Three Americans on trial Monday on charges that they ran a vigilante jail and interrogation operation here accused the FBI of removing evidence needed for their defense, and they were given a seven-day extension to prepare after the agency returned the evidence later that day.
One of the defendants, Jonathan Idema, a former Special Forces soldier who says he was running a legitimate counterterrorism effort, said that the FBI had taken videotapes, photographs and documents that had been seized from his house by Afghan authorities after his arrest on July 5, and that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had then blocked all access to it.
Idema said the evidence would show that the FBI, the CIA and the military had approved his operation, even though the U.S. government has denied any connection with it or the defendants.
“Everyone knew what we were doing,” Idema said. “We were not in the United States military, but we were working with the United States military.”
Idema was defending himself, and he appeared to speak for another defendant, Brent Bennett, 28, a former soldier who was silent during the daylong session. Their defense lawyers had not yet arrived from the United States, Idema said.
Michael Skibbie, an American member of the team defending Edward Caraballo, the third American, made similar accusations about lacking access to evidence. The defense team had been promised the material by the embassy by the end of last week, he said, but it had not arrived. “We had to finalize our defense without the evidence,” Skibbie told the court.
Skibbie said the FBI contacted him just hours before the trial to say it was giving back the documents to the National Security Directorate, from which they had been taken. “Returning substantial evidence after the trial begins shows an incredible insult to the Afghan justice system, an insult to the court and to the defense,” he said. He added that because the evidence had not been seen before it was taken by the FBI, it was impossible to know if parts of it had been lost or mislaid while in its hands. He asked the court to request a report from the agency detailing where the evidence had been held and by whom.
Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtiari, presiding over the trial, agreed to a week’s extension to allow the defendants access to the returned evidence.
The prosecutor, Muhammad Naeem Dawari, repeated the charges against the defendants of entering the country illegally, running an illegal jail, operating with illegal weapons and illegally imprisoning people.
The prosecution had eight witnesses who were held prisoner in Idema’s house and also had instruments of torture and video footage found in the house, he said. He accused the four Afghans arrested with them — two translators, a cleaner and a guard — of being accomplices to the illegal operations. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty.
Idema denied accounts by witnesses in pretrial hearings that he had tortured detainees. “No one was hung up by their feet; no one’s fingers were cut off; no one’s head was beaten,” he said. “We used very standard interrogation techniques.”
Despite repeated requests from the judge to answer the question of how he entered the country and under what authorization he had been operating, Idema answered neither question directly. He showed flashes of contempt and anger at the proceedings, complaining about poor translation and microphones.
“I can’t defend myself like this,” he said. “Just give me 15 years and let’s get it over with. Or hang me and let the others go free.”
Caraballo said that after seeing high-level meetings with Afghan and U.S. officials and military officers, Caraballo said, he believed that Idema’s operation had been approved by both the Afghan and U.S. governments.
