Recent Appearances...

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Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Abu Zubaydah	Abu Zubaydah	al-Qaeda	Afghanistan	Jordanian	In Jug	Key Aide	20031118
		Qaeda operations officer. PTI said he had been named as Binny's successor before he was caught in Faisalabad.
Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn Abu Zubaydah	Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn Abu Zubaydah	al-Qaeda	Terror Networks & Islam	Palestinian	Jugged	Big Shot	20020214
		AQ chief of operations, nabbed in Pakistan 3-2002

-Short Attention Span Theater-

CNN confused Obama with Osama bin Laden in embarrassing on-air mix-up

2025-02-09

[FoxNews] CNN's most recent on-air flub goes viral on social media after viewers caught the surprising name mix-up

CNN mixed up the names of former President Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden in an embarrassing on-air gaffe on Friday night.

During a segment on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp on "CNN News Central," a graphic appeared behind anchor Boris Sanchez that read, "OBAMA BIN LADEN ASSOCIATE: ABU ZUBAYDAH."

Abu Zubaydah – the suspected Palestinian terrorist whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn – is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding his apprehension and detention.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

CIA operative reveals mental disorder agency 'actively seeks to hire' because it makes for better spies

2025-01-23

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A former CIA operative has revealed the agency pursues people with a certain mental disorder as it makes them the best agents.

John Kiriakou, who had a 14-year career as a CIA officer, said the agency 'actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies,' but avoids individuals with a full-blown disorder.

A 'sociopath' is someone who lacks empathy, disregards the feelings of others and may manipulate or harm people without remorse, often for their own personal gain.

'Sociopaths are impossible to control,' said Kiriakou. 'They slip through the cracks because they have no conscience and they pass the polygraph very easily because they don't feel guilty.

Someone who has some of these qualities tend to rise to the highest levels of the CIA.

'People who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience but are still perfectly happy to work in moral legal and ethical gray areas,' said Kiriakou.

Kiriakou admitted that he falls into the category of having sociopathic tendencies, explaining how he was 'happy to break into people's houses and plant bugs.'

The former officer used the idea that he was part of the good guys and that his country needed him as a way to feed his sociopathic tendencies.

The CIA has admitted that spies have pathological personality features that help them with their espionage efforts, such as a sense of entitlement or a desire for power and control.

While employed by the CIA, Kiriakou was involved in critical counterterrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He was involved in the capture of terrorist Abu Zubaydah.

However, he refused to be trained in so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'

Kiriakou has claimed that he never authorized or engaged in these techniques.

After leaving the CIA, he appeared on ABC News where he said the CIA waterboarded detainees and labeled the action as torture.

The interview led to Kiriakou being arrested in 2012 and charged with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer.

He was also charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it, and one count of making false statements for allegedly lying to the Publications Review Board of the CIA in an unsuccessful attempt to trick the CIA into allowing him to include classified information in a book he was seeking to publish.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

'A CIA psychiatrist told me one time that the CIA looks to hire people with sociopathic tendencies–not sociopaths because sociopaths have no consciences,' said Kiriakou, speaking to The Real News Network.

When asked if he thinks that is what the CIA saw in him, he responded: 'I think they probably did.'

Kiriakou provided a question he was asked during the CIA hiring interview.

'They said, 'You know that Mr X has something in his house that you need, whether it’s a file or whatever. You need it. And you work on him to recruit him so that eventually he turns that file over to you.'

'But he’s not recruitable. And in the end, when you ask him for the file, he tells you, no. What do you do?'

'I said, I break into the house and take the file.' Seemed like a perfectly logical answer to me.'

The former CIA officer explained that because he believed he was part of the good guys, Mr X was surely a bad guy, such as a Russian scientist.

Another former CIA agent, Jim 'Mad Dog' Lawler, has echoed Kiriakou's remarks about sociopathic tendencies in the agency.

Lawler had a 25-year career with the agency as a nuclear weapons expert and spy.

He was a specialist in the recruitment of foreign spies, and he spent over half of his CIA career battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

During his career, Lawler served as chief of the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Takedown Team, which resulted in the disruption a nuclear weapons network led by Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The network was active in the 1980s and 1990s and involved countries including Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

Lawler recently said the CIA wants people who are dangerously on the line or straddling the line of being a sociopath.

