Lost in the media angst-fest over Judith Miller today and the continuing Aruba agonistes (not to mention London's Olympic defeat of the French,) was a pretty important headline: According to a wire story that ran in WaPo today:
The U.S. military in Iraq has detained five Americans for suspected insurgent activity, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. The five have not been charged or had access to a lawyer, and face an uncertain legal future. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to identify any of them, citing the military's policy of not providing the names of detainees. They are in custody at one of the three U.S.-run prisons in Iraq. One was identified by his family and U.S. law enforcement officials as Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-American filmmaker and U.S. Navy veteran. The NY Times ran an in-depth story on Kar today:
Mr. Kar, 44, a naturalized American born in Iran, followed his dream where few others might have gone. In mid-May, he traveled to Iraq with an Iranian cameraman to film archaeological sites around Babylon. After a taxi they were in was stopped in Baghdad, the two men were arrested by Iraqi security forces, who found what they suspected might be bomb parts in the vehicle. Since then, Mr. Kar has been held in what his relatives and their lawyers describe as a frightening netherworld of American military detention in Iraq - charged with no
crime but nonetheless unable to gain his freedom or even tell his family where he is being held.
He is one of four men with dual American citizenship who have been detained in Iraq beginning in April, a Defense Department official said. But none of the others - all Iraqi-Americans suspected of ties to the insurgency - nor an accused Jordanian-American terrorist operative captured in a raid last year appear to have had anything like Mr. Kar's ties to the United States.
The ACLU is suing to get Kar out of lock-up, saying he's being unjustly accused. Meanwhile the Debka File has more detail on the nationalities of those being held:
The Jawa Reporters speculate on the possible ID of one of the other detainees:
Could the American suspected of involvement in a kidnapping be Mohammed Monaf? Mohammed Monaf has been indicted in Romania for alleged involvement in the kidnapping of 3 Romanian journalists. More on Monaf here. He is an Iraqi-American and was working as a translator for three Romanian journalists who were taken captive this spring and held for two months. According to Romania's president, Monaf planned the kidnapping with a Syrian born businessman, and the motive was to help a third man beat a finance rap:
Romanian prosecutors have said the two men plotted the kidnapping while in Romania and the motivation for the ruse was that Hayssam, one of Romania's
wealthiest businessman, was under investigation for financial wrongdoing and
banned from leaving Romania. He apparently hoped that "saving" the journalists would help him get clemency, they said. Monaf allegedly carried out the kidnapping with the help of some friends, but lost control of the situation after a few days when a well organized Iraqi insurgent group intervened and took over the hostages, Basescu said. There's no confirmation that Monaf is one of those being held -- it's all just speculation at this point. But the Debka File's breakdown of the nationalities of the detainees offers some interesting detail:
Pentagon officials say two of the five, an Iranian-American and a Jordanian-American, are US citizens and three Iraqis are also believed to hold US nationality. They were captured separately in Iraqi between Nov. 2004 and June 2005. The Iranian-American [presumably Kar] was arrested at a Baghdad checkpoint in a car packed with washing machine timers (used for roadside bombs.) One Iraqi was involved in a kidnapping, the Jordanian American is thought close to the Zarqawi network. The US in Iraq is holding 10,000 detainees, 400 of them non-Iraqi.
Which WaPo corroborates:
Three of those being detained are Iraqi-Americans, Whitman said. The fifth is a Jordanian-American the Pentagon previously had acknowledged holding. One of the Iraqi-Americans allegedly had knowledge of planning for an attack and a second possibly was involved in a kidnapping, Whitman said. The third was "engaged in suspicious activity," Whitman said, declining to be more specific. They were captured, one each, in April, May and June.
If I'm not mistaken, Monaf was bagged in May or June. The Jordanian-American could be the unnamed naturalized citizen whom the U.S. acknowledged holding back in April, and who was the first American citizen to be arrested in connection with the Iraqi insurgency, and who was actually caught in 2004: 1 April 2005 WASHINGTON - US forces in Iraq are holding a senior operative of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who holds joint American-Jordanian citizenship, defense officials said on Thursday. The man was captured in a raid by US-led coalition forces in Iraq late in 2004, said Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.
“Weapons and bomb-making materials were in his residence at the time he was captured,” Waxman said. Waxman described the man as a personal associate of Zarqawi and an emissary to insurgent groups in several cities in Iraq. ... Defense officials also believe the captured American helped coordinate the movement of insurgents and money into Iraq, Waxman said.
Ordinarily this would have been a pretty big headline, but today, it got lost in the other news of the day (including the Olympics). If Monaf is one of the detainees, it would seem his crime is more criminal -- a kidnapping for cash -- than "insurgent." The others (or all five, if he's not the one) could be in serious jeopardy of a trial at Gitmo, with all the familiar civil liberties and WOT questions. The military acknowleded the tricky legal situation for the Zarqawi aide, who has no lawyer, is designated as an enemy combatant, but has reportedly been visited by the Red Cross. It will be interesting to see if these cases go the way of the Hamdi and Padilla (eternal disappearance and wrangling all the way to the Supreme Court) or , Walker-Lindh (plea bargain). And of course, we'll soon have a new Supreme Court to weigh the question of just what the administration can do to, and with, the "Baghdad Five" and other American citizens accused of aiding anti-U.S. forces... |
