Dawn : Lawyers in Pakistan rally for judges’ reinstatement

Lawyers in Pakistan rally for judges’ reinstatement

August 28, 2008

LAHORE, Aug 28 (AP) Hundreds of lawyers are rallying in major Pakistani cities and disrupting traffic to pressure the government to reinstate judges deposed by former president Pervez Musharraf.

The protests Thursday occurred in Karachi, Multan and Lahore.

Top lawyer leader, Aitzaz Ahsan, said the ruling coalition should “honour its pledge” to reinstate Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and other judges.

Reuters : Pakistani lawyers press government

Pakistani lawyers press government

By Augustine Anthony | August 28, 2008

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Protesting lawyers blocked roads across Pakistan on Thursday to press the government to reinstate judges purged by former president Pervez Musharraf, as militants attacked police in the northwest, killing 11 people.

A bitter disagreement between the country's two main political parties over the judges led to a split in the ruling coalition this week, dashing hopes for stability in the nuclear-armed country after Musharraf's resignation last week.

Political uncertainty, militant violence and economic woes have undermined investor confidence, leading to a sharp slide in Pakistan stocks which authorities have tried to halt by setting a floor for the key share index.

Black-suited lawyers sat down on roads in all major cities to press the coalition, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, to reappoint dozens of judges Musharraf dismissed when he imposed emergency rule in November.

Lawyers were at the forefront of opposition to Musharraf after the former army chief clashed with the then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in March 2007, and their protests pose a challenge to the coalition that came to power after February elections.

"The lawyers are proving how organized they are, that they have total consensus, and this protest will continue until the chief justice is restored," firebrand lawyers' leader Aitzaz Ahsan told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.

The country's second biggest party, headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, left the coalition on Monday, saying Bhutto's party broke promises to give the judges their jobs back.

Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, led by her widower Asif Ali Zardari, has been dragging its feet on the judges because it fears Chaudhry will take up a challenge to an amnesty granted to Zardari and other party leaders from graft charges, analysts say.

Several thousand slogan-chanting lawyers and flag-waving activists squatted on main roads in central Lahore for about two hours, bringing traffic to a standstill.

In an ominous sign for the government, protesters directed their anger at Zardari, who looks set to become president in a September 6 vote by legislators.

"Down with Zardari" and "Zardari, killer of Pakistani judiciary", hundreds of lawyers and activists chanted in the eastern city of Multan.

In Islamabad, protesters tore down banners of Zardari while similar protests were held in Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar and smaller cities.

POLICE BUS BLOWN UP

As the politicians tussle over the judges and who will replace Musharraf as president, violence has been surging in the northwest where security forces are battling militants in several areas and the militants are striking back with bombs.

Government soldiers supported by air strikes killed nearly 50 militants in heavy clashes in the northwest on Wednesday, while on Thursday, a car bomb blew up a police bus near the town of Bannu, killing nine policemen and two passers-by, police said.

Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism was deeply unpopular but Zardari, seen as close to the United States, has vowed to press ahead with the effort.

Washington, an important source of aid for Islamabad, says al Qaeda and Taliban militants orchestrate violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the West from sanctuaries in the northwest.

Nervous investors withdrawing their funds from Pakistan in the face of violence and political instability have sent the country's financial markets skidding lower.

The rupee has lost about a quarter of its value against the dollar this year. Pakistan's stock market, which rose for six consecutive years to 2007 and was one of the best-performing markets in Asia in that period, has fallen about 36 percent.

Struggling to halt the slide, stock exchange authorities announced early on Thursday they were setting a floor for the index at Wednesday's closing level.

Some dealers said the move would help confidence, at least in the short-term, and the index opened more than 1 percent higher before slipping back a bit. It closed up 0.64 percent.

Investors hope next week's presidential election, when members of the country's four provincial assemblies and two-chamber national parliament vote for Musharraf's replacement, will bring some clarity to the political outlook.

Bhutto's party has nominated Zardari while Sharif's has put up a former Supreme Court judge, Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui.

The main pro-Musharraf party nominated a former government minister and top party official, Mushahid Hussain Sayed.

Zardari telephoned Sharif on Thursday to ask him to rejoin the coalition and withdraw his candidate but Sharif declined both requests, a Sharif party official said.

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Jerry Norton)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

NYT : U.S. Soldiers Executed Iraqis, Statements Say

U.S. Soldiers Executed Iraqis, Statements Say

By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER | August 27, 2008

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.

After the killings, the first sergeant — the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company — told the other two to remove the men’s bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times.

The statements and other court documents were provided by a person close to one of the soldiers in the unit who insisted on anonymity and who has an interest in the outcome of the legal proceedings.

After removing the blindfolds and handcuffs, the three soldiers shoved the four bodies into the canal, rejoined other members of their unit waiting in nearby vehicles and drove back to their combat outpost in southwest Baghdad, the statements said.

The soldiers, all from Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade, have not been charged with a crime. However, lawyers representing other members of the platoon who said they witnessed or heard the shootings, which were said to have occurred on a combat patrol west of Baghdad, said all three would probably be charged with murder.

The accounts of and confessions to the killings, by Sgt. First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sgt. Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D’s senior medic and an acting squad leader, were made in January in signed statements to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany.

In their statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy each described killing at least one of the Iraqi detainees on instructions from First Sgt. John E. Hatley, who the soldiers said killed two of the detainees with pistol shots to the back of their heads. Sergeant Hatley’s civilian lawyer in Germany, David Court, did not respond to phone calls and e-mail messages Tuesday.

Last month, four other soldiers from Sergeant Hatley’s unit were charged with murder conspiracy for agreeing to go along with the plan to kill the four prisoners, in violation of military laws that forbid harming enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody.

In an Army evidentiary hearing on Tuesday in Vilseck, Germany, two of those soldiers — Specialists Steven A. Ribordy and Belmor G. Ramos — invoked their right against self-incrimination. Reached by telephone, James D. Culp, a civilian lawyer for one of the other two soldiers charged, Staff Sgt. Jess C. Cunningham, declined to comment. A lawyer for the fourth soldier, Sgt. Charles P. Quigley, could not be reached.

In their sworn statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy described the events that preceded the shooting of the Iraqi men, who apparently were Shiite fighters linked to the Mahdi Army militia, which controlled the West Rashid area of southwest Baghdad.

After taking small-arms fire, the patrol chased some men into a building, arresting them and finding several automatic weapons, grenades and a sniper rifle, they said. On the way to their combat outpost, Sergeant Hatley’s convoy was informed by Army superiors that the evidence to detain the Iraqis was insufficient, Sergeant Leahy said in his statement. The unit was told to release the men, according to the statement.

“First Sergeant Hatley then made the call to take the detainees to a canal and kill them,” Sergeant Leahy said, as retribution for the deaths of two soldiers from the unit: Staff Sgt. Karl O. Soto-Pinedo, who died from a sniper’s bullet, and Specialist Marieo Guerrero, killed by a roadside bomb.

“So the patrol went to the canal, and First Sergeant, Sgt. First Class Mayo and I took the detainees out of the back of the Bradley, lined them up and shot them,” Sergeant Leahy said, referring to a Bradley fighting vehicle. “We then pushed the bodies into the canal and left.”

Sergeant Mayo, in his statement, attributed his decision to kill the men to “anger,” apparently at the recent deaths of his two comrades.

Sergeant Leahy, in his statement, said, “I’m ashamed of what I’ve done,” later adding: “When I did it, I thought I was doing it for my family. Now I realize that I’m hurting my family more now than if I wouldn’t have done it.”

Reuters : Violence hits as Pakistani politicians jockey

Violence hits as Pakistani politicians jockey

By Kamran Haider | August 27, 2008

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Government forces killed about 40 militants in clashes in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday as increasing violence, and political uncertainty deepened by a split in the government drove stocks lower.

Hopes for political stability in nuclear-armed Pakistan after Pervez Musharraf resigned as president last week were dashed when the ruling coalition, led by the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, fell apart over a judicial dispute and replacing Musharraf.

The departure of the second biggest party, that of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, ended what analysts said was an unnatural alliance between the two old rival parties and set the scene for a battle over the presidency.

The wrangling has distracted the government's attention from mounting militant violence, critics say, though the government says it is committed to pressing on with the campaign against militancy.

Military officials said on Wednesday that 41 militants were killed in two clashes near the Afghan border.

The first began around midnight when militants attacked a military post in the South Waziristan region and 11 of them were killed, the military said.

Later, 30 militants including some foreigners died in fighting in the northwestern region of Bajaur, also on the Afghan border, a military official said.

"Our troops carried out an operation this morning and we have reports that 30 militants, including some Uzbeks, were killed," said a military official who declined to be identified.