'A good friend of mine he was an operational psychologist at the CIA and he would review the criteria for hiring more folks like me and he wondered you know how much sociopathy are we dialing in to, he said while speaking on the Julian Dorey Podcast.

'What I did is rather sociopathic. I'm manipulating people. I'm exploiting people. I found out doing it against foreigners was as hell of a lot of fun.

'Its that sociopathic part where we enjoy breaking people's laws because that's what we do we break foreign countries laws. We are convincing people to become Traders.'

He also explained that he would do virtually anything that's legal to get people in foreign countries to be spies for the US.

Lawler admitted that he had only used his 'special skills' three times, including to avoid a traffic ticket and get an upgrade to first class on an airplane.

The former CIA officer shared that he is also extremely empathic, which is the complete opposite of a full-blown sociopath.

Link

Arabia

Biden releases 11 Yemanis at Gitmo to Oman

2025-01-07

[MSN] The Biden administration has released 11 additional detainees from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, sending the men, all natives of Yemen, to neighboring Oman, the Pentagon said Monday.

The move ends their more than two decades of imprisonment without charges and leaves the detainee population at 15. Over the years, the notorious prison in southeast Cuba has held roughly 780 men, all of them swept up amid the frantic global “war on terror” that followed 9/11.

Monday’s announcement is part of President Joe Biden’s fervent effort during his final weeks in office to reduce the number of those held Guantánamo.

Last month, the Biden administration repatriated four men, including two Malaysians who pleaded guilty to involvement in a Southeast Asian terrorist plot and will now serve out their prison sentences in Malaysia, plus a Tunisian and a Kenyan who were never charged.

The administration also is seeking to repatriate — to an Iraqi prison — a severely disabled Iraqi detainee who pleaded guilty to terrorist involvement, the New York Times reported. Attorneys for the man, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, have sued the U.S. government to block his transfer, arguing he will not be safe or receive adequate medical care in Iraq.
--------------
fwiw, it costs a lot to house these terrorists at GITMO, probably at least double what supermax would cost.

It would probably cost somewhat less if the rules for the guards weren’t so absurd, but President George W. Bush took bad advice about that in the hope that the carpers wouldn’t.

Link

Terror Networks

9/11 mastermind KSM and two other terrorists awaiting trial on Guantanamo Bay strike plea deals

2024-08-01

[NYPOST] The alleged criminal mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and two other Death Eaters being held on Guantánamo Bay will be spared the death penalty
under a deal with prosecutors, it was revealed Wednesday.

"The Convening Authority for Military Commissions has entered into pretrial agreements with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ’Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, three of the co-accused in the 9/11 case," an Office of Military Commissions (OMC) spokesperson confirmed.

The terror suspects will be spared the death penalty as part of the plea agreement, according to the OMC, which sent a letter to victims’ families Wednesday detailing some of the terms of the negotiations.

"In exchange for removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three Accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet," the letter obtained by The Post reads in part.

The news came as a gut-punch for families who have been holding out hope for justice for more than two decades.

"I am very disappointed. We waited patiently for a long time. I wanted the death penalty — the government has failed us," Daniel D’Allara, whose twin brother, John D’Allara, was one of 23 NYPD cops killed the day of the attacks, told The Post.

OMC said the specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements were not immediately available. The deals are set to be officially announced Thursday and the guilty plea hearings could take place as soon as next week, with sentencings likely to happen next summer, according to the letter and sources.

It was not immediately known where the men will be incarcerated following their pleas.

The defendants, including accused plotter Mohammed, stand accused of providing training, financial support and other assistance to the 19 Death Eaters who hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa. on Sept. 11, 2001.

The three accused who have accepted a plea deal — along with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh — were initially jointly arraigned on June 5, 2008, then again on May 5, 2012, the Department of Defense said in a statement.

The OMC said it first entered into plea deal negotiations with the suspects’ defense counsel in March, 2022.

Victims’ families were outraged by the news that the death penalty was no longer on the table for the suspects, whose alleged actions killed nearly 3,000 in the worst terror attack on US soil in American history.

