PDA

View Full Version : Bin Laden's Son-In-Law: U.S. Tortured Me



Gold9472
07-20-2013, 11:06 AM
Bin Laden’s son-in-law: U.S. tortured me

http://www.yalibnan.com/2013/07/20/bin-ladens-son-in-law-u-s-tortured-me/

July 20, 2013 ⋅ 4:15 pm

Abu Ghaith, bin laden son-in-lawNew York-Lawyers for Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law claimed in court papers Friday that he was tortured by the U.S. and asked a judge to dismiss the terrorism case against him.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s attorneys said in papers in Manhattan federal court that their client is charged in a flawed document that fails to adequately explain how he was part of a conspiracy to kill Americans. They said the statute of limitations had expired and that he was denied due process.

They also said he was interrogated at length during a 14-hour flight to the United States earlier this year during which “he was subjected to a variety of deprivation techniques and harsh treatment which constitute torture.”

Abu Ghaith, 47, has been held without bail since he was brought to the United States in March to face charges that he conspired against Americans in his role as al-Qaida’s spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks. Authorities say he had appeared in propaganda videos that warned of further assaults against the United States as devastating as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people. Abu Ghaith, who has pleaded not guilty, would be the highest-ranking al-Qaida figure to stand trial on U.S. soil since 9/11.

In an affidavit filed to support a request to suppress a 22-page statement he made to authorities, the Kuwaiti-born Abu Ghaith said he left Afghanistan in 2002 and entered Iran, where he was arrested in mid-year and held by elements of the Republican Guard before he was detained in prisons and interrogated extensively. He said he was told by Iranian government officials that the U.S. government was aware he was being held in jail in Iran and that Iran had turned over a number of prisoners to the United States already.

Abu Ghaith said he was released from Iranian custody on Jan. 11, when he entered Turkey, where he was detained and interrogated before he was released on Feb. 28. He said he was heading home to Kuwait on a plane to see family when the flight landed instead in Amman, Jordan, where he was handcuffed and turned over to American authorities.

He said he had learned through other detainees and news sources over the years that the U.S. had engaged in waterboarding, beatings, freezing rooms, sleep deprivation, electrical shocking, the use of dogs and noise torture, humiliation while naked and other practices.

“I believed that I was now in American custody, and I anticipated increasing degrees of physical and psychological torture, which terrified me,” he wrote.

He said he was kept naked on the plane for several minutes as a man in military clothing photographed his body.

“I was terrified, and I saw that there were several men on board, and at least one woman present, who observed me while I was naked from her location behind a partially-drawn curtain at the front of the plane,” Abu Ghaith said.

He said he was interrogated over the next 13 hours with a few breaks in a cold plane. He said he was only given a small bottle of water and one orange to eat. He said he soiled his clothing and feet and urinated on the floor when he tried to relieve himself in the plane’s restroom while handcuffed as a soldier watched.

“The soldier shouted and cursed at me in English and made threatening gestures, and I was made to kneel and clean up the urine from the floor using bits of paper, while my hands were shackled at my waist. It was terrifying to be confined in a small airplane toilet cleaning the floor while the soldier yelled at me and threatened me,” he said.

USA Today/AP

Gold9472
07-20-2013, 11:15 AM
Bin Laden son-in-law accuses U.S. of torture, collusion with Iran

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/07/20/Bin-Laden-son-in-law-Abu-Ghaith-accuses-U-S-of-torture-.html

Saturday, 20 July 2013
AFP, New York City

Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law on Friday asked a New York court to throw out terrorism charges against him, partly on the grounds he had been tortured on the flight that brought him to the United States.

In a motion seeking the dismissal of the case, lawyers for former al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith also claimed U.S. officials had colluded with Iran over his detention there for more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks.

The move marks the first salvo of a landmark legal battle in which Abu Ghaith’s lawyers will seek to challenge the U.S. government’s conduct in the “war on terror.”

Prosecutors declined to comment on the dismissal motion. They have three weeks to respond, and the judge then has two weeks to set a date for a ruling or a hearing on the issues raised.

Abu Ghaith was detained by U.S. agents in Jordan at the end of February and flown to New York. He was indicted on March 1 on a single count of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals.

That move was decried by prominent Republicans who said he should have been treated as an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay -- though human rights groups welcomed President Barack Obama’s decision to seek a civilian trial.

Abu Ghaith, a 47-year-old Kuwaiti national, is best-known for his incendiary statements alongside bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

In a speech cited by the U.S. government indictment, Abu Ghaith defended the attacks and warned Americans the “storms shall not stop, especially the airplanes storm.”

The defense team argues Abu Ghaith has effectively been declared guilty -- on the basis of his “mere association” with bin Laden -- of a crime that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

They deny that his fiery rhetoric reflects direct involvement in any plot to kill Americans.

The motion presented to a U.S. District Court in Manhattan Friday seeks the dismissal of the charges, most notably for violation of due process and the defendant’s rights under the Speedy Trial Act.

The submission says Abu Ghaith was interrogated on the flight from Jordan under “capture shock” tactics designed to induce extreme vulnerability and terror in their client.

The tactics included being stripped naked, shackled and subjected to sensory deprivation through the use of blackout goggles and ear coverings, which the defendant says were refitted whenever he stopped answering questions.

The dismissal motion also alleges Abu Ghaith could have been brought to trial much sooner, given that the U.S. had been able to secure the smooth transfer of other al-Qaeda suspects from Iran in the years following 9/11.

Abu Ghaith left Afghanistan for Iran around the end of 2002 and was held there until travelling to Turkey in early 2013. After being detained there, he was put on a plane to Kuwait but was arrested during a stopover in Jordan.

His lawyers said the U.S. was always aware of his whereabouts, and they are seeking the disclosure of all official documents related to contacts with Iran to explain the more than 11-year delay before he was moved to U.S. NATO ally Turkey.

They argued Abu Ghaith’s chances of a fair trial have also been compromised by the killings of potential witnesses in U.S. drone attacks, as well as by other assassinations of Qaeda leaders, including that of bin Laden himself.

And they say other witness testimony has been compromised by the well-documented use of torture at Guantanamo.

The defense also argued the charges should be thrown out on grounds that the relevant five-year statute of limitations has been violated and that the terms of the indictment are so vague that Abu Ghaith’s constitutional right to be made aware of the detailed charges against him have been infringed.

In light of the torture claims, the judge was asked to rule inadmissible a 21-page FBI report largely based on the defendant’s statements made during his 13-hour in-flight interrogation.

Defense lawyers also requested that several sections of the indictment relating to bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks be struck down, saying they are likely to prejudice a jury in a trial to be held close to the site of the 2001 attacks on New York.

Earlier this month, Abu Ghaith’s defense team unsuccessfully petitioned the court to issue a restraining order formally restricting the U.S. government from monitoring their communications amongst themselves, with Ghaith and his family or with potential witnesses.

The request, lodged in response to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the scale of U.S. surveillance activities, was dismissed by the judge, who said that, even if such monitoring was taking place, there was no evidence it would be used to help the prosecution.