how the U.S. has failed to win the release of hostages captured by ISIS and other militants, we turn now to the case of Peter Kassig. A former U.S. soldier turned aid worker in Syria, Kassig was captured by ISIS just over a year ago. Last month, he was executed in the latest ISIS beheading of a Western hostage. Kassig, who was 26, converted to Islam in captivity and was also known as Abdul-Rahman.
Stanley Cohen talking:
The truth may not be known for many years, but the reality of it is that we had negotiated a protocol between the Jordanian intelligence and the United States government, a five-point protocol which specifically permitted Sheikh Maqdisi, who is, by some, the most important jihadi—for lack of a better word—imam in the world, to specifically speak with one of his students, Turki bin Ali, who is the grand mufti of ISIS. That was reduced to writing. We have the exchange of emails between the government and ourselves.
After two or three days of negotiations around the terms and conditions of those discussions, while discussions were going on with Gitmo veterans in Kuwait with other people at the same time, I received an email that said, from the government, “Spoken to co-worker on the ground. The talks are a go.” The talks began. I saw on WhatsApps the exchanges of information, the discussions, while I was in Jordan, between bin Ali and Maqdisi. It was clearly moving in the right direction. It didn’t involve the exchange of money or anything else. This was going to be a personal request by the Maqdisi in exchange for stopping his verbal attacks upon ISIS.
From nowhere, after the Jordanians had approved of this negotiation, he was arrested. He was seized, the conditions being, although they changed—they said there were a variety of reasons for the arrest—it came down to the fact that he was talking to ISIS, and he wasn’t allowed to, despite the fact that we had a protocol agreed to by the U.S. government and the Jordanian government.
At the same time, when I returned to Kuwait, Kuwaiti intelligence people moved in on ex-Gitmo people that were involved, and threatened to arrest them if they continued negotiations or discussions with ISIS around two points. It wasn’t just around the release of Peter Kassig; it was also around stopping the seizing of civilians, stopping the seizing of journalists, the beheading and capture of journalists and aid workers as a new process in the region.
We provided a hundred pages of email exchanges between myself and a person who’s a lead person with the FBI, which laid out the protocol, the five steps that were required in order for Maqdisi to do it, which after two days said, “The calls are a go. You can do it.” Maqdisi began the calls. The calls were positive. It happened at the same time—keep in mind, there had been no beheadings for six weeks. When I was told to come to the Middle East, we were told—we conveyed I wasn’t coming unless there was a guarantee that Mr. Kassig would be alive and at that point the beheadings would stop. For some six weeks, no one was beheaded. This was a protocol. It was negotiated. It was reduced to writing. It was shared with Sheikh Maqdisi. It was shared with Sheikh Qatada, another former al-Qaeda heavyweight, so to speak. And the talks were underway.
there were two different angles or approaches. One had to do with ex-Gitmo. Imagine you’re an ex-Gitmo veteran. When I say “veteran,” you were a prisoner. People who had been tortured in Bagram, in Kandahar, in Gitmo, they made a decision. These were folks that I had worked with over the prior few years in some cases of mine. They made a decision it was in the best interest, for a whole lot of reasons, for these beheadings to stop.
I was told to come to the Middle East. The people in Kuwait were negotiating with fighters, essentially, from ISIS, while I was told I had to go to Jordan to speak with Maqdisi and with Qatada, because if they were going to release anyone, ISIS, it would only come through discussions with Sheikh Maqdisi. I went. We met. There was a protocol set up. There were telephones that were purchased. There were communications that were underway. The government was aware of what was proceeding at all times. They made a request for the identity of the three people that Maqdisi was speaking with. He agreed to provide them. He provided them. The FBI had them. The discussions were underway.
Not only were there no beheadings for six weeks at all, but al-Qaeda for the first time made public pronouncements calling for the saving of Mr. Kassig and the cessation of beheadings. So, clearly, there was positive movement underway that had nothing to do with money, that had nothing to do with buying freedom, that had—it was all based upon a discussion between religious leaders who were opposed to the beheadings, opposed to the captors, and ISIS, their leadership, their religious leadership.
initially, Jordan said they arrested Maqdisi because of a post that he had done a month before. I find it interesting—a post in which he called for unification because of the new crusades, meaning the bombings. I found it interesting that Jordan arrested him and told the U.S. it was OK and go for it and you can do it, knowing two days later he was to be arrested.
