Tweet
It turns out the claims the VP and Colin Powell made that Iraq was supporting Al Qaeda during the run up to the invasion of Iraq was based upon confession gained from prisoners being tortured. I don't like Al Qaeda but if you torture someone enough they will tell you anything you want to hear so torture is not a reliable means of extracting information.
It seems like there are still many pyschological ways to get a person to confess without having to resort to something which is so against common western values.
Confession that formed base of Iraq war was acquired under torture: journalist
Thu Oct 26, 8:37 PM ET
LONDON (AFP) - An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of links between
Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured, a journalist told the BBC.
Iban al Shakh al Libby told intelligence agents that he was close to Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and "understood an awful lot about the inner workings of Al-Qaeda," former FBI agent Jack Clonan told the broadcaster.
Libby was tortured in an Egyptian prison, according to Stephen Grey, the author of the newly-released book "Ghost Plane" who investigated the secret US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons that housed terror suspects around the world.
US
President George W. Bush confirmed the existence of the network of CIA holding facilities overseas during a September 6 speech defending controversial US interrogation practices.
Libby was apparently taken to Cairo, Clonan told the broadcaster, after being captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
"He (Libby) claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in Egyptian prisons," Grey said.
"What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.
Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003, weeks before a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under Saddam Hussein had provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative", whom Grey alleges is Libby.
"At the time, the caveats to say this intelligence was extracted under torture were not provided," Grey said.
Grey said that, after being held in Egypt, Libby was transferred to a secret CIA facility in Bagram, just north of Afghanistan's capital Kabul. The journalist said he had also met other people held in that facility who describe the torture that Libby faced at the CIA facility.
Since then, "he disappeared", Grey said.
"Like hundreds of other people arrested after September 11, he's vanished into a sort of netherworld of prisons where astonishingly,
President Bush now says the prisons have emptied.
Thu Oct 26, 8:37 PM ET
LONDON (AFP) - An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of links between
Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured, a journalist told the BBC.
Iban al Shakh al Libby told intelligence agents that he was close to Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and "understood an awful lot about the inner workings of Al-Qaeda," former FBI agent Jack Clonan told the broadcaster.
Libby was tortured in an Egyptian prison, according to Stephen Grey, the author of the newly-released book "Ghost Plane" who investigated the secret US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons that housed terror suspects around the world.
US
President George W. Bush confirmed the existence of the network of CIA holding facilities overseas during a September 6 speech defending controversial US interrogation practices.
Libby was apparently taken to Cairo, Clonan told the broadcaster, after being captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
"He (Libby) claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in Egyptian prisons," Grey said.
"What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.
Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003, weeks before a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under Saddam Hussein had provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative", whom Grey alleges is Libby.
"At the time, the caveats to say this intelligence was extracted under torture were not provided," Grey said.
Grey said that, after being held in Egypt, Libby was transferred to a secret CIA facility in Bagram, just north of Afghanistan's capital Kabul. The journalist said he had also met other people held in that facility who describe the torture that Libby faced at the CIA facility.
Since then, "he disappeared", Grey said.
"Like hundreds of other people arrested after September 11, he's vanished into a sort of netherworld of prisons where astonishingly,
President Bush now says the prisons have emptied.
It seems like there are still many pyschological ways to get a person to confess without having to resort to something which is so against common western values.
Comment