A lawyer for accused Al Qaeda associate Ahmed Omar Abu Ali said today that evidence that Saudi Arabian security officers brutally tortured his client—allegedly with the collusion of FBI agents and other U.S. government officials—will be “front and center” in his client’s defense on charges that he plotted with Saudi-based terrorists to assassinate President Bush.
“There is scar tissue all over his back,” defense lawyer Edward MacMahon told NEWSWEEK, adding that the scars are consistent with Abu Ali having been beaten during the 20 months he was detained and interrogated by Saudi officials before being flown home to the United States this week to face criminal charges that he provided material support to a terrorist group.
But federal prosecutors today strongly rejected the claims that Abu Ali, a 23-year-old American citizen, had been abused while in Saudi custody and called him a "grave danger to the community—and to the nation" in a court filing Wednesday. They also hinted that they will present more evidence to back up their case at a detention hearing in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday.
“Is there anybody left who believes the Saudis don’t torture people?” MacMahon said. “They behead people. Are they [the U.S. government] going to bring the Saudis that questioned him into the courtroom?”
MacMahon’s threat to make evidence of torture central to Abu Ali’s defense raises the stake in what is rapidly shaping up as a major criminal prosecution that could prove embarrassing to one of the U.S. government’s staunchest allies in the war on Al Qaeda—as well as FBI agents who worked closely with the Saudis on the handling of the former northern Virginia resident. It also comes at a time there are mounting investigations—in Congress and by foreign governments—into the U.S. practice of “rendering” terror suspects to countries that are alleged to practice torture.
One piece of evidence that could be used by Abu Ali’s lawyers, sources tell NEWSWEEK, is the U.S. State Department’s own human-rights reports, which have consistently described Saudi Arabia as a country that practices and condones torture of prisoners—a potentially key finding since much of the evidence against Abu Ali appears to come from other suspected terrorists who have been in Saudi custody for some time.
For example, the most recent State Department report on human-rights practices in Saudi Arabia, released last year, states that there were “credible reports” that Saudi Ministry of Interior officials were responsible for abuses, including “beatings, whippings, and sleep deprivation.”
In addition, the State Department report said, “there were allegations of torture, including allegations of beatings with sticks and suspension from bars by handcuffs. There were reports that torture and abuse were used to obtain confessions from prisoners.” A new State Department human-rights report on the Saudis, containing up-to-date information, is expected to be released in the next few days.
A source close to the Saudis this week dismissed the claims that Abu Ali had been tortured while in Saudi custody. The source said that, before he was placed onto an airplane to fly him to the United States on Monday, Abu Ali was examined by four doctors—two Saudi, one British and one U.S.—all of whom found no evidence of abuse. A U.S. official confirmed that an American government doctor had examined Abu Ali this week and that, as far as U.S. officials are concerned, there were no grounds to conclude he was mistreated.
In their court filing Wednesday, federal prosecutors stated: "An American doctor gave the defendant a thorough physical examination on or about February 21, 2005, after the defendant had been transferred by the Saudi government to U.S. custody. The doctor found no evidence of physical mistreatment on the defendant's back or any other part of his body."
Still, claims that Abu Ali was mistreated by the Saudis—with the collusion of U.S. government officials—has found at least some support from a federal judge who has been presiding over a civil case brought by Abu Ali’s parents alleging violations of his civil rights. In a detailed ruling last December, U.S. Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, found that there were “well supported factual allegations” of violations of Abu Ali’s rights, adding: “There is at least some circumstantial evidence that Abu Ali has been tortured during interrogations with the knowledge of the United States.” Bates cited evidence that FBI agents in Saudi Arabia closely monitored Saudi handling of Abu Ali and even participated in some of the questioning of him.
Some law-enforcement officials have privately expressed concerns about the wisdom of the Justice Department’s surprise decision to bring criminal charges against Abu Ali this week, saying prosecutors will inevitably face difficult issues in trying to bring some evidence outlined in the indictment into a U.S. courtroom. For example, defense lawyers would normally be given ample opportunity to explore the conditions of confinement not just of Abu Ali but of key witnesses against him who have also been detained by the Saudis. (A close reading of the Abu Ali indictment suggests that much of the crucial evidence against Abu Ali comes from other Saudi detainees.) Any evidence that a judge finds was extracted under conditions that would “shock the conscience of the court” can be tossed out altogether.
