NATO Troops in Afghanistan Tricked by Vigilantes

[Barrett808]

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO-led forces in Afghanistan were tricked into helping a group of U.S. vigilantes hunting for militants and who were arrested for illegally detaining Afghans, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Three U.S. nationals were arrested last week after a brief shootout in Kabul. They and some Afghan accomplices had been illegally detaining and interrogating people they believed to be terrorists, Afghan officials said.

The group had asked for, and received, help from members of Afghanistan's NATO-led peacekeeping force, who believed they were members of a genuine military task force, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

ISAF explosive disposal teams had inspected a compound occupied by the group three times in June and had found traces of explosives and some suspicious electronic components, said a spokesman for the NATO-led force, Chris Henderson.

"The ISAF personnel believed that he was what he purported to be, that he represented a special operations agency," Henderson said, referring to the group leader Jonathan, or Jack, K. Idema, whom the U.S. military says had passed himself off as a U.S. government or military official.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=3&u=/nm/20040714/wl_nm/afghan_nato_dc

[daleo]

1. I don't believe this

There has to be more to this. First, the U.S. military denies they knew of this operation (which obviously involved torture), now NATO forces claim they were 'tricked' into helping them. This is beginning to smell.

[phoebe]

2. more ..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1257512,00.html

snip

Mr Idema has a chequered history not untypical of some of the ex-military personnel who have been drawn to Kabul. Although the US military authorities would not confirm his record yesterday, he is said to have been a member of the special forces between 1975 and 1992.

After leaving the forces, he ran a military equipment firm in the US.

He was convicted of wire fraud and other offences in connection with that business in the 90s.

One rightwing news website in the US suggests that he was only charged after he refused to cooperate with the FBI and the CIA over information which he claimed he had about weapons-grade nuclear material being sold in Russia to foreign terrorist groups.

This information, gathered when he was in Lithuania, is the source of a legal action that Mr Idema launched against Steven Spielberg's film company DreamWorks SKG.


Tend to agree that this "smells"..