Monday, May 18, 2009 5:07:32 AM
Prisoner Who Tied Iraq to Al-Qaeda Found Dead in Libyan Jail
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose false tortured confession was used as basis for Bush's war, has reportedly committed suicide...
Blogged by Brad Friedman on 5/10/2009 8:18PM
British journalist and historian Andy Worthington, an expert and author on Guantanamo, reports that the man who had supplied a key false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda --- after being tortured in Egypt, where he had been rendered by the U.S. --- has died in a Libyan prison. "Dead of suicide in his cell," according to a Libyan newspaper.
Worthington has excellent coverage of the story [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ] tonight, which, he says, is "ablaze" in the Arabic media, but so far unreported in all but one [ http://www.ennaharonline.com/en/international/1151.html ] English language outlet.
"This news resolves, in the grimmest way possible," Worthington writes, "questions that have long been asked about the whereabouts of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, perhaps the most famous of 'America's Disappeared' - prisoners seized in the 'War on Terror,' who were rendered not to Guantánamo but to secret prisons run by the CIA or to the custody of governments in third countries - often their own - where, it was presumed, they would never be seen or heard from again."
The "emir" of a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, al-Libi "was one of hundreds of prisoners seized by Pakistani forces in December 2001, crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Most of these men ended up in Guantánamo after being handed over (or sold [F6 note - see http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=6528497 ]) to US forces by their Pakistani allies, but al-Libi was, notoriously, rendered to Egypt by the CIA to be tortured on behalf of the US government."
Worthington reports:
In Egypt, he came up with the false allegation about connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that was used by President Bush in a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, just days before Congress voted on a resolution authorizing the President to go to war against Iraq, in which, referring to the supposed threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime, Bush said, "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases."
Four months later, on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell made the same claim in his notorious speech to the UN Security Council, in an attempt to drum up support for the invasion. "I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda," Powell said, adding, "Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story." As a Newsweek report in 2007 explained, Powell did not identify al-Libi by name, but CIA officials - and a Senate Intelligence Committee report - later confirmed that he was referring to al-Libi.
Al-Libi recanted his story in February 2004, when he was returned to the CIA's custody, and explained, as Newsweek described it, that he told his debriefers that "he initially told his interrogators that he 'knew nothing' about ties between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden and he 'had difficulty even coming up with a story' about a relationship between the two." The Newsweek report explained that "his answers displeased his interrogators - who then apparently subjected him to the mock burial. As al-Libi recounted, he was stuffed into a box less than 20 inches high. When the box was opened 17 hours later, al-Libi said he was given one final opportunity to 'tell the truth.' He was knocked to the floor and 'punched for 15 minutes.' It was only then that, al-Libi said, he made up the story about Iraqi weapons training."
Worthington concludes: "The most important question that needs asking just now, of course, is whether it was possible for al-Libi to commit suicide in a Libyan jail, or whether he was murdered. I doubt that we will ever find out the truth...Whatever al-Libi’s actual crimes, his use as a tool in a program of 'extraordinary rendition' and torture, exploited shamelessly not to foil future terrorist plots but to yield false information about al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, remains a low point in a 'War on Terror' that has few redeeming features."
UPDATE: 16 hours later, and virtually zero coverage of this story in the U.S. corporate mainstream MSM. Amazing. Details now here... [next below] [That report has now also been updated to include a few U.S. outlets finally jumping in to the story, 24 hours later.]
Copyright © Brad Friedman (emphasis in original)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7133 [with comments]
---
and yes, of course, this is one and the same "Ibn Sheikh al-Libby" referred to by Ali Soufan when he testified ( http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37841806 ):
"A second major problem with this [enhanced interrogations] technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. As the interrogator isn't an expert on the detainee or the subject matter, nor has he spent time going over the details of the case, the interrogator cannot easily know if the detainee is telling the truth. This unfortunately has happened and we have had problems ranging from agents chasing false leads to the disastrous case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libby who gave false information on Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD."
==========
Coverage of al-Libi 'Suicide' Almost Wholly Absent from U.S. Mainstream Corporate Media
(But there's plenty on a comedian's jokes about Limbaugh and Hannity at the White House Correspondents Dinner)
UPDATED: 24 hours later, WaPo & UPI finally jump in with some decent coverage...
[Ed Note: See bottom of article for several late updates.]
