Jailed U.S. CIA contractor in court in Pakistan

Islamabad, Pakistan.
Raymond Davis, the American accused of killing two Pakistani men, appeared Friday in a Pakistani court, where he was handed documents that detailed the case against him.

The court then adjourned until March 3 when Davis is expected to be formally charged.

The case has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a key ally in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, and the shooting deaths have outraged many Pakistanis.

Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities have detained a second U.S. citizen, identified as Aaron Mark DeHaven, in Peshawar, according to a statement Friday by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.
No additional details can be confirmed until a U.S. government representative meets with DeHaven, the statement said.

Davis has said that the January 27 shooting occurred after two men attacked him as he drove through a busy Lahore neighborhood, according to the U.S. Embassy.

U.S. officials originally said Davis was a diplomat and later revealed he is a CIA contractor, intensifying the already highly charged situation.

During the court hearing Friday, Davis was handed over documents of evidence in the case, but he initially refused to accept them because they were in Urdu, a language he did not understand.

Clerks were told to translate the documents into English. Davis told the judge that he should be released from jail because he has diplomatic immunity, the same argument other U.S. officials have used since Davis' arrest.

The judge said he was waiting on a response from the Pakistani government on that issue and that it should happen at the March hearing.

U.S. officials originally said Raymond Davis was a diplomat,

 but later revealed he is a CIA contractor.

U.S. checks Egyptian prisons for terrorist escapes.

The U.S. intelligence community is closely monitoring the state of Egypt‘s highest security prisons, trying to track dozens of senior members of al Qaeda, the Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad to find out whether any have escaped and where they have gone.

“Yes, we are monitoring this,” Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg told The Washington Times on Thursday when asked about reports of breakouts from Egyptian prisons since the Jan. 25 uprisings began in Cairo and Alexandria.

After Pakistan, Egypt holds the largest number of senior al Qaeda leaders, according to two U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity.

The jailbreaks occurred in the first days after the unrest after police left their posts guarding some prisons. Several news reports suggested that the Interior Ministry deliberately allowed the jails to empty in order to justify a crackdown later on.

U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials say they are concerned about the fates of prisoners such as Shawky Salama Mostafa and Mohammed Hassan Mahmoud, two suspected leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad captured by U.S. forces in 1998 in Albania but sent to Egypt for trial. Human Rights Watch and other groups report the two men were tortured in Egyptian jails.

U.S. intelligence officials are also trying to locate Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman, the son of the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the failed 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 but was eventually sent to Egypt.

Senior Egyptian officials have warned that senior jihadists may have escaped from prison in the midst of the popular uprising. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Vice President Omar Suleiman said al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists are among those who have escaped.

“This is a serious matter. We must use every bit of strength to bring them back to prison,” he said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told PBS news on Wednesday that 17,000 prisoners escaped from prisons that had been destroyed.

Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush told The Times on Thursday: “The Egyptian government may be preying on the ambiguities on what is actually happening and who is on the street to justify their posture.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Zarate said, “There is a mixture of problematic violent Islamic jihadis who have been in Egyptian jails and custody who we would not want to see let go. The U.S. government has been very concerned from the get-go about who has broken out and where they are.”

“There are efforts under way to try to determine who is on the loose and where they are,” Mr. Zarate added. Four other U.S. officials confirmed that this effort is under way.

One U.S. counterterrorism official who is monitoring the situation said, “You have to understand that there could be hundreds or even thousands of escaped al Qaeda under the worst-case scenario, though no one wants to endorse that, absent proof, for obvious reasons.”

This official added, “If the [prisoners] from Albania busted out and the rest of Zawahri‘s old gang, the leadership will split for Pakistan‘s tribal areas as soon as possible, and the middle management will try to revive Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Gamm’a Islamiya.”

Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command of al Qaeda, was also a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He eventually merged his group with al Qaeda.

Another U.S. counterterrorism official said, “Of course we are watching closely for signs that dangerous terrorists were among those prisoners who broke free early in the Egyptian crisis. At this point, nothing suggests that there are any big names among those running loose.”

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the director of the center for terrorism research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, “It’s not just a concern that these guys go back to Pakistan, but that groups that had previously been up against the wall could end up reconstituting themselves in Egypt.”

Joanne Mariner, director of the human rights program at Hunter College and a former counterterrorism analyst at Human Rights Watch, said Egypt‘s prisons were “notorious incubators for al Qaeda.”

For Iran, It's a Matter of Decision Taking.

