Guantanamo judge may suspend trial for Canadian detainee

 

A military judge threatened to suspend the war-crimes trial of a Canadian detainee, scolding the government Thursday for failing to provide records of his confinement at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for Omar Khadr say details of his interrogations and mental health could provide grounds to suppress self-incriminating statements at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

At a pretrial hearing, Judge Peter Brownback, an Army colonel, criticized the prosecution team led by Marine Maj. Jeffrey Groharing for demanding an expedited trial despite failing to obtain the documents from the detention center.

“I have been badgered, beaten and bruised by Maj. Groharing since the 7th of November to set a trial date,” Brownback said. “To get a trial date, I need to get discovery done.”

His frustration highlights the dueling interests of two military entities at Guantanamo — the tribunal system, which airs the backgrounds of terror suspects in detail, and the Joint Task Force, which tightly restricts information about inmates whom officials describe as some of America’s most dangerous enemies.

Brownback said he understands the military’s worry that the documents might identify prison officials who fear retribution. But he ordered the government to provide the records of Khadr’s day-to-day confinement by May 22, in complete or edited form, or he will suspend proceedings.

The Toronto-born Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15 and was taken to Guantanamo four months later. In a sworn affidavit, he said he was threatened with rape and left short-shackled to a bolt in the floor for as long as six hours. He claims he was so scared that he told interrogators what they wanted to hear.

Khadr is accused of lobbing a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a firefight at an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on charges including murder, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

His Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said he believes Khadr’s treatment at Guantanamo was designed to prevent him from recanting a false confession that he made under coercion at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

“He was essentially punished for not cooperating with interrogators while at Guantanamo Bay,” Kuebler said.

Failure to produce the documents could derail what was likely to be the first trial of a terror suspect at Guantanamo, where the U.S. holds about 270 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Military prosecutors say they plan to prosecute as many as 80 of the suspects.

The judge could eventually dismiss the case if the military does not deliver the documents, said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon office overseeing the tribunals.

But Kuebler said that possibility unlikely. He has urged Canada to demand Khadr’s repatriation to spare him a trial he says is guaranteed to produce a conviction.

Gitmo captive: I was threatened with rape

WASHINGTON — In a fresh document from the Guantánamo war court files, Canadian captive Omar Khadr alleges that he was repeatedly threatened with rape as an interrogation technique in Afghanistan and at U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

The partially censored nine-page affidavit, signed by Khadr on Feb. 22, covers old ground already investigated, including allegations of abuse at Guantánamo that emerged in 2005, prompting a Navy criminal investigation.

But the document includes never-before revealed allegations, such as the rape threats and a partially censored description of regaining consciousness after his capture to discover he was being interrogated in an American field hospital in Afghanistan. He was 15.

Once released from medical care to the Bagram detention center, he said, “I was interrogated many, many times. For about the first two weeks to a month that I was there I would be brought into the interrogation room on a stretcher.”

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, repeated the Pentagon’s long-held conviction that Guantánamo captives are treated humanely and that any credible allegations of mistreatment are investigated and dealt with in keeping with military standards.

“In this case, we have no evidence to substantiate these claims,” he wrote in an e-mail. He also noted that all approved interrogation techniques are published in the Army Field Manual on Interrogations and that an al Qaeda training manual “teaches its operatives to make false claims of abuse.”

The details are emerging in the military trial case of Khadr, now 21, accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. Army commando in a July 2002 firefight. The document was admitted to court last week as part of the pretrial arguments over access to potential witnesses for Khadr’s upcoming summertime trial before U.S. military officers, called a military commission.

Meantime, the Canadian’s Pentagon lawyers have been searching for interrogators and other witnesses to his capture, in which he was shot twice in the back in a U.S. raid on a suspected al Qaeda compound. They also want witnesses to the interrogations in Afghanistan and later in Guantánamo.

The lawyers are seeking to punch holes in the prosecution case alleging that Khadr, as an al Qaeda conspirator since age 10, was the only enemy combatant who could have thrown the grenade that fatally wounded Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., in a firefight near Khost, Afghanistan.

Speer died of his wounds days later at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. Last week, the defense revealed at a pretrial hearing that the brigade commander at the firefight wrote two accounts, with the same date.

