Mowhoush and al-Jamadi
In an article reporting the former DCIs’ attempt to shut down the torture investigation, the WaPo provides a few more details on the direction of that investigation. It reports that John Durham will be reviewing just a few cases, including the deaths of Iraqis Abed Hamed Mowhoush and Manadel al-Jamadi.
Two other detainee cases were among those that drew significant law enforcement attention: the death by suffocation of Iraqi Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush in November 2003, after which an Army officer was convicted; and the death the same month of Manadel al-Jamadi at Abu Ghraib prison, in the custody of the CIA, where he was placed after being beaten by Navy SEALs. One SEAL was charged with a crime, and he later won an acquittal.
It also describes one of the reasons these cases are being investigated again–because there was some disagreement over whether to indict the cases.
The Justice Department review in the Eastern District of Virginia decision several years ago was conducted by some of the office’s top prosecutors.
One official involved in the review said there was “absolutely no pressure from DOJ” to decide the cases in a certain direction. “There was absolutely none of that, and if I had seen that I would have been very offended by it,” the official said.
[snip]
The [Office of Public Responsibility] report, which is undergoing declassification review, does not point to problems with attorneys in the Eastern District of Virginia, two sources said, but it does explore differences of opinion within the working group that examined the detainee allegations over how to proceed on the few cases that were “close calls.” In a small number of instances, career lawyers disagreed about whether the evidence was sufficient to seek indictment and ultimately win in court. Some of those issues were assessed — as is normally the case — by political appointees, including Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who was nominated to serve as deputy attorney general in October 2005. There are no allegations that cases were rejected for improper political reasons.
As it happens, the CIA released some of its own internal discussions on the Mowhoush and al-Janabi killings in response to earlier FOIAs. This set of documents, for example, includes a number of emailed public reports of the investigations. Note, for example, the several reports in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal (and though the reports don’t say it, the completion of the CIA IG Report) citing CIA referrals of these two, as well as the Salt Pit death (which the WaPo says will also be reviewed), as well as several reports from the trial of a soldier in Mowhoush’s killing.
In addition there is:
- An email from September 16, 2004 warning that the military prosecutor in the Mowhoush case was preparing to charge military personnel and stating that the OGC lawyer “was interested in certain issues related to the case”
- Discussions about a CIA person retaining counsel for the Mowhoush IG investigation
- An April 2006 email giving someone an opportunity to review the OIG’s report on Mowhoush’s death
- The memo accompanying the IG Report on al-Jamadi’s death sent to the head of the criminal division in the US Attorney’s office that conducted the investigation; this notes that the decision not to prosecute that case was made orally (February 9, 2005) and in written form (February 22, 2005)
This document includes an entirely redacted review of three criminal investigations being conducted by OIG, including Mowhoush and al-Jamadi (the third may be Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, which William Ockham posted on here and here).
This document includes requests from HPSCI and SSCI in May 2005 for an immediate briefing on the investigation into Mowhoush’s death.
This document includes the letters accompanying the IG Report on al-Jamadi’s death–sent on November 21, 2005–to the Jane Harman and John Rockefeller.
This document includes the formal declassification–on April 1, 2005–of really basic information relating to CIA’s role in al-Jamadi’s death.
None of those documents explain the back story to the review, but then declination to prosecute, of these deaths (though a few relating to the CIA person involved with Mowhoush’s death suggest that person refused to deal with his role). But they’re useful in showing how both of these deaths first came to attention via the Abu Ghraib story and scrutiny on DOD abuse, followed by the declination to prosecute, and only then followed by the CIA’s own detailed investigation of the deaths.
“When the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” It also means, as part of a conspiracy to commit torture at the highest levels of the Bush Administration, you’re eligible for the death penalty.
What a mess. Trying to get information out of reports of disagreements between political appointees and career prosecutors is really difficult because of the way the Bush DOJ was politicized in its hiring of career prosecutors. Do we know the percentage of Liberty U grads in Eastern District VA?
Here is the link to The New Yorker article dated 11/14/2005 by Jane Mayer which names Mark Swanner as the CIA officer/employee who was interrogating Al Jamadi (aka “The Ice Man”) when he died. In the Abu Ghraib photos Al Jamadi is pictured packed in ice and Lynde England standing over him with thumbs up. The death certificate for Al Jamadi shows cause of death as “homicide”.
This is just a refresher as I know the info I give now has been discussed here many times before.
FWIW: I can’t find her name at the moment, but the woman doing “thumbs-up” with a big grin over the body of al-Jamadi wasn’t Lynndie England. (If you’ll scroll down from the picture showing the grinning woman, there is also a picture of Lynndie for comparison,)
Link.
Thank you fatster. I stand corrected.
I’m still trying to find the name of the thumbs-up woman, acquarius74. I do think I saw it somewhere. I will let you know if/when I find it.
Found it! Sabrina Harman, although Graner had to get himself photographed with the corpse, too. Good old wiki. Sorry to be so slow on the uptake today.
Sabrina Harman is the name I believe.
Thank you so much. I did finally find the info–see @26. Do you know what happened to her?
She was convicted of mistreatment and got a six month sentence.
The New Yorker profile of her. This ABC story is also pretty good. She speaks in this Standard Operating Procedure clip.
Thank you ever so much. I saved the NYorker and ABC Story. Can’t figure out how to save the SOP clip, but I’ll work on it. Again, many thanks.
Nothing like a good whitewash to start the morning. The basic events get little reporting in MSM, a couple of small fry are convicted, and the folks who ordered the torture don’t even have their lunch disturbed.
Boxturtle (I thought we used to have a law against murder…)
Moving forward without looking back is not the way to go regarding the concern of torture. We wake up every day with the burden of the fact that our leaders have not addressed this and their “looking forward” (avoiding truth and justice) just increases the burden. This increases the burden because we all know, our future diplomacy efforts are dead in the water and we signed off on the future torture of our own who serve to protect our nation.
I am with JimWhite. What. A. Mess.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Boxturtle (That darn constitution gets so INCONVIENENT sometimes!)
Thanks for that link. What is in that document alone ought to have caused deep shame throughout the military, the government, and the country as a whole, followed by a strenuous program to regain our decency.
The Jamadi death is especially poignant because he died with evidence of severe blunt trauma, and he was also “doused” with water with a canvas sandbag over his head. A wet bag on the head could obviously lead to respiratory difficulty. Whether dousing was an “OLC-approved” CIA technique on 11/4/03 is an open question….
Doesn’t matter, if the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong.
Saw Bush at the Dallas game last night. He sure looked happy, like he was getting plenty of sleep, not a care in the world. I couldn’t help thinking he’d look good in Orange, surrounded by federal marshals and lawyers.
Boxturtle (at least Dallas lost)
Naval Criminal Investigative Service had done an investigation of the SEALs role in Jamadis death. On January 24, 2004, Army CID says
Attaboy!
In October 2004, the CID investigation lists Navy SEAL interviews as being held at CIA OIG. These are dated around April to August 2004.
And from Salon:
Some more on this horror, the SEALs and CIA is here.
Your link does not work for me. I get a blank article with Time headers on the page.
Boxturtle (It’d probably just piss me off reading it anyway)
So sorry, BoxTurtle. I expected someone to report problems with getting to the picture/story of al-Jawadi because the url stretched from here to the end of the block, and then some.
Here’s the Time one (which is really quite short, so I don’t see how it tripped you up). Oh, well, IANAL and IANACT (. . . computer tech):
http://www.time.com/time/magaz…..-3,00.html
I just checked the time url and got right through. Hope you do, too.
You might try again, as it worked for me just now. Sometimes a whole mess o packets gets dropped at once, I think.
Thnx.
Hrrumph. Neither link works for me until I copy/paste it into another browser window. Then it’s fine.
Boxturtle (I was right, the story just pissed me off)
I was right, the story just pissed me off
Yep. Hadn’t read a direct account in a while and forgot how patently awful they are.
I’d really have to watch myself with someone like that unit chief, finding all kinds of lame-ass excuses to violate his training by destroying obvious evidence in a potential homicide matter. People might make tasteless jokes. [As if they weren’t anyway.] Someone could slip on the bloody spots.
