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OUTSOURCING TORTURE
  The secret history of America's "extraordinary rendition" program

(continued)

The Bush Administration�s redefinition of the standards of interrogation
took place almost entirely out of public view. One of the first officials
to offer hints of the shift in approach was Cofer Black, who was then in
charge of counter-terrorism at the C.I.A. On September 26, 2002, he
addressed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and stated that
the arrest and detention of terrorists was �a very highly classified
area.� He added, �All you need to know is that there was a �before 9/11�
and there was an �after 9/11.� After 9/11, the gloves came off.�

Laying the foundation for this shift was a now famous set of internal
legal memos�some were leaked, others were made public by groups such as
the N.Y.U. Center for Law and National Security. Most of these documents
were generated by a small, hawkish group of politically appointed lawyers
in the Justice Department�s Office of Legal Counsel and in the office of
Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel. Chief among the authors was
John C. Yoo, the deputy assistant attorney general at the time. (A Yale
Law School graduate and a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, Yoo now
teaches law at Berkeley.) Taken together, the memos advised the President
that he had almost unfettered latitude in his prosecution of the war on
terror. For many years, Yoo was a member of the Federalist Society, a
fellowship of conservative intellectuals who view international law with
skepticism, and September 11th offered an opportunity for him and others
in the Administration to put their political ideas into practice. A former
lawyer in the State Department recalled the mood of the Administration:
�The Twin Towers were still smoldering. The atmosphere was intense. The
tone at the top was aggressive�and understandably so. The
Commander-in-Chief had used the words �dead or alive� and vowed to bring
the terrorists to justice or bring justice to them. There was a fury.�

Soon after September 11th, Yoo and other Administration lawyers began
advising President Bush that he did not have to comply with the Geneva
Conventions in handling detainees in the war on terror. The lawyers
classified these detainees not as civilians or prisoners of war�two
categories of individuals protected by the Conventions�but as �illegal
enemy combatants.� The rubric included not only Al Qaeda members and
supporters but the entire Taliban, because, Yoo and other lawyers argued,
the country was a �failed state.� Eric Lewis, an expert in international
law who represents several Guant�namo detainees, said, �The
Administration�s lawyers created a third category and cast them outside
the law.�

The State Department, determined to uphold the Geneva Conventions, fought
against Bush�s lawyers and lost. In a forty-page memo to Yoo, dated
January 11, 2002 (which has not been publicly released), William Taft IV,
the State Department legal adviser, argued that Yoo�s analysis was
�seriously flawed.� Taft told Yoo that his contention that the President
could disregard the Geneva Conventions was �untenable,� �incorrect,� and
�confused.� Taft disputed Yoo�s argument that Afghanistan, as a �failed
state,� was not covered by the Conventions. �The official United States
position before, during, and after the emergence of the Taliban was that
Afghanistan constituted a state,� he wrote. Taft also warned Yoo that if
the U.S. took the war on terrorism outside the Geneva Conventions, not
only could U.S. soldiers be denied the protections of the Conventions�and
therefore be prosecuted for crimes, including murder�but President Bush
could be accused of a �grave breach� by other countries, and be prosecuted
for war crimes. Taft sent a copy of his memo to Gonzales, hoping that his
dissent would reach the President. Within days, Yoo sent Taft a lengthy
rebuttal.

Others in the Administration worried that the President�s lawyers were
wayward. �Lawyers have to be the voice of reason and sometimes have to put
the brakes on, no matter how much the client wants to hear something
else,� the former State Department lawyer said. �Our job is to keep the
train on the tracks. It�s not to tell the President, �Here are the ways to
avoid the law.�� He went on, �There is no such thing as a non-covered
person under the Geneva Conventions. It�s nonsense. The protocols cover
fighters in everything from world wars to local rebellions.� The lawyer
said that Taft urged Yoo and Gonzales to warn President Bush that he would
�be seen as a war criminal by the rest of the world,� but Taft was
ignored. This may be because President Bush had already made up his mind.
According to top State Department officials, Bush decided to suspend the
Geneva Conventions on January 8, 2002�three days before Taft sent his memo
to Yoo.