The United States, an ally and important source of aid for Pakistan, says militants on the border provide shelter for insurgents fighting the Afghanistan government.

Drawn out political uncertainty and militant violence have undermined confidence of investors who hoped Musharraf's departure would let the government focus on economic and security problems.

Pakistani stocks fell more than 4 percent to their lowest level in more than two years in intra-day trade on Wednesday.

The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange index has fallen for six consecutive sessions after a two-day recovery following Musharraf's resignation.

"There is still a lot of uncertainty on the political front. People just want to get out of the market," said Sajid Bhanji, a dealer at Arif Habib Ltd.

DRUMMING UP SUPPORT

As investors sold their stocks, politicians drummed up support for the September 6 presidential election in which members of the country's four provincial assemblies and two-chamber national parliament will vote.

Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party has nominated her widower and political successor, Asif Ali Zardari. Sharif's party has put forth a former Supreme Court judge, Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui.

The main pro-Musharraf party nominated a former government minister and top party official, Mushahid Hussain Sayed.

No party has a simple majority of votes though analysts expect Zardari to be able to gather enough support to win.

Bhutto's party dismissed a news report this week suggesting Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on various charges but was never convicted, suffered from severe mental problems.

Party spokeswoman Farzana Raja said Zardari had been tortured while in prison and as a result had been under mental stress and had a heart problem.

"But he has never been mentally ill," she said.

"It's a planted story to try to ridicule Mr Zardari, our party and the country."

A spokesman for Sharif's party said if the report of Zardari's mental illness were true, he would be ineligible to run for president.

The main issue that led to the departure of Sharif's party from the coalition was his demand scores of judges Musharraf purged last year be reinstated.

The PPP is reluctant to restore the judges partly because of concern the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty granted to Zardari and other party leaders from graft charges last year, analysts say.

But eight of the dismissed judges, all High Court judges from the southern province of Sindh, were re-appointed on Wednesday, the eve of the launch of a nationwide protest campaign by lawyers aiming to get all their colleagues restored.

Analysts say it is doubtful the government will reinstate the top judge whom Musharraf purged, the independent-minded former chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.

(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Jerry Norton)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

AFP : Pakistan turmoil deepens after coalition split

Pakistan turmoil deepens after coalition split

August 26, 2008

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan's political turmoil deepened Tuesday after the two main parties in the ruling coalition split, weakening the fragile government just a week after president Pervez Musharraf resigned.

The world's only nuclear-armed Islamic nation, already facing a fresh campaign of bombings by a resurgent militant movement, now faces the prospect of a bitter political battle over the choice of Musharraf's successor.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of the coalition on Monday, saying they were moving to the opposition because of what he said were the broken promises of the other main party's leader, Asif Ali Zardari.

He said Zardari had gone back on a pledge to reinstate dozens of judges sacked last year by Musharraf -- an issue that has been at the centre of a political dispute in Pakistan for the past year.

"We have taken this decision after we failed to find any ray of hope and none of the commitments made to us were fulfilled," Sharif said on Monday. "This situation forced us to withdraw our support."

Zardari, in a televised address late Monday, appealed for Sharif's return to the government.

"We are sad over Nawaz Sharif's decision. We want to move together and solve the problems facing the nation," he said. "We will request Nawaz Sharif to return to the government."

Lawyers meanwhile called for a nationwide protest on Thursday to demand the reinstatement of the judges, who were pushed out as Musharraf purged his opponents in the judiciary last year.

Sharif's PML-N party has now put forward its own candidate to challenge Zardari, widower of another former premier, Benazir Bhutto, on September 6, when lawmakers will select who will be the next president.

Zardari and the PML-N candidate, former judge Saeed uz Zaman Siddiqui, will face off against the party formerly behind Musharraf, which has nominated its secretary general Mushahid Hussain.

Candidates filed their election papers on Tuesday.

Political chaos is nothing new in Pakistan, which has been under military rule -- including under General Musharraf -- for more than half of its existence since being partitioned from India after World War II.

But the months of turmoil that eventually forced Musharraf to resign last week under threat of impeachment, and the new split between Sharif and Zardari, have made Western allies jittery about Pakistan's role in the "war on terror".

The United States, which turned Musharraf into an ally after the September 11 attacks and has supplied the country with tens of billions of dollars in aid since then, played down the importance of the split.

"I don't anticipate it would have any impact on our joint efforts to combat extremism," said US State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

The strategically important country -- which has the second-largest Muslim population in the world -- has seen a resurgence of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militant activity in the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border.

While critics have long charged that Pakistan's powerful intelligence service actually helps to support the militants, the military is nevertheless also pursuing a tough campaign against Islamist guerrillas.

Clashes in one region alone have left around 500 people dead in the last fortnight, and the Pakistani Taliban have said that the latest wave of suicide bombings will continue until the assault is stopped.

But the government said Monday it had banned the main Taliban militant umbrella group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and frozen its bank accounts and assets.

Unknown gunmen opened fire on the car of a US diplomat in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, but she escaped unhurt, police said.

NYT : In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals

In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER | August 25, 2008

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.

The Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, took no questions. But he asserted that the files — which included an array of plans for nuclear arms and technologies, among them a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design — had been destroyed so that they would never fall into terrorist hands.

Behind that official explanation, though, is a far more intriguing tale of spies, moles and the compromises that governments make in the name of national security.

The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.

Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the C.I.A. paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s bomb program, reveal Iran’s atomic labors and, ultimately, undo Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market.

In addition, American and European officials said, the Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.

The relationship with the Tinners “was very significant,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began. “That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.

Yet even as American officials describe the relationship as a major intelligence coup, compromises were made. Officials say the C.I.A. feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners’ relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran’s nuclear program. Destruction of the files, C.I.A. officials suspected, would undermine the case and could set their informants free.

“We were very happy they were destroyed,” a senior intelligence official in Washington said of the files.

But in Europe, there is much consternation. Analysts studying Dr. Khan’s network worry that by destroying the files to prevent their spread, the Swiss government may have obscured the investigative trail. It is unclear who among Dr. Khan’s customers — a list that is known to include Iran, Libya and North Korea but that may extend further — got the illicit material, much of it contained in easily transmitted electronic designs.

The West’s most important questions about the Khan network have been consistently deflected by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who resigned last Monday. He refused to account for the bomb designs that got away or to let American investigators question Dr. Khan, perhaps the only man to know who else received the atomic blueprints. President Bush, eager for Pakistan’s aid against terrorism, never pressed Mr. Musharraf for answers.

“Maybe that labyrinth held clues to another client or another rogue state,” said a European official angered at the destruction.

The Swiss judge in charge of the Tinner case, Andreas Müller, is not terribly happy either. He said he had no warning of the planned destruction and is now trying to determine what, if anything, remains of the case against Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Urs and Marco.

Some details of the links between the Tinners and American intelligence have been revealed in news reports and in recent books, most notably “The Nuclear Jihadist,” a biography of Dr. Khan by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. But recent interviews in the United States and Europe by The New York Times have provided a fuller portrait of the relationship — especially the involvement of all three Tinners, the large amounts of money they received and the C.I.A.’s extensive efforts on their behalf. Virtually all the officials interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss matters that remain classified.

The destroyed evidence, decades of records of the Tinners’ activities, included not only bomb and centrifuge plans but also documents linking the family to the C.I.A., officials said. One contract, a European intelligence official said, described a C.I.A. front company’s agreement to pay the smugglers $1 million for black-market secrets. The front company listed an address three blocks from the White House.

The C.I.A. declined to comment on the Tinner case, but a spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, called the disruption of Dr. Khan’s network “a genuine intelligence success.”

With the evidence files destroyed and a trial in question, it is unlikely that the full story of the Tinners will be told any time soon. If it is, it is unlikely to come from the elder Mr. Tinner.

Approached at his home in Haag, Switzerland, near the Liechtenstein border, Mr. Tinner, 71, was polite but firm in his silence. “I have an agreement not to talk,” he told a reporter.

Beginning a Double Life

An inventor and mechanical engineer, Friedrich Tinner got his start in Swiss companies that make vacuum technology, mazes of pipes, pumps and valves used in many industries. Mr. Tinner received United States patents for his innovative vacuum valves.

By definition, his devices were so-called dual-use products with peacetime or wartime applications. Governments often feel torn between promoting such goods as commercial boons and blocking them as security risks.

As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads.

Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.

In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated. Spy satellites can be fooled. Documents can lie. Electronic taps can mislead. But a well-placed mole can work quietly behind the scenes to get at the truth.

