~ U.S. TORTURERS HELD PRISONERS WITH NO EVIDENCE ~

http://www.the-signal.com/News/ViewS...p?storyID=4755


Israel Hires Ex-O.J. Prosecutor
Canyon Country man is ?just a translator? and had ?no say-so in anything? at
Abu Ghraib, wife says

5/30/2004
Leon Worden City Editor


John B. Israel has hired a prominent Los Angeles law firm to fend off
allegations that he shared responsibility for the abuse last fall at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq.
Israel, 48, of Canyon Country, hired attorney Christopher Darden and an
associate late last week, his wife told The Signal on Saturday.
She said her husband will not be a scapegoat.
Darden, a onetime Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, is best
known for having been a prosecutor in the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
Darden subsequently went into private practice.
Darden said he is "not making any statements whatsoever at this time."
From Oct. 14 until earlier this year, Israel was a civilian contractor for
Army intelligence at the prison. He is one of four men accused by Army Maj.
Gen. Antonio Taguba as having been ?directly or indirectly responsible for the
abuses at Abu Ghraib.?
But his wife, Roza Israel, said he had no authority there.
?He?s just a translator,? she said Saturday at her home. ?He is not an
interrogator. He has no say-so in anything.?
She said the blame is being misdirected.
?If they need to find a scapegoat, it?s not going to be him,? she said.
?His job was translating. That?s it.?
She refused to disclose Israel?s whereabouts other than to say he is in the
United States. Last week his employer, SOS Interpreting Ltd., with offices in
New York City and Fairfax, Va., said he was unavailable.
Roza Israel said her husband ?went (to Iraq) to serve his country, to
protect our children, your children, everyone?s children.?
?It didn?t work out that way,? she said.
They have three daughters.
?The truth will come out soon,? she said, adding, ?I don?t like the media
to make a big issue out of nothing.?
Roza said her family has lived in Santa Clarita since 1988. They have owned
their current home since it was built in 1996.
She wouldn?t say what her husband did for a living prior to his translating
job at Abu Ghraib.
A neighbor said she knew him as ?a computer guy? before October and
described him last week as ?a very nice man.? She said he wanted to return to
Iraq when they last spoke in late April.
?He was really bent on going back. He said, ?I want to help my people. It?s
my duty to try to help them.? He?s a Christian,? the neighbor said.
Israel was born in Baghdad in 1955. He is a U.S. citizen, said a spokesman
for Titan Corp., an intelligence firm that subcontracted the prison translation
work to SOS.
Taguba recommended a formal inquiry to determine the extent of Israel?s
culpability. Defense Department and Justice Department officials could not
confirm Friday that any investigation is underway.

Additional articles by Leon Worden (for 'The Signal') appear at the following
URL:

http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/iraq/

Additional material (articles and similar) related to the above appear at the
following URL:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=15767

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Civilian contractors suspected in abuses in a legal gray area

