“Proxy detention of American citizen by Yemeni government, arranged & overseen by US agents”

Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2010, 5:18 pm by GottaLaff
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Via Al Jazeera

Sharif Mobley is an American citizen who decided to leave Yemen because the situation there was worsening. He went to the U.S. Embassy, but then he says he was interrogated (chained, blindfolded) about his contacts and activities in Yemen, threatened with rape, beaten, and was ultimately accused of murder:

The method of abduction may have been brutal, but it was not the work of a rebel group or criminal gang. Instead, the armed men were Yemeni security agents, and in a set of legal documents seen by Al Jazeera, Mobley’s lawyers allege they were operating on behalf of the US government.

The documents, part of a freedom of information request submitted by Mobley’s [Sharif Mobley, an American citizen living in Yemen] legal team to US authorities, paint a disturbing picture of shadowy security cooperation between the US and Yemen in the wake of an alleged attempt by an al-Qaeda group based in the country to blow up an airliner over Detriot in December last year. [...]

Mobley’s story, his lawyers say, is an example of a more disturbing development in the relationship between the US and Yemen; the proxy detention of an American citizen by the Yemeni government, arranged and overseen by US agents in the country. [...]

While it is not possible to independently verify the account of Sharif Mobley’s arrest given by his legal team, few analysts in Yemen doubt that coordination on security operations is occurring at a senior level between US and Yemeni authorities.

Mobley is making every attempt to get a fair trial. You can read the rest here.

These are allegations, and until Mobley goes to court, there is no proof one way or the other that his allegations are accurate.

However, what is so disturbing is that they are credible, especially in light of BushCo’s track record. Had Abu Ghraib never happened, had Fayiz al-Kandari not been sold for bounty and spent the last 8+ years in a cell, we might not believe a word of this story. Had the Obama administration investigated BushCo’s war crimes and even been less secretive themselves, accusations like these might be taken with a grain of salt.

But these things did happen, and because they did, we can no longer shrug off the horrific possibility that every word that Sharif Mobley has uttered is true.

H/t: Huda

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  • Clancy

    If absolutely nothing can be verified, by all means, do the responsible thing and run the story anyway (you know, because it sounds believable).

    Really, folks, we bemoan the devolution of responsible journalism all the time when it seems to be helping the “other side” (whomever or whatever that may be); perhaps we should also be a little more aware of it when it seems to be working on ours.

  • http://twitter.com/Colierrannd Michael Norton

    Honestly this is what bothers me so much about what the Obama Administration is doing now with states secrets and such. Not only does it make it harder to support him and his party and his administration, but it makes it so much easier for stories like this to be believed. And this kind of thing does as much to recruit for terrorist organizations like Al Quaeda as burning a Quran.