For instance, the United States had gathered circumstantial evidence that Iran wanted an atom bomb. Suddenly it had a direct view into clandestine Iranian procurement of centrifuges and other important nuclear items.

“It was a confirmation,” recalled Dr. Samore, the former national security official who is now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That was much more significant than Libya,” because that country’s atomic program was in its infancy whereas Iran’s was rushing toward maturity.

Despite considerable income from their illicit trade, the Tinners had money problems, a European intelligence official said. Eventually, Urs Tinner persuaded his father and younger brother to join him as moles, and they began double lives, supplying Dr. Khan with precision manufacturing gear and helping run a centrifuge plant in Malaysia even as their cooperation with the United States deepened.

At the time, Washington was stepping up efforts to penetrate Libya’s bomb program. In early 2003, the European official said, the Tinners and C.I.A. agents met at a hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, to discuss cooperative terms. Several months later, in Jenins, a Swiss mountain village, Marco Tinner signed a contract dated June 21, 2003, with two C.I.A. agents, the official said.

The contract outlined the sale of rights that the Tinners held for manufacturing vacuum gear, and of proprietary information about the devices. In exchange, $1 million would be paid to Traco Group International, a front company Marco Tinner had established in Road Town, the capital of the British Virgin Islands, on the island of Tortola.

In the contract, according to the European intelligence official, the two C.I.A. agents used cover names — W. James Kinsman and Sean D. Mahaffey — and identified their employer as Big Black River Technologies Inc. In military and intelligence work, “black” means clandestine. In the contract, Black River gave an address on I Street in Washington, the intelligence official said. But no business directory lists the company, and employees in the mailroom at the address said they had no records for a company of that name.

Four months after the signing of the contract, American and European authorities seized cargoes of centrifuge parts bound for Libya. “The Tinners were a source,” a former Bush administration official said.

Two other officials credited the Tinners with helping end the Libyan bomb program. In Libya, investigators found the rudiments of a centrifuge plant and a blueprint for a basic atom bomb, courtesy of Dr. Khan’s network. The Bush administration celebrated Libya’s abandonment as a breakthrough in arms control.

But the secret lives of the Tinners began to unravel. The Malaysian police issued a report naming them as central members of Dr. Khan’s network. An official of VP Bank Ltd., Traco’s business agent in the Virgin Islands, said it ended that relationship in early 2004, when Marco Tinner was exposed.

Under growing pressure, Dr. Khan confessed. His clients turned out to include not only Libya but Iran and North Korea, and his collaborators turned out to be legion.

“We will find you,” Mr. Bush said in February 2004 of Dr. Khan’s associates, “and we’re not going to rest until you are stopped.”

Acts of Sabotage

After the Tinners were arrested, Swiss and other European authorities began to scrutinize their confiscated files and to conduct wide inquiries. European investigators discovered not only that the Tinners had spied for Washington, but that the men and their insider information had helped the C.I.A. sabotage atomic gear bound for Libya and Iran. A former American official confirmed the disruptions, saying the technical architect of the operation was “a mad-scientist type” who took pleasure in devising dirty tricks.

An American intelligence official, while refusing to discuss specifics of the sabotage operation or the Tinners’ relationship with the C.I.A., said efforts to cripple equipment headed to rogue nuclear states “buy us some time and space.” With Iran presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb, he added, “that may be the best we can hope for.”

The sabotage first came to light, diplomats and officials said, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Iran and Libya in 2003 and 2004 and discovered identical vacuum pumps that had been damaged cleverly so that they looked perfectly fine but failed to operate properly. They traced the route of the defective parts from Pfeiffer Vacuum in Germany to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. There, according to a European official who studied the case, nuclear experts had made sure the pumps “wouldn’t work.”

A more serious disruption involved a power supply shipped to Iran from Turkey, where Dr. Khan’s network did business with two makers of industrial control equipment.

The Iranians installed the power supply at their uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. But in early 2006, it failed, causing 50 centrifuges to explode — a serious, if temporary, setback to Iran’s efforts to master the manufacture of nuclear fuel, the hardest part of building a bomb. (Iran says its nuclear efforts are for electricity, not weapons.)

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, told a reporter last year that Iranian investigators found that the power supply had been manipulated.

After the episode, he added, “we checked all the imported instruments.”

Discussions With Washington

In 2005, Swiss authorities began asking the United States for help in the Tinner case. Among other things, they wanted information about the Libyan centrifuge program to press charges of criminal export violations. For more than a year, the Swiss made repeated requests. Washington ignored them.

“Its lack of assistance needlessly complicates this important investigation,” David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington, told Congress in May 2006. Mr. Albright said he had helped Swiss prosecutors write to the State Department.

The Swiss turned to the I.A.E.A. for help in assessing the Tinner cache. European officials said the agency was surprised to find multiple warhead plans and judged that most had originated in Pakistan. The country denied that Dr. Khan had access to nuclear weapon designs and questioned the agency’s conclusions.

In late July 2007, according to Swiss federal statements, the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, flew to Washington for talks with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the attorney general; and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director.

Officially, the statements said, the main topic was “cooperation in the criminal prosecution of terrorist activities.” But the real agenda was what to do about the Tinners.

A former Bush administration official said different government agencies had differing views of the case. The State Department wanted the bomb plans destroyed as a way to stem nuclear proliferation, while the C.I.A. wanted to protect its methods for combating illicit nuclear trade.

The C.I.A. also wanted to help the Tinners. “If a key source is prosecuted,” a former senior official involved in the case said, “what message does that send when you try to recruit other informants?”

American officials discussed a range of possible outcomes with the Swiss and expressed their clear preferences. The best result, they said, would be turning over the family’s materials to the United States. Acceptable would be destroying them. Worst, according to the former administration official, would have been making them public in a criminal trial, where defense lawyers would have probably exposed as much American involvement as possible in hopes of getting their clients off the hook.

A Furor Over Destroyed Files

Last March, Mr. Müller became the examining magistrate in the Tinner case, charged with assessing if a trial was warranted. Soon after, he was quoted as saying the evidence files contained “obvious holes.” Sketchy reports of deleted computer files and shredded documents had been circulating, but he was the first identified official to hint at a widespread destruction. Then, on May 23, the Swiss president, Mr. Couchepin, revealed that Switzerland had begun a series of extraordinary actions just days after Mr. Blocher, the justice minister, returned from Washington.

Swiss citizens are prohibited from aiding foreign spies. But in his statement, the president said that in late August 2007, the government canceled a criminal case against the Tinners for suspicions of aiding a foreign government. Though unmentioned, the C.I.A. seemed to peer out from his statement.

On Nov. 14, his statement continued, the government decided to destroy “the comprehensive holding of the electronic files and documents” seized from the Tinners. The most dangerous items, the president said, included “detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges for the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, as well as for guided missile delivery systems.” International atomic inspectors, he added, supervised the destruction.

Mr. Couchepin said keeping the documents “was incompatible with Switzerland’s obligations” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and added, “Under all circumstances, this information was not to reach the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state.”

The statement provoked a political furor. Some politicians and columnists accused Switzerland of surrendering to Washington’s agenda and violating Swiss neutrality. Among the strongest critics was Dick Marty, a prominent Swiss senator. “We could have respected the treaty by avoiding their publication and putting them under lock and key,” he was quoted as saying on Swissinfo, the Web site of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Destroying them, he added, “ could lead to the collapse of the legal case.”

Many European officials dismissed the government’s arguments about terrorists and rogue states as empty.

“If they had kept the material in federal possession for years, why not keep holding it?” asked Victor Mauer, a senior official at the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “Their explanation is not convincing.”

An Action’s Repercussions

In an interview, a senior European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A. said the destruction could have repercussions far beyond the criminal case.

For one thing, he said, the international atomic agency had been allowed to examine only parts of the archive. He called it “a good sample” and judged that the agency had missed no significant clues. Even so, he said, the agency might “come to regret” its inability to examine the materials further for insights into hidden remnants of Dr. Khan’s network.

And while the Swiss president made much of the proliferation danger, the diplomat insisted that the warhead designs were in many respects sketchy and incomplete. “These are almost like studies — bits and pieces,” he said, adding that they “wouldn’t be enough to let you build a replica.”

So while they might have little or no value for a terrorist with no atomic experience, the plans might prove quite helpful for an ambitious state intent on building a nuclear arsenal. He said the agency had no evidence that Iran had acquired the bomb plans.

The diplomat added that the Swiss had “lots of possibilities” other than destruction. He said they had no legal obligation to destroy the files under the nonproliferation treaty, and could have put them under I.A.E.A. seal in Vienna or Switzerland.

Several European officials speculated that Washington might actually have kept secret copies of the archive. A senior American official said the United States had reviewed the material but declined to say if there were copies.