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/w...9-1n29law.html



By David Washburn and Bruce V. Bigelow

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

May 29, 2004 An untested law that experts say contains significant loopholes
appears to be the best weapon the Justice Department has to prosecute civilian
contractors allegedly involved in the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Although one U.S. soldier has been convicted and six others face military
charges of assault, mistreatment and indecent acts for suspected actions at the
prison near Baghdad, the legal standard is far less certain for prosecuting
American civilian contractors who are implicated. Legal experts say the statute
that most probably would apply to civilian contractors, including those from
San Diego's Titan Corp., is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of
2000. However, the government has yet to convict anyone under the law, and its
authors say it wasn't written with a case like this in mind. U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft announced May 21 that the Justice Department was
investigating the involvement of civilian contractors in the Abu Ghraib
scandal. Later that day, Titan fired Adel L. Nakhla, a linguist identified as a
suspect in an Army report on the prison abuses. Nakhla told Army investigators
that he witnessed abuses by military personnel, and The Wall Street Journal
has reported that he admitted to sexually humiliating prisoners. There is less
information on John B. Israel, a Titan subcontractor identified in the Army
investigation as "either directly or indirectly" responsible for some abuses.
Titan officials have declined to comment, except to say they will take
necessary action if their employees are found to have engaged in any
wrongdoing. Two laws that aim to prevent wartime atrocities, the Torture
Victims Protection Act of 1991 and the War Crimes Act of 1996, can be applied
to civilian contractors, say legal experts and human-rights advocates. But
experts say those laws carry a relatively high threshold and convicting
civilians could be difficult under either act if the contractors played only
supporting roles in the abuses. It is also highly unlikely that Iraqi courts
have jurisdiction over U.S. contractors. The workers are protected by what is
known as a status-of-forces agreement, which basically says U.S. contractors
are immune to the Iraqi legal process, said David Hammond, a partner at
Washington, D.C.-based Crowell & Moring, a firm specializing in government
contract law. That leaves the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which
enables the Justice Department to prosecute U.S. civilians who commit crimes on
foreign soil while employed by the Pentagon or while accompanying military
personnel. But using the act to prosecute civilian abusers of Iraqi prisoners
was not something congressional sponsors considered when they drafted the
legislation. "The last thing we envisioned was a case like this," said Michael
Brumas, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who wrote the bill.
Sessions, a former U.S. attorney, sponsored the legislation in 2000 after a
judge ruled that there was no applicable law for prosecuting an Army sergeant's
husband accused of molesting his stepdaughter at a U.S. base in Germany. The
law has gone untested since President Clinton signed it in October 2000, with
the first case to be prosecuted under the act scheduled to begin July 13 before
U.S. District Judge Nora Manella in Los Angeles. Latasha Lorraine Arnt, 24, was
indicted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act for second-degree
murder after the stabbing death of her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Matthias
A. Arnt III, at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Because she was a civilian
accompanying her husband overseas, Arnt could not be tried under the Uniform
Code of Military Justice. Legal experts point to caveats in the law that could
pose problems for the Justice Department in the Iraq contractor cases if
prosecutors decide there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. For example, the
law applies only to felony crimes that would carry a sentence of more than a
year in prison if they were committed in the United States. If there were clear
and convincing evidence of physical abuse by the contractors, the government
could bring felony charges. But evidence on the contractors thus far seems
murky, Hammond and others said. "If all someone did was interpret, then how do
you deal with that person?" asked Michael Nardotti Jr., a former judge advocate
general of the Army. "Is strictly the humiliation of a prisoner enough for a
felony?" Military law is much clearer, and specifically addresses criminal
behavior during interrogations. Nardotti said the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, which covers the soldiers involved in the abuses, allows for charges
such as cruelty, maltreatment and dereliction of duty. Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits
received the maximum sentence of a year in prison and a bad-conduct discharge
May 19 for his role in the abuse after pleading guilty on all three military
charges at a special court-martial held in Baghdad. As part of his plea, Sivits
agreed to testify against other soldiers charged in the mistreatment of Iraqis
at Abu Ghraib. However, there are no parallels in federal law covering
civilians, Nardotti said. Justice Department representatives declined to answer
questions concerning the investigation or which statutes government lawyers
might use to prosecute the contractors. Legal experts say another loophole in
the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act is that the law covers
contractors only for the Defense Department. That omission is important because
U.S. authorities are investigating at least two cases involving Central
Intelligence Agency contract interrogators. "Obviously, (the act) was passed to
plug a hole," Hammond said. "It plugged it for (the Defense Department), but
doesn't appear to plug it for other agencies." This could pose a problem if the
Justice Department decides to prosecute civilian interrogators working for CACI
International, a Virginia-based defense contractor, who have been implicated in
the abuses. It appears the Army hired the interrogators under an umbrella
contract issued by the Interior Department. However, the experts said the
Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act most probably applies because the
interrogators were clearly accompanying military personnel. "I think the
statute has to be read in a common-sense way," said Eugene Fidell, a military
law expert at the Washington-based law firm of Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell.
"The Army was sufficiently involved in this contract. The Army was the user of
the services." Also, the law may not apply to third-country nationals working
as contractors, such as Titan linguists from Jordan, Egypt or even Canada. With
more than 20,000 contractors working in Iraq, the Defense Department should
have anticipated such issues, said Daniel Guttman, a lawyer and fellow at the
Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University.
Failure to do so is an example of the poor planning for postwar Iraq, he said.
"It's one thing not to have intelligence on the ground for (weapons of mass
destruction), but we have plenty of lawyers in Washington who knew for years
that this was a problem that we needed to address," Guttman said. U.S. Rep.
David Price, D-N.C., has proposed legislation that would close some of the
loopholes. Also, the Defense Department in March proposed a rule change that
would "address issues related to contract performance outside the United
States." However, Guttman and others are not sure how the rule could be applied
to cases like the Abu Ghraib abuses. "This is going to be a fascinating chapter
in the legal history of the war on terrorism," Fidell said.
David Washburn: (619) 542-4582;

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Pentagon Acknowledges Incomplete Prison Report Sent to Senate
The Associated Press
Published: May 26, 2004




WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon said Wednesday that it inadvertently failed
to give the Senate Armed Services Committee a full copy of the 6,000-page
Army investigation into the prison abuse scandal.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said no critical information was
withheld and that Defense Department would submit the missing documents to
the panel.

Chairman John Warner, R-Va., sent a memo to committee members Wednesday
saying that he continues "to believe that the department is working in good
faith with the committee to provide a complete copy of the Taguba report."

The report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found "numerous incidents of
sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted on Iraqis held at
Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad between last October through December. The
committee has held three hearings about the abuses and is planning more.

Committee staff raised concerns last week that they hadn't received 2,000
pages of the report and its annexes.

Di Rita said the committee was provided with a CD-ROM of the report and
"there was a disconnect between the CD-ROM and the printed submission."

"The perception that was left was unfortunate, which is that we were somehow
trying to withhold something from the committee. That was certainly not the
case," he said.

