Author Archives: Tom Parker

About Tom Parker

Tom Parker is the former Policy Director for Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights at Amnesty International USA. He was previously Executive Director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in New Haven, Connecticut and has worked extensively during the past five years as a consultant on post-conflict justice issues for clients such as USAID, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Institute on projects in Darfur, Iraq and Georgia. Tom has also served as a war crimes investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and as a counterterrorist official with the British government. Tom has held adjunct positions with both Yale University’s Residential College Seminar Program and Bard University’s Globalization and International Affairs Program teaching courses on trends in international terrorism and counter-terrorism. He has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Defense Institute for International Legal Studies (DIILS) serving as an instructor on counterterrorism training programs in countries as diverse as Latvia, Rwanda, Nepal, Albania, Thailand, Lebanon and Sri Lanka. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the University of Leiden and Brown.
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Rep. King's Terrorism Problem

January 6, 2011 at 10:40 AM

Congressman Peter King

Yesterday, with the opening of the 112th Congress, Representative Peter King (R-NY) succeeded Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MI) as the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.

In the past few weeks Congressman King, no stranger to exaggerated sensationalism, has attracted a great deal of media attention for labeling Wikileaks a terrorist organization (a stretch by any definition of the term) and calling for the prosecution of the New York Times under the Espionage Act.

Congressman King has said that his first order of business as Chair will be to hold hearings on Muslim-American radicalization.

This has caused more than a little concern in the Muslim community since King made headlines in 2004 by channeling Senator Joseph McCarthy in an interview with Sean Hannity in which he claimed – without any apparent factual basis whatsoever – that 85% of the mosques in America were controlled by “Islamic fundamentalists” and went on to describe the members of these mosques as “an enemy living among us.”

Can you tell the difference?

I suppose we shouldn’t be terribly surprised by Congressman King’s antics, as he has never been particularly good at spotting real terrorists. King was a high profile supporter of the Provisional IRA for almost twenty years telling a political meeting in Nassau County, New York, in 1982:

“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.”

In the course of more than three decades of violence in Northern Ireland the Provisional IRA is variously estimated to have killed between 1,700 and 1,900 people and to have injured thousands more.

These attacks included the bombing of a Remembrance Sunday (Veteran’s Day) Service in Enniskillen in which eleven members of the congregation died, the bombing of a MacDonald’s in Warrington that killed two small children, and the bombing of the London department store Harrods, which claimed six lives, including that of a United States citizen.

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Finally a good news story…

January 3, 2011 at 5:43 PM

James Zadroga

Yesterday, while still on vacation in Hawaii, President Obama signed the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act into law, laying the groundwork for a $4.3 billion fund to cover the healthcare costs of first responders suffering from medical complications arising from their service at Ground Zero.

The act will come too late to help former NYPD officer James Zadroga, who died in January 2006, but 100s of his fellow officers, firefighters, steelworkers and volunteers will benefit enormously. In the words of Mike Paladino, President of the New York City Detectives Endowment Association:

“The USA has done the right thing.”

It is shocking to note that New Yorkers had to wait nine years for this burden for so many heroes of 9/11 to be lifted. It is even more shocking to note that if had not been for public outrage at the political shenanigans that accompanied the dying days of the last Congress this act would still be languishing at the bottom of politicians’ ‘to do’ list.

So, we would like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to all of you who raised your voices on this issue and to those who took our online action. You can be very proud of a good day’s work.

It is not yet clear how exactly the act will be implemented but you can rest assured that going forward Amnesty International USA will be keeping a watchful eye on Washington to make sure that all those first responders and residents of lower Manhattan who need medical help in the months and years ahead receive it.

No More Delays

December 20, 2010 at 8:38 PM

In the past week we have been treated to the unedifying spectacle of U.S. Senators blocking the passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (H.R.847) until the Bush tax cut debate was concluded to their satisfaction. Even with the tax cut issue settled, the Zadroga Bill (or as Jon Stewart memorably put it on The Daily Show “the least we can do no brainer act of 2010”) still languishes on the Senate’s to do list.

The lack of urgency with which this bill has been treated by Congress and the mainstream media is a national disgrace. Politicians who do not hesitate to wrap themselves in the flag and invoke the memory of 9/11 for their own selfish purposes are playing petty politics with the lives of men and women that sacrificed everything to answer their country’s call in one of its darkest hours.

Last Thursday Senator Susan Collins (R- ME) even called Capitol police when she was alarmed to learn that a group of 9/11 first responders planned to camp out in Senate offices until they garnered the necessary 60 votes to secure the bill’s passage.

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Lost in Iraq

December 2, 2010 at 3:11 PM

This post is part of our Write for Rights series

Walid Yunis Ahmad is quite possibly the longest serving detainee in Iraq. He is a member of the marginalized Turkoman minority and has been imprisoned in Irbil, Northern Iraq, without charge or trial for more than ten years.