As for the Tinners, the father was released in 2006, pending legal action. In a brief interview at his home, Mr. Tinner pleaded ignorance about basic aspects of the criminal case, such as where the authorities kept the materials that had belonged to him and his sons. “The newspapers know more about these things than I do,” he insisted.

Should the case fall apart, the Tinners would join a growing list of freed associates of Dr. Khan. In June, Malaysia released the network’s chief operating officer, B. S. A. Tahir, saying he was no longer a national security threat. The authorities have kept the Tinner brothers in jail for fear that they might flee the country. In late May, a Swiss court rejected their bail application, and early this month, the ruling was upheld. But the judges also told the authorities that they could not hold the brothers indefinitely without charging them.

With much of the evidence gone, the magistrate, Mr. Müller, expressed frustration at finding “no answers to the really interesting questions in this case.” He declined to predict how it might turn out.

“At the moment,” he said, “it is impossible to make any schedule, since the case is in many aspects extraordinary.”

Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt, and Uta Harnischfeger from Zurich.

Reuters : Pakistanis jubilant over Musharraf's resignation

Pakistanis jubilant over Musharraf's resignation

By Asim Tanveer | August 19, 2008

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistanis danced in the streets on Monday after beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation, with many ordinary people hoping his departure would bring improvement to their lives.

After ruling Pakistan single-handedly for nearly nine years, the former army chief and close ally of the United States announced his resignation in a televised address in the face of an impending impeachment by the ruling coalition government.

Lawyers, who have spearheaded an anti-Musharraf campaign since he tried to sack the chief justice last year, stormed out of courts in the southeastern city of Multan on hearing of Musharraf's resignation, shouting "Down with the American stooge".

"It's just like I'm celebrating my wedding," said lawyer Malik Naveed, dancing among a crowd of about 400 colleagues.

Then army chief Musharraf was welcomed when he deposed an unpopular prime minister in a 1999 coup, ending a decade of fractious civilian rule.

But his popularity began to evaporate last year when he tried to dismiss the chief justice, and later imposed a six-week stint of emergency rule, cracking down on the media and detaining thousands of political activists.

Jaffar Shah, a retired soldier in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said: "The root cause of all problems has gone".

"I wish I could fire shots to show my joy but unfortunately I can't do that."

People in Karachi, the country's commercial capital, handed out sweets and danced in celebration.

"Thank God he's resigned. The country will do much better now. It's a victory for the people," said Mohammad Ilyas, 30.

ECONOMIC WOES

Critics have complained the wrangling over Musharraf distracted the new government's attention from worsening security and a deteriorating economy.

Inflation is at its highest in 30 years and fiscal and current account deficits are widening. The rupee has lost about a quarter of its value this year while stocks have plummeted about 50 percent from a record high set on April 21.

Some Pakistanis harbored what would appear to be unrealistic expectations for the post-Musharraf outlook: "Inflation is surely going to go down now," said Rifaqat Shah, 65, a businessman in Karachi. But others were less optimistic about the resignation of a leader who promoted an investor-friendly environment and oversaw good growth and surging stocks until this year.

"The country was doing better economically but now the politicians won't be able to preserve the economy and things will get worse," said another Karachi resident, Mariam Bibi.

Despite Musharraf's unpopularity, many Pakistanis are suspicious of the civilian politicians -- a number of whom have returned to power -- who were dogged by accusations of corruption and mismanagement when they ruled in the 1990s.

Some said they feared that with Musharraf gone, the coalition would be beset by infighting between parties that have traditionally been rivals.

"I'm not very hopeful. These politicians will again indulge in political bickering ... I don't think they will bring down prices," said Mohammad Faisal, a civil servant in Multan.

(Additional reporting by Aftab Borka, Imtiaz Shah and Faris Ali)

(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

NYT : Sharif Threatens to Pull Out of Pakistani Coalition

Sharif Threatens to Pull Out of Pakistani Coalition

By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A day after their unified effort ousted President Pervez Musharraf, the two major parties in the governing coalition fell into disarray on Tuesday when they failed to agree on the restoration of the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

The instant deterioration in relations became evident when Nawaz Sharif, the leader of one of the parties, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, walked out of a meeting here and headed back to his home in Lahore, a four-hour drive away.

Party members said Mr. Sharif had delivered an ultimatum to the senior coalition party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, led by Asif Ali Zardari, to consent to the return of the chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, within 72 hours, or the Mr. Sharif’s party would leave the government. Mr. Chaudhry was among some 60 judges suspended by Mr. Musharraf last year.

Even by the standards of Pakistan’s hard-boiled and volatile political scene, the public discord between the political leaders was surprising, politicians said, a sign that opposition to Mr. Musharraf may have been the strongest thread tying them together.

The departure of Mr. Sharif’s party would greatly weaken the government but would not necessarily mean there would be new elections. Still, the situation did not bode well for future stability, with Pakistan facing a sharply declining economy and an emboldened Taliban insurgency that is fast moving past its sanctuaries in the tribal region and reaching into other parts of the country.

In an attack claimed by the Taliban within the tribal region on Tuesday, a suicide bomber ripped into the emergency room of the district hospital in Dera Ismail Khan, a town near Waziristan, killing 25 people and injuring 30, said the inspector general of the police in the North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan. He said there was some evidence that the suicide bomber was linked to Waziristan, the base of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud.

The rupture in the coalition appeared serious, perhaps fatal, said Arif Nizami, the editor of the daily newspaper, The Nation, and friend of the Mr. Sharif’s family.

Mr. Sharif was “unlikely to cave,” Mr. Nizami said.

Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif have sharply disagreed over Mr. Chaudhry’s reinstatement ever since they became coalition partners.

Mr. Sharif based his election campaign earlier this year on the reinstatement of some 60 judges fired by Mr. Musharraf, including the independently minded Mr. Chaudhry. A poll in June by the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based group, showed that 83 percent of Pakistanis wanted the Supreme Court justices reinstated.

But Mr. Zardari has made it clear that he does not want Mr. Chaudhry back on the bench. He prefers the chief justice installed by Mr. Musharraf after he imposed emergency rule last November, Abdul Hamid Dogar, according to lawyers familiar with Mr. Zardari’s thinking.

The lawyers’ movement that has grew around Mr. Chaudhry as the ultimate anti-Musharraf symbol in Pakistan regards Mr. Dogar as an illegal appointee.

Mr. Dogar comes from Sindh Province, Mr. Zardari’s political base, and the two men are friendly.

The basis of Mr. Zardari’s opposition to Mr. Chaudhry rests with a fear that he might undo an amnesty agreement that absolved Mr. Zardari of corruption charges, lawyers said. The amnesty, which applies to bureaucrats and politicians who faced corruption charges, was part of a package arranged by Mr. Musharraf when Mr. Zardari returned to Pakistan after his wife, the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated late last year.

Members of the Pakistan Muslim League-N said Mr. Zardari, in failing to agree to the reinstatement of Mr. Chaudhry, was breaking a written accord made with Mr. Sharif 10 days ago.

The attack in Dera Ismail Khan as part of continuing sectarian strife between Sunni and Shiites, according to Mr. Khan, the police chief. A Shiite man was killed in the town Tuesday, and as a group of Shiites approached the gates of the emergency room with the body of the dead man, the suicide bomber blew himself up, he said.

Many of the 23 dead were Shiites, Mr. Khan said. Two police officers were also killed, he said.

In another unexpected move after Mr. Musharraf’s resignation, the chief of staff of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, made a surprise visit to the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Tuesday.

The spokesman for the Afghan military, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said General Kayani attended a meeting of the tripartite commission, a body composed of the military leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States coalition and NATO forces in Afghanistan. General Kayani’s presence was notable, not only because of its timing so quickly after Mr. Musharraf’s departure, but because it was believed to be the first time the Pakistani general had attended a meeting of the commission in Kabul since assuming command of the Pakistani military last November.

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been particularly tense in the last few months after the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, repeatedly accused Pakistan of helping Taliban fighters cross the border into Afghanistan in order to attack Afghan and NATO troops. The Bush administration has also publicly reprimanded the Pakistanis for their support of the Taliban.

Last month, American officials confronted General Kayani with evidence they said showed that Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, had planned the suicide bomb attack against the Indian Embassy in Kabul in early July. General Kayani is the former head of the agency.

There was speculation that General Kayani may have attended the talks in Kabul in response to the stepped American pressure.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Mark Mazzetti from Washington, and David E. Sanger from Vermont.

Reuters : Pakistanis jubilant over Musharraf's resignation

Pakistanis jubilant over Musharraf's resignation

By Asim Tanveer | August 18, 2008

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistanis danced in the streets on Monday after beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation, with many ordinary people hoping his departure would bring improvement to their lives.

