U.S. prosecutors confirmed on Thursday night that Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law has been indicted and has been taken to New York to be arraigned on Friday. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who appeared in videos representing al Qaeda after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans. Abu Ghaith is the one of the highest-ranked al Qaeda officials to undergo a civilian trial in New York, where the courthouse is just blocks away from the World Trade Center. According to NBC News, Abu Ghaith was sent with a group of other al Qaeda operatives to Iran after the September 11th terrorist attacks, where they were promptly captured and detained. It's unclear how Abu Ghaith got to Turkey, where he was captured by the U.S.

Senator Lindsey Graham held a press conference on Thursday evening after news of Ghaith's capture and presence in New York was revealed, and made clear the the GOP wants Ghaith transferred to Gitmo. In the Associated Press video above, Graham also seems to be having a bit of a sad that the Obama administration had been -- you know, working -- and didn't make the GOP aware that the Democratic president was going to accomplish something...possibly making them look bad. C'est la vie.

ABC News:

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, has been "cooperating" and has already revealed "key intelligence" about the current status, personnel and finances of al Qaeda even before he was secretly spirited to New York City, U.S. officials told ABC News today.

"It is huge," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "This is a man who is in the inner circle of bin Laden's al Qaeda operations and now we have him alive and he's talking."

Ghaith was moved to New York sometime last week after being transferred to Jordanian custody following his capture in Turkey.

He is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in New York City Friday, and faces charges including conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, according to an indictment unsealed today.

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A documentary report by the Guardian and BBC Arabic links the former CIA director General David Petraeus to two veteran advisors of El Salvadorean paramilitary squads who ran Iraqi interrogation centers, where Shi'ite torture of Sunni prisoners fueled the country's sectarian violence. Petraeus was tasked in 2004 with organizing Iraq's security forces and Colonel James Coffman became his direct report. Along with Colonel James Steele, Coffman hired Shi'ites to work as police commandos in intelligence centers where, according to a former Iraqi general, committees used torture to make detainees confess. This includes "using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts," according to the general. When word of this got out to the public, Iraq's already-tumultuous civil war worsened.

The Guardian:

"The allegations made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse."

"Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus's "eyes and ears out on the ground" in Iraq."

"They worked hand in hand," said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. "I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there ... the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture."
...
"The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents."

"Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. "I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library's columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten."'

"Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. "We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I'm looking around I see blood everywhere."'

The kicker? Colonel Steele now works as a motivational speaker. Watch the full-length film investigation about Colonel James Steele.

Snatching people off the streets. Hanging people from the ceiling. A man freezing to death alone on a concrete floor. This is the story of how the United States used its position to cajole, persuade, and strong-arm 54 other countries to take part in the CIA's post-9/11 campaign of secret detention and torture.

After the September 11 attacks against the United States, the CIA conspired with dozens of governments to build a highly classified program of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. The program was designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of law. Suspected terrorists were seized and secretly flown across national borders to be interrogated by foreign governments that used torture, or by the CIA itself in clandestine "black sites."

A new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative, Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition(pdf), brings together for the first time the intricate details of 136 named victims of the program. It documents how 54 different governments around the world took part in their kidnapping, detention, and often torture. It documents, in case after case, who was targeted, where they were taken, and what happened to them.

H/T George Soros, Chairman and Founder, Open Society Foundations

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Video thanks to Scarce and Heather!

During a press conference Tuesday discussing Syria, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said he spoke with Senator John Kerry (D-MA) this morning and looks forward to "interrogating" the nominee for Secretary of State at his confirmation hearing next week, joking that "we will bring back, for the only time, waterboarding to get the truth out."

McCain was joking, of course, (Recall this "hilarious" moment in 2007?) but I hope Senator Kerry takes some security along with him to the confirmation hearing.

More members of Occupy Wall Street are coming forward to allege that police carrying old bench warrants for minor violations such as public urination, open container or riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, so that they could interrogate occupiers about May Day activities.

Experts say that while executing old warrants is legal, even old warrants, but the tactic becomes illegal when done solely to investigate political activity.

Via:

Officers visited up to six homes the day before the May 1 protests, but Shawn Carrié found himself getting questioned the evening of the protest. He was coordinating all internal communications for the Occupy movement on May Day. At about 9 p.m., he was walking near Wall Street, heading home.

“And somebody comes up to me and says, ‘Shawn?’ And just grabs my arm and nine dudes surround me,” said Carrié.

He said nine plain clothes officers wearing NYPD jackets asked if he had anything sharp in his pockets. He shook his head no. He said they started pulling possessions out of his clothes, including his cell phone, his wallet and keys.

Within seconds, he said, they bound his hands with zip ties, but didn't explain why. Then the officers placed him in a red van waiting nearby that was marked with an NYPD sticker, he said.

Carrié says that after being taken to police headquarters in Lower Manhattan, he was taken to a room where he was questioned about what he was doing that day, and then placed alone in a cell for 13 hours. In court the next day, he learned that he was arrested because of two outstanding warrants from 2007 for "violations related to a public urination incident." To make matters worse, the warrants were for another Shawn Carrié. Police had snatched the wrong guy off the street.

Read the full article by Alisa Chang here, inluding the legal experts opinions, and NYPD Commissioner Commissioner Ray Kelly's remarks on the use of the warrants.