Walid was detained by Kurdish security forces in February 2000 after he was given a lift in a car that allegedly contained explosives. Although the driver of the car was released within three months, Walid remains locked up more than a decade later.

For the first three years after his detention Walid’s family received no official notification of his arrest and believed he had simply disappeared.

During these early years of confinement, Walid was tortured, held in solitary confinement and transferred from prison to prison until he finally ended up in the cells of the Kurdish security police headquarters, where he remains to this day.

Walid told Amnesty International delegates who visited him last June:

“I haven’t seen my children for 10 years. I did not want to see them in this terrible predicament.”

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Old School Justice

November 18, 2010 at 5:03 PM

Yesterday in a courtroom in downtown Manhattan nothing very special happened. A jury of ordinary New Yorkers sifted the evidence presented to them and convicted the defendant of a serious charge they felt the Prosecution had substantiated.

The defendant in question was Ahmed Ghailani who was accused of playing a supporting role in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. The bombings were horrific. In Nairobi at least 212 people were killed including embassy staff and many local Kenyan residents. In Dar es Salaam at least 11 people were killed. Many hundreds more were severely injured by the blasts.

Ghailani has been convicted of conspiracy to destroy US government buildings with explosives. He faces a minimum sentence of twenty years and maximum sentence of life in prison. He is now a convicted felon. Due process was observed. Evidence collected illegally was excluded. Justice was done.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be. As Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), outgoing Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, put it:

“I trust our men and women in uniform to protect the public. I trust our system of jurisprudence in America. I don’t care how bad you are, we can still put you on trial and if the evidence warrants a conviction you’ll get it.”

Susan F. Hirsch, whose husband was killed in the Tanzania attack, thanked the jury for its service, but added:

“I can’t help but feel that the case would have been stronger had Ghailani been brought to trial when he was captured in 2004.”

It’s an important point from someone directly concerned in this case – a little more police work and a lot less thuggery would have served the prosecution’s case much better.

Of course it didn’t take long for the fear-mongers to regroup and for their chorus of disapproval to reach the airwaves. Representative Peter King (R-NY) issued a statement in which he said he was “disgusted at the total miscarriage of justice” and that Ghailani’s conviction demonstrated “the absolute insanity” of trying terrorism suspects in federal court. No, I didn’t quite follow his logic either.

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A Moral Quagmire

November 18, 2010 at 12:42 PM

On Tuesday the British government announced that it had reached a settlement to pay compensation to sixteen former Guantanamo detainees for the abuses they suffered in US custody. Shaker Aamer, a UK resident still held in Guantanamo, will be one of those receiving an, as yet, undisclosed financial payment.

At least six of the individuals had lodged civil claims for damages against the government in the UK. The complaints included British complicity in unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition and torture. One detainee, Binyam Mohamed, alleged that British intelligence officers had supplied questions to his Moroccan interrogators who at one point cut his penis with a knife to get him to talk.

The British government has denied any wrong doing and the Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke told the House of Commons that “no admissions of culpability have been made in settling these cases.” The stated reasons the government decided to agree to the settlement were to avoid protracted litigation, diverting resources from vital counterterrorism investigations, and estimated legal costs that could have exceeded $80m.

However, an equally pressing concern was the government’s desire to protect classified information from disclosure in court. Much of this classified information related to CIA reporting on its interrogation and treatment of the detainees in its custody.

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Another Presidential Flip-flop

November 15, 2010 at 12:56 PM

Khalid Sheik Mohammed

The Obama administration released a trial (no pun intended) balloon over the weekend, leaking that it was thinking of shelving plans to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators to trial.

Instead the administration is apparently considering holding KSM and other GTMO detainees indefinitely as Prisoners of War. Far from closing GTMO, the new Obama plan seems to be to institutionalize it as part of the national landscape.

If GTMO becomes a permanent feature of America’s counter-terrorism architecture it is inevitable that sooner or later new detainees will be sent there. Federal agents and intelligence officials faced with a hard case or sensitive sources to protect will opt for indefinite detention over prosecution. More mistakes are going to be made.

Indeed, given the amount of flip-flopping we have seen from the White House on this issue, I am beginning to wonder how long it will be before the Presidential ban on coercive interrogation is lifted in the spirit of bipartisanship.

In June 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder met with 9/11 families and told them that he was personally committed to bringing the perpetrators to trial in open, transparent courts. This was the only way forward if the administration was to rehabilitate America’s damaged reputation on the world stage.

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Top UK Officials Doubt Bush Claims

November 12, 2010 at 2:33 PM

Former President George Bush has spent the past week touring media outlets to promote the publication of his new memoir “Decision Points” in which he proudly admits that he authorized the CIA to subject terrorist suspects to “simulated drowning” in an attempt to get them to talk.

