[Mb-civic] US Citizen Held in Iraq as Suspected Insurgent Reuters

[Michael Butler]

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    US Citizen Held in Iraq as Suspected Insurgent
    Reuters

    Friday 01 April 2005

    The US military said on Friday it has held since last year an American
citizen without charges in Iraq as a suspected top aide to militant Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, drawing condemnation from civil rights activists.

    The man, who US officials at the Pentagon and in Iraq refused to
identify by name, possessed dual US-Jordanian citizenship, the military
said.

    The man was not born in the United States, but became a naturalized US
citizen and lived in "a couple of different cities" during about 20 years in
America, one official said.

    Thought to be the first US citizen caught as a suspected participant in
Iraq's two-year-old insurgency, he was seized in a raid "late last year" on
a Baghdad home where weapons and bomb-making material was found, the
military said.

    Air Force Lt. Col. John Skinner, a Pentagon spokesman, said the man,
deemed an enemy combatant, had personal ties to Zarqawi and was believed to
have served as his personal emissary in several Iraqi cities. The man has
not been allowed to have a lawyer, Skinner said.

    "I think it's extremely high on the outrageous scale. This is a direct
violation of a Supreme Court decision," said lawyer Rachel Meeropol of the
New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

    The justices ruled last June that the government cannot hold an American
citizen indefinitely in a US military jail without providing a chance to
contest the case against him.

    "The Supreme Court decided that an alleged enemy combatant who is an
American citizen has the right to challenge the factual basis for his
detention, and has the right to do that through counsel. This man has
clearly been denied both opportunities," Meeropol said.

    'Rule of Law'

    "If they're going to hold him, he should be charged," Meeropol added.
"This is an administration that simply does not seem concerned with
following the rule of law."

    Skinner said the man attended a three-officer military tribunal's
hearing to review the facts surrounding his capture and interview witnesses,
and had the opportunity to hear the basis on which he was detained and make
a statement.

    Skinner said the panel determined he did not merit for prisoner of war
status and that he was an enemy combatant.

    The man is being held at one of the three permanent US prisons in Iraq,
believed to be the Camp Cropper facility for "high-value" detainees at
Baghdad International Airport.

    Skinner said International Committee of the Red Cross representatives
have had access to him.

    A US official said the Bush administration was weighing three main
options: turning him over to the Iraqi government for trial; turning him
over to the Justice Department for trial in the United States; or simply
continuing his detention.

    Skinner said information suggested the man provided aid to Zarqawi's
network including: facilitating links to other terrorist groups; aiding in
the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq; aiding in the transfer of funds
to support Iraq-based terrorist operations; and aiding in the planning and
execution of kidnappings in Iraq.

    Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, is the most-wanted man in the
country. His group has claimed responsibility for many of the worst suicide
attacks, as well as the beheading of several foreigners.

    The Bush administration has declared a small number of US citizens enemy
combatants eligible for indefinite detention without charges. For example,
Yaser Esam Hamdi, whose case led to last year's ruling, was captured in 2001
in Afghanistan and accused of being a Taliban soldier. After the ruling, the
government released Hamdi to Saudi Arabia on condition that he give up US
citizenship.