Brent Bennett is a former US Army paratrooper who was convicted by an Afghan court on 15 September 2004 for participating in torture and kidnapping, and for running a private jail in Kabul. Bennett and his associate Jonathan Idema had been operating as independent security contractors in Afghanistan, but had been representing themselves to the American and international media, members of the US military, and Afghan nationals as US government-sponsored covert operatives to track and apprehend Osama bin Laden and senior Taliban officials. The government has repeatedly denied the validity of their claims. [1] [2]
Bennett and Idema, along with journalist Edward Caraballo were arrested by Afghan police on 5 July 2004, during a raid in which they found eight Afghan men (some hanging from their feet) bound and hooded in detention. On 15 September 2004 a three-judge Afghan panel headed by Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari sentenced both Idema and Bennett to a ten-year prison term, while Caraballo received eight years. Idema and Bennett's sentences were later cut to five and three respectively. Caraballo claimed he was filming Idema and Bennett for a documentary on counterterrorism. Four Afghans working with Idema were sentenced to between one and five years imprisonment. [3] [4]
On 30 September 2006, after serving more than two years of his sentence, Bennett was released from prison and flown out Afghanistan. US officials secured Bennett a passport and a ticket out of the country. [5]
The United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), colloquially known as Leavenworth, is a military correctional facility located on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi is a Sudanese militant and paymaster for al-Qaeda. Qosi was held from January 2002 in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 54.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical abuse, sexual humiliation, both physical and psychological torture, rape, as well the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema was an American mercenary and former United States Army reserve non-commissioned officer, known for his vigilante activities during the War in Afghanistan.
Omar Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for ten years, during which he pleaded guilty to the murder of U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer and other charges. He later appealed his conviction, claiming that he falsely pleaded guilty so that he could return to Canada where he remained in custody for three additional years. Khadr sued the Canadian government for infringing his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; this lawsuit was settled in 2017 with a CA$10.5 million payment and an apology by the federal government.
Robert Lowell Moore Jr. was an American writer who wrote The Green Berets, The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy, and with Xaviera Hollander and Yvonne Dunleavy, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story.
Irwin Allen Schiff was an American libertarian and tax resistance advocate known for writing and promoting literature in which he argued that the income tax in the United States is illegal and unconstitutional. Judges in several civil and criminal cases ruled in favor of the federal government and against Schiff. As a result of these judicial rulings Schiff was in a hospital prison serving a sentence of 162 months at the time of his death.
The Montana Freemen were an anti-government militant Christian Patriot group based outside the town of Jordan, Montana, United States. The members of the group referred to their land as "Justus Township" and had declared their leaders and followers "sovereign citizens" no longer under the authority of any outside government. They became the center of public attention in 1996 when they engaged in a prolonged armed standoff with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal involved Lawrence Franklin passing classified documents regarding United States policy towards Iran to Israel. Franklin, a former United States Department of Defense employee, pleaded guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years of prison, which was later reduced to ten months' house arrest. Franklin passed information to American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman, who were fired by AIPAC. They were then indicted for illegally conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to Israel. However, prosecutors later dropped all charges against them without any plea bargain.
Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad, also known as Ahmad Abd al Rahman Ahmad, is a Spanish national born in Ceuta, who was captured and arrested by Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan in the fall of 2001 during the United States intervention in Afghanistan. He was transferred to United States military custody and held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a suspected enemy combatant from early 2002 to February 14, 2004, the only Spanish citizen to be detained there. His internment serial number (ISN) was 267.
Edward Caraballo is an American videographer and investigative photojournalist, specializing in covert photography. He was arrested in Afghanistan in 2004 while documenting the exploits of a vigilante group led by U.S. mercenary Jonathan "Jack" Idema. Caraballo was implicated as an associate of Idema and was charged with entering the country illegally, running a private prison, and torture. He was sentenced to an eight-year prison term and incarcerated in Afghanistan's Pul-e-Charkhi prison.
Shlomo Benizri is an Israeli politician and member of the Shas party. He represented Shas in the Knesset between 1992 and 2008, serving as Deputy Health Minister, Minister of Health, and Labor and Social Welfare Minister during the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was later convicted for accepting bribes, breach of trust, conspiring to commit a crime, and obstruction of justice, and served a prison sentence.
Patrice Lumumba Ford has been accused of membership in a terrorist group dubbed the Portland Seven, members of which attempted to travel to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 in order to aid the Taliban. He refused to cooperate with the government and was sentenced to eighteen years in prison after pleading guilty to seditious conspiracy and levying war against American and allied forces.
Babar Ahmad is a British Muslim of Pakistani descent who spent eight years in prison without trial in the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2012 fighting extradition to the United States. The US accused him of providing material support to terrorism via a website that he set up in the UK in 1996 to publish stories about the conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya, but which in 2000–2001 allowed two articles to be posted on the site offering support to the then Taliban government in Afghanistan. The US accepted that the website was operated from the UK but claimed jurisdiction because one of the servers hosting the website was located in the US. He fought a public eight-year legal battle, from prison, to be tried in Britain but the British Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was "insufficient evidence to prosecute" him.
The Virginia jihad network was a group network of Islamist jihadist young men centered in Northern Virginia that were accused of conspiring to train and participate in violence overseas against US forces in Afghanistan and Indian forces in Kashmir. The men, Muhammed Aatique, Hammad Abdur-Raheem, Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Hamdi, Seifullah Chapman, Khwaja Hasan, Masoud Khan, Yong Kwon, Randall Todd Royer and Donald Surratt, were found guilty of various terrorism-related offences.
The Maywand District murders were the thrill killings of at least three Afghan civilians perpetrated by a group of U.S. Army soldiers from January to May 2010, during the War in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who referred to themselves as the "Kill Team", were members of the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, and 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. They were based at FOB Ramrod in Maiwand, from Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.
Clint Allen Lorance is a former United States Army officer who is known for having been convicted and pardoned for war crimes.
The 2011 Helmand Province killing was the manslaughter of a wounded Taliban insurgent by Alexander Blackman, which occurred on 15 September 2011. Three Royal Marines, known during their trial as Marines A, B, and C, were anonymously tried by court martial. On 8 November 2013, Marines B and C were acquitted, but Blackman was initially found guilty of murder of the Afghan insurgent, in contravention of section 42 of the Armed Forces Act 2006. This made him the first British soldier to be convicted of a battlefield murder whilst serving abroad since the Second World War.
The Illinois Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Project network, is a non-profit legal organization that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
Derrick Miller is a former US Army National Guardsman sergeant who was sentenced in 2011 to life in prison with the chance of parole for the murder of an Afghan civilian during a battlefield interrogation. Miller is colloquially associated with a group of U.S. military personnel convicted of war crimes known as the Leavenworth 10. After being incarcerated for eight years, Miller was granted parole and released in 2019. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Justice for Warriors Caucus and Military Adviser to Texas Republican U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert.
MICHAEL BOUCHER, STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN: So I'm afraid we don't -- have no connection with these individuals. The US government has no connection with these individuals.