Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Aggressive FBI Interrogation of US Teen in Kuwait Raises Concerns

Daphne Eviatar
Senior Associate, Human Rights First’s Law and Security Program
Posted: January 13, 2011 05:03 PM

Last week I wrote about an American teenager who says he was detained [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/is-proxy-detention-the-ob_b_805998.html ], beaten and sleep-deprived in Kuwait after he was placed on a U.S. no-fly list based on his travels to Yemen. Today, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times, who first reported the story, provides chapter two [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/world/middleeast/13detain.html (below)]. It turns out that the Somali-American 19-year-old, Gulet Mohamed, yesterday was aggressively interrogated by FBI agents at the Kuwaiti prison, according to Mazzetti. The interrogation became so hostile, Mazzetti reports, that Kuwaiti officials felt compelled to intervene to stop the interrogation.

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones heard and reported [ http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/gulet-mohamed-fbi-illegal-interrogation ] on the same story yesterday from Mohamed's U.S.-based lawyer, Gadeir Abbas. Abbas says that the FBI agents insisted on continuing the interrogation even though they'd handed Mohamed a sheet of paper listing his Miranda rights and Mohamed said that he did not want to speak without his lawyer.

I observed last week [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/is-proxy-detention-the-ob_b_805998.html ] that the Somali-American 19-year-old, Gulet Mohamed, appears to be yet another victim of a US policy of proxy detention abroad in countries infamous for disregarding human rights. Increasingly, it seems that Americans who've traveled to Yemen at some point have been placed on U.S. no-fly lists and then detained abroad, where they're subjected not only to aggressive questioning by U.S. officials but also to brutality by the U.S. allies detaining them. As far as we know, these prisoners are not being sent to third countries for interrogation, as they were during the Bush administration's policy of "extraordinary rendition," which sometimes involved CIA kidnappings. Yet similar forms of torture, indefinite detention and gross violations of human rights appears also to be integral to this new "extraordinary rendition-lite." The case of Sharif Mobley in Yemen is another illustrative example.

Glenn Greenwald last week [ http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/06/kuwait/index.html (three back at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=58565871 )] pointed out that it's implausible that the Kuwaiti government would have detained and tortured an American citizen without the knowledge of the U.S. government, and that it's no coincidence that the questions both Kuwaiti and American interrogators asked focused on his knowledge of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American cleric in Yemen who's also on the Obama administration's hit list.

Despite his U.S. citizenship, Mohamed told Greenwald, neither U.S. embassy officials nor the FBI agents who interrogated Mohamed expressed any interest in his claims of abuse by his Kuwaiti captors.

Mazzetti reports that the U.S. State Department last week confirmed that it was aware of Mohamed's detention but denied that it was at the behest of the United States. "We are ensuring his well-being," said Philip Crowley, a State Department spokesman.

That seems inconsistent with today's report that Kuwaiti prison guards had to intervene to protect the American citizen prisoner from the hostility of FBI agents.

Copyright © 2011 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/aggressive-fbi-interrogat_b_808810.html [with comments]

===

Detained American Says F.B.I. Pressed Him

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: January 12, 2011

WASHINGTON — An American teenager detained in Kuwait said he underwent a heated interrogation by F.B.I. agents for several hours on Wednesday, in a case that has renewed debate over the Obama administration’s expansion of the no-fly list after the attempted bombing of a passenger plane bound for Detroit in 2009.

The interrogation grew steadily more hostile when the agents pressed the teenager, Gulet Mohamed, on his travels to Yemen and Somalia and began calling him an “embarrassment to his country,” accusing him of lying about his contacts with militants overseas, he said.

Mr. Mohamed said the agents began yelling the name “Anwar al-Awlaki” at him, prompting Kuwaiti officials to intervene and request that the agents end the interrogation.

Mr. Awlaki, the radical cleric American officials have been trying to capture or kill for more than a year, is believed to be hiding in Yemen. In two telephone interviews from a Kuwaiti deportation facility, including one on Wednesday, Mr. Mohamed has said that he briefly traveled to Yemen in 2009 but never had contacts with militants and later spent several months in Somalia living with family members.

Mr. Mohamed, whom American officials said is on a no-fly list, said the F.B.I. agents interrogated him even after he refused to answer their questions without a lawyer, and after they gave him a paper listing his Miranda rights. He said the agents never presented evidence that he made contacts with militants.

“They wanted me to lie about myself, and pushed me to lie about things I had done,” he said.

Mr. Mohamed’s Washington-based lawyer called the actions of the F.B.I. agents “illegal” and on Wednesday wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

“If law enforcement officials have concerns about Mr. Mohamed or his past actions, he should be allowed to return to the United States, where he may agree to being questioned in the presence of his attorney — free of the psychological pressures of his current detention,” wrote his lawyer, Gadeir Abbas of the Council on American-Islamic Relations [ http://www.cair.com/ ].

Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, declined to comment.

Mr. Mohamed, a 19-year-old of Somali descent who grew up in Alexandria, Va., has said he was taken into custody in late December while trying to renew his visa at the airport in Kuwait City. Over the next week, he said, he was severely beaten [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/world/middleeast/06detain.html ], deprived of sleep and questioned about his travels to Yemen and Somalia.

Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, last week denied that Mr. Mohamed was detained at the behest of the United States. “We are aware of his detention, we have provided him consular services, and we are ensuring his well-being, as we would for any citizen in detention,” Mr. Crowley said.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government on behalf of more than a dozen Americans unable to return to the United States because of the no-fly list. Ben Wizner, an A.C.L.U. lawyer, said many clients were put on the list because they had traveled to Yemen.

Mr. Mohamed said that the F.B.I. on Wednesday did not say directly that he would be refused entry to the United States if he did not cooperate with them. But he said that one of the agents pledged to monitor his activities if he ever made it home.

“He said, ‘I will see you in Alexandria. I will see you at McDonald’s. I will come talk to you,’ ” Mr. Mohamed said.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/world/middleeast/13detain.html

===

also (items linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=45042153 and preceding and following (including in particular http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=45529839 )

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39471610 and preceding and following