In the first account, a brigade commander identified to the public as ”Lt. Col. W” wrote that the grenade thrower was killed on the spot. In the second, according to Navy Cmdr. William Kuebler, written two months later, Lt. Col. W said only that the enemy was ”engaged,” leaving open the possibility that he had survived.

Khadr was the only survivor.

The documents are under seal at the Office of Military Commission along with the other defense motions from last week’s case.

Now, the affidavit, a 63-item statement by the Canadian who grew up between Toronto, South Asia and U.S. detention, offers Khadr’s most comprehensive account of his alleged treatment — an English document crafted with his lawyers, which does not name his guards and interrogators, at least in the portion not blacked out by military censors.

For example, after his capture and regaining consciousness, he said, he was guarded by “a young blond soldier who was about 25 and a Mexican or Puerto Rican soldier.”

The document is riddled with threats of rape wielded by the United States and its allies.

”On several occasions at Bagram, interrogators threatened to have me raped or sent to other countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Israel to be raped,” he alleges in Item 23. By Item 55, he has been transferred to Guantánamo, and he is taken to interrogation with an Afghan man, who ”told me that I would be sent to Afghanistan and raped.” In Item 56, he says, an interrogator pulled his hair, spit in his face and threatened to bring in an Egyptian “to rape me.”

The document also revisits old allegations — such as his description on arriving in Guantánamo, at age 16, and hearing someone in the military say, “Welcome to Israel.”

Or his claim, investigated by the military, that in March 2003 guards splashed his prison camp uniform with Pine Sol and dragged him around an interrogation booth, like a human mop, because he had urinated on himself during a bout of shackled isolation.

Pentagon and Guantánamo spokesmen did not reply Tuesday to queries on what that investigation found or whether anyone was disciplined.

The current prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, in February declined to address allegations emerging at the military commissions, saying, “It is likely best for all of us to hear what the attorneys have to say during the hearings.”

Former SAS man condemns British role in torture tactics

Hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture, a former SAS soldier said yesterday. Ben Griffin said individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and in Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay.

Griffin, 29, left the British army last year after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the “illegal” tactics of US troops. While ministers had stated their wish that the Guantánamo Bay camp should be closed, they had been silent over prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. He added: “These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinitely without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva conventions, international law and the UN convention against torture.”

Referring to the government’s admission last week that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace “pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place”.

He told a Stop the War Coalition press conference in London that since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, UK special forces had operated within a joint US-UK taskforce that had been responsible for the detention of “hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq”. The primary mission of the taskforce in Iraq was to kill or capture “high-value targets”. However, the taskforce often detained non-combatants.

He said he had not himself witnessed torture or mistreatment. But he added: “I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.”

He continued: “It is only since I have left the army [and] I have read the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention on Torture, that I realised that we have broken so many of these conventions and treaties in Iraq.”

He said three fellow soldiers had told him on separate occasions that they had witnessed the interrogation of two detainees in Iraq using “partial drowning and an electric cattle prod”. Ministers must have been briefed on the activities of the taskforce and should be charged with breach of conventions protecting individuals from torture, he added.

The Ministry of Defence said yesterday it did not comment on the activities of special forces. However, senior army officers and parliament’s security and intelligence committee have expressed concern about ignorance among British troops about both national and international law covering the treatment of prisoners.

Let Us Talk to Sept 11 Planner, U.S. Lawyers Ask

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – Military lawyers defending Osama bin Laden’s former driver on terrorism charges in the U.S. war court at Guantanamo Bay have offered a compromise in their quest to interview September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

They promised not to ask Mohammed about his treatment in U.S. custody or about the CIA’s admission that it subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as “waterboarding” during interrogations.

Bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and faces life in prison if convicted in the Guantanamo court of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

The Yemeni man said he never joined al Qaeda, had no advance knowledge of its attacks and became bin Laden’s driver in Afghanistan because he needed the salary of $200 per month.

Hamdan’s lawyers said Mohammed — the highest-ranking al Qaeda leader held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — can help their defense by telling them what role, if any, Hamdan had in the organization.

They likened it to somebody “on trial for organized crime and you’ve got the opportunity to bring in the godfather.”

The request was still pending when a pretrial hearing ended on Thursday but the military judge suggested he might at least let the lawyers question Mohammed via written notes.

The judge is expected to rule in the next couple of weeks and Hamdan is scheduled to go to trial in May. So far, only one captive — an Australian man — has been convicted by the widely criticized court and that was in a plea bargain.

TOO DANGEROUS

Prosecutors said Mohammed, accused of masterminding the attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants on September 11, 2001, was too dangerous an enemy in an ongoing war to allow defense lawyers to go on “a fishing expedition.”

“The defense is asking for access to some of the most notorious terrorists the world has ever seen,” said one of the prosecutors, Air Force Lt. Col. William Britt.

There was a risk of endangering U.S. agents if Mohammed revealed to the defense lawyers the sources and methods the government used to get information from him, prosecutors said.

The CIA has acknowledged using waterboarding, which critics say is a form of illegal torture, on Mohammed and two other senior al Qaeda leaders who were later sent to Guantanamo.

The defense lawyers, one of whom has top clearance to view government secrets, said they disapproved of waterboarding but would not ask Mohammed about it or about anything that occurred after the September 11 attacks.

Mohammed is one of 15 “high-value” al Qaeda prisoners held separately from the other 260 non-U.S. captives at Guantanamo in a facility whose location is kept secret even from the officers who run the other detention camps.

Prosecutors also objected to defense requests to question six other high-value prisoners.

“Equally wrapped up in secret tape, eh?” asked the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred.

He said the defense had shown adequate need to question Mohammed and suggested they conduct the interview via written questions and answers, which the prosecutors also opposed.

The United States set up the Guantanamo tribunals to try suspected terrorists after the September 11 attacks but so far, none of the handful of prisoners facing charges has been accused of direct involvement in the attacks.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the September 11 attacks, citing people who have been briefed on the case.

The charges, to be filed at Guantanamo, would involve up to six detainees there including Mohammed.

No defense lawyer has been allowed access the high-value group of suspected terrorists facing charges, who were brought to Guantanamo in 2006 after about three years in secret CIA custody.

One of Hamdan’s lawyers, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, said that raised a crucial question about U.S. plans to try those important figures.

“Who is going to represent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and when will his trial be?” Swift said.

U.S. says no one too young for Guantanamo court

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba – A Canadian accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan should not be tried as a war criminal because he was a child soldier for al Qaeda, too young to voluntarily join its forces, his military defense lawyer told a U.S. war court on Monday.

Navy Lt. William Kuebler asked a military judge to throw out the charges against Canadian defendant Omar Khadr, who was shot and captured at age 15 in a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

“He is a victim of al Qaeda, not a member of al Qaeda,” Kuebler said.

Khadr is the Toronto-born son of an alleged al Qaeda financier. He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer in the firefight and planting roadside bombs intended to kill other U.S. or coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

Khadr is charged in the Guantanamo war court with murder, attempted murder, conspiring with al Qaeda, providing material support for terrorism and spying by conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Kuebler argued that U.S. and international law assume that children involved in an armed conflict are not there voluntarily, because they lack the experience and judgment to understand the risk of joining armed forces. Defense attorneys contend that any charges against Khadr should be pursued in a civilian court in a juvenile system where the goal is rehabilitation rather than punishment.

If the U.S. Congress intended to try children as war criminals, it would have explicitly authorized that in the 2006 law that serves as a framework for the Guantanamo court, Kuebler said.

But a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, arguing for the prosecution, said that if Congress intended to exclude juveniles from the Guantanamo war court, it would have explicitly written that, because lawmakers knew Khadr could face charges. Instead, Congress wrote the law using the term “person,” which legally refers to “anyone born alive,” Justice Department attorney Andy Oldham said.

LAST WESTERNER

Khadr is the last citizen of a Western nation among the 275 captives being held at Guantanamo as part of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism.

Charges are now pending against five of the Guantanamo prisoners. The Pentagon plans to try about 80 of them. But six years after the detention camp opened, only one captive has been convicted in Guantanamo’s widely criticized tribunal system and that was through a plea deal.

Khadr sat quietly during the hearing, clad in a white tunic and trouser uniform signifying that he complies with camp rules. In his more than five years at Guantanamo, the once pimply faced boy has grown into a 21-year-old man with a short, bushy beard.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, did not indicate when he would rule on the request to drop the charges. The case is scheduled for trial in May, though Kuebler said it probably would be delayed.