The legal pronouncements from Washington about the status of detainees
were painstakingly constructed to include numerous loopholes. For example,
in February, 2002, President Bush issued a written directive stating that,
even though he had determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to
the war on terror, all detainees should be treated �humanely.� A close
reading of the directive, however, revealed that it referred only to
military interrogators�not to C.I.A. officials. This exemption allowed the
C.I.A. to continue using interrogation methods, including rendition, that
stopped just short of torture. Further, an August, 2002, memo written
largely by Yoo but signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee
argued that torture required the intent to inflict suffering �equivalent
in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as
organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.� According to
the Times, a secret memo issued by Administration lawyers authorized the
C.I.A. to use novel interrogation methods�including �water-boarding,� in
which a suspect is bound and immersed in water until he nearly drowns. Dr.
Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of
Torture, told me that he had treated a number of people who had been
subjected to such forms of near-asphyxiation, and he argued that it was
indeed torture. Some victims were still traumatized years later, he said.
One patient couldn�t take showers, and panicked when it rained. �The fear
of being killed is a terrifying experience,� he said.

The Administration�s justification of the rough treatment of detainees
appears to have passed down the chain of command. In late 2003, at Abu
Ghraib prison, in Iraq, photographs were taken that documented prisoners
being subjected to grotesque abuse by U.S. soldiers. After the scandal
became public, the Justice Department revised the narrow definition of
torture outlined in the Bybee memo, using language that more strongly
prohibited physical abuse during interrogations. But the Administration
has fought hard against legislative efforts to rein in the C.I.A. In the
past few months, Republican leaders, at the White House�s urging, have
blocked two attempts in the Senate to ban the C.I.A. from using cruel and
inhuman interrogation methods. An attempt in the House to outlaw
extraordinary rendition, led by Representative Markey, also failed.

In a recent phone interview, Yoo was soft-spoken and resolute. �Why is it
so hard for people to understand that there is a category of behavior not
covered by the legal system?� he said. �What were pirates? They weren�t
fighting on behalf of any nation. What were slave traders? Historically,
there were people so bad that they were not given protection of the laws.
There were no specific provisions for their trial, or imprisonment. If you
were an illegal combatant, you didn�t deserve the protection of the laws
of war.� Yoo cited precedents for his position. �The Lincoln assassins
were treated this way, too,� he said. �They were tried in a military
court, and executed.� The point, he said, was that the Geneva
Conventions��simple binary classification of civilian or soldier isn�t
accurate.�

Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers
to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the
nation�s defense�a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As
Yoo saw it, Congress doesn�t have the power to �tie the President�s hands
in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.� He continued, �It�s
the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can�t prevent the
President from ordering torture.� If the President were to abuse his
powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was
impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush�s victory in the
2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales
mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was �proof that the debate is over.�
He said, �The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.�


A few months after September 11th, the U.S. gained custody of its first
high-ranking Al Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. He had run bin
Laden�s terrorist training camp in Khalden, Afghanistan, and was detained
in Pakistan. Zacarias Moussaoui, who was already in U.S. custody, and
Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber, had both spent time at the Khalden camp. At
the F.B.I.�s field office in New York, Jack Cloonan, an officer who had
worked for the agency since 1972, struggled to maintain control of the
legal process in Afghanistan. C.I.A. and F.B.I. agents were vying to take
possession of Libi. Cloonan, who worked with Dan Coleman on anti-terrorism
cases for many years, said he felt that �neither the Moussaoui case nor
the Reid case was a slam dunk.� He became intent on securing Libi�s
testimony as a witness against them. He advised his F.B.I. colleagues in
Afghanistan to question Libi respectfully, �and handle this like it was
being done right here, in my office in New York.� He recalled, �I remember
talking on a secure line to them. I told them, �Do yourself a favor, read
the guy his rights. It may be old-fashioned, but this will come out if we
don�t. It may take ten years, but it will hurt you, and the bureau�s
reputation, if you don�t. Have it stand as a shining example of what we
feel is right.��

Cloonan�s F.B.I. colleagues advised Libi of his rights and took turns with
C.I.A. agents in questioning him. After a few days, F.B.I. officials felt
that they were developing a good rapport with him. The C.I.A. agents,
however, felt that he was lying to them, and needed tougher interrogation.

