A British organization
charges that German territory and airspace may have been used for the transportation, detention, and interrogation of U.S. "enemy combatant" inmates. On the guest list of those allegedly detained at the secret prison on a U.S. base in Germany was
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the reputed second-in-command of al Qaeda and mastermind of the 9/11 attack on the U.S.
But what about Mohammed's children?
You may have read about them
in my diaries over the past three-and-a-half years. (I'm kind of a one-note Janie.)
News accounts from 2002, 2003, and 2004 indicate that the U.S. had adopted a new strategy for its "war on terror": kidnapping and detaining noncombatant children in intelligence and combat operations overseas, interrogating the children, and using them as leverage in getting their parents to surrender and/or be more cooperative in their interrogations. The tactic was apparently quite successful with Mohammed and was imported to Iraq in the early months of the U.S. invasion and occupation there.
Here are a few links to peruse:
Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.
Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
Mohammed fled just hours before the raid but his sons and another senior al-Qaeda member were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.
The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father. CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities.
"We are handling them with kid gloves," said one official [note: apparently missing the irony of the statement]. "After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."
[...] He has been told that his sons are being held and is being urged to divulge future attacks against the West and reveal the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
"He has said very little so far," a CIA official said on Saturday. "He sits in a trance-like state and recites verses from the Koran. But while he may claim to be a devout Muslim, we know he is fond of the Western-style fast life. His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."
Originally published in the Wall Street Journal: Other than torture or truth serum, American authorities have an array of options in extracting information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
JESS BRAVIN and GARY FIELDS, The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
[...] U.S. authorities have an additional inducement to make Mr. Mohammed talk, even if he shares the suicidal commitment of the Sept. 11 hijackers: The Americans have access to two of his elementary-school-age children, the top law-enforcement official says. The children were captured in a September raid that netted one of Mr. Mohammed's top comrades, Ramzi Binalshibh.
When interrogators finish with Mr. Mohammed, he is likely to face a U.S. military tribunal, but that will probably be years from now.
The kidnapping of children to force their parents to talk was a strategy that worked so well in the case of Mohammed (and how many others?) that it was adopted in the war on Iraq later in 2003.
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.
[...] Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info."
They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.
As I mentioned when I initially investigated and wrote about this practice:
Aaron Mullins, a legislative aide in Sen. Dole's office, talked with officials at the U.S. Department of Defense in July 2003 and confirmed that, yes, the United States was indeed using this tactic, and that it was considered both "safe and effective" -- that the children are not harmed, and that "if they were cleared of wrongdoing" they are "usually released."
Wall Street Journal correspondents Jess Bravin and Gary Fields, who have written extensively about U.S. interrogation practices and broke the story of the use of children as leverage in interrogation of a senior al-Qaeda suspect, stand by their story, which has never been refuted by the Defense Department or the White House.
A call to U.S. Central Command likewise elicited no denial of the reports, saying only that commanders have the discretion to do what they believe is necessary.
The problem is that children haven't always been treated with kindness at the hands of US kidnappers and interrogators: Teens were subjected to a macabre "game" that was not halted until abuses were made public in 2004. Teens allegedly were sodomized by US interrogators/soldiers or while U.S. interrogators stoody by -- rapes that may have been recorded and that may reside in the cache of documentary evidence in the Abu Ghraib investigation.
No oversight.
No tallies of how many children have been involved.
No Red Cross visiting the kids.
No standards for treatment.
Aside from initial confirmation back in 2003, there's been no acknowledgement at all that this is taking place.
If the children are indeed being treated well and released, why isn't there any transparency?
It's been nearly four years since Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's children (then ages 7 and 9, now presumably ages 11 and 13) were taken by U.S. intelligence forces. No one can tell us where they are or whether they've ever been returned to their mother in Pakistan. Or whether, indeed, their mother was taken as well.
It seems like a fairly easy thing to track down Mohammed's wife and ask whether the children were returned and whether they're safe; surely the US government has kept good tabs on her whereabouts. I'll ask her myself if I can raise the funds to get to Pakistan for a few weeks. I can't find anyone else interested in doing it; as one of reporters who initially broke these stories told me, "It's a little far down on the priority list as far as alleged atrocities go, as there are no claims that the kids are actually being harmed."
These claims have haunted me since I first read them nearly four years ago. And every time I read something new about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, I wonder about his children. Today we hear that he was detained in Germany. Where are his kids? Who's been tracking them?
I want answers. Don't you?