Blogged by Brad Friedman on 5/11/2009 2:06PM
So, it's been about 16 hours since we covered [above]indie journalist/historian/blogger Andy Worthington's detailed report [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ] on the the reported suicide of the man who falsely "confessed," during torture, to a false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The forced confession was subsequently used by the Bush Administration (Bush himself, as well as Powell and others) as justification for the war on Iraq. That, despite the fact that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi recanted his story not long thereafter, as long and widely reported.
As of this moment, not a single mainstream U.S. newspaper or broadcast outlet has reported on the story. Is it not notable? Or are our newspapers just dead set on ensuring their irrelevance by continuing to not report on news that actually matters, no matter how widely it's being reported in other parts of the world?
A search of "al-Libi" at Google News [ http://news.google.com/news?q=al-Libi&oe=UTF-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn&ei=cXcIStW_Oo_ItAP9mtHmAQ&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=1 ], at this moment, lists five stories in all, with The BRAD BLOG's coverage [above] as the top story on the matter. The one, late, mainstream-ish entry is the coverage, finally, from Reuters [ http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE54A4WU20090511 ] filed one hour ago. And it's pathetic. Simply pathetic...
Their lede: "A Libyan Islamist whose fabricated testimony about al Qaeda was used by the United States to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq has killed himself in his Libyan jail cell, a Libyan newspaper reported on Monday."
They go on to say that al-Libi, also known as Ali Mohammed Abdelaziz al Fakhiri:
...later made up a story about links between al Qaeda and Iraq to avoid torture while in the custody of a third country, according to a 2006 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report.
U.S. media have reported that Fakhiri provided the account to interrogators in Egypt, where he was sent by the United States in January 2002.
Egyptian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Egyptian officials were not available for comment? How about U.S. officials, such as Bush and Powell who each used the false tie --- supplied by al-Libi following torture, as it's been well reported, as opposed to "to avoid torture" --- in public speeches to justify the war. Did Reuters bother to try to get comment from them? Or would that be inconvenient in continuing to avoid the well-reported facts that al-Libi's forced "confessions" were made following torture, after the U.S. renditioned him from Guantanamo to Egypt, where they knew he would be tortured?
Reuters continues:
Fakhiri was later returned to U.S. custody and withdrew his accusations about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda in January 2004, the U.S. committee report said.
No doubt, the 2006 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report, widely regarded as a whitewash for the Bush Administration before the Republicans were booted from the majority, may say that al-Libi merely "withdrew his accusations." But, as Worthington's report explained last night, Newsweek's 2007 coverage [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/183629/ ], which did note Bush/Powell's use of al-Libi's false information, found that...
"he initially told his interrogators that he 'knew nothing' about ties between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden and he 'had difficulty even coming up with a story' about a relationship between the two." The Newsweek report explained that "his answers displeased his interrogators - who then apparently subjected him to the mock burial. As al-Libi recounted, he was stuffed into a box less than 20 inches high. When the box was opened 17 hours later, al-Libi said he was given one final opportunity to 'tell the truth.' He was knocked to the floor and 'punched for 15 minutes.' It was only then that, al-Libi said, he made up the story about Iraqi weapons training."
Was none of that mainstream reportage, the veracity of which has not been challenged, as far as we know, not worth including in Reuters coverage of this matter? Not the fact that he explained to debriefers that he was essentially buried alive for 17 hours and then punched for 15 minutes before offering the "made up story" about Iraq training al-Qaeda in the use of non-existent WMD?!
Reuters continues its useless coverage:
The committee found that in the run-up to the Iraq war the U.S. intelligence community based assessments about possible Iraqi training of al Qaeda largely on evidence from Fakhiri.
Could any of this possibly be more sugar-coated?
Only the last graf of the report offers anything that might be useful in advancing this story beyond Worthington's far-superior coverage from last night:
The paper [Libya's Oed] said former friends of Fakhiri cast doubt on his reported suicide, arguing that the former mosque preacher from the coastal Ajdabiya town knew suicide is prohibited by Islam.
Want actual coverage of this story (and all the rest of the stories that matter)? Compare the Google News search to the Google Blog search [ http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=al-Libi&hl=en&ned=us&tab=nb ], where you'll find links to Worthington's original coverage [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ], "bmaz" at emptywheel [ http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/10/al-libi-dies-in-a-libyan-prison/ ], John Amato's at Crooks & Liars [ http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-whose-false-claim ], Nick Baumann at MoJo Blog [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/05/al-qaedas-ibn-shaikh-al-libi-dead ], and many more [F6 note - and see, for that matter, http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7128 ].
Or compare it to a Google News search for "Sykes Limbaugh" [ http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&hl=en&q=sykes+limbaugh ] or "Sykes Hannity" [ http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&hl=en&q=sykes+hannity ] (more than 1000 "news articles" found for each).
Other than that, we just can't understand why the U.S. corporate mainstream media is having such trouble surviving.
UPDATE: The UK's Telegraph jumps in [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/5310168/Al-Qaeda-chief-commits-suicide-in-Libyan-prison-report-says.html ] with coverage, noting:
Al-Libi recanted the story in January 2004, although George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, wrote later: "The fact is, we don't know which story is true, and since we don't know, we can assume nothing."
"We can assume nothing"? Since when, George? Seems like you allowed Dubya and Powell to "assume" plenty when they used al-Libi's initial confession, no?
BTW, the Telegraph goes on to report:
Clive Stafford Smith from Reprieve, said: "We are told that al Libi committed suicide in his Libyan prison. If this is true it would be because of his torture and abuse, if false, it may reflect a desire to silence one of the greatest embarrassments of the Bush Administration.
"Reprieve has been exploring tentative contacts with al Libi, and his death may have been a result of the pressure to allow him to speak openly about his torture."
UPDATE 9:52pm PT: Okay, finally some U.S. outlets are jumping in to tell this story, both quoting from a Human Rights Watch press release [ http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner ] issued tonight calling on Libya to investigate the circumstances of al-Libi's death after he was renditioned by the CIA.
UPI posts a squib [ http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/11/UPI-NewsTrack-TopNews/UPI-61991242093600/ ] (second story down at link) appx "two hours ago," according to Google News on the al-Libi death. While short, at least it far exceeds, in quality, the Reuters report. It includes reference to Powell's use of the false material gained from al-Libi under torture, and also notes:
"The death of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi means that the world will never hear his account of the brutal torture he experienced," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said. "So now it is up to Libya and the United States to reveal the full story of what they know, including its impact on his mental health."
...
HRW called on Libya to disclose what it knows about al-Libi's treatment in U.S. and Egyptian custody.
And, as the first U.S. newspaper to run anything on the reported suicide of al-Libi, Washington Post's Peter Finn filed a not-bad report [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html ] a few hours ago as well. Finn includes [emphasis ours]:
When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.
"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."
...
Libi angrily rejected speaking to the researchers [from HRW, who found him in Libya's Abu Salim prison on April 27th], saying, "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" according to [HRC's Heba] Morayef, who described the encounter in a phone interview.
...
Libi was among dozens of former "ghost prisoners" who were in American custody overseas but whose disposition has never been officially released...
The Obama administration recently announced that it was decommissioning the CIA's global network of secret prisons, which have been mothballed since 2006, but human rights activists say the U.S. government should still provide the ICRC with an accounting of where it sent every prisoner it once held.
Copyright © Brad Friedman (emphasis in original)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7135 [with comments]
==========
Following al-Libi's 'Suicide,' What About the Other 'Ghost Detainees' in Libya, Elsewhere?
Where the U.S. MSM continue to fail
PLUS: What of the Bush Regime's justifications for not only negotiating with, but actually working with the 'international terrorist' regime in Libya?...
Blogged by Brad Friedman on 5/13/2009 1:32PM
Andy Worthington, who largely broke the story [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ] of the reported 'suicide' of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in a Libyan prison, into the English-language press on Sunday (as we helped that night [at top]), picked up last night on our followup [just above] to the original story, decrying the paucity of coverage of the disturbing report in the U.S. corporate mainstream media.
Al-Libi was, after all, the 'ghost detainee' who had offered a false link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, used loudly by the Bush Administration before the war as a key justification for it, after being tortured by the CIA and Egypt, where he'd been secretly renditioned from U.S. custody at Guantanamo. He would later recant his false 'confession,' explaining that it had come about only after 17 hours of 'mock burial,' and a session of brutal beatings by his captors which followed it.
Newsweek describes [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/196818 ] the al-Libi affair today as "one of the biggest intelligence fiascos of the run up to the Iraq War" and "a major embarrassment for the Bush administration."
