Federal Official doubts Khalid Sheikh Mohammed killed Daniel Pearl

[cynatnite]

The problems with Mohammed's coerced confessions are especially glaring in the Daniel Pearl case. It may be that Mohammed killed Pearl, but contradictory evidence and opinion continue to surface.

Yosri Fouda, the Al Jazeera reporter who interviewed Mohammed in Karachi, said that although Mohammed handed him a package of propaganda items, including an unedited video of the Pearl murder, he never identified himself as playing a role in the killing, which occurred in the same city just two months earlier.

And a federal official involved in Mohammed's case said, "He has no history of killing with his own hands, although he's proved happy to commit mass murder from afar." Al Qaeda's leadership had increasingly focussed on symbolic political targets. "For him, it's not personal," the official said. "It's business."

Ordinarily, the U.S. legal system is known for resolving such mysteries with painstaking care. But the C.I.A.'s secret interrogation program, Senator Levin said, has undermined the public's trust in American justice, both here and abroad. "A guy as dangerous as K.S.M. is, and half the world wonders if they can believe him -- is that what we want?" he asked. "Statements that can't be believed, because people think they rely on torture?"

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002263.php

[jobycom]

1. So he's a Republican?

"He has no history of killing with his own hands, although he's proved happy to commit mass murder from afar."

[Solly Mack]

2. He was waterboarded....I don't "think they rely on torture"...I know it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html

"Inside the CIA, water-boarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information -- though "not all of it reliable," a former senior intelligence official said."




http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866&page=1

CIA "admired" Khalid Sheik Mohammed for lasting so long while being water-boarded



"According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess. "




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html
US charges water-boarding as a war crime...

"Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk"



But let's keep pretending America doesn't torture...let's keep enabling the war criminals...let's keep pretending America isn't a war crime nation...let's keep pretending we are all about human rights and due process while we torture people and then justify it by saying it's OK if they're bad people.....