Monday, November 12, 2007

One Musharraf tentacle

Here's one our posts from a few months ago about the mysterious case of Saud Memon. The Wall Street Journal has done some follow-up (subs. req'd) and seems to have established the following facts --

Memon was wanted in Pakistan in connection with the murder of Daniel Pearl and possible links to al Qaeda, including their alleged WMD program.

He fled to Mozambique and then to South Africa.

He was detained in South Africa, almost certainly by the CIA, and then transferred to an unknown detention facility, possibly in Afghanistan.

After the vaunted enhanced interrogation techniques got him to confess to an impressive range of crimes -- many already claimed by others -- he was transferred back to Pakistan, whose investigators then applied their own enhanced interrogation techniques.

Some combination of the two "we don't torture" experiences, his conditions of detention, or his own ill-health resulted in him catching multiple infectious diseases.

For some reason, possibly that he had become the subject of a "disappeared" court case in Pakistan, he was dumped out of custody outside his home, and died a few days later, though not before putting in an appearance at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which was looking into his case.

George Bush's friend President Musharraf in effect abolishes the Supreme Court, ensuring that Memon's case and others like it will disappear -- and removing the irony that the Pakistani legal system was doing more to help track him down than the system of his American jailors.

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