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Military: Iraqi detainee plotted chemical attack in Pakistan
By Robert Burns, AP Military Writer
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 | No comments posted.
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials say one terror suspect imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay is a former Iraqi soldier and al-Qaida member who plotted with an Iraqi intelligence agent in August 1998 to attack the American and other foreign embassies in Pakistan with chemical weapons.
There is no public record of such an attempt being made, although the Islamabad embassy staff was reduced that month amid heightened security concerns following the Aug. 7 truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. On Aug. 20 the United States responded with cruise missile attacks on al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and a target in Sudan.
The Iraqi, whose identity is being concealed by the Pentagon on privacy grounds, is further described as a "trusted agent" of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and a member of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. He was arrested in Pakistan in July 2002.
These accusations are contained in a two-page "summary of evidence" presented to the Iraqi for his appearance before a Combatant Status Review Board at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba late last year. The evidence was meant to convince the three-member review board - which has heard all 558 detainee cases at Guantanamo Bay - that the government properly classified him as an "enemy combatant."
The summary was released to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. As a matter of policy, the government will not disclose which of the 558 detainees were among the 38 the review boards determined were not enemy combatants.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Daryl Borgquist, a spokesman for the Combatant Status Review Board, said Tuesday he could not elaborate on the document pertaining to the Iraqi's case nor the source of the information in it, because the summary of evidence was derived from classified information.
In a July 29, 2004, memo spelling out procedures for conducting review board hearings, the Navy wrote that the government's evidence against detainees should be presumed to be "genuine and accurate."
Navy Secretary Gordon England, who is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's designated overseer of the review process, was asked at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday about the reliability of the government's evidence against detainees generally, but not specifically about the Iraqi's case.
"They're the facts as certainly as we know them," he said. "They're fact."
Among the few details made public about the Iraqi is that he is 39 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay since October 2002, three months after he was reported captured in Pakistan.
The assertion that the Iraqi was involved in a plot against embassies in Pakistan is not further substantiated in the document. It states only that he traveled to Pakistan in August 1998 with a member of Iraqi intelligence "for the purpose of" striking at embassies with chemical mortars.
The CIA-led Iraq Survey Group that spent months in Iraq investigating its weapons programs wrote in its final report last September that an insurgent group in Iraq had managed to build nine chemical mortars in 2003 using malathion pesticide, although they apparently were not used. Malathion is in a highly toxic class of pesticides that affect the central nervous, cardiovascular and respiratory systems.
The Pentagon document on the Iraqi detainee says that from 1997 to 1998 he "acted as a trusted agent for Osama bin Laden, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al-Qaida leader in Oman, Iraq and Afghanistan."
There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him traveling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence.
The document makes no mention of the Iraqi's alleged activities after August 1998, except to say that in November 2000 the Taliban issued him a Kalishnikov rifle, and he was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan in July 2002.
According to the summary of evidence, a Taliban recruiter in Baghdad persuaded the Iraqi to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994. It says he served in the Iraqi infantry from 1987-89.
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On the Net:
Description of the "summary of evidence" document at: http://wid.ap.org/050329detainees.pdf
Review Board at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant-Tribunals.html
Review procedures at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2004/d20040730comb.pdf
There is no public record of such an attempt being made, although the Islamabad embassy staff was reduced that month amid heightened security concerns following the Aug. 7 truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. On Aug. 20 the United States responded with cruise missile attacks on al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and a target in Sudan.
The Iraqi, whose identity is being concealed by the Pentagon on privacy grounds, is further described as a "trusted agent" of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and a member of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. He was arrested in Pakistan in July 2002.
These accusations are contained in a two-page "summary of evidence" presented to the Iraqi for his appearance before a Combatant Status Review Board at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba late last year. The evidence was meant to convince the three-member review board - which has heard all 558 detainee cases at Guantanamo Bay - that the government properly classified him as an "enemy combatant."
The summary was released to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. As a matter of policy, the government will not disclose which of the 558 detainees were among the 38 the review boards determined were not enemy combatants.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Daryl Borgquist, a spokesman for the Combatant Status Review Board, said Tuesday he could not elaborate on the document pertaining to the Iraqi's case nor the source of the information in it, because the summary of evidence was derived from classified information.
In a July 29, 2004, memo spelling out procedures for conducting review board hearings, the Navy wrote that the government's evidence against detainees should be presumed to be "genuine and accurate."
Navy Secretary Gordon England, who is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's designated overseer of the review process, was asked at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday about the reliability of the government's evidence against detainees generally, but not specifically about the Iraqi's case.
"They're the facts as certainly as we know them," he said. "They're fact."
Among the few details made public about the Iraqi is that he is 39 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay since October 2002, three months after he was reported captured in Pakistan.
The assertion that the Iraqi was involved in a plot against embassies in Pakistan is not further substantiated in the document. It states only that he traveled to Pakistan in August 1998 with a member of Iraqi intelligence "for the purpose of" striking at embassies with chemical mortars.
The CIA-led Iraq Survey Group that spent months in Iraq investigating its weapons programs wrote in its final report last September that an insurgent group in Iraq had managed to build nine chemical mortars in 2003 using malathion pesticide, although they apparently were not used. Malathion is in a highly toxic class of pesticides that affect the central nervous, cardiovascular and respiratory systems.
The Pentagon document on the Iraqi detainee says that from 1997 to 1998 he "acted as a trusted agent for Osama bin Laden, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al-Qaida leader in Oman, Iraq and Afghanistan."
There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him traveling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence.
The document makes no mention of the Iraqi's alleged activities after August 1998, except to say that in November 2000 the Taliban issued him a Kalishnikov rifle, and he was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan in July 2002.
According to the summary of evidence, a Taliban recruiter in Baghdad persuaded the Iraqi to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994. It says he served in the Iraqi infantry from 1987-89.
---
On the Net:
Description of the "summary of evidence" document at: http://wid.ap.org/050329detainees.pdf
Review Board at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant-Tribunals.html
Review procedures at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2004/d20040730comb.pdf
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