By William Fisher
Human Rights organizations are telling the United Nations that the United States is failing to hold corporations, including private government contractors, accountable for human rights abuses ranging from human trafficking to murder.
These and a plethora of other charges have been triggered by the UN’s formal process known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for reviewing the human rights records of 192 UN member states by the UN Human Rights Council, scheduled for November, when the US human rights performance will be reviewed for the first time.
The UPR was established when the Human Rights Council was created in 2006 by the UN General Assembly. Numerous human rights groups have responded to the US State Department’s invitation to members of the US public to present their concerns about human rights in America.
Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, has attended the predecessor UN Commission on Human Rights and now the Council for more than two decades, as a delegate of the US government, Amnesty International, or other NGOs.
He told IPS, “The Universal Periodic Review process is a welcome step forward, in that it subjects all states to regular review of their human rights records, in addition to the work done by other mechanisms such as the treaty bodies and special rapporteurs as well as the Council’s own retained ability to make recommendations regarding acute situations of gross and systematic violations.”
But the problem, he said, is that “the process is far too slow, too limited in scope and authority, and still suffers from the inevitable politics that must be diminished if human rights implementation on the ground is to advance. The US government, in particular, should be the first to offer leadership and ensure authentic and full compliance with human rights law. But instead of setting this example, the United States all too often continues to seek refuge for itself and its allies in double standards.”
Jamil Dakwar, Director of the Human Rights Program of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), struck a more hopeful note, telling IPS, “We hope this process will help bring US policies in line with international human rights standards by shining a light on domestic human rights issues and holding state, local and federal government accountable to our human rights obligations.”
Specifically, the ACLU is urging President Obama to “issue a new executive order to revitalize the Inter-Agency Working Group on Human Rights, to coordinate the efforts of federal agencies and departments to respect and implement human rights obligations as U.S. domestic policy.”
He said other important steps are necessary including “the creation of a national human rights institution in the form of an expanded US Civil and Human Rights Commission, and effective coordination between federal bodies and existing state and local agencies charged with monitoring and enforcing civil and human rights laws.”
One coalition of groups includes The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Earth Rights International (ERI), the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net) and the Western Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP).
These organizations cite numerous examples where private companies have been alleged to be responsible for serious human rights abuses, including human trafficking of Nepali laborers by Kellogg Brown & Root; nonconsensual medical experimentation by Pfizer; extrajudicial killings and torture committed by private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan; complicity in war crimes by Chiquita; and violations of the indigenous peoples’ rights to health, land, and culture by private mining companies in Nevada.
The Federation of American Scientists asked the State Department to turn its attention to those cases where a resolution of alleged human rights violations has been barred by the government's use of the state secrets privilege.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Government Secrecy Project of the American Federal of Scientists, told IPS, "There are innocent individuals who have been swept up in US Government counterterrorism operations, wrongly detained, 'rendered' surreptitiously to foreign countries, subjected to extreme physical and mental stress, or otherwise wronged."
He added, "In some cases, like those of persons such as Maher Arar and Khaled el-Masri, efforts to seek legal remedies have been blocked by the Government's invocation of the state secrets privilege. As a result, the alleged abuses committed in such cases remain unresolved, and there is no way for the affected individuals to be made whole."
"If the judicial process in such cases is foreclosed by the state secrets privilege, then an alternate procedure should be created to rectify the wrongs that may have been committed," he suggested.
Another prominent human rights advocacy group, Human Rights First (HRF), focused its report on refugee protection and immigration detention, counter-terrorism policies, and hate crimes and discrimination.
The group said, “Despite its leadership in protecting victims of persecution around the world, the US has fallen short on its commitment to treat refugees who seek asylum in the United States in accordance with the1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
It said, “The US should change its laws and regulations to provide asylum seekers who are detained on arrival with prompt immigration court custody hearings, eliminate the one-year asylum filing deadline, and ensure refugees are not improperly excluded from protection or returned to persecution after interdiction at sea.”
Regarding counterterrorism policies, the group notes that the US continues to hold more than 800 detainees in military facilities at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan without charge or trial.
“Due to the government’s overly broad definition of armed conflict and belligerency, many of these detainees are being held in violation of international law. Some are slated for trial in military commissions which do not comport with international due process standards. The government has also failed to provide adequate information about detainees reportedly abused in a “black site” in Afghanistan, the group said.
“Bias-motivated violence continues to be a serious problem in the US,” the report says. “Official response is not uniform across the country, and vulnerable groups continue to be subjected to violent acts motivated by racism, bigotry and intolerance.”
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Life After Fifty? Listen Up Ladies!
William Fisher Reviews “In The Fullness of Time: 32 Women on Life After Fifty.” Edited by Emily W. Upham and Linda Gravenson. ATRIA paperback.
I have to admit, this is not my usual book. Generally I’m more comfortable with Sy Hersh or Jane Mayer or Tom Ricks or a history of the Supreme Court.
But this little volume turned up on my living room coffee table and I was drawn to it not by its title – which may be the least descriptive title in the history of book publishing -- but by its subtitle: 32 Women on Life After Fifty.
This is a book about what each of these people has lost and how each has adjusted her life to go on living. I found it a book that’s often amusing, always inspiring, and definitely worth reading.
And who are the authors? They are 32 extremely gifted American writers and artists. And they share the further common identity: Baby Boomers. As Emily Upham writes in her foreword, “the baby boomers had arrived at the second half of life…this half would be laden with loss.”
She goes on to describe this cohort as “the mapless generation.” We “came of age at a fleeting moment in history when all traditional expectations were tossed aside and torn up like confetti. Our womanhood was forged at a time when birth control was easy, abortion was easy, pursuing a career was easy, when there were no rules, no boundaries, no directions other than our own inner ones…As we age and begin to suffer the losses common to all women, our landscape is a very different from that of the women who came before and after us.”
The essays in this book were written for this book; there’s no boilerplate here. The authors range in age from fifty-five to a hundred and one. They are all “immersed in, or have emerged from, maelstroms of change.”
But this book is not only about the more predictable kinds of losses that face us as we age, for example, the loss of spouses and lifelong friends. Among my favorites:
Gail Godwin, who falls into a deep depression after being turned down for a home care insurance policy;
Katherine B. Weissman, who as an archetypal feminist “learned to assert my rights, own my successes, get angry and not apologize so damned much,” and is suddenly forced to confront her naked 63-year-old body;
Erica Jong ruminating about death, “The lucky ones die in restaurants after a good dinner. Or die in their sleep in bed during an erotic dream about a lover long since passed to the other side;”
Claire Bloom, reflecting on living a relationship-free life, with the help of Buddha – “I’ve been free to travel to be with my daughter, to be with my friends, in a way that I wasn’t when I was in a relationship.”
