Abu Zubaydah Poses a Real Threat to al Qaeda

9/11 Blogger
Kevin Ryan

Abu Zubaydah, a man once called al-Qaeda’s “chief of operations” appears to be at the center of an unraveling of the official myth behind al Qaeda.  After his capture in early 2002, Zubaydah was the first “detainee” known to be tortured.  The information allegedly obtained from his torture played a large part in the creation of the official account of 9/11 and in the justification for the continued use of such torture techniques.  Yet in September, 2009, the U.S. government admitted that Zubaydah was never a member or associate of al Qaeda at all.  These facts raise an alarming number of questions about the veracity of our knowledge about al Qaeda, and the true identity of the people who are said to be behind the 9/11 attacks.

Unlike other alleged al Qaeda leaders, including Khlaid Sheik Mohammed and Rasmi bin Alshibh, Zubaydah has never been charged with a crime.  As these other leading suspects await their continually-postponed military trial, Zubaydah is instead being airbrushed out of history.  Why would the U.S. government want us to forget Zubaydah, the first and most important al Qaeda operative captured after 9/11?

The 9/11 Commission called Zubaydah an “Al Qaeda associate,” a “long-time ally of Bin Ladin,” a “Bin Ladin lieutenant,” and an “al Qaeda lieutenant.”[1] The Commission’s claims were somewhat contradictory in that Zubaydah was, in the Commission’s report, represented as both an al Qaeda leader and simply a terrorist colleague who collaborated in the training and recruiting of operatives.  For example, the Commission reported that Zubaydah “helped operate a popular terrorist training camp near the border with Pakistan” [Khalden Camp], and that Bin Laden had an agreement with Zubaydah to “conduct reciprocal recruiting efforts whereby promising trainees at the camps would be invited to join al Qaeda.”  It was unclear why a “Bin Laden lieutenant” would need such a reciprocal agreement with Bin Laden.

Other claims made by the 9/11 Commission were that “KSM and Zubaydah each played key roles in facilitating travel for al Qaeda operatives,” and that “Zubaydah had been a major figure in the millenium plots.” These claims are supported primarily by the torture testimony of Zubaydah and others, and by Zubaydah’s “diary.”

In an amazing turnabout in 2009, an attorney for Zubaydah wrote in The Guardian that the majority of the accusations against Zubaydah were understood by all parties to be false.  In fact, he wrote, they “were known to be false when uttered.“[2]  Attorney Brent Mickum said that his client, said to be the “number three man in al Qaeda,” was never a member or associate of al Qaeda and that — “These facts really are no longer contested: [Zubaydah] was not, and never had been, a member of either the Taliban or al-Qaida. The CIA determined this after torturing him extensively.”  In fact, he “was never a member or a supporter of any armed forces that were allied against the United States,” and he was never the “head of a military camp that trained terrorists. That allegation is false at all levels.”

It turns out that Mickum’s report was correct and that “Abu Zubaydah’s supposed relationship with al-Qaida is a complete myth.”[3]

We know this because, as of September 2009, the U.S. government agreed that Zubaydah was never an al Qaeda operative.  During Zubaydah’s habeas corpus petition, the government admitted that Abu Zubaydah had never been a member of al-Qaeda, nor involved in the attacks on the African embassies in 1998, or the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.[4]  The motion, filed by the U.S. government, states:

  

…the Government has not contended in this proceeding that Petitioner [Zubaydah] was a member of al-Qaida or otherwise formally identified with al-Qaida.

Respondent [The United States Government] does not contend that Petitioner was a “member” of al-Qaida in the sense of having sworn a bayat (allegiance) or having otherwise satisfied any formal criteria that either Petitioner or al-Qaida may have considered necessary for inclusion in al-Qaida. Nor is the Government detaining Petitioner based on any allegation that Petitioner views himself as part of al-Qaida as a matter of subjective personal conscience, ideology, or worldview.

The Government has not contended in this proceeding that Petitioner had any direct role in or advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

… the Government has not contended that Petitioner had any personal involvement in planning or executing either the 1998 embassy bombings… or the attacks on September 11, 2001.

In his article that same year, attorney Mickum went on to point out that the torture tapes, which the CIA had first lied to the 9/11 Commission about and then destroyed, had a lot to do with Zubaydah.  Mickum wrote:  “the videotapes of his torture were destroyed. Just recently, the government revealed that 90 of the 92 videotapes that the CIA destroyed related to our client.”  Not only that, Mickum went on to say that the U.S. government has removed all “reference to my client from the charge sheets and factual returns of other prisoners whose cases were being prosecuted. Abu Zubaydah has been linked to nearly 50 prisoners and former prisoners through media accounts and official Guantanamo Bay documents. Of these, approximately two dozen have either had their charges dropped or have been released from custody.”  They have, essentially, “airbrushed Abu Zubaydah out of history.”

