rssMilitary Contractor Employee Alleges Torture by Obama Administration
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 4:25 pm
- 4 Comments
Seeking to dismiss criminal fraud charges against him, Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager working for an English contractor, has charged that he was seized in Afghanistan and tortured before before being sent to Virginia to face trial.
Scott Horton reports on the case and provides links to all the court documents on The Huffington Post.
Azar claims he was threatened and coerced into signing a confession in ways that amounted to torture. He says he was hooded, strip-searched, photographed naked, exposed to extreme cold and sleep-deprived. He also alleges that while he was driven to the U.S. prison at the Bagram air base, a federal agent “pulled a photograph of Azar’s wife and four children from his wallet” and said he’d better confess to bribing a contract officer if he ever wanted to see them again.
The government denies that charge and calls Azar’s claims of torture “hyperbolic.”
4 Comments
Comment posted August 11, 2009 @ 9:47 pm
The M.O. sounds so familiar. From Horton's Huffpo piece:
“According to court papers, on April 7, 2009, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by “at least eight” heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they had traveled for a meeting to discuss the status of one of his company's U.S. government contracts. The trip ended with Azar alighting in manacles from a Gulfstream V executive jet in Manassas, Virginia, where he was formally arrested and charged in a federal antitrust probe.”
Ummm… I don't recall an “antitrust probe” mentioned in the news previously that required the suspects be “hooded, strip-searched, photographed naked, exposed to extreme cold and sleep-deprived.” WTF?
Pingback posted August 23, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
[...] Daphne Eviatar at the Washington Independent: Azar claims he was threatened and coerced into signing a confession in ways that amounted to torture. He says he was hooded, strip-searched, photographed naked, exposed to extreme cold and sleep-deprived. He also alleges that while he was driven to the U.S. prison at the Bagram air base, a federal agent “pulled a photograph of Azar’s wife and four children from his wallet” and said he’d better confess to bribing a contract officer if he ever wanted to see them again. [...]
Comment posted January 30, 2010 @ 1:17 am
I don't really know whom to believe but if Azar's statement was true then it was a crime against human rights, I feel pity for him..
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