FBI forces false confession out of man
Long story short: Man is staying in hotel in NYC during the 9/11/2001 attacks. Hotel empties after attacks and device is found in man's hotel room closet that allows communication with airline pilots. Man is Egyptian national, and FBI questions him. Man denies owning device.LinkFBI agent threatens that man's family will be tortured in Egypt.
Man confesses, ultimately spending a month in jail before airline pilot shows up at hotel asking for radio left in man's room back. Whoops! Lawsuits ensue.
From Steve Bergstein's Psychosounds blog, where I found this:
"Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. Of course, by confessing, Higazy's life is worth garbage at that point, but ... well, that's why coerced confessions are outlawed in the United States."Good thing the FBI doesn't do this any more. Right?
We never would have known any of this as the US Court of Appeals in Manhattan redacted the description of the torture threats in its decision, but someone posted an unredacted decision on the web for a brief time. And a PDF of that is what's making the rounds now.
Here's the link to a story on the situation from the ABA Journal.
In it, the court claims it redacted the information about the torture threats to protect Higazy and his family. The story doesn't say what they're being protected from.
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I look forward to the time when "America" is an aspirational word again. Too many blemishes lately.
I love my country, and I want it back, please.
Um... The PDF here is the edited version, not the original. As I understand, the original document specificaly said TORTURE. The PDF from BB has the censored "make their lives a living hell."
Were you compromised?? Hacked?? Or just posted the wrong PDF??
I used to love my country. It's sad to see something you love get uglier and uglier until you just can't recognize it anymore, and it becomes apparent that still loving it is denying its real character...
Man, I hope this gets all over the front pages of all the major papers and news outlets...
I think this needs to be spread more...
I can understand the court's decision to try and redact their document. Basically what they tried to take back was all the bits where Higazy said how cruel and terrible the Egyptian security forces are, and thus why he thought the threat was credible. He's in Egypt right now, I read, which means the bad people he badmouthed are within driving distance of his house. Probably not a good thing. They might not appreciate their critics over there.
I think he's going to have a hard time proving his case, though, unless there's actually a video or transcript of the interrogation that the government would admit to having (which they might -- if the government is in the business of coverups, it's not been very good at it).
Although I don't doubt that there are plenty of undertrained FBI agents, Marshals, etc, running around since 9/11. It's an easy story to believe.
There's more about this, with some additional links, here . I love my country too and I am so sad to these things happening!
@2,
I'm pretty sure that is the original one. It's the same one I found when I went out looking, anyway. The FBI agent never actually said the word "torture"; it was inferred by Higazy when the FBI threatened to call up the Egyptian security forces and have them make his family's lives a "living hell".
Which is still coercion.
Reading more, it turns out the radio did not belong to Higazy at all. He's suing the FBI and the agent involved for it's method of extracting a false conviction. He "confessed" to protect his family in Egypt. It sounds like he has a case against the FBI to me, and the court is allowing his case to proceed. Which seems like the right result.
So why the redaction?
Actually, I believe the court. I think that the "mild" redacted version of the threats might indeed make Higazy and his family safer in Egypt. The court itself already considered the unredacted version in making its decision. Higazy has gotten the benefit of his actual unredacted testimony. I would imagine the unredacted version would also be available for his further proceedings, probably under seal.
I honestly think the court decided that changing the wording might not incite the inhumane legal authorities in Egypt to do something to Higazy's family because they were embarassed, or annoyed, or in case others the Egyptian government felt embarassed and ordered harrassment and torture. What other use is the redaction?
Who is being protected by the redacted version? The FBI? Not really. The fact that the FBI used such threats to elict a confession is the problem. "Torture" or "hellish life" are problematic for them in this case, either way.
Torture is explicit, the other is implied, but any knowledge of Egypt would lead one to understand what was being threatened anyway. Such information can be introduced at trial with or without the word "torture". The "torture" aspect really goes only to the credibility of Higazy's belief. And the court considered that exact word.
The torture committed by Egyptian security forces is well known. We don't need this testimony to prove it.
We had an FBI agent immediately post 9/11 using unscrupulous and likely unlawful, threats to elicit a confession when he thought he had found a material link to the attacks on the USA. The threats were so effective that a false confession was obtained.
Now the victim is seeking redress for this unlawful act against him and the court is allowing him to do so. Again, this seems like the right result, and I'm not seeing how the redaction is all that nefarious in light of the possible harm the unredacted version might cause to Higazy and his family. The FBI will not escape consequences on account of the redaction.
And think about this, an Egyptian national is suing a national US law enforcement agency in the USA for redress of a wrong. His case is proceeding. Can you imagine the opposite - a US citizen suing an Egyptian police agency, in Egypt, for making threats?
Despite many many problems in the USA right now this incident does not really seem like one of them to me.
@#8
By incident I mean the court's redaction, not the FBI's actions.
@Bonzo McGrue
It may come back for Americans regarding America, but I don't think it will come back in the eyes of the rest of the world. A big part of why they saw us that way (pardon me while I generalize about billions and billions of people) was that we were so much more powerful than them and to see us as anything other than well-intentioned was intolerably scary (not to mention that we actually did rescue Europe in WW2, quite heroically and at great sacrifice).
The power differential now is nowhere near as big as it once was. Post WW2, Europe was in ruins; now they have banded together in ways that strengthen their collective position. The Soviet Union was crippled by Communism; that's been replaced by a stronger capitalism. China, once lagging, is now strong in both military and economy.
Add to this the fact that all the good will built up in and post WW2, built up in freeing Eastern Europe from the Soviet regime, and resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks was squandered by our misguided national leadership, and it's hard to imagine a likely scenario that restores us to or position in the world.
Remember when you were little and you heard about strange faraway places like Chile and Venezuela where people got kidnapped and tortured by their own government? How bizarre and horrifying it seemed.
@8 "And think about this, an Egyptian national is suing a national US law enforcement agency in the USA for redress of a wrong. His case is proceeding. Can you imagine the opposite - a US citizen suing an Egyptian police agency, in Egypt, for making threats?"
Is this really where we're at 6 years after 9/11? We might coerce false confessions, torture suspects, turn a blind eye toward illegal domestic spying by our government... but hey, at least we can still bring lawsuits! W00t.
I'm sure somewhere in Egypt there's someone defending Egypt saying, hey we may coerce false confessions, torture suspects and turn a blind eye toward domestic spying, but at least we're not like those North Koreans.
It's nice we can redress problems later, but this sort of problem is representative of a systemic failure occurring across the executive branch that, apparently, is only going to get worse.
I think the U.S. will start getting its good reputation back in the eyes of the rest of the world when the criminals in the Bush administration are brought to justice for their domestic and international crimes.
Because if we don't torture innocent people... the terrorists win.
As for those of us who want the old america back, its some pretty narrow windows in history you're talking about.
We're living on stolen land, ir was no less than imperialism. Sure we've had our shining moments, but we've hardly ever had a clean slate.
This is the obvious proof of why torture doesn't work, and should be brought up often by the poor liberals who throw themselves to the wolves on ridiculous shows like "The O'Reilly factor" or "Hannity and Colmes" Conservative goons like to bring up IDEAL situations, with a proven terrorist and an imminent bomb detonation, and justify torture in order to save millions of lives. But that is something that has never been shown to have ever happened, and yet here is the ideal situation to show why torture is not helpful, and it's a situation that actually DID happen.
As for America and patriotism. . . . Yes, America was founded on stolen land, but there's really no way to fix that now (although I fantasize about some Native tribe getting rich from gambling monies and buying out the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins and changing their names to "Cleveland Crackers" and "Washington Whiteys"). In the history of mankind everyone stole land from one another (just look at how the borders of Europe changed between the Napoleonic wars and the end of WW2). I don't justify it, but I also don't know what can be done to fix it; any "cure" will probably result in more problems, like creating (re-creating?) Israel did.
In a sense the United States of America is actually an "ideal" to strive for, the promise of what was expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and later codified in the US Constitution. It took the US a long time to realize it wasn't living up to those ideals with regard to slavery, but it finally did. As for other aspects of the "ideal" of America, true, we are not living up to that ideal, but perhaps we can. It's hard work to live up to an ideal-- look at what the US had to go through to end slavery, and later segregation. The one thing holding us back is not being humble and admitting our mistakes, like the aforementioned Conservative goons so often refuse to do.
i don't disagree. i just notice that everyone dreams of the good old days, but more often than not you'll find that in the good old days certain folks had to drink from seperate waterfountains.
Take any period in our history where we had one bit going pretty good and you'll find grievous assaults on human rights and dignity elsewhere.
What I find extremely astounding is that not only was the radio not his -- it wasn't even in his room. Turns out the hotel security staff had lied to the FBI about which room it was in, because Higazy was Arab-looking.
What really got people thinking was when the pilot who'd stayed a floor below Higazy came in asking for the radio he'd left in the hotel...
And this is the same FBI which had specifically directed their Minneapolis office to avoid following up on an investigation of a Saudi citizen who -- oops -- actually was involved in the 9/11 incident. Because we didn't want to tick Saudi Arabia off (Egypt isn't as important to our strategic requirements, and the Bush family doesn't have business interests there.)
What gets me (after reading the judges statements) is that the Special Agent who coerced the false statement, didn't think it would be used in court. Really? You get a statement from a guy who says he's guilty, and you DONT think it will be used in court? Then why question anyone?
Hey, is this where the guys who write '24' get their script ideas?
Cpt. Tim, we haven't achieved perfection, so we should accept depravity? I don't see it.
Have you read 1491? I highly recommend it. Fascinating book.
Wow. Thats the second one I have come across in the last little bit that made me say WOW.
Here is the first one on the government using hacking techniques to come after citizens.
be-afraid-be-very-afraid-fbi-are-now-1337.
You're all absolutely right! America is evil and always wrong.
What a bunch of liberal pus!@#. Please just stay out of the way and let the grown-ups take care of defnding our country.