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."

Prisoner transfers were stopped by mission commander

OTTAWA — An army general has told a Federal Court judge that Canadian troops stopped transferring enemy prisoners to Afghan authorities the day after a Nov. 5 prison visit found evidence of torture.

Brigadier-General André Deschamps, chief of staff to Canada's Expeditionary Forces Command and the first witness to testify as human-rights groups seek an injunction against the transfers, said the decision was made by Col. Christian Juneau.

Col. Juneau was acting commander of Canada's military effort in Afghanistan when Canadian officials heard stories of abuse from prisoners being held in a Kandahar prison.

The decision came after the Conservative government ridiculed its opponents for raising torture allegations and Prime Minister Stephen Harper accused them of being pro-Taliban.

Brig.-Gen. Deschamps told Federal Court Justice Anne Mactavish that no prisoners have been transferred since that prison visit.

But Paul Champ, the lawyer for Amnesty International Canada and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, was continually thwarted in his efforts to learn more.

Defence lawyers repeatedly sprang up and claimed National Defence Act protections when Mr. Champ asked why the government never told Canadians about the policy change, where the detainees are now and how many there are.

Brig.-Gen. Deschamps did say the prisoner facility at Kandahar airfield has not been expanded since the decision.

Civil libertarians and opposition parties have warned that Canada could be violating the Geneva conventions by turning over captives to Afghan authorities with the knowledge they could be tortured.

The two groups have sued Ottawa in an effort to block further transfers.

A prisoner told Canadian officials he'd been beaten unconscious, whipped with electrical cables, belted with a rubber hose, and he showed Canadians the bruises and told them exactly where they could find the torture instruments.

Others claimed they'd been tortured with electricity.

Government lawyer J. Sanderson Graham sent Amnesty International a letter this week explaining the policy change after the group pressed for details.

The government kept its decision under wraps, even as it prepared to fight rights groups seeking a halt to transfers in court Thursday.

"Canadian authorities were informed on November 5, 2007, by Canada's monitoring team, of a credible allegation of mistreatment pertaining to one Canadian-transferred detainee held in an Afghan detention facility," the lawyers said in a letter to Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

"As a consequence there have been no transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities since that date," the letter confirmed.

"It's staggering," Jason Gratl, president of the BCCLA said of the government's belated admission. "In matters as important as complicity in torture and its conduct of war, the government owes Canadians some explanations in an open and frank manner."

The government, which is trying to drum up support for extending the Afghan mission, only revealed it had ceased transfers as it tried to make a deal with Amnesty and the BCCLA to drop their application for an injunction.

But Ottawa refused a counteroffer in which it would have agreed to give seven days notice before resuming transfers.

It's not clear whether troops are still taking prisoners only to release them, holding them in temporary cells run by Canadian Military Police on Kandahar Air Base or once again turning prisoners over to U.S. forces, which operate a prison at Bagram in Afghanistan.

"Concerning the matter of detainees, the number of detainees, if they are being transferred or not, these are all operational matters and are the responsibility of the Canadian Forces. The Government will not provide any comment on operational matters," said Sandra Buckler, spokeswoman for Mr. Harper.

The letter to Amnesty and the BCCLA continued: "Canada will resume transferring detainees when it believes it can do so in accordance with its international legal obligations."

Among those obligations is a Geneva Conventions prohibition against handing prisoners over to those who would abuse or torture them.

Given the widely documented and widespread abuse and ill-treatment that is rife in Afghan prisons, Mr. Gratl said he "could not foresee detainee transfers resuming in the foreseeable future.

"The government's decision amounts to a concession that the May, 2007, monitoring agreement has failed to prevent torture by Afghan authorities," he said.

That agreement, which allows for follow-up inspections, was negotiated only after former defence minister Gordon O'Connor's assurances that the International Committee of the Red Cross would report abuse of transferred prisoners back to the Harper government were shown to be wrong.

More than a month after it stopped handing prisoners over to Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, the Harper government sent a senior general to give a sworn affidavit in the case brought by Amnesty and BCCLA.

The rights groups wanted transfers banned, claiming the government is bound by both international law and the Canadian Constitution from delivering detainees to those likely to torture or abuse them.

Building a NATO detention facility, perhaps on the Kandahar base, which currently houses more than 10,000 troops, has been repeatedly suggested by international human-rights groups. Canada and most NATO nations are opposed.

"The long-term, indefinite detention of detainees in such circumstances would be inconsistent with the sovereignty of Afghanistan," Gen. Deschamps said.