The all-important matter of Iran’s timetable for achieving a military nuclear capability surfaces periodically. The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which was never formally modified, the pronouncements of various US officials and, more recently, Israel’s deputy prime minister Yaalon and the retiring Mossad chief Dagan have all pointed to mid-decade as an approximate target date. On January 24, 2011, the new head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, said, that it was the Iranian leader’s decisions that will determine the timescale of the project: “Based on their infrastructure, technical know-how and the amount of uranium they have, after he makes that decision, they will have nuclear weapons within a year or two." Dagan himself revised his previous estimate and stated that in a worst case scenario, Iran could have a nuclear device much sooner than 2015.

The contradictory assessments can be reconciled if one takes into account that different estimates may be based on different sources of information and on different scenarios. In the case of Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports provide reliable and verified technical information on which some estimates can be based. According to the latest IAEA report, Iran has a sufficient amount of low-enriched uranium (LEU) that, if further enriched to military – high values (HEU), could be used to produce the cores for at least two nuclear explosive devices. Iran certainly has the technical capability to do so. It would take six months to produce the amount of HEU needed for the first core, and another six months to produce the core itself, meaning one year from the moment of decision.

Having the technical means is certainly a necessary condition for Iran’s obtaining a military nuclear capability. However, this is not sufficient for the production of weapons, since essential decisions of the Iranian regime are needed to launch this activity, and these will determine the end result and its timetable. Strategic considerations and local political considerations will affect the Iranian decisions. The following factors will likely be taken into account before deciding to “go nuclear”: what is the right moment to start producing nuclear weapons; what is the minimum number of weapons to be included in the Iranian arsenal; can Iran afford to start producing these weapons before the materials for this minimal arsenal are available; does Iran want to demonstrate its capabilities by carrying out an underground nuclear test. On the political side, Iran will certainly evaluate the possible international repercussions; the regional Iranian benefits; the positive and negative effects on the internal situation in Iran; and the wish to introduce an Iranian “point of no return” where a nuclear Iran is a given fact.

The ability to demonstrate a nuclear capability is different from the accumulation of a nuclear arsenal. For proof of a nuclear capability it is sufficient to explode in an underground cave a single “primitive” nuclear explosive device, which is not packaged into a warhead. For the accumulation of an arsenal, several warheads must be produced, with all the trimmings attached to a military capability. However, both modes need HEU cores, and the decision to manufacture these is a very serious matter.

Since at present there is no indication that the sanctions are working to convince the Iranian regime to forego the military project, their imposed difficulties could also have a negative effect and convince Iran that a moment could arrive when they would be more comfortable with “breaking out” and proclaiming a military nuclear capability, and perhaps demonstrating this, rather than going on with the present political impasse. The current political situation reduces the fear of reprisals. Taking the India and Pakistan examples into account, where the world’s reaction had fizzled out long ago, would be reasonable. The fact that Iran is party to the NPT should be a minor bother, since Iran can formally withdraw from the treaty without penalties. Iran would also not be bothered too much if it is eventually found to be in non-compliance with its treaties’ obligations, including its signature of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The minimum arsenal is not an inconsiderable factor. For example, a decision could be taken that there is a need for at least four explosive devices: one for a nuclear explosion test; a second in case the first test explosion fails (this has some precedents); and two for deployment for possible future use, and as deterrent against aggressive action.

The IAEA reports have shown that the enrichment rate has been quite steady, and probably will be so in the near future. What probably has gone wrong, and this is also observable from the IAEA reports, is the wish to expand this project and to enrich uranium at a growing rate, which would greatly accelerate the accumulation of the enriched uranium stockpile. Unless Iran has concealed enrichment facilities, clandestinely producing HEU, the one year estimate would be a constant that could be defined, at present, as the worst case scenario, staying with us for a long time. At the present rate of enrichment, the Iranians could produce about 25 kilograms of HEU per year, or roughly a sufficient quantity for one core per year. Taking into account the present Iranian stocks of LEU and the estimated enrichment rates, they could first arrive at the required amount of LEU for the four cores by the end of 2012. Producing the first device could take another year, and thus the timetable for this example is clear: from these purely technical considerations, the end of 2013 can be taken as the earliest date for an Iranian military nuclear capability.

However, these time estimates, especially where an arsenal is being considered, could change in a very short time if the technological difficulties are overcome, and if there is a breakthrough in the Iranian technology and the deployment of more advanced enrichment machines. It could also happen if there is an urgent Iranian need to demonstrate a military nuclear capability. It all boils down to the question whether the estimates are given for the more probable or for the worst case scenario. It is quite clear that the worst case scenario gives the time frame of a year, when a nuclear test could be carried out. For the “more probable” case, the publicized estimate of 2015 is as good as any other.

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dr. Roberto Polastro