A Welshman in Milano: The Idema and Caraballo Show continues....

giovedì, luglio 22, 2004

The Idema and Caraballo Show continues....

To revert to a previous story that I posted on July 12 about the fake prison that was found to be operating in Afghanistan, there have been several developments - not least being that the three men are facing trial in Afghanistan on charges of robbery together with beating and torturing the people that they kidnapped. We can, of course, say 'kidnapped' without fear of censure as the men were operating completely (!) outside of the knowledge and control of the occupying US military forces.

They are now positively identified as being Jonathan Keith Idema (48) - better known as Jack Idema, whose occupation was given only as "a former member of the U.S. special forces". Also standing accused with him is Brent Bennett, who refused to give any occupation for himself to the court (I hope this isn't him), together with the mysterious third man, now positively identified as Edward Caraballo, calling himself a journalist. There are a further 4 non-US citizens standing in the dock with the 3 Americans.

It is still not certain what the purpose of this ' private prison' actually was, but evidence is mounting that they were following through with the scenario that the book, showing Jack Idema on the cover, "The Hunt for Bin Laden", was portraying. In a nutshell, they had their eyes on the reward of $50million that is being offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden. It's a lot of money and I would be rather surprised if more of these vigilante-style operations don't creep out of the woodwork over time.

The claims by the accused seem to be straight out of a spy story though, with Jack Idema now claiming that they were operating their jail with the direct sponsorship of Donald Rumsfeld's office in the Pentagon known as "The Cabal". He elaborated, "The American authorities absolutely condoned us and absolutely supported us". As though to support his claims to be a "Mission Impossible" operative, he wore a freshly pressed Army shirt with an American flag sewn onto the right shoulder. He continued to say, "At times we were in touch with the Department of Defense every day, at the highest levels, sometimes five times a day."

The Arab News service, AlJazeera, were surprising calm about the issue, possibly because by allowing these clowns to carry on without any control in Afghanistan, the US military have already made themselves look worse than AlJazeera could with any number of fabricated stories (not that I'm saying that they make up anything - oh, no!).