Obviously this attempt to remove a key 9/11 accomplice from history must make a significant difference to the official account of 9/11.  We would expect that major revisions to the 9/11 Commission Report would be necessary given the knowledge that the man never had a connection to al Qaeda.

In order to better understand just how much Zubaydah meant as a primary source for the official account of 9/11, we must review the extensive claims made about Zubaydah by the U.S. government and mainstream media  over the years.  We’ve seen that the 9/11 Commission (falsely) called Zubaydah an “al Qaeda lieutenant.”  The Joint Congressional inquiry did the same, calling him “al-Qa’ida leader Abu Zubaydah,” and the “Bin Ladin lieutenant captured in March 2002.”  As late as 2006, the Justice Department’s Inspector General report on the 9/11 attacks called Zubaydah a “Bin Laden lieutenant.”

When Zubaydah was captured, in March 2002, U.S. government officials touted him as the biggest catch of the War on Terror, at least until the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM).  FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that Zubaydah’s capture would help deter future attacks.[5]  White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Zubaydah could provide a treasure-trove of information about al-Qaeda.[6]  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that Zubaydah was “a man who knows of additional attacks”, who has “trained people to do this”, and was a big fish who had a fountain of knowledge.[7]

The extensive allegations against Zubaydah went on and on, and included that he was:

• along with KSM, one of “Al Qaeda’s top operational managers” – “Counterterrorism Czar”Richard Clarke, in his book Against All Enemies
• “sinister” and “there is evidence that he is a planner and a manager as well. I think he’s a major player.” – Former State Department director of counter-terrorism, Michael Sheehan [8]
•  “extremely dangerous” and a planner of 9/11. – State Department legal advisor John B. Bellinger III in a June 2007 briefing.[9]
• a trainer, a recruiter, understood bomb-making, was a forger, a logistician, and someone who made things happen, and made “al-Qaeda function.” – Former CIA station chief, Bob Grenier [10]
• “a close associate of UBL’s, and if not the number two, very close to the number two person in the organization. I think that’s well established.” -Donald Rumsfeld [11]
•  “a very senior al Qaeda official who has been intimately involved in a range of activities for the al Qaeda.” – Donald Rumsfeld [12]
• a “very senior al Qaeda operative.” – Donald Rumsfeld
• a “key terrorist recruiter and operational planner and member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle.” – White House spokesman Ari Fleischer [13]
• someone whose capture was a “very serious blow” to al-Qaeda and therefore one of al-Qaeda’s “many tentacles” was “cut off.” – White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
•  “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” –President George W. Bush [14]
•  “one of al-Qaeda’s top leaders” who was “spending a lot of time as one of the top operating officials of al Qaeda, plotting and planning murder.” –President George W. Bush [15]
•  “al Qaeda’s chief of operations.” – President George W. Bush [16]
• “one of the top three leaders” in al-Qaeda. – President George W. Bush [17]
• someone whose interrogation “led to reliable information”, a “prolific producer” of information, with whom originated roughly 25 percent of the information on al Qaeda that came from human sources. – Michael Hayden [18]
• one of three individuals “best positioned to know about impending terrorist atrocities.” – Michael Hayden [19]

As the myth of Zubaydah grew, it was reported that he was –

• “worth a ton of guys at Gitmo.”[20]
• a “senior bin Laden official” and the “former head of Egypt-based Islamic Jihad.”[21]
• “played a key role in the East Africa embassy attacks.”[22]
• listed as a “trusted aide” to bin Laden with “growing power.”[23]
• in control of al-Qaeda.[24]
• an aide of bin Laden who ran training camps in Afghanistan and “coordinated terror cells in Europe and North America.”[25]
• a “key terrorist recruiter, operational planner, and member of Osama Bin Laden’s inner circle.”[26]
• “bin Laden’s CEO”,[27] and “a central figure in Al Qaeda”[28]
• Bin Laden’s “travel planner.”[29]
• “one of a handful of men entrusted with running the terrorism network in the event of Osama bin Laden’s death or capture.”[30]
• a senior bin Laden lieutenant who was believed “to be organizing al Qaida resources to carry out attacks on American targets.”[31]
• the fourth ranking member of al Qaeda behind Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Muhamed Atef.[32]
• someone who knew the identities of “thousands” of terrorists that passed through al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan [33]
• a colleague of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber.[34]
• one of bin Laden’s top planners of terrorist operations who knew of al Qaeda plots and cells.[35]
• the “connection between bin Laden and many of al-Qaida’s operational cells.”[36]
• the source of information that UAL Flight 93 was intended to hit the White House.[37]

Because we now know that Zubayda was never an al Qaeda operative, or even an al Qaeda associate, we are forced into the stunning realization that all of this was false.  The questions that should arise from that realization include:  How much of what we know about al Qaeda, and how much of the War on Terror, was built on the torture testimony of a man who clearly could not have known anything about al Qaeda at all?

