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Today's
Stories
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts
Republicans and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or "Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy Christison
Fallon and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts
How to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why "Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its Sheen
Michael Neumann
The One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
Did the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley Beattie
The Passion of John McCain
March 8-9, 2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy Christison
Crisis over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia: Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force Chairman
Poet's Basement
St. Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of the Weekend
Hillary Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the 'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo Britons
Will Potter
Before the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
February 20,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Lies
and Spies
Paul Krassner
My
Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The
Pakistani Elections
Farzana Versey
The
Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch
Allan Nairn
Dying for a Second Round: Israel's
New Plan to Attack Lebanon
John V. Whitbeck
If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization?
Steve Eckardt
Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News
Lee Sustar
Union-Busting at Freightliner
Mike Ferner
How Sick of It are You?
Website of the Day
The US Military Index
February 19,
2008
Uri Avnery
Blood
and Champagne
Paul Craig
Roberts
Paying
Insurgents Not to Fight
Gary Leupp
The Independence of Kosovo
Fidel Castro
The Moment Has Come
David Macaray
Management's Dirty Little Secret
Reza Fiyouzat
Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections
Valerie Morse
The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie
Walter Brasch
Bush on Safari
Website of the Day
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
February 18,
2008
Wajahat Ali
Free
Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan
Diana Johnstone
NATO's
Kosovo Colony
Paul Craig Roberts
What Do We Stand For?
Andy Worthington
Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along"
Debbie Nathan
Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes
Anthony DiMaggio
Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business
of Elections
Bill Simpich
Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq
Eva Liddell
A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash
Christopher Brauchli
The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans
Stephen Soldz
Wikileaks is Under Attack!
Johann Rossouw
The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism
Website of
the Day
Sick of It Day!
February 16
/ 17, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan
Ralph Nader
We
the Corporations ...
David Macaray
The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin?
William J.
Peace
Wheelchair Dumping
Ron Jacobs
War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption
Diane Christian
War Corrupts
Alan Maass
Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen
(and Beyond)
Ramzy Baroud
Iraq and the US Elections
Michael Donnelly
Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Art of Finding Whalers
James L. Secor
China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008
Eve Bachrach
Bush Returns to Africa
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army
Stephen Gowans
Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian
Missy Beattie
To Vote or Not to Vote?
David Michael
Green
Warming Slowly to Obama
Wajahat Ali
Attack of the Info-tainment Circus
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther
Website of the Day
Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!
February 15,
2008
George Szamuely
The
Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
Patrick Cockburn
Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability
to Baghdad?
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban,
Bin Laden and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg
Alan Farago
God and the Democrats
Chris Genovali
Alberta's Black Gold Rush
Jacob Hornberger
Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull
Website of the Day
Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams
February 14,
2008
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Palestine
in the Mind of America
Mike Whitney
Swan Song for NATO
Clancy Sigal
Strike Notes from a Screenwriter
George Wuerthner
A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
Peter Morici
Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit?
John Ross
Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border
Allan Nairn
Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can
Whack Anyone
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon's Warmongers
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein
Donna Volatile
Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It
Seth Sandronsky
The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes
Website of
the Day
Conventions: the Land Around Us
February 13,
2008
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet
John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America
Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line
Christina Kasica
King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America
Vicente Navarro
How to Read the U.S. Primaries
Hall Greenland
Australia's Finest Hour
Lee Sustar
Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most
David Macaray
The Writers' Strike Finally Ends
Roderick Frazier
Nash
Celebrating Wilderness
Patrick Irelan
Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT
Anthony Papa
Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases
Carl Finamore
Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted
by Politicians
Website of
the Day
John He Is
February 12,
2008
Frank J. Menetrez
The
Case Against Alan Dershowitz
Paul Craig
Roberts
War Without End
Dr. Trudy Bond
The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the
Torture?
Col. Dan Smith
The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away?
