Intercept (11 page)

Inside Court 11, there were probably a dozen military officers, three politicians, and six members of the CIA. The four petitioners, smartly dressed in jackets and ties but still manacled, were seated with armed army guards both between them and on the flanks.

The most unlikely group in the entire courtroom were four anonymous representatives from the Israeli embassy, and you needed to be a real insider to understand the purpose of their attendance—that Israel wanted Ben al-Turabi and Abu Hassan at least as badly as the Navy SEALs wanted Ibrahim Sharif and Yousaf Mohammed.

If necessary the Mossad was quite prepared to take over and haul them off to Israel for execution. What terrified them was this American judge was about to liberate Ben and Abu—liberate the two men who had killed and maimed so many people in two of the worst atrocities ever committed in Israel. The Mossad’s oft-stated motto is,
We Never Forget
. The unwritten one is,
We Never Forgive
.

Captain Al Surprenant, the top lawyer for the Navy in the San Diego base, had flown in the previous day in company with three senior SPECWARCOM commanders.

The SEALs had spilled a lot of blood bringing down men like Ibraham and his buddies, and each one of the U.S. Special Forces in that courtroom was hoping the steely, silver-tongued resolve of Commander Surprenant would compel the judges to see reason. Military reason, that is, which is not always the same as civilian reason.

“All Rise!”
The court officer called the room to order as Judge Stanford Osborne led the justices in. All the principal figures in the appeal were familiar with the facts.

And the justices understood the enormous difficulty for the military to provide proof,
civilian court proof
, that these obvious scoundrels who were petitioning had indeed committed the crimes of which they had never really been accused.

That of course was not the issue. Could it be fair and reasonable for the United States to act like some banana republic and lock up these men, indefinitely, without trial, without reasonable proof of guilt, and without appeal to anyone? They were, after all, members of the human race.

James Myerson was invited to begin, and he stood before the court and argued that, despite the beliefs of the military, there were massive issues here about the burden of proof. “Maybe these men had committed crimes,” he said. “But no one saw them. No one bore witness to anything. And each of these men swears by his God that he is innocent.

“I am not here to protest their innocence. I am here to plead that never, in all the annals of United States law, from the Founding Fathers to the twenty-first century, has it been acceptable, has it been regarded as legal, fair, or even reasonable, for a court in the United States of America to declare that it does not care one way or another whether the accused are guilty or not.

“That’s not America, your Honor. That’s Stalin. That’s Pol Pot or whatever the hell his name was. That’s a banana republic. Not us. No, sir, not us at all. And whatever the rights and wrongs, these men have spent many years of pure hell in one of the cruelest prison camps in the Western world.

“And with every passing month, while they endured forms of torture and deprivation, their very presence on that Godforsaken outpost of U.S. civilization has tarnished and dishonored our great nation. It has sullied us, reduced our reputation in the world, poisoned opinion against us.

“Your honor, this cannot be right. And I beseech you to end this most terrible stain on the name of American justice. I’m imploring you to free these four men, allow them to return home, and help the world to understand that we are indeed the bright City on the Hill, the shining hope of the human race. That we are Americans, to whom a lack of fair play is nothing less than abhorrent.”

Myerson sat down next to Renton, who subtly patted him on the shoulder. Judge Osborne nodded his appreciation of the manner in which Myerson had delivered his case. And the clerk signaled for Captain Surprenant to proceed with the motion for the military.

The Navy attorney stood and briefly reminded the justices that the U.S. military had tracked and grabbed Ibrahim Sharif from the remotest of Afghani mountain villages, where Yousaf Mohammed was also hiding out. There was plainly no doubt that these men were bomb makers. With assistance from another Middle Eastern Intelligence Service, they had been identified with no reasonable doubts. Well, almost.

The other two were high on the list of Israel’s most wanted mass murders, and they were both from Gaza City. “I understand,” said the captain, “that the evidence was not one hundred percent decisive, and that it was, in a sense, circumstantial. But no one would dispute it was ninety-eight percent decisive. Circumstantial or not.”

