Torturers, Terrorists and Iraq

By Bill West

In May 2004, I wrote an article concerning the potential of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, led particularly by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), identifying and pursuing former Saddam Hussein regime operatives who served as members of elite military, intelligence and security forces who were involved in torture, political murder and other human rights abuses. The purpose of such an operation would be to identify those perpetrators within Iraq for possible criminal prosecution there, and from a US law enforcement perspective, to insure they were properly listed in immigration, visa and border security lookout systems so, like the torturing terrorists they are, they would hopefully be prevented from ever entering the United States.

Additionally, since the United States has been accepting thousands of Iraqi citizens as refugees, students and immigrants of all other varieties for many years, it is entirely possible...in fact likely...that at least some of Saddam�s former torturers and assassins managed to sneak into the US under our visa control and border defenses in years past. The ability of such operatives to utilize false identification documents, false history bonafide documents, or to simply lie effectively during visa and immigration benefit processing is significant and that would realize their entry into the US and obtaining a variety of American immigration statuses, up to and including naturalized US citizenship.

From a further domestic law enforcement perspective, such a project would be able to identify those former Saddam regime human rights violators who had committed US immigration law violations to obtain entry and status within the US and would then allow US authorities to effectively target them for appropriate enforcement action. Such action could include criminal prosecution for fraud or other violations if the evidence was developed and presented and within the pertinent statute of limitations. Otherwise, civil/administrative enforcement action, such as revocation of status and removal (deportation) proceedings could be initiated.

The premise for initiating such a project, apart from the existence of a perpetrator population, is the fact the US Government, as the occupying force within Iraq, essentially possesses and has access to what had been well maintained records of the former Hussein regime relative to the personnel of the military, intelligence and security services. Identifying the personnel who occupied key positions responsible for engaging in abuse activities should be something entirely within the capabilities of US investigators and analysts. Combined with the fact that �free� Iraq now provides a mechanism for surviving former victims of these persecutors to similarly be identified, located and their witness testimony taken, cases against the bad guys (and presumably some bad gals) could be made.

However, to date, there has been virtually no effort to pursue such a project. ICE, via its Operation No Safe Haven, has at least a modicum of domestic investigative effort targeting foreign nationals and naturalized US citizens who are known or suspected human rights violators. One reason for a non-start of an Iraqi persecutor project might be found in the recent revelations from Congressional Intelligence oversight committees about US exploitation of captured Iraqi government documents, to include those related to terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Reportedly, of some one million documents captured since the start of the war, and most were captured early in the war, only about fifty thousand have been fully reviewed, analyzed and exploited.

If our Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are so slow in the pursuit of Iraqi terrorist and WMD leads, perhaps expecting any effort against former Iraqi torturers and assassins is expecting too much.

Interestingly, there have been some recent civil case successes in US Federal District and Appellate courts on behalf of victim plaintiffs against alien human rights persecutor defendants. These cases were brought by US-based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) on behalf of the victim plaintiffs, completely independent of US Government involvement, but for the USG response to Court-ordered subpoenas, of course.

It will be interesting to see if these NGOs decide to similarly pursue such Iraqi persecutors on behalf of now US domiciled victims. With the liberation of Iraq and the establishment of a US recognized Iraqi judicial system, such Iraqi persecutors who remain in Iraq may be civilly reachable by US courts. Human rights persecution...torture, political assassination, illegal detention, rape and beatings...by a tyrannical state is really just another form of state-sponsored terrorism. Can it be long before former torture victims of Saddam, or their surviving family members, many of whom are now living in the US, decide to take their cases to US Federal courts seeking civil justice against the old regime? Ironically, how much US taxpayer money may, in the end, go to paying those reparation settlements since most of the new Iraqi government is funded by the US?

The US has invaded, occupied and �liberated� Iraq. For better or worse, there are many ramifications resulting from those actions. Unlike the allies after WW-II in occupied Nazi Germany (ironically, Hitler was one of the leaders Saddam supposedly admired), will our Government choose not to pursue viable investigative leads that may identify Iraqi government operatives who engaged in horrendous violence in the past? Iraqis who may even now be within our own borders? If not, why not? If the answer is a lack of resources to review and analyze captured documents, that sounds more like a pre-9/11 bureaucratic excuse than an answer.

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