Ronnie Cummins
Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road
Ralph Nader
Open the Government
John V. Walsh
Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered
Dave Lindorff
Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms
the Candidate
Michael Donnelly
Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules
Ron Jacobs
La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life"
Ben Tripp
Beggars Collide
Website of the Day
Springsteen and Youngstown
February 11,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Lessons
for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate?
Wajahat Ali
A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby
Ray McGovern
Waterboarding for God and Country
Allan Nairn
The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta
Uri Avnery
An End Foreseen?
Chris Floyd
American
Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech
Martha Rosenberg
School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows
Stephen Fleischman
The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics
Marc Lamont Hill
Not My Brand of Hope
Liliana Segura
Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation
Peter Morici
Challenges for the New President
Christopher
Brauchli
A Drug Rant from a Former Taker
Website of the Day
Annie vs. the Blue Angels
February 8
/ 10, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Does
the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?
Patrick Cockburn
Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold?
Mike Whitney
The Great Bust of '08
Anthony DiMaggio
How the Press Covers Waterboarding
Andy Worthington
The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists?
Linn Cohen-Cole
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
Firmin DeBrabander
Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering
and Deaths of the Great Whales
Kenneth S. Pope
Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association
Jacob G. Hornberger
American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy
Robert Bryce
Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ...
Then What?
P. Sainath
The Last of the Buccaneer Editors
Allan Nairn
Give Me Back My Land
Fred Gardner
/
Pebbles Trippet
"The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the
Law!"
Andrew Wimmer
Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death
Robert Fantina
America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr
David Michael Green
Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves
Kevin Zeese
Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd?
Peter Morici
Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence
Chris Driscoll
Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008?
Prairie Miller
Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen
Poets Basement
Davies and Buknatski
February 7,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Baghdad Will Explode Again
Bill Christison
Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians
David Anderson
NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for
the Sake of Ratings
Ron Jacobs
Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing
Jane Rockefeller
The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation
Andy Worthington
On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden
|
March 13, 2008
Afghan Hero Who died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
By ANDY WORTHINGTON
On February 5, the New York Times published a front-page story by Carlotta Gall and myself, Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S., about Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, a 68-year old Afghan detainee who died in Guantánamo on December 30, 2007, in which we established that Mr. Hekmati, known to the authorities in Guantánamo as Abdul Razzak, had -- contrary to assertions that he was involved in both al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- helped free three anti-Taliban commanders from a Taliban jail in 1999, but that no significant effort had been made in Guantánamo to find witnesses who could easily have verified his story, which he had repeated throughout his five-year detention without charge or trial.
In the wake of various right-wing claims that the journalistic integrity of the article was in doubt, following an “Editor’s Note” issued by the Times, pointing out that I have described Guantánamo as part of “a cruel and misguided response by the Bush administration to the Sept. 11 attacks,” and that I have an “outspoken position on Guantánamo” and “a point of view,” I think it may be prudent to relate a little of the background to the story, explaining its genesis, and directing readers to other sources to help verify the story reported by Carlotta and myself.
The story of Abdul Razzaq Hekmati had intrigued me while I was researching my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, primarily because he had called Ismail Khan -- who was exceedingly well known as the governor of the western Afghan province of Herat -- as a witness in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantánamo. These tribunals were established to review the detainees’ status as “enemy combatants,” and were apparently empowered to call outside witnesses requested by the detainees. In fact, as Carlotta and I reported, (based on my research, on statements made last year by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, who had served on the tribunals, and on a report compiled by the Seton Hall Law School,) no outside witnesses had ever been called to appear at a tribunal.
In Chapter 18 of The Guantánamo Files, I looked specifically at the US authorities’ stated inability to locate witnesses requested by the detainees to appear at their tribunals to clear their names. Because Ismail Khan was so famous, I mentioned the request made by a truck driver named Abdul Razzak, who claimed that he had freed Khan from a Taliban jail in 1999, but I had no time to research his story further.
Instead, after also mentioning a few more of the many Afghan detainees who beseeched the authorities to establish contact with officials in Afghanistan who could apparently vouch for them, I focused on the case of Abdullah Mujahid. He had been cleared for release at the time I was writing the book, and was finally released from Guantánamo -- only to end up being held without charge or trial in a US-run wing of Kabul’s Pol-i-Charki prison -- in December 2007.