Link

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

India-Pakistan

Armed Mobs Go On The Rampage, Burn Churches, Christian Homes In Pakistan After Blasphemy Allegations

2023-08-17

[PUBLISH.TWITTER]

Armed Mobs Go On The Rampage, Burn Churches, Christian Homes In Pakistan After Blasphemy Allegations | Sahara Reporters https://t.co/Iz8n97TDv9 pic.twitter.com/OQi8O6PxOl
— Sahara Reporters (@SaharaReporters) August 16, 2023

The controversy erupted after torn pages of the Koran, the holy book for Moslems, were discovered near the Christian colony with alleged blasphemous content written on them.

The pages were taken to a local religious leader, who reportedly urged Moslems to protest and demand that the culprits be arrested.

Over 100 held after several churches, homes vandalised in Jaranwala

[GEO.TV] More than 100 people have been arrested for their involvement in riots over alleged blasphemy
...the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider it to be a crime. In Pakistain you can commit blasphemy by looking cross-eyed at a Koran...
in Faisalabad
...formerly known as Lyallpur, the third largest metropolis in Pakistain, the second largest in Punjab after Lahore. It is named after some Arab because the Paks didn't have anybody notable of their own to name it after...
’s Jaranwala during which members of the Christian community were targeted, the Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
interim government’s spokesperson confirmed.

In a statement, Punjab government spokesperson said that the provincial government has also ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident.

Earlier, interim Punjab Information Minister Amir Mir had said that "dozens of people who disturbed peace" in the area were detained.

In a statement, the minister said that the violence in Jaranwala was done under a "well-thought-out conspiracy".

"There was a plan to disturb the peace by inciting public sentiments. After the desecration of the Holy Koran, the angry protesters reacted strongly," Mir said, adding that the situation in Faisalabad is fully under control now.

The provincial info minister also said that the investigation into the tragic incident of the desecration of the holy book is underway at a fast pace, adding that anyone who tries to take the law into his hands would be arrested immediately.

The security of churches, he said, has been tightened and a large number of law enforcers have been deployed. More than 6,000 coppers and Rangers personnel are present in the affected areas, he added.

The minister also shared that in today's incidents, no one was injured nor was there any loss of life.

Mir went on to say that the Punjab chief secretary and Inspector General of Punjab Police have reached Jaranwala on the instructions of caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi.

INTERIM PM GUTTED BY JARANWALA INCIDENT
Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Wednesday directed law enforcement agencies to apprehend culprits behind the vandalisation of churches in Jaranwala, Faisalabad over blasphemy allegations.

"I am gutted by the visuals coming out of Jaranwala, Faisalabad. Stern action would be taken against those who violate law and target minorities," said Kakar in a post on X, the microblogging website formerly known as Twitter.

Gutted. The poor dear.
Dawn adds:

An enraged mob vandalised multiple churches in the Jaranwala tehsil of Faisalabad on Wednesday over blasphemy allegations, officials said. A Christian leader, Akmal Bhatti, said the crowd had torched at least five churches and looted valuables from houses that had been abandoned by their owners after holy mans made announcements in mosques inciting the mob. Images on social media showed smoke rising from the church buildings and people setting fire to furniture that had been dragged from them.

Dozens of people also blocked a nearby highway.

Jaranwala pastor Imran Bhatti told Dawn.com that the ransacked churches included the Salvation Army Church, United Presbyterian Church, Allied Foundation Church and Shehroonwala Church situated in the Isa Nagri area. He added that the mob also demolished the house of a Christian cleaner, accused of blasphemy.

Meanwhile,
...back at the shouting match, the spittle had reached unprecedented levels...
the police registered a first information report against the accused under sections 295B (defiling, etc., of the Holy Koran) and 295C (use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet) of the Pakistain Penal Code.

The Times of Israel adds:

The attacks in Jaranwala, in the district of Faisalabad in Punjab province, erupted after some Moslems living in the area claimed they had seen a local Christian, Raja Amir, and his friend tearing out pages from a Koran, throwing them on the ground and writing insulting remarks on other pages.

Police chief Rizwan Khan said this had angered the local Moslems. A mob gathered and began attacking multiple churches and several Christian homes,

Police eventually intervened, firing into the air and wielding batons before dispersing the attackers with the help of Moslem holy mans and elders.

