US General requests death sentence for US citizen

Under the heading, if you can't find any terrorists - invent some:

A U.S. citizen who allegedly orchestrated the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists near Baghdad last year was sentenced to death in an Iraqi court Thursday, prompting his lawyers to ask a federal judge in Washington to block the U.S. military from transferring him to the Iraqi government.

Mohammad Munaf, 53, has been in U.S. custody since May 23, 2005, when he was arrested during a military raid to rescue the Romanian journalists nearly two months after they were snatched. Authorities have alleged that Munaf -- who had ushered the journalists into Iraq and was acting as their guide and translator -- posed as a kidnap victim but was actually involved in a conspiracy for ransom and led them into a trap.

Military officials have said in sworn statements that Munaf confessed to elements of the crime and helped arrange the kidnapping. Munaf has been held at Camp Cropper, where the U.S. military keeps high-value detainees on behalf of Multinational Force-Iraq.

So let's review. We have an American citizen with Islamic sounding name who "confesses" to a crime after months of confinement in a prison where we just know they never coerce confessions and he's sentenced to death? But wait. The plot gets thicker.

Munaf's Iraqi attorneys reported that the Central Criminal Court judge was prepared to dismiss the charges at a hearing on Thursday but that two American officials -- including an unnamed general -- stepped into the courtroom and requested a private meeting. The judge returned 15 minutes later and sentenced Munaf and four other defendants to death without hearing additional evidence, according to a sworn statement by Sean Riordan, a legal intern at the Brennan Center who spoke with Munaf's attorney in Baghdad.

"In 36 years practicing law in Iraq, [the lawyer] had never before seen or heard of a death sentence being handed down without deliberation or consideration of the merits," Riordan said in the statement filed in Washington yesterday. [all emphasis added]

So let's extrapolate from the clues. An unnamed US General intevenes in an Iraqi court case and a US citizen with a "suspicious" name suddenly is sentenced to death and the White House position is that we can't stop them because we're a "multinational force" who is merely caretaking the prisoner?

Please tell me that the Bush administration is not so crass as to use an innocent citizen as a pawn in a game of polical power chess. I mean they wouldn't insist this guy be executed just to prove how "tough on terror" they are -- would they?