In Guantánamo, Mujahid persistently maintained that he had been working for the government of Hamid Karzai, and the authorities’ alleged inability to find witnesses requested by him was demonstrated as a sham in June 2006, when, in the space of 72 hours, the journalist Declan Walsh located three witnesses whom the authorities claimed to have been unable to contact: one was working in Washington DC, another was working for the Karzai government in Kabul, and the third was working for the provincial government in Gardez. All three were able to verify his story.
When I read that Abdul Razzak had died of colorectal cancer in Guantánamo on December 30, I was determined to see if I could find out anything more about his story, and Googled various variations of his name, and the events he had referred to, until finally, “ismail khan taliban jailbreak 1999” led me to “Dissension Within Taliban Made Daring Escape From Prison Possible”, a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall, from January 2002, which matched the account of the jailbreak described by Abdul Razzak in many ways.
Carlotta Gall interviewed the engineer of the prison escape, 21-year old Hekmatullah Hekmati, who, as she described him, “was only a teenage Taliban intelligence officer, barely old enough to grow a beard, when he decided to help Ismail Khan.” According to Hekmati’s account, he had become “disillusioned by the Taliban, whom he saw as power hungry opportunists presenting themselves as religious students, and bad leaders, who were waging a brutal, ethnically motivated war against their countrymen.” He decided that Khan, imprisoned, with 14 others, in the Kandahar prison that held the Taliban's most senior political and military prisoners, might provide a good alternative, having established himself as a “decent administrator” during his tenure as Herat’s pre-Taliban governor. “I thought he would work more for his country, if he were freed,” he told Carlotta Gall.
Having secured a job as an intelligence officer at the prison, through a relative, Hekmati said that he then set about persuading Khan that he was trustworthy. Speaking to Carlotta Gall, Ismail Khan said, ”We spoke to Hekmatullah for about a year about the escape. Since he was such a powerful Talib he could easily come to my cell and speak to me. I could not believe he could do it and that I could trust him.” To prove that his intentions were sincere, Khan added that he told Hekmati that, “if he wanted to go ahead with the plan he should move his mother and brothers and sisters to Iran for safety,” and that when he did so he knew that the plan was real.
While Ismail Khan's son, Mirwais, and several of his cousins organized the escape, Hekmati acted as a go-between, delivering a letter to Khan outlining the plans. In response, Khan said, he “pledged to provide the young man with a lifetime sinecure and arranged for a four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser to be sent to Kandahar for the escape.” After discussing plans to free all 15 prisoners, the escape team settled on just three men -- Khan, Haji Abdul Zahir, a commander from a famous Afghan family, and his cellmate from Jalalabad, General Qassim -- and on the night of March 2, 1999, while the other guards slept, Hekmatullah Hekmati opened their cells and led them to a Land Cruiser parked outside, which had been adorned with the white flag of the Taliban.
After changing into the “black turbans and flowing robes that were the signature dress of the Taliban,” the escape party drove off, passing through checkpoints with ease. They later got lost in the desert, and hit an anti-tank mine, which destroyed the vehicle and left both Ismail Khan and Hekmatullah Hekmati with “broken legs and open wounds,” but Hekmati’s father, who had been driving the Land Cruiser, then “set off for help and after a four-hour walk north reached the front lines of Ismail Khan's own troops, who arranged a rescue.”
Although Carlotta Gall did not mention Abdul Razzak by name, it seemed probable to me that he was actually Hekmati’s father, named as Abdul Raza Hekmati, who drove the escape vehicle and arranged for the rescue of Ismail Khan and his own son after the Land Cruiser hit the anti-tank mine. The elder Hekmati evidently shared his son’s disgust with the direction the Taliban was taking. As Hekmatullah came up with his plans, Carlotta Gall noted, “The only other person he told was his father, who did not try to stop him but advised him to take it very slowly and carefully.”