Worthington asked [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/12/the-suicide-of-ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-why-the-media-silence/ ] why the initial "media silence," before noting that while U.S. outlets have finally begun to cover the story, one of the better initial reports, from Peter Finn at Washington Post [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html ] fails to follow up on the paper's own previous coverage [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html ] of 'ghost detainees,' which included al-Libi, who had disappeared, at some point, from the Bush Administration's long list of suspected 'terrorists' captured following 9/11.
Al-Libi was one of those captives previously reported on by WaPo. His re-emergence in Libya --- where he was spotted by Human Rights Watch at the Abu Salim prison in late April, in apparent good health, but refused to be interviewed, reportedly saying only "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" --- was punctuated, just two weeks later, by the surprising news of his reported 'suicide.'
But where WaPo covered some of the points mentioned in a press release on al-Libi's death from HRW [ http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner ], they failed to mention any of the other 'ghost detainees' mentioned in the very same press release, whose whereabouts had been a mystery up until now. That, even though WaPo had previously reported the 'missing' status of those same detainees!
Given the disturbing fate of al-Libi --- who, HRW's Tom Malinowski charges, "was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration. He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war" --- it's disappointing that the paper has so far failed to connect dots that could, in this case, help shine a spotlight on growing concerns about some of those other detainees: A spotlight which may help keep them alive, at this point.
There is certainly good reason [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/13/ibn-al-sheikh-al-libi ] to question both the timing, and reported means, of al-Libi's death, not the least of which is the point made in several media reports, including AP's [ http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hs2s19m5dp45pSQfDLfars6Z_qiAD984SCI02 ], where some have "expressed doubts that al-Libi killed himself, saying al-Libi was a 'true Muslim and Islam prohibits committing suicides.'"
Yet, as Worthington notes, the Post failed to even mention the current status of the other detainees HRW discovered in the Libyan prison, even as they had similarly been sent there by the CIA following claims of abuse and torture at the hands of the U.S....
Human Rights Watch also revealed that, although its researchers had been unable to talk to al-Libi, they did interview four other Libyan prisoners, sent to Libya by the CIA between 2004 to 2006, who stated that they had been tortured by US forces in detention centers in Afghanistan, and that US forces had also supervised their torture in Pakistan and Thailand.
One of the men, Mohamed Ahmad Mohamed al-Shoroeiya, also known as Hassan Rabi'i, told Human Rights Watch that "in mid-2003, in a place he believed was Bagram prison in Afghanistan," he had been subjected to the following abuse: "The interpreters who directed the questions to us did it with beatings and insults. They used cold water, ice water. They put us in a tub with cold water. We were forced [to go] for months without clothes. They brought a doctor at the beginning. He put my leg in a plaster. One of the methods of interrogation was to take the plaster off and stand on my leg."
...
[T]he Post failed to follow up on the stories of the other prisoners mentioned in the Human Rights Watch press release, even though, in October 2007, Craig Whitlock had written a front-page article for the Post, "From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html ]," which included details of the four prisoners.
...
Just as the story of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi should shine the most uncomfortable light [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/11/dick-cheney-and-the-death-of-ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi/ ] on former Vice President Dick Cheney's claims that the CIA's web of secret prisons and proxy prisons protected America from further deadly attacks (and not, as it transpired, provided false information obtained through torture to justify an illegal war), so the stories of these four men deserve to be heard, to focus much-needed attention on a policy which, with no oversight from either Congress or the judiciary, allowed the Executive branch to indulge its dictatorial fantasies by "disappearing" prisoners anywhere around the world, and, in some cases, returning them to countries like Libya, with its notoriously poor human rights record, even when, as Craig Whitlock noted, at least two of these men "had nothing to do with al-Qaeda."
Worthington, a journalist, blogger, historian, and the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0745326641?ie=UTF8&tag=tbb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0745326641 ] goes on to conclude by pointing out the hypocrisy with which the U.S., under the Bush Regime, decided to begin not only negotiating with, but actually working as partners with the terrorist regime in Libya...
And an even bigger story, to which I hope to return in future, involves asking searching questions of both the US and UK governments regarding their role in forcibly returning - or attempting to return - Libyan prisoners from Guantánamo [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/06/16/return-to-torture-cleared-guantanamo-detainee-abdul-rauf-al-qassim-fears-return-to-libya/ ], and Libyan residents in the UK [ http://cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=24043 ], whose only crime, it appears, is to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Colonel Gaddafi, once regarded as a pariah and an international terrorist, became an ally in the "War on Terror," and those who opposed him were transformed, overnight, from freedom fighters to terrorists.
Copyright © Brad Friedman (emphasis in original)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7141 [with comments]
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose false tortured confession was used as basis for Bush's war, has reportedly committed suicide...
Blogged by Brad Friedman on 5/10/2009 8:18PM
British journalist and historian Andy Worthington, an expert and author on Guantanamo, reports that the man who had supplied a key false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda --- after being tortured in Egypt, where he had been rendered by the U.S. --- has died in a Libyan prison. "Dead of suicide in his cell," according to a Libyan newspaper.
Worthington has excellent coverage of the story [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ] tonight, which, he says, is "ablaze" in the Arabic media, but so far unreported in all but one [ http://www.ennaharonline.com/en/international/1151.html ] English language outlet.
"This news resolves, in the grimmest way possible," Worthington writes, "questions that have long been asked about the whereabouts of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, perhaps the most famous of 'America's Disappeared' - prisoners seized in the 'War on Terror,' who were rendered not to Guantánamo but to secret prisons run by the CIA or to the custody of governments in third countries - often their own - where, it was presumed, they would never be seen or heard from again."
The "emir" of a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, al-Libi "was one of hundreds of prisoners seized by Pakistani forces in December 2001, crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Most of these men ended up in Guantánamo after being handed over (or sold [F6 note - see http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=6528497 ]) to US forces by their Pakistani allies, but al-Libi was, notoriously, rendered to Egypt by the CIA to be tortured on behalf of the US government."
Worthington reports:
In Egypt, he came up with the false allegation about connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that was used by President Bush in a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, just days before Congress voted on a resolution authorizing the President to go to war against Iraq, in which, referring to the supposed threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime, Bush said, "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases."
Four months later, on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell made the same claim in his notorious speech to the UN Security Council, in an attempt to drum up support for the invasion. "I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda," Powell said, adding, "Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story." As a Newsweek report in 2007 explained, Powell did not identify al-Libi by name, but CIA officials - and a Senate Intelligence Committee report - later confirmed that he was referring to al-Libi.
Al-Libi recanted his story in February 2004, when he was returned to the CIA's custody, and explained, as Newsweek described it, that he told his debriefers that "he initially told his interrogators that he 'knew nothing' about ties between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden and he 'had difficulty even coming up with a story' about a relationship between the two." The Newsweek report explained that "his answers displeased his interrogators - who then apparently subjected him to the mock burial. As al-Libi recounted, he was stuffed into a box less than 20 inches high. When the box was opened 17 hours later, al-Libi said he was given one final opportunity to 'tell the truth.' He was knocked to the floor and 'punched for 15 minutes.' It was only then that, al-Libi said, he made up the story about Iraqi weapons training."
Worthington concludes: "The most important question that needs asking just now, of course, is whether it was possible for al-Libi to commit suicide in a Libyan jail, or whether he was murdered. I doubt that we will ever find out the truth...Whatever al-Libi’s actual crimes, his use as a tool in a program of 'extraordinary rendition' and torture, exploited shamelessly not to foil future terrorist plots but to yield false information about al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, remains a low point in a 'War on Terror' that has few redeeming features."
UPDATE: 16 hours later, and virtually zero coverage of this story in the U.S. corporate mainstream MSM. Amazing. Details now here... [next below] [That report has now also been updated to include a few U.S. outlets finally jumping in to the story, 24 hours later.]
Copyright © Brad Friedman (emphasis in original)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7133 [with comments]
---
and yes, of course, this is one and the same "Ibn Sheikh al-Libby" referred to by Ali Soufan when he testified ( http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37841806 ):
"A second major problem with this [enhanced interrogations] technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. As the interrogator isn't an expert on the detainee or the subject matter, nor has he spent time going over the details of the case, the interrogator cannot easily know if the detainee is telling the truth. This unfortunately has happened and we have had problems ranging from agents chasing false leads to the disastrous case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libby who gave false information on Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD."
==========
Coverage of al-Libi 'Suicide' Almost Wholly Absent from U.S. Mainstream Corporate Media
(But there's plenty on a comedian's jokes about Limbaugh and Hannity at the White House Correspondents Dinner)
UPDATED: 24 hours later, WaPo & UPI finally jump in with some decent coverage...
[Ed Note: See bottom of article for several late updates.]