Detainee timeline

2001

Dec. 19: Then-defence-minister Art Eggleton reveals that Canadian forces, specifically commandos from Joint Task Force 2, have joined the war, sparking concerns about whether troops would turn captured Afghans over to U.S. authorities.

2002

Jan. 21: Canadian commandos turn three captured al-Qaeda fighters over to the U.S. military.

Jan. 28: Then-prime-minister Jean Chrétien says the government is reviewing its policy on prisoners and that opposition concerns are "hypothetical" because none have been taken.

Jan. 29: Mr. Eggleton admits he learned eight days earlier that Canadian commandos had turned over prisoners without any assurances about whether they would be treated as prisoners of war.

Feb. 6: U.S. President George W. Bush says that Taliban prisoners would be considered POWs under the Geneva Conventions, but al-Qaeda prisoners would not.

Feb. 7: Both Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Eggleton say they are satisfied with this guarantee.

2005

Dec. 18: General Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff, signs an agreement with Afghanistan's Defence Minister stipulating that detainees handed from Canadian to Afghan custody will be treated in accordance with the third Geneva convention, which forbids torture and other inhumane treatment.

2006

May 31: Defence Minister Dennis O'Connor says the International Committee of the Red Cross is monitoring detainees, and will report prisoner abuse to Canada.

2007

February: Investigations are launched into the treatment of Afghan detainees after The Globe and Mail publishes allegations of abuse.

Feb. 21: Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association file an application in Federal Court seeking a judicial review of the military's detainee-handover policy, questioning whether Canadian soldiers abroad are legally bound by the Geneva Conventions.

March 21: Mr. O'Connor apologizes for providing inaccurate information. "I would like to be clear: The International Committee of the Red Cross is under no obligation to share information with Canada on the treatment of detainees transferred by Canada to Afghan authorities," he tells the House of Commons. "The International Committee of the Red Cross provides this information to the country that has the detainees in its custody, in this case, Afghanistan."

April 23: During 30 face-to-face interviews with The Globe and Mail, Afghans detained by Canadian soldiers and sent to Kandahar's notorious jails say they were beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and subjected to electric shocks during interrogation.

April 24: Stephen Harper brushes off calls for his Defence Minister's head and dismisses the furor over the torture of Afghans captured by Canadian soldiers as "allegations of the Taliban. ... We do not have evidence that [the torture] is true."

April 26: The Harper government buckles and announces a new deal providing Canadian officials with full access to Afghan jails.

July 9: It is learned that Gen. Hillier's office has halted the release of documents relating to detainees captured in Afghanistan under the federal Access to Information Act, claiming that disclosure of any such information could endanger Canadian troops.

Sept. 22: Canada is unable to account for at least 50 prisoners it captured and turned over to Afghan authorities, frustrating efforts to put to rest concerns the detainees were subject to torture. Canadian sources blame the Afghans' shoddy record-keeping and suggest the detainees have likely returned safely to their homes. But officials familiar with Kandahar's justice system say the possibility of foul play cannot be dismissed.

Nov. 13: Turning Afghan detainees over to known torturers breaks international law, and Canada, along with other NATO countries should impose an immediate halt to transfers, Amnesty International says.

Nov. 15: Canadian officials confirm they have evidence a Taliban detainee showed signs of physical abuse, the seventh such allegation made by detainees since Canada began systematically visiting Afghan prisoners in May.

2008

Jan. 22: Compelling evidence that Canadian-transferred detainees are still being tortured in Afghan prisons emerges from the government's own follow-up inspection reports.

Can your iPhone be searched without a warrent? // Current

Can your iPhone be searched without a warrent? // Current: "Can your iPhone be searched without a warrent?"

935 False Statements Preceded War

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Jan. 22 on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund For Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements - amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts - was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists - indeed, even some entire news organizations - have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

Terrorist gets life in embassy plot

NEW YORK -- The admitted terrorist said he had been a naive adolescent brainwashed into plotting to blow up American embassies. He called himself a changed man, a would-be ophthalmologist who deserved a chance to pursue his goal.

But a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Mohammed Mansour Jabarah to life in prison, saying she gave him credit for repudiating violence but couldn't overlook what he had done.

"Actions speak louder than words," U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones said as she imposed the sentence Friday.

She had listened to the Canadian citizen deliver a convoluted 20-minute speech blaming his past on evil men who exploited his youth and inexperience.

"I am not a ruthless, infamous and notorious terrorist," said Jabarah, who was 19 when he was captured in Oman after the collapse of his bombing plot. "I do not believe in terrorism, violence and killing."

Jabarah has been in U.S. custody since 2002, when Canada's intelligence service turned him over to the FBI. He secretly pleaded guilty to terrorism charges as part of a short-lived plea bargain.

