THREE American bounty hunters accused of torturing Afghan prisoners in their own private jail were found guilty by a Kabul court yesterday, despite their insistence that they were operating with Pentagon approval.
Jonathan “Mad Jack” Idema, the ringleader, was sentenced to ten years in jail, along with Brent Bennett, his right-hand man. Edward Caraballo, a journalist who said he was making a documentary about Idema, was given an eight-year term at the end of a trial marked by claims of clandestine operations against terrorist suspects.
The verdict followed a 7½-hour hearing during which the men’s lawyers tried to have the charges dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution had failed to make its case and that Afghanistan’s justice system did nothing to protect the defendants’ most basic rights.
Idema, a convicted fraudster and former Special Forces soldier, denounced the proceedings as he was led away in handcuffs to begin his sentence, having failed to convince the judge of his claim that he had been operating in Afghanistan with the blessing of the American military.
He told the courtroom that the FBI had cut him loose to face Afghan justice in revenge for his refusal to name the sources who once tipped him off about a nuclear smuggling operation in Lithuania.
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“It’s the same sick Taleban judges, the same sick sense of justice,” Idema said as he was led out of the courtroom, with his co-defendants, clad in a khaki shirt emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes and a black and white chequered Arabic scarf.
“I knew that the American Government wasn’t going to help me.”
The verdict ended the buccaneering career that Idema had pursued in Afghanistan since his arrival with the triumphant Northern Alliance nearly three years ago. He came to the country as a freelance agent in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, apparently drawn by the multimillion-dollar bounties on their heads.
He was regarded by most as a colourful but harmless character with a creative regard for the truth, but a sinister side to his enterprises was revealed when police raided his Kabul house and found prisoners dangling from the ceiling by their feet.
Idema insisted that he was operating with the knowledge of senior Afghan officials and the Pentagon and had even handed over a Taleban suspect to the American military — a claim the Pentagon was forced to admit.
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But the military denied that Idema was working for them, or even that the men were using so-called “plausible denials”, links to the military so loose that they could always be denied should they prove embarrassing.
Impostor or not, Idema’s past certainly has the potential to embarrass. Having heard the allegations he raised in his defence at his 1994 trial for fraud, the judge memorably concluded that “insanity might have been his best defence”.
He also attempted to sue the film director Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks company over the 1997 movie The Peacemaker, claiming that the George Clooney character was based on him. His case was dismissed and he was ordered to pay the legal fees.