence that could help Mohammed prove he was tortured and are obliged to assist in his defense under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, as well as British law. ''Mr. Mohammed has been the victim of extraordinary rendition, horrific torture, years of detention without trial, all apparently with the assistance of or, at least, the Nelsonian blindness of the British government,'' solicitor Richard Stein said, releasing the suit on behalf of the legal aid organization Reprieve. ``It beggars belief that they will not lift a finger to help a British resident when he may face the death penalty.''
May 7, 2008
Pg. 14
Attorneys for an Ethiopian-born terrorism suspect are trying to prove that British and American agents tortured their client, thereby corrupting his prosecution by the United States.
By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Attorneys for a detainee held here as an alleged al Qaeda co-conspirator filed suit against the British government on Tuesday, claiming it would violate its own foreign policy by permitting a former resident to face war crimes trial here with evidence allegedly obtained by torture.
Pentagon officials have not yet charged Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammed, 29, with war crimes. In the last, aborted U.S. effort to stage military commissions, he was accused of planning to blow up a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in New York City. The suit seeks to extract from the British government any secret intelligence that the two war on terror allies may have exchanged in the case in a bid to prove any trial would be tainted by torture.
Pakistani security forces arrested Mohammed at the Karachi airport in April 2002. From there, his lawyers claim, he disappeared into a secret network of U.S. supported prisons -- including 18 months in Morocco between 2002 and 2004.
There, according to an affidavit his London lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, he confessed under torture to crimes he never committed.
''The torture included shackling, being suspended from walls and ceilings, brutal beatings and being cut all over his body with a scalpel, including his genitals,'' according to the 21-page petition filed Tuesday at the British High Court of Justice.
``Unsurprisingly, the claimant co-operated to avoid further torture.''
Under military commissions law, evidence obtained through coercion may be admitted at trial, if the military judge considers it necessary. But evidence from torture is banned, because it is illegal under both U.S. and international law.
It will be up to each detainee's judge to decide the distinction between the two once the trials get under way in the first exclusively U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
Mohammed lived seven years in London, starting at age 16. His family had fled his native Addis Ababa, first to the Washington, D.C., area, then to Britain.
He claims he never joined al Qaeda but confessed to crimes he never committed under torture. His lawyers say he traveled to Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on a religious journey to shake a drug habit.
His attorneys argue that the British government has evidence that could help Mohammed prove he was tortured and are obliged to assist in his defense under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, as well as British law. ''Mr. Mohammed has been the victim of extraordinary rendition, horrific torture, years of detention without trial, all apparently with the assistance of or, at least, the Nelsonian blindness of the British government,'' solicitor Richard Stein said, releasing the suit on behalf of the legal aid organization Reprieve. ``It beggars belief that they will not lift a finger to help a British resident when he may face the death penalty.''