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U.S. Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects
Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, March 11, 2002; Page A01 JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 10 -- Arriving here from Pakistan in
mid-November, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni told acquaintances that he had
come to Indonesia to disburse an inheritance to his late father's second
wife. But instead of writing a check and leaving, he settled into a small
boarding house in a crowded, lower-middle-class neighborhood, where he
visited the local mosque and spent hours on end watching television at a
friend's house. Stocky and bearded, Iqbal, 24, betrayed little about his life in
Pakistan, except to hand out business cards identifying him as a Koran
reader for an Islamic radio station. In early January, however, the CIA
informed Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency that Iqbal had another
occupation, according to Indonesian officials and foreign diplomats.
Iqbal, they said, was an al Qaeda operative who had worked with Richard C.
Reid, the Briton charged with trying to detonate explosives in his shoes
on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22. The officials and diplomats said the CIA provided information about
Iqbal's whereabouts and urged Indonesia to apprehend him. A few days
later, the Egyptian government formally asked Indonesia to extradite
Iqbal, who carried an Egyptian as well as a Pakistani passport, a senior
Indonesian official said. The Egyptian request alleged Iqbal was wanted in
connection with terrorism, he said. It did not specify the crime, he said,
but Indonesian officials were told the charges were unrelated to the Reid
case. By Jan. 9, Iqbal was in the hands of Indonesian intelligence agents.
Two days later -- without a court hearing or a lawyer -- he was hustled
aboard an unmarked, U.S.-registered Gulfstream V jet parked at a military
airport in Jakarta and flown to Egypt, the Indonesian officials said. Since Sept. 11, the U.S. government has secretly transported dozens of
people suspected of links to terrorists to countries other than the United
States, bypassing extradition procedures and legal formalities, according
to Western diplomats and intelligence sources. The suspects have been
taken to countries, including Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence
services have close ties to the CIA and where they can be subjected to
interrogation tactics -- including torture and threats to families -- that
are illegal in the United States, the sources said. In some cases, U.S.
intelligence agents remain closely involved in the interrogation, the
sources said. "After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all
the time," a U.S. diplomat said. "It allows us to get information from
terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil." U.S. officials would not comment on evidence linking Iqbal to Reid, but
Western diplomats in Jakarta said Iqbal's name appeared on al Qaeda
documents discovered by U.S. intelligence agents in Afghanistan.
Indonesian officials said U.S. officials did not detail Iqbal's alleged
involvement with terrorism other than to say he was connected to Reid, and
as a consequence, he was highly sought by the U.S. government. Iqbal remains in custody in Egypt, intelligence sources said. The
sources said he has been questioned by U.S. agents but there was no word
on his legal status, a situation that resembles that of other Islamic
activists taken into custody in cooperation with the CIA. In October, for instance, a Yemeni microbiology student wanted in
connection with the bombing of the USS Cole was flown from Pakistan to
Jordan on a U.S.-registered Gulfstream jet after Pakistan's intelligence
agency surrendered him to U.S. authorities at the Karachi airport,
Pakistani government sources said. The hand-over of the shackled and
blindfolded student, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, who was alleged to be an
al Qaeda operative, occurred in the middle of the night at a remote corner
of the airport without extradition or deportation procedures, the sources
said. U.S. forces seized five Algerians and a Yemeni in Bosnia on Jan. 19 and
flew them to a detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, after they were ordered released by the Bosnian Supreme Court for
lack of evidence -- and despite an injunction from the Bosnian Human
Rights Chamber that four of them be allowed to remain in the country
pending further proceedings. The Human Rights Chamber, created under the
U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war, was
designed to protect human rights and due process. U.S. involvement in seizing terrorism suspects in third countries and
shipping them with few or no legal proceedings to the United States or
other countries -- known as "rendition" -- is not new. In recent years,
U.S. agents, working with Egyptian intelligence and local authorities in
Africa, Central Asia and the Balkans, have sent dozens of suspected
Islamic extremists to Cairo or taken them to the United States, according
to U.S. officials, Egyptian lawyers and human rights groups. U.S.
authorities are urging Pakistan to take the same step with the chief
suspect in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl. In 1998, U.S. agents spirited Talaat Fouad Qassem, 38, a reputed leader
of the Islamic Group, an Egyptian extremist organization, to Egypt after
he was picked up in Croatia while traveling to Bosnia from Denmark, where
he had been granted political asylum. Qassem was allegedly an associate of
Ayman Zawahiri, the number-two man in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Egyptian lawyers said he was questioned aboard a U.S. ship off the
Croatian coast before being taken to Cairo, where a military tribunal had
already sentenced him to death in absentia. Egyptian officials have
refused to discuss his case. U.S. intelligence officers are also believed to have participated in
the 1998 seizure in Azerbaijan of three members of Egypt's other main
underground group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, according to testimony provided
to their attorneys in Cairo. Also in 1998, CIA officers working with Albanian police seized five
members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who were allegedly planning to bomb the
U.S. Embassy in Tirana, Albania's capital. After three days of interrogation, the five men were flown to Egypt
aboard a plane that was chartered by the CIA; two were put to death. The
five were among 13 suspects known to have been picked up in the Balkans
with U.S. involvement and taken to Egypt for trial. Between 1993 and 1999, terrorism suspects also were rendered to the
United States from Nigeria, the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa in
operations acknowledged by U.S. officials. Dozens of other covert
renditions, often with Egyptian cooperation, were also conducted, U.S.