Police chief Bilal Mehmood told news hounds they were also looking for Amir, who went into hiding to escape the mob, and would detain him to determine whether he had desecrated the Koran.

Several coppers are seen in the videos watching the situation without intervening to stop the vandalism.

Khalid Mukhtar, a local priest, said there are 17 churches in Jaranwala and he believes most of them were attacked. The authorities did not immediately confirm that figure.

Father Gulshan Barkat, who teaches church history at the National Catholic Institute of Theology in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
, described the blasphemy

allegations as a "false accusation" and said the local mosques were also to blame because loudspeakers erected on minarets had earlier in the day called on Moslems to gather and "attack the churches and Christian community."

"The emotion of our Moslem brethren flares up very quickly, even at hearsay," he said.

None of the holy mans at Jaranwala mosques could be reached to confirm the allegation about the loudspeakers.

Link

Science & Technology

The FBI eGuardian Information Sharing System - Gotta Love Them Fusion Centers

2023-07-24

[FBIgov] Section 1: Description of the Information System
The Guardian Program, managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Counterterrorism Division (CTD), Guardian Management Unit (GMU), provides a proven methodology for reporting, sharing, tracking, and mitigating a large volume of counterterrorism-based incidents. The Guardian Program encompasses two systems, the classified Guardian Threat Tracking System (Guardian), which resides on FBINET, and an unclassified companion, the eGuardian system, which is available and utilized in the daily operations of state, local, tribal, territorial, and federal law enforcement partners as well as the national fusion center network. The Guardian and eGuardian systems, even though they reside on different classification networks, have a bi-directional communication ability that facilitates sharing, reporting, collaboration, and deconfliction among all law enforcement agencies.

The FBI has expanded the best practice of addressing counterterrorism threats, utilizing the Guardian system, to other national threat program areas. The FBI will leverage existing technology and existing law enforcement partnerships to address not only counterterrorism threats, but also cyber and criminal threats and suspicious activities, with minimal cost, minimal expenditure of resources, and minimal time needed to place the technology and business process into operation.

By providing a common platform to law enforcement for the reporting and sharing of the threats delineated above, the FBI will be able to provide a universal reporting system for all law enforcement, while concurrently eliminating the jurisdictional and bureaucratic impediments to sharing information which results in degradation of our national security posture.

This Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) amends the previous eGuardian PIA, dated November 25, 2008, and specifically examines the eGuardian system as it accounts for privacy concerns while creating an environment that will continue to address the need to share suspicious activity and threat information as mandated by the National Security Presidential Directives.

The eGuardian system’s primary purpose is to facilitate the reporting, tracking, and management of threats to determine whether a particular matter should be closed or opened as a predicated investigation. The eGuardian system also facilitates pattern and trend analysis of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) information. The original eGuardian system was designed in consultation with legal, privacy, and security personnel in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and elsewhere to ensure that privacy protections and security controls were integrated into system development and to the eGuardian system’s functionality.

Link

Africa North

Algeria police detain leading opposition figure

2023-05-25

[AnNahar] Algerian opposition figure Karim Tabbou has been taken into custody for unknown reasons, reports said Wednesday, with his brother saying plainclothes coppers had detained him at his home.

Tabbou, 48, was one of the most recognisable faces during mass rallies, led by the Hirak pro-democracy movement, that began in February 2019.

The protests demanded a sweeping overhaul of the ruling system in place since the North African country's independence from La Belle France in 1962.

Tabbou "was arrested in Dely Ibrahim", a suburb of the capital Algiers, "by plainclothes police", his brother Djaffar said in a Facebook post late Tuesday, citing lawyer Toufik Belala.

The brother added that Tabbou had not been informed of when he would appear before prosecutors or the charges he might face.

Tabbou's lawyer Belala was unavailable for comment.

Tabbou leads a small, unregistered opposition party, the Democratic and Social Union (UDS).

He was sentenced in March 2020 to one year in jail for "undermining national security" over his criticism of the army's involvement in politics.

After his release from prison, he was detained again in April 2022 for 24 hours for unknown reasons.

The Hirak protests had forced longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika
...10th president-for-life of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and served on his third or four terms. When he announced for the fifth, or maybe it was the sixth, visibly doddering, a grateful nation rose up in its wrath and threw him out...
to step down. Demonstrations continued in a push for deep reforms but the movement waned when the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
pandemic struck.

