Recent Appearances...

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Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri	Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri	al-Qaeda	Terror Networks	Captured	Big Shot	20031002
		Al-Qaeda naval operations. Arrested in Dubai.
	Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri	al-Qaeda	Arabia			20030515
	Abd Al Rahim Al-Nashiri	al-Qaeda	India-Pakistan			20030501
	Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri	Al Qaeda	Terror Networks			20021209

Home Front: WoT

Guantanamo judge rejects torture-derived confession

2023-08-20

[Dawn] A US military judge ruled for the first time Friday that an al-Qaeda bombing suspect’s confession cannot be used as evidence because it was derived from torture, potentially setting a new hurdle for September 11 prosecutions.

The judge in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba US military tribunals said that a confession by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri,

...the quietly polite, little middle-aged man who two decades ago was an Al Qaeda bigshot and friend of formerly not-dead Osama bin Laden. He has been in American prisons and GITMO since 2002, far from the pleasures of jihad and female companionship, which is some compensation for the fact that he is still among the living...

the alleged criminal mastermind of the 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
that left 17 dead, was tainted by years of abuse at the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

"Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs," wrote the judge, Col. Lanny Acosta.

"However,
a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all...
permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same government that seeks to prosecute and execute the accused may have even greater societal costs."

Still, he’s been imprisoned in GITMO for two decades, kept from practicing jihad and reduced to getting fat and flinging horded feces and urine at his jailers, which is some consolation.

Nashiri’s attorney Anthony Natale said the judge threw out the key evidence military prosecutors hoped to use to convict Nashiri.

The ruling left the long-running death penalty

case mired in the pretrial phase, with no sign of when a full trial could begin.

Attorneys for both Nashiri and the five men accused of the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attack on the United States have battled for more than a decade in the Guantanamo military court to exclude evidence against them derived from torture.

The six were captured separately after the 2001 attacks and shuttled through CIA-run "black sites" in countries such as Thailand and Poland where they were put through extreme interrogation techniques including waterboarding and physical beatings.

After they arrived at Guantanamo — an isolated US naval base — some like Nashiri were again mistreated, including in early 2007, when the FBI interrogated him.

While prosecutors had argued that Nashiri was no longer affected by the impact of earlier torture sessions, the judge ruled that continued rough treatment up to that interrogation simply extended "years of physical and psychological torment".

"The evidence supports a conclusion that the accused did what he was trained to do: comply," the ruling said.

Nashiri, 58, is charged with engineering the deadly attack on the USS Cole on October 12, 2000. He is also accused of the bombing of the crude carrier Limburg two years later in the same area, which left one person dead.

Natale stressed that the ruling only applies to Nashiri’s case, and is not binding on any of the other judges overseeing cases in the Guantanamo military court. But he said it creates "a template that others could try to replicate".

Alka Pradhan, an attorney for one of the five accused in the September 11 case, said it would impact the entire military court.

"The Nashiri ruling today is fundamentally destabilising to the whole military commission system," she said in a social media post.

In both the 9/11 and Nashiri cases, she said, the bulk of prosecutors’ evidence "was derived from torture at the CIA black sites whose effects were deliberately maintained through FBI interrogations at Guantanamo".

Link

Britain

Shamima Begum and other jihadis jailed in the Middle East 'should be allowed BACK to their homelands in a bid to break the cycle of extremism', says report

2020-07-04

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Soufan Centre

... a nonprofit security analysis group...
has claimed homegrown extremists pose greater threat to national security than 20 or more UK jihadists jailed in the Middle East

Ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan

... a former senior FBI counterterrorism agent who spent years tracking Qaeda suspects in Yemen and claims to have often battled with the CIA over information sharing...
has called for repatriation of jailed citizens in Syria, Iraq and Turkey

Prisoners being held overseas include Shamima Begum and 'ISIS Beatles' El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey

Fellow ISIS Beatle Aine Davis was convicted for terrorism offences in May 2017 and jailed in Turkey

Link

Home Front: WoT

Court tosses military panel proceedings against suspected USS Cole attack mastermind

2019-04-17

[FoxNews] A federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday rejected yearslong proceedings against the accused criminal mastermind of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. The proceedings were conducted by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the military judge in the terrorism case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

improperly presided over the trial at the same time he was seeking a job with the Justice Department (DOJ) as an immigration judge. In the panel's ruling, Judge David Tatel wrote that retired Air Force Col. Vance Spath's application for the DOJ position "created a disqualifying appearance of partiality" and vacated all orders issued by Spath in the case after he applied for the job in 2015.