After ruling Pakistan single-handedly for nearly nine years, the former army chief and close ally of the United States announced his resignation in a televised address in the face of an impending impeachment by the ruling coalition government.

Lawyers, who have spearheaded an anti-Musharraf campaign since he tried to sack the chief justice last year, stormed out of courts in the southeastern city of Multan on hearing of Musharraf's resignation, shouting "Down with the American stooge".

"It's just like I'm celebrating my wedding," said lawyer Malik Naveed, dancing among a crowd of about 400 colleagues.

Then army chief Musharraf was welcomed when he deposed an unpopular prime minister in a 1999 coup, ending a decade of fractious civilian rule.

But his popularity began to evaporate last year when he tried to dismiss the chief justice, and later imposed a six-week stint of emergency rule, cracking down on the media and detaining thousands of political activists.

Jaffar Shah, a retired soldier in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said: "The root cause of all problems has gone".

"I wish I could fire shots to show my joy but unfortunately I can't do that."

People in Karachi, the country's commercial capital, handed out sweets and danced in celebration.

"Thank God he's resigned. The country will do much better now. It's a victory for the people," said Mohammad Ilyas, 30.

ECONOMIC WOES

Critics have complained the wrangling over Musharraf distracted the new government's attention from worsening security and a deteriorating economy.

Inflation is at its highest in 30 years and fiscal and current account deficits are widening. The rupee has lost about a quarter of its value this year while stocks have plummeted about 50 percent from a record high set on April 21.

Some Pakistanis harbored what would appear to be unrealistic expectations for the post-Musharraf outlook: "Inflation is surely going to go down now," said Rifaqat Shah, 65, a businessman in Karachi. But others were less optimistic about the resignation of a leader who promoted an investor-friendly environment and oversaw good growth and surging stocks until this year.

"The country was doing better economically but now the politicians won't be able to preserve the economy and things will get worse," said another Karachi resident, Mariam Bibi.

Despite Musharraf's unpopularity, many Pakistanis are suspicious of the civilian politicians -- a number of whom have returned to power -- who were dogged by accusations of corruption and mismanagement when they ruled in the 1990s.

Some said they feared that with Musharraf gone, the coalition would be beset by infighting between parties that have traditionally been rivals.

"I'm not very hopeful. These politicians will again indulge in political bickering ... I don't think they will bring down prices," said Mohammad Faisal, a civil servant in Multan.

(Additional reporting by Aftab Borka, Imtiaz Shah and Faris Ali)

(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

NYT : Musharraf Walked a Tightrope

Musharraf Walked a Tightrope

By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A commando at heart, and a man of often impetuous decisions, Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9/11 and pledged to help the United States, becoming one of Washington’s most crucial allies in the campaign against terrorism.

It was a bold stroke that boosted the Bush administration in its immediate war against Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf also gave Washington permission to strike at Qaeda targets in his nation’s lawless tribal areas.

But the assurances turned out to be less than promised, and though Mr. Musharraf forged a personal bond with President Bush, the Pakistani general proved to be a tough, frustrating customer for the United States.

Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency never severed ties with the Taliban.

Nine years later, the Taliban are putting up a ferocious fight against the United States in Afghanistan, and are providing shelter to Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. The rejuvenated Taliban now virtually control Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and are pressing into the rest of the country, threatening the stability of the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people.

“Musharraf continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban and the author of “Descent into Chaos,” a book that details the relationship between Mr. Musharraf and Washington. “It was a remarkable feat of balancing on the tightrope.”

The feat was so skilful that Mr. Musharraf won more than $10 billion in American military assistance for his army, as well as unannounced covert aid. About half the military aid was supposed to be spent on bolstering the counter-insurgency skills of the Pakistani army.

Much of that money never reached the military and was allocated instead to Pakistan’s general budget, but the Bush administration was so anxious to keep Mr. Musharraf as an ally it chose not to complain, according to a congressional investigation this year.

Washington finally lost patience last month. In a diplomatic showdown, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency confronted the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service helped plan the July 7 terror attack against the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

But by that time, Mr. Musharraf’s power was eclipsed, and the Bush administration acknowledged that Mr. Musharraf’s usefulness was past.

Mr. Musharraf stepped down as chief of the army last November, handing the post to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , who has kept above the fray in the effort to impeach the president.

After grabbing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, Mr. Musharraf began his tenure as president with a wave of support from a public weary of a decade of weak and corrupt civilian government.

In the beginning, he attracted competent people to his cabinet, and promised to tackle longstanding problems, including the spread of madrassas, the religious schools that had become breeding grounds of Islamic extremists.

But the madrassas remained untouched, mainly because Mr. Musharraf handed the task to the Ministry of Religious Affairs which was opposed to the plan, according to Jehangir Tareen, a former minister of industries and special projects in the Musharraf cabinet.

Mr. Musharraf backed some important reforms in the news media and the rights of women, according to his supporters and his critics. Now, dozens of private television stations exist, many of them with rambunctious political talk shows. He also moved to improve the status of women by pushing for the amendment of strict Islamic laws.

“Musharraf tried to construct a modern enlightened state,” said Mr. Tareen. “But he proved you cannot do this on the structure of a patronage-riven and police-oriented political machine.”

One of his greatest shortcomings, Mr. Tareen said, was his disdain of democratic methods, and civilian politicians.

In 2002, Mr. Musharraf ordered a referendum to be held, a yes or no vote on his legitimacy as president. No opposition candidates were permitted to stand and rallies by opposition political parties were banned.

After parliamentary elections six months later, Mr. Musharraf engineered political support from the Chaudhry clan, a powerful group of politicians in Punjab Province who were seen as anti-reformist. They created a political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as a vehicle for Mr. Musharraf. When conservative religious parties swept those parliamentary elections in the North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Musharraf sought their support too.

In March 2007, facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election.

A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turned into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.

In November, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency and fired 60 judges. By the time he lifted the decree in December, he was seen as an unpopular dictator, and by then, his main political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, had returned to Pakistan to run in elections.

Ms. Bhutto was assassinated at the end of December, postponing elections that were scheduled for the beginning of January. But Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, picked up the reins of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and in February elections, the two parties swept into power. They formed an uneasy coalition that left Mr. Musharraf’s political party flailing for support.

In the end, his failure to manage his double game of keeping the Americans on his side and keep allowing the religious extremists to thrive may have proved his undoing, and left Pakistan in a more precarious position, Mr. Rashid said.

Last year, there were 56 suicide attacks in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban ensconced in the tribal areas. The Taliban were pouring out of the tribal areas into more settled regions, striking anxiety into an army unaccustomed to fighting an insurgency.

“The Taliban are not only an external problem for Pakistan, they have now become an internal problem for Pakistan,” said Mr. Rashid.

Dawn : Pakistanis jubilant over Musharraf's resignation

Pakistanis jubilant over Musharraf's resignation

August 18, 2008

MULTAN, Aug 18 (Reuters/AFP): Pakistanis danced in the streets on Monday after President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation, with many ordinary people hoping his departure would bring improvement to their lives.

Lawyers, who have spearheaded an anti-Musharraf campaign since he tried to sack the chief justice last year, stormed out of courts in Multan on hearing of Musharraf's resignation, shouting “Down with the American stooge.”

Jaffar Shah, a retired soldier in Peshawar, said: “The root cause of all problems has gone. I wish I could fire shots to show my joy but unfortunately I can't do that.”

People in Karachi handed out sweets and danced in celebration.

“Thank God he's resigned. The country will do much better now. It's a victory for the people,” said a businessman.

In Lahore, the sound of drums and cheers of joy echoed throughout this ancient walled city.

Elsewhere, people fired Kalashnikovs in the air to celebrate.

Some Pakistanis harboured what seem unrealistic expectations for the post-Musharraf outlook: “Inflation is surely going to go down now,” said one shopkeeper.

Others were less optimistic as despite Musharraf's unpopularity, many Pakistanis are suspicious of the civilian politicians -- a number of whom have returned to power -- were dogged by accusations of corruption and mismanagement when they ruled in the 1990s.

Some said they feared that with Musharraf gone, the coalition would be beset by infighting between them.

Other Pakistanis sounded a note of caution, saying that the nation would now likely see more political chaos.

“I think we should see about the state of the country. The coalition have been saying Musharraf was a big obstacle. We will see what they do now,” Ahmed, a political analyst said.

NYT : Musharraf Walked a Tightrope

Musharraf Walked a Tightrope

By JANE PERLEZ | August 19, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A commando at heart, and a man of often impetuous decisions, Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan’s support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after 9/11 and pledged to help the United States, becoming one of Washington’s most crucial allies in the campaign against terrorism.