Dozens are still detained in Algeria over links to Hirak or human rights
When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much...
activism, according to the National Committee for the Release of Detainees.

Link

Home Front: WoT

‘The forever prisoner': Abu Zubaydah's drawings expose the US's depraved torture policy.

2023-05-14

Nota bene: the yellow highlighter belongs to comments from poster Hupainter Peacock1045, green is badanov, periwinkle is mine. Some of HP1045’s comments have been interrupted by badanov’s and/or my responses. HP1045 periodically retreads the same ground, using yet another article from a small stable of sources who can be relied upon to deliver his message.

—trailing wife

[TheGuardian] A detainee held in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay who was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has produced the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the brutal techniques to which he was subjected.

And of course every word he utters is the utter truth — this we dare not question lest the readers of The Guardian sneer at us as nekulturny Americans.

Abu Zubaydah

... Al Qaeda recruitment and training leader as well as member of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan-based Shura consultative council — whose real name is Zayn Abdeen al Husseini and once in the Rantburg archives as Zayne Abu Zubaydah. He was arrested in Faisalabad with several others in 2002...

has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI have labored for years to keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a grisly period in US history.

The drawings, which Zubaydah has annotated with his own words, depict gruesome acts of violence, sexual and religious humiliation, and prolonged psychological terror committed against him and other detainees. They were sketched from memory in his Guantánamo cell and sent to one of his lawyers, Prof Mark Denbeaux.

... a Seton Hall law professor who has been a prominent lawyer for Guantanamo detainees. His big thing is how few GITMO detainees actually fought against the US, which has nothing to do with whether or not they are evil members of a terror organization attempting to conquer the world for Islam, who therefore deserve to be locked up for the duration of that war. He also does not seem to address — nor does the Guardian op-ed — how many of those thus far released from GITMO have returned to the jihad.

I'm just waiting for the deranged responses to begin. "He deserved it!"
This is black letter international law. If you appear on a battlefield, armed without a uniform, and you are captured, you are at the mercy of whichever commander detains you. You have zero rights. The commander is free to execute you on the spot, hold a trial and execute on the spot, or interrogate you.

Not just on the battlefield — spies and saboteurs have the exact same zero rights. Being a law-abiding society is not intended to be a suicide pact, no matter how uncharmingly self-righteous The Guardian waxes in its determined ignorance.

Isn't America supposed to be the good guys? Torture is clearly evil. And who's doing it? The CIA and FBI? The deep state, hello?
The field agents and operatives in the CIA have a commission to capture battlefield illegal combatants and to extract as much information from them as possible by which ever means. Whether that means bribing the prisoner with hookers and blow, or enhanced interrogation techniques, that commission doesn't change.
Zubaydah’s sketches provide a unique visual record of the US government’s use of torture in the wake of 9/11. Videotapes of Zubaydah being tortured were filmed by the CIA but then destroyed in violation of a court order, while a 6,700-page torture report by the Senate intelligence committee remains secret almost a decade after it was completed.
Because when the CIA destroys evidence under subpoena, that's a sure sign that they're not afraid of what it will show.

Now we're going to chant, "Torture might be evil but it saved lives." Bullshit.

Torture is chancy — some will lie to stop the pain. But intelligent interrogation applying psychological and psychiatric discoveries can prove very useful indeed.

Though the full Senate report has never been made public, its conclusion is known: that the abuse of Zubaydah and other detainees failed to elicit any new intelligence. In other words, torture does not work.

Zubaydah, 52, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and renditioned to several CIA dark sites in Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. He was the first victim of what was to become the widespread use of torture by the US against terror suspects.

He was transferred to Guantánamo in 2006, where he has been held ever since.

The US initially claimed he was a top al-Qaida operative but was forced to concede he was not even a member of the terror group. "Everybody agrees, they tortured the wrong guy; they went ahead anyway so they could get permission to torture other people," Denbeaux said.
And now they've got it. Just like all the other weapons they built, this will now be used on us, the American people.