The court released documents describing the battle in which Khadr was captured. U.S. forces entered the suspected al Qaeda compound after an aerial bombing and were fired upon with a rifle and with the grenade that killed Speer, it said.

An unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, said he found two wounded people still alive inside — a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle, whom he shot in the head and killed, and Khadr, who was seated on the ground facing away.

The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, “Kill me.”

Khadr was instead given medical treatment and sent to Guantanamo.

Kandahar governor denies torture claim

Khalid says he’s never interrogated or abused a prisoner in custody; Hillier says governor is doing “phenomenal work”

 OTTAWA and WASHINGTON — The governor of Kandahar says he’s never interrogated, much less abused, a prisoner in his government’s custody.

Asadullah Khalid told The Canadian Press that the treatment of Afghan prisoners should be a military issue, not a political one.

Mr. Khalid’s response to allegations he was involved in the torture and abuse of prisoners comes a day after Canada’s top soldier, General Rick Hillier, praised him for doing “phenomenal work.”

Mr. Khalid said he doesn’t go around to prisons and interrogate people because it isn’t his job. And he said his accuser likely never met him but was just looking for a way out of jail.

Mr. Khalid said the government of Afghanistan is stronger now and in control of the conditions in prison.

Canada’s top soldier says the governor of Kandahar province is doing “phenomenal work,” and that allegations of torture against him are up to Afghans to investigate.

While the opposition has asked why Canadians weren’t informed about the allegations 10 months ago, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the prisoner who made the charges against Mr. Khalid was not handed over by Canadians and that it’s an issue for Kabul to deal with.

Mr. MacKay and Gen. Hillier made their remarks as opposition members demanded that the Harper government put pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the allegations. They also wanted to know what the Department of Foreign Affairs did with the information and why it has taken this long for it to emerge.

Gen. Hillier confirmed he was aware of allegations against the governor, but said it is up to the Afghan government to deal with them. He also praised Mr. Khalid for the work he has done in Kandahar.

“Governor Asadullah has been doing some phenomenal work in Kandahar province. Obviously, we have worked with him because he is the governor there. And we have seen some incredible changes in the province, and if there’s an issue of any kind of impropriety whatsoever, that’s an issue for the Afghanistan government.”

According to a censored report published in The Globe and Mail yesterday, a prisoner held in Kandahar told two Canadian officials last April of interrogations as well as a beating and electric shocks he received from an individual whose identification was blacked out. Sources have told The Globe that “the governor” were the censored words, in reference to Mr. Khalid.

Outside the House of Commons, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said Canada should use its influence with Mr. Karzai to have the matter investigated. He was also angry that the federal government did not disclose the incident when it first occurred.

“We’re not there to cover things up, we’re not there to cover up for some guy who’s corrupt. We’re not there to cover up for some guy who’s allowing beatings to go on in a private jail,” Mr. Rae said.

In the House, Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale called the incident a cover-up.

“Has the government even bothered to investigate the allegations against Mr. Khalid as specifically required under Canada’s detainee-transfer agreement?”

Mr. MacKay said that the prisoner who made the complaint had not been transferred by Canadian Forces into Afghan detention.

“The allegation with respect to the governor is not a Canadian-transferred prisoner,” Mr. MacKay said.

“Second, with respect to the governor of Kandahar, let us not forget that this is an individual appointed by the sovereign elected government of Afghanistan.”

He noted that when Canada did hear of a credible complaint from a Canadian-transferred prisoner, an investigation was launched. The government also stopped transferring detainees in early November after that incident.

In Kandahar, Mr. Khalid’s staff said yesterday that the governor would respond to the allegations that a secret prison was located inside his compound and that he had personally engaged in torture and abuse of detainees. However, the governor didn’t return calls yesterday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was told last spring by Canadian diplomats of the allegations against Mr. Khalid, Graziella Piccolo, an ICRC spokeswoman in Kabul, confirmed.

But the ICRC won’t tell Canada whether it investigated the allegations nor the outcome of any investigation.

“Should an authority, such as the Canadian government, decide to share information with the ICRC about detainees held by another authority, such as the Afghan government, the ICRC would address these concerns only with the detaining authorities.”

Former foreign affairs minister John Manley, who headed a recent panel looking into the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, could not be reached for comment over the allegations against Mr. Khalid.

Meanwhile, Gen. Hillier said yesterday that Canadian soldiers won’t be able to avoid combat if they remain in Kandahar and that switching places with a NATO country in a quieter region of Afghanistan is not an option, The Canadian Press reported.

While the Liberals have suggested remaining in Afghanistan only for training rather than combat, Gen. Hillier said the need for troops is in the south and that means combat.

“Certainly, if you’re in Kandahar, you’re going to be in combat operations,” he said.

Gen. Hillier said that the report of the panel led by Mr. Manley that more troops are needed in the south only echoes the frustration of NATO military commanders from many countries.

Finally, Gen. Hillier told reporters that he was not angry last week when he heard that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s communications director, Sandra Buckler, had said the military did not inform the government that transfers of prisoners had been suspended, a statement she retracted the next day.

“I was on the beach in the Dominican Republic. I had a little break, and I heard about that, and, can I say this without everybody beating up on me across Canada? I was on my third rum and Coke, and I really didn’t give a damn.”

Gen. Hillier said the military did inform the government right away when the transfers were suspended in November.

Media bidding war starts for Guantanamo ex-detainee

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian David Hicks, the only Guantanamo Bay detainee convicted of terrorism charges, is at the centre of a worldwide media bidding war for his story, with a possible price tag of A$1 million (US$892,000), local media said.

Hicks, 32, has had 30 offers from television and publishing firms in Australia, the United States and Italy, his lawyer told The Australian newspaper.

Media analysts say Hicks’ story could fetch A$1 million, the newspaper said on Friday, but Australian laws preventing people profiting from their crimes may deny Hicks any money.

Hicks’ father, Terry, told The Australian that most of the money paid for his son’s story would be donated to charity, but that he should keep some to compensate for his six years in prison.

Hicks is currently prevented from talking to the media until a U.S.-gag order expires on March 26.

Hicks, who is now free and living in his hometown of Adelaide, was released from an Australian prison in December after spending over six years behind bars, the majority in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

He was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and spent over five years in Guantanamo before becoming the first person to be sentenced under the alternate war crimes tribunals created by President George W. Bush’s administration to try non-American captives.

The former kangaroo skinner admitted training with al Qaeda and meeting its leader Osama bin Laden, whom he described as “lovely”, according to police evidence given to the court.

No Secret C.I.A. Buildup For Pakistan

WASHINGTON — The top two American intelligence officials traveled secretly to Pakistan early this month to press President Pervez Musharraf to allow the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups are all active, according to several officials who have been briefed on the visit.

But in the unannounced meetings on Jan. 9 with the two American officials — Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director — Mr. Musharraf rebuffed proposals to expand any American combat presence in Pakistan, either through unilateral covert C.I.A. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.

Instead, Pakistan and the United States are discussing a series of other joint efforts, including increasing the number and scope of missions by armed Predator surveillance aircraft over the tribal areas, and identifying ways that the United States can speed information about people suspected of being militants to Pakistani security forces, officials said.

American and Pakistani officials have questioned each other in recent months about the quality and time lines of information that the United States has given to Pakistan to use in focusing on those extremists. American officials have complained that the Pakistanis are not seriously pursuing Al Qaeda in the region.

The Jan. 9 meetings, the first visit with Mr. Musharraf by senior administration officials since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, also included the new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the director of Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj. American officials said the visit was prompted by an increasing sense of urgency at the highest levels of the United States government that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts to destabilize the Pakistani government.

The C.I.A. has fired missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Ayman al-Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda leader, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village.

Pakistani authorities, in interviews, say they have more than 100,000 troops operating in the region, including a sizable force conducting what they said was a major offensive in South Waziristan. But in the White House, the Pentagon and the C.I.A., frustrations remain high, and there is concern that Mr. Musharraf’s political problems will distract him from what the administration regards as its last chance to take aggressive action.

Despite the insistence of administration officials that the United States and Pakistan have a common goal in fighting Al Qaeda, Mr. Musharraf has made clear in public proclamations that it is far from his first priority. At the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Mr. Musharraf said several times that the 100,000 Pakistani troops that he said were now along the border were hunting for Taliban extremists and “miscreants,” but he also said there was no particular effort being put into the search for Qaeda fighters.

In Washington, however, the Bush administration has said that fighting terrorists, chiefly Al Qaeda, is the primary purpose of the $10 billion in American aid that has been sent to Pakistan, mostly for reimbursements for the cost of patrolling the tribal areas. President Bush has often praised Mr. Musharraf for fighting terrorism, pointing out that Al Qaeda has tried to kill the Pakistani leader. But White House officials were silent when Mr. Musharraf said this week that his efforts were focused on the Taliban, and that the main problem the United States faced was in Afghanistan, not Pakistan.

Accounts of the discussions between Mr. Musharraf and the intelligence officials were provided by American and Pakistani officials over the past two weeks after The New York Times inquired about the secret trip. While officials confirmed some details of the discussion, much remains unknown about the continuing dialogue between Islamabad and Washington.

The trip by Mr. McConnell and General Hayden, a 14,000-mile over-and-back visit for one day of discussions, occurred just five days after senior administration officials debated new strategies for dealing with Pakistan. No decisions were made at that meeting of the National Security Council, which gathered all of Mr. Bush’s top national security officials but not the president.

In the ensuing three weeks, however, the debate appeared to be intensifying, as senior American officials said they believed that American forces — whether as combat troops or trainers — could enhance the efforts of Pakistan’s military in the mountainous and lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

“The purpose of the mission,” a senior official said, “was to convince Musharraf that time is ticking away,” and that the increased attacks on Pakistan would ultimately undermine his effort to stay in office.

Other officials said that recent intelligence analysis indicated that Al Qaeda was now operating in the tribal areas with an impunity similar to the freedom that it had in Afghanistan before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The C.I.A. operatives in Afghanistan and the covert Special Operations forces there have made little secret of their desire to move into the tribal areas with or without Mr. Musharraf’s explicit approval. In the administration, there has been discussion of whether Mr. Bush should give orders to allow them more latitude. Mr. Musharraf has explicitly rejected that, and within days after Mr. McConnell and General Hayden’s departure, he told a Singapore newspaper that any unilateral action by the United States would be regarded as an invasion. In Davos, he dismissed the idea that Americans could be effective in the tribal areas.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States was willing to send combat troops to Pakistan to conduct joint operations against Al Qaeda and other militants if the Pakistani government asked for American help. Mr. Gates said that Pakistan had not requested American assistance, and that any American troops sent to Pakistan would likely be assigned solely to train Pakistani forces. The top American commander in the region, Adm. William J. Fallon, visited Pakistan last Tuesday to discuss counterterrorism issues with senior Pakistani officials, including General Kayani.

American and Pakistani spokesmen confirmed that the meetings between Mr. Musharraf and American intelligence officials took place, but they declined to offer any details. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in an interview that the meetings were about “improving coordination, discussing the war on terror, and filling the gaps between intelligence and operations,” but he declined to provide details.

Last Tuesday, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, Lt. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, echoed some of those concerns, telling reporters that there were gaps in what the United States knew about the threat in the tribal areas. “We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there,” said General Dailey, who retired from the Army with extensive experience in military Special Operations. “Not on Al Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban.”

In dealing with the American requests, Mr. Musharraf is conducting a delicate balancing act. American officials contend that now, more than ever, he recognizes the need to step up the battle against extremists who are seeking to topple his government. But he also believes that if American forces are discovered operating in Pakistan, the backlash will be more than he can control, especially because the Taliban and Al Qaeda are trying to cast him as a pawn of Washington. One result appears to be a compromise: Mr. Musharraf is willing, they say, to accept training, equipment, and technical help, but has insisted that no Americans get involved in ground operations.

Pakistani officials insist they are taking the militant threat seriously and have completed major operations in the Swat Valley to drive out extremists. In the past few days, about 1,000 Pakistan Army troops and Frontier Corps paramilitary forces have also begun a three-pronged attack against the South Waziristan stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with links to Al Qaeda who is the main suspect in the assassination of Ms. Bhutto.

Sudan’s ex-Guantanamo prisoners demand payout

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – A group of Sudanese released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay demanded cash payouts and an apology from the United States on Saturday, for mental and physical torture suffered during years spent in jail there.

“We have asked for compensation and an apology,” aid worker Adil Hassan Hamad told a conference in Khartoum, which was organized by Local Rights groups to demand the release of seven Sudanese still held at Guantanamo Bay.

Hamad, freed just over one month ago, wore orange overalls like those worn by detainees in the U.S. prison camp. He was working with refugees when arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to Afghanistan and then the U.S. camp in Cuba.

He said his U.S. lawyer would seek compensation in the U.S. courts. One of Hamad’s daughters died during his detention because his wife could not afford medical treatment. Two other inmates were also seeking compensation, he said.

Washington has designated Guantanamo prisoners, who were mainly seized in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, as “enemy combatants” and denied them prisoner-of-war status that would guarantee them certain rights under international law.

Many attending the Khartoum conference broke down in tears when addressed by the wife of al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj, the most high-profile of the around 300 detainees still in the prison on the Caribbean island.

He has been on hunger strike for 400 days but is force fed twice a day in a manner his lawyer told the conference was tantamount to torture.

His wife Aygol Ismailova, who is from Azerbaijan, wept as she told the gathering how Hajj has been urinating blood and was suffering from other health problems.

“His son Mohamed always asks me: ‘Where is my father, who took him? What is prison? What do they do there?’ And I don’t know how to answer him,” Ismailova told Reuters.

“Do people know that I have no way to contact my husband other than letters that reach him late and are censored? For more than six years I’ve not heard his voice, not seen him,” she said. “This is torture.”

All Guantanamo detainees deserved compensation and an apology, she said, adding that Sudanese government officials had told her they hoped Hajj would be released by the end of March.

Hamad and another former Guantanamo detainee set up mock prison cells to show those attending the conference the cramped conditions in which they were held.

“Often they’d leave prisoners tied up in very, very cold rooms and refuse to allow them to go to the bathroom so they’d wet themselves.”

“I was beaten, made to stand for long periods of time, deprived of sleep for three nights,” Hamad said of his treatment by the U.S. army in Afghanistan before he was moved to Cuba.

Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens

FLORENCE, Ariz. — Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he’s never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack’s claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship.

“The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes,” Warziniack said in a phone interview from jail. “All I know is that somebody dropped the ball.”

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens.

U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they’re simply not believed.

An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

Vera initially focused on six facilities where most of the cases surfaced. The organization later broadened its analysis to 12 sites and plans to track the outcome of all cases involving citizens.

Nina Siulc, the lead researcher, said she thinks that many more American citizens probably are being erroneously detained or deported every year because her assessment looked at only a small number of those in custody. Each year, about 280,000 people are held on immigration violations at 15 federal detention centers and more than 400 state and local contract facilities nationwide.

Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don’t have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves. Less affluent or resourceful U.S. citizens who are detained must try to maneuver on their own through a complicated system.

“It becomes your word against the government’s, even when you know and insist that you’re a U.S. citizen,” Siulc said. “Your word doesn’t always count, and the government doesn’t always investigate fully.”

Officials with ICE, the federal agency that oversees deportations, maintain that such cases are isolated because agents are required to obtain sufficient evidence that someone is an illegal immigrant before making an arrest. However, they don’t track the number of U.S. citizens who are detained or deported.

“We don’t want to detain or deport U.S. citizens,” said Ernestine Fobbs, an ICE spokeswoman. “It’s just not something we do.”

While immigration advocates agree that the agents generally release detainees before deportation in clear-cut cases, they said that ICE sometimes ignores valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to ship out more illegal immigrants.

Proving citizenship is especially difficult for the poor, mentally ill, disabled or anyone who has trouble getting a copy of his or her birth certificate while behind bars.

Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen who was born in Los Angeles, was serving a 120-day sentence for trespassing last year when he was shipped off to Mexico. Guzman was found three months later trying to return home. Although federal government attorneys have acknowledged that Guzman was a citizen, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said Thursday that her agency still questions the validity of his birth certificate.

Last March, ICE agents in San Francisco detained Kebin Reyes, a 6-year-old boy who was born in the U.S., for 10 hours after his father was picked up in a sweep. His father says he wasn’t permitted to call relatives who could care for his son, although ICE denies turning down the request.

The number of U.S. citizens who are swept up in the immigration system is a small fraction of the number of illegal immigrants who are deported, but in the last several years immigration lawyers report seeing more detainees who turn out to be U.S. citizens.

The attorneys said the chances of mistakes are growing as immigration agents step up sweeps in the country and state and local prisons with less experience in immigration matters screen more criminals on behalf of ICE.

ICE’s Fobbs said agents move as quickly as possible to check stories of people who claim they’re American citizens. But she said that many of the cases involve complex legal arguments, such as whether U.S. citizenship is derived from parents, which an immigration judge has to sort out.

“We have to be careful we don’t release the wrong person,” she said.

In Warziniack’s case, ICE officials appear to have been oblivious to signs that they’d made a serious mistake.

After he was arrested in Colorado on a minor drug charge, Warziniack told probation officials there wild stories about being shot seven times, stabbed twice and bombed four times as a Russian army colonel in Afghanistan, according to court records. He also insisted that he swam ashore to America from a Soviet submarine.

Court officials were skeptical. Not only did his story seem preposterous, but the longtime heroin addict also had a Southern accent and didn’t speak Russian.

Colorado court officials quickly determined his true identity in a national crime database: He was a Minnesota-born man who grew up in Georgia. Before Warziniack was sentenced to prison on the drug charge, his probation officer surmised in a report that he could be mentally ill.

Although it took only minutes for McClatchy to confirm with Minnesota officials that a birth certificate under Warziniack’s name and birth date was on file, Colorado prison officials notified federal authorities that Warziniack was a foreign-born prisoner.

McClatchy also was able to track down Warziniack’s three half-sisters. Even though they hadn’t seen him in almost 20 years, his sisters were willing to vouch for him.

One of them, Missy Dolle, called the detention center repeatedly, until officials there stopped returning her calls. Her brother’s attorney told her that a detainee in Warziniack’s situation often has to wait weeks for results, even if he or she gets a copy of a U.S. birth certificate.

Warziniack, meanwhile, waited impatiently for an opportunity to prove his case. After he contacted the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, a group that provides legal advice to immigrants, a local attorney recently agreed to represent him for free.

Dolle and her husband, Keith, a retired sheriff’s deputy in Mecklenburg County, N.C., flew to Arizona from their Charlotte home to attend her brother’s hearing before an immigration judge.

Before she left, she e-mailed Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. After someone from his office contacted ICE, immigration officials promised to release Warziniack if they got a birth certificate.

After scrambling to get a power of attorney to obtain their brother’s birth certificate, the sisters succeeded in getting a copy the day before the hearing.

On Thursday, however, government lawyers told an immigration judge during a deportation hearing that they needed a week to verify the authenticity of Warziniack’s birth record. The judge delayed his ruling.

“I still can’t believe this is happening in America,” Dolle said.

Warziniack began to weep when he saw his sister. “They still don’t believe me,” he said.

Later that day, however, ICE officials changed their minds and said that he could be released this week. They said they were able to confirm his birth certificate, but they didn’t acknowledge any problem with the handling of the case.

The officials blamed conflicting information for the mix-up.

“The burden of proof is on the individual to show they’re legally entitled to be in the United States,” said ICE spokeswoman Kice.

Warziniack, 40, told McClatchy that he has no memory of telling anyone he was Russian. Instead, he recalled the shock of withdrawing from his heroin addiction after 18 years of drug abuse.

Katherine Sanguinetti, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, suspects that prison officials were relying on information that Warziniack gave when he was first taken into custody because they never received the Colorado court documents concluding that he was a U.S. citizen.

Even now, the prison records inaccurately show his current location as “the Soviet Union.”

In the end, Sanguinetti said, ICE is responsible for making sure that it detains and deports the correct person. Her prisons flag hundreds of prisoners a month as foreign-born, but can’t possibly verify the information, she said.

“Could it happen again? Sure,” Sanguinetti said. “But we would hope that ICE during their investigative process would discover the truth.”

Rachel Rosenbloom, an attorney at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College who’s identified at least seven U.S. citizens whom ICE has mistakenly deported since 2000, believes that the agency should set up a more formal way of handling detainees when they appear to have valid claims of U.S. citizenship. At the very least, she said, ICE could release people such as Warziniack on bond while waiting for immigration judges to hear the cases.

“It’s like finding innocent people on death row,” Rosenbloom said. “There may be only a small number of cases, but when you find them you want to do everything in your power to make sure they get out.”