officials said. The details of most of these operations, which often
ignored local and international extradition laws, remain closely
guarded. Even when local intelligence agents are involved, diplomats said it is
preferable to render a suspect secretly because it prevents lengthy court
battles and minimizes publicity that could tip off the detainee's
associates. Rendering suspects to a third country, particularly Muslim
nations such as Egypt or Jordan, also helps to defuse domestic political
concerns in predominantly Muslim nations such as Indonesia, the diplomats
said. Sending a suspect directly to the United States, the diplomats said,
could prompt objections from government officials who fear that any
publicity of such an action would lead to a backlash from fundamentalist
Islamic groups. In Iqbal's case, Indonesian government officials told local media that
he had been sent to Egypt because of visa violations. A spokesman for the
immigration department said Iqbal failed to identify a sponsor for his
visit to Indonesia on his visa application form, which was submitted in
Islamabad, Pakistan. A senior Indonesian government official said disclosing the U.S. role
would have exposed President Megawati Sukarnoputri to criticism from
Muslim-oriented political parties in her governing coalition. "We can't be
seen to be cooperating too closely with the United States," the official
said. The official said an extradition request from Egypt and the discovery
of Iqbal's visa infraction provided political cover to comply with the
CIA's request. "This was a U.S. deal all along," the senior official said.
"Egypt just provided the formalities." Indonesian officials believe Iqbal, who arrived in Jakarta on Nov. 17,
came to the vast Southeast Asian archipelago not to plan an attack but to
seek refuge as the Taliban neared collapse and al Qaeda leaders sought to
flee Afghanistan. Western officials said they do not have a full picture
of what Iqbal was doing in Indonesia and they cannot rule out the
possibility that he was engaged in terrorist activities here. Iqbal had lived in Jakarta as a teenager while his father, who also was
an expert Koran reader, taught at the Arab Language Institute. Shortly
after Iqbal arrived in November, he returned to his old neighborhood, a
district in east Jakarta with narrow, winding streets and open sewers.
There he met up with one of his father's former students, Mohammed Rizard,
who helped him get a room at a nearby boarding house. Rizard, a printer, said Iqbal often would spend afternoons at his
house, watching television and singing Indian karaoke tunes. Although
Iqbal said he came to Indonesia to distribute an inheritance to his
father's second wife, he appeared to be in no hurry to perform the task,
Rizard said. "He was taking it easy," Rizard said. "He was more interested in
talking about girls and singing karaoke." Just before his arrest, Iqbal visited Solo, a city in central Java,
Indonesia's main island, saying he was going to see his stepmother. The
city is regarded by Western and Asian intelligence officials as a base for
Jemaah Islamiah, a militant Muslim group with bases in Indonesia,
Singapore and Malaysia that is alleged to be affiliated with al Qaeda. The
group is accused of plotting to blow up Western embassies and U.S. naval
vessels in Singapore and of aiding two of the Sept. 11 hijackers during a
trip they made to Malaysia in 2000. Rizard said he never discussed politics with Iqbal or inquired about
his life in Pakistan. "He never talked about jihad or America," Rizard
said. Rizard also said he rifled through Iqbal's suitcase and "found
nothing suspicious." In December, Iqbal sent several letters to friends in Pakistan, Rizard
said. Three replies arrived at Rizard's house, which Iqbal used as a
return address, after he had been seized and sent to Egypt. Rizard gave
the unopened letters to correspondents for The Washington Post and the
Weekend Australian newspaper. The handwritten letters, in the Urdu language, contain no incriminating
details but do suggest that Iqbal's missives had expressed deep
frustration and despair. "Why have you lost all hope?" one of his friends, Hafiz Mohammad
Riazuddin, wrote. "Please keep your head and spirits up." "Surprisingly you have asked about the Taliban," Riazuddin continued.
"How did you become interested in politics? Anyway, by the time you sent
this letter, Taliban rule has ended in Afghanistan. U.S. and British
troops have landed in Afghanistan. The U.S. has taken bases in Pakistan
and Pakistan's nuclear program is in danger." A lengthy letter from a woman who appears to be his girlfriend
suggested Iqbal had left Pakistan suddenly and had not told those close to
him where he was going. "It gives great pleasure to know that you are
alive," she wrote. Another letter, from a man named Shahid, refers to plans to visit an
"uncle in America" and talk to an "Uncle Babar" in Malaysia. Despite criticism from some U.S. officials as well as from neighboring
Singapore and Malaysia that Indonesia is not moving aggressively enough
against suspected terrorists, particularly members of Jemaah Islamiah,
officials here quickly point to Iqbal's rendition as proof they are
cooperating, albeit quietly, in the global fight against terrorism. "The CIA asked us to find this guy and hand him over," the senior
Indonesian official said. "We did what they wanted." Finn reported from Berlin. Correspondent Howard Schneider in Cairo,
special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and staff writers
Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus in Washington contributed to this report.
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