Originally, we were told that it was Zubaydha who first identified KSM as the Bin Laden associate called “Mukhtar.”  This was according to Ali Soufan, the FBI official who first interrogated him at a secret CIA site in Thailand.  Soufan also claimed that Zubaydah said KSM was the “mastermind” behind the 9/11 attacks.  In his 2007 book, CIA director Tenet went further, claiming that “interrogating Abu Zubaydah led to Ramsi bin al Shibh.”[38]

US withheld evidence in WikiLeaks case

The Examiner

FORT MEADE: Lawyers for the US soldier charged with passing a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks accused the military Tuesday of withholding hundreds of emails over fears of a publicity nightmare.

The defense team for Private Bradley Manning, who could be jailed for life for "aiding the enemy" over the massive security breach, alleged that more than 1,300 messages were ignored by prosecutors for at least six months.

The emails relate to the conditions the 24-year-old trooper was held in during military detention at Quantico, Virginia, where he was sent after a spell in a US Army jail in Kuwait following his arrest while on duty in Iraq in 2010.

Manning's civilian lawyer David Coombs told a pre-trial hearing that 84 emails were released to the defense team on July 25, but he later discovered that 1,290 other messages remained on file.

The government "chose to let these emails collect dust somewhere," Coombs said on the first day of the three-day hearing at a military base in Fort Meade, Maryland, 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the US capital.

Military prosecutors then suddenly announced that 600 other messages had been handed to Manning's legal team on Monday, ahead of the hearing, but Coombs persisted with his attack.

"It is the defense position that the government has been playing word games," the lawyer said, implying that the emails were held back because the government adopted a deliberately narrow definition of their relevance.

"That is the absurd nature of that excuse. That is 'the dog ate my homework' excuse," Coombs added.

The defense maintains that Manning was mistreated at Quantico, and even alleged Tuesday that the former intelligence analyst had been ordered by guards to stand at attention while completely naked.

Coombs then took aim at top Marine officers responsible for running the jail, who he said had put their concerns about bad publicity ahead of their duty to provide fair treatment to detainees.

The emails go as high up the chain as General George Flynn, the then commanding general of the US Marine Corps, who insisted that Manning be placed on suicide watch.

Top officers at Quantico regularly sent emails to Flynn informing him of Manning's confinement, which the defense says was unnecessarily harsh, and told the Marine commander who the jailed WikiLeaks suspect's visitors were.

"They didn't want any negative publicity," Coombs said, reading out an official list that placed media risks at the top of eight concerns at Quantico.

After his detention at the Marine Corps Brig from July 2010 to April 2011, Manning was transferred to a prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was placed under less restrictive conditions.

If the court finds he was abused, the case could potentially be thrown out, or any eventual sentence reduced.

However, Major Ashden Fein, lead counsel for the government at Fort Meade, denied that the emails were withheld, insisting the prosecution simply had more pressing issues to deal with.

Most of the emails amount to nothing more than "argument and conjecture" among the military commanders involved, he said.

"They were concerned about public affairs (media handling) but they were also concerned about Private First Class Manning," Fein said of officers at Quantico, describing Flynn as "being informed but not necessarily directing" control.

Colonel Denise Lind, the case judge, however said the months-long delay over disclosure of the emails remained unexplained.

"I still wonder why you waited until July," Lind asked Fein, before ruling that she would examine the estimated 700 emails from the original bundle that remain in government hands, before deciding if they too should be handed over.

The publishing by WikiLeaks of official documents, including military logs concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, triggered a diplomatic firestorm that hugely embarrassed American officials and rankled the nation's allies.

Manning, who is attending this week's hearing, has not yet entered a plea in the case and his trial now looks set to start in February -- five months later than originally thought.

NAPOLITANO: Trading fair trial for vengeance

Washington Times
Andrew P. Napolitano

New rules for 9/11 terrorists’ prosecution could crush Constitution

The trial of the alleged masterminds of Sept. 11, which began last week at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will address some of the most profound issues of our era. Are natural rights truly inalienable, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, or can the government take them away from those it hates or fears? Does the Constitution protect the rights of all persons who come in contact with the government, or does it protect only certain Americans, as the government argues? Can the government deny a person due process by changing the rules retroactively, or is the Constitution’s guarantee of due process to all persons truly a guarantee?