Blogged by Brad Friedman on 5/11/2009 2:06PM
So, it's been about 16 hours since we covered [above]indie journalist/historian/blogger Andy Worthington's detailed report [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ] on the the reported suicide of the man who falsely "confessed," during torture, to a false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The forced confession was subsequently used by the Bush Administration (Bush himself, as well as Powell and others) as justification for the war on Iraq. That, despite the fact that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi recanted his story not long thereafter, as long and widely reported.
As of this moment, not a single mainstream U.S. newspaper or broadcast outlet has reported on the story. Is it not notable? Or are our newspapers just dead set on ensuring their irrelevance by continuing to not report on news that actually matters, no matter how widely it's being reported in other parts of the world?
A search of "al-Libi" at Google News [ http://news.google.com/news?q=al-Libi&oe=UTF-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn&ei=cXcIStW_Oo_ItAP9mtHmAQ&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=1 ], at this moment, lists five stories in all, with The BRAD BLOG's coverage [above] as the top story on the matter. The one, late, mainstream-ish entry is the coverage, finally, from Reuters [ http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE54A4WU20090511 ] filed one hour ago. And it's pathetic. Simply pathetic...
Their lede: "A Libyan Islamist whose fabricated testimony about al Qaeda was used by the United States to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq has killed himself in his Libyan jail cell, a Libyan newspaper reported on Monday."
They go on to say that al-Libi, also known as Ali Mohammed Abdelaziz al Fakhiri:
...later made up a story about links between al Qaeda and Iraq to avoid torture while in the custody of a third country, according to a 2006 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report.
U.S. media have reported that Fakhiri provided the account to interrogators in Egypt, where he was sent by the United States in January 2002.
Egyptian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Egyptian officials were not available for comment? How about U.S. officials, such as Bush and Powell who each used the false tie --- supplied by al-Libi following torture, as it's been well reported, as opposed to "to avoid torture" --- in public speeches to justify the war. Did Reuters bother to try to get comment from them? Or would that be inconvenient in continuing to avoid the well-reported facts that al-Libi's forced "confessions" were made following torture, after the U.S. renditioned him from Guantanamo to Egypt, where they knew he would be tortured?
Reuters continues:
Fakhiri was later returned to U.S. custody and withdrew his accusations about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda in January 2004, the U.S. committee report said.
No doubt, the 2006 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report, widely regarded as a whitewash for the Bush Administration before the Republicans were booted from the majority, may say that al-Libi merely "withdrew his accusations." But, as Worthington's report explained last night, Newsweek's 2007 coverage [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/183629/ ], which did note Bush/Powell's use of al-Libi's false information, found that...
"he initially told his interrogators that he 'knew nothing' about ties between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden and he 'had difficulty even coming up with a story' about a relationship between the two." The Newsweek report explained that "his answers displeased his interrogators - who then apparently subjected him to the mock burial. As al-Libi recounted, he was stuffed into a box less than 20 inches high. When the box was opened 17 hours later, al-Libi said he was given one final opportunity to 'tell the truth.' He was knocked to the floor and 'punched for 15 minutes.' It was only then that, al-Libi said, he made up the story about Iraqi weapons training."
Was none of that mainstream reportage, the veracity of which has not been challenged, as far as we know, not worth including in Reuters coverage of this matter? Not the fact that he explained to debriefers that he was essentially buried alive for 17 hours and then punched for 15 minutes before offering the "made up story" about Iraq training al-Qaeda in the use of non-existent WMD?!
Reuters continues its useless coverage:
The committee found that in the run-up to the Iraq war the U.S. intelligence community based assessments about possible Iraqi training of al Qaeda largely on evidence from Fakhiri.
Could any of this possibly be more sugar-coated?
Only the last graf of the report offers anything that might be useful in advancing this story beyond Worthington's far-superior coverage from last night:
The paper [Libya's Oed] said former friends of Fakhiri cast doubt on his reported suicide, arguing that the former mosque preacher from the coastal Ajdabiya town knew suicide is prohibited by Islam.
Want actual coverage of this story (and all the rest of the stories that matter)? Compare the Google News search to the Google Blog search [ http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=al-Libi&hl=en&ned=us&tab=nb ], where you'll find links to Worthington's original coverage [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ], "bmaz" at emptywheel [ http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/10/al-libi-dies-in-a-libyan-prison/ ], John Amato's at Crooks & Liars [ http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-whose-false-claim ], Nick Baumann at MoJo Blog [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/05/al-qaedas-ibn-shaikh-al-libi-dead ], and many more [F6 note - and see, for that matter, http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7128 ].
