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| Americans On Trial In Kabul
from cnn Quote:
American vigilantes stand trial in Kabul
Wednesday, July 21, 2004 Posted: 5:58 PM EDT (2158 GMT)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Three American vigilantes went on trial in Afghanistan Wednesday on charges they tortured eight prisoners in a private jail, with the group's leader saying he had the tacit support of senior Pentagon officials.
The military, facing its own allegations of prisoner abuse, says the men were freelancers operating outside the law and without their knowledge.
Jonathan Idema, Brett Bennett and Edward Caraballo were arrested when Afghan security forces raided their makeshift jail in a house in Kabul on July 5.
Standing before a three-judge panel in a heavily guarded national security court, the trio listened quietly to the charges -- including hostage-taking and "mental and physical torture."
Three of their former captives described being beaten, held under water and left without food.
The Americans didn't testify. But Idema said afterward that the abuse allegations were invented.
He said his men had arrested "world-class terrorists" and said he was in daily phone and e-mail contact with officials "at the highest level" of the U.S. Department of Defense.
"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did, they absolutely supported what we did," Idema told reporters crowding round the dock. "We have extensive evidence of that."
Idema said a four-star Pentagon official called Heather Anderson "applauded our efforts" and wanted to place the group "under contract" -- an offer they refused.
But there are no four-star female officers in the entire U.S. military. The name Heather Anderson is not listed in the Pentagon phone book.
An official from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul observed the trial but declined to comment on the proceedings, where only one of the Americans had a lawyer.
Afghan and U.S. officials have left open whether the men, who face up to 20 years in Afghan jails if convicted, might be sent to the United States to face further charges.
Presiding Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari adjourned the case for two weeks to give the Americans and four Afghans accused of helping them more time to prepare their defense.
There was no attorney for Idema, a bearded former American soldier and convicted fraudster reportedly aged 48, who appeared in a khaki uniform with a reversed American flag on the shoulder.
He wore sunglasses despite the gloom in the courtroom, completing a look that had fooled even Kabul's NATO peacekeepers, who sent explosives experts to help with three raids last month before realizing they had been duped.
Idema told reporters his group had halted a plot to blow up the main U.S. military base with fuel trucks and assassinate a string of Afghan leaders. "We're talking about world-class terrorists," he said.
He also said his group had delivered suspects to American special forces in the past.
Maj. Rick Peat, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said he had no information on such a handover.
During the court session, Idema interrupted the judge to complain about the error-strewn translation and glowered at his former prisoners as well as his Afghan assistants when they incriminated him.
Turbaned men in the audience groaned in disapproval when prosecutor Mohammed Naeem Dawari said Afghan defendants told interrogators the Americans were "always drunk" and brought women to the house.
Ghulam Safi, a shopkeeper, said Idema's men stopped his car, put a hood over his head and bundled him off to their jail, where he was held for 18 days.
"They put me in the shower and let boiling water run over me," Safi told the court.
He said he had lost feeling in his hands and that his watch and money were stolen.
A taxi driver called Ahmad Ali said his head was forced repeatedly under the surface of a basin of water and that he was beaten on the feet and stomach. He said he was fed two pieces of bread in seven days.
"They kept showing me pictures of people and asked if I knew them," Ali said. "They said they'd bring my family and beat them as well."
The third witness, a senior official at the Afghan Supreme Court called Maulawi Sidiq, said he wasn't allowed to go the toilet for 24 hours.
The American military says it has no idea what motivated Idema's group, which flew into Afghanistan from India on April 14. But there were indications that it may have been commercial.
Idema, who claims to have fought with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001-2002, offered security to journalists and hawked purported al Queda training videos to television networks at the time.
Idema, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, stars in a top-selling book about the war called "Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for bin Laden."
Dawari said cameras -- as well as weapons -- were seized in their Kabul hideout, and that the Americans were "making a film on counterterrorism."
The prosecutor said Caraballo, 35, was a cameraman and that Bennett, 28, who also wore a military uniform, "seemed to be a journalist." Bennett's hometown was not known.
Michael Skibbie, an American lawyer representing Caraballo, confirmed that his client was a journalist from New York City, but declined to elaborate.
Skibbie, appointed through an international legal aid foundation, told reporters his defense would rest on distinguishing Caraballo, who wore jeans and a black T-shirt, from the others.
"I don't think anyone has said that he played an active part" in the alleged crimes, Skibbie said.
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