These are all questions that the government does not want to answer, but it should know better. By structuring the trial after the crime was committed and establishing retroactive rules - prohibited by the Constitution - that have never before been used in any American civilian or military court, Congress has created and the Obama administration will conduct a trial that will resemble none in our history.

The trial is being held in Cuba because President Obama caved in to political pressure from New York City politicians who did not want the trial at the location where the murders took place. In one of the few rules of criminal procedure laid down in the Constitution, the Framers required all trials to be held in the same judicial district where the alleged crime took place. They were familiar with the British practice of trying colonists in London for crimes alleged to have been committed in New York. But today, New York politicians, their allies in Congress and the president think they can pick and choose which parts of the Constitution to uphold and which parts they can ignore.

The Constitution guarantees the right to confront evidence and witnesses. The colonists were all too familiar with the Star Chamber, a British trial system in which evidence against an accused was summarized by a clerk of the court rather than presented by witnesses with personal knowledge or revealed in documents for all to see. In trials at Gitmo, the government may summarize evidence for the court, and it may keep documents it plans to use away from the defendants.

The rules for this trial also permit hearsay - basically, anonymous accusations that also were the hallmark of the Star Chamber. They permit the secretary of defense, who is the boss of both the prosecutors and the judge, to replace the judge if the secretary is displeased by his rulings. This is a procedure that is taken right out of the Communist Party playbook from the Stalinist Soviet Union.

9/11 trial focused on torture

Telegraph

The defence lawyers for those accused of planning the September 11 attacks insist that their clients trial is a opportunity to investigate claims of mistreatment and torture.

The second attempt to prosecute the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four men accused of helping orchestrate the plot got off to a rough start on Saturday, with the defendants disrupting their arraignment and forcing the proceedings to drag on late into the night.

At a news conference on Sunday morning, defence lawyer James Connell called the actions of the defendants a "peaceful resistance to an unjust system" following years of torture.

"These men have endured years of inhumane treatment and torture. This treatment has had serious long-term effects and will ultimately infect every aspect of this military commission tribunal," he said.

Mr Connell, who represents defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the government has tried to eliminate the mention of the use of torture from the trial and he said he is committed to revealing what he claims is evidence his defendant and others were mistreated.

Cheryl Bormann, a civilian defence lawyer for accused 9/11 co-conspirator Walid bin Attash, said her client has scars on his arms from alleged mistreatment at the hands of the government.

"We're hoping to address that while in the courts and hoping to get a fair hearing on that," said Ms Bormann.

Saturday was the defendants' first appearance in more than three years after stalled efforts to try them for the attacks, in which hijackers steered four commercial jets into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a western Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy

The Guardian
Michael Ratner

On 24 April, a hearing in one of the most important court martial cases in decades will take place in Fort Meade, Maryland. The accused faces life in prison for the 22 charges against him, which include "aiding the enemy" and "transmitting defense information". His status as an alleged high-profile whistleblower and the importance of the issues his case raises should all but guarantee the proceedings a prominent spot in major media, as well as in public debate.

Yet, in spite of the grave implications, not to mention the press and public's first amendment right of full and open access to criminal trials, no outside parties will have access to the evidence, the court documents, court orders or off-the-record arguments that will ultimately decide his fate. Under these circumstances, whatever the outcome of the case, the loser will be the transparency necessary for democratic government, accountable courts and faith in our justice system.

In the two years since his arrest for allegedly leaking the confidential files that exposed grand-scale military misconduct, potential war crimes and questionable diplomatic tactics, army private Bradley Manning has been subjected to an extremely secretive criminal procedure. It is a sad irony that the government's heavy-handed approach to this case only serves to underscore the motivations – some would say, the necessity – for whistleblowing like Manning's in the first place.

The most well-known of the leaked files, a 39-minute video entitled "Collateral Murder", depicts three brutal attacks on civilians by US soldiers during the course of just one day of the Iraq war. The footage, recorded from the cockpit of a US Apache helicopter involved in the attacks, shows the killing of several individuals, including two Reuters journalists, as well as the serious injury of two children. Beyond the chilling images of US soldiers eagerly pleading for chances to shoot, the release of this footage placed a spotlight on the military's blatant mischaracterization of the events, in which a spokesman claimed that there was "no question" that the incident involved engagement with "a hostile force", and underscores the vital role that public scrutiny plays in government accountability.