After his arrest, I reached out to the government immediately, and I was very blunt. I said, “You’ve just basically killed—not you, but we’ve all been sandbagged. Someone needs to get on the phone, whether it’s the White House or the State Department. Pick up a phone, call Jordan, release Maqdisi, get these talks underway, get them moving once again.” I had had discussions again with people in Kuwait who took the same position. The discussions could proceed. We just needed to get Maqdisi back out.
Maqdisi wasn’t charged with acts of terrorism. He wasn’t charged with any acts of conspiracy. Eventually, we found out he was essentially arrested because of the very communications and contacts that had been authorized by the United States and agreed to by Jordanian intelligence.
the record of Sheikh Maqdisi and Qatada was very clear. They had absolutely no use for ISIS whatsoever. They found their tactics to be repugnant to Islam. This was not about a rapprochement. The United States has tried to argue that one of the problems is it would have been a rapprochement. Rapprochement was never on the table. There was a very public debate, a, at times, very aggressive and offensive debate between ISIS and these other sheikhs. The agreement was that in exchange for the release of Mr. Kassig, for this new bridge which was going to stop attacking journalists, stop attacking aid workers and civilians, they were going to tone down the debate. There was never a chance of any rapprochement, of the true groups merging, of creating a new sort of tsunami of terrorism. It just wasn’t going to happen. As Sheikh Qatada has described ISIS, they’re a bunch of thugs. They want nothing to do with them. These are the same people that had negotiated the release, without money, of 36 peacekeepers from a different group in the region just six months before. They were interested in a cessation of these types of violent, un-Islamic beheadings and capturings of civilians. This was not about ever a reunification of two groups that were fighting each other.
U.S. said “We can’t get involved.” Nonsense. Three weeks later, the president is sitting there with Abdullah in the White House, giving him an extra $400 million a year for 10 years to lead the ISIS battle. The United States made a decision—I don’t know if it was the White House, I don’t know if it was the State Department—they made a decision to throw Mr. Kassig under the bus, because, for whatever reason, the Jordanian government did not want this to happen.
Now, I have my own theory. My theory is simple: that there are surrogate states in the region that were very much concerned about nonstate actors, such as these persons, being able to accomplish what they couldn’t accomplish, which would have caused them tremendous loss of financial aid from the U.S. They didn’t want it to happen. They prevented it from happening. And I’m convinced that had Sheikh Maqdisi not been arrested, Mr. Kassig would have been saved, and this—there would have been a cessation of these practices.
Sheikh Maqdisi is still in prison. He’s in Jordan being—every 15 days, he sees an intelligence judge, who just renews it, renews it, renews it.
there are some who believe that the U.S. didn’t want it to happen, that they were afraid of this rapprochement, that they wanted the best of all worlds. They wanted to be able to say, “We’re trying an innovative approach to obtain the release.” They were shocked at the speed by which we really moved. This occurred within a 17-day period. We’re not talking about a year and a half. And eventually the United States made a decision—someone in the U.S. made a decision: “We’re not going to change our geopolitical policies. We’re not going to tell Jordan what to do.” And Mr. Kassig died.
anyone who knows me knows I’ve been harassed for 15 years. The investigation into my work for Hamas started more than 15 years ago, with clients harassed, with people being told if they gave me up, they’d get out of jail. There’s been a steady practice, raids on my office. There has been monitoring that’s going on. There’s been harassment of my family. It’s caused tremendous time and effort in terms of my practice.
I find it interesting, the disconnect between me, who supposedly is this person who put his own interests ahead of the U.S. government, but when it came to my going to the region, when it came to the U.S. government making decisions on the basis of my recommendation, there was no problem whatsoever. I was assigned to a federal judge that I’d been fighting with for 20 years. There were prosecutors who were assigned to this case who were recently called liars by federal judges. Anyone who knows me knows the concept of me, who’s done so much pro bono work, especially in the Middle East, being engaged in obstruction of tax, knows it’s rubbish.
Stanley Cohen is facing 18 months in prison for impeding the IRS code. this is politically motivated based on his years of taking on controversial cases.
We had negotiated a protocol between the Jordanian government and the United States government, with the blessing of Sheikh Maqdisi and Sheikh Qatada, probably the two most important so-called jihadi imams in the region. Sheikh Maqdisi was considered to be the grand mufti of al-Qaeda. That protocol, among other things, guaranteed that he could talk to leaders of ISIS without being arrested, that he could talk in uncontrolled environments, that he was permitted to speak to three separate religious leaders, including one of his students, who is now the grand mufti or religious leader of ISIS.