"We cannot permit an appearance of partiality to infect a system of justice that requires the most scrupulous conduct from its adjudicators," said Tatel, who was joined in the ruling by Judges Judith Rogers and Thomas Griffith.

The ruling likely means that the prosecution of al-Nashiri in the Cole bombing, which killed 17 American sailors and wounded 37 more while the vessel was being refueled in Yemen's Aden harbor, will have to begin anew. Al-Nashiri has been in U.S. custody since 2002 but was not arraigned in the Cole bombing until 2011, and the case has been delayed several times over various legal and logistical issues

The prosecution of this case started under George W. Bush, so President Trump will be the third president dealing with it. Here’s hoping he ensures it finally goes to conviction and sentencing.

Link

Arabia

Trump confirms death of top Al-Qaeda leader responsible for USS Cole attack

2019-01-07

[ALMASDARNEWS] US President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
appeared to confirm reports on Sunday that Jamal Badawi, an operative of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (banned in Russia) responsible for a 2000 attack on the USS Cole, had been killed in an ~~Arclight~~ airstrike.

"Our GREAT MILITARY has delivered justice for the heroes lost and maimed in the cowardly attack on the USS Cole. We have just killed the leader of that attack, Jamal al-Badawi." Trump wrote on his Twitter.

US media reported on Saturday that Badawi, who was indicted by a grand jury in 2003 for orchestrating the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors, had been killed in the strike in Yemen

...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
on January 1.

On October 12, 2000, a small boat loaded with explosives crashed into the side of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 39, leaving a gaping, 40-foot hole in the side of the ship.

Badawi, along with Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Abu Ali al-Harithi and Fahd al-Quso, was named by the incoming George W. Bush administration as conspirators who organized the attack on behalf of al-Qaeda, which grabbed credit for the act. Tawfiq bin Attash has also been accused of organizing the attack.

Link

Home Front: WoT

US court rejects Guantanamo detainee’s appeal

2017-10-18

[DAWN] The US Supreme Court on Monday paved the way for a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of being the criminal mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole in a Yemeni port to go on trial before an American war crimes military tribunal.

The justices declined to hear an appeal by Saudi defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who argues that the tribunal lacks the jurisdiction to conduct the trial.

His lawyers said that because the United States was not engaged in "hostilities" with Al Qaeda, which carried out the bombing, at the time of the attack, his acts were not crimes of war.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against him on a 2-1 vote in August 2016. His trial is due to be held at the Guantanamo Bay where he has been held since 2006.

Link

Home Front: WoT

In Guantánamo, an alleged al-Qaeda killer awaits trial

2017-01-13

[ECONOMIST] THE accused, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a diminutive, clean-shaven Saudi aged 52, looks innocuous as he shuffles into court between two burly guards, a blue-gloved hand on each of his shoulders. A young paralegal in his defence team embraces him. If found guilty by a jury of handpicked uniformed officers, he faces the death penalty.

Mr Nashiri is one of Guantánamo’s 15 most "high-value" prisoners, kept in a special jail known as Camp Seven whose location has never been made public. He is charged with criminal masterminding an attack by two suicide-bombers who steered an explosives-laden skiff into the side of an American naval destroyer, the USS Cole, in Aden harbour in 2000, killing 17 American sailors and wounding many more.

Nowadays he is what officials at Guantánamo call "highly compliant". He politely declines an offer made by the judge, an air-force colonel, of prayer-breaks. He sits patiently, often looking bored, sometimes quizzical, occasionally adjusting the headphones through which he listens to simultaneous translation into Arabic, as arguments are batted laboriously back and forth between prosecution and defence. What evidence may be admissible when the trial proper begins? How much secret intelligence may be divulged? What medical details may be aired? Who may be called as witnesses, seeing that most of the key ones were interviewed about 15 years ago in Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
by the FBI, under a brutal government long since tossed?

Was he truly the criminal mastermind or just a foot soldier within al-Qaeda? Above all, may the fact that he was tortured, admitted by the CIA, be used in his defence? What about the videos of his interrogation, which may have been destroyed? "You need to hear from the torturers themselves," says Richard Kammen, Mr Nashiri’s chief lawyer, who for decades has defended, with notable success, Americans facing the death penalty.