In the various accounts that he gave in Guantánamo, Abdul Razzak credited himself with the motivation to free Ismail Khan, which his son claimed was his own idea, but in other crucial respects the story of the escape, as described by Hekmatullah Hekmati, matched Abdul Razzak’s account exactly, not only in his various descriptions of himself as the driver of the escape vehicle, but also in his description of the incident with the anti-tank mine. Explaining his role in the escape, Abdul Razzak said, “It was at night time. I brought [the] Land Cruiser … and I was waiting in a dark place. My son did it, because he was in the intelligence and he was entrusted by the Taliban. He took all three of them out and put them in the car… and then we escaped.” The following exchange from one of his military review boards is his take on the incident with the anti-tank mine:
Board Member: What happened to the Land Cruiser he purchased?
Detainee (through translator): Hit a mine and my son’s foot was amputated and my hand was broken. It was destroyed.
After discovering this story, I contacted Carlotta Gall, who remembered that a friend of Hekmatullah’s had told her that his father had been arrested and sent to Guantánamo, and that she had spoken about it to Haji Zahir, who was outraged and said that he would talk to the Americans about it. With the truth established that Abdul Razzak was indeed Hekmatullah Hekmati’s father, the story then took shape.
I provided Carlotta with information from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and his Administrative Review Boards (ARB) at Guantánamo, from the statements of Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, and from the report by the Seton Hall Law School, and Carlotta tied the whole thing together, talking to key figures and securing poignant quotes from representatives of the US and Afghan governments, and from those who knew Mr. Hekmati.
I was particularly impressed with the comments made by Haji Zahir, who explained, “What he did was very important for all Afghan people who were against the Taliban,” adding, “He was not a man to take to Guantánamo. He was a man to give a house to and support.” Haji Zahir was even more significant than the final version of the article indicated. His father, Haji Abdul Qadir, not only served as vice-president for six months in Hamid Karzai’s first government, but was assassinated in July 2002, and his uncle was Abdul Haq, a celebrated anti-Taliban commander who was killed by the Taliban in October 2001. Ironically, the void left by the death of Abdul Haq, who was described in an obituary in the Guardian as “one of the few homegrown political figures who could have restored unity to his benighted and wartorn country” raised the profile of another anti-Taliban Pashtun who had, until that point, struggled to establish himself in the south of the country. That man was none other than Hamid Karzai.
This was not Haji Zahir’s only claim to fame. During the largely disastrous Tora Bora campaign in late November and early December 2001, when Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and many other senior figures in al-Qaeda and the Taliban escaped unscathed into Pakistan’s largely autonomous border provinces -- leaving numerous foot soldiers and fleeing civilians to be captured and sent to Guantánamo -- Zahir was widely regarded as the only trustworthy commander out of the three Afghan commanders chosen to lead the US Special Forces’ proxy Afghan armies in the battle against bin Laden’s men.
The other two commanders -- the thuggish Hazrat Ali and the urbane smuggler Haji Zaman Ghamsharik -- are discussed in Chapter 4 of my book. Haji Zahir never made the final cut, but I noted in my first draft that he, and the 600 men he brought with him, were to prove themselves able fighters in the battle for Tora Bora, and I also quoted some perceptive comments that he made after the operation, when he explained to John F. Burns of the New York Times that he had pleaded with the Americans to block the trails to Pakistan. “The Americans would not listen,” he said, “even when I told them that one word with me was worth more than $1 million of their high technology. Their attitude was, ‘We must kill the enemy, but we must remain absolutely safe.’ This is crazy.”
I think Haji Zahir’s significance -- added to that of Ismail Khan -- reinforces the importance of Abdul Razzaq Hekmati’s role in striking a major blow against the Taliban, and I believe that it should make his lonely death, after being falsely imprisoned for five years by an administration that was blithely and cruelly unconcerned with establishing whether or not he had been captured by mistake, count for something more productive than a belated and much-needed epitaph. This epitaph is clearly important for an innocent man who, even in death, had his name blackened by the people who had wrongly imprisoned him in the first place, and who let him die without having had an opportunity to clear his name, but what his story reveals about the many failures of Guantánamo should also resonate in the halls of power in Washington.