But other law-enforcement officials say that the evidence against Abu Ali is stronger than many realize and some of it is likely to be unveiled by federal prosecutors at a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday afternoon before a U.S. magistrate in Alexandria.
Abu Ali, who grew up in northern Virginia and then left for college in Saudi Arabia, was taking his final exam at the Islamic University of Medina when he was arrested on June 11, 2003, by Saudi security agents—part of a massive Saudi dragnet of Al Qaeda suspects that took place in the wake of the bombing of residential housing compounds in Riyadh that killed 34 people on May 12 that year.
Five days after the arrest, on June 16, 2003, FBI agents raided Abu Ali’s home in Falls Church, Va., and found, according to the indictment returned against him this week, literature consistent with at least an interest in extremist Muslim causes. The evidence seized included a two-page document praising Afghanistan’s Taliban leader Mullah Omar, a six-page document on how to avoid government surveillance, audiotapes in Arabic promoting violent jihad and the killing of Jews and a book written by Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which the Al Qaeda leader describes democracy as a “new religion that must be destroyed.”
Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, whose organization has spearheaded the civil case against the U.S. government brought by Abu Ali’s parents, said today that the material found in Abu Ali’s home was the kind of material any young person of Arabic descent who is reading “what’s going on” in the world might have in his home.
MacMahon, the defense lawyer, noted that another supposedly incriminating item mentioned in the indictment mentions as being found in Abu Ali’s home was an issue of Handguns magazine, with his name on a subscription label. A recent issue of Handguns, which advocates the rights of gun owners, contains an article headlined SPORTSMEN’S VICTORY! about the re-election of President Bush. “America’s hunting and shooting community will have a friend in the White House for four more years, plus new friends in the Senate and the House, after Tuesday’s election in which George W. Bush defeated John Kerry,” the article states.
Sources familiar with the Abu Ali case say the suspect first came onto the radar of U.S. law-enforcement officials as a result of an investigation into a ring of northern Virginia jihadis who were alleged to have used paintball games as paramilitary training in order to fight for Lashkar-Taiba, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist group for its violent campaign against India over independence of the disputed Kashmir region. Abu Ali had connections to some of the accused members of that ring and, at one point, sold one of them an AK-47 assault rifle, sources said. But he was viewed as a tangential figure in the Virginia network and was never charged in that case.
According to the indictment unveiled this week, Abu Ali, the valedictorian of his high-school class at an Islamic school in northern Virginia, became ensnared with Al Qaeda plotters when he first flew off to Saudi Arabia for religious studies in 2000. After returning for a second trip to Saudi Arabia in September 2002, Abu Ali allegedly told two unidentified co-conspirators that he wanted “to become a planner of terrorist operations like [9/11 masterminds] Muhammad Atta and Khalid Shaikh Muhammed.” In one such talk, the indictment alleges, Abu Ali and one co-conspirator talked about plans for Abu Ali to assassinate President Bush. They discussed “two options” for assassinating the president, the indictment states, an operation in which Abu Ali would “get close enough to the president to shoot him on the street” or, alternatively, “an operation in which Abu Ali would detonate a car bomb.”
The indictment provides no information about where or when these attacks were supposed to take place or if they ever got beyond the talking phase. However, it states that Abu Ali did obtain a “religious blessing” for another co-conspirator to assassinate the president. It also states that Abu Ali later met with other Al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia, one of whom gave him money to buy a laptop computer and a cell phone that he was to use to establish an Al Qaeda cell in the United States.
Just how strong this evidence is—and how much of it can be presented in a U.S. courtroom—may become at least partially clear in Thursday’s detention hearing. But either way, the case is likely to focus increased attention on the practice of renditions—in which U.S. officials send off terror suspects to countries that allegedly practice torture. One such case, involving a Canadian jihadi suspect, Maher Arar, is gearing up at the same time as that of Abu Ali. Arar, a 34-year-old technology consultant who was born in Syria but became a naturalized Canadian, was detained while passing through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002. After questioning and holding him for 12 days, U.S. officials allegedly placed him—chained and shackled—.
He was then transported over land to Syria where, he has claimed, he was beaten and tortured until he signed a false confession. In Ottawa, a special government tribunal headed by an Ontario judge is now conducting a full-scale inquiry into the case. So far most of the tribunal's hearings have been held in secret, but transcripts and documents from some of the investigation have been posted on the tribunal's Web site (www.ararcommission.ca) and more extensive public hearings are expected later this year.
