After being secretly held by the CIA for months, an Iraqi who was among al-Qaeda's most senior and experienced operatives has been transported to the Guantanamo Bay military prison for terror suspects, officials said on Friday.
Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi is believed responsible for plotting cross-border attacks from Pakistan on US forces in Afghanistan and led an effort to assassinate Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf and UN officials, the Pentagon said.
The transfer of al-Iraqi, said to have been an associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, makes him the 15th so called "high-value" detainee known to have been handed over to military officials at the US Navy facility in Cuba from CIA control.
The arrangement continues to be controversial. People in the secret prisons are subject to harsh interrogation methods that human rights groups say amount to torture. US President George W. Bush's administration says the methods are legal and the interrogation necessary to protect the US from attack.
The Pentagon said al-Iraqi was born in Mosul, in northern Iraq, in 1961 and served in Iraq's military. Spokesman Bryan Whitman said he was a major al-Qaeda paramilitary leader in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, and in 2002 to 2004 led efforts to attack US forces in Afghanistan with guerrilla forces based in Pakistan.
Neither Whitman nor CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano would say where or when al-Iraqi was captured or by whom.
A US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the Iraqi man had been captured late last year in an operation that involved many people in more than one country.
CIA Director Michael Hayden wrote in a note to agency employees on Friday that the capture was a significant victory, and the CIA played a crucial role in efforts to locate al-Iraqi, an agency official who saw the note said.
In Pakistan, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao described the arrest of al-Iraqi as a welcome development but gave no indication that Pakistan played a role.
CIA spokesman Gimigliano called al-Iraqi "a veteran jihadist" and said the capture was good news.
He said of al-Qaeda and the capture: "It is still an extremely dangerous group. But it is evidence of success in terms of eroding their leadership."
It was not until last September that Bush acknowledged the CIA use of secret prisons around the world.
Officials said on Friday that al-Iraqi was captured well after that, but John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York said he was skeptical.
After Bush's announcement, Sifton said: "We thought there were others who remained in CIA custody or, if they weren't, they were temporarily being held in some sort of proxy custody by someone else."
His group says it has a list of 16 additional people who had been in CIA custody at some time and have not been accounted for.
The CIA has not commented on the list.
RISK REMAINS: An official said that with the US presidential elections so close, it is unclear if China would hold war games or keep its reaction to angry words The Ministry of National Defense said it was “on alert” as it detected a Chinese aircraft carrier group to Taiwan’s south yesterday amid concerns in Taiwan about the possibility of a new round of Chinese war games. The ministry said in a statement that a Chinese navy group led by the carrier Liaoning had entered waters near the Bashi Channel, which connects the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean and separates Taiwan from the Philippines. It said the carrier group was expected to enter the Western Pacific. The military is keeping a close watch on developments and “exercising an
FIVE-YEAR WINDOW? A defense institute CEO said a timeline for a potential Chinese invasion was based on expected ‘tough measures’ when Xi Jinping seeks a new term Most Taiwanese are willing to defend the nation against a Chinese attack, but the majority believe Beijing is unlikely to invade within the next five years, a poll showed yesterday. The poll carried out last month was commissioned by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei-based think tank, and released ahead of Double Ten National Day today, when President William Lai (賴清德) is to deliver a speech. China maintains a near-daily military presence around Taiwan and has held three rounds of war games in the past two years. CIA Director William Burns last year said that Chinese President Xi Jinping
RESILIENCE: Once the system is operational, there would be no need to worry about the risks posed by disasters or other emergencies on communication systems, an official said Taiwan would have 24-hour access to low Earth orbit satellites by the end of this month through service provided by Eutelsat OneWeb as part of the nation’s effort to enhance signal resilience, a Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) official said yesterday. Earlier this year the Ministry of Digital Affairs, which partnered with Chunghwa Telecom on a two-year project to boost signal resilience throughout the nation, said it reached a milestone when it made contact with OneWeb’s satellites half of the time. It expects to have the capability to maintain constant contact with the satellites and have nationwide coverage by the end
REACTION TO LAI: A former US official said William Lai took a step toward stability with his National Day speech and the question was how Beijing would respond US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday warned China against taking any “provocative” action on Taiwan after Beijing’s reaction to President William Lai’s (賴清德) speech on Double Ten National Day on Thursday. Blinken, speaking in Laos after an ASEAN East Asia Summit, called the speech by Lai, in which he vowed to “resist annexation,” a “regular exercise.” “China should not use it in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions,” Blinken told reporters. “On the contrary, we want to reinforce — and many other countries want to reinforce — the imperative of preserving the status quo, and neither party taking any
RSS