To this end I was pleased to note that, in an article in the Washington Independent on February 10, Aziz Huq of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law cited Mr. Hekmati’s case as part of an argument aimed at the Supreme Court, which is currently deciding whether or not the Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. In the article, Aziz Huq asked the highest court in the land “to decide whether the role of the courts is to bless the errors and abuses of the executive -- or whether it is the role of the courts, as a co-equal branch, to check error and reject lies.”
Discussing the failures of the current limited review of cases allowed by 2005’s Detainee Treatment Act, Aziz Huq wrote, “There are many reasons why the government might be resisting fuller review. It could be that the government, as a matter of principle, believes it should have the power to lock-up indefinitely anyone it deems is a terrorist-combatant. It could be that it has tortured the detainees to get information. It could be that it would rather let a man die of cancer in Guantánamo than follow its own leads to prove his actual innocence --that he had, in fact, fought against the Taliban.”
For further information on Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, I recommend the transcripts of his CSRT, his first round ARB and his second round ARB, which reveal even more of his story, to counter the administration’s claims, after his death, that he was “assessed to be an experienced jihadist with command responsibilities,” and that he was also “assessed to have had multiple links to anti-coalition forces.”
Additional claims, not mentioned in the article, which were introduced in his ARBs -- and which almost certainly came from dubious “confessions” made by other detainees -- were that he was paid to smuggle 50 Arab family members out of Afghanistan and into Iran, that he was “knowledgeable of an assassination plot against President Karzai the day before it occurred,” and, most bizarrely of all, that he told another detainee that “there were still suicide pilots in the United States who could carry out their missions.” A final allegation referred to his conduct in Guantánamo, where, it was claimed, he was “currently instructing others on how to resist interrogation tactics.”
As mentioned in the Times article, he refuted all the allegations against him, but his reason for denying the claim about his behavior in Guantánamo revealed explicitly how allegations in the prison have often arisen through conflict between the detainees. He explained that this particular false allegation arose because a Tajik detainee, who had lived in an adjacent cell for a month, had “started fighting” with him and had falsely accused him.
Also not mentioned in the article was a specific and rather telling comment about the Taliban’s connections with Pakistan. After explaining that he was driven to take part in the jailbreak because of his opposition to the Taliban’s “ruthlessness and injustice,” he stated his belief that, when Ismail Khan was governor, “the whole area was peaceful and all the money coming through the province was safe,” whereas the Taliban “were disbursing money to Pakistan and just wasting money.”
He also included additional information about the time that he spent in exile in Iran after the jailbreak (before returning to Afghanistan to be handed over to unquestioning US forces by a personal enemy), when the Taliban offered a substantial reward for his capture. He explained that, because he was protected by Burhanuddin Rabbani’s governing council (the official anti-Taliban government-in-exile in northern Afghanistan, which was recognized as legitimate by most of the western world, including the United States), he fled to Iran with his family, where he was provided with a house and financial support, and where, in addition, his neighbor was Ismail Khan. “They gave me the house he (Khan) used to live in, and Khan took another house,” he explained. “We had a family relationship. They invited us to their house and we invited them to our home. We would eat food and then they would go back home.”
The final word on this shameful story -- for now, at least -- must go to the Guantánamo spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, who admitted that he “did not know” if Mr. Hekmati “was allowed any final contact” with his family before he died. This seems extremely unlikely, as Mr. Hekmati himself explained, in the last of his fruitless military reviews in 2006, that after nearly four years in US custody he had not received a single letter from his family, and did not even know where they were.
So much for justice.
The transcripts of the hearings are here:
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/Set_18_1463-1560.pdf (pp. 55-9)
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/ARB_Transcript_Set_9_21017-21351.pdf (pp. 272-85)
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/ARB_Transcript_2599-2697.pdf (pp. 37-51)
Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk
He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk
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