The court feels not at all martial, more like a conference room in a dreary hotel. The six rows of desks allocated to the accused are furnished with computer screens; the five defendants in the September 11th case are being charged together in the same room. The only clue that this is no ordinary forum are the shackles, unused in Mr Nashiri’s case, screwed into the grey carpet beside each of the defendants’ seats. Behind a window is a soundproofed gallery for 50-odd visitors, including family members of the victims of the accused. There are curtains they may draw, should they wish to weep. The audio transmission has a 40-second lag so that the judge can switch off any mention of classified information. Mr Nashiri’s lawyers repeatedly ask for information to be aired that the prosecution claims would jeopardise national security.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Alleged al Qaeda bomber loses pretrial challenge

2016-08-31

[REUTERS] A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday rejected a challenge by the alleged criminal mastermind in the bombing of a U.S. ship in Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
in his upcoming trial before a military tribunal.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against Saudi defendant Abd al Rahim al Nashiri on a 2-1 vote.

Nashiri, a detainee at the U.S. naval facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is accused of overseeing a plan by myrmidon Islamic group al Qaeda to ram a boat full of explosives into the side of the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed in the blast that tore a huge hole in the ship. He has also been linked with an attack on a French ship and an attempted attack on a second U.S. vessel.

His lawyers challenged whether the U.S. military commission had jurisdiction to hear his case. The lawyers argue that the United States was not engaged in "hostilities" with al Qaeda at the time of the attacks, meaning his acts were not crimes of war.

Writing for the court, Judge Thomas Griffith said Nashiri had to wait until after the trial to renew his claims because court precedent urges judges not to intervene in ongoing military legal proceedings.

Judge David Tatel wrote a dissenting opinion saying the court should have considered Nashiri's case now, citing the "extraordinary and unusual circumstances," including the allegation that he was subject to "years of brutal detention and interrogation tactics."

Nashiri was captured in October 2002 and has been in U.S. custody since then. He was at one point kept at so-called Central Intelligence Agency "black sites" where he was interrogated, according to his testimony. He has been detained at the Guantanamo facility since 2006.

Link

Home Front: WoT

FBI Has Nearly 1,000 Active Islamic State Probes Inside U.S.

2015-11-15

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has nearly 1,000 active probes connected to the Islamic State terrorist group inside the U.S., law enforcement officials claimed in a letter to President Obama.

This is seriously absurd. If they aren't citizens deport them, if they are, convict them and jail them.

The terrorist probes were revealed in a letter from a group of elected sheriffs in Colorado blasting the president's plan to transfer known terrorists held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanmo Bay, Cuba, to a mainland facility. Two federal prison facilities in Colorado are being considered for the potential transfer.

The sheriff's wrote that the relocation of such dangerous prisoners to a Colorado facility could tempt many of the thousands of Islamic State supporters being investigated by the FBI to target the prison.

"We recently learned that the FBI has almost 1,000 active ISIS investigations taking place inside the borders of the United States. We believe it would be dangerously naive not to recognize that a civilian prison with an untold number of enemy combatant inmates, located in our state, would provide a very tempting target for anyone wishing to either free these detainees or simply wishing to make a political statement," the sheriffs wrote in their Nov. 9 letter, published by Judicial Watch.

The Obama administration has been working to release or transfer detainees from the Guantanamo Bay facility back to their home countries, but those that are still deemed to dangerous to transfer will be moved to a U.S. facility if President Obama successfully closes the prison, a goal he has touted since his first presidential campaign.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said that about half of the remaining 112 Gitmo detainees must be locked up "indefinitely." These prisoners include 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi as well as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Al Qaeda terrorist charged with orchestrating the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole, according to Judicial Watch.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Lawyer: Tortured 9/11 Mastermind should not Face Death Penalty

2014-12-11

[AnNahar] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed criminal mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, should not have to face the death penalty, his lawyer said Tuesday, following revelations of torture in a scathing U.S. Senate report.

Generally, getting your own lawyer to agree that the state should go light on you isn't that far a stretch...

"It's not legal, humane, or fair to execute a person after torturing him," David Nevin told Agence La Belle France Presse.

Mohammed is known to have been waterboarded 183 times in secret CIA prisons and in March 2003 he was subjected to five waterboard sessions over 25 hours.

"Holding a real execution of Mr. Mohammad, after 183 mock executions, is cruel and unusual punishment," prohibited under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Nevin said.

"The brutality revealed in the details of the torture is quite shocking," he said, and "produced absolutely no useful information."

So you and the Democrats in the Senate say. Now...

Tuesday's report revealed that sleep deprivation for over a week, beatings, shackling and waterboarding were among the cruel methods used by the George W. Bush-era CIA to interrogate Al-Qaeda terror suspects. The document found that the techniques employed by the Central Intelligence Agency were "far more brutal" than the spy agency had previously admitted to.

And the Dems knew all along...

The lawyer for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who allegedly led Al-Qaeda operations in the Gulf, said it was "stunning" that the prosecutors knew of the torture "for years and hid it from the court in violation of their professional obligations."

