14 Oct 2015
30 Oct 2012
Traces of explosives found on Smolensk Tupolev wreckage
Polish experts have found traces of explosives on the wreckage of the presidential plane that crashed in Smolensk in April 2010, killing President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others, reports Rzeczpospolita. The experts have been investigating the wreckage of Tu-154M for the last month, after Polish prosecutors expressed doubts regarding the Russian specialists' analysis of the pyrotechnics.
The analysis delivered by the Russians did not meet some procedural requirements, the newspaper reports, which is why a team of Polish experts – including specialists from the Central Forensic Laboratory and the Central Bureau of Investigation – was sent to Smolensk to carry out its own detailed investigation.
Using the most technically advanced equipment, they found some significant traces of explosives both inside the aircraft and on its wings. Devices detected traces of TNT and nitroglycerine also on 30 seats.
1 Apr 2012
Breakfast in Collinsville
Last December, filmmaker Terrance Huff and his friend Jon Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a "Star Trek" convention in St. Louis. As they passed through a small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff's red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road, allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour, Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff's car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff's car by hand. Ultimately, he sent Huff and Seaton on their way with a warning.
Earlier this month, Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop taken from Reichert's dashboard camera. No shots were fired in the incident. No one was beaten, arrested or even handcuffed. Reichert found no measurable amount of contraband in Huff's car. But Huff's 17-and-a-half minute video raises important questions about law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the drug war, profiling and why it's so difficult to take problematic cops out of the police force.
21 Apr 2011
Pentagon Seeks Death Penalty Against USS Cole Bombing Suspect
The Defense Department announced Wednesday that it is seeking the death penalty against a Guantanamo Bay detainee in connection with the USS Cole bombing in Yemen more than a decade ago.
Military prosecutors have re-filed terrorism and murder charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, of Saudi Arabia, the first case to move forward since President Obama ordered military trials to resume at Guantanamo Bay. The charges allege that Al-Nashiri led the planning and preparation for the USS Cole attack that blew a hole in the ship, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 40.
Al-Nashiri was first charged in 2008, but those charges were later withdrawn after President Obama took office, as his administration undertook a sweeping review of the Guantanamo Bay detention program. Al-Nashiri had been waterboarded during the Bush administration.
Former CIA agents have confirmed rumours that the agency tortured terror suspects at a detention center in Poland. One agent allegedly held a drill to a prisoner's head while he was naked and hooded.
Former CIA agents have confirmed for the first time that the agency tortured prisoners at a "black site" detention center in north-eastern Poland at the height of the war on terror. According to the Associated Press, a former CIA agent identified only as "Albert" tortured the terror suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri multiple times with an electric drill at the converted Stare Kiejkuty military base near Szymany in the Masuria region of Poland.
Al-Nashiri is the suspected mastermind behind one of the first large al-Qaida attacks, which targeted the US destroyer USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in October 2000. According to former CIA agents who preferred to remain anonymous, Albert tortured the suspect for two weeks in December 2002. The claim is backed up by a review by the CIA's inspector general, which reads: "The debriefer entered the detainee's cell and revved the drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded."