Idema: Trigger-happy and
troublesome By Richard S Ehrlich
BANGKOK - American bounty hunter Jonathan "Jack"
Idema, who has been put on trial in Kabul for allegedly
torturing Afghans, arrived in Afghanistan alongside US
invasion forces in 2001 and enjoyed threatening to kill
journalists.
"That's what I love about
Afghanistan - if you tell someone you are going to kill
them, they f**king believe you," Idema said during
several interviews with this correspondent in December
2001 and January 2002 in Kabul.
"If I'm in New
York and I tell someone I'm going to kill them, they
say, 'Yeah motherf**ker? Well, I'm going to kill you
first.' But not Afghanistan. Here they believe you."
On Monday, Idema and two other Americans
appeared on trial in Kabul denying allegations that they
tortured Afghans they kept in a private jail. Idema told
the court he hunted alleged terrorists with the
knowledge of the US government. Washington and the
Pentagon denied that Idema worked for them after he was
arrested in July.
In the winter of 2001-02, the
short, stocky Idema liked to dye his salt-and-pepper
hair black and show off his pistol and his Kalashnikov
assault rifle, which he occasionally fired using bullets
capable of piercing body armor.
He traveled with
a handful of young, armed, Afghan men whom he ordered
about, often shoving wads of cash into their hands and
waving a big hunting knife at them while theatrically
laughing with maniacal glee.
But in a truly
terrifying display, Idema threatened to murder an
American reporter representing the Stars and Stripes
newspaper after the journalist revealed that Idema had
served time in a US jail several years earlier for a
white-collar crime.
"I just might have to
f**king kill you!" an irate Idema shouted at the
reporter during a December 2001 party, while other
foreign correspondents quickly exited the dining room,
leaving the two men to argue amid frosted cake and
drinks. "You don't believe me? Test me. Just test me.
But get the f**k out of here now before I do."
The shaken Stars and Stripes journalist was
hosting the party in a house he rented, and politely
reminded Idema that this was his house. "You think this
house is yours?" Idema yelled at him, adding more
expletives and threats until the journalist left the
room.
Several days later, the Stars and Stripes
reporter said to anyone who asked about the
confrontation: "Look his name up on Internet, and the
story of him in jail will come up. His name is spelt
I-D-E-M-A."
As a result of his menacing
behavior, most foreign journalists avoided Idema and
told one another he was an unreliable troublemaker who
liked to brandish weapons and "play soldier" amid the
anarchy of war.
Idema, however, insisted he was
acting to protect innocent Afghans from being exploited
and abused by all sides, so they would not suffer either
from the US invasion nor from the ousted Taliban and
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
When asked
whom he really worked for, Idema grinned and told me: "I
work for God and country."
After much coaxing,
he displayed a resume that he kept on his laptop and
that listed military badges he said he had earned,
including "El Salvadoran Master Parachute Wings", "Royal
Thai Army Combat Parachute Wings", "Kuwaiti Police
Commander Badge", "German Senior Parachute Wings" and
"Nicaraguan Senior Parachute Wings".
His resume
also listed: "11 years in the United States Army Special
Forces, 18 years in Special Operations", and "military
adviser in Nicaragua and South Africa" in 1978. In 1979,
he was "primary SWAT [special weapons and tactics]
instructor for New York State Police Olympic SWAT Team,
Lake Placid".
His resume claimed he was "primary
weapons and tactics instructor for British SAS [Special
Air Services] commandos during operation Honeygift" in
1980, and, in 1984, "chief instructor/adviser for the
USAID [US Agency for International Development]
Diplomatic Protection Guard during the Haitian coup
attempt".
In 1984, he was also "chief tactics
and firearms instructor for Ron Reagan, Jr" - the son of
the former US president. In 1986, he was "director of
training for the United States National Park Service and
Park Police for the Statue of Liberty rededication
ceremonies [including] SWAT, counter-terrorism and
explosives training".
Idema named a slew of
courses he completed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, Fort
Benning in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort
Drum in New York and Fort Devens in Massachusetts.
But his biography stopped in 1991. Asked about
the 1990s, Idema replied, "For over 10 years, I've been
'black'," implying secret missions he could not divulge.
In Afghanistan, he called himself "a civilian
adviser to the Northern Alliance" of Afghans who were
helping the United States topple the Taliban and their
al-Qaeda allies. "I am a [former] Green Beret, no longer
on active military service," he said.