Those talks began. They were approved by the U.S. government. They were approved by the Jordanian government. They were underway for several days. I saw the series of exchanges in WhatsApp. I had a U.S. court interpreter with me the entire time. They were moving towards the point that Sheikh Maqdisi was going to make a request that, as a gesture, as part of a movement of ending the public jousting going on between al-Qaeda and the sheikhs and ISIS, that Peter Kassig be released.
We later learned that there was a Sharia court that was held as a precondition to his release, where they found that his conversion to Islam was righteous. We were of the opinion that Mr. Kassig not only would have been released within three or four days of that point, but that the practice, the policy of taking hostages to behead them, particularly journalists and civilians and aid workers, would have ended.
when you have Sheikh Maqdisi, who the U.S. government describes as the “most important jihadi,” quote-unquote—and those are his words—religious leaders in the world, who was the religious leader of al-Qaeda in the war in Iraq, with Zarqawi, that whole front, when they are making a commitment that this is going to happen; when this is a group that’s already produced the release, along with Gitmo veterans, of some 36 peacekeepers; when no beheadings had occurred for some six weeks, when they had been occurring before almost every week or every two weeks; when videos were being released showing hostages being held in a much better condition; when you had people on the ground in Kuwait talking to ISIS; when you had the religious leaders in Jordan talking to ISIS; and when Turki bin Ali, the religious leader who sat to the right of Abu Bakr, who’s the head of ISIS, saying this is going to work, I’m convinced it would have worked. This isn’t money. This isn’t bankers. These aren’t corporate guys doing discussions. This is the most important sheikh in the world talking to one of his students about releasing Mr. Kassig and about a cessation of this practice of attacking civilians. I’m convinced it would have worked. The good faith was six weeks of no executions. Before I traveled to the Middle East, it was a condition that we set that no hostages could be executed. And none were for some six weeks.
These are people that had been tortured in Bagram, in Kandahar, in Gitmo. They are opposed to attacks on civilians Islamically and politically. They are opposed to beheadings. They are opposed to taking journalists and civilians and aid workers as hostages. And they saw this practice as giving the United States—they see regional instability as giving the U.S. and the West and Israel an excuse for more and more attacks, for drone attacks, for re-entering into the region. They’d like to ratchet it down. They’d like to begin a new day in the region. And that’s one of the ways they thought they could stop it.
it wasn’t the U.S. government that reached out to me. It was after some Palestinians from Sabra-Shatila who knew Peter Kassig and some Veterans for Peace reached out to me.
They reached out to me to see if I could do anything about saving Kassig. They had a relationship with him. I called a friend, who is a man who did seven years in Gitmo, who was at one time a major al-Qaeda leader—or that’s what the U.S. government believes. They had already negotiated the release of dozens of U.N. peacekeepers. He called me a day later and said, “Yes, we can do this. We’re opposed to this. We’d like this to happen.”
I brought the government in at one point only because it became obvious to me that there might become a time or a reason where I had to get the U.S. engaged in order to accomplish this. I wasn’t working as a U.S. agent. I didn’t have to report to them. I didn’t have to do what they asked me to do. The one occasion where they asked me to do something affirmatively—namely, meet with a federal agent on the ground in Jordan—I refused. And lo and behold, there came a time when I asked for one single thing to be done, which was this protocol, which was negotiated and agreed.
The protocol which allowed Maqdisi to call Turki bin Ali without fear of being arrested. And lo and behold, for the first time in 30 years of being an adversary of the U.S. government, in this particular situation, I trusted the—at least the person I was dealing with. And I have no problem with the person I was dealing with, personally. I think political decisions were made, because I couldn’t imagine that they would take—that they would refuse to follow up on an agreement, knowing full well that an American would be murdered. And that’s what happened. I put the sword in this case in the hands of whether it’s the White House, the State Department or the CIA. There was a deal that was brokered. There was a deal that was broached. We got sandbagged. An American was beheaded. And a whole protocol that was underway to build a bridge for the future ended.
Peter’s parents didn’t even know we were there.