It was a bold stroke that boosted the Bush administration in its immediate war against Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to work with Pakistani intelligence to arrest senior Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf also gave Washington permission to strike at Qaeda targets in his nation’s lawless tribal areas.

But the assurances turned out to be less than promised, and though Mr. Musharraf forged a personal bond with President Bush, the Pakistani general proved to be a tough, frustrating customer for the United States.

Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency never severed ties with the Taliban.

Nine years later, the Taliban are putting up a ferocious fight against the United States in Afghanistan, and are providing shelter to Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. The rejuvenated Taliban now virtually control Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and are pressing into the rest of the country, threatening the stability of the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people.

“Musharraf continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban and the author of “Descent into Chaos,” a book that details the relationship between Mr. Musharraf and Washington. “It was a remarkable feat of balancing on the tightrope.”

The feat was so skilful that Mr. Musharraf won more than $10 billion in American military assistance for his army, as well as unannounced covert aid. About half the military aid was supposed to be spent on bolstering the counter-insurgency skills of the Pakistani army.

Much of that money never reached the military and was allocated instead to Pakistan’s general budget, but the Bush administration was so anxious to keep Mr. Musharraf as an ally it chose not to complain, according to a congressional investigation this year.

Washington finally lost patience last month. In a diplomatic showdown, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency confronted the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service helped plan the July 7 terror attack against the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

But by that time, Mr. Musharraf’s power was eclipsed, and the Bush administration acknowledged that Mr. Musharraf’s usefulness was past.

Mr. Musharraf stepped down as chief of the army last November, handing the post to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , who has kept above the fray in the effort to impeach the president.

After grabbing power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, Mr. Musharraf began his tenure as president with a wave of support from a public weary of a decade of weak and corrupt civilian government.

In the beginning, he attracted competent people to his cabinet, and promised to tackle longstanding problems, including the spread of madrassas, the religious schools that had become breeding grounds of Islamic extremists.

But the madrassas remained untouched, mainly because Mr. Musharraf handed the task to the Ministry of Religious Affairs which was opposed to the plan, according to Jehangir Tareen, a former minister of industries and special projects in the Musharraf cabinet.

Mr. Musharraf backed some important reforms in the news media and the rights of women, according to his supporters and his critics. Now, dozens of private television stations exist, many of them with rambunctious political talk shows. He also moved to improve the status of women by pushing for the amendment of strict Islamic laws.

“Musharraf tried to construct a modern enlightened state,” said Mr. Tareen. “But he proved you cannot do this on the structure of a patronage-riven and police-oriented political machine.”

One of his greatest shortcomings, Mr. Tareen said, was his disdain of democratic methods, and civilian politicians.

In 2002, Mr. Musharraf ordered a referendum to be held, a yes or no vote on his legitimacy as president. No opposition candidates were permitted to stand and rallies by opposition political parties were banned.

After parliamentary elections six months later, Mr. Musharraf engineered political support from the Chaudhry clan, a powerful group of politicians in Punjab Province who were seen as anti-reformist. They created a political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as a vehicle for Mr. Musharraf. When conservative religious parties swept those parliamentary elections in the North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Musharraf sought their support too.

In March 2007, facing elections in a few months time, Mr. Musharraf fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , apparently out of fear that the judiciary might undermine his re-election.

A tidal wave of support for Mr. Chaudhry from lawyers across the country turned into a vibrant anti-Musharraf campaign.

In November, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency and fired 60 judges. By the time he lifted the decree in December, he was seen as an unpopular dictator, and by then, his main political opponents, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, had returned to Pakistan to run in elections.

Ms. Bhutto was assassinated at the end of December, postponing elections that were scheduled for the beginning of January. But Ms. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, picked up the reins of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and in February elections, the two parties swept into power. They formed an uneasy coalition that left Mr. Musharraf’s political party flailing for support.

In the end, his failure to manage his double game of keeping the Americans on his side and keep allowing the religious extremists to thrive may have proved his undoing, and left Pakistan in a more precarious position, Mr. Rashid said.

Last year, there were 56 suicide attacks in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban ensconced in the tribal areas. The Taliban were pouring out of the tribal areas into more settled regions, striking anxiety into an army unaccustomed to fighting an insurgency.

“The Taliban are not only an external problem for Pakistan, they have now become an internal problem for Pakistan,” said Mr. Rashid.

Dawn : CHRONOLOGY-Months of turmoil for Pakistan's Musharraf

CHRONOLOGY-Months of turmoil for Pakistan's Musharraf

Islamabad, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation on Monday in the face of an impending impeachment motion by Pakistan's ruling coalition government. The former army chief and firm U.S. ally had seen his popularity slide over the past 18 months and had been isolated since his parliamentary allies lost a February general election. Here is a chronology of recent events that led to the downfall of Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in December 1999 and became president in 2001.

March 9, 2007 - Musharraf suspends Supreme Court Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry over allegations of misconduct. Lawyers rally around the top judge and Musharraf's popularity plummets.

July 10 - Musharraf orders troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement there. At least 105 people are killed. Militant attacks and suicide bombings follow.

July 20 - Supreme Court reinstates Chief Justice Chaudhry, dealing a blow to Musharraf's authority.

July 27 - Musharraf meets former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Abu Dhabi for inconclusive talks on how to move the country towards a civilian-led democracy. Bhutto demands Musharraf step down as army chief.

Sept 10 - Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is arrested at Islamabad airport on his arrival from exile, despite the Supreme Court clearing his return. He is deported to Saudi Arabia.

Oct 2 - Musharraf's government announces it will drop graft charges against Bhutto, clearing the way for her return.

Oct 6 - Musharraf wins a presidential vote by legislators.

Supreme Court holds off confirming legality of vote.

Oct 19 - Suicide bomber tries to assassinate Bhutto in Karachi as she returns from eight years of exile.

Nov 2 - Supreme Court meets to decide if Musharraf was eligible to stand for re-election while still army chief.

Nov 3 - Musharraf imposes emergency rule, detaining thousands of opposition politicians and lawyers.

Nov 11 - Musharraf says parliamentary elections will be held by Jan. 8.

Nov 13 - Bhutto is placed under house arrest for a week in Lahore, hours before planned march against emergency rule.

Bhutto says Musharraf must quit as president.

Nov 15 - Musharraf appoints Senate chairman Mohammadmian Soomro to head a caretaker line-up to oversee elections.

Nov 22 - Commonwealth suspends Pakistan.

Nov 25 - Sharif returns from exile.

Nov 28 - Tearful Musharraf hands command of the army to General Ashfaq Kayani.

Nov 29 - Musharraf is sworn in as civilian leader.

Dec 15 - Musharraf lifts state of emergency, restores constitution.

Dec 27 - Bhutto is assassinated in a gun and bomb attack.

Jan 2 - Election delayed from Jan 8 to Feb 18 because of disturbances after Bhutto's assassination.

Feb 18 - Resounding election victory for parties led by Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari (Pakistan People's Party) and Sharif (Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)). Analysts say Musharraf may be driven out.

March 9 - Sharif says he will join Zardari to form a coalition hostile to Musharraf.

Aug 7 - Ruling coalition says it will launch proceedings to impeach Musharraf.

Aug 16 - Pakistan's ruling coalition prepares impeachment charges against Musharraf focusing on violation of the constitution and misconduct.

Aug 18 - Musharraf announces resignation.

NYT : Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations

Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations

By BENEDICT CAREY | August 15, 2008

They have closely studied suspects, looking for mental quirks. They have suggested lines of questioning. They have helped decide when a confrontation is too intense, or when to push harder. More than those in the other healing professions, psychologists have played a central role in the military and C.I.A. interrogation of people suspected of being enemy combatants.

But now the profession, long divided over this role, is considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of its code of ethics.

At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting this week in Boston, prominent members are denouncing such work as unethical by definition, while other key figures — civilian and military — insist that restricting psychologists’ roles would only make interrogations more likely to harm detainees.

Like other professional organizations, the association has little direct authority to restrict members’ ability to practice. But state licensing boards can suspend or revoke a psychologist’s license, and experts note that these boards often take violations of the association’s ethics code into consideration.

The election for the association’s president is widely seen as a referendum on the issue. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, plan a protest on Saturday afternoon.

And last week, for the first time, lawyers for a detainee at the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, singled out a psychologist as a critical player in documents alleging abusive treatment.

“It’s really a fight for the soul of the profession,” said Brad Olson, a psychologist at Northwestern University, who has circulated a petition among members to place a moratorium on such consulting.

