Global News Journal

Tanzanian police cast shadow over Guantanamo trial

By Basil Katz Throughout the trial, defense lawyers have been suggesting to the jury that Tanzanian witnesses who testified against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first suspect from Guantanamo to face a criminal court, were in some way intimidated by the Tanzanian national police and fear reprisals back home.

Prosecutors deny the witnesses have been under any pressure and say the Tanzanian police escorts who accompanied them on their plane ride to New York were provided due to the complexity of international travel and the high stakes nature of the case.

Ghailani, 36, a Tanzanian from Zanzibar, has been on trial in Manhattan on charges he conspired in the 1998 al Qaeda car bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

The lawyers finished closing arguments Tuesday and the jury begins deliberations Wednesday.

In his closing, defense attorney Peter Quijano urged the jury to wonder “why is the Tanzanian national police here?”

“Why do you need the Tanzanian national police hovering, babysitting, on the same flight, in the same hotel?” Quijano asked. “Why are they shadowing these people?”

The Tanzanian police played an important role in the days and months after the bombings, sharing evidence and witnesses with the FBI, court documents and testimony showed.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

“My Life with the Taliban” – on study and Islamic values

In  "My Life with the Taliban",  Abdul Salam Zaeef -- who fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and later served in the Taliban government before it was ousted in 2001 -- writes of how he longed to escape the trappings of office and instead follow in the footsteps of his father as the Imam of a mosque, learning and teaching the Koran.

"It is work that has no connection with the world's affairs. It is a calling of intellectual dignity away from the dangers and temptations of power. All my life, even as a boy, I was always happiest when studying and learning things. To work in government positions means a life surrounded by corruption and injustice, and therein is found the misery of mankind," he writes in his memoirs, newly translated and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn.

Zaeef became best known as the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks -- he was then arrested and sent to Guantanamo -- and his memoirs provide a unique insight into the developments which led to the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.  That alone makes it a must-read, providing an alternative and very personal account to set alongside Western concepts of the Taliban -- more closely associated with their human rights record, their treatment of women, and their refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States after 9/11.

But the ideological heart of the book lies in his belief in the value of study (Talib means student) and his unswerving faith that only an Islamic system based on the implementation of sharia can drag Afghanistan out of its current misery.  Given the current discussion about whether a political settlement can be reached with the Taliban, it is perhaps his representation of this internal faith, as much as the outward trappings of jihad, that merit the most serious attention.

Zaeef was born in 1968 to a poor but educated family in Afghanistan, was orphaned as a boy, and later fled with his relatives to Pakistan shortly before the Soviet invasion in 1979.  At the age of 15, without telling his family, he ran off to join the jihad against the Soviets.  Countering the commonly held view that the movement emerged -- or was created by Pakistan -- only in 1994, he writes that the Taliban were very much present and active in the 1980s.

A group of religious scholars and students, they stood out from the other mujahideen because of their piety and their commitment that those who fought with them must continue their studies even on the battlefield. "The Taliban were different," Zaeef writes. "Jihad was not just about fighting; in our view there had to be a strong educational perspective as well as a provision for justice."

Despite the gruelling conditions, the injuries and deaths, these early years had an innocence to them, forging bonds among the Taliban that would endure through decades of war.  "It's hard to believe, maybe, but we were happy."  One night, he remembers Mullah Muhammad Omar, who lost an eye in the fighting and later became the leader of the movement, singing a "ghazal" - a form of poetry more commonly associated nowadays with Sufi Islam than with the austere brand of Islam represented by the Taliban.

A return of “ignore Germany” under Obama?

It’s not quite as bad as it was back in 2003 when Gerhard Schroeder publicly chastised George W. Bush for invading Iraq and Condi Rice introduced a new policy in the White House called ”ignore Germany” (France was to be punished and Russia forgiven for their opposition to the war).

But relations between Berlin and Washington are probably as poor as they’ve been since Angela Merkel replaced Schroeder in 2005 and set Germany on a course of reconciliation with the United States.

After becoming accustomed to dinners in the White House, barbecues and back-rubs with Bush in his Europe-friendly second term, Merkel and her advisers in Berlin are agonising over a series of slights (perceived or real) from Obama since he came to office in January. 

First came the message from Washington that Obama might not continue the regular videoconferences Merkel held with Bush. In the end the White House came around, but it took two months to set one up.

Berlin also got the cold shoulder when Merkel tried to arrange a trip to Washington ahead of a G20 meeting in London at the start of April. Messages from Berlin with proposed dates went unanswered for days until Merkel’s team abandoned the idea completely, an official close to her told me.

This week came the latest signal, at least from Berlin’s perspective, that the Obama team is not taking German concerns seriously. 

The rescue of Opel, the German unit of U.S. carmaker General Motors, has become the central theme of a slow-to-get-started German election campaign that pits Merkel against her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. A misstep on Opel and Merkel’s bid for a second term could be doomed.

Should Europe help Obama out over Guantanamo?