I’ve spent 20 years in the Middle East. I’ve represented Hamas. I’ve done work for Hezbollah. I’ve done work in South Yemen. I’ve represented people from al-Qaeda. There’s a degree of trust. There are connections. There are people that I know and can speak with and sit down and talk to, with my reputation, with my history, and get things done in ways that others can’t in the United States, including the intelligence divisions, including the NSA and including the White House. So the answer was yes. They weren’t sending anyone. But the view that “how could we expect Cohen to be able to do what we can’t?” shows the kind of government ignorance and arrogance that is at the root of this disaster called foreign policy, in general, and hostage negotiations, in particular.
I think U.S were blindsided, but I think they very easily could have picked up a phone, called Abdullah and said, “We give you $2 billion a year…” And I actually proposed, look, send him home, put him under house arrest, get him out, keep these negotiations going.
Most of all, I think what Americans have to understand is this betrayal of Sheikh Maqdisi, after a commitment from the U.S. government, means that no one on the ground, no private state—no private actor, will trust the word of the United States again around any issue having to do with hostages or anything else in the region. This was a betrayal, and the U.S. could have undone it with one simple phone call and elected not to do it, which essentially guaranteed Mr. Kassig, Abdul-Rahman Kassig’s murder and guaranteed that this long-term discussion for building a bridge to stop the attacks on civilians would fall apart. Now, there are some who believe the United States is comfortable with that, because they thrive on regional instability. I happen to be one of those people who believe that.
the interesting thing is it’s impeding the IRS code. When it came to my sentencing, the probation department said to the judge, “Mr. Cohen denies his guilt. When he was interviewed, he denied all these overt acts.” And I did.
There were reasons why I chose to dispose of this. And the judge, who I’ve known for 20 years, and has not like me for 20 years, and who I’ve had problems with for 20 years, turned around and said, “I reject what the probation department is saying. I believe Mr. Cohen is owning up to his responsibility.” I made a decision, after some 17 years, 16 years, whatever it is, of harassment, after spending $600,000, of which $400,000 is owed in legal fees, after another $100,000 in accounting fees, after raids on my office, after intimidation of clients, after harassment of my family, I wanted to bring this to a close. We faced upwards of five more years’ worth of trials and appeals. We faced years’ worth of interfering with work that I’ve been doing in the United States and overseas. And I decided I want to put a close to this, end this chapter and move on, because it’s obvious something that began with my work with Hamas in the mid-1990s moved along with my work with Hezbollah, which generated battles over my refusal to fill out and sign OFAC agreements,
Office of Financial Assets Control requires that when you represent designated, quote-unquote, “terrorist” movements or persons, you’re supposed to fill out a form identifying who you’re representing, where you’re going, how long you’re going to be there and what you’re doing there. My view of that is, if I’m not getting paid—and almost all of my work in the Middle East for 25 years has—20 years, has been pro bono—I’ve got no obligation to fill that out. They threatened to indict me for violations of that. They tried and failed. They threatened and they investigated me for writing op-ed pieces they claimed I wrote for Hamas, which ended up in major newspapers throughout the United States, which became the subject of the Humanitarian Law Project, the material support case, in front of the Supreme Court. They spoke to Palestinians, saying, “We know that Cohen is a member of the inner circle of Hamas”—a Jewish anarchist from the Lower East Side—”exchanging information and running money back and forth.” This went on for years. The Northern District of New York, where I had beaten this very prosecutor,
The Canadian border, where there’s a huge—where the Mohawk territory is. I’ve represented Mohawks for 25 years. I was charged with seditious conspiracy in Canada for a standoff in 1990. The case was dismissed. The Northern District, who I’d beaten for years; judges that I had won cases against, who took positions; prosecutors that I had beaten, including the prosecutor that went after me; agents that I sued, who were suspended—this went on for years. The Northern District somehow ends up with a tax investigation of a lawyer who doesn’t live in the Northern District, who lives in the Southern District. There’s no basis for them investigating. So they start this huge investigation, and they end up with impeding the IRS code, whatever that means.
They’re saying I made it difficult for the IRS to figure out exactly what my income was. My response to that was: Where are the—where’s the fruits? Where’s the property? Where’s the boats, the planes? Where’s the bank accounts? Where’s the pensions? Where’s the 401(k)s? Where’s the Stock Exchange? Where’s the money? There is none. This ended up being a face-saving decision by the Northern District. After years of investigating me, this is what ended up being returned.
it’s not a crime in New York state, so I still have my New York state license. I have been removed from the Northern District of New York. I’m going to have to withdraw from upwards of a half-dozen terrorism cases either I’m representing in district courts or on appeal. And after I get out of jail, which will be probably about a year, I will then make an application to pick up and proceed representing clients. In all likelihood, I expect to be leaving the country, relocating to the Middle East, continuing working with a group of lawyers that’s brought lots of human rights cases and which we currently have about five or six pending.