"My
original purpose here was to help humanitarian aid
efforts to both the Northern Alliance and the Afghan
people." He claimed to have sent a report to the US
Defense Department that Secretary of State Colin Powell
also read, describing problems with US food aid during
the first months of the war.
He also boasted
that armed Afghans had recently threatened him on a road
near the eastern city of Jalalabad, until he shouted
that he was an American and bluffed that if anyone hurt
him, a retaliatory US air strike would obliterate the
place. Laughing as he told and retold the tale, Idema
said the Afghans suddenly became gracious and allowed
him to continue his journey.
In January 2002, he
said his personal Northern Alliance "intelligence
assets" discovered videotapes showing al-Qaeda
operatives teaching foreign fighters how to kidnap, bomb
and assassinate people. The techniques appeared to
borrow from US, British and Israeli commando tactics, he
said.
The Pentagon tried to block his attempts
to sell copies of the seven-hour-long videotapes to TV
broadcasters, Idema complained. But he eventually sold
the videotapes, and photographs from them, for thousands
of dollars to television networks and an international
photo agency.
After watching the videotapes in
Kabul, I asked Idema to take me to the former al-Qaeda
training camp where they were filmed. He initially
demanded that I pay him US$100 for access to the secret
site, but he eventually provided me a free tour of the
bomb-littered al-Qaeda compound in Mir Bacheh Kowt
village, 24 kilometers north of Kabul.
The
heavily damaged buildings were formerly a children's
school, but were now littered with unused rockets, land
mines, bullets and other ammunition scattered on the
floor in dangerous heaps. The videotapes showed foreign
men at the compound, disguised as janitors and golfers,
acting out strategies to seize and kill
hostages.
A fake janitor, for example, was filmed
sweeping in front of a building while fake office
workers entered and exited. After a while, the janitor
moved his broom cart into the foyer and, sweeping and
keeping his head down, slowly climbed the stairs to
sweep an upper hallway. At a key moment, the janitor
dropped his broom and pulled weapons out of his broom
cart, blasting pre-selected targets and chasing people
into groups so they could be taken on to the roof as
hostages while other terrorists emerged from their
sleeper positions.
"When the hostage thing
started, he [the janitor] went and pulled out a
handgun," Idema explained during the tour of the
training camp. To remind me of the action on the
videotapes, Idema then pulled out a black pistol and
charged forward, as if pushing a bunch of hostages.
In other scenes videotaped at the school, dozens
of men of various races and ethnic origin fired
Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades
while attacking a fake audience of VIPs at a mock golf
tournament and a convoy of vehicles.
"Arabic
interpreters, and also Afghans, who viewed the tapes
were able to identify the different dialects and we know
for a fact there were Kuwaiti, Iranian, Iraqi and Libyan
guys here," Idema said. He was proud about getting the
videotapes, and delighted to cash in on the TV and photo
rights.
"It just goes to prove a point: one guy,
operating by himself independently with the indigenous
population, can gain more intelligence than 5,000 guys
in a room watching satellites," he said.
Idema's
infamous mood swings, meanwhile, continued. At a party
in Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, Idema heard a CNN
employee belittle his analysis of the Afghan war and
denounce Idema as "some old guy" who knew nothing.
"I will break your f**king legs, I will break
your f**king arms, and then I will l ..." Idema suddenly
raged, escalating his threats and moving in on the CNN
employee, who became wide-eyed and distressed when he
realized Idema's fury.
After venting and
receiving nervous apologies from the CNN man, their
confrontation dissolved into jokes, but Idema's
performance proved he could easily intimidate people.
But his real goal, he said, was to "build a
security force [in Kabul] with a whole bunch of [US]
former special forces guys" to help the Afghan
government train Afghans in "professional soldiers'
skills" so they could be bodyguards and commandos in a
new, democratic Afghanistan.
"We will start with
100 [Afghan trainees] and we'll try to get it up to
500," he said. "It will be to protect journalists,
protect aid workers, protect foreign dignitaries and
protect their own [Afghan] dignitaries. It won't be
private. It will be Afghan government. It will partially
under the control of the Ministry of Defense and partly
under the control of the Ministry of Interior."
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based
journalist from San Francisco, California. He has
reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author
of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book
of investigative journalism. He received a master's
degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of
Journalism. He can be reached atanimists@yahoo.comor through his website: www.geocities.com/glossograph/.