 Barely noticed, the United States sent a top diplomat to  Europe this week to seek help on an important commitment by President Barack Obama — to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.     The trip by veteran envoy Dan Fried to Brussels and Prague is part of efforts to persuade European states to take in some of the 241 remaining detainees at the prison, synonomous for many with rights abuses in the “war on terror” under U.S. President George W. Bush.     Europe has long called for the jail to be shut down, but only a few countries — such as France, Portugal and Albania — have  volunteered to resettle any inmates from third countries such as Afghanistan or China.      Time is steadily running out if Obama is to achieve his goal of clearing and closing the prison by next January.  A perceived  lack of European help could sour the much-vaunted new start in transatlantic ties which both sides say they want.    But many European officials are asking why they should help the United States out of a hole it dug itself into.     The main problem does not involve the small number of  so-called high-value  terror suspects in the camp — they will remain in detention and Washington does not seriously expect anyone to come forward and take them off its hands.     Nor does it involve the 17 detainees who have already been cleared for release. The really hot issue is the fate of  the remaining detainees who are not high risk but have not been given the full all-clear.      European officials fear the affair could turn into a legal and political nightmare. Who will take which detainees? Given that much of Europe is now border-free, how will one country reassure its neighbours if it agrees to resettle inmates? And doesn’t the fact that European states have different national policies on surveillance and detention pose extra problems?     Worse still, the political fall-out could be devastating. If , for example, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner carried out an attack in Germany just before an election this year, how would Chancellor Angela Merkel explain it to voters? 

Washington knows it won’t be easy to get the Europeans on board. But it says it would be hypocritical for Europe now not to help after all its criticism of Guantanamo.

It also points out that some of the Europeans who are now raising concerns over security were not so long ago saying  most of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were innocent.     Washington hopes to encourage EU justice and home affairs ministers to at least agree a common line on the need to help it with Guantanamo at a regular meeting scheduled for June. Then it will approach individual countries for negotiations on resettling specific cases.     Is it time for Europe tocome forward and help Obama or is this one file on which it is advised to stay clear?

Restarting life in Albania after Guantanamo Bay

By Benet Koleka Abu Bakkr Qassim, a Uighur from far western China, has seen a number of the world’s more remote corners for a middle aged fruit vendor who is now learning how to make pizzas for a living. He is one of four Uighurs living in Albania since 2006 because they could not stay in the United States nor go to China which sees them as terrorists.

Found innocent of terrorism after three and a half years in the U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he feels vindicated by President Barack Obama’s decision to close down the notorious prison eventually. “I was happy. First of all, President Obama understood the mistake that happened to us in Guantanamo. We want him to repair the mistake although it is not easy,” said Qassim, 39.

Last month, Obama ordered that the Guantanamo military prison close within a year. It has become a symbol of the harsh U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects in a murky system of international prisons under ex-President George W. Bush. Qassim has not talked to 17 fellow Uighurs still at Guantanamo but said they tell their families they are living under much better conditions now. “They have a big garden and can open the doors themselves,” he told Reuters.

These other men are in limbo at Guantanamo although they have been cleared for release as no country, including Albania, is willing to take them. Although he said he was not tortured — in contrast to some who have been released from Guantanamo — Qassim described very difficult conditions during his time at Guantanamo.

“Even for an animal it is bad to be shut in a cage of two square metres. What I had thought about America, with all my admiration, was not the cage at Guantanamo,” he added. “I told the U.S. soldier: ‘You are not America’. The commander told him other things, but he threw the Koran in the toilet. No one can do that. It means going to extremes.”

A native of Ghulja, a city of one million in China’s Xinjiang province, Qassim spent seven months in jail in 1998 for what the Chinese termed religious propaganda. He said he was later found innocent, but was kept under watch. Many Muslim Uighurs, who are from far western China, seek greater autonomy for the region. Beijing has waged a campaign against what it calls their violent separatist activities.

On December 31, 2000, Qassim left his wife and toddler son seeking opportunity abroad. He ended up with other Uighurs in an Afghan village where they were eventually captured and handed over to American forces. Qassim said they rejoiced to hear they were being handed over to the Americans because the U.S. had backed the Uighurs. “They told us not to worry because they had come for the Arabs and they would not hand us over to the Chinese,” he said. “After six months, were were flown to Guantanamo. For three and a half years there, they kept repeating they had made a mistake with us but we had to stay there.”

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

The other Guantanamo

U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered the Guantanamo military prison closed within the year, but what about the detention centre in Bagram, the U.S. military base in Afghanistan, which has an equally murky legal status ?

An estimated 600 detainees are held there, without any charge and many for over six years, rights activists say. That makes it more than twice the number held in Guantanamo, and according to military personnel who know both facilities, it is much more spartan and with lesser privileges as this report in the New York Times says.

Few detainees have had access to lawyers, and there was no question ever of allowing journalists or human rights advocates into the facility. I lived on the military base for four weeks as part of a group of journalists covering the war in 2002 and we had no clue where the prison was located, and we would keep guessing which one of the cavernous Soviet-built aircraft hangars the detainees were kept in.

Since then, the New York Times says, the population at the Bagram prison has expanded substantially, especially after the Bush administration largely halted the movement of prisoners to the Cuban facility in September 2004, making the Afghan centre the preferred alternative.

Indeed there is a U.S. plan to expand the prison complex to hold 1,100 "enemy combatants" - prisoners who cannot see lawyers, have no trials and never see any evidence there may be against them, Britain's Telegraph said. The one concession that has happened over the past year is that every Monday families gather in a Red Cross compound in Kabul for a glimpse by live video of brothers, sons and husbands who have disappeared into the feared detention centre in Bagram.

The U.S. military says the detainees are Taliban and al Qaeda fighters who must be kept off the battlefield. But human rights lawyers say the prison also holds scores of innocent people, many seized after tip-offs from feuding rivals in a viciously warring tribal society, as the Telegraph story says.