New ‘Operation Condor’ trial opens in Argentina

Five former intelligence and military officials in Argentina have gone on trial on charges of murdering 65 people. They are accused of kidnapping, torturing, and killing left-wing activists under the country’s military rule between 1976 and 1983.

The five, two former intelligence officers, Honorio Martinez Ruiz and Eduardo Ruffo, former Gen Eduardo Cabanillas, former Col Ruben Visuara, and former military intelligence agent Raul Guglielminetti, have denied the charges.

A prosecutor said what happened at Automotores Orletti was “calculated and planned and amounted to a death sentence” for the prisoners.

Australian intelligence used to jail woman in Yemen

The Sidney Morning Herald reports that, according to Yemen’s National Organisation for Defending Rights and Freedoms, Australia provided intelligence about a Yemeni-based Australian woman – who was subsequently jailed and her young children placed under home detention – to Yemeni security police via the FBI.

”Yemen is dealing with the FBI, which has its own office in Yemen, and we believe that the FBI is the connection between the intelligence of the Yemeni government and the intelligence of the Australian government”, said the head of Yemen’s National Organisation for Defending Rights and Freedoms, Mohamed Naji Allawo.

Ms Giddins had her Australian passport cancelled by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on April 10 at the request of ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation). Her Australian lawyer, Stephen Hopper, received a letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday which stated: ”ASIO assesses Giddins has an extremist interpretation of Islam and her activities in Yemen are prejudicial to security.” She is now being held at Sanaa’s central prison, and has been refused access both to legal representation and her children – who had their passports confiscated and remain under detention in a Sanaa apartment.

Ms Giddins’ arrest comes in the middle of a crackdown on foreigners suspected of being linked to a local jihadi group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – known as AQAP.

Ex-CIA top official’s op-ed supports Miranda rights

Philip Mudd, former deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from 2003 to 2005 and senior intelligence adviser to the FBI from 2009 to 2010, has an op-ed in The Washington Post entitled “Mirandizing terrorists: Not so black and white”.

In the article, Mudd argues that interviewing a suspect terrorist must pursue two objectives, which are not necessarily irreconcilable: to protect lives and to guard American civil liberties. More importantly, Mudd observes that suspect terrorist’ motives for talking or not with their interviewers are not driven by Miranda.

“His motivations are complex: He folds quickly after arrest, revealing everything he knows about a plot because he was never fully committed to a cause. Or he remains silent, requesting a lawyer and refusing to reveal whether another bomber is on the loose because his ideological roots run deep. Or he’s somewhere in between, offering some truths but also spinning tales, challenging his interrogator to separate fact from fiction and to steer the dialogue — or, more precisely, his unique psychology — toward a slowly evolving relationship that reveals plots and players”, Mudd writes describing the multifaceted attitudes of suspect terrorists towards their interviewer.

According to the ex-CIA official, Miranda rights have never been a real issue in real-world situations. He reports interviewers having said that Miranda was not a bar to intelligence-gathering during detainee debriefings.

“Washington officials make decisions all the time on whether a detainee is providing valuable intelligence. I sat at hundreds of briefing tables for nine years after Sept. 11, 2001, and I can’t remember a time when Miranda impeded a decision on whether to pursue an intelligence interview”, he says.

On the other hand, Mudd points out that Miranda can contribute to the acquisition of intelligence, encouraging a detainee to speak in a context dominated by the rule of law.

“Mirandizing a young detainee might prove to nervous parents — say, from countries with fearsome security services — that the rule of law applies in the United States and that there is incentive for their child to speak. In cultures with tight family structures, those parents could be the deciding factor in whether a young detainee talks” he observes.

Putin pushes legislation to curtail opposition

Spiegel reports that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has proposed legislation that would allow Russia’s intelligence service to imprison people for more than two weeks, without involving the courts.

That’s the proposed legislation in bill 364427-5, brought before the government by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is also the former head of the FSB. In the interest of suppressing opposition and taking even tougher action against the Islamic underground movement in the Caucasus, the bill would allow the FSB  (Russia’s domestic intelligence service and the successor to the KGB) to imprison citizens they consider problematic for up to 15 days without even involving the courts.

By boosting the secret service’s powers to fight terrorism, the proposal wins broad public support, despite the fact that such changes run the risk of intensified suppression of the press. After the Moscow Metro attacks that killed 40 people this March, the government wants to take tougher action against the country’s Islamist insurgency. “Despite all measures taken, the number of violent crimes committed by extremists has not fallen,” reads the reasoning behind the law.

The new law will have its repercussions also on the freedom of press. The proposed bill would allow the FSB to preemptively summon journalists for questioning and to demand that articles with “undesirable” news be removed from websites.

Following the Moscow Metro attacks, Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament and leader of Putin’s United Russia party, even equated critical journalists with Doku Umarov, a terrorist leader in the Caucasus, saying their statements were “in the same vein” as those of the terrorist leader. A Moscow district court however rejected a defamation suit by the Russian daily Vedomosti, targeted by Gryzlov’s  criticism.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva doesn’t hold out much hope that Medvedev will obstruct the proposed FSB law. Out of 233 bills brought before the government this legislative period, some 232 have been passed by parliament. “He won’t turn against Putin,” Alexeyeva says.