To Cloonan�s dismay, the C.I.A. reportedly rendered Libi to Egypt. He was
seen boarding a plane in Afghanistan, restrained by handcuffs and ankle
cuffs, his mouth covered by duct tape. Cloonan, who retired from the
F.B.I. in 2002, said, �At least we got information in ways that wouldn�t
shock the conscience of the court. And no one will have to seek revenge
for what I did.� He added, �We need to show the world that we can lead,
and not just by military might.�

After Libi was taken to Egypt, the F.B.I. lost track of him. Yet he
evidently played a crucial background role in Secretary of State Colin
Powell�s momentous address to the United Nations Security Council in
February, 2003, which argued the case for a pre�mptive war against Iraq.
In his speech, Powell did not refer to Libi by name, but he announced to
the world that �a senior terrorist operative� who �was responsible for one
of Al Qaeda�s training camps in Afghanistan� had told U.S. authorities
that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two Al Qaeda operatives in the
use of �chemical or biological weapons.�

Last summer, Newsweek reported that Libi, who was eventually transferred
from Egypt to Guant�namo Bay, was the source of the incendiary charge
cited by Powell, and that he had recanted. By then, the first anniversary
of the U.S. invasion of Iraq had passed and the 9/11 Commission had
declared that there was no known evidence of a working relationship
between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Dan Coleman was disgusted when he heard about
Libi�s false confession. �It was ridiculous for interrogators to think
Libi would have known anything about Iraq,� he said. �I could have told
them that. He ran a training camp. He wouldn�t have had anything to do
with Iraq. Administration officials were always pushing us to come up with
links, but there weren�t any. The reason they got bad information is that
they beat it out of him. You never get good information from someone that
way.�

Most authorities on interrogation, in and out of government, agree that
torture and lesser forms of physical coercion succeed in producing
confessions. The problem is that these confessions aren�t necessarily
true. Three of the Guant�namo detainees released by the U.S. to Great
Britain last year, for example, had confessed that they had appeared in a
blurry video, obtained by American investigators, that documented a group
of acolytes meeting with bin Laden in Afghanistan. As reported in the
London Observer, British intelligence officials arrived at Guant�namo with
evidence that the accused men had been living in England at the time the
video was made. The detainees told British authorities that they had been
coerced into making false confessions.

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, told me that
�the U.S. accepts quite a lot of intelligence from the Uzbeks� that has
been extracted from suspects who have been tortured. This information was,
he said, �largely rubbish.� He said he knew of �at least three� instances
where the U.S. had rendered suspected militants from Afghanistan to
Uzbekistan. Although Murray does not know the fate of the three men, he
said, �They almost certainly would have been tortured.� In Uzbekistan, he
said, �partial boiling of a hand or an arm is quite common.� He also knew
of two cases in which prisoners had been boiled to death.

In 2002, Murray, concerned that America was complicit with such a regime,
asked his deputy to discuss the problem with the C.I.A.�s station chief in
Tashkent. He said that the station chief did not dispute that intelligence
was being obtained under torture. But the C.I.A. did not consider this a
problem. �There was no reason to think they were perturbed,� Murray told
me.

Scientific research on the efficacy of torture and rough interrogation is
limited, because of the moral and legal impediments to experimentation.
Tom Parker, a former officer for M.I.5, the British intelligence agency,
who teaches at Yale, argued that, whether or not forceful interrogations
yield accurate information from terrorist suspects, a larger problem is
that many detainees �have nothing to tell.� For many years, he said,
British authorities subjected members of the Irish Republican Army to
forceful interrogations, but, in the end, the government concluded that
�detainees aren�t valuable.� A more effective strategy, Parker said, was
�being creative� about human intelligence gathering, such as infiltration
and eavesdropping. �The U.S. is doing what the British did in the
nineteen-seventies, detaining people and violating their civil liberties,�
he said. �It did nothing but exacerbate the situation. Most of those
interned went back to terrorism. You�ll end up radicalizing the entire
population.�


Although the Administration has tried to keep the details of extraordinary
renditions secret, several accounts have surfaced that reveal how the
program operates. On December 18, 2001, at Stockholm�s Bromma Airport, a
half-dozen hooded security officials ushered two Egyptian asylum seekers,
Muhammad Zery and Ahmed Agiza, into an empty office. They cut off the
Egyptians� clothes with scissors, forcibly administered sedatives by
suppository, swaddled them in diapers, and dressed them in orange
jumpsuits. As was reported by �Kalla Fakta,� a Swedish television news
program, the suspects were blindfolded, placed in handcuffs and leg irons;
according to a declassified Swedish government report, the men were then
flown to Cairo on a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V jet. Swedish officials
have claimed that they received assurances from the Egyptians that Zery
and Agiza would be treated humanely. But both suspects have said, through
lawyers and family members, that they were tortured with electrical
charges to their genitals. (Zery said that he was also forced to lie on an
electrified bed frame.) After spending two years in an Egyptian prison,
Zery was released. Agiza, a physician who had once been an ally of
Zawahiri but later renounced him and terrorism, was convicted on terrorism
charges by Egypt�s Supreme Military Court. He was sentenced to twenty-five
years in prison.