Or compare it to a Google News search for "Sykes Limbaugh" [ http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&hl=en&q=sykes+limbaugh ] or "Sykes Hannity" [ http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&hl=en&q=sykes+hannity ] (more than 1000 "news articles" found for each).
Other than that, we just can't understand why the U.S. corporate mainstream media is having such trouble surviving.
UPDATE: The UK's Telegraph jumps in [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/5310168/Al-Qaeda-chief-commits-suicide-in-Libyan-prison-report-says.html ] with coverage, noting:
Al-Libi recanted the story in January 2004, although George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, wrote later: "The fact is, we don't know which story is true, and since we don't know, we can assume nothing."
"We can assume nothing"? Since when, George? Seems like you allowed Dubya and Powell to "assume" plenty when they used al-Libi's initial confession, no?
BTW, the Telegraph goes on to report:
Clive Stafford Smith from Reprieve, said: "We are told that al Libi committed suicide in his Libyan prison. If this is true it would be because of his torture and abuse, if false, it may reflect a desire to silence one of the greatest embarrassments of the Bush Administration.
"Reprieve has been exploring tentative contacts with al Libi, and his death may have been a result of the pressure to allow him to speak openly about his torture."
UPDATE 9:52pm PT: Okay, finally some U.S. outlets are jumping in to tell this story, both quoting from a Human Rights Watch press release [ http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner ] issued tonight calling on Libya to investigate the circumstances of al-Libi's death after he was renditioned by the CIA.
UPI posts a squib [ http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/11/UPI-NewsTrack-TopNews/UPI-61991242093600/ ] (second story down at link) appx "two hours ago," according to Google News on the al-Libi death. While short, at least it far exceeds, in quality, the Reuters report. It includes reference to Powell's use of the false material gained from al-Libi under torture, and also notes:
"The death of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi means that the world will never hear his account of the brutal torture he experienced," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said. "So now it is up to Libya and the United States to reveal the full story of what they know, including its impact on his mental health."
...
HRW called on Libya to disclose what it knows about al-Libi's treatment in U.S. and Egyptian custody.
And, as the first U.S. newspaper to run anything on the reported suicide of al-Libi, Washington Post's Peter Finn filed a not-bad report [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html ] a few hours ago as well. Finn includes [emphasis ours]:
When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.
"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."
...
Libi angrily rejected speaking to the researchers [from HRW, who found him in Libya's Abu Salim prison on April 27th], saying, "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" according to [HRC's Heba] Morayef, who described the encounter in a phone interview.
...
Libi was among dozens of former "ghost prisoners" who were in American custody overseas but whose disposition has never been officially released...
The Obama administration recently announced that it was decommissioning the CIA's global network of secret prisons, which have been mothballed since 2006, but human rights activists say the U.S. government should still provide the ICRC with an accounting of where it sent every prisoner it once held.
Copyright © Brad Friedman (emphasis in original)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7135 [with comments]
==========
Following al-Libi's 'Suicide,' What About the Other 'Ghost Detainees' in Libya, Elsewhere?
Where the U.S. MSM continue to fail
PLUS: What of the Bush Regime's justifications for not only negotiating with, but actually working with the 'international terrorist' regime in Libya?...
Blogged by Brad Friedman on 5/13/2009 1:32PM
Andy Worthington, who largely broke the story [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/ ] of the reported 'suicide' of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in a Libyan prison, into the English-language press on Sunday (as we helped that night [at top]), picked up last night on our followup [just above] to the original story, decrying the paucity of coverage of the disturbing report in the U.S. corporate mainstream media.
Al-Libi was, after all, the 'ghost detainee' who had offered a false link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, used loudly by the Bush Administration before the war as a key justification for it, after being tortured by the CIA and Egypt, where he'd been secretly renditioned from U.S. custody at Guantanamo. He would later recant his false 'confession,' explaining that it had come about only after 17 hours of 'mock burial,' and a session of brutal beatings by his captors which followed it.
Newsweek describes [ http://www.newsweek.com/id/196818 ] the al-Libi affair today as "one of the biggest intelligence fiascos of the run up to the Iraq War" and "a major embarrassment for the Bush administration."
Worthington asked [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/12/the-suicide-of-ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-why-the-media-silence/ ] why the initial "media silence," before noting that while U.S. outlets have finally begun to cover the story, one of the better initial reports, from Peter Finn at Washington Post [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html ] fails to follow up on the paper's own previous coverage [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html ] of 'ghost detainees,' which included al-Libi, who had disappeared, at some point, from the Bush Administration's long list of suspected 'terrorists' captured following 9/11.
