Bush's 'Smoking Gun' Witness Found Dead of 'Apparent Suicide'

IndictBushNow.org files Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to get to the bottom of the story.

Courtesy: newmatilda.com

(WASHINGTON D.C.) - "The cover-up of Bush-era crimes is taking a shocking but not unexpected turn. A fateful move has been made and it is certain to backfire."

The group IndictBushNow.org says Colin Powell used Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi's "tortured and knowingly fabricated testimony to tell the United Nations that Saddam Hussein's government was helping al-Qaeda develop weapons of mass destruction to kill Americans. It was all a lie."

IndictBushNow.org is joining with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and the ANSWER Coalition to demand full disclosure of the facts surrounding the man's death.

"We have filed a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) with the CIA, Department of Defense, Department of State and other agencies to reveal information in their possession about Libi's imprisonment, torture, false testimony on Iraq and the circumstances of his death," the group reported.

"A prisoner who was horribly tortured in 2002 until he agreed - at the demand of Bush torturers - to say that al-Qaeda was linked to Saddam Hussein is suddenly dead. Several weeks ago, Human Rights Watch investigators discovered the missing inmate and talked to him. He had been secretly transferred by the administration to a prison in Libya after having been held by the CIA both in secret 'black hole prisons' and in Egypt."

It was under conditions of extreme torture, the group alleges, that the prisoner, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, agreed in 2002 to supply the Bush-ordered interrogators what they sought as a political cover for Bush's marketing of the pending war of aggression against Iraq. Mr. Libi agreed to tell them whatever they wanted in exchange for an end to the torture. The now famous Torture Memos providing legal cover for the torture were written at the same time starting in the summer of 2002.

"Libi's tortured and knowingly fabricated testimony was the source of information used by Bush to sell the war to the U.S. Senate, and the source for Colin Powell's bogus and lying presentation to the United Nations in 2003."

IndictBushNow.org charges that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, "are now running around saying that the torture regime 'protected the country from terrorist attack.' But the torture was used for the personal political goals of Bush and Cheney: namely, to sell their Iraq invasion to a very skeptical and disbelieving country."

IndictBushNow.org further alleges that having been discovered by human rights investigators two weeks ago, Mr. Libi's story coincided with the release of the Torture Memos and the growing clamor for criminal prosecutions of Bush officials.

"His testimony is the smoking gun that would reveal that the torture regime was not for 'national security' but for the personal political aims of Bush and Cheney," IndictBushNow.org stated.

"He was Exhibit A in the indictment that alleges that tortured confessions and the contrived legal justifications of torture set up by Justice Department lawyers in July/August 2002 were central to the launch of the war against Iraq."

"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and tens of thousands of U.S. service members have either been killed or badly wounded in a war that was based on lies fortified and promoted by the most sadistic torture."

The group says Mr. Libi is suddenly dead. A Libyan "newspaper source" says that his death is an apparent suicide, but it has been reported that his friends don't believe that.

"We are building a movement for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. This is not a political choice. It is a legal imperative. Mr. Libi's death must be the first business of the investigation. When other prisoners who had been kept at secret sites were sent to Guantanamo, the Bush administration and the CIA intentionally kept Mr. Libi from being part of that transfer. Mr. Libi was publicly stating that the Iraq-al-Qaeda links attributed to him from his torture sessions were not true."

IndictBushNow.org continued, "Who was the beneficiary from his death? Why was he spirited away by the Bush administration to hidden foreign prisons after he recanted his tortured testimony and revealed that he was forced to make false statements about Iraq under torture?"

IndictBushNow.org is joining with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and the ANSWER Coalition to demand that the truth be told. We have filed a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) with the CIA, Department of Defense, Department of State and other agencies to reveal information in their possession about Libi's imprisonment, torture, false testimony on Iraq and the circumstances of his death. To read a copy of the FOIA, click this link.

Special thanks to IndictBushNow.com