Author of UN Torture Document to be Expert in Gitmo USS Cole Trial
By of the end of 2012, more than $560,000 in taxpayer dollars had been provided to the defense of accused USS Cole bombing mastermind Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri just for experts, investigators, and consultants.
That doesn’t count the money allocated by the Defense Department to spend on travel, learned counsel, translators, a full-time investigator, office expenses, lodging, and other logistics costs for the defense team, noted chief prosecutor Mark Martins at Guantanamo Bay today.
Although that experts sum is nearly double the average cost for all expenses and salaries in a federal court death-penalty trial, al-Nashiri’s case is still at a competency stage in pretrial hearings — and the military judge approved a defense request for one controversial expert witness to deliver testimony this week related to the U.S. government, torture, and the accused operative of Osama bin Laden.
Vincent Iacopino is principal author of the Istanbul Protocol: the Manual on Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted by the United Nations in 1999. “The whole purpose of this manual is so that perpetrators can be prosecuted,” Commander Andrea Lockhart said for the prosecution at the military commission, arguing it has nothing to do with the psych evaluation of al-Nashiri requested by the government.
Al-Nashiri’s civilian lawyer, Indiana criminal defense attorney Richard Kammen, said no part of their defense would hinge on his mental state at the time of the Yemen attack, nor have they suggested their client isn’t competent to stand trial.
Kammen said he came to the matter “with a fairly jaded outlook — let’s just say there were lots of doctors involved with Mr. Nashriri who didn’t follow the Hippocratic Oath.” He argued that al-Nashiri has “functionally untreated” post-traumatic stress disorder due to torture and said he didn’t trust the court’s panel of experts to assess the “unique population” of terror suspects who’ve “been kept in very onerous circumstances.”
Prosecutor Anthony W. Mattivi read from the introduction to the Istanbul Protocol, noting the defense had moved multiple times before to bring the document’s author into the case. “Take a look at this document,” he said. “What you will find is it is not relevant for the purposes it was offered by the defense.”
In The Guardian in 2011, Iacopino wrote of “documenting medical evidence of torture” and serving as an expert in a number of Guantanamo cases.
“In each of the cases that I have evaluated, the physical and psychological evidence of torture is consistent with the UN Convention Against Torture’s definition of torture,” Iacopino wrote. In a 2002 paper, he called torture a “weapon of mass destruction.”
Al-Nashiri, a 48-year-old Saudi, is charged with murder, terrorism, and other counts in an attempted attack on the USS The Sullivans in January 2000, the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, and an attack on the MV Limburg in October 2002. Seventeen sailors were killed and dozens injured when an explosive-laden boat rammed the Cole in the port of Aden, and one crew member was killed in the attack on the Limburg oil tanker.
Clean-shaven unlike the other al-Qaeda suspects facing the death penalty in last week’s case, with neatly cropped hair and a white jumpsuit, al-Nashiri sat quietly with his hands folded during the proceedings, wearing translation headphones and later in the day donning a gray jacket.
He is one of three individuals former CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted to waterboarding at the agency’s overseas sites. Arrested in the United Arab Emirates in 2002, al-Nashiri was transferred to Gitmo to stand charges as an enemy combatant in 2006. “From the time I was arrested . . . they have been torturing me,” he said in 2007 during his first case, in which charges with withdrawn in 2009 and refiled in 2011. “One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way.” Al-Nashiri claimed he made up information during his interrogations to make his questioners “happy.”
It was a good day for his defense team, as they also won the suspension of proceedings while the government mental-health evaluation of their client is conducted in the next few weeks, and the right for a doctor to give him a physical examination with the prisoner unrestrained. The defense argued that a shackled physical exam would cause their client “retraumatization.”
Lord have mercy! Do you suppose that George Bush had any idea of what a circus the lefty lawyers would make of this in 10 years? The poor guy has PSTD!?! What about the parents spouse’s and children of the 17 victims? They’ve spent a half a million on his defense already and the trial has not even begun! I wonder how much it cost to repair the Cole? The “military tribunal” was supposed to be a way to avoid all this bologna.
Lets face it Bush was not the sharpest knife in the drawer on many many things. This is the reason these guys at gitmo should have had accidents or committed suicide rather than been given trials. Now imagine if Obozo and Holder had actually moved the trials to New York.
Call this no lawyer left behind and why it is stupid to allow lawyers other than military lawyers in a military court. The war on terror is bleeding us out with billions on airport security, billions on defense, billions on homeland security and billions on legal fees once you catch these bastards. Obama has not added to the head count because Mr wonderful prefers drone strikes that simply blow these bastards and perhaps many innocent bystanders to allah all in one go. How do they read these guys their rights before the drone blows them up I wonder.
During World War II, someone like Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri would have been shot a few days after being captured. If he was lucky, he would have been given a military tribunal and then, when found guilty, he would have been executed. That is exactly what happened to some Nazi spies found here in the United States (see here: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-saboteurs-executed-in-washington). And those Nazi spies didn’t even kill anyone. Could you imagine what would have happened to them if they had actually killed a lot of Americans, like al-Nashiri did?
But when you treat an act of war as a criminal offense, this is what you get, endless years of litigation. I really think al-Nashiri is going to die of old age before he is executed for killing Americans.
In Britain we reserve torture for the despised white working class.
There’s a surreal story about the latest victim, Emma West, at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
Reagan missed a bet.
He should have requested a declaration of war against thoee who blew up the Marines. If you have finances, embody a “government in waiting,” have armed forces, and wage war, you are a country equivalent and can have war declared on you. Members in the US are enemy spies. The enemy can be processed according to the Geneva Conventions. Enemy members can be put up as POWs until the war is over. The repeat the same request on every subsequent ragtag Later Verse Enthusiast group doing bad things.
Need to give that dude a much bigger dose of PTSD.
Indeed!
President Obama Wants To Protect Children? Why Not End U.S. Drone Strikes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldUHR_8-piY
Moral Relativism – Making the bad guy the victim, the true victim irrelevant, the normally worhtless liberal a living, the taxpayer enslaved and broke.