A key investigator in an espionage case against a Syrian-born former interpreter at the Guantanamo Bay prison now faces criminal charges himself, including rape, sodomy and fondling girls, the Air Force said.
Technical Sergeant Marc Palmosina, who assisted the lead investigator in the case of Ahmad Al Halabi, was charged on May 26 with the crimes near Travis and near Kadena Air Base in Japan as long ago as 1998. It is unclear how many victims were involved, said Air Force spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Cassidy.
Palmosina is also accused of mishandling classified documents in 2001 and last year. Cassidy said the investigation into these crimes is ongoing, and that the charges have nothing to do with the case against Al Halabi, a senior airman.
The charges against Palmosina were revealed on Tuesday outside court by Al Halabi's civilian defense lawyer, Donald Rehkopf Jr., who has accused the Air Force of sloppy investigative work that resulted in unwarranted charges against his client. The Air Force later released a document outlining the charges against Palmosina.
In May, Rehkopf filed a motion asking for the dismissal of all charges against Al Halabi, who faces 17 criminal counts including attempted espionage, lying and misconduct. If convicted of the most serious charges, he could be sentenced to life in a military prison. The military judge was likely to rule on the matter yesterday.
"The case was poorly investigated from the beginning," Rehkopf said on Tuesday during a court break. "The more we dig into it, the less evidence there is."
Al Halabi, 25, was a supply clerk at the Travis base until the military's demand for Arabic speakers increased sharply and he was sent to Guantanamo. He was arrested last July as he prepared to leave for Syria, where he said he planned to marry his girlfriend.
Palmosina helped the lead investigator in the case, Special Agent Lance Wega. Rehkopf alleges that Wega and others drank beer, failed to wear gloves and rifled evidence.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS