Pentagon to challenge interview of 9/11 suspect

Pentagon prosecutors are challenging a military court’s decision to let Osama bin Laden’s driver send written questions to alleged senior al Qaeda members held incommunicado at Guantánamo.

Defense lawyers for Salim Hamdan, 36, want to ask reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, known in CIA circles as ”KSM,” and six other ”high-value detainees” what they know about Hamdan’s role in al Qaeda’s organization.

Based on their answers, they will decide whether to call as defense witnesses any of the seven men, who are fellow detainees now but were held and interrogated for years by the CIA.

Last week, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, Hamdan’s military commission judge, ruled that defense lawyers could submit questions to an independent security officer to give to Mohammed and the others held in a restricted prison camp on the base called Camp 7.

The judge ordered that the questions and answers be strictly limited to the time before Hamdan’s capture in November 2001 in Afghanistan. Censors will black out any responses that don’t cover that time period.

Navy Lt. Catheryne Pully, a military commissions spokeswoman, said on Monday that the prosecution would seek ”reconsideration” of the judge’s decision, which the prosecutors believed raised “a lot of complicated issues.”

Intelligence officials have described as national security secrets the CIA sites where Mohammed and 14 other detainees were held before their September 2006 transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Now they are held in Camp 7, segregated from other detainees at an undisclosed site on the remote U.S. Navy base. The prison camps’ spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, has not been able to say whether the location of the camp itself is a national security secret.

Allred gave the prosecution until Tuesday to find an independent security officer — who does not work for the prosecution — to handle the defense lawyers’ questions and detainees’ answers, if they choose to reply.

Hamdan attorney Andrea Prasow, a civilian on the Defense Department team, said the Pentagon prosecutors agreed to identify the security officer but notified the team on Saturday that they would ask for reconsideration of the question.

Hamdan’s lawyers wanted to meet the men in person to assess their credibility as potential witnesses at Hamdan’s summertime trial.

The lead defense lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brad Mizer, said the attorneys also sought face-to-face meetings with the detainees because, after years in CIA custody, the captives might suspect written questions as an interrogation trick.

Allred’s remedy to the defense lawyers mirrors a 2003 formula proposed by a federal judge at the civilian trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who eventually pleaded guilty to providing material support for al Qaeda and is now serving a life sentence.

In that case, the Justice Department refused to let the defense send questions to Mohammed, the reputed 9/11 mastermind. At the time, he was under CIA interrogation, and the government argued his testimony would harm the war effort.

In this instance, the men Hamdan’s lawyers seek to question are now among 15 former CIA detainees in military custody at Guantánamo.

• Mohammed, who according to Pentagon transcripts confessed to plotting the 9/11 attacks along with a long string of other al Qaeda suicide bombings, as well as beheading Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

• Ramzi bin al Shib, a Yemeni and Mohammed’s alleged go-between with some of the 9/11 attackers.

• Walid bin Attash, another Yemeni who supposedly trained some of the hijackers.

• Mustafa al Hawsawi, who supposedly helped get funds to the Sept. 11 suicide squads.

Those four men were identified as candidates for execution at Guantánamo as part of a complex, six-detainee prosecution the Pentagon unveiled last week. Their charge sheets await approval from a Bush administration appointee. None of them yet have lawyers.

In addition, Hamdan’s lawyers asked to interview Abu Faraj al Libi, Abdul Rahim al Nashiri and Abdul Hadi al Iraqi because of their knowledge of other al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan not tied to the Sept. 11 strikes.

Secret draft of Iraq war dossier to be revealed

The secret first draft of the notorious Iraq dossier that helped to take Britain to war is expected to be released tomorrow, in a victory for freedom of information campaigners.

The early version written by John Williams, then director of communications at the Foreign Office, has been the subject of a three-year legal wrangle amid hopes that it could reveal whether the supposedly intelligence-led dossier was actually based on a press officer’s script – and whether it was subsequently ’sexed up’ by Alastair Campbell.

The draft is understood not to contain the infamous claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a strike with ‘weapons of mass destruction’ within 45 minutes, a claim that was central to the final ‘dodgy dossier’.

Yesterday Williams attacked the decision to withhold the document for so long. ‘If the government withholds a piece of paper, it immediately makes it significant; it almost doesn’t matter what it says,’ he argued. ‘That’s what I said at the time: why are we withholding it?’

A former journalist, who left Whitehall in May, Williams said the row was particularly frustrating as he had never wanted the government to produce a dossier. He had argued, he said, that rather than attempting to prove that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction, the government should have challenged him to prove he did not: ‘I was against the idea of a dossier because I thought it was wrong.’

The Hutton inquiry into the road to war on Iraq identified the existence of an early draft by Williams, but was told by Campbell that it had become ‘redundant’ when John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee linking Downing Street to the security services, took charge of the process. However, an information tribunal last month ruled that the Williams draft should be disclosed. Anti-war campaigners regard it as key evidence of who introduced the most contentious material into the final draft, and whether Scarlett was too heavily influenced by aides with an interest in making a case for war.

Williams said that critics of the war were likely to find significant similarities between his draft and Scarlett’s version, but insisted that should not be surprising since both were working with ‘the same assumptions, the same policy, with much of the same material’.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to confirm in a statement to the Commons tomorrow that the government will bow to the information tribunal’s ruling, rather than exercising ministerial powers to veto it or challenge it in court. Ministers had argued that the draft should not be disclosed because it jeopardised the confidentiality – and therefore candour – of advice given to them by civil servants.

The release is in response to pressure by Chris Ames, a former charity worker from Surrey, who began pursuing the document early in 2005.

The government will hope that the publication finally draws a line under the sorry saga of the dossier, which led indirectly to the suicide of scientist David Kelly after he was identified as the apparent source of BBC reports that the dossier had been ‘overspun’ by Campbell.

Feds admit to jailing U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but call incidents rare

WASHINGTON — A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official acknowledged Wednesday that his agency has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but he denied that his agency has widespread problems with deporting the wrong people.

Gary Mead, ICE’s deputy director of detention and removal operations, testified during a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing that U.S. citizens have been detained on “extremely” rare occasions, but he blamed the mix-ups on conflicting information from the detainees.

Nonetheless, Mead said his agency is reviewing its handling of people who claim to be U.S. citizens “to determine if even greater safeguards can be put in place.”

The testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law came after immigration advocates told McClatchy that they’d seen a small but growing number of cases of U.S. citizens who’ve been mistakenly detained and sometimes deported by ICE. They accuse agents of ignoring valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to deport more illegal immigrants.

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.

Last month, Thomas Warziniack, a U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, was mistakenly detained for weeks in an Arizona immigration facility and told that he was going to be deported to Russia.

Warziniack, 40, was released after his family, who learned about his predicament from a McClatchy reporter, produced his birth certificate.

In another high-profile example, ICE agents in California mistakenly deported Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen, to Mexico. Guzman was found months later when he tried to return to the United States.

Mead contended that both Warziniack and Guzman said they were illegal immigrants, and he said ICE agents have to be careful not to release the wrong people. Guzman and Warziniack had been serving time for minor offenses when their jailers turned them over to immigration authorities.

Although Mead said that Guzman is the only U.S. citizen he knows who’s been deported erroneously, immigration lawyers have said they’ve found at least seven others. In the past four years, ICE agents have detained more than 1 million people.

House committee members also heard stories of ICE agents interrogating or detaining U.S. citizens in their homes, at their workplaces and on the street.

Marie Justeen Mancha, a 17-year-old born in Texas, said ICE agents raided her family’s home in Georgia in 2006 while her mother was running an errand. Her mother is also a U.S. citizen.

“I started to hear the words, ‘Police! Illegals!’” she recalled. “I walked around the corner from the hallway and saw a tall man reach toward his gun and look straight at me.”

Mancha said the agents left after grilling her about her citizenship.

“I carry that fear with me every day, wondering when they’ll come back,” she said.

Mancha is one of five U.S. citizens named in a pending lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that alleges wrongful interrogations or detentions by ICE in Southeast Georgia.

Rep. Steven King, R-Iowa, the ranking minority member of the committee, described the cases as isolated and urged the agency not to be distracted from detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

“ICE does not aim to harass and detain U.S. citizens,” he said.

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the committee, said that after hearing such stories, she feared an “overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens.”

Nancy Morawetz, who runs an immigration rights clinic at New York University, said getting proof of citizenship is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for detainees, especially when they’re shipped to a facility far from home.

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

“As a country we do not have a national identity card,” Morawetz said in an interview. “People don’t walk around with a ‘C’ on their forehead that says they’re a U.S. citizen.”

Former Navy airman describes ‘water torture.’

Today in the Washington Post, Richard E. Mezo, who served in the Navy for six years, describes his experience being waterboarded:

Last week, much to my dismay, government officials testified before Congress that the United States has used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding and would like to hold out the option of using it in the future. As someone who has experienced waterboarding, albeit in a controlled setting, I know that the act is indeed torture. I was waterboarded during my training to become a Navy flight crew member. […]

Waterboarding has, unfortunately, become a household word. Back then, we didn’t call it waterboarding — we called it “water torture.” We recognized it as something the United States would never do, whatever the provocation. … Waterboarding is torture, and torture is clearly a crime against humanity.

Former Justice Department official Daniel Levin, who was voluntarily waterboarded in 2004, came to similar conclusions about the procedure. 

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.

WTF?…O’Reilly On Waterboarding: ‘The Far Left Is Putting Us All In Danger’

Earlier this week, the Bush administration admitted that it has waterboarded at least three al Qaeda detainees since 9/11. Yesterday, CIA Director Michael Hayden added that the tactic may currently be illegal.

On Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor yesterday, Bill O’Reilly gave a full-throated defense of the torture tactic, claiming that the “far left went wild” after the revelations. The left “literally went crazy,” he said. O’Reilly continued his pro-torture rant:

Why are they so insane about this? It’s not fatal. It doesn’t leave a lasting phyiscal injury? Why are they so crazy? … I think the President has to have the authority…in extraordinary circumstances, as these three were. And the far left is putting us all in danger.

By O’Reilly’s logic, military officers and staunch conservatives are also “crazy.” Just yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Maples said the practice is unnecessary. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and members of the Pentagon’s JAG corps also agree. Intelligence experts say it is “ineffective” because the technique “often produces false information.”

Waterboarding, not progressives, puts America in danger. As Colin Powell noted in 2005 when President Bush wanted to loosely define torture, “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”

Secret camp inside Gitmo confirmed

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban have been locked up for years, is a place even more closely guarded — a jailhouse so protected that its very location is top secret.

For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby also provided a few details about the maximum-security lockup.

Guantanamo commanders said Camp 7 is for key alleged al-Qaida members, who must be kept apart from other prisoners to prevent them from retaliating against long-term detainees who have talked to interrogators. They also want the location kept secret for fear of terrorist attack.

Many operations have been classified since the detention center opened in January 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. More than four years passed before the military released even the names of detainees held on this 45-square-mile base in southeast Cuba — and it did so only after the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

Detainees have been held in Camp Echo and Camps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Journalists cleared by the military have been allowed to tour some of these lockups, where 260 men are held, but aren’t allowed to speak to detainees. Some lawmakers and other VIPs have passed through, and the International Red Cross has access, but doesn’t divulge details of visits with prisoners.

Camp 7, where 15 “high-value detainees” are held, is so secret that its very existence was not publicly known until it was mentioned in December by attorneys for Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident who allegedly plotted to bomb gas stations in the United States. Previously, many observers believed the 15 were being held in Camps 5 or 6, which are maximum-security facilities.

“Under the gag order … we are prohibited from saying anything more about their camp,” lawyer Gitanjali Gutierrez, who met with Khan in October, said Tuesday. Most of the lawyers’ notes and memos have been stamped “top secret” by the government.

Buzby told the AP he is sharply limiting to a “very few” the number of people who know Camp 7’s whereabouts.

He described it as a maximum security facility that was already built when President Bush announced in September 2006 that 14 high-value terrorism suspects had been transferred from CIA secret detention facilities to Guantanamo. An additional detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, arrived last April.

“They went straight into that facility,” Buzby said.

Buzby, who heads all military detention operations on Guantanamo, said he controls Camp 7, but would not discuss whether the CIA might still be talking with the high-value detainees.

Paul Rester, the military’s chief interrogator at Guantanamo, told AP he has been interviewing one of the Camp 7 detainees and that others may be interrogated, depending on intelligence needs.

But other key military commanders on the base have been told to leave Camp 7 to others.

“Not everybody, even within the Joint Task Force, has access or even knowledge of where Camp 7 is,” said Army Col. Bruce Vargo. As commander of the military’s Joint Detention Group at Guantanamo, Vargo is responsible for the camps holding 260 detainees. But not for Camp 7.

Red Cross representatives have visited Camp 7 and all the other detention facilities at Guantanamo, confirmed Geoff Loane, head of the humanitarian organization’s delegation in Washington. He declined to give details.

Buzby said the 15 are kept isolated in part to protect other prisoners. “Detainees have told us a lot of things about this group of people, and if there were potential for retribution it would be a very, very dangerous situation,” he said.

For his part, Vargo said he is preoccupied by the possibility of an al-Qaida attack on Guantanamo.

“Although we are trying to be open, security is paramount,” he said. “I mean, if you can fly a plane into the towers, you can attack Guantanamo if that’s what you choose to do. It’s something I think about on a day-to-day basis.”

Vargo declined to discuss whether the U.S. has received information that al-Qaida may be planning such an attack. “We have intelligence reports, but I don’t want to release what we know for obvious reasons,” he said.

While some military personnel have reportedly grumbled about being kept out of the loop, others don’t mind.

Army Col. Larry James, whose team of psychologists assists interrogators, said he does not want to know where Camp 7 is.

“I learned a long, long time ago, if I’m going to be successful in the intel community, I’m meticulously — in a very, very dedicated way — going to stay in my lane,” he said. “So if I don’t have a specific need to know about something, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t ask about it.”

CIA says it used waterboarding on three suspects

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The CIA used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.

“Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.

Congress is considering banning the simulated drowning technique. A Democratic senator and a human rights advocacy group urged a criminal investigation after Hayden made his remarks.

“Waterboarding is torture, and torture is a crime,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said at the Senate hearing on threats to the United States.

He said waterboarding has not been used in five years.

“The circumstances under which we are operating … are frankly, different than they were in late 2001 and early 2002,” Hayden said. “Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent. In addition to that, my agency … had limited knowledge about al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”

Hayden told reporters later that the interrogations of Mohammed and Zubaydah were particularly fruitful. 

From the time of their capture in 2002 and 2003 until they were delivered to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006, the two suspects accounted for one-fourth of the human intelligence reports on al Qaeda, Hayden said.

Some analysts have questioned Mohammed’s credibility under interrogation. But Hayden said most of the information was reliable and helped lead to other al Qaeda suspects.

He told the committee he opposed limiting the CIA to using interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding. CIA interrogators are better trained, and the agency works with a narrower range of suspects in its interrogations, he said.

HARSH TACTICS

Hayden said fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA’s terrorism detention and interrogation program launched after the September 11 attacks, with fewer than one-third of them subjected to any harsh interrogation techniques.

But applying the field manual’s limitations to the CIA, he said, “would substantially increase the danger to America.”

The CIA is the only U.S. agency that uses harsh interrogation techniques, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the hearing. The entire military adheres to the Army Field Manual and FBI Director Robert Mueller told the hearing his agency does not use coercive techniques.

A senior intelligence official said after the hearing that it was unclear whether the CIA could legally use waterboarding in the future, given changes in U.S. law. The Bush administration says it neither uses nor condones torture.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and judiciary committee member, demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey investigate the CIA waterboarding and vowed to delay the nomination for Mukasey’s deputy until the attorney general responds to that and other issues.

A Justice Department investigation should explore whether waterboarding was authorized and whether those who authorized it violated the law,” Durbin said in a letter to Mukasey.

The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a Justice Department investigation. Mukasey has said that probe was focused on the tapes’ destruction rather than on the interrogation they depict, but investigators would be able to follow other evidence of illegal activity.

