By Peter Finn / Washington Post
A former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died in a Libyan prison, an apparent suicide, according to a Libyan newspaper.
A researcher for Human Rights Watch, who met Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli late last month, said a contact in Libya had confirmed the death.
Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration. He became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives. The claim was most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003.
Powell later called the speech a "blot" on his record, saying he was not given all available intelligence and analysis within the government. The Defense Intelligence Agency and some analysts at the CIA had questioned the veracity of Libi's testimony, which was obtained after the prisoner was transferred to Egyptian custody for questioning by the CIA, according to Senate investigators.
In their book "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Michael Isikoff and David Corn said Libi made up the story about Iraqi training after he was beaten and subjected to a "mock burial" by his Egyptian interrogators, who put him in a cramped box for 17 hours. Libi recanted the story after being returned to CIA custody in 2004.
When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.
"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."
2 comments:
Bush/Cheney declared Libya with it's evil leader Gaddafi one of the worse counties and often included them in the Axis of Evil over the 8 years in office. Now we learn Bush/Cheney and Gaddafi were the best of friends and the US used a Libaya secret prison to torture detainees. Now reporters differ around the World as some call Ibn al-Shayakh al-Libi case murder and some say he's been die for a long time. Now remember Bush said the US didn't have secret prisons and was clueless about the many missing detainees. As Cheney is willing to tell his side of the story the only back who could prove him wrong is now publicly said to be dead. Was this an act of the Cheney Assassination Squad? How many other Axis of Evil countries are really friends of the Bush Team? The truth will come out and even the dead will talk. This man knew to much and lied so you can bet the farm he was he was murdered.
American justice system is dust in the wind...short of a new revolution, it appears to be gone for good.
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