Truth drug and beatings fail to get al-Qa'eda No 3 to talk..I wonder why?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/08/walq08.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/08/ixworld.html

Intelligence officials who have been questioning Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the senior al-Qa'eda suspect arrested last week, have cast doubt over claims by the Pakistani prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, that the interrogation is "proceeding well".

The officials say that al-Libbi, who is believed to be al-Qaeda's number three, has defied efforts to make him reveal valuable intelligence about its senior hierarchy, despite coming under "physical pressure" to do so.

More than a dozen low-key al-Qa'eda targets were arrested in Pakistan last week thanks to information stored on al-Libbi's satellite telephone. Yet early hopes among both American and Pakistani intelligence officials that he would tell them the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawihiri, were dashed.

One senior intelligence official told The Telegraph: "So far he has not told us anything solid that could lead to the high-value targets. It is too early to judge whether he is a hard nut to crack, or simply that he doesn't know more than he has told us."

Al-Libbi had been beaten and injected with the so-called "truth drug", sodium pentothal, said the official. "They have tried all possible methods, from the 'third degree' to injecting him with a truth serum but it is hard to break him," he said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1602568,00.html

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’

Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad Islamabad

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

[rodeodance]

1. a wet noodle is what they have

[rodeodance]

3. it is not in our 'liberal' press yet

[oneighty]

2. "A hard nut to crack"

Offer him a lot of money.

Lot of money be likely to make any nut crack.

Even our nutty leaders.

I bet.

180

[Hissyspit]

4. He is not No. 3, there probably is no No. 3...

That's the way al Qaeda is structured.

No. 6 to No. 2: "Who is No. 1?" "I'm not a number, I am a human being!"
(In "The Prisoner," a different No. 2 every week - At the end of the series, No. 6 finds out the identity of No. 1. It turns out to be HIMSELF. 'We have met the enemy and they is Us.')

[NNN0LHI]

6. Think about how many people have been identified as the 20th hijacker

I would say at least a hundred different people have been given that label...so far.

Don

[ThunderChild]

8. I bet he is singing like canary.

No one is immune to bone breaking, ligament tearing flesh-searing torture.

Now maybe he doesn’t know the answers to the questions in which case he has a whole lot of suffering ahead of him or they have the right man and are asking the right questions in the right way and they need to buy time to exploit the answers to his torture.

[kliljedahl]

5. That's not who they got

A case of "Mistaken Identity"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1602568,00.html

Of course, Chimpy Horsewhacker doesn't make mistakes


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[gratuitous]

7. They used the third degree?

Did they audibly crack his shoulders out of place after the thumb screws and hot pokers didn't work?

Gee, I'm soooo proud that we're on the side of the angels in this War on Terror thing. Otherwise, I'd have to conclude that we're every bit as bloodthirsty, fanatical and cruel as our enemies.