Afghan government officials raided a rented house in the capital late Sunday where the three Americans lived. They found a private prison inside the building that contained eight prisoners, a Ministry of Interior official said Friday.via American Street, which also follows up with this post:
. . .
Idema [one of the American men living in the house] and his colleagues told Afghan authorities they were operating the prison because they wanted "to take part in the war on terror," the Afghan official said.
The Americans did not torture their prisoners, but did administer "some beatings," the official added.
Who are these private citizens who kidnapped Afghans with long beards and tortured them in a private prison in Afghanistan? Well, the one identified as Jonathan Idema, appears to be "Jonathan "Keith" Idema," a fine patriotic paintball enthusiast, former Green Beret, ex-con, "father" of a someday-to-be-cloned dog (I'm not making any of this up), a "civilian" military advisor to the Northern Alliance and the "finder" of all those Al Qaeda videotapes liberated from an Afghan house awhile back.Then comes Kos:
Yes, this is the patriot who provided one of the greatest intelligence successes of the Afghan War, or at least one of the greatest public relations successes of the war--remember, under Our Leader, perception is at least as, if not more, important than reality. Of course, our government has to distance itself from him now, but there's little doubt that he served as a CIA contractor in the early stages of the war--It was a CIA operation.
In some Zeligesque twist of stranger-than-fiction truth, Idema has made headlines over the years as:all ultimately via digby*the subject of Dan Rather interview about fighting al Qaeda,
*a manufacturer of military and paintball (yes, you read that right -- PAINTBALL) vests,
*the primary source for the book Hunt for bin Laden,
*expert on weapons smuggling out of the former USSR,
*documentary filmmaker who made a film about Soviet nuclear smuggling, KGB double agents in the FBI and CIA, and "how one US Army Green Beret went to prison for trying to expose it,"
*man who found "al Qaeda's videotapes on how to massacre schoolchildren",
*very man who got Geraldo River in trouble for revealing the locations of sniper-hunting US troops in the mountains of Afghanistan, and
*the guy who [sued] Stephen Spielberg over rights to the movie The Peacemaker.
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