Rice Was ‘Uninterested In Advising The President’ Before 9/11, Wanted To Be His ‘Closest Confidante’

Tomorrow, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon will release his book The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, revealing “failure at the highest levels of the United States government.”Shenon singles out Condoleezza Rice as inept, more interested in being President Bush’s buddy than securing the nation. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas writes a preview of the book:

The official ineptitude uncovered by the commission is shocking. Dubbed “Kinda-Lies-a-Lot” by the Jersey Girls, Ms. Rice comes across as almost clueless about the terrorist threat. “Whatever her job title, Rice seemed uninterested in actually advising the president,” Mr. Shenon writes. “Instead, she wanted to be his closest confidante — specifically on foreign policy — and to simply translate his words into action.”

An example of this incompetence is the fact that on July 10, 2001 — two months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks — then-CIA director George Tenet met with Rice and warned her about a threat from al Qaeda that “literally made [his] hair stand on end.” Rice was polite, but gave them the “brushoff.”

The 9/11 commission, however, heard about this meeting only after it completed its report. Shenon reveals that commission executive director Philip Zelikow, a close friend of Rice, stopped staffers from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance prior to 9/11 as “amount[ing] to incompetence.”

Another particularly bumbling figure in Shenon’s book is John Ashcroft. On July 17, 2001, the then-Attorney General “received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target.” While Rice was interested in cozying up to Bush, Ashcroft was focused on protecting gun owners:

Attorney General John Ashcroft appears more interested in protecting gun owners from government intrusion than in stopping terrorism, and dismissively tells [acting FBI director Thomas] Pickard that he doesn’t want to hear any more about threats of attacks.

UPDATE: According to Shenon, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was intent on placing blame on the Clinton administration. When Ashcroft “unveiled a memo that seemed to cast the antiterror record of the Clinton Justice Department in an unflattering light, Gonzales and his aides high-fived each other.”

US pledges ‘no death penalty’ for British terror suspect

The United States government has promised in writing that a British terror suspect will not face the death penalty if he is extradited to face trial in America, a court was told today.

Lawyers for Babar Ahmad, a 30-year old accused by America of raising money to support terrorism in Chechnya and Afghanistan via the internet and e-mails, question the validity of the guarantee .

The Imperial College computer worker, from Tooting, London, is alleged to have run websites inciting murder and urging Muslims to fight in a holy war.

The diplomatic note from the American Embassy in London to the Foreign Secretary, said Mr Ahmad would only be tried by a federal court with “the full panoply of rights and protections”.

The note was presented at his resumed extradition hearing at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in central London today.

An expert defence witness told an earlier hearing that Mr Ahmad could face the death penalty if extradited to America and that there was a real risk he could be transferred to military custody and detained indefinitely.

However, John Hardy, representing the Unites States government, today presented a series of written assurances about how Mr Ahmad would be treated if his extradition were approved.

He then read an extract from the diplomatic note to the Foreign Secretary. “The government of the US hereby assures the government of the UK that the US would neither seek the death penalty against, nor would the death penalty be carried out against Babar Ahmad, upon his extradition to the US.

“The government of the US further assures the government of the UK that upon extradition to the US, Babar Ahmad would be prosecuted before a federal court in accordance with the full panoply of rights and protections that would otherwise be provided to a defendant facing similar charges.

“Pursuant to his extradition Babar Ahmad would not be prosecuted before a military commission as specified in the President’s Military Order of November 13, 2001, nor would he be criminally prosecuted in any tribunal or courts other than a US federal court and nor would he be treated or designated as an enemy combatant.”

Mr Hardy described the note as “both irrevocable and unequivocal” and said “you cannot have a more authoritative declaration from a government of a sovereign ally”.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, appearing for Mr Ahmad, urged the court to query the note’s validity and claimed it was not binding on the US president. “We do not accept my learned friend’s proposition that this is unequivocal,” he said.

Mr Fitzgerald said that if Ahmad were extradited, there would be nothing to stop the US president potentially acting on advice from the CIA and designating him as an enemy combatant.

Judge Timothy Workman ruled this afternoon that Mr Ahmad’s lawyers could call a witness to support their argument that the US guarantees are inadequate and adjourned the case until Wednesday.

Outside the court, more than 200 of Ahmad’s supporters conducted a noisy protest.

They chanted “free Babar Ahmad” and waved placards criticising both the American and British governments.

Ahmad’s father Ashfaq, and his wife Maryam, were among the crowd. She said: “He [Babar] is doing OK. Obviously he wants to be able to return home to his family and rebuild his life.”