Maybe a spot of physical work …
The OPR Report is undergoing declassification? Whitewashing
More than that, the canary is dead in the CIA coal mines…
Is the Eastern District of VA still as politicized as when Scott Horton said this about it back in ‘07? Considering Rove’s conversion of DOJ into a GOP tool, I’ll be surprised if it has changed it’s ways. Or have Obama and Holder created their own “silent graveyard?”
Well, here let my cynicism show once more.
Re: al-Jamadi, his is one of the few cases where there is direct public information on the name of the CIA agent responsible in his interrogation. The body is photographed, Cyril Wecht has issued autopsy findings (I’m sure that OPR report will go into the handling of the case against Wecht by Mary Beth Buchanan, uh huh). The only way to really clear the CIA is to have some kind of public absolution – so that puts that on the list.
Re: Mowhoush, there is currently a civil case pending. The criminal investigation/suit will be a nifty way to shut down the civil case that Mowhoush’s son, who was allegedly taken hostage and abused and used to stage a mock execution in the next room, so Mowhoush was tortured to death thinking that his juvenile son had just been executed in the next room as well, has filed. And look at what the military punishment was in that case. How do you reconcile with a jury the 60 or 90 day ankle bracelet treatment of a guy who repeatedly suffocated a man to death? It’s a great opportunity to derail the civil suit and end up with no real action against the underlying actors. Once you have the soldier who suffocated the general and who has “done his time” on the stand, or even before you get to that point after a depo of the soldier, you can – if it’s the underlying game plan – crater things. And if you play your cards the way DOJ has been playing them, you can make the testimony of the son, who himself was a victim of a war crime (being taken hostage and being abused) the subject of classification or other impediments that will impact his civil suit.
I’m sure there’s an equally compelling argument that everything is on the up and up, but I’m not buying it. And I’m still waiting for the release of the CIA memo about the innocence of named persons held in abuse at GITMO and the investigation of those war crimes. And what about all the things not in the CIA’s IG report at all – re: renditions to third party torture. The CIA IG didn’t even claim to include that in his investigation – it still hasn’t been dealt with – and we have 7 figure refugee situations and huge death, misery and suffering that relate directly back to the al-libi torture and we have no one taking the responsiblity for sending al-libi to Libya either, even though he had recanted and the subject of disinformation leading up to the Iraq war was a matter of more than passing interest to the Congress and the American public -not to mention the couple million refugees and families of the thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis.
And I guess we aren’t going to be seeing anything about Rumsfeld and Haynes and the Mowhoush death, or the Dilawar death, or …
Whatever. If Obama is a one term President, it won’t be because he didn’t earn it.
This has really been the hallmark of everything the last 8 years or so. DOJ will “go after” everyone execpt its own. They’ll leave Aafia Siddiqui’s son to be disappeared by Afghans; they’ll look the other way as KSM’s children and wife are disappeared; they’ll directly sign off on sending stray Canadians to Syrian torture; they’ll organize and implement torture regimes; in the final analysis, they’ll all “sign off” on memos’ like Bradbury’s love letters to Evil – but don’t cross one of “their own.” The only thing that really got any members of DOJ lit up and talking and pushing back was the USA firings. That was the only step that was a step too far.
Argh- meant this to be in response to fatster @27 and can’t change it
Thanks for the link.
My pleasure. And nice to know that BoxTurtle and I aren’t the only two having technical difficulties this am.
After Hadifia rape,Torture and murder of some 28 people I think someone got 6 months in the brig,big deal.
Sooner or later there has to be an International tribunal for justice to be served. How many countries were involved in the torture assembly line? How many nationalities were tortured? Who brought the ice to the party?
We are just like WW2 Germany, a rouge nation ,so full of itself and out of control the rest of the world banded together to defeat then TRY the big fish.
Time for Nuremburg 2 for the system or POLICY to be judged with the top 20/30 lead actors in the dock at once.
Then strip them of everything the claim dear, except for their lonely lives lived out in the bowels of Abu Grhaib prison where they can listen to the ghosts scream in their little minds.
Report: CIA interrogations informed by bad science
By PAMELA HESS (AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — “The CIA’s harsh interrogation program likely damaged the brain and memory functions of terrorist suspects, diminishing their physical ability to provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.”
More.