Another case suggests that the Bush Administration is authorizing the
rendition of suspects for whom it has little evidence of guilt. Mamdouh
Habib, an Egyptian-born citizen of Australia, was apprehended in Pakistan
in October, 2001. According to his wife, Habib, a radical Muslim with four
children, was visiting the country to tour religious schools and determine
if his family should move to Pakistan. A spokesman at the Pentagon has
claimed that Habib�who has expressed support for Islamist causes�spent
most of his trip in Afghanistan, and was �either supporting hostile forces
or on the battlefield fighting illegally against the U.S.� Last month,
after a three-year ordeal, Habib was released without charges.

Habib is one of a handful of people subjected to rendition who are being
represented pro bono by human-rights lawyers. According to a recently
unsealed document prepared by Joseph Margulies, a lawyer affiliated with
the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School,
Habib said that he was first interrogated in Pakistan for three weeks, in
part at a facility in Islamabad, where he said he was brutalized. Some of
his interrogators, he claimed, spoke English with American accents.
(Having lived in Australia for years, Habib is comfortable in English.) He
was then placed in the custody of Americans, two of whom wore black
short-sleeved shirts and had distinctive tattoos: one depicted an American
flag attached to a flagpole shaped like a finger, the other a large cross.
The Americans took him to an airfield, cut his clothes off with scissors,
dressed him in a jumpsuit, covered his eyes with opaque goggles, and
placed him aboard a private plane. He was flown to Egypt.

According to Margulies, Habib was held and interrogated for six months.
�Never, to my knowledge, did he make an appearance in any court,�
Margulies told me. Margulies was also unaware of any evidence suggesting
that the U.S. sought a promise from Egypt that Habib would not be
tortured. For his part, Habib claimed to have been subjected to horrific
conditions. He said that he was beaten frequently with blunt instruments,
including an object that he likened to an electric �cattle prod.� And he
was told that if he didn�t confess to belonging to Al Qaeda he would be
anally raped by specially trained dogs. (Hossam el-Hamalawy said that
Egyptian security forces train German shepherds for police work, and that
other prisoners have also been threatened with rape by trained dogs,
although he knows of no one who has been assaulted in this way.) Habib
said that he was shackled and forced to stand in three torture chambers:
one room was filled with water up to his chin, requiring him to stand on
tiptoe for hours; another chamber, filled with water up to his knees, had
a ceiling so low that he was forced into a prolonged, painful stoop; in
the third, he stood in water up to his ankles, and within sight of an
electric switch and a generator, which his jailers said would be used to
electrocute him if he didn�t confess. Habib�s lawyer said that he
submitted to his interrogators� demands and made multiple confessions, all
of them false. (Egyptian authorities have described such allegations of
torture as �mythology.�)

After his imprisonment in Egypt, Habib said that he was returned to U.S.
custody and was flown to Bagram Air Force Base, in Afghanistan, and then
on to Guant�namo Bay, where he was detained until last month. On January
11th, a few days after the Washington Post published an article on Habib�s
case, the Pentagon, offering virtually no explanation, agreed to release
him into the custody of the Australian government. �Habib was released
because he was hopelessly embarrassing,� Eric Freedman, a professor at
Hofstra Law School, who has been involved in the detainees� legal defense,
says. �It�s a large crack in the wall in a house of cards that is midway
through tumbling down.� In a prepared statement, a Pentagon spokesman,
Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico, said there was �no evidence� that Habib
�was tortured or abused� while he was in U.S. custody. He also said that
Habib had received �Al Qaeda training,� which included instruction in
making false abuse allegations. Habib�s claims, he suggested, �fit the
standard operating procedure.�

The U.S. government has not responded directly to Habib�s charge that he
was rendered to Egypt. However, several other men who were recently
released from Guant�namo reported that Habib told them about it. Jamal
al-Harith, a British detainee who was sent home to Manchester, England,
last March, told me in a phone interview that at one point he had been
placed in a cage across from Habib. �He said that he had been in Egypt for
about six months, and they had injected him with drugs, and hung him from
the ceiling, and beaten him very, very badly,� Harith recalled. �He seemed
to be in pain. He was haggard-looking. I never saw him walk. He always had
to be held up.�

Another piece of evidence that may support Habib�s story is a set of
flight logs documenting the travels of a white Gulfstream V jet�the plane
that seems to have been used for renditions by the U.S. government. These
logs show that on April 9, 2002, the jet left Dulles Airport, in
Washington, and landed in Cairo. According to Habib�s attorney, this was
around the same time that Habib said he was released by the Egyptians in
Cairo, and returned to U.S. custody. The flight logs were obtained by
Stephen Grey, a British journalist who has written a number of stories on
renditions for British publications, including the London Sunday Times.
Grey�s logs are incomplete, but they chronicle some three hundred flights
over three years by the fourteen-seat jet, which was marked on its tail
with the code N379P. (It was recently changed, to N8068V.) All the flights
originated from Dulles Airport, and many of them landed at restricted U.S.
military bases.


Even if Habib is a terrorist aligned with Al Qaeda, as Pentagon officials
have claimed, it seems unlikely that prosecutors would ever be able to
build a strong case against him, given the treatment that he allegedly
received in Egypt. John Radsan, a law professor at William Mitchell
College of Law, in St. Paul, Minnesota, who worked in the general
counsel�s office of the C.I.A. until last year, said, �I don�t think
anyone�s thought through what we do with these people.�

Similar problems complicate the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was
captured in Pakistan in March, 2003. Mohammed has reportedly been
�water-boarded� during interrogations. If so, Radsan said, �it would be
almost impossible to take him into a criminal trial. Any evidence derived
from his interrogation could be seen as fruit from the poisonous tree. I
think the government is considering some sort of military tribunal
somewhere down the line. But, even there, there are still constitutional
requirements that you can�t bring in involuntary confessions.�

The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, in Alexandria, Virginia�the only U.S.
criminal trial of a suspect linked to the September 11th attacks�is
stalled. It�s been more than three years since Attorney General John
Ashcroft called Moussaoui�s indictment �a chronicle of evil.� The case has
been held up by Moussaoui�s demand�and the Bush Administration�s
refusal�to let him call as witnesses Al Qaeda members held in government
custody, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. (Bin
al-Shibh is thought to have been tortured.) Government attorneys have
argued that producing the witnesses would disrupt the interrogation
process.

Similarly, German officials fear that they may be unable to convict any
members of the Hamburg cell that is believed to have helped plan the
September 11th attacks, on charges connected to the plot, in part because
the U.S. government refuses to produce bin al-Shibh and Mohammed as
witnesses. Last year, one of the Hamburg defendants, Mounir Motassadeq,
became the first person to be convicted in the planning of the attacks,
but his guilty verdict was overturned by an appeals court, which found the
evidence against him too weak.

Motassadeq is on trial again, but, in accordance with German law, he is no
longer being imprisoned. Although he is alleged to have overseen the
payment of funds into the accounts of the September 11th hijackers�and to
have been friendly with Mohamed Atta, who flew one of the planes that hit
the Twin Towers�he walks freely to and from the courthouse each day. The
U.S. has supplied the German court with edited summaries of testimony from
Mohammed and bin al-Shibh. But Gerhard Strate, Motassadeq�s defense
lawyer, told me, �We are not satisfied with the summaries. If you want to
find the truth, we need to know who has been interrogating them, and under
what circumstances. We don�t have any answers to this.� The refusal by the
U.S. to produce the witnesses in person, Strate said, �puts the court in a
ridiculous position.� He added, �I don�t know why they won�t produce the
witnesses. The first thing you think is that the U.S. government has
something to hide.�

In fact, the Justice Department recently admitted that it had something to
hide in relation to Maher Arar, the Canadian engineer. The government
invoked the rarely used �state secrets privilege� in a motion to dismiss a
lawsuit brought by Arar�s lawyers against the U.S. government. To go
forward in an open court, the government said, would jeopardize the
�intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the
United States.� Barbara Olshansky, the assistant legal director of the
Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, said that
government lawyers �are saying this case can�t be tried, and the
classified information on which they�re basing this argument can�t even be
shared with the opposing lawyers. It�s the height of arrogance�they think
they can do anything they want in the name of the global war on
terrorism.�


Nadja Dizdarevic is a thirty-year-old mother of four who lives in
Sarajevo. On October 21, 2001, her husband, Hadj Boudella, a Muslim of
Algerian descent, and five other Algerians living in Bosnia were arrested
after U.S. authorities tipped off the Bosnian government to an alleged
plot by the group to blow up the American and British Embassies in
Sarajevo. One of the suspects reportedly placed some seventy phone calls
to the Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in the days after September 11th.
Boudella and his wife, however, maintain that neither he nor several of
the other defendants knew the man who had allegedly contacted Zubaydah.
And an investigation by the Bosnian government turned up no confirmation
that the calls to Zubaydah were made at all, according to the men�s
American lawyers, Rob Kirsch and Stephen Oleskey.

At the request of the U.S., the Bosnian government held all six men for
three months, but was unable to substantiate any criminal charges against
them. On January 17, 2002, the Bosnian Supreme Court ruled that they
should be released. Instead, as the men left prison, they were handcuffed,
forced to put on surgical masks with nose clips, covered in hoods, and
herded into waiting unmarked cars by masked figures, some of whom appeared
to be members of the Bosnian special forces. Boudella�s wife had come to
the prison to meet her husband, and she recalled that she recognized him,
despite the hood, because he was wearing a new suit that she had brought
him the day before. �I will never forget that night,� she said. �It was
snowing. I was screaming for someone to help.� A crowd gathered, and tried
to block the convoy, but it sped off. The suspects were taken to a
military airbase and kept in a freezing hangar for hours; one member of
the group later claimed that he saw one of the abductors remove his
Bosnian uniform, revealing that he was in fact American. The U.S.
government has neither confirmed nor denied its role in the operation.

Six days after the abduction, Boudella�s wife received word that her
husband and the other men had been sent to Guant�namo. One man in the
group has alleged that two of his fingers were broken by U.S. soldiers.
Little is publicly known about the welfare of the others.

Boudella�s wife said that she was astounded that her husband could be
seized without charge or trial, at home during peacetime and after his own
government had exonerated him. The term �enemy combatant� perplexed her.
�He is an enemy of whom?� she asked. �In combat where?� She said that her
view of America had changed. �I have not changed my opinion about its
people, but unfortunately I have changed my opinion about its respect for
human rights,� she said. �It is no longer the leader in the world. It has
become the leader in the violation of human rights.�

In October, Boudella attempted to plead his innocence before the
Pentagon�s Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The C.S.R.T. is the
Pentagon�s answer to the Supreme Court�s ruling last year, over the Bush
Administration�s objections, that detainees in Guant�namo had a right to
challenge their imprisonment. Boudella was not allowed to bring a lawyer
to the proceeding. And the tribunal said that it was �unable to locate� a
copy of the Bosnian Supreme Court�s verdict freeing him, which he had
requested that it read. Transcripts show that Boudella stated, �I am
against any terrorist acts,� and asked, �How could I be part of an
organization that I strongly believe has harmed my people?� The tribunal
rejected his plea, as it has rejected three hundred and eighty-seven of
the three hundred and ninety-three pleas it has heard. Upon learning this,
Boudella�s wife sent the following letter to her husband�s American
lawyers:

        Dear Friends, I am so shocked by this information that it seems as if my
blood froze in my veins, I can�t breathe and I wish I was dead. I can�t
believe these things can happen, that they can come and take your husband
away, overnight and without reason, destroy your family, ruin your dreams
after three years of fight. . . . Please, tell me, what can I still do
for him? . . . Is this decision final, what are the legal remedies? Help
me to understand because, as far as I know the law, this is insane,
contrary to all possible laws and human rights. Please help me, I don�t
want to lose him.

___________
John Radsan, the former C.I.A. lawyer, offered a reply of sorts. �As a
society, we haven�t figured out what the rough rules are yet,� he said.
�There are hardly any rules for illegal enemy combatants. It�s the law of
the jungle. And right now we happen to be the strongest animal.�

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