Al-Libi was one of those captives previously reported on by WaPo. His re-emergence in Libya --- where he was spotted by Human Rights Watch at the Abu Salim prison in late April, in apparent good health, but refused to be interviewed, reportedly saying only "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" --- was punctuated, just two weeks later, by the surprising news of his reported 'suicide.'
But where WaPo covered some of the points mentioned in a press release on al-Libi's death from HRW [ http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner ], they failed to mention any of the other 'ghost detainees' mentioned in the very same press release, whose whereabouts had been a mystery up until now. That, even though WaPo had previously reported the 'missing' status of those same detainees!
Given the disturbing fate of al-Libi --- who, HRW's Tom Malinowski charges, "was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration. He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war" --- it's disappointing that the paper has so far failed to connect dots that could, in this case, help shine a spotlight on growing concerns about some of those other detainees: A spotlight which may help keep them alive, at this point.
There is certainly good reason [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/13/ibn-al-sheikh-al-libi ] to question both the timing, and reported means, of al-Libi's death, not the least of which is the point made in several media reports, including AP's [ http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hs2s19m5dp45pSQfDLfars6Z_qiAD984SCI02 ], where some have "expressed doubts that al-Libi killed himself, saying al-Libi was a 'true Muslim and Islam prohibits committing suicides.'"
Yet, as Worthington notes, the Post failed to even mention the current status of the other detainees HRW discovered in the Libyan prison, even as they had similarly been sent there by the CIA following claims of abuse and torture at the hands of the U.S....
Human Rights Watch also revealed that, although its researchers had been unable to talk to al-Libi, they did interview four other Libyan prisoners, sent to Libya by the CIA between 2004 to 2006, who stated that they had been tortured by US forces in detention centers in Afghanistan, and that US forces had also supervised their torture in Pakistan and Thailand.
One of the men, Mohamed Ahmad Mohamed al-Shoroeiya, also known as Hassan Rabi'i, told Human Rights Watch that "in mid-2003, in a place he believed was Bagram prison in Afghanistan," he had been subjected to the following abuse: "The interpreters who directed the questions to us did it with beatings and insults. They used cold water, ice water. They put us in a tub with cold water. We were forced [to go] for months without clothes. They brought a doctor at the beginning. He put my leg in a plaster. One of the methods of interrogation was to take the plaster off and stand on my leg."
...
[T]he Post failed to follow up on the stories of the other prisoners mentioned in the Human Rights Watch press release, even though, in October 2007, Craig Whitlock had written a front-page article for the Post, "From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602326.html ]," which included details of the four prisoners.
...
Just as the story of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi should shine the most uncomfortable light [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/11/dick-cheney-and-the-death-of-ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi/ ] on former Vice President Dick Cheney's claims that the CIA's web of secret prisons and proxy prisons protected America from further deadly attacks (and not, as it transpired, provided false information obtained through torture to justify an illegal war), so the stories of these four men deserve to be heard, to focus much-needed attention on a policy which, with no oversight from either Congress or the judiciary, allowed the Executive branch to indulge its dictatorial fantasies by "disappearing" prisoners anywhere around the world, and, in some cases, returning them to countries like Libya, with its notoriously poor human rights record, even when, as Craig Whitlock noted, at least two of these men "had nothing to do with al-Qaeda."
Worthington, a journalist, blogger, historian, and the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0745326641?ie=UTF8&tag=tbb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0745326641 ] goes on to conclude by pointing out the hypocrisy with which the U.S., under the Bush Regime, decided to begin not only negotiating with, but actually working as partners with the terrorist regime in Libya...
And an even bigger story, to which I hope to return in future, involves asking searching questions of both the US and UK governments regarding their role in forcibly returning - or attempting to return - Libyan prisoners from Guantánamo [ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/06/16/return-to-torture-cleared-guantanamo-detainee-abdul-rauf-al-qassim-fears-return-to-libya/ ], and Libyan residents in the UK [ http://cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=24043 ], whose only crime, it appears, is to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Colonel Gaddafi, once regarded as a pariah and an international terrorist, became an ally in the "War on Terror," and those who opposed him were transformed, overnight, from freedom fighters to terrorists.
Copyright © Brad Friedman (emphasis in original)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7141 [with comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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