As co-editor Linda Gravenson writes of these 32 women, “These are the women I’d want in my lifeboat.”
Gravenson is also the author of one of the book’s moving essays. In it she recollects her totally crazy and confusing childhood-to-adulthood relationship with her debilitatingly dangerous mentally ill mother, and her feelings after this unfortunate creature had passed.
She writes: “My relationship with my mother keeps getting better and better. I can approach her now and take from the family album what I need. I can even return to the mischievous little girl who runs wildly around the garden as her mother holds out a sweater, insisting on protection from the evening chill. I am shrieking with glee as I skip just ahead of her, proud of my speed, and happy to be fooling around with my mom.”
One further observation about the dilemmas that face aging women. On many levels, they don’t really seem all that different from the dilemmas facing aging men.
I have to admit, this is not my usual book. Generally I’m more comfortable with Sy Hersh or Jane Mayer or Tom Ricks or a history of the Supreme Court.
But this little volume turned up on my living room coffee table and I was drawn to it not by its title – which may be the least descriptive title in the history of book publishing -- but by its subtitle: 32 Women on Life After Fifty.
This is a book about what each of these people has lost and how each has adjusted her life to go on living. I found it a book that’s often amusing, always inspiring, and definitely worth reading.
And who are the authors? They are 32 extremely gifted American writers and artists. And they share the further common identity: Baby Boomers. As Emily Upham writes in her foreword, “the baby boomers had arrived at the second half of life…this half would be laden with loss.”
She goes on to describe this cohort as “the mapless generation.” We “came of age at a fleeting moment in history when all traditional expectations were tossed aside and torn up like confetti. Our womanhood was forged at a time when birth control was easy, abortion was easy, pursuing a career was easy, when there were no rules, no boundaries, no directions other than our own inner ones…As we age and begin to suffer the losses common to all women, our landscape is a very different from that of the women who came before and after us.”
The essays in this book were written for this book; there’s no boilerplate here. The authors range in age from fifty-five to a hundred and one. They are all “immersed in, or have emerged from, maelstroms of change.”
But this book is not only about the more predictable kinds of losses that face us as we age, for example, the loss of spouses and lifelong friends. Among my favorites:
Gail Godwin, who falls into a deep depression after being turned down for a home care insurance policy;
Katherine B. Weissman, who as an archetypal feminist “learned to assert my rights, own my successes, get angry and not apologize so damned much,” and is suddenly forced to confront her naked 63-year-old body;
Erica Jong ruminating about death, “The lucky ones die in restaurants after a good dinner. Or die in their sleep in bed during an erotic dream about a lover long since passed to the other side;”
Claire Bloom, reflecting on living a relationship-free life, with the help of Buddha – “I’ve been free to travel to be with my daughter, to be with my friends, in a way that I wasn’t when I was in a relationship.”
As co-editor Linda Gravenson writes of these 32 women, “These are the women I’d want in my lifeboat.”
Gravenson is also the author of one of the book’s moving essays. In it she recollects her totally crazy and confusing childhood-to-adulthood relationship with her debilitatingly dangerous mentally ill mother, and her feelings after this unfortunate creature had passed.
She writes: “My relationship with my mother keeps getting better and better. I can approach her now and take from the family album what I need. I can even return to the mischievous little girl who runs wildly around the garden as her mother holds out a sweater, insisting on protection from the evening chill. I am shrieking with glee as I skip just ahead of her, proud of my speed, and happy to be fooling around with my mom.”
One further observation about the dilemmas that face aging women. On many levels, they don’t really seem all that different from the dilemmas facing aging men.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
A Conversation with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis
For the past almost three years, an American citizen, Syed Fahad Hashmi, has been held in isolation in a federal detention center in New York City.
He is suspected of conspiring to provide “material support” to Al Qaeda. The government’s evidence is a suitcase full of raingear left by a visitor to his London apartment; the government charges that the raingear was for delivery to al Qaeda operatives, and that Hashmi let his visitor use his cellphone. Hashmi is under 24-hour video and audio surveillance, even when he uses the toilet. He eats all his meals in his small cell. He is not allowed to communicate with other prisoners. He is a Muslim but is not allowed to participate in group prayer .
The month-old newspapers he receives have whole sections cut out of them by the government. Contact with the media is forbidden. For one hour every other week, one member of his family can “visit” through a heavy screen. No touching or hugging is allowed or possible. Sometimes the government takes away his family visits as punishment; in 2008, he lost his visits for three months and has not had family visits since December. Sometimes the government does not allow his family to see him when they arrive at the prison because the FBI translator is not there.
Hashmi’s trial is finally scheduled for April 28, and the government’s star witness against him is the man who left the raingear in Hashmi’s London apartment, and who has already been sentenced to a long prison term but is using his testimony to work off his sentence.
Here, IPS correspondent William Fisher discusses the case with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, the Brooklyn College professor who was Hashmi’s teacher in 2002, and is one of those most outraged by Hashmi’s treatment.
IPS: How do you remember Hashmi as one of your students?
JT: He was a student of mine in 2002. He took the senior capstone seminar in political science with me--that year, the course I taught was on post-civil rights racial politics, which focused on civil rights from the 1960s to the present. He loved to talk and debate other students—and seemed to have a rather optimistic view of the power of debate to change people’s minds. It is a small course where students are required to do a research paper. He did his on the treatment of Muslim groups in the United States post-9/11 and -- ironically or perhaps not -- described the violations of civil liberties that Muslim groups of various political positions were facing. Now that paper he did with me is being lived out in lower Manhattan -- and it is his rights that have been violated.
IPS: Did you encourage him to seek a Masters degree ?
JT: He came to see me about his desire to go to graduate school, which made sense, given his scholarly interests and we talked through his plans. Also, as part of a class assignment for another course where students had to interview someone who had the job that they wanted, he came and talked with me about being a professor.
I wrote him a letter of recommendation for a number of graduate schools and, like many students, sent him on his way. Next I heard about him, he'd been arrested and we were being instructed by Brooklyn College not to have any comment to the media.
IPS: The next time you saw him he was in custody and there was a court hearing. How did he seem to you?
JT: Over the course of the past two years seeing him at these court hearings, his mental health appears to have declined. He now appears considerably less focused and more jittery. He used to pay attention to everything happening in court, constantly talking to his lawyer and for the brief moments entering and leaving court, making eye contact and smiling at people in the audience. He now seems much more withdrawn, sometimes just keeping his head down the whole time. This certainly corresponds to the research on the effects of prolonged solitary confinement, which documents this kind of degradation of people's mental health.
IPS: Did his lawyer put up a robust defense against the imposition of the SAMs?
JT: Yes, his defense has challenged the SAMs on multiple occasions --including introducing medical and scholarly evidence of the damage that prolonged solitary confinement has on a person. The judge was unconcerned and ruled against every defense motion seeking to address the SAMs. She has refused even to make modest changes. She has determined the SAMs to be "administrative and not punitive" and thus constitutional. Judges -- and particularly this judge, Loretta Preska -- seem to be allowing the government wide latitude in imposing these inhumane measures.
These SAMs are legalized torture. The levels of isolation and sensory deprivation are dehumanizing. They go against international standards and have been shown in medical and scholarly research to have a severe impact on a person's mental health and stability. And they severely impact the ability of a person to participate effectively in his or her own defense.
IPS: Do you think Hashmi will get a fair trial?
JT: No, his right to a fair trial has already been severely compromised by the SAMs, and also by the use of "classified" evidence legalized through the Classified Information Procedures Act. As a US citizen, Hashmi has not been allowed to review all the evidence against him. We are hoping to salvage justice in his case. But three years of solitary confinement and severe isolation have made a fair trial impossible.
We have begun to have a public conversation in this country about torture but not addressed this crucial aspect of it happening right here in the federal system, and, in Hashmi's case, right here in New York City. While there has been public attention to the use of torture for intelligence gathering, we have missed the use of torture to gain convictions -- as a way for the government’s lawyers to demonstrate the success of U.S. law enforcement and federal prosecution in the War on Terror.
He is suspected of conspiring to provide “material support” to Al Qaeda. The government’s evidence is a suitcase full of raingear left by a visitor to his London apartment; the government charges that the raingear was for delivery to al Qaeda operatives, and that Hashmi let his visitor use his cellphone. Hashmi is under 24-hour video and audio surveillance, even when he uses the toilet. He eats all his meals in his small cell. He is not allowed to communicate with other prisoners. He is a Muslim but is not allowed to participate in group prayer .
The month-old newspapers he receives have whole sections cut out of them by the government. Contact with the media is forbidden. For one hour every other week, one member of his family can “visit” through a heavy screen. No touching or hugging is allowed or possible. Sometimes the government takes away his family visits as punishment; in 2008, he lost his visits for three months and has not had family visits since December. Sometimes the government does not allow his family to see him when they arrive at the prison because the FBI translator is not there.
Hashmi’s trial is finally scheduled for April 28, and the government’s star witness against him is the man who left the raingear in Hashmi’s London apartment, and who has already been sentenced to a long prison term but is using his testimony to work off his sentence.
Here, IPS correspondent William Fisher discusses the case with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, the Brooklyn College professor who was Hashmi’s teacher in 2002, and is one of those most outraged by Hashmi’s treatment.
IPS: How do you remember Hashmi as one of your students?
JT: He was a student of mine in 2002. He took the senior capstone seminar in political science with me--that year, the course I taught was on post-civil rights racial politics, which focused on civil rights from the 1960s to the present. He loved to talk and debate other students—and seemed to have a rather optimistic view of the power of debate to change people’s minds. It is a small course where students are required to do a research paper. He did his on the treatment of Muslim groups in the United States post-9/11 and -- ironically or perhaps not -- described the violations of civil liberties that Muslim groups of various political positions were facing. Now that paper he did with me is being lived out in lower Manhattan -- and it is his rights that have been violated.
IPS: Did you encourage him to seek a Masters degree ?
JT: He came to see me about his desire to go to graduate school, which made sense, given his scholarly interests and we talked through his plans. Also, as part of a class assignment for another course where students had to interview someone who had the job that they wanted, he came and talked with me about being a professor.
I wrote him a letter of recommendation for a number of graduate schools and, like many students, sent him on his way. Next I heard about him, he'd been arrested and we were being instructed by Brooklyn College not to have any comment to the media.
IPS: The next time you saw him he was in custody and there was a court hearing. How did he seem to you?
JT: Over the course of the past two years seeing him at these court hearings, his mental health appears to have declined. He now appears considerably less focused and more jittery. He used to pay attention to everything happening in court, constantly talking to his lawyer and for the brief moments entering and leaving court, making eye contact and smiling at people in the audience. He now seems much more withdrawn, sometimes just keeping his head down the whole time. This certainly corresponds to the research on the effects of prolonged solitary confinement, which documents this kind of degradation of people's mental health.
IPS: Did his lawyer put up a robust defense against the imposition of the SAMs?
JT: Yes, his defense has challenged the SAMs on multiple occasions --including introducing medical and scholarly evidence of the damage that prolonged solitary confinement has on a person. The judge was unconcerned and ruled against every defense motion seeking to address the SAMs. She has refused even to make modest changes. She has determined the SAMs to be "administrative and not punitive" and thus constitutional. Judges -- and particularly this judge, Loretta Preska -- seem to be allowing the government wide latitude in imposing these inhumane measures.
These SAMs are legalized torture. The levels of isolation and sensory deprivation are dehumanizing. They go against international standards and have been shown in medical and scholarly research to have a severe impact on a person's mental health and stability. And they severely impact the ability of a person to participate effectively in his or her own defense.
IPS: Do you think Hashmi will get a fair trial?
JT: No, his right to a fair trial has already been severely compromised by the SAMs, and also by the use of "classified" evidence legalized through the Classified Information Procedures Act. As a US citizen, Hashmi has not been allowed to review all the evidence against him. We are hoping to salvage justice in his case. But three years of solitary confinement and severe isolation have made a fair trial impossible.
We have begun to have a public conversation in this country about torture but not addressed this crucial aspect of it happening right here in the federal system, and, in Hashmi's case, right here in New York City. While there has been public attention to the use of torture for intelligence gathering, we have missed the use of torture to gain convictions -- as a way for the government’s lawyers to demonstrate the success of U.S. law enforcement and federal prosecution in the War on Terror.
A Talk With Mary Giovagnoli
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS, ) has come under increasing criticism because of its poor treatment of would-be immigrants held in detention – including a number of unreported deaths – lack of medical facilities, administrative bungling resulting in loss of records, and absence of due process for detainees at ICE detention centers.
A recent report by the DHS Inspector General excoriated ICE for substandard management of the 287(g) program, in which local police and sheriffs are given authority to enforce immigration laws. The program has been attacked for encouraging racial and ethnic profiling, using untrained police officers to enforce the highly complex immigration laws, and diverting local law enforcement authorities from the work they traditionally perform.
Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council, believes that ICE could substantially improve its performance by appointing an Ombudsman “to serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog.”
Giovagnoli has a long history of service with government immigration agencies. She served with ICE’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for almost seven years, and then with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) after INS was dissolved in 2003 and its responsibilities transferred to DHS.
IPS correspondent William Fisher interviewed Ms. Giovagnoli.
Q. Isn’t the DHS Inspector General and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties designed to fulfill the Ombudsman function by investigating allegations of civil rights violations across the Department and attempting to educate Department personnel about proper procedures?
A. These offices are crucial to keeping all of DHS honest, but the problems in ICE require more specialized and ongoing attention. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is small and tasked with an incredible number of responsibilities for protecting civil rights across all of DHS. The Office of Inspector General also has competing priorities and therefore must limit its investigations to the most egregious problems throughout DHS. ICE also has an Office of Professional Responsibility that looks at particular allegations against individual officers. But often, these kinds of offices can't focus on the individual run of the mill case where policies and procedures cause the problem rather than any particular wrongdoing on the part of an officer. Because ICE is a law enforcement agency, but one that enforces a wide range of civil laws, its relationship to the community is, I think, unique and complex.”
Q. What specifically would the Ombudsman do?
A. An ombudsman would serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, investigating them, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog. When Congress established DHS, there was considerable concern that the former INS wasn't responsive to the numerous complaints it received. Originally, the ombudsman’s office was intended to cover all immigration matters, but the final legislation only included authorization for oversight of USCIS.
The ombudsman monitors USCIS performance and advocates for change with a direct reporting requirement to Congress regarding different legislative proposals and recommendations. Although this model is written in the law, there is no reason to believe that the Secretary couldn't establish a similar mechanism for monitoring ICE, at least in terms of investigating complaints and making recommendations.
Q. What is required for the Ombudsman idea to proceed?
A. There are several pieces of legislation proposing an ombudsman within the detention context, but we don’t need to wait for legislation. Better oversight should start happening right now. DHS should gather input from affected communities to create a system that will make ICE more responsive.
There are particular concerns in implementing the Ombudsman idea for ICE. You need a structure that is in tune with how the agency works. You have to have a chain of command structure that is respected by the officers -- an ombudsman needs to have sufficient authority to report to someone outside ICE but at the same time be seen as working within and through ICE to solve problems. So access, authority, and ability to make changes is critical.
Then, an ombudsman needs representatives in the field -- ideally, you would have someone responsible for individual districts that would take complaints, gather information, and investigate concerns.
Finally an ombudsman needs a support system from within the community. Ideally, the ombudsman might be the central figure in a range of community oversight boards with the ability to advise and make recommendations to individual offices and to the national office about improved performance and working with the community.”
Q. How would an Ombudsman work with the larger community?
A. We have to change the model of immigration enforcement to reflect community needs and interests. There has been a lot of great thinking along the border about what that might look like in border communities, but we need to expand that thinking to all communities where ICE operates. An ombudsman who spearheaded a group of local community advisory boards would be in a position to speak for all the people who right now find their complaints unanswered whose issues are probably not big enough to get to the level of an IG report.
A recent report by the DHS Inspector General excoriated ICE for substandard management of the 287(g) program, in which local police and sheriffs are given authority to enforce immigration laws. The program has been attacked for encouraging racial and ethnic profiling, using untrained police officers to enforce the highly complex immigration laws, and diverting local law enforcement authorities from the work they traditionally perform.
Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council, believes that ICE could substantially improve its performance by appointing an Ombudsman “to serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog.”
Giovagnoli has a long history of service with government immigration agencies. She served with ICE’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for almost seven years, and then with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) after INS was dissolved in 2003 and its responsibilities transferred to DHS.
IPS correspondent William Fisher interviewed Ms. Giovagnoli.
Q. Isn’t the DHS Inspector General and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties designed to fulfill the Ombudsman function by investigating allegations of civil rights violations across the Department and attempting to educate Department personnel about proper procedures?
A. These offices are crucial to keeping all of DHS honest, but the problems in ICE require more specialized and ongoing attention. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is small and tasked with an incredible number of responsibilities for protecting civil rights across all of DHS. The Office of Inspector General also has competing priorities and therefore must limit its investigations to the most egregious problems throughout DHS. ICE also has an Office of Professional Responsibility that looks at particular allegations against individual officers. But often, these kinds of offices can't focus on the individual run of the mill case where policies and procedures cause the problem rather than any particular wrongdoing on the part of an officer. Because ICE is a law enforcement agency, but one that enforces a wide range of civil laws, its relationship to the community is, I think, unique and complex.”
Q. What specifically would the Ombudsman do?
A. An ombudsman would serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, investigating them, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog. When Congress established DHS, there was considerable concern that the former INS wasn't responsive to the numerous complaints it received. Originally, the ombudsman’s office was intended to cover all immigration matters, but the final legislation only included authorization for oversight of USCIS.
The ombudsman monitors USCIS performance and advocates for change with a direct reporting requirement to Congress regarding different legislative proposals and recommendations. Although this model is written in the law, there is no reason to believe that the Secretary couldn't establish a similar mechanism for monitoring ICE, at least in terms of investigating complaints and making recommendations.
Q. What is required for the Ombudsman idea to proceed?
A. There are several pieces of legislation proposing an ombudsman within the detention context, but we don’t need to wait for legislation. Better oversight should start happening right now. DHS should gather input from affected communities to create a system that will make ICE more responsive.
There are particular concerns in implementing the Ombudsman idea for ICE. You need a structure that is in tune with how the agency works. You have to have a chain of command structure that is respected by the officers -- an ombudsman needs to have sufficient authority to report to someone outside ICE but at the same time be seen as working within and through ICE to solve problems. So access, authority, and ability to make changes is critical.
Then, an ombudsman needs representatives in the field -- ideally, you would have someone responsible for individual districts that would take complaints, gather information, and investigate concerns.
Finally an ombudsman needs a support system from within the community. Ideally, the ombudsman might be the central figure in a range of community oversight boards with the ability to advise and make recommendations to individual offices and to the national office about improved performance and working with the community.”
Q. How would an Ombudsman work with the larger community?
A. We have to change the model of immigration enforcement to reflect community needs and interests. There has been a lot of great thinking along the border about what that might look like in border communities, but we need to expand that thinking to all communities where ICE operates. An ombudsman who spearheaded a group of local community advisory boards would be in a position to speak for all the people who right now find their complaints unanswered whose issues are probably not big enough to get to the level of an IG report.
In Search of Stevens
Analysis by William Fisher
With the resignation of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, U.S. President Barack Obama faces an opportunity that may become a migraine – or vice versa.
All presidents welcomes vacancies on the high court; each one gives them another chance to leave their mark on the American political landscape. The resignation this Summer of Justice Stevens, who is approaching 90 years of age, after 34 years on the court, is no different.
With partisan acrimony at the most intense pitch in recent memory, President Obama faces a dilemma. Does he choose someone uncontroversial – more conservative -- who is likely to be confirmed by the Senate with relatively little opposition, or does he nominate someone in the Stevens mold?
Stevens, though a Republican selected by a Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, has since his appointment in 1975, gradually become the voice of the “progressive wing” of the court as the full court has moved relentlessly toward the right.
Today, there are four justices who represent a reliably predictable conservative vote – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the “swing vote,” often joins the conservatives to give them a majority of five.
Many of Stevens’ decisions have angered those on the political right, including decisions that limit executive branch power and expand legal rights for Guantanamo detainees.
Some of his dissents may in time also prove to be as important as the Court’s majority opinions; for example, his recent impassioned opposition to the majority in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case which ruled that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as humans and therefore can spend unlimited amounts of money in political campaigns for or against candidates.
Some observers of the Washington scene believe Obama will opt for a “safer” nominee to avoid alienating Senate Republicans, whose support he is still seeking for passage of his legislative agenda. Others contend that Obama, now emboldened politically by passage of his historic health care legislation and a new nuclear weapons accord with the Russians, will challenge conservative Republicans to a knock-down drag-out fight in the Senate.
Conventional wisdom suggests that those reportedly on the shortlist of nominees include several who were considered before President Obama named his first Supreme Court Justice, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. They include the current Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, formerly dean of the Harvard law school; federal judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland; and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Judge Wood is arguably the most liberal of these possible nominees. Some disqualify Garland because they believe Obama wants to choose another woman – there are currently two on the court. Kagan is generally well regarded by conservatives and has many supporters on the right, although she favored a ban on military recruitment on the Harvard campus. As Solicitor General, she plays a major role in choosing court cases the government will bring or defend. In a large number of these, her choices have channeled those of the George W. Bush Administration.
Napolitano, former governor of a border state, Arizona, has been tough on illegal immigration, a position that has strengthened her hand among conservatives. The two appeals court judges both have long judicial paper trails, generally thought to be an impediment to speedy confirmation. Judge Wood in particular has written a number of opinions in abortion cases that conservatives would find objectionable.
While other names – including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- have also been mentioned, the truth is that only Obama and his most senior advisors know who is being seriously considered.
Meanwhile, legal experts have begun to assess the legacy of Justice Stevens.
Prof. Peter Shane of the Ohio State University law school told IPS, “The phrase you will see a million times in upcoming summaries of Justice Stevens' career is independent-minded. He is truly a calls-it-as-he-sees-it kind of judge, devoted as much as any judge can be to the nontendentious, dispassionate, principled development of the law.”
He continued, “The fact that he is now widely regarded as so liberal is chiefly a reflection of his fidelity to the primary trajectory of 20th Century constitutional development, which was, over time, more and more protective of individual rights, social inclusion, and the authority of the federal government to address all national problems.”
In recent years, Shane says, Stevens “has become an anguished truth-teller, pointing out both in Citizens United and in Parents Involved (the Seattle voluntary school desegregation case) the untethered radicalism of Roberts-Alito-Scalia-Thomas jurisprudence. What the Court needs now, in my judgment, is a justice with both the intellectual heft and personal disposition to weigh in effectively against the tide of right-wing jurisprudence. Justices Marshall and Brennan spring most obviously to mind as role models.”
Col. Morris D. Davis (US Air Force Ret.), former chief prosecutor of the Military Commission trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told IPS, “My concern as the Obama administration weighs a replacement is what the Court will lose when Justice Stevens departs. He alone brings three perspectives to the bench that will likely be lost: he's the lone military veteran, the lone Protestant, and the lone non-Ivy leaguer.”
He explained: “I suppose I'm biased as I share those three characteristics with Justice Stevens and I believe those are important perspectives that should be reflected on the Court for it to have the benefits of a range of experiences to draw upon in making decisions that impact us all. A Court composed entirely of Catholics and Jews, all with Ivy League educations, and none with a day of military service does not come close to mirroring the diversity of the nation.”
And Prof. Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois law school appears to have lost confidence that Obama can nominate anyone who will stop the Court’s drift to the right. He told IPS, “So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle [the Bush Administration’s] totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.”
With the resignation of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, U.S. President Barack Obama faces an opportunity that may become a migraine – or vice versa.
All presidents welcomes vacancies on the high court; each one gives them another chance to leave their mark on the American political landscape. The resignation this Summer of Justice Stevens, who is approaching 90 years of age, after 34 years on the court, is no different.
With partisan acrimony at the most intense pitch in recent memory, President Obama faces a dilemma. Does he choose someone uncontroversial – more conservative -- who is likely to be confirmed by the Senate with relatively little opposition, or does he nominate someone in the Stevens mold?
Stevens, though a Republican selected by a Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, has since his appointment in 1975, gradually become the voice of the “progressive wing” of the court as the full court has moved relentlessly toward the right.
Today, there are four justices who represent a reliably predictable conservative vote – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the “swing vote,” often joins the conservatives to give them a majority of five.
Many of Stevens’ decisions have angered those on the political right, including decisions that limit executive branch power and expand legal rights for Guantanamo detainees.
Some of his dissents may in time also prove to be as important as the Court’s majority opinions; for example, his recent impassioned opposition to the majority in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case which ruled that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as humans and therefore can spend unlimited amounts of money in political campaigns for or against candidates.
Some observers of the Washington scene believe Obama will opt for a “safer” nominee to avoid alienating Senate Republicans, whose support he is still seeking for passage of his legislative agenda. Others contend that Obama, now emboldened politically by passage of his historic health care legislation and a new nuclear weapons accord with the Russians, will challenge conservative Republicans to a knock-down drag-out fight in the Senate.
Conventional wisdom suggests that those reportedly on the shortlist of nominees include several who were considered before President Obama named his first Supreme Court Justice, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. They include the current Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, formerly dean of the Harvard law school; federal judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland; and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Judge Wood is arguably the most liberal of these possible nominees. Some disqualify Garland because they believe Obama wants to choose another woman – there are currently two on the court. Kagan is generally well regarded by conservatives and has many supporters on the right, although she favored a ban on military recruitment on the Harvard campus. As Solicitor General, she plays a major role in choosing court cases the government will bring or defend. In a large number of these, her choices have channeled those of the George W. Bush Administration.
Napolitano, former governor of a border state, Arizona, has been tough on illegal immigration, a position that has strengthened her hand among conservatives. The two appeals court judges both have long judicial paper trails, generally thought to be an impediment to speedy confirmation. Judge Wood in particular has written a number of opinions in abortion cases that conservatives would find objectionable.
While other names – including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- have also been mentioned, the truth is that only Obama and his most senior advisors know who is being seriously considered.
Meanwhile, legal experts have begun to assess the legacy of Justice Stevens.
Prof. Peter Shane of the Ohio State University law school told IPS, “The phrase you will see a million times in upcoming summaries of Justice Stevens' career is independent-minded. He is truly a calls-it-as-he-sees-it kind of judge, devoted as much as any judge can be to the nontendentious, dispassionate, principled development of the law.”
He continued, “The fact that he is now widely regarded as so liberal is chiefly a reflection of his fidelity to the primary trajectory of 20th Century constitutional development, which was, over time, more and more protective of individual rights, social inclusion, and the authority of the federal government to address all national problems.”
In recent years, Shane says, Stevens “has become an anguished truth-teller, pointing out both in Citizens United and in Parents Involved (the Seattle voluntary school desegregation case) the untethered radicalism of Roberts-Alito-Scalia-Thomas jurisprudence. What the Court needs now, in my judgment, is a justice with both the intellectual heft and personal disposition to weigh in effectively against the tide of right-wing jurisprudence. Justices Marshall and Brennan spring most obviously to mind as role models.”
Col. Morris D. Davis (US Air Force Ret.), former chief prosecutor of the Military Commission trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told IPS, “My concern as the Obama administration weighs a replacement is what the Court will lose when Justice Stevens departs. He alone brings three perspectives to the bench that will likely be lost: he's the lone military veteran, the lone Protestant, and the lone non-Ivy leaguer.”
He explained: “I suppose I'm biased as I share those three characteristics with Justice Stevens and I believe those are important perspectives that should be reflected on the Court for it to have the benefits of a range of experiences to draw upon in making decisions that impact us all. A Court composed entirely of Catholics and Jews, all with Ivy League educations, and none with a day of military service does not come close to mirroring the diversity of the nation.”
And Prof. Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois law school appears to have lost confidence that Obama can nominate anyone who will stop the Court’s drift to the right. He told IPS, “So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle [the Bush Administration’s] totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.”
Thursday, April 15, 2010
ICE Needs an Ombudsman
By William Fisher
One of the nation’s senior immigration authorities is recommending that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) could substantially improve its performance by appointing an Ombudsman “to serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, checking them out, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog.”
The Ombudsman proposal was made by Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council, in an exclusive interview with IPS.
Giovagnoli has a long history of service with government immigration agencies. She served with ICE’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for almost seven years, and then with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) when INS was broken up in 2003 with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
ICE has come under increasing pressure because of its poor treatment of would-be immigrants held in detention – including a number of unreported deaths – lack of medical facilities, administrative bungling resulting in loss of records, and absence of due process for detainees at ICE detention centers.
Giovagnoli says, “It can be argued that the DHS Office of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights is designed to play that function because it investigates allegations of civil rights violations across the Department and attempts to educate Department personnel about proper procedures.”
So why isn’t this sufficient?
Giovagnoli says that the office is small and “tasked with an incredible number of responsibilities. Similarly, the Office of Inspector General clearly has the ability and authority to investigate and monitor abuses within ICE. ICE also has some kind of Office of Professional Responsibility that looks at particular allegations against individual officers.”
“Often, these kinds of offices can't focus on the individual run of the mill case where policies and procedures cause the problem rather than any particular wrongdoing on the part of an officer. Because ICE is a law enforcement agency, but one that enforces a wide range of civil laws, its relationship to the community is, I think, unique and complex,” she says, adding:
“An ombudsman would serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, checking them out, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog.”
“When Congress established DHS, there was considerable concern that the former INS wasn't responsive to the numerous complaints on the services side and this led to the creation of an ombudsman's office as a separate entity within DHS. The ombudsman was supposed to monitor USCIS performance and advocate for change with a direct reporting requirement to Congress regarding different legislative proposals and recommendations. Although this model is statutory, there is no reason to believe that the Secretary couldn't establish a similar mechanism for monitoring ICE, at least in terms of investigating complaints and making recommendations,” she says.
Giovagnoli says there are particular concerns in implementing the Ombudsman idea for ICE. “You need a structure that is in tune with how the agency works. Thus, you have to have a chain of command structure that is respected by the officers -- an ombudsman needs to have sufficient authority to report to someone outside ICE but at the same time be seen as working within and through ICE to solve problems. So access, authority, and ability to make changes is critical.
“Then, an ombudsman needs representatives in the field -- ideally, you would have someone responsible for individual districts who would take complaints, gather information, and investigate concerns.
Finally, “an ombudsman needs a support system from within the community. Ideally, the ombudsman might be the central figure in a range of community oversight boards with the ability to advise and make recommendations to individual offices and to the national office about improved performance and working with the community.”
She added, “I think we see from the 287(g) report that the expectations for advisory committees (which appear to be just made up of ICE and local law enforcement people) were never met, but I question whether you can have successful oversight committees that don't involve average citizens.”
Giovagnoli was referring to a recent report by the DHS Inspector General (IG) that was highly critical of a program known as 278(g), in which local police and sheriffs are given authority to enforce immigration laws. The program has been attacked for encouraging racial and ethnic profiling, using untrained police officers to enforce the highly complex immigration laws, and diverting local law enforcement authorities from the work which they traditional perform,
Giovagnoli told IPS, “We have to change the model of immigration enforcement to reflect community needs and interests. There has been a lot of great thinking along the border about what that might look like in border communities, but we need to expand that thinking to all communities where ICE operates. An ombudsman who spearheaded a group of local community advisory boards would be in a position to speak for all the people who right now find their complaints unanswered whose issues are probably not big enough to get to the level of an IG report.”
Writer Jeffrey Lubbers points out that ombudsmen are not a new concept both in government and the private sector. About 20 years ago, ombudsman offices began to spread to state and local governments, prisons, universities, newspapers, and corporations. Now federal agencies are jumping on the bandwagon by creating such offices -- in some cases with Congressional blessing or mandates.
Lubbers says, “The ombudsman's role in federal agencies clearly is becoming better known. And there seems to be a fair amount of bi-partisan support for the concept in Congress.”
He adds, “With staff reductions in many agencies, the need for problem resolution between regulators and the regulated (or affected third parties) is becoming more acute. Ombudsmen will have an increasingly important role to play in and for agencies in the years to come.”
Ombudsman is a Swedish word meaning "agent" or "representative," and its Scandinavian origins have been traced to 1274. The first national Ombudsman was established in Sweden in 1809.
One of the nation’s senior immigration authorities is recommending that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) could substantially improve its performance by appointing an Ombudsman “to serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, checking them out, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog.”
The Ombudsman proposal was made by Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council, in an exclusive interview with IPS.
Giovagnoli has a long history of service with government immigration agencies. She served with ICE’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for almost seven years, and then with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) when INS was broken up in 2003 with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
ICE has come under increasing pressure because of its poor treatment of would-be immigrants held in detention – including a number of unreported deaths – lack of medical facilities, administrative bungling resulting in loss of records, and absence of due process for detainees at ICE detention centers.
Giovagnoli says, “It can be argued that the DHS Office of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights is designed to play that function because it investigates allegations of civil rights violations across the Department and attempts to educate Department personnel about proper procedures.”
So why isn’t this sufficient?
Giovagnoli says that the office is small and “tasked with an incredible number of responsibilities. Similarly, the Office of Inspector General clearly has the ability and authority to investigate and monitor abuses within ICE. ICE also has some kind of Office of Professional Responsibility that looks at particular allegations against individual officers.”
“Often, these kinds of offices can't focus on the individual run of the mill case where policies and procedures cause the problem rather than any particular wrongdoing on the part of an officer. Because ICE is a law enforcement agency, but one that enforces a wide range of civil laws, its relationship to the community is, I think, unique and complex,” she says, adding:
“An ombudsman would serve as an internal conscience, taking in reports on individual cases, checking them out, making sure that policy is followed and serving as an internal watchdog.”
“When Congress established DHS, there was considerable concern that the former INS wasn't responsive to the numerous complaints on the services side and this led to the creation of an ombudsman's office as a separate entity within DHS. The ombudsman was supposed to monitor USCIS performance and advocate for change with a direct reporting requirement to Congress regarding different legislative proposals and recommendations. Although this model is statutory, there is no reason to believe that the Secretary couldn't establish a similar mechanism for monitoring ICE, at least in terms of investigating complaints and making recommendations,” she says.
Giovagnoli says there are particular concerns in implementing the Ombudsman idea for ICE. “You need a structure that is in tune with how the agency works. Thus, you have to have a chain of command structure that is respected by the officers -- an ombudsman needs to have sufficient authority to report to someone outside ICE but at the same time be seen as working within and through ICE to solve problems. So access, authority, and ability to make changes is critical.
“Then, an ombudsman needs representatives in the field -- ideally, you would have someone responsible for individual districts who would take complaints, gather information, and investigate concerns.
Finally, “an ombudsman needs a support system from within the community. Ideally, the ombudsman might be the central figure in a range of community oversight boards with the ability to advise and make recommendations to individual offices and to the national office about improved performance and working with the community.”
She added, “I think we see from the 287(g) report that the expectations for advisory committees (which appear to be just made up of ICE and local law enforcement people) were never met, but I question whether you can have successful oversight committees that don't involve average citizens.”
Giovagnoli was referring to a recent report by the DHS Inspector General (IG) that was highly critical of a program known as 278(g), in which local police and sheriffs are given authority to enforce immigration laws. The program has been attacked for encouraging racial and ethnic profiling, using untrained police officers to enforce the highly complex immigration laws, and diverting local law enforcement authorities from the work which they traditional perform,
Giovagnoli told IPS, “We have to change the model of immigration enforcement to reflect community needs and interests. There has been a lot of great thinking along the border about what that might look like in border communities, but we need to expand that thinking to all communities where ICE operates. An ombudsman who spearheaded a group of local community advisory boards would be in a position to speak for all the people who right now find their complaints unanswered whose issues are probably not big enough to get to the level of an IG report.”
Writer Jeffrey Lubbers points out that ombudsmen are not a new concept both in government and the private sector. About 20 years ago, ombudsman offices began to spread to state and local governments, prisons, universities, newspapers, and corporations. Now federal agencies are jumping on the bandwagon by creating such offices -- in some cases with Congressional blessing or mandates.
Lubbers says, “The ombudsman's role in federal agencies clearly is becoming better known. And there seems to be a fair amount of bi-partisan support for the concept in Congress.”
He adds, “With staff reductions in many agencies, the need for problem resolution between regulators and the regulated (or affected third parties) is becoming more acute. Ombudsmen will have an increasingly important role to play in and for agencies in the years to come.”
Ombudsman is a Swedish word meaning "agent" or "representative," and its Scandinavian origins have been traced to 1274. The first national Ombudsman was established in Sweden in 1809.
Monday, April 12, 2010
GITMO DETAINEE ORDERED FREED -- BUT WHERE TO?
By William Fisher
After nine years in captivity, a federal court has ordered the release of a Guantanamo prisoner once described as the "highest-value detainee at the facility " –and set off a firestorm of protest from Republican lawmakers.
Federal District Judge James Robertson ruled in Washington, D.C. that the U.S. could not continue to detain Mohamedou Ould Salahi (sometimes spelled “Slahi”), a Mauritanian citizen who has been in U.S. custody since 2001. Judge Robertson’s opinion, providing the reasons for the granting of Salahi’s habeas corpus petition, was released last week after undergoing a classification review; some portions were withheld as classified.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and private attorneys challenged Salahi’s detention, arguing that the government had no reliable evidence that he was part of al-Qaeda when he was seized in 2001.
Salahi became the 34th GITMO detainee whose imprisonment has been declared illegal.
The Department of Justice said it would appeal Judge Robertson’s decision. However, even if the government’s appeal is unsuccessful it is unclear that Salahi could be released until another country offers to take him in.
Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, told IPS, “Salahi's case is a national disgrace -- rendition, brutal torture, and eight years of arbitrary detention without charge or any reliable or credible evidence. Regrettably, rather than ending this shameful episode that flouts the rule of law, and repatriating Salahi, the government is seeking to prolong his illegal imprisonment."
“Salahi's illegal detention for more than eight years without charge or trial embodies the most egregious abuses of Guantánamo,” he said. “The district court’s decision invalidating that detention and ordering Salahi’s release is an important step towards restoring the rule of law,” he added.
After Salahi was arrested in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al-Qaeda, the U.S. government illegally rendered him to Jordan, where he was detained, interrogated and abused for eight months. He was then rendered to Bagram, Afghanistan and finally to Guantánamo, where he has been held in U.S. custody since August 2002.
While at Guantánamo, Salahi was held in total isolation for months, kept in a freezing cold cell, shackled to the floor, deprived of food, made to drink salt water, forced to stand in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music for hours at a time, threatened with harm to his family, forbidden from praying, beaten and subjected to the “frequent flyer” program, during which he was awakened every few hours to deprive him of sleep. The government falsely told him that his mother had been arrested and was being sent to Guantánamo.
Salahi’s abuse was documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, the military lawyer originally assigned to prosecute the case against Salahi in the military commissions, determined that Salahi’s self-incriminating statements were so tainted by torture that they couldn’t ethically be used against him. Couch told his supervisors that he was “morally opposed” to Salahi’s treatment and refused to participate in the prosecution.
In his decision, Judge Robertson wrote that there is “ample evidence in this record that Salahi was subjected to extensive and severe mistreatment at Guantánamo.”
Congressional Republicans expressed outrage over the decision. The Hill newspaper reported that Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, stated, "While (Attorney General Eric) Holder's Justice Department should appeal this outrageous decision, I'm not holding my breath. Holder seems more intent on closing Guantánamo Bay than keeping terrorists locked up where they belong."
The Hill also reported that Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, sent a letter to Holder asking him to appeal the ruling, in which he wrote, "It is certainly possible, if not likely, that Mr. Salahi will re-engage in efforts to commit terrorist attacks against innocent Americans if allowed to go free. This ruling clearly puts the American people in danger and should not be allowed to stand."
Salahi was subjected to several years of torture, which began soon after he was taken in by the Mauritanian authorities on November 20, 2001, at the request of the Bush administration. "My country turned me over, shortcutting all kinds of due process of law, like a candy bar to the United States," he said in his combatant status review tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004.
Salahi was transferred by the US from Mauritania to Jordan. According to historian Andy Worthington, he was one of at least 15 prisoners rendered to Jordan by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 2001 and 2004. He was held there for eight months and said what happened to him was "beyond description." He was tortured "maybe twice a week, a couple times, sometimes more." He was then transferred to the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan for two weeks and arrived in Guantánamo on August 4, 2002.
Worthington reports that, “as the highest-value detainee at Guantánamo - in the days before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other high-value detainees were flown in from secret CIA prisons in September 2006 - Salahi was again subjected to torture, which included prolonged isolation, prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings, death threats and threats that his mother would be brought to Guantánamo and gang-raped.”
This program, he says, was implemented in May 2003 and augmented with further "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It culminated in August 2003 in an incident when Salahi was taken out on a boat, wearing isolation goggles, while agents whispered, within earshot, that he was "about to be executed and made to disappear." As the German magazine Der Spiegel explained in an article in 2008, "He was so terrified that he urinated in his pants."
After nine years in captivity, a federal court has ordered the release of a Guantanamo prisoner once described as the "highest-value detainee at the facility " –and set off a firestorm of protest from Republican lawmakers.
Federal District Judge James Robertson ruled in Washington, D.C. that the U.S. could not continue to detain Mohamedou Ould Salahi (sometimes spelled “Slahi”), a Mauritanian citizen who has been in U.S. custody since 2001. Judge Robertson’s opinion, providing the reasons for the granting of Salahi’s habeas corpus petition, was released last week after undergoing a classification review; some portions were withheld as classified.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and private attorneys challenged Salahi’s detention, arguing that the government had no reliable evidence that he was part of al-Qaeda when he was seized in 2001.
Salahi became the 34th GITMO detainee whose imprisonment has been declared illegal.
The Department of Justice said it would appeal Judge Robertson’s decision. However, even if the government’s appeal is unsuccessful it is unclear that Salahi could be released until another country offers to take him in.
Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, told IPS, “Salahi's case is a national disgrace -- rendition, brutal torture, and eight years of arbitrary detention without charge or any reliable or credible evidence. Regrettably, rather than ending this shameful episode that flouts the rule of law, and repatriating Salahi, the government is seeking to prolong his illegal imprisonment."
“Salahi's illegal detention for more than eight years without charge or trial embodies the most egregious abuses of Guantánamo,” he said. “The district court’s decision invalidating that detention and ordering Salahi’s release is an important step towards restoring the rule of law,” he added.
After Salahi was arrested in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al-Qaeda, the U.S. government illegally rendered him to Jordan, where he was detained, interrogated and abused for eight months. He was then rendered to Bagram, Afghanistan and finally to Guantánamo, where he has been held in U.S. custody since August 2002.
While at Guantánamo, Salahi was held in total isolation for months, kept in a freezing cold cell, shackled to the floor, deprived of food, made to drink salt water, forced to stand in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music for hours at a time, threatened with harm to his family, forbidden from praying, beaten and subjected to the “frequent flyer” program, during which he was awakened every few hours to deprive him of sleep. The government falsely told him that his mother had been arrested and was being sent to Guantánamo.
Salahi’s abuse was documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, the military lawyer originally assigned to prosecute the case against Salahi in the military commissions, determined that Salahi’s self-incriminating statements were so tainted by torture that they couldn’t ethically be used against him. Couch told his supervisors that he was “morally opposed” to Salahi’s treatment and refused to participate in the prosecution.
In his decision, Judge Robertson wrote that there is “ample evidence in this record that Salahi was subjected to extensive and severe mistreatment at Guantánamo.”
Congressional Republicans expressed outrage over the decision. The Hill newspaper reported that Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, stated, "While (Attorney General Eric) Holder's Justice Department should appeal this outrageous decision, I'm not holding my breath. Holder seems more intent on closing Guantánamo Bay than keeping terrorists locked up where they belong."
The Hill also reported that Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, sent a letter to Holder asking him to appeal the ruling, in which he wrote, "It is certainly possible, if not likely, that Mr. Salahi will re-engage in efforts to commit terrorist attacks against innocent Americans if allowed to go free. This ruling clearly puts the American people in danger and should not be allowed to stand."
Salahi was subjected to several years of torture, which began soon after he was taken in by the Mauritanian authorities on November 20, 2001, at the request of the Bush administration. "My country turned me over, shortcutting all kinds of due process of law, like a candy bar to the United States," he said in his combatant status review tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004.
Salahi was transferred by the US from Mauritania to Jordan. According to historian Andy Worthington, he was one of at least 15 prisoners rendered to Jordan by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 2001 and 2004. He was held there for eight months and said what happened to him was "beyond description." He was tortured "maybe twice a week, a couple times, sometimes more." He was then transferred to the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan for two weeks and arrived in Guantánamo on August 4, 2002.
Worthington reports that, “as the highest-value detainee at Guantánamo - in the days before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other high-value detainees were flown in from secret CIA prisons in September 2006 - Salahi was again subjected to torture, which included prolonged isolation, prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings, death threats and threats that his mother would be brought to Guantánamo and gang-raped.”
This program, he says, was implemented in May 2003 and augmented with further "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It culminated in August 2003 in an incident when Salahi was taken out on a boat, wearing isolation goggles, while agents whispered, within earshot, that he was "about to be executed and made to disappear." As the German magazine Der Spiegel explained in an article in 2008, "He was so terrified that he urinated in his pants."
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