Others strongly disagree. “The vast majority of military psychologists know the ethics code and know exactly what they can and cannot do,” said William J. Strickland, who represents the Society for Military Psychology before the association’s council. “This is a fight about individual psychologists’ behavior, and we should keep it there.”

At the center of the debate are the military’s behavioral science consultation teams, informally known as biscuits, made up of psychologists and others who assist in interrogations. Little is known about these units, including the number of psychologists who take part. Neither the military nor the team members have disclosed many details.

Defenders of that role insist that the teams are crucial in keeping interrogations safe, effective and legal. Critics say their primary purpose is to help break detainees, using methods that might violate international law.

In court documents filed Thursday, lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee Mohammed Jawad asserted that a psychologist’s report helped land Mr. Jawad, a teenager at the time, in a segregation cell, where he became increasingly desperate.

According to the documents, the psychologist, whose name has not been released, completed an assessment of Mr. Jawad after he was seen talking to a poster on his cell wall. Shortly thereafter, in September 2003, he was isolated from other detainees, and many of his requests to see an interrogator were ignored. He later attempted suicide, according to the filing, which asks that the case be dismissed on the ground of abusive treatment.

The Guantánamo court is reviewing the case. Military lawyers have denied that Mr. Jawad suffered any mental health problems from his interrogation. On Thursday, the psychologist in the case invoked Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment.

“This is what it’s come to,” said Steven Reisner, an assistant clinical professor at the New York University School of Medicine and a leading candidate for the presidency of the psychological association. “We have psychologists taking the Fifth.”

Dr. Reisner has based his candidacy on “a principled stance against our nation’s policy of using psychologists to oversee abusive and coercive interrogations” at Guantánamo and the so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The psychological association’s most recent ethics amendments strongly condemn coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign. But its current guidelines covering practice conclude that “it is consistent with the A.P.A. ethics code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national-security-related purposes,” as long as they do not participate in any of 19 coercive procedures, including waterboarding, the use of hoods and any physical assault.

How these guidelines shape behavior during interrogations is not well understood. Documents from Guantánamo made public in June suggested that at least some of the coercive methods the military has used were derived from SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, a program based on Chinese techniques used in the 1950s that produced false confessions from American prisoners.

These techniques included “prolonged constraint,” “exposure” and “sleep deprivation,” known informally as the frequent flier program.

In this kind of environment, “health professionals, bound by strong ethical imperatives to do no harm, may become calibrators of harm,” said Nathaniel Raymond of Physicians for Human Rights, which has been strongly critical of the psychological association’s position.

According to the standard operating procedure for Camp Delta, at Guantánamo, the “behavior management plan” for new detainees “concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.”

Some psychologists, though appalled by these techniques, emphasize that there is a danger in opting out as well.

“There’s no doubt that the psychologist’s presence can be abused,” said Robert W. Resnick, who is in private practice in Santa Monica, Calif., “but if there’s no presence at all, then there’s no accountability, and you walk away feeling noble and righteous, but you haven’t done a damned thing.”

Stephen Behnke, director of ethics at the psychological association, said in an interview on Friday that Defense Department standards for interrogation appeared to have improved in recent years.

“If you take the position that interrogation cannot be done ethically, then the discussion stops there,” Dr. Behnke said. “But if the answer is yes, then you don’t shut down the whole operation because certain individuals behaved unethically.”

Interrogators, too, are split on the question of whether psychologists provide valuable assistance. Some say that their advice can be helpful; others point out that there is no evidence that it improves the quality of the information obtained.

“I take a hybrid view of this,” said Steven Kleinman, a veteran interrogator and trainer who has worked in Iraq and strongly opposes coercive techniques. “The idea that a psychologist or psychiatrist is going to systematically unlock any prisoner’s resistance and provide some unique strategy is completely false — it’s a fantasy. Their role should be protecting the rights of both the interrogator and the prisoner. That’s far more valuable, and anything they might whisper in the interrogator’s ear, like ‘This person seems to have issues with his mother, play that up.’ ”

However the field addresses the issue, scholars say it may not alter the relationship much between psychologists and the military. Psychologists have helped screen recruits and study morale going back to World War I, and in Iraq, some military psychologists have worked long tours under fire, managing troops’ mental reactions at the front.

“American psychology really grew up with the military,” said Jean Maria Arrigo, a psychologist who has studied the profession’s relationship to military intelligence. “It was barely considered a science before the collaboration began, and the entanglement goes very deep.”

Reuters : Appeals court upholds CIA leak lawsuit dismissal

Appeals court upholds CIA leak lawsuit dismissal

By Andy Sullivan | August 12, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former CIA analyst Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and several former Bush administration officials for disclosing her identity to the public.

The Court of Appeals in Washington dealt another setback to the former spy, who has said her career was destroyed when officials blew her cover in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

Plame's outing led a lengthy criminal investigation, which resulted in the conviction of Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice.

President George W. Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year prison sentence last year.

Plame and Wilson sought money damages from Cheney, Libby, former White House aide Karl Rove and former State Department official Richard Armitage for violating their constitutional free speech, due process and privacy rights.

But a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld a federal judge's ruling that dismissed the couple's lawsuit.

The court ruled Cheney and the others were acting within their official capacity when they revealed Plame's identity to reporters.

Government employees who engage in questionable acts, such as abusing prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay facility or engaging in defamatory speech, cannot be held individually liable if they are carrying out official duties, the court said.

"The conduct, then, was in the defendants' scope of employment regardless of whether it was unlawful or contrary to the national security of the United States," Appeals Court Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote in the opinion.

Plame's lawyer said she was disappointed.

"We're considering all of our options, including appeal, which I think is likely," said Plame attorney Melanie Sloan, who added that she is still studying the decision.

(Editing by David Wiessler)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

NYT : Key questions in bomb-plot trial

Key questions in bomb-plot trial

By ELAINE SCIOLINO | The New York Times | July 15, 2008

LONDON — When Scotland Yard disrupted what it called a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives in August 2006, officials in Britain and the United States said the deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11 had been averted.

Air traffic on two continents was paralyzed, and passengers around the world were permanently barred from carrying most liquids onto planes. Terrorism alert levels in both countries were raised. There were claims by U.S. officials that the suspected scheme resembled the work of al-Qaida.

Now, as the three-month trial of eight defendants draws to a close, prosecutors have presented evidence of meticulous planning, with experiments on a new kind of bomb, research into plane schedules, videos threatening martyrdom, an apartment purchased for more than $270,000 in cash and a mysterious outsider with strong ties to Pakistan.

But the testimony has shown little evidence the suspects were prepared to strike immediately or of any link to al-Qaida — potential vulnerabilities in the case that several defendants have tried to capitalize on in court.

Three defendants pleaded guilty to intent to cause explosions, the judge announced Monday, in an apparent attempt to convince the jury their intention was not to commit mass murder, as prosecutors alleged. Instead, they said they planned a series of small, nonfatal blasts — "publicity stunts," one defendant claims — to protest British and U.S. foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The three men, and two others, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause a public nuisance by publishing videos threatening suicide-bomb attacks.

Britain does not allow plea bargaining, and the defendants — all British Muslim men, ages 24 to 30, six with family roots in Pakistan — still face more serious charges. They include conspiracy to murder passengers on airplanes.

Peter Wright, the chief prosecutor, urged jurors not to be swayed. "This was for real," he said. "Human beings ready, able and willing to commit carnage for the sake of Islam."

Still, the question of imminent threat and the sophistication of the alleged plot has hung over the trial.

At one point, after a videotape of a simulated liquid-bomb explosion was shown in court, the judge, David Calvert-Smith, reminded jurors that there was no evidence the suspects had fabricated a bomb.

"We need to deal with the fact that this is an allegation of conspiracy rather than the actually causing of explosion or murder," he said.

In building the case that the men were getting close to an actual attack, prosecutors have used evidence from several months of human police surveillance; thousands of items seized in 69 searches; DNA and chemical analyses; phone taps; Internet, e-mail and other audio and video monitoring; travel records; and the defendants' own words.

Surveillance inside their London apartment, notes, bomb-making materials and the suspects' testimony indicate they were trying to make an ingenious liquid bomb.

Bombs in a drink

Using a sealed 17-ounce sports drink, the men planned to drain the plastic bottle through a tiny hole in the bottom and then inject an explosive mix of concentrated hydrogen-peroxide, along with food coloring to make it look like the original beverage. Super Glue would seal it shut. AA batteries filled with the explosive HMTD would serve as the detonator; a disposable camera would serve as the trigger.

Prosecutors said the men planned to carry the components onto seven trans-Atlantic planes, assemble them and then explode them in midair.