I am pled guilty to Impeding the IRS code.
you got $600,000? Do you know how many people plead guilty every day in the United States in federal courts who aren’t guilty? You know how many clients that I’ve had who make a decision, strategic decisions, because if you go to trial and you lose, and especially in front of the judge that was handpicked, after 16 years of it just continuing and continuing and continuing with no end? Overt acts attributed to me, including sweat equity, representing people in the projects in exchange for them doing work for me as messengers—that’s an overt act. I made a strategic decision when it started not only impacting—and it had for a number of years—the finances of my family, but started harassing my family, started harassing my practice, and it promised to go on for four or five or six years—who knows how long?
all clients, when you’re a defense attorney, are political clients. Almost everyone prosecuted in this country is on the basis of color, is on the basis of class, is on the basis of gender, is on the basis of politics. Anyone who believes otherwise is being very naive. I have a traditional practice, which is, you know, drug cases and assault cases and robbery cases, and I’ve had that for many years. I started out in the Legal Aid Society in the South Bronx, represented Larry Davis many years ago. My political clients are different.
I was originally the attorney, brought William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart in—Lynne, who’s also been convicted of crimes that she didn’t do and was disbarred.
There’s two components to my political practice. I either have to share a solidarity with the politics of the person or the movement, or I have to like the person personally, because you’re talking about working very intensely for long periods of time with an individual. Or you have to have both. And fortunately, in almost all of my practice, whether it’s in the Middle East, whether it’s representing Indians in Canada, whether it’s representing black bloc, Anonymous, squatters on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, whether it’s the Kassig situation, the common thread is that it is resistance. It is becoming friction unto the machine. It’s challenging the government. It’s exposing the government. It’s going after agencies. It’s going after federal prosecutors. It’s jumping into this machine the way very few other attorneys do, especially of late.
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith is a wonderful, wonderful imam who, interestingly enough, during the occupation by Iraq of his country in Kuwait, at a very young age, worked with the United States trying to get money to people in the community, had no problems with the United States. He’s a man whose entire life has been as an educator, as a teacher, as a religious leader. He happened to go to Afghanistan three months before 9/11. He went there to see what was going on. He was asked to meet with Osama bin Laden, which is not unusual, because he had a reputation in the Middle East.
The family relationship is somewhat misleading, because he married Osama bin Laden’s daughter his seventh year of prison in Iran. So there’s this notion that they had met initially, that they married initially. It’s not true. Abu Ghaith spent 11 years in prison after he fled Afghanistan during the U.S. bombings in Tora Bora. While in prison in his seventh year, the eldest daughter of Osama bin Laden had been arrested herself. Her husband had been killed in a battle. For her safety, he married her, because you couldn’t have a single woman in a prison in Iran. So when they call him Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, it’s true, but bin Laden didn’t know that, didn’t bless it, didn’t introduce them. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.
They met in prison, seven years after 9/11. When they say that Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was this close—look, every single government witness in Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s trial said he had nothing to do and there’s no proof he had any knowledge of the twin embassy bombing cases, he had nothing to do with the attack on the Cole, there was no evidence he knew of or had anything to do with 9/11. There wasn’t a single shred of evidence that he was involved in any conspiracy to kill any American, to bomb any building or do anything with the 1 percent of al-Qaeda that were involved in acts of terrorism, while the vast majority were involved with fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. He made a series of incendiary speeches. He made speeches which attacked the United States, which threatened future acts which could carry out. This occurred during a three-month period. There were probably four speeches, two audio tapes, and that’s it.
That was three months prior to 9/11 and for about three months after 9/11.
he met Osama bin Laden within a day of the attack, Osama bin Laden asked him to come to his house—he did—and asked him, as a religious leader, as a respected religious leader, to sort of dovetail bullet points with religious context and what had occurred. He made several videos, he made several speeches, and then fled. He was arrested by the Iranians, not charged, held for 11 years, released and then kidnapped, renditioned by the United States government and put on trial.
he was sent to United States directly. If Sulaiman Abu Ghaith had any information, if he had any knowledge, if he was the player that they claimed he was, he would not have been put on an airplane immediately after landing in Jordan, but would have been sent to some black hole, would have ended up in Gitmo, would have been tortured. This was a safe case. The Obama administration needed to get someone at—in federal court in New York City, to try him, someone who hadn’t at that point been tortured, someone who there weren’t, quote-unquote, “national security problems,” although there became national security problems because we tried to get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to testify, the judge wouldn’t permit it. He was a very safe—he was Osama bin Laden. Without bin Laden, they put him there, and that’s what he was convicted, on the basis of association and speech. There wasn’t a shred of evidence that he did anything to further any acts of terrorism at any time.
