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Confession that formed base of Iraq war was acquired under torture: journalist
Thu Oct 26, 8:37 PM ET
An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of
links between Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured, a
journalist told the BBC.
Iban al Shakh al Libby told intelligence agents that he was close to Al-Qaeda
leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and "understood an awful lot
about the inner workings of Al-Qaeda," former FBI agent Jack Clonan told the
broadcaster.
Libby was tortured in an Egyptian prison, according to Stephen Grey, the author
of the newly-released book "Ghost Plane" who investigated the secret US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons that housed terror suspects around the world.
US President George W. Bush confirmed the existence of the network of CIA
holding facilities overseas during a September 6 speech defending controversial
US interrogation practices.
Libby was apparently taken to Cairo, Clonan told the broadcaster, after being
captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in
the United States.
"He (Libby) claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in
Egyptian prisons," Grey said.
"What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and
the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the
way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as
a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.
Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003, weeks before
a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under Saddam Hussein had
provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he could "trace the story of a
senior terrorist operative", whom Grey alleges is Libby.
"At the time, the caveats to say this intelligence was extracted under torture
were not provided," Grey said.
Grey said that, after being held in Egypt, Libby was transferred to a secret
CIA facility in Bagram, just north of Afghanistan's capital Kabul. The
journalist said he had also met other people held in that facility who describe
the torture that Libby faced at the CIA facility.
Since then, "he disappeared", Grey said.
"Like hundreds of other people arrested after September 11, he's vanished into
a sort of netherworld of prisons where astonishingly, President Bush now says
the prisons have emptied.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information
contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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