He outlined the crimes and the continuing dangers posed by such men. The scale of the mayhem that might break out if such men were free to return to the lands where they plotted and launched the 9/11 attacks.

“Your Honors,” he continued, “These men are disciples of Osama bin Laden. All of them are members of the most sinister terror groups in the Middle East. The world has changed. These men do not fight in uniform, they do not represent Nation States. They are secretive, underhanded killers, who strike indiscriminately at both military and civilian targets. They have loyalty only to fellow jihadists. They observe no national borders. No nation even recognizes their organizations, with the exception of the pariahs of Iran and the West Bank.

“There are no standards in the world today by which such men can be judged. They render, by their own actions, the Geneva conventions and protocols obsolete. I am not pleading for them to remain in jail to justify some ephemeral and hopelessly outdated sense of fair play. There is no fair play left in our fight against terrorism. That ended around 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in September 2001.

“Your Honors, I cannot believe you are prepared to grant this appeal, to liberate these men who will surely come at us again. Every military expert in the country understands that they cannot, they must not, be freed to fight again. We might be the City on the Hill, the beacon of freedom and fairness, but those four men, the ones in manacles in this courtroom, would surely flatten it, given even a semblance of a chance. I ask their appeal be denied.”

The clerk immediately declared a recess for the judges to retire to consider their verdict. A timeframe that would, unusually, be announced within the hour.

It was soon announced that the decision would be at 3 p.m., and when it came, the entire law enforcement and security forces of the United States of America understood that this was the appeal that was decided before it was heard.

“We have listened to the arguments,” the judge said. “And we have studied the evidence exhaustively. We are unanimously drawn to the truth that the moral standards of the United States of America are being examined here, and that Captain Surprenant offered the most compelling case to cast them aside.

“However this great nation’s sense and reputation for what is right, respectable, and fair, must always be paramount. Otherwise, we should perhaps ask ourselves, who indeed are we? But it was with some misgivings that we nonetheless reached an irrevocable decision.

“We could not bring ourselves to abandon the light that has guided this nation for so long—the light carried down the centuries, and first illuminated by Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin. The simple light of fairness, for everyone.

“That is the most important thing in all the world for us. And holding men in endless incarceration without even a trial, without giving them a chance, crosses that line, and it takes us into the darkness, which lies on the other side of decency.

“Therefore this court finds unanimously for the petitioners. The appeal is granted. Ibrahim Sharif, Yousaf Mohammed, Ben al-Turabi, and Abu Hassan Akbar, you are freed this day by the Court of the United States of America to go about your lawful business.”

The words of Judge Stanford Osborne seemed to echo throughout the corridors of the Pentagon, ringing through the grim offices of the CIA and
the FBI. Republicans were stunned, and a new era of caution began to waft through the ranks of the stone-faced Navy SEALs training in Coronado.

One of the SPECWARCOM commanders jolted back in his seat, as if he had been shot. And all four of the men from the Israeli embassy instantly stood up and left the courtroom.

NEWS OF THE JUDGMENT
in Court 11 ripped around the nation. The army major in charge of the four men’s security hit the cell phone line to the Pentagon and asked blandly, “What do I do now? Unclip the manacles, say goodbye, and wait for something to blow?”

An army colonel on the other end suffered a complete collapse of his sense of humor, and growled, “Keep them under DC Superior Court control. Get ’em back in the prison van.

“Then take them direct to the U.S. marshals’ cell block, down in the basement of 500 Indiana Avenue, Washington Northwest. They got a big holding pen in there. And don’t let ’em out ’til we fix flights out of this country. We don’t want ’em back.”

CIA Chief Birmingham, with three of his senior officials, stared in horror at the CNN newsscreen. It seemed like every phone in Langley was ringing. What the hell was going to happen? Birmingham hit the line to the State Department, direct to the secretary’s office.

The call was only just on the south side of panic.

“Jesus Christ! They’ve got to go somewhere.”

“Pakistan’s the most likely country, but they don’t have a flight out of here until tomorrow.”

“Well, get ’em to France.”

“Unescorted?”

“Hell, no!”

“Someone better call Sarkozy.”

“We’ll put four agents on the plane.”

“Same guys to track ’em onward to Karachi?”

“No. We’ll change the guard at Charles de Gaulle.”

“Then what? Chase ’em into the fucking Himalayas!”

“No, but we can’t let ’em loose.”

The message came through to Langley that the four terrorists were being transferred to the cells in Indiana Avenue. From that point on, State, the CIA, and the Pentagon moved quickly and aggressively.

“We need four clear rows in coach class. Then you’ll have to throw people off the flight. You want to go on flying in and out of the USA, you’ll clear those four rows. If I have to I’ll have the president call Sarkozy right now.”

The Air France agent finally understood that this had nothing to do with tickets, and bookings, and cancellations. Right here was something that looked like a national emergency. And whatever it was these lunatics from the American government wanted, it was obvious they were going to get it. The ticket agent told the CIA official that someone would be back within a few minutes with detailed seat allocations for the flight to Paris.

Bob Birmingham himself put in a call to an old friend, General Michel Jobert, commander-in-chief of the French equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs. General Jobert’s headquarters was in the outer suburbs of Paris in Taverny, home of France’s Commandement des Operations Speciale (COS).

Jobert answered his private telephone and smiled at the sudden sound of the voice of his old friend and golfing partner Bob Birmingham, who was, so far as Michel was concerned, the most useful man in the United States. “
Bon jour, mon vieux
!” he exclaimed.

“Hey, Michel,” replied the CIA boss. “We need to talk. The U.S. Court of Appeals just liberated all four of those killers from Guantanamo . . . ”

“I know,” interrupted the General.

“You do? It only happened five minutes ago.”

“I knew five minutes ago.”

“I should have guessed. But anyway, we now have the problem of getting these guys out of the USA. They’re going to Pakistan, Dulles to Paris, Air France, then Paris to Karachi, Pakistan International Airlines.”

“And you want me to organize CDG security.”

“Well, I know your slightly hysterical government will take more notice of you than anyone else.”

“You will have an escort on board from Washington to France?”

“Yes, two U.S. marshals, and two of my top guys.”

“Will you keep the prisoners in handcuffs?”

“Well, that’s the point. I don’t think we can, not on a foreign airline in international airspace.”

“Well, why not use a U.S. airline as far as France? That way you can do what you like.”

“So can you . . . ”

“I’m sorry?”

“French customs or immigration could refuse to let them step out onto French soil—then they’d have to come right back to the USA, on their American aircraft, and for us, that is not an option.”

“You mean if they arrive on Air France, we really have to let them out, and then get them back on a foreign airline as fast as possible?”

“Correct. And it has to be PIA because Pakistan is the only nation, so far, which has agreed to accept them.”

“A little co-operation, eh? And the problem goes away.”

“Precisely. But we shall ask for your help in boarding four CIA men on PIA to track the prisoners into Karachi. We’d like to exchange agents at Charles de Gaulle. The first four will return immediately to the United States.”

“Bobby, I will take care of it. I’ll send you an e-mail with a couple of contact phone numbers. But it’s all on one condition . . . ”

“Shoot,” snapped Birmingham.

“You’re not going to assassinate these characters on French soil, nor will you blow up the aircraft?”

“You have my word.”

 

SOMBRE “COUNCILS OF WAR”
were regular in the Mossad’s situation room in the basement of the Israeli embassy on International Drive, Washington NW—as regular as Friday evening prayers for the Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah
.
There was always something, an atrocity, a Muslim rally or demonstration, hundreds of fanatics pledging loudly their support for Hamas or Hezbollah.