The jury was shown a videotape of an explosion of a bomb built by government scientists to be identical to those the defendants are accused of trying to make. Thick panels of reinforced plastic were blown to the floor as the device exploded.

In cross-examining Keith Ritchie, the government scientist who testified about the simulated explosion, however, defense lawyer Malcolm Bishop said, "Such a plot was unattainable and really amounts to no more than prosecution fantasy."

The strongest evidence is against Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, a husband and father who studied computer-systems engineering and has been described by the prosecution as the ringleader.

A computer memory stick found in his pocket when arrested highlighted timetables of seven daily flights to cities in the United States and Canada. It also contained baggage information, security guidance about what could be carried as hand luggage and information about Heathrow Airport.

In a conversation recorded by the police, Ali discussed "locations in the U.S.A." and the desire to find the most popular destinations for British travelers, the prosecution said.

Ali's address book included handwritten notes that prosecutors called a plot "blueprint": "Clean batteries, perfect disguise, drink bottles," and, "Check time to fill each bottle." He also wrote, "Select date. Five days before. All link up, prepare." Prosecutors described the second key operative as Assad Sarwar, 28, who bought and stockpiled bomb-making materials and was responsible for experimenting with hydrogen peroxide and HMTD.

A college dropout who studied earth sciences, he first met Ali on a trip to Pakistan with an organization called the Islamic Medical Association in 2002.

During cross-examination, Sarwar explained in detail how to concentrate hydrogen peroxide to bomb-making levels, rattling off the difficult formula with chilling accuracy. He was also watched buying a suitcase and walking in a wooded area where the police later found a partially buried suitcase filled with bomb-making materials to make HMTD, hexamethylene triperoxide diamine.

Ali, Sarwar and a third suspect, Tanvir Hussain, have admitted they were making explosives but deny they wanted to blow up airplanes or kill anyone. The goal, they said, was simply to cause alarm and panic with small blasts to protest U.S. and British policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories. Ali described their plan as a "publicity stunt."

Last Thursday, in closed court, Ali, Sarwar and Hussain pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cause an explosion. In addition, the three men and two others, Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30, pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause a public nuisance by publishing videos threatening suicide attacks.

Threat of martyrdom

Four of the suspects were foot soldiers who made videos threatening martyrdom. They include Savant, a convert to Islam with Anglo-Indian roots who worked in his British mother's bookkeeping business; Islam, a convert and former Rastafarian of Caribbean origin; Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, a newly engaged former cellphone shop employee; and Waheed Zaman, 24, a former biomedical college student who once headed his university's Islamic organization.

All four denied any knowledge of a bomb plot or intention to commit suicide, insisting their videos were to be part of a documentary.

The most tantalizing foreign link is the role played by Mohammed Gulzar, 26, a defendant who was on the run from a serious crime committed in Britain in 2002 and who prosecutors call a "shadowy figure" and an "international terrorist." He moved to South Africa two years later.

He turned up again in Britain with false documents posing as a honeymooner, met the two main defendants and communicated with them from phone booths using phone cards. He was also in regular phone contact with Pakistan and in possession of the same type of Toshiba batteries manufactured for sale in Pakistan as the ones used by the bomb makers.

Wright, the prosecutor, described Gulzar as a "sleeper" terrorist who was waiting for instructions from his "superiors in Pakistan" to strike.

In the immediate aftermath of the arrests in 2006, U.S. officials were quick to suggest links to al-Qaida. Since then, both U.S. and British authorities say they were convinced the scheme was the work of al-Qaida.

In congressional testimony in early 2007, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described the group as "an al-Qaida cell, directed by al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan, that planned to bomb nearly a dozen U.S. airliners bound for the U.S. in midair." He stands by that testimony today, his office said.

In a telephone interview, Michael Chertoff, the U.S. Homeland Security secretary, said, "If you look objectively at the nature of the plot, the multiple planes, its sophistication and high consequences, it certainly resembles plotting we've seen with al-Qaida."

British investigators said they were convinced the size, scope, cost, secrecy and ingenuity of the plot bear al-Qaida's signature; they said they believe the cell learned to make the liquid explosive device from al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on confidentiality regarding criminal prosecutions.

During the trial, Sarwar admitted that during a trip to Pakistan between mid-June and early July 2006, a friend told him how to make the explosive HMTD.

He said the friend, whom he identified as Jameel Shah, was a Kashmiri freedom fighter. "He told me what I needed to do," Sarwar said.

Gulzar denied the charges, claiming he was a missionary for a Muslim revivalist movement.

Wright, the prosecutor, also insisted the plotters were "almost ready" to spring into action, but he admitted there was no evidence that a date had been chosen.

The group had not yet made the HMTD explosive or refined the hydrogen peroxide to the correct concentration. Some of the suspects did not yet have new passports. Some stumbled or smiled during their videos, giving them an amateurish quality. No plane tickets had been purchased.

Ali testified that he thought they were being watched and had put the plan on hold.

In cross-examination, Ritchie, the government scientist, testified that making the liquid bomb required lengthy research, and that the preparation and transport of liquid explosive materials would be extremely hazardous.

Asked whether the suspects could have successfully completed the attacks, Chertoff was circumspect, saying, "The amount of damage and consequences depend on a lot of things: how skillful the operation is, where the bomb is detonated, and how competent the operation is."

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

WaPo : Tactic Used After It Was Banned

Tactic Used After It Was Banned

Detainees at Guantanamo Were Moved Often, Documents Say

By Josh White | Washington Post Staff Writer | August 8, 2008

At least 17 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to a program that moved them repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation, according to U.S. military documents.

Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period.

Military police logs for cell blocks at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show that guards used the program -- dubbed the "frequent flyer" program in official documents -- on numerous detainees and noted the program in their 2003 and 2004 records. The logs, reviewed by The Washington Post, also indicate that the frequent cell movements took place on the same days a Navy admiral was visiting Guantanamo to assess possible detainee abuses.

Some of the detainees violently objected to the moves, spitting at guards and resisting handcuffs and shackles after enduring repeated cell transfers, leading to even more sanctions. One "cell transfer schedule" for detainee 519 -- Maher Rafat al-Quwari -- shows that he was moved six times a day for 12 days in July 2003, with a four-hour interrogation session in the middle.

Defense officials have previously acknowledged the program's existence, saying it stopped in 2004. They also have said that detainees are treated humanely and that credible allegations of abuse are investigated.

"There is no such program currently in place," said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo. "JTF Guantanamo conducts the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants legally, ethically and transparently."

U.S. military investigators deemed the program "abusive" but did not describe the extent of its use. Military police soldiers noted in handwritten entries that the cell movements were part of interrogation plans and that they were carefully organized.

For example, Moroccan detainee Ahmed Rashidi was scheduled for six-hour interrogations in the middle of the night and then moved to his cell for four hours, "then cycled through again repeatedly," according to one notation.

"Detainee must be monitored, observed, and recorded by on-duty MPs," the entry states. "The room will contain nothing more than a chair."

Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, a Saudi detainee who has been charged with terrorism offenses, was in the "frequent flyer" program from November 2003 to February 2004, according to the records, moving repeatedly from cell K36 to K38. Sharbi's civilian lawyer said he was troubled to learn that his client might have faced sleep deprivation at the hands of his jailers.

"We have to assume that the frequent flyer program, what its details were, was not designed to strengthen the comfort and resolve of the prisoner," said Robert Rachlin, who represents Sharbi. "Sleep deprivation is coercive. Of course it troubles me."

Mohammed Jawad, a 24-year-old detainee accused of trying to kill U.S. forces in Afghanistan with a grenade, has asked through his lawyers to have all military commission charges against him dismissed as a result of the abuse he suffered by the frequent moves.

Other detainees could raise similar arguments in military commission cases, as Salim Ahmed Hamdan did in his commission trial that ended yesterday. The judge in that case ruled that some evidence could not be presented because of "coercive" techniques but found that his treatment at Guantanamo, including the frequent flier program, did not affect his statements to interrogators.

Jawad's lawyer, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, said the newly discovered records indicate that "no one actually knows the full scope of the abuses at Guantanamo" and that "all of these allegedly comprehensive investigations were whitewashes."

"This is only the tip of the iceberg," Frakt said. "This program was approved at the highest levels. . . . It suggests that people had simply lost their ability to distinguish right from wrong."

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said he worries that more of the organization's numerous clients at Guantanamo could have faced the frequent flier technique.

"News that this methodology is more widespread than the government has initially acknowledged is troubling but not initially surprising," Warren said. "Things like sleep deprivation are against international law and U.S. domestic law, and all investigators, including those in Congress, need to focus on these issues of programmatic torture."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.