JAG CENTRAL

From the NY Times, Senate Moves to Protect Military Prisoners Despite Veto Threat ("Defying the White House, the Senate overwhelmingly agreed Wednesday to regulate the detention, interrogation and treatment of prisoners held by the American military. The measure ignited a fierce debate among many Senate Republicans and the White House, which threatened to veto a $440 billion military spending bill if the detention amendment was tacked on, saying it would bind the president's hands in wartime. Nonetheless, the measure passed, 90 to 9, with 46 Republicans, including Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, joining 43 Democrats and one independent in favor. More than two dozen retired senior military officers, including Colin L. Powell and John M. Shalikashvili, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, endorsed the amendment, which would ban use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in United States government custody."); 3 Fort Bragg Teachers Charged ("Three people who taught foreign languages at the Joint Special Operations Command Center at Fort Bragg were arrested on immigration charges, federal officials said. Two Indonesians, Nurkis Qadariah, 34, and Sayf Rimal, 37, were arrested on Tuesday and charged with possessing and using false documents. Another man, Ousmane Moreau, 38, of Senegal, was arrested on Monday and charged with being in the country illegally."); Reimbursement
For Gear to Protect GI's ("The Pentagon issued regulations for providing reimbursement for some combat equipment bought privately for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rules, effective immediately, were issued more than seven months after Congress required such a program be finalized. They allow military personnel and those who bought equipment for them to make claims of up to $1,100 for health, safety and protective gear bought from Sept. 11, 2001, to July 31, 2004."), and
More Prosecutions Likely To Stem From New Srebrenica Report:

The war crimes tribunal in Bosnia-Herzegovina said yesterday that it expected to increase the number of its prosecutions in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre after the announcement on Tuesday that a list of names of more than 17,000 Bosnian Serb soldiers, police officers and officials involved in the killings had been completed by a government commission.

In November of last year, the Bosnian Serb authorities acknowledged responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre and apologized officially after years of playing down the extent of the violence that occurred in July 1995 and the expulsions of millions of people.

The turning over of the list to war crimes officials completes a two-year investigation by the Bosnian Serb government of the Srebrenica massacre. The panel said the list included 19,473 civilians and armed forces members, of whom 17,074 were named. The massacre left an estimated 8,000 people, mostly Muslim men and boys, dead in Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

A senior Bosnian Serb official familiar with the commission's work investigating the atrocity said he expected 90 people named on the list to be prosecuted by Bosnia's recently established war crimes court.

Leandro Aragoncillo, Ex-Marine Accused of Spying at White House (ABC News)

From the Washington Post, Spy Probe Widens to Years Suspect Was At White House:

The Justice Department is investigating whether a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Philippines stole classified documents while he worked in the office of Vice President Cheney and provided the information to opposition politicians in Manila, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The possibility that Leandro Aragoncillo was passing the material while stationed as a U.S. Marine security official at the White House marks a dramatic expansion of the case against him and a former Philippine police official, Michael Ray Aquino. Both were arrested and charged in federal court in Newark last month with sending classified information obtained this year to the Philippines -- more than two years after Aragoncillo left the White House and went to work as an FBI intelligence analyst.

Officials from the White House, Justice Department and FBI declined to comment late yesterday, other than to confirm that Aragoncillo first went to work at the White House in 1999, when Al Gore was vice president. ABC News reported last night that Aragoncillo had admitted taking classified documents while he worked in Cheney's office. Officials with the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Newark declined to comment on the report.

Joseph Estrada, the former Philippine president who was forced from office four years ago by mass demonstrations, has acknowledged receiving documents from Aragoncillo while the suspect was still in the Marines. Estrada told a Philippine newspaper last month that Aragoncillo had passed material while visiting him at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Manila, where the former president was receiving treatment while being held on corruption charges from 2001 through 2003. Part of that stay would coincide with Aragoncillo's time in Cheney's office.

In other news from the Post, Senate Supports Interrogation Limits; U.S. Interrogator Charged ("A U.S. interrogator accused of threatening to sexually assault prisoners in Afghanistan has been charged, the Army said. Pfc. Damien M. Corsetti, an interrogator with the 519th MI Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C., is the 15th soldier to face charges since the 2002 deaths of two detainees at Bagram Airfield."); and Pentagon Releases Repayment Rules.

From USA Today, Spying Suspect Worked at FBI, White House (regarding the alleged Marine Spy in the Post article above).

Categories: Espionage, Bosnia, War+Crimes, Detainee+Abuse, Fiscal+Law, Newspapers