You’ve been nuked lately, Hupainter Peacock1045? Because I haven’t, nor has anyone shot a missile at me, nor even a basic scary black rifle. Possibly someone has bugged my phone, tracked my GPS, or explored my iPad, in which case they’ve wasted a great deal of time better spent on more interesting targets, but I’ve not seen evidence even of that. In short, your histrionics are not persuasive.

Link

Africa North

US says it repatriated a Guantanamo Bay detainee to Algeria

2022-04-03

[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The United States has repatriated to Algeria a man who was held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly two decades after being accused of conspiring with al-Qaeda, the Department of Defense said on Saturday.

The department identified the man as Sufiyan Barhoumi,

...more formally Sufyian Ibn Muhammad Barhoumi, the one-handed, accused Al Qaeda bomb maker captured in Faisalabad with a group of other accused Al Qaeda henchmen in the company of accused Al Qaeda “travel agent” Zayn Abdeen al Husseini, a.k.a. Abu Zubaydah. Mr. Barhoumi set himself to learn fluent English and perfect his soccer striking skills while charming his guards with his mediation skills...

a native of Algeria, and said his detention at the US military base was "no longer necessary."

Barhoumi arrived at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the year the base’s detention camp was set up following a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in pursuit of the al-Qaeda network behind attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

Link

Home Front: WoT

US shuts once-secret Guantanamo prison unit, moves prisoners

2021-04-05

[AlAhram] A once-secret unit within the Guantanamo Bay detention center that had fallen into disrepair has been closed and the prisoners moved to another facility on the American base in Cuba, the U.S. military said Sunday.

The prisoners at Camp 7 were transferred to a facility adjacent to where the other detainees on the base are held as part of what U.S. Southern Command said in a statement was an effort to ``increase operational efficiency and effectiveness.``

It’s been a while since it was a secret — Camp 7 shows up in the Rantburg archives three times in 2016 alone.

Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees the detention center at the southeastern edge of Cuba, did not say how many prisoners were moved. Officials have previously said about 14 men were held in Camp 7. There are 40 prisoners at Guantanamo.

Southern Command said the Camp 7 prisoners were moved to Camp 5 ``safely and without incident,`` but did not say when the transfer occurred. Camp 5, which was largely empty, is next to Camp 6, where the other detainees are held.

Camp 7 opened in December 2006 for prisoners previously held in a network of clandestine CIA detention facilities, often referred to as ``black sites,'' where they were subjected to brutal interrogation techniques. The military ran it under an agreement with CIA, and Southern Command said intelligence agencies were involved with the transfer.

The military long refused to even acknowledge the location of Camp 7 on the base and has never allowed journalists to see the inside of the facility. Officials had said that unit, which was never designed to be permanent, had structural issues and needed to be replaced, but the Pentagon dropped plans to seek money for the construction.

Among those held at Camp 7 were the five prisoners charged with war crimes for their alleged roles planning and providing logistical support for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

President Joe The Big Guy Biden
Joe <q>The Big Guy</q> Biden

...46th president of the U.S., who gives the geriatric a bad name...
has said he intends to close Guantanamo, but that would require approval from Congress to move some prisoners to the U.S. for trial or imprisonment.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Did the U.S. Government Hide bin Laden In Iran? Alleged Whistleblower Releases Evidence to Make His Claim

2020-10-21

The writer appears to be a Q true believer. She started writing about it for American Thinker here. We addressed Mr. Parrot’s claims a week ago here.

Strolling through the Rantburg archives when I possibly should have been doing something more useful, I was reminded that after Al Qaeda was cornered in Tora Bora, Al Qaeda split itself in two. Twenty to thirty members of the management council, led by Al Qaeda #3 Saif Adel, fled to welcoming arms in northern Iran, taking most of Osama bin Laden’s wives and underage children. The Shura consultative council, led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, broke into smaller groups and wandered from safe house to safe house across Pakistan. Some of them were found and arrested along the way, including the big guy himself in Abbottabad. Former #2 Ayman al Zawahiri is still out there, no doubt just as protected by the ISI as ever he was. With so many allies, no American collusion was needed.