Al-Nashiri, who was tortured in CIA prisons, is accused of criminal masterminding a suicide kaboom of the USS Cole which killed 17 American sailors in 2000 off the coast of Yemen.

"The fact that military and civilian prosecutors are protecting torturers who were acting in violation of American and international law is disappointing, although regrettably not unexpected," Richard Kammen told AFP.

Rights advocates hailed the exposure following the report's release, but criticized a Justice Department announcement that it will not prosecute any U.S. officials implicated.

It was regrettable that "the government has excluded from the report the identities of the torturers, the locations of the torture, and many other facts," said James Connell, the civilian lawyer for Mohammad's nephew and accused co-conspirator Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali. He called for the publication of "the remaining 6,125 pages" of the redacted report.

Lieutenant Colonel Sterling Thomas, Ali's military lawyer, said that "torture violates American military values."

"The military commission should order access to the full torture report and its underlying documents as part of that accounting for torture," he said.

According to the Senate report, Mohammed was the detainee who was tortured the most of the 39 prisoners who underwent the interrogation techniques.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Alleged USS Cole Mastermind Seeks to Avoid Death Penalty

2014-11-07

[AnNahar] The defense team for a Saudi man accused of organizing the attack on the USS Cole asked a Guantanamo Bay judge Wednesday to stop him from facing capital punishment.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri faces the death penalty if convicted of charges stemming the Cole suicide kaboom, and from the attack on the MV Limburg French oil tanker.

Seventeen sailors died on the Cole in 2000 in Yemen; a Bulgarian sailor was killed in the 2002 Limburg attack.

Al-Nashiri's lawyers have provisionally had the Limburg charges withdrawn, though the United States is appealing that ruling.

In their motion to withdraw the death penalty in the Cole charges, the lawyers said "there is no military necessity served by executing the accused," adding that he is "far from the original theater of war in which he was captured" in 2002.

"There's no deterrence in executing Mr Nashiri," said military defense lawyer Major Allison Danels, adding that such an action would only inflame tensions and would likely play into the hands of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
jihadists.

"It would do nothing but enrage the ~~bandidos~~ Lions of Islam and give them reasons for their brutalities," she said at a preliminary hearing at the U.S. naval prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Al-Nashiri was initially held for several years in secret CIA prisons.

"Even if Mr Nashiri is acquitted, he can be detained indefinitely by the U.S., he's no danger for public security," Danels added.

Military judge Colonel Vance Spath will decide on the motion later, but he acknowledged how long the case is taking to play out.

"This case needs to move forward, because it's (been) here for a long time," he said, noting that the U.S. government was still appealing the dismissal of the Limburg charges.

Spath dismissed those charges this summer because he said the U.S. military had not shown it had jurisdiction pertaining to the attack on a French vessel.

The judge declined to give a date for al-Nashiri's trial, though it was initially supposed to open in February 2015.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Govt Must Turn Over Info On CIA Prisons To Defense

2014-04-23

[Ynet] U.S. prosecutors must turn over never-revealed details about the time a Guantanamo Bay detainee spent in secret CIA prisons after his arrest in connection with the deadly attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a military judge's order released Tuesday.

The order was a victory for defense lawyers representing Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing. Al-Nashiri, who was born in Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
, has been held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006.

Link

Terror Networks

Guantanamo's first secret national security session a mystery

2013-06-15

Pentagon prosecutors and defense lawyers in the USS Cole death penalty case held the first closed hearing of the Obama war court Friday, a 78-minute secret session that excluded both the public and the accused al-Qaida terrorist.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor, disclosed the length of the national security session but gave no details. He said the judge ordered production of a redacted transcript but gave no timetable for release.

There was a secret session. Thats all I can say, said veteran criminal defense lawyer Rick Kammen after the hearing on a subject so sensitive the motion being argued was called CLASSIFIED on the war court docket. In red.

For the occasion, Kammen was sporting a kangaroo lapel pin. Real justice occurs in the sunshine, not in secret, he said, ducking every question about the first closed hearing of President Barack Obamas war court.

How long did it last? No comment. Were there witnesses? He would not say. Neither would the general, who said a transcript of any unclassified portions might make clear if anyone testified.

It was the first closed hearing under the Military Commissions Act of 2009, the war court Obama reformed to give the accused terrorists greater rights. Kammen said, however, the closed hearing violated the rights of his client, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who got to Guantánamo in 2006 after four years of secret CIA custody that included waterboarding and interrogating with a revving power drill and racked pistol.

Link

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