In some cases, Di Rita said, the material was improperly labeled. In others,
it was material that "wasn't unique to the investigation," such as a field
manual, he added.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Powell A. Moore sent a letter to Warner on
Tuesday, saying the Pentagon has contacted Taguba in Kuwait and asked him to
provide the missing material. The Pentagon was also copying "as many of the
relevant documents as are available in the Pentagon" and would send them to
the committee, he said.

AP-ES-05-26-04 1843EDT

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Sound familiar (to Abu Ghraib)?:

Briton says he was held in Israeli dungeon

Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv and Duncan Campbell
Friday May 28, 2004
The Guardian

A British journalist released from Israeli custody yesterday said that he had
been held in a dungeon with excrement on the walls following his arrest on
suspicion of espionage.
Peter Hounam was detained on Wednesday by the Israeli security agency on
suspicion that he had obtained classified information from Mordechai Vanunu,
the Israeli technician who was jailed after revealing Israel's nuclear
capabilities to the world.

The journalist was released on condition that he leave Israel within 24 hours,
and will not be allowed to return .

Speaking outside the Jerusalem jail where he had been held, Hounam said Israel
should be ashamed of itself for arresting him. He complained of being kept
overnight in solitary confinement in a "dungeon with excrement on the walls"
and limited to two hours' sleep.

Hounam, 60, said he was questioned for more than four hours by Israeli
security. "They accused me of spying on nuclear secrets and aggravated
espionage. It is laughable," he said.

Senior sources at the security agency Shin Bet said that Hounam had organised a
covert operation to interview Mr Vanunu in breach of his release regulations.

After 18 years in prison, Mr Vanunu was released last month, but was forbidden
from speaking about his work at Israel's nuclear reactor and from contact with
foreigners.

Hounam was the Sunday Times journalist who interviewed Vanunu in 1986 and then
published his revelations of Israel's nuclear programme.

According to Shin Bet, Hounam paid an Israeli woman, Yael Lotan, £1,000 to
interview Mr Vanunu on his behalf. Hounam, with the help of BBC employees,
edited and duplicated the tapes.

Shin Bet said they had retrieved five copies of the interview but were not sure
if other copies had been smuggled out of the country or distributed via the
internet.

Shin Bet's source said that the interview focused on Mr Vanunu's history, from
his childhood to his work at Israel's nuclear facility in the Negev desert.

The tapes were still to be analysed to see if Mr Vanunu revealed any secrets or
broke Israeli law, the source said. Mr Vanunu could be made to return to prison
if he is deemed to have broken any of the conditions for his release.

Hounam denied that Mr Vanunu had passed on any secrets. "All the information
that Mordechai Vanunu knew about in 1986 was published at the time," Hounam
said. "He has no more secrets, and it's time the authorities here realised
that."

He added: "The key fight is the fight to get Mordechai Vanunu the right to
leave this country, start a new life in America, if that's where he wants to
go, and stop these ridiculous restrictions."

Seeking to track to down all copies of the interview, Shin Bet also detained
Chris Mitchell, a BBC journalist, as he tried to leave Israel with tapes of the
interview.

Hiyari Sadi, a British free lance journalist, "consented" to give Shin Bet his
copies of the interview, the security sources said.

Hounam was arrested in Tel Aviv on Wednesday as he was on his way to meet a
peace activist. He has been in Israel since Mr Vanunu's release, working with a
television crew making a film for the BBC about the case.
Mr Vanunu is barred from leaving Israel for at least a year and is staying in
St George's Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem. He has received death threats and
is anxious to settle in the US with his adoptive parents.

Yesterday Hounam's wife, Hilarie, said from the couple's home in Aberfeldy,
Perthshire, that he was "overjoyed" to be released. She said she believed the
arrest sprang from the Israeli authorities' continuing campaign against Mr
Vanunu. "They know he has no more secrets," she said. "It's vengeance, isn't
it?"

Hounam angered the Israeli authorities by publishing the identity of the Mossad
agent who lured Mr Vanunu to Italy where he was kidnapped, drugged, bound and
shipped back to Israel. In his book, The Woman from Mossad, Hounam identified
the woman as Cheryl Bentov and tracked her down to Florida.

Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty International researcher, witnessed Mr Hounam's
arrest in the garden of the Jerusalem Hotel.

"Peter Hounam was brought into the garden by five plain-clothes members of the
security forces or police," she said. "He broke away from them and ran over to
my table. He looked very concerned and just had the time to tell me: 'I am
being arrested, please tell the Sunday Times, please let people know'."

The Foreign Press Association, which represents international news
organisations in Israel, welcomed Hounam's release but said the arrest of
journalists was "a most dangerous threat to any democracy".

Hounam's lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, called the detention a farce, and said he had
not violated any of the restrictions on Mr Vanunu. "He was arrested as part of
the security establishment's never-ending obsession with Vanunu," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Sto...226520,00.html