A former Army Ranger hired by the CIA to conduct interrogations was charged with assaulting an Afghan detainee who died after two days of beatings, the first time civilian charges have been brought in the investigation of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A four-count grand jury indictment was handed up Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina, against David Passaro, 38, for the death of Abdul Wali on June 21 last year.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said Passaro was accused of "brutally assaulting" Wali at a US base in Asadabad, Afghanistan.
Asked why Passaro was not charged with torture or other more serious offenses, Ashcroft said the indictment was based on the best evidence available. He said more serious charges could be brought if new evidence is found.
The charges were brought on the same day that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters he ordered an alleged member of an Iraqi militant group held without notifying international authorities in a timely fashion, as required under the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of prisoners. He said he did so at the request of CIA Director George Tenet, adding such a decision would be made to prevent the prisoner's interrogation from being interrupted.
The detainee was never held at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and is not there now, Rumsfeld said. He did not offer specifics about the detainee's whereabouts.
An intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that in January, the CIA asked where the detainee was and the military couldn't locate him. Rumsfeld disputed that.
"He wasn't lost in the system," Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon, adding "there is no question at all" that he received humane treatment.
The Iraqi prisoner was described by Rumsfeld as a high-ranking member of the Ansar al-Islam group, which is believed to have orchestrated some of the bombings and guerrilla warfare there.
An intelligence official said the detainee was captured in late June or early July by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and taken to an undisclosed location outside of Iraq because he was believed to be involved in terrorist activities. The detainee stayed at that location from early July until the end of October, when the CIA got legal guidance that he should be considered an unlawful combatant and returned to Iraq, the official said.
He now will be given an identification number, as required, with formal notification to the International Committee of the Red Cross to follow.
The Bush administration has been stung by harsh criticism at home and abroad over mistreatment of prisoners, most notably at Abu Ghraib.
In a sworn statement to Army investigators obtained by USA Today, Army Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Jordan, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib when abuses occurred, said he was under intense pressure from the White House, Pentagon and CIA last fall to get better information from detainees. He also said he had worked out a procedure with CIA interrogators to hide five or six inmates from Red Cross inspectors in October, the newspaper reported in Friday editions.
Jordan's statement said he was reminded of the need to improve intelligence "many, many, many times" and the pressure included a visit to the prison by an aide to White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the paper reported.
To rebut Jordan's account, the White House arranged an interview with White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend before, but in anticipation of, the newspaper's publication. Townsend, who last fall was Rice's deputy for combating terrorism, said she visited Abu Ghraib and even walked through a cellblock but "we never discussed interrogation. We never discussed interrogation techniques. That wasn't the focus."
"I did not go there to pressure them to do anything they weren't doing," Townsend added. "I really wanted to understand how they were taking the information they had and what they were doing with it so that I could ... think through how we could make that dissemination of information most effective."
Wali, the prisoner who died last year in Afghanistan, was described as having participated in rocket attacks against a US base in mountainous northeast Afghanistan about 8km from the border with Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are active in the region, Ashcroft said.
US officials wanted to talk to Wali, and on June 18 last year he came to the base gate to surrender, according to court documents. Wali died in a cell at the base after two days of beatings by Passaro, who used "his hands and feet and a large flashlight," the indictment alleged.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese