Texas man says he'll join Anonymous in fight against cartel

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By Ashley Fantz and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNNNovember 4, 2011 -- Updated 1639 GMT (0039 HKT)NEW: A website claims Anonymous is not releasing information for the time beingBarrett Brown says he expects to receive e-mails naming Zetas affiliatesAn online video purportedly from Anonymous warns of possible risks, but vows to continueAnalyst: Inside Anonymous "there has been disagreement" about the purported plan

(CNN) -- A Texas man who is a self-proclaimed supporter of Anonymous says he's joining the hacking ring's purported fight against one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels.

Barrett Brown, 30, told CNN that in the next two days he expects to receive thousands of e-mails naming alleged Zetas drug gang affiliates that he's been told were taken by hackers from a Mexican government website.

"It's possible this is all a big hoax, (but) I'm more involved in this because of the possibility of striking a blow against the Zetas. ... The issue to me was more about how do we do this operation. I'm intent on what we could do with the information when we release it," Brown told CNN in a telephone interview Thursday.

The Dallas resident, who describes himself as a former member of Anonymous and has frequently spoken publicly about his involvement in Anonymous activities, posted a YouTube video Wednesday explaining why he planned to join the effort.

"I've decided to support the operation, which I understand is controversial for a number of reasons. In this case, there are lives hanging in the balance, in that those who are identified are likely to be killed," Brown says in the video, leaning back in a leather desk chair as he smokes a cigarette.

He told CNN he learned about the so-called OpCartel after Mexican members of Anonymous reached out to him in an online chat forum.

In the video, Brown says he wants to help Mexicans in their effort to stop cartel violence. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says more than 43,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels.

Some Mexicans have decided to take matters into their own hands, Brown says, doing what they can to stop the Zetas.

Is Mexican cartel the next 'Anonymous' target?

"It's Mexicans themselves who started this operation, who conceived it. It's not a bunch of stereotypical computer geeks sitting somewhere else in safety. These are people on the ground," he says.

The purported threat against the Zetas began in early October with an online video of a masked man warning that the names, photographs and addresses of cartel supporters in the Mexican state of Veracruz can be published "if necessary."

The video demanded the release of a member of Anonymous who had allegedly been abducted by the Zetas in Veracruz. CNN was unable to verify that accusation, or online posts claiming the alleged kidnap victim had been released. A Veracruz government spokeswoman said no such kidnapping complaint had been registered with local officials.

This week, another video purportedly from Anonymous surfaced, vowing to continue the campaign -- but warning of the possible risks.

"This is not a video game. It's a dangerous operation that puts at risk the lives of you and your loved ones. Don't identify yourself as a member of Anonymous. You should never do it, but even less right now," a masked man in that video says.

It's unclear whether Anonymous is behind either online video, or what the organization plans to do. The hacking group has no clear leader and no central official website.

A website purporting to be an official site connected with Anonymous in Latin America said early Friday that no information on the Zetas would be released -- for now.

"A message has been sent to us, that if Anonymous reveals a name related with the cartel, the family of the kidnapped Anonymous member will suffer the consequences, for every cartel name that is revealed, 10 people will be put to death. ... The collective Anonymous has decided by consensus that the information that we have available will not be revealed for the time being, now that we understand that we cannot avoid the threats that involve innocent civilians that don't have anything to do with our actions," the site said.

But other online posts -- which CNN was also able to independently verify -- have said the operation is moving forward.

"Looking over the forums of Anonymous discussions, it is clear that there has been disagreement over whether or not to pursue and publicize information on the cartels," Ben West, a tactical analyst for the STRATFOR global intelligence firm, wrote in an e-mail to CNN Thursday night. "Many Anonymous members seem to be aware of the threat that the Mexican cartels pose and seem disinclined to risk the consequences of incurring the cartels' wrath."

Earlier Thursday, a security analysis from the intelligence firm said it seemed likely that some members of the organization would move forward with the purported plan.

"Anonymous' collective nature means activists can select the actions they participate in, including Operation Cartel. It would only take one dedicated individual to continue the operation," the analysis said.

Brown, the Texas man, said he planned to use a computer database to methodically sift through the e-mails he receives, verify them with the help of an experienced journalist and a cartel expert and then possibly release names -- or entire e-mails -- in small batches over time.

"If we have 100 names, we'll release 30 or 40 names that seem right," he told CNN.

Brown's online video -- which showed his face and was posted under his own name -- is notably different than many Anonymous posts, which commonly feature men in Guy Fawkes masks.

He told CNN Thursday that he was not afraid to come forward.

"I don't feel I should be. I should have the right and the ability as someone who is a fairly public person to work to ID criminals in a foreign country without having to worry about being murdered," he said.

Brown also said he had weighed the possibility of wrongly identifying someone, or causing killings.

"Both my grandfathers were bombers in World War II (and) they killed innocent people and did it with less information. I'm more confident about the ratio. I'd be surprised if many people (in the e-mails) were incorrect," he said.

While whether -- and who -- Anonymous planned to attack remained unclear, some self-proclaimed members of the group were already declaring at least one victory.

Last week and this week a former Mexican state prosecutor's website was apparently hacked, with bold letters stating he "is Zeta."

Late Thursday night, the website featured a picture of a Mexican Day of the Dead offering and the words, "Anonymous Mexico OpCartel continues."

In the past few years, Anonymous has taken credit for disrupting a number of prominent websites, including those of PayPal, Master Card, Visa and the Church of Scientology.

In September, the group claimed it was targeting the Mexican government, launching attacks on a range of official websites, including those of Mexico's defense and public safety ministries.

The Zetas started with deserters from the Mexican Army, and quickly gained a reputation for ruthless violence as the armed branch of Mexico's Gulf cartel. It split off into a separate drug-trafficking organization last year.

In recent months, the Gulf coast state of Veracruz has become a frequent site of clashes between armed groups as drug-related violence grows. In September, 35 bodies were abandoned in a roadway during rush-hour traffic in a popular tourist area there, two days before a meeting of high-ranking state prosecutors and judges.

CNN's Rene Hernandez, Doug Gross and Nick Valencia contributed to this report.

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Police investigate racism claims against Chelsea's Terry

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Chelsea captain John Terry shouts instructions during an English Premier League match against Arsenal on Saturday.Chelsea captain John Terry accused of shouting racial slur at opponent last monthScotland Yard and England's Football Association are investigatingTerry denies wrongdoing; his manager says he backs TerryTarget of alleged remark, Anton Ferdinand, says he's made statement to FA

(CNN) -- London's Metropolitan Police on Tuesday said they are investigating allegations that Chelsea and England captain John Terry aimed a racial slur at an opposing player during an English Premier League match last month.

The Metropolitan Police, also known as Scotland Yard, launched the investigation after spending several days assessing the October 23 incident, which happened during Chelsea's 1-0 defeat at Queens Park Rangers in west London.

Officials with England's Football Association also are investigating the claims.

Video footage posted on the Internet appeared to show Terry, who is white, shouting a racist comment at Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand, who is black. But Terry denied wrongdoing, saying people have "leapt to the wrong conclusions about the context" of the remark.

Terry said Ferdinand, during the match, first inaccurately accused him of using a racist slur before Terry shouted "what I was seen to be saying" to Ferdinand.

"I thought Anton was accusing me of using a racist slur against him. I responded aggressively, saying that I never used that term. I would never say such a thing, and I'm saddened that people would think so," Terry, a Chelsea central defender, said in a statement released after the match.

Ferdinand on Monday said he had given a statement regarding the matter to the FA.

"I have very strong feelings on the matter, but in the interests of fairness and not wishing to prejudice what I am sure will be a very thorough enquiry by the FA, this will be my last comment on the subject until the enquiry is concluded," Ferdinand said in the statement released by his club.

Chelsea's manager, Andre Villas-Boas, said last week that the incident was a "misunderstanding," and that he fully backs Terry.

"(Terry) is confident about it and he spoke to Anton after the game," Villas-Boas said, according to Chelsea. "Anton was present in our dressing room and for us it was an end of story. It is just a great misunderstanding and it is blown out of all proportion."

The Metropolitan Police released this statement Tuesday: "Police were notified of an incident on Sunday, 23 October, involving alleged racial abuse. This is currently being investigated by officers from (the London borough of) Hammersmith & Fulham."

FA officials said Scotland Yard contacted them "to make us further aware of their investigation into the matter."

"Due to this it would be inappropriate for The FA to comment until the police have completed their own enquiries," an FA statement read.

Piara Powar, executive director of Football Against Racism in Europe, told "CNN World Sport" last week that English football officials must act quickly if they are to prevent the Premier League's reputation from being tarnished.

"With the TV coverage comes a global awareness of what's going on in English football," he said. "If you look at the markets the Premier League is particularly interested in -- Asia, Africa, the U.S. -- these are not places that take to seeing racial abuse on the field of play amongst the assets very well."

CNN's Phil Black contributed to this report.

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Ex-Guantanamo guard tells of violence against detainees

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Brandon Neely: Guantanamo is "a significant black eye on the Unites States."Former U.S. military police officer Brandon Neely was deployed to Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray detention facitilyNeely says he feels ashamed of his treatment of detainees and unease about the facility's purposeHe describes prisoners being subjected to violence by fellow guardsEditor's note: Nearly three years after President Obama declared the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects would be closed, the camp in Cuba remains open. Of the more than 750 inmates that were once held there, fewer than 200 remain now. CNN contributor Jenifer Fenton interviewed some of the former inmates, and one of the guards.

(CNN) -- "We were told that they were all guilty ... that these were the worst of the worst," Brandon Neely said about the detainees who were arriving at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We were told that these guys, all of them, had either helped plan 9/11 or were caught red handed on the battlefield, weapon in hand, fighting American soldiers ... These are the people that would kill you in a heartbeat if you turn your back on them."

In June 2000, Specialist Neely, now 31, enlisted for five years as a military police officer. He left later that summer for Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for training and was assigned to Fort Hood, Texas upon graduating. In early January 2002, Neely boarded a plane to Guantanamo Bay, where he would be stationed for the next six months. He had volunteered for the deployment not knowing what it was or where it would take him.

"I was asleep in my barracks one morning. They knocked on my door and ... told me there were two deployments that were going to happen in the deployment area."

Neely agreed to go on one and then went out with his friends later that night. The next day, he was informed that he would be stationed at Guantanamo. "I was kind of mad that I was going to go to Guantanamo instead of the front lines of the war," Neely recalled.

I didn't really understand what a terrorist was going to look like. I know that sounds funny and really naive. I was kind of shocked that a lot of them were very little and malnourished.
Brandon Neely, former Guantanamo guard

His superiors told him he would be stationed a detention facility, Neely said. "They had decided from the start that it was different from an enemy prison of war camp ... We were told in the first couple of minutes at Gitmo that this was a detention facility and the Geneva Conventions would not be in effect ... There was no army manual on this, no standard operation procedure."

Neely did not receive any special or additional training for working at Guantanamo, he said. He, and the rest of the company (about 110 people), arrived just a few days before the first detainees did. Contractors "were still welding the cells at the time," he said.

As a military policeman, Neely was not involved in interrogations. The company's assignments included escorting duties -- taking detainees to the showers or a medical examination and filling the water buckets in the cells.

"At Camp X-Ray you would have to take a water hose and put water in their buckets ... They had two buckets, one for water and one to use as the restroom," Neely said. Personnel could also be assigned to check identifications or to the Internal Reaction Force team. The jobs rotated on a daily basis for the most part.

On January 11, the prisoners began to arrive. "We were told those [detainees] were the top guys. This is the group that they had to get out of Afghanistan because they were literally the worst of the worst," Neely said. He was not sure what to expect.

"I didn't really understand what a terrorist was going to look like. I know that sounds funny and really naive. I was kind of shocked that a lot of them were very little and malnourished." Neely remembered commenting at the time: "If these are the world's most dangerous men, we don't have very much to worry about."

The detainees were wearing blacked out goggles, leg shackles, three-piece suits and ear muffs. Some had gloves on, Neely said.

There was an incident on the first day that he was involved in. He said after the detainees were processed, their pictures and fingerprints were taken and they were given a quick check over. Then they were to be escorted to their cells.

Neely said he and his escorting partner were taking one detainee assigned to Alpha Block. They started to walk but the detainee was shaking and would not walk. "So we started yelling and screaming at him to walk faster ... We were actually walking so fast and he wouldn't walk so we had to pick him up off the ground and we were carrying him."

The detainee was put in his cell with Neely taking control of his upper body. His leg shackles and right handcuff were taken off. Neely said when he went to take off the left handcuff the detainee jerked toward him.

I have no problem fighting and dying for this country, but I am not going to kill or be killed for something I don't believe in
Brandon Neely

"We started yelling at him and screaming at him not to move," Neely said. Neely said the detainee continued to jerk when he and his partner tried again to remove the cuff.

"Next thing I know I slammed him on the ground and I was on top of him. He was trying to get up. I kept pushing his head down to the... concrete floor." Neely said he could hear people on the radio calling "code red Alpha Block." His escorting partner had backed out of the cell and closed the cell door.

"It was just me and the detainee in there." The IRF team "opened the cell door, grabbed me by the back of my uniform and pulled me outside and they just went in there hogtied him and left him there for I don't know how long."

A few weeks later, Neely said he was told by one of the English-speaking detainees why the man kept moving. "The reason he had moved was not to fight... He still had the blacked out goggles on so he could not see. He thought he was going to be executed," Neely said. "A lot of those guys thought they were going to be executed when we put them on their knees and started talking their cuffs off."

Neely said he felt ashamed. He said he witnessed abuse by the guards and others during his six months at the camp.

He said in one incident that occurred in the first few weeks at the camp, a detainee refused to drink a can of the protein drink Ensure, which many detainees were given because they were malnourished. The IRF was called to restrain the detainee so a medic could give him the drink. Upon entering the detainee's cell, one of the IRF team hit the detainee with a shield, Neely said.

The entire team was soon on top of the detainee so it was difficult to see what has happening, according to Neely. The IRF team then stood the detainee up and handcuffed him to the cage fencing and the medic entered the cage, grabbed the detainee by the neck and emptied the can of Ensure into his mouth, but he detainee did not swallow it, Neely said.

The medic then punched the detainee and walked out of the cage like nothing had happened, he added. The detainee was un-cuffed from the cage, hogtied and left that way for several hours, according to Neely, who said he later learned that the detainee thought he was being poisoned.

In another incident, when the camp had been operational for about two months, a detainee allegedly made a comment about one of the female guards and the IRF team was called to Bravo Block.

"They went up to the cell door and they told [the detainee] to turn around and put his hands on his head. He didn't listen," Neely said. The IRF team unlocked the cell door, at which point the detainee turned around put his hands on his head and went on his knees.

The IRF team opened the cell door and the one team member carrying a riot shield threw it off to the side. "And whatever little speed he could gather from that short distance he jumped up in the air and came down with his knee right in the middle of the back of [the detainee] and landed right on top of him."

The other four men started punching the detainee. "Then someone on the inside called the female MP... in there to hit him. And she did," Neely said.

When it was all over the detainee was in a pool of blood unconscious, according to Neely. The detainee was taken by ambulance to the main hospital in Guantanamo. The detainee was later released from Guantanamo Bay without charge, Neely said.

Asked about the allegations, a U.S. military spokeswoman told CNN via email that the Department of Defense does not tolerate the abuse of detainees and takes such allegations seriously. She however denied there was a pattern of systematic mistreatment.

"All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate disciplinary action is taken when those allegations are substantiated," Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde said.

But she added: "Although there have been substantiated cases of abuse in the past, for which U.S. service members have been held accountable, our enemies also have employed a deliberate campaign of exaggerations and fabrications. The suggestion that DoD personnel, the overwhelming majority of whom serve honorably, are or ever were engaged in systematic mistreatment of detainees is false and does not withstand scrutiny."

As for Neely, he still recalls his conversations with the detainees who spoke English.

"I was always kind of worried about them because of all the stuff I had heard," Neely said. "We were told they were all guilty." The two prisoners he spoke to the most were former British detainees Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul. At Guantanamo, they would talk about music and normal subjects. "Eminem and Dr. Dre... at the time [they] were real big," Neely said.

Ahmed "would tell us he was from London. It was kind of weird, because here this guy was in Guantanamo behind this cell door and here I was on the outside ... He was actually doing a lot of the same stuff that I was doing in the United States ... We had a little bit in common."

Ahmed and Rasul were released from Guantanamo and transferred to Britain in 2004. They sued for damages against Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of state, and other senior military officers over alleged inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. The case was dismissed because the alleged abuse occurred before the U.S Supreme Court said that the constitution covered detainees in Guantanamo.

Neely returned to Fort Hood after his six-month deployment at Guantanamo was up. When he left, he signed a non-disclosure statement -- which he said was routine -- stating that he would not talk to the press, write a book or make a movie. He was told he could be prosecuted if he did, but has gone public about his concerns because he disagrees with U.S. policies in places like Guantanamo and Iraq. He has also testified to the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas at the University of California, Davis.

"I have no problem fighting and dying for this country, but I am not going to kill or be killed for something I don't believe in," he said.

Neely deployed to Iraq in 2003, returned to the U.S. the following year and left the military in 2005, when his contract was up. In 2007, Neely did not respond to a recall for active duty and he was honorably discharged. He now works as a police officer in Texas, where he is raising three children.

He thinks the detention center should be closed. "I think someone would be naive to say that everybody that ever stepped foot in Guantanamo was innocent," Neely said. We know they are not, but "the fact is there is a better way to do it ... you can't just throw the principles and the values of the country and the law of the land out the window because it benefits you." Detaining innocent people and depriving them of their due process is "a significant black eye on the Unites States," Neely added.

There will be a time and a place when Neely will tell his children -- the oldest is now 10 -- about Guantanamo. I will "give them all the information and let them make their own opinion ... I'll just tell them the truth ... I will tell them that I have been part of it."

Neely initially contacted Rasul via Facebook and then met with Ahmed and Rasul, the two former British detainees, in London almost two years ago.

Neely wanted to get in touch with them to say that he was sorry for the part he played in their detention at Guantanamo. "I was very nervous to meet them," Neely said. He did not know what might happen. "I wasn't sure if they would hate me, yell at me," he added. "I can honestly say though when I left London I left with two more friends then I arrived with."

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Exclusive: Videos detail News America tactics against competitors

One of the subsidiaries at News Corp. United States It is the attention with allegations of corporate espionage, hacking team and threats to destroy its competition.

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