Speaking to the British newspaper The Times, Bush claimed that water-boarding had saved British lives by preventing attacks on a skyscraper in the East End of London and on Heathrow airport. His claims received an immediate rebuttal from a series of British politicians from across the political spectrum in the UK.

The former Director of Public Prosecutions during the period in question, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, told the Daily Telegraph:

“I’ve never seen anything to substantiate these claims. It’s an easy claim to make, it’s much more difficult to prove. These claims are to be treated with a great deal of skepticism.”

Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General added:

“I know President Bush has made these claims. I don’t know what evidence there is for it. I didn’t hear that at the time.”

The former Chairman of the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, Dr. Kim Howells, said that he doubted that “what we regard as torture actually produced information instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition.” Dr. Howells added in an interview with BBC:

“It is his claim and no doubt he will go on making it… he needs to try to justify what he did to the world. We think water-boarding is torture.”

David Davis, former Shadow Home Secretary and a former Special Forces soldier, also observed on the same BBC program:

“[President Bush] talks about being mortified about what he termed being false intelligence that led to the war in the Iraq. Do you know where that false intelligence came from – a large part of it – it came from the torture of a Mr. Al-Libi… That’s the problem with torture. People under torture tell you what you want to hear. If you want to hear that Saddam is supporting Al Qaeda, which plainly he wasn’t, that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, which plainly he didn’t; then you’ll get that information by torture. You’ll get the wrong information.”

The British Prime Minster, David Cameron, reiterated his belief that the manner in which the United States had treated War on Terror detainees had made the West less, not more, safe.

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A Week in Politics

November 8, 2010 at 2:39 PM

"Congress"As the dust settles on the midterm election we thought it might be useful to take a moment to assess what implications the results have for the Counter Terror with Justice (CTWJ) campaign.

Economic woes dominated election stump speeches and national security issues were surprisingly little addressed by either main party. However, the changed political landscape is going to have a real impact on our issues.

The likely accession of Lamar Smith (R-Texas) to the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee is going to present further obstacles to the administration’s attempts to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. Smith took the opportunity in his first press statement after the election to pledge that keeping the prison open for business would be one of his top priorities for the coming session.

Republican staffers on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee have already begun to investigate the security regimes under which former GTMO detainees cleared for release are currently living in the European countries that stepped forward to offer them sanctuary. We can expect to see security concerns raised in an effort to block the further release of cleared detainees.

Another troubling outcome of the vote was the election to the House of Representatives of Allen West (R-Florida) whose war record in Iraq one would have thought would have disqualified him from office. In August 2003 Lt. Col. West stood by and watched his men beat up an Iraqi suspect, Yehiya Kadoori Hamoodi. He then threatened to kill Hamoodi, drawing his own handgun and discharging it next to the prisoner’s head.

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High Stakes Poker at GTMO

October 25, 2010 at 7:27 PM

This morning Omar Khadr pled guilty, at a Military Commission hearing held in Guantanamo Bay, to five charges: murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, providing material support to Al Qaeda, espionage and conspiracy.

Omar Khadr was only fifteen at the time of the incident out of which the charges derived. By the terms of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child he was, at worst, a child soldier. The crime of material support was not even on the statute books. The charge of espionage makes him the youngest spy outside of children’s fiction.

The action at the heart of the case – the detonation of a grenade that killed a US Army medic – has been characterized as a violation of the laws of war. Or, in plain English, a war crime. Many legal scholars are incredulous at this characterization.

International humanitarian law states that a civilian on a battlefield who picks up a weapon becomes a combatant. The penalty they pay is that they become a legitimate target for the opposing force. Khadr paid this penalty in full – he was shot twice in the chest and lost an eye to shrapnel.

The government case against Omar Khadr was a weak one. There were no eye-witnesses to the central event. Khadr’s ‘confession’ was tainted by his entirely plausible allegation that it had been elicited through coercion. The film of him assembling an IED could not be tied to an actual attack. In a real court this was far from a slam-dunk.

However, a disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge at the Military Commissions. Knowing that the odds are so heavily stacked against them and the sentences facing them so out-sized, defendants plead guilty out of desperation, grasping at the straws offered by the Prosecution.

Plea deals, while doubtless an efficient method for dispensing with cases quickly, do not always represent justice being done. They resemble more closely a high stakes game of poker – the defendant reviews his cards and then decides whether to bet on the hand he has been dealt or cut his losses by folding.

The added twist at the Military Commissions is that the house gets to make the rules and stack the deck. Khadr had already written to Judge Parrish expressing his lack of faith that he could receive a fair trial. It seems that, having studied his cards, he decided to fold after all.

AIUSA will continue to campaign against the Military Commissions system – which offer justice for neither defendents nor the victims of terrorist acts. You can take action today by going to www.amnestyusa.org/911trials and sending an email to President Obama or Attorney-General Holder calling for federal trials.