Details from our files:
Northern Iran contingent: 20-30 Al Qaeda senior members of the management council including Saif Adel (AlQ #3 and operations chief), Suleiman Abu Ghaith (info chief, spokesmen), AlQ CFO Shaik Said, AlQ personnel director Abu Hafs, Abu Dahak (Yemeni, AlQ ambassador to the Chechen rebels), Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, two of bin Laden's teenage sons — Saad (drone zapped in Pakistan in 2009) and Hamza (killed in AfPak in 2019) — plus three Osama bin Laden wives and about 20 offspring. Iran Al Quds unit supported Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad and OBL’s Al Qaeda starting in about 1990 with significant weapons and logistics support and training. So they were very happy to put their clients under “house arrest” to keep the Americans off their backs. OBL’s youngest wife rejoined him in Pakistan in 2002, the two middle ones wandered back later.

Pakistan contingent: the Shura consultative council included Osama bin Laden and #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri along with Abu Zubaydah (recruitment and training leader arrested in Faisalabad), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Balochi, operations commander grabbed in Rawalpindi) and two of his deputies: Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Abu Faraj al Libbi (taken in Karachi and Multan). The ISI carefully has not noticed them or their supporters, even when they were neighbours in the military town of Abbotabad.

OBL’s first wife, Najwa bin Laden, left Afghanistan for her family in Damascus before 9/11, taking her handicapped son, but leaving most of the rest of her eleven children with their father.

[AmericanThinker] Alan Howell Parrot is an unusual character with a flowing gray beard and wizard’s turban who looks like he popped out of a movie. Born in Maine, he followed his fascination with falcons to the Middle East, serving as Chief Falconer to the Shah of Iran and organizing falconry hunts for the royal families of Saudi Arabia. His falconry skills often brought him into Iran, where he says he met Osama bin Laden six times. Parrot claims that both George W. Bush and Barack Obama were fully aware that bin Laden and more than 100 of his top Al Qaeda fighters were sheltering in Iran, along with their families. And he’s now released documents to support his claim, including an audio recording, that he has not denied, of Joe Biden's attorney admitting that Osama bin Laden was being kept in Iran as part of a deal with the U.S government.

For years, Parrot tried to alert the public about his disturbing experience with American intelligence agencies that he says refused to take action against bin Laden’s encampment. "John Brennan and Clinton and Biden outsourced the imprisonment of Al Qaeda leaders to Iran," Parrot recently told Charles Woods, father of fallen Benghazi hero Tyrone Woods. (You can watch their conversation here.) "My team planned a program to go in and get bin Laden in Iran. We were going to catch him while he was falconry hunting."

According to Parrot, U.S. intelligence agencies first ignored, then obstructed, and finally threatened him, warning they would alert the Iranians if he attempted to capture bin Laden. Eventually, Parrot says, Hillary Clinton arranged to move bin Laden to Pakistan for a "trophy kill" to ensure Obama’s reelection. In 2010, Parrott made a movie, "Feathered Cocaine," about his encounters with bin Laden, which was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Here’s the trailer.) In 2011, his lawyer, John Loftus, alleged more details of U.S. intelligence’s complicity in sheltering bin Laden in an article that included this intriguing tidbit: "My friend laughed and said, "Don’t you get it, John? The last thing they want is for anyone to capture bin Laden alive. Think of what he could say on the stand in a public trial." I didn’t believe him at first."

Last week, Parrot’s story started to get traction when Anna Khait, an independent journalist, published, via Twitter, documents and audio that she says Parrot had given her. The documents include a signed non-disclosure agreement between Parrot, Congressman Curt Weldon & Joe Biden's attorney (and fixer) Brian S. Ettinger, on information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, letters asking why the intelligence on bin Laden is being ignored, and audio of conversations between Parrot, Weldon, and Ettinger, in which Biden’s attorney acknowledges U.S. government policy is to shelter bin Laden in Iran: "He is being protected by us. We don’t really want to get him...we want him under the radar screen because he basically made a deal with us that he’s not gonna uh...hit us here in the US." Neither Ettinger nor Biden has issued a statement denying it.

Parrot is not the only person making credible claims about bin Laden’s safe haven in Iran. Mike Moore, an intelligence expert and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, came to the same conclusion after interviewing government intelligence operators, informants, and lawmakers. Moore notes that Robert Mueller was the FBI Director during these events and that John Brennan was "neck deep" in arranging the bin Laden deal with the Saudis and Iranians. Mueller and Brennan, of course, were key figures in the coup efforts against President Trump.

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