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Three vigilantes have been reported arrested in Afghanistan, and the leader has been identified as an American. The nationality of the other two is unclear at this time, although early reports identified them as Americans also. BBC:

Three foreigners arrested in Kabul this week were on a freelance counter-terrorism mission, the Afghan government says.

They include at least one US national, Jonathan K Idema, a purported former US special services soldier who says he helped fight the Taleban in 2001.

The men were detained for illegally holding Afghans in a private prison.

The Interior Minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, said their activities had no legal standing.

US officials say Mr Idema had tried to pass himself off as an American government or military official.

The BBC’s Andrew North in Kabul says this is the first official confirmation that Mr Idema and his group may have been acting beyond the control of US forces or the Afghan government in hunting alleged members of al Qaeda and the Taleban.

The interior minister said Mr Idema and his colleagues had arrested eight people from across Afghanistan and imprisoned them.

“They apparently said that their aims were to act against those carrying out terrorist attacks,” Mr Jalali told journalists in Kabul.

“But they did not have a legal relationship with anyone and the United States was also chasing them – they are actually rebels,” he said.

Warning

Earlier this week the US embassy warned journalists in Kabul about Mr Idema who says he helped anti-Taleban rebels fight the hard-line Islamic regime back in 2001.

“The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him,” a US statement said.

Security sources have told the BBC that the US military circulated warning notices about Mr Idema some time ago, describing him as armed and dangerous and accusing him of interfering with military operations in Afghanistan.

Great. I wonder if they tortured their detainees and took pictures of them like the real US military did in Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

UPDATE: Well, does this shock anyone?

Afghan forces arrested three Americans on a freelance counter-terrorism mission after bursting into a private jail that the trio were allegedly running and finding prisoners hanging from their feet, officials said.

The US military, facing a widening investigation into prisoner abuse, quickly distanced itself from the three, who had been posing as American agents before their detention on Monday in Kabul.

UPDATE: Here’s lots of background on Idema. Thanks to commenter EC for the link.

The AP is reporting that the US military is now investigating the abduction of Wassef Ali Hassoun, who was even reported to have been beheaded, as an elaborate hoax. Apparently, Hassoun is safe at home in Beirut with his parents.

After the Islamic group Ansar al-Sunna Army denied abducting Hassoun and beheading him, reports began alleging that Hassoun was “safe” and had been released after promising to quit the US military. Conflicting stories from the family of Hassoun began surfacing. Now, it seems that the original story about the missing marine was probably correct:

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who is now being held hostage by militants in Iraq, was thought to have deserted his unit when he was first reported missing on June 21, military representatives told NBC News. The officials believed Hassoun was headed for Lebanon and a reunion with his wife, they said. Hassoun, who is of of Lebanese descent, was originally classified as a deserter because of this theory, a Pentagon official told NBC News.

The Straits Times reports:

The intrigue began on June 19, when Corporal Hassoun, who was serving his second stint in Iraq, disappeared from his unit near Fallujah.

Reports about him first surfaced on June 27, with Al-Jazeera television claiming that a group called the Islamic Response Movement had lured and kidnapped him from a US base.

The brief video aired showed a blindfolded man in army fatigues seated in a chair with a hand holding a sword above his head. An identity card named him as Wassef Ali Hassoun.

The plot thickened when the New York Times quoted a marine officer as saying that Corporal Hassoun was betrayed by the Iraqis he befriended at his base.

Emotionally traumatised by images of his sergeant being blown up by a mortar shell, he wanted ‘to go home and quit the game’.

Chances of official termination of his deployment, however, were slim so he enlisted the help of the Muslims he had befriended to sneak home.

So, Hassoun went so far as to fake his own abduction and death in order to get out of the Marines. While there is no evidence that Hassoun quit for any moral or principled reason, the Imperial Forces shrunk a bit. Good.

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When the beautiful Saudi news presenter was brutally beaten by her husband, this case first made news because the real story was that a Saudi male was being taken to task – by the law! – over bad behavior toward a woman. Now, as court cases seem inevitably (here in the U.S. as well) to twist and turn in strange and bizarre ways, we have the villain being pardoned by his victim. Admittedly, I can only believe this was part of the settlement, necessary to divorce and child custody issues.

Regarding the dismissal of her suit against the FBI, whistleblower Sibel Edmonds sends this along:

They are fighting it relentlessly all right! Now, this can be used to continue the gag on Congress, the quashing of any subpoenas for my deposition, and to prevent my information from appearing on the 9/11 Commission and DOJ-IG’s reports.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge Reggie Walton) today dismissed my lawsuit on grounds of national security and the State Secret Privilege. The government had invoked the rarely used (though often used by the Bush Administration) state secrets privilege.

This decision comes in the immediate aftermath of the FBI/DOJ reclassifying information to serve its litigation advantage.

“The decision today represents another example of the Executive Branch’s abusive nature of using secrecy as a weapon against Whistleblowers,” said Mark S. Zaid, my attorney. “It is quite disappointingly evident that accountability is no longer a word in our Government’s dictionary,” he added. An immediate appeal is planned.

We reserved a room at National Press Club for my press conference: ‘Peter Lisagor’ room, at National Press Club, 13th floor, 529 14th Street, Washington, DC, for this Thursday, July 8, at 1:00PM. I will be accompanied by Mark Zaid, and most likely POGO’s attorneys.

UPDATE: Here’s a pdf of the decision.

The war on Iraq claimed yet another life today, this time in a traffic accident in Balad, Iraq. CentCom reports:

One 13th Corps Support Command Soldier was killed and four injured as the result of a vehicle accident near Ramadi at approximately 1 a.m. July 7.

Yesterday, the Department of Defense released the name of a female soldier stationed in Afghanistan:

Spc. Julie R. Hickey, 20, of Galloway, Ohio, was evacuated from Bagram, Afghanistan, on June 30 and died in Landstuhl, Germany, on July 4 of complications from a non-combat related illness.

Such incidents rarely garner headlines in the mainstream media. These two deaths, however, bring the deaths totals in Iraq and Afghanistan to 872 and 129 respectively, and thus the total count to 1001. Once coupled with the official wounded count in Iraq of over 5000 or the unofficial count of 7,000-10,000, the human cost of these interventions demands we continue to ask those who supported or continue to support this war: at what cost?