Material support for terrorism and conspiracy to murder Americans. The theory of the conspiracy was those speeches automatically meant—became responsible for all previous acts and all acts which, in essence, occurred while he was in prison for 11 years. That’s what he was convicted of. No conspiracy to bomb, no conspiracy to murder, no plotting, no meeting, no getting together, no gathering—none of that, nothing. Pure speech, pure association, as repugnant and as offensive as it may have been and as disturbing as it was.
He was the perfect guy to put on trial. From the U.S. propaganda standpoint, he was. We knew what the U.S. would do with those videos. I predicted in the opening statement: You’re not going to see a shred of evidence tying this man, but you’re going to hear the name bin Laden 300 times, you’re going to see the buildings on fire, 9/11, 300 times. And they did. And it was impossible to get this guy a fair trial. Every turn we made, every move we tried was shot down—national security; people are in Gitmo, they can’t testify. We had the U.S. government scaring away Salim Hamdan, who was the driver for Osama bin Laden, who agreed to be deposed in Yemen. He ended up refusing to testify. He was afraid of retaliation. It was a showcase. It was a zoo. That’s what it was. It was part of the political agenda of this administration, and it worked.
Abu Ghaith was tortured while in Iranian custody. He had a seizure. He had various back problems, limbs that were broken. He had a child who died while he was in custody. He was tortured on an airplane, the 13-hour air flight that brought him from Jordan to the United States. The typical—the enhanced interrogation techniques, they call, with the earmuffs and the eyemuffs, and every time he stopped talking, the muffs went back on, the chains went back on. And as long as he kept talking, the chains came off.
Now, Abu Ghaith took the witness stand. He was the first one. He took the witness stand and said, “Look, what do you want to know?” And the U.S. government, which had looked for him, they claim, for all these years, and we know had negotiated with Iran over trying to get him for some period of time and then walked away from it, cross-examined this major al-Qaeda leader for three hours on the witness stand. Ask your questions—and didn’t, and sat down.
He got a life sentence, which I believe will be reversed on appeal. Unfortunately, I am now stripped from representing him on appeal. He is somewhere in the middle of the United States on the way to Supermax in Colorado. I believe he’s got a dozen great appellate issues. I believe he’ll prevail. I believe there will be a new trial. And unless there is a change in U.S. attitude and policy or laws, it’s an uphill battle again. But again, he’s been stripped of his attorney of choice.
I’ve just received notice yesterday, because I made the phone call, because I never got the letter I was supposed to get. There is a high-security facility that also has, quote-unquote, “a camp” in Pennsylvania, that I report to a week from today. I will do approximately a year in jail. And then I will be released.
I suspect I’m going to come back and fight to make sure my state license is back in order, and then I’m going to leave the United States. I’m probably going to move to the Middle East. I’ve had offers to join firms that I work with and do international human rights litigation in the Middle East. I’ve spent probably half my life in the Middle East the last 20 years. Interestingly enough, I had recently offers of political asylum from six countries, including four in the Middle East. I have family in the Middle East. I have friends in the Middle East. Unfortunately, I’d like to go to Palestine, but I can’t get in, because I’m banned by both Israel and Egypt, and now probably Jordan, the only ports of entry.
I’ve decided that strategically, I can do the most effective work, the rest of the years that I have, litigating overseas. I’ve got cases in The Hague. I’ve got cases in the International Criminal Court. I’ve got a case in the African Union against Egypt right now. I’ve sued the United States overseas. You know, it’s very clear—I’ve spent 20 years as being friction under the machine on exposing, challenging and embarrassing the United States and its system of surrogate governments in the Middle East.
— source democracynow.org
Stanley Cohen, longtime human rights attorney who brokered the secret talks for Peter Kassig’s release. Next week, he is due to begin serving an 18-month prison term over tax offenses, a case he says was politically motivated based on his years of taking on controversial cases.