For a few months, he was a valuable resource in the hunt for al-Qaida leaders. He gave investigators information about Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described his personal meetings with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and detailed his interactions with several other high ranking al-Qaida lieutenants.

He also described his own involvement in a terrorist plot. After graduating from high school in St. Catharines, Ontario, where he had lived since a move from Kuwait at age 12, Jabarah slipped into Afghanistan and trained at al-Qaida camps in 2001. Prosecutors said he was preparing his first major operation - bomb attacks on American and Israeli embassies in Singapore and the Philippines - when the scheme was foiled by a round of arrests.

"This is far from a half-baked plot," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Rodgers said, noting that tons of explosives had been bought and a suicide bomber selected.

"Mr. Jabarah is the real deal," Rodgers said.

After Oman's intelligence service captured Jabarah, he was brought to Canada. He was interrogated and told he had two choices: Go to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, or switch sides and become an informant.

By July 2002, he had pleaded guilty in a closed court session and moved into a series of FBI safe houses in the United States, where he lived in relative comfort, with a stereo and his own kitchen.

His work as a snitch ended a few months later, when FBI agents searching his quarters discovered jihadist writings, a knife and rope hidden in his luggage, and instructions on how to make explosives. They also found a list bearing the initials of U.S. agents and prosecutors. Investigators believed it was a roster of people Jabarah intended to kill.

CIA tapings continued after 2002, lawsuit says

WASHINGTON: Lawyers for Majid Khan, a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have challenged the Central Intelligence Agency's assertion that videotaping of interrogations stopped in 2002, saying that Khan's interrogations after that time were recorded on videotape.

In papers filed Jan. 4, Khan's lawyers challenged a statement Dec. 6 by the CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden. Addressing agency employees after being told that an article about the tapes was about to be published, he wrote that the taping stopped in 2002.

Intelligence officials have said the tapes showed the questioning of just two detainees suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes were destroyed in 2005, and Congress and the Justice Department are investigating their destruction.

The filing by Khan's lawyers was released Thursday, with heavy redactions by the government. A spokesman for the Justice Department, Erik Ablin, declined to comment because the case was in litigation. A CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said the agency stood by Hayden's statement from Dec. 6.

Khan, a Pakistani who moved to the United States with his family and attended high school outside Baltimore, was captured in 2003 and held at a secret CIA interrogation site overseas. He was one of 14 men suspected of being high-level members of Al Qaeda who were moved to Guantánamo in September 2006.

In a statement that year, the government said Khan was directed by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief organizer of the Sept. 11 plot, to conduct research on poisoning reservoirs and blowing up gas stations in the United States. The statement also said Khan had delivered money for terrorist attacks to another operative from Al Qaeda and discussed a plan to smuggle explosives into the United States.

In a petition in August to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Khan's lawyers challenged a finding by a military panel at Guantánamo that he was being properly held as an "enemy combatant." They have also said he was tortured, though details of the claims have been redacted by the government from the court papers. The CIA has denied torturing anyone.

Attached to Khan's new filing are handwritten letters he sent to the appeals court on Dec. 17 and Dec. 21, also with deletions by the government. The letters, in serviceable English, offer a rare direct statement from a so-called high-level detainee.

"Why would I ever want to harm U.S.A., who has never done anything but good to me and my family?" he asks in one letter.

In their motion, Khan's lawyers say that Bush administration officials who authorized "state-sanctioned torture" of Khan and others "have done far greater harm to our nation than any of the unproven allegations against Majid Khan."

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

Blair stabs Hillary Clinton in the back’ after supporting Republicans

Tony Blair is accused of betrayal last night as he waded into the American Presidential campaign to support George Bush’s Republican world view.As the former PM recommended Mr Bush’s policies to 400 millionaire bankers in Las Vegas, former ally Bill Clinton was campaigning in Nevada for his wife Hillary, who hopes to be the Democratic candidate for the White House and is an arch Bush critic.

In a move liable to be interpreted as a stab in the back for Hillary’s campaign, Mr Blair – who was paid 175,000 for his 35-minute speech – said: “George Bush is an amazingly strong and steady President…which is what America and the world needs.”

Last night Labour backbencher Jeremy Corbyn said: “A week ago Mr Blair travelled to France to praise the Right-wing President of France and this week he travels to the USA to support the Republicans.

“Is there no end to the extremes he will go to?” No, He’ll do anything to hitch the money train of Bushie’s military industrial complex’s…Blood Sucker!

Mr Blair’s office denied that his comments were an attack on Mrs Clinton.