As an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and a legal adviser to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, I continue to attend Manning's hearings and can only describe them as a theater of the absurd: the trial involves numerous and lengthy off-the-record conferences, out of sight and hearing of the press and public, after which the judge provides an in-court summary that hardly satisfies standards of "open and public". Perhaps more remarkable is the refusal even to provide the defense with a pre-trial publicity order signed by the judge – an order that details what lawyers can and cannot reveal about the case. Yes, even the degree to which proceedings should be kept in secret is a secret, leaving the public and media chained in a Plato's Cave, able only to glimpse the shadows of reality.

The press and advocacy groups, however, have not been quiet about the trampling of their rights. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, on behalf of 46 news organizations, urged the Department of Defense to take measures that would allow the news media to view documents prior to court arguments. The committee pointed out that the trial for the "alleged leak of the largest amount of classified information in US history" is of "intense public interest, particularly where, as here, that person's liberty is at stake". The Center for Constitutional Rights, too, has requested access in the interest of an "open and public" trial, but neither appeal has been answered.

This is a clear violation of the law, but it will likely take burdensome litigation to rectify this lack of transparency. The US supreme court has insisted that criminal trials must be public, and the fourth circuit, where this court martial is occurring, has ruled that the first amendment right of access to criminal trials includes the right to the documents in such trials.

The greater issue at hand is why this process should be necessary at all. As circuit judge Damon Keith famously wrote in Detroit Free Press v Ashcroft, "Democracies die behind closed doors." Yet it is evident from the many layers of secrecy around Manning's arrest, imprisonment and prosecution that the government shows no sign of relinquishing its claimed powers to obscure rightfully transparent judicial proceedings. The doors appear to be tightly shut.

Unless we challenge the growing culture of secrecy within our government, and counter the ever-increasing, reflexive claims of "national security" by claiming our own constitutional rights, we risk finding those doors shut indefinitely.

Egypt's army draws fire over military trials

Reuters
Dina Rayed

Actor Aly Sobhy's trial in an Egyptian military court lasted just 20 minutes, hours after he was detained in March with more than 160 other protesters in central Cairo.

He was among a score of lucky ones acquitted of charges of "thuggery" after a campaign for their release. But he spent four days in custody and now questions the army's intentions.

"There are thousands of youth held in military prisons simply for the reason that they were on the street at the wrong time. It's a plan to dismantle the revolution. If they arrest some, others will be scared to go protest," he told Reuters.

Anger at the army's handling of the transition to civilian rule is growing. Demonstrators camped out in Cairo's Tahrir Square say the army is taking too long to purge the system and end the corrupt practices of the Hosni Mubarak era.

Protesters cite the widespread use of military courts to try civilians, a common practice under the ousted president and since adopted by the army council led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's defense minister for two decades.

Even under Mubarak, civilians subjected to military trials were often suspects in security cases, particularly during an armed Islamist uprising in the 1990s, not common criminals.

Rights groups and activists say the wholesale use of military trials in the last few months calls into question the willingness of the army council, which took over after Mubarak resigned in February, to transform Egypt into a democracy.

The military says such trials are reserved for serious crimes and not to quash freedom of expression. But activists and rights groups point to at least six incidents of random arrests to disperse demonstrations in the past few months.

"The military has shown itself to be guilty of many of the same practices used under the Mubarak regime," said Shadi Hamid, director of research at Brookings Doha Center.

"Being condemned to prison for protesting is the complete opposite of what people are calling for in Tahrir Square."

EMERGENCY SITUATION

Rights groups say the trials undermine the rule of law and hinder an orderly transition, arguing that it was better to use the civilian judicial system, despite its flaws and slower pace.

At least 10,000 civilians have faced military trials since the uprising that toppled Mubarak, according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other rights groups.

Charges vary from petty theft to violent crime. Sentences can be tough. A shop-owner was sentenced to seven years in jail after a tribunal convicted him of stealing four pairs of shoes and a mobile phone card. He denied the charge.

The army accepts the principle, enshrined in international law, that military courts should not try civilians, but says they are needed temporarily to handle Egypt's security problems.

"No civilian should be tried in front of military courts," General Mamdouh Shaheen of the ruling military council told reporters. "But in this emergency situation ... military courts took the place of civilian courts until they were able to work."

In response to criticism, the generals have now offered a contact numbers for queries and complaints on past convictions. For Sobhy and others, such offers are inadequate.

"Their insistence on defending military justice is a problem," Adel Ramadan, a human rights lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said. "This is a policy that the armed forces has adopted and it is not willing to give it up."