By William Fisher
After years of stonewalling, the U.S. Defense Department has released the names of people imprisoned at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Made available in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the list contains the names of 645 prisoners who were detained at Bagram as of September 2009.
But the government blacked-out other vital information requested by the civil rights group -- including prisoners’ citizenship, length of detention, country where captured, and circumstances of capture.
The government’s previous position was that the public had no right to have this information.
Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said, “Releasing the names of those held at Bagram is an important step toward transparency and accountability at the secretive Bagram prison, but it is just a first step. Hundreds of people have languished at Bagram for years in horrid and abusive conditions, without even being told why they’re detained or given a fair chance to argue for release.”
But she added, “The information the government continues to withhold is just as vital as the names of prisoners. Full transparency and accountability” about Bagram requires full disclosure. “The public has long been kept in the dark about what goes on at Bagram. It is time to shine a bright light on the secretive prison.”
It was not clear whether the names of those released also included those held in field detention sites around the country where some detainees are taken initially before being placed in the general detainee population.
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records relating to the detention and treatment of prisoners held at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan in April 2009.
When documents were not forthcoming, the ACLU filed the FOIA lawsuit in September 2009, seeking the disclosure of documents related to the detention and treatment of prisoners at Bagram, records relating to the rules and agreements that govern the facility, and documents pertaining to the conditions of confinement and status review process afforded prisoners.
The U.S. government's Bagram detention facility has been the focus of widespread media attention and public concern for many years, but very little information has been publicly available about the secrecy-shrouded facility or the prisoners held there. The U.S. government has been detaining a previously-unknown number of prisoners at the facility since 2002. Some have been held for as long as six years without access to counsel or a meaningful opportunity to challenge their imprisonment.
The conditions of confinement at Bagram are reportedly primitive, with allegations of mistreatment and abuse continuing to surface; in fact, in 2002, two Afghan prisoners at Bagram were fatally beaten by US troops.
The US military has recently built a modern new prison to take the place of the dilapidated and inefficient original unit. The Americans are in the process of handing management of this new facility over to the Afghan authorities.
Nonetheless, there is growing public concern in the U.S. and around the world that Bagram has become, in effect, the new Guantánamo.
Former detainees have described abusive treatment at the base, especially in the first two or three years it was in existence. But in the last several years, detainees who have been released described improved conditions.
While the majority of the detainees at Bagram are Afghan, a small number are foreigners who are accused of fighting with the Taliban. Also held there are a handful of detainees captured in other countries, according to human rights lawyers and military detention officials. The current detainee population is about 750, according to military detention officials, but in September, when the information request was made, there were about 100 fewer detainees. The numbers have grown over the past few months because of the increased military operations by American forces.
An investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has revealed that former detainees at Bagram were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with dogs.
Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, told IPS, "The BBC investigation provides further confirmation of the United States' mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram. These abuses are the direct consequence of decisions made at the highest levels of the U.S. government to avoid the Geneva Convention and forsake the rule of law.”
The Obama Administration has sought to deflect some of the heat it is getting from civil rights organizations and legal experts over its management of Bagram. For example, it recently announced a set of new procedures for conducting periodic assessments of the status of each prisoner.
But, according to Tina Monshipour Foster, Executive Director of the International Justice Network – the only US organization actively litigating on behalf of Bagram detainees – “The ‘new’ procedures adopted by the Obama administration are not new at all, they appear to be exactly the same as the procedures created by the Bush administration in response to prior court challenges by Guantanamo detainees. The idea of assigning a non-lawyer 'personal representative' who does not legally represent the detainee, but works for the military, is a step in the wrong direction.“
She told IPS, “Only a lawyer who is independent from the government can effectively assist a detainee with his defense against allegations being made by the government.“
The Pentagon denied the BBC’s charges of harsh treatment and insisted that all inmates in the facility are treated humanely.
Another prominent human rights organization, the U.K.-based Reprieve, called on the British Government to take action concerning two Pakistanis who it says the U.K. helped render there from Iraq.
“These men were never in Afghanistan until the UK and the US took them there,” Stafford Smith told IPS. “It is the height of hypocrisy to take someone to Bagram and then claim that it is too dangerous to let them see a lawyer. Even Guantánamo Bay is better than this.”
Since coming to office, US President Barack Obama has banned the use of torture and ordered a review of policy on detainees, which is expected to report next month. But unlike its detainees at the US naval facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the prisoners at Bagram have no access to lawyers and they cannot challenge their detention.
In April 2009, in a lawsuit brought in federal court by the International Justice Network, Judge John D. Bates ruled that three Bagram prisoners -- two Yemenis and one Tunisian citizen – had the right to petition U.S. courts for their release because they were not Afghans captured on the Afghan battlefield.
But he also ruled that for a fourth appellant, a citizen of Afghanistan, rather than a Yemeni or Tunisian citizen held at Bagram, granting him legal rights might upset the relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan. Judge Bates dismissed the petition of Haji Wazir, an Afghan civilian held at Bagram without charge for more than six years. The judge ruled that because the petitioner was a citizen of Afghanistan, he had no right to petition the US courts for his release.
Afghan government sources have said prisoners will have a right to appeal their detentions once the US transfers its authority.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
GITMO: SUICIDES OR SOMETHING EVEN WORSE?
By William Fisher
Is the administration of President Barack Obama concealing evidence suggesting that three suicides at Guantanamo Bay were not suicides at all?
That is a question human rights groups, legal experts and national security specialists are pondering on the heels of an article in Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton presenting whistleblower testimony suggesting that the three dead prisoners likely suffered particularly abusive interrogations in a remote corner of the base in the hours before they died, and their deaths were then passed off as suicides by the Bush Administration.
Horton presents new evidence from then-Sergeant Joe Hickman, a whistleblower formerly stationed in Guantánamo, that the three dead prisoners were taken to a remote corner of the base in the hours before they died. There they were tortured, GITMO officials came up with the suicide cover, and the Bush Administration capitalized on the panic by ordering further abuse of prisoners, and by spreading self-serving and poisonous lies about the dead men, adding to their families’ distress.
Horton says that President Obama’s Justice Department has refused to fully investigate the incident.
Clara Gutteridge, who is a secret prisons investigator for the London-based legal advocacy group Reprieve, said, "Scott Horton’s investigation indicates that, as usual, Guantánamo’s traumatised prisoners are telling the truth about their treatment. According to our clients, in addition to the secret CIA facility -- and another house on the base where some prisoners were taken to be held in solitary confinement -- there was also a black site run by US marines on Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. It was located outside the main prison, and was known amongst the prisoners as a place where people were taken to be 'broken.' When will these prisoner’s testimonies finally be taken seriously? And when will the perpetrators of these terrible crimes finally face justice?"
George Brent Mickum IV, an attorney who is currently handling a number of Guantanamo cases, told IPS, “There have been 100 deaths of detainees since 2006. Thirty-six of these have been declared homicides. Only one case has ever been prosecuted. The probable reason: The CIA is responsible for these deaths."
According to the US Navy, Gitmo detainees Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani were found hanged in their cells on June 9. 2006. The US military initially described their deaths as "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States, before finally declaring that the deaths were suicides that the inmates coordinated among themselves.
But a report from Seton Hall University Law School, released last fall, cast
doubt on almost every element of the US military's story. It questioned, for
example, how it would have been possible for the three detainees to have stuffed rags down their throats and then, while choking, managed to raise themselves up to a noose and hang themselves.
The report stated: “There is no explanation of how each of the detainees, much less all three, could have done the following: braided a noose by tearing up his sheets and/or clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear to the guards he was asleep in his cell, hung sheets to block vision into the cell—a violation of Standard Operating Procedures, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling, climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation, hanged until dead and hung for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards.”
Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman told Harper's magazine that he was made aware of the existence of a secret detention center at Guantanamo, nicknamed by some of the guards "Camp No," because "No, it doesn't exist."
According to Hickman, it was generally believed among camp guards that the facility was used by the CIA.
Hickman also said there was a van on site, referred to as the "paddy wagon,"
which was allowed to come in and out of the main detention area without going through the usual inspection. On the night of the three detainees' deaths, Hickman says he saw the paddy wagon leave the area where the three were being detained and head off in the direction of Camp No. The paddy wagon, which can carry only one prisoner at a time in a cage in the back, reportedly made the trip three times.
Hickman says he saw the paddy wagon return and go directly to the medical
center. Shortly after, a senior non-commissioned officer, whose name Hickman didn't know, ordered him to convey a code word to a petty officer. When he did, the petty officer ran off in a panic.
Both Hickman and Specialist Tony Davila told Harper's that they had been told, initially, that three men died as a result of having rags stuffed down their throats. And in a truly strange turn of events, the whistleblowers say that -- even though by the next morning it had become "common knowledge" that the men had died of suicide by stuffing rags down their own throats -- the camp commander, Col. Michael Bumgarner, told the guards that the media would "report something different."
According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags.
But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Bumgarner has not responded to requests for comment.)
Scott Horton of Harper's reports: "The presence of a black site at Guantánamo has long been a subject of speculation among lawyers and human-rights activists, and the experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guantánamo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who
died on June 9 were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths
resulted from the grueling techniques the Justice Department had approved for the agency’s use—or from other tortures lacking that sanction."
Two of the dead prisoners were plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of the deceased and their families, Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld.
CCR Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, lead counsel in the civil case surrounding the deaths, which charges the government and 24 federal officials with responsibility for the abuse and wrongful death of the deceased, said, "President Obama’s Department of Justice has tried to keep our case out of the courts, beyond the reach of the legal system and any oversight or accountability. It is critical that the full story of how our clients died and who was responsible be brought to light in open court before an impartial judge. Serious gaps and questions remain, more than three years after the deaths."
Is the administration of President Barack Obama concealing evidence suggesting that three suicides at Guantanamo Bay were not suicides at all?
That is a question human rights groups, legal experts and national security specialists are pondering on the heels of an article in Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton presenting whistleblower testimony suggesting that the three dead prisoners likely suffered particularly abusive interrogations in a remote corner of the base in the hours before they died, and their deaths were then passed off as suicides by the Bush Administration.
Horton presents new evidence from then-Sergeant Joe Hickman, a whistleblower formerly stationed in Guantánamo, that the three dead prisoners were taken to a remote corner of the base in the hours before they died. There they were tortured, GITMO officials came up with the suicide cover, and the Bush Administration capitalized on the panic by ordering further abuse of prisoners, and by spreading self-serving and poisonous lies about the dead men, adding to their families’ distress.
Horton says that President Obama’s Justice Department has refused to fully investigate the incident.
Clara Gutteridge, who is a secret prisons investigator for the London-based legal advocacy group Reprieve, said, "Scott Horton’s investigation indicates that, as usual, Guantánamo’s traumatised prisoners are telling the truth about their treatment. According to our clients, in addition to the secret CIA facility -- and another house on the base where some prisoners were taken to be held in solitary confinement -- there was also a black site run by US marines on Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. It was located outside the main prison, and was known amongst the prisoners as a place where people were taken to be 'broken.' When will these prisoner’s testimonies finally be taken seriously? And when will the perpetrators of these terrible crimes finally face justice?"
George Brent Mickum IV, an attorney who is currently handling a number of Guantanamo cases, told IPS, “There have been 100 deaths of detainees since 2006. Thirty-six of these have been declared homicides. Only one case has ever been prosecuted. The probable reason: The CIA is responsible for these deaths."
According to the US Navy, Gitmo detainees Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani were found hanged in their cells on June 9. 2006. The US military initially described their deaths as "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States, before finally declaring that the deaths were suicides that the inmates coordinated among themselves.
But a report from Seton Hall University Law School, released last fall, cast
doubt on almost every element of the US military's story. It questioned, for
example, how it would have been possible for the three detainees to have stuffed rags down their throats and then, while choking, managed to raise themselves up to a noose and hang themselves.
The report stated: “There is no explanation of how each of the detainees, much less all three, could have done the following: braided a noose by tearing up his sheets and/or clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear to the guards he was asleep in his cell, hung sheets to block vision into the cell—a violation of Standard Operating Procedures, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling, climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation, hanged until dead and hung for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards.”
Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman told Harper's magazine that he was made aware of the existence of a secret detention center at Guantanamo, nicknamed by some of the guards "Camp No," because "No, it doesn't exist."
According to Hickman, it was generally believed among camp guards that the facility was used by the CIA.
Hickman also said there was a van on site, referred to as the "paddy wagon,"
which was allowed to come in and out of the main detention area without going through the usual inspection. On the night of the three detainees' deaths, Hickman says he saw the paddy wagon leave the area where the three were being detained and head off in the direction of Camp No. The paddy wagon, which can carry only one prisoner at a time in a cage in the back, reportedly made the trip three times.
Hickman says he saw the paddy wagon return and go directly to the medical
center. Shortly after, a senior non-commissioned officer, whose name Hickman didn't know, ordered him to convey a code word to a petty officer. When he did, the petty officer ran off in a panic.
Both Hickman and Specialist Tony Davila told Harper's that they had been told, initially, that three men died as a result of having rags stuffed down their throats. And in a truly strange turn of events, the whistleblowers say that -- even though by the next morning it had become "common knowledge" that the men had died of suicide by stuffing rags down their own throats -- the camp commander, Col. Michael Bumgarner, told the guards that the media would "report something different."
According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags.
But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Bumgarner has not responded to requests for comment.)
Scott Horton of Harper's reports: "The presence of a black site at Guantánamo has long been a subject of speculation among lawyers and human-rights activists, and the experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guantánamo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who
died on June 9 were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths
resulted from the grueling techniques the Justice Department had approved for the agency’s use—or from other tortures lacking that sanction."
Two of the dead prisoners were plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of the deceased and their families, Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld.
CCR Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, lead counsel in the civil case surrounding the deaths, which charges the government and 24 federal officials with responsibility for the abuse and wrongful death of the deceased, said, "President Obama’s Department of Justice has tried to keep our case out of the courts, beyond the reach of the legal system and any oversight or accountability. It is critical that the full story of how our clients died and who was responsible be brought to light in open court before an impartial judge. Serious gaps and questions remain, more than three years after the deaths."
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
UK Government Relents in Torture Document Release
By William Fisher
After months of denial, the British government has agreed to release secret documents that lawyers say could prove that MI5 agents were present during the CIA’s torture of a British resident held by the US government for eight years.
Shaker Aamer, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, claims he was tortured during his detention in Afghanistan and that Britain was complicit in that torture by sending agents to interview him. He says British intelligence agents were present during some of his torture.
Aamer’s lawyers went to the High Court in London to force the release of documents that they believe will help prove his case against the UK Government.
Aamer wants access to the British intelligence documents because he thinks they will help him in his fight to get out of Guantanamo.
The British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has issued repeated denials that Britain engages in or condones torture.
Aamer, a 41-year-old citizen of Saudi Arabia, was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo for close to eight years. Married to a Briton, he is considered a British resident and has indefinite leave to stay in the UK.
After resisting for four months, the British Government last week suddenly agreed to surrender the secret documents to Aamer's security-cleared lawyer in the US. Aamer says his confessions were made under duress. The US claims he is a terror suspect but has not charged him with any offence.
Previously, the Government asserted that full disclosure could jeopardize the UK security services and intelligence sharing with the US.
Aamer’s American lawyer, George Brent Mickum, IV, said his client had filed a habeas corpus petition in 2007, which was stayed by US government appeal. He was charged with being Osama bin Laden’s translator.
But Aamer was cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007.
Mickum told IPS he might ask for a second hearing on the habeas petition but “I don’t actually know what my client has been charged with.” He said the reason is that, after Aamer’s case had its annual review, the government could have added charges or dismissed all the original charges, and we wouldn’t know about it.” The US government claims it is not obligated to inform prisoners or their attorneys.
Asked about the government’s rationale for continuing to detain a person already cleared for release, Mickum speculated that the US “finds it impossible to admit a mistake. ” He added, “The government will go to great lengths to keep torture out of the public eye.”
The UK Foreign Office has made two requests to the US for Aamer’s release, including one recent request from Foreign Secretary David Miliband. But Aamer's British lawyer told the High Court that the government’s U-turn showed the Government had not "done all it could" to secure his release.
Aamer has made a series of allegations that MI5 officers were present during the torture he suffered while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. Among other things, the 42-year-old has claimed that he was denied sleep for nine days, beaten regularly and threatened with further torture.
He has said: “One of them - a British MI5 agent - was standing and they started talking to me in different languages: English, French, Arabic and shouting. I felt someone grab my head and start beating my head into the back wall so hard that my head was bouncing. They were shouting that they would kill me or I would die.”
Aamer has written of his imprisonment in Afghanistan, “Once after a few days of sleep deprivation they took me to the interrogation room and the intelligence team starting coming one after another and the room was full, up to ten or more. One of them, a British MI5 agent, was standing and they started talking to me in different languages—English, French, Arabic—and shouting. I started shouting with them and after that I do not know what happened. All I know is that I felt someone grab my head and start beating my head into the back wall—so hard that my head was bouncing. And they were shouting that they would kill me or I would die. After this, they left the room and told to think and tell them the truth or I would die. I was threatened with rendition to Egypt, the Northern Alliance, Israel and/or Jordan to be tortured. I was very scared.”
He alleges that on another occasion he was visited by an MI5 agent called 'John' who told him there was nothing he could do to help him. Aamer says he saw another man and a female British agent calling herself Sally who asked more questions.
The Government is currently fighting a separate legal fight to avoid revealing information that is alleged to prove that MI5 knew about and profited from the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed. Mohamed, also a British resident, was released from Guantanamo in 2009 without charge after years of imprisonment.
In a related development, a group of British MPs is suing the CIA to get it to release information about alleged UK involvement in the secret rendition of terror suspects.
The group -- led by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie -- has filed a complaint in a district court in Washington DC seeking a judicial review of the CIA's failure to disclose information.
They are demanding to see documents on extraordinary rendition, secret detention and the coercive interrogation of suspected terrorists.
The MPs, from the All-Party Parliamentary Group, decided to launch what they believe is a landmark legal action after Freedom of Information requests in the US and UK were rejected or where information released was incomplete or heavily redacted.
Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative MP who is a member of the group said, "The current drip-drip of information on rendition is hugely damaging. To achieve closure on rendition we need disclosure. "It is in everyone's interests that the truth on the US rendition program comes to light."
The information requests were made to the CIA, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and UK government departments. It is thought to be the first time the same information has been requested in different jurisdictions under their respective freedom of information legislation.
The group has also written to President Obama calling on him to publish secret documents that allegedly contain evidence of US and British complicity in torture.
The group wants to know about :
Agreements between the US and UK on rendition - the moving of terrorist suspects from one country to another for interrogation and possible imprisonment without legal protection.
Agreements between the US and other governments on rendition and UK participation and support of US rendition and secret detention programs.
The use of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, to facilitate rendition, including the identity of two suspects rendered through its airspace, where they were traveling from and their destination.
Alleged terror plots, specific detainees and the transfer of detainees from UK control to US control.
The group plans to make similar requests to Australian government departments.
After months of denial, the British government has agreed to release secret documents that lawyers say could prove that MI5 agents were present during the CIA’s torture of a British resident held by the US government for eight years.
Shaker Aamer, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, claims he was tortured during his detention in Afghanistan and that Britain was complicit in that torture by sending agents to interview him. He says British intelligence agents were present during some of his torture.
Aamer’s lawyers went to the High Court in London to force the release of documents that they believe will help prove his case against the UK Government.
Aamer wants access to the British intelligence documents because he thinks they will help him in his fight to get out of Guantanamo.
The British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has issued repeated denials that Britain engages in or condones torture.
Aamer, a 41-year-old citizen of Saudi Arabia, was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo for close to eight years. Married to a Briton, he is considered a British resident and has indefinite leave to stay in the UK.
After resisting for four months, the British Government last week suddenly agreed to surrender the secret documents to Aamer's security-cleared lawyer in the US. Aamer says his confessions were made under duress. The US claims he is a terror suspect but has not charged him with any offence.
Previously, the Government asserted that full disclosure could jeopardize the UK security services and intelligence sharing with the US.
Aamer’s American lawyer, George Brent Mickum, IV, said his client had filed a habeas corpus petition in 2007, which was stayed by US government appeal. He was charged with being Osama bin Laden’s translator.
But Aamer was cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007.
Mickum told IPS he might ask for a second hearing on the habeas petition but “I don’t actually know what my client has been charged with.” He said the reason is that, after Aamer’s case had its annual review, the government could have added charges or dismissed all the original charges, and we wouldn’t know about it.” The US government claims it is not obligated to inform prisoners or their attorneys.
Asked about the government’s rationale for continuing to detain a person already cleared for release, Mickum speculated that the US “finds it impossible to admit a mistake. ” He added, “The government will go to great lengths to keep torture out of the public eye.”
The UK Foreign Office has made two requests to the US for Aamer’s release, including one recent request from Foreign Secretary David Miliband. But Aamer's British lawyer told the High Court that the government’s U-turn showed the Government had not "done all it could" to secure his release.
Aamer has made a series of allegations that MI5 officers were present during the torture he suffered while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. Among other things, the 42-year-old has claimed that he was denied sleep for nine days, beaten regularly and threatened with further torture.
He has said: “One of them - a British MI5 agent - was standing and they started talking to me in different languages: English, French, Arabic and shouting. I felt someone grab my head and start beating my head into the back wall so hard that my head was bouncing. They were shouting that they would kill me or I would die.”
Aamer has written of his imprisonment in Afghanistan, “Once after a few days of sleep deprivation they took me to the interrogation room and the intelligence team starting coming one after another and the room was full, up to ten or more. One of them, a British MI5 agent, was standing and they started talking to me in different languages—English, French, Arabic—and shouting. I started shouting with them and after that I do not know what happened. All I know is that I felt someone grab my head and start beating my head into the back wall—so hard that my head was bouncing. And they were shouting that they would kill me or I would die. After this, they left the room and told to think and tell them the truth or I would die. I was threatened with rendition to Egypt, the Northern Alliance, Israel and/or Jordan to be tortured. I was very scared.”
He alleges that on another occasion he was visited by an MI5 agent called 'John' who told him there was nothing he could do to help him. Aamer says he saw another man and a female British agent calling herself Sally who asked more questions.
The Government is currently fighting a separate legal fight to avoid revealing information that is alleged to prove that MI5 knew about and profited from the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed. Mohamed, also a British resident, was released from Guantanamo in 2009 without charge after years of imprisonment.
In a related development, a group of British MPs is suing the CIA to get it to release information about alleged UK involvement in the secret rendition of terror suspects.
The group -- led by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie -- has filed a complaint in a district court in Washington DC seeking a judicial review of the CIA's failure to disclose information.
They are demanding to see documents on extraordinary rendition, secret detention and the coercive interrogation of suspected terrorists.
The MPs, from the All-Party Parliamentary Group, decided to launch what they believe is a landmark legal action after Freedom of Information requests in the US and UK were rejected or where information released was incomplete or heavily redacted.
Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative MP who is a member of the group said, "The current drip-drip of information on rendition is hugely damaging. To achieve closure on rendition we need disclosure. "It is in everyone's interests that the truth on the US rendition program comes to light."
The information requests were made to the CIA, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and UK government departments. It is thought to be the first time the same information has been requested in different jurisdictions under their respective freedom of information legislation.
The group has also written to President Obama calling on him to publish secret documents that allegedly contain evidence of US and British complicity in torture.
The group wants to know about :
Agreements between the US and UK on rendition - the moving of terrorist suspects from one country to another for interrogation and possible imprisonment without legal protection.
Agreements between the US and other governments on rendition and UK participation and support of US rendition and secret detention programs.
The use of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, to facilitate rendition, including the identity of two suspects rendered through its airspace, where they were traveling from and their destination.
Alleged terror plots, specific detainees and the transfer of detainees from UK control to US control.
The group plans to make similar requests to Australian government departments.
Accountability Questions After Revelations of Immigrant Deaths
By William Fisher
In the treatment of thousands of immigrants held in government detention, the actions of the Obama administration are falling far short of its promises of transparency and accountability.
That is the view of David M. Shapiro, Staff Counsel with the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He spoke with Truthout on the heels of a New York Times exposé of the secrecy surrounding the deaths of 107 immigrants while in detention.
The Times article by Nina Bernstein, which was published last week, alleged that officials of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), fearful of media scrutiny, conspired to conceal the deaths of a number of detained immigrants.
Bernstein wrote that “…it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.”
The documents were obtained by The Times and the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. They relate to most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by ICE October 2003, when the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security. The documents also revealed ten deaths in detention that had never been disclosed by the government.
Attorney Shapiro told Truthout that two issues play a major role in creating an environment in which death and deprivation in detention become inevitable. The first issue is the absence of any enforceable standards for the maze of 400 federal, municipal, county and private jails used by ICE to house immigrants. The second issue is a medical care regimen that allows the government such wide discretion that it can deny urgent care, including biopsies for suspected cancers and treatment of heart conditions.
The Obama administration has declined to produce system-wide enforceable standards for the prisons its uses to house immigrants. Shapiro declined to speculate on the administration’s rationale, but others have said that it is based on the wide differences between the various types of facilities used by the government. It has also failed to produce a medical care program that is binding on ICE personnel and its contractors. A number of the reported deaths in detention have been caused by ICE’s failure to provide timely medical interventions in emergency situations. Some observers believe that the rationale for deciding against providing “long term” medical care – for example, biopsies – is that ICE detention is largely short-term.
Yet ICE and its DHS parent department have acknowledged that many immigrants are held in custody for years. ICE has also admitted many of the deficiencies in its detention system and have vowed to initiate reforms. But Shapiro contends that the most recent documents obtained by the ACLU show that ICE’s culture of secrecy has not changed.
Bernstein’s New York Times article says that the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to “cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.”
The article details a litany of abuses. For example:
“As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told The Times that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity.”
“In another case that year, investigators from the agency’s Office of
Professional Responsibility concluded that unbearable, untreated pain had been a significant factor in the suicide of a 22-year-old detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, and that the medical unit was so poorly run that other detainees were at risk.”
“The investigation found that jail medical personnel had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee, a Salvadoran named Nery Romero, had been given Motrin. The fake entry was easy to detect: When the drug was supposedly administered, Mr. Romero was already dead.”
“Yet those findings were never disclosed to the public or to Mr. Romero’s
relatives on Long Island, who had accused the jail of abruptly depriving him of his prescription painkiller for a broken leg. And an agency supervisor wrote that because other jails were ‘finicky’ about accepting detainees with known medical problems like Mr. Romero’s, such people would continue to be placed at the Bergen jail as ‘a last resort’.”
The Times article describes a number of telephone conference calls among ICE officials in which they discussed one of the deaths and how to avoid public and media attention. It says, “Among the participants in the conferences was Nina Dozoretz, a longtime manager in the agency’s Division of Immigration Health Services who had won an award for cutting detainee health care costs. Later she was vice president of the Nakamoto Group, a company hired by the Bush administration to monitor detention. The Obama administration recently rehired her to lead its overhaul of detainee health care.”
Detainees include immigrants who have applied for asylum in the U.S. and others awaiting hearings before being deported. The number of people detained has soared to more than 400,000 a year.
As of today, there are no legally enforceable rules governing immigration detention, despite an order by a federal judge to create such rules. The Obama administration refused the judge’s order, which followed a petition filed in court by former detainees. Instead, ICE chose to follow an inspection system instituted during the administration of George W. Bush. That system relies in part on private contractors. Judge Denny Chin ruled that the agency’s failure to respond to the plaintiffs’ petition for two and a half years was unreasonable.
DHS contended that rule-making would be ”laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than the review process now in place. It said its current inspection system would “provide adequately for both quality control and accountability.”
According to Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs, the government’s decision “disregards the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees.” She claims that the absence of enforceable rules is the major cause of problems of mistreatment and medical neglect. “The department has demonstrated a disturbing commitment to policies that have cost dozens of lives,” she said.
ICE inherited its lack of transparency and accountability from its past, when it was called the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). For decades, INS was a dreaded word among immigrants. Its detention system then was essentially the one it operates today, though on a smaller scale. It was generally thought of as America’s most secretive prison system.
ICE has committed many of the same kinds of mistakes that contributed to INS’s poor reputation. Many of these mistakes have involved erroneous deportations. For example:
Duarnis Perez, a native of the Dominican Republic, became a U.S. citizen at 15 when his mother was naturalized. But he didn't know that meant he was also a citizen. He thought he was an illegal immigrant, and so did the authorities. He was deported and subsequently arrested trying to sneak back into the U.S. from Canada. Perez spent almost five years in prison for unlawful reentry. But when he was released in 2004, an ICE official reviewed his file and told him he had been a citizen all along.
The Perez case became one of a growing chamber of horrors coming under increasing scrutiny by Congress, the Courts, and civil liberties advocates.
ICE officials downplay the problem. "ICE does not detain United States citizens," said spokesman Richard Rocha, adding that agents thoroughly investigate people's claims of citizenship. "ICE only processes an individual for removal when all available facts indicate that the person is an alien," he said.
Another case involved Majed Chehade, a 64-year old German citizen whose wife, three children, and grandson are U.S. citizens. Chehade owns a home in Massachusetts and is the export director of a German manufacturing company. He was on his way to visit his daughter in December, 2006, when he was detained at Las Vegas Airport. He was taken to a local jail, where he was subjected to strip and visual cavity searches, denied access to medical care and his prescription medications, and told that if he wanted to return to the U.S., he would have to spy on behalf of the government.
In that case, a federal judge rejected the government's request to have the case dismissed, finding that strip searches of immigrants arriving in the country, including those housed at local detention facilities, are constitutional only if supported by reasonable suspicion. The court further held that the immigration agents' actions could be considered "extreme and outrageous conduct" and allowed an inquiry into the legality of the government's attempt to conscript a foreign national to spy to move forward.
Civil liberties organizations say these are not aberrations or isolated cases. They contend that they show a clear pattern of bureaucratic inefficiency, a lack of respect for the law, and the absence of clear guidelines for immigration officers.
A Washington Post investigation concluded that the system was “a hidden world of flawed medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost medical files and dangerous staff shortages.”
Last February, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed Dora Schriro as a Special Advisor on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Detention and Removal. The new position was created to focus exclusively on the significant growth in immigration detention over the last five years, and to focus on the arrest priorities at ICE.
In an April letter to Human Rights First, a legal advocacy group, Schriro said she was “dedicating these first months to the close examination of issues impacting detention and removal including arrest priorities, detention decisions and practices, and the utilization of alternatives to detention.”
But rights groups say little was heard from her following her letter, and she later resigned to accept a post with the New York City police department.
The ACLU has filed a public records request asking the Obama administration to make public changes it is making to a federal immigration enforcement program that allows local police to arrest and process illegal immigrants.
And Amnesty International (AI) has recommended that “Detention should only be used in extraordinary circumstances, be justified in each individual case and be subject to judicial review.” Nevertheless, AI says that in the U.S., immigrants can be detained for months or years without a judicial warrant.
The detention and deportation issue is further complicated by immigration judges, many of who were political appointees during the George W. Bush administration and who have little or no experience in immigration law.
Most immigrants who appeal their cases to the Board of Immigration Appeals can not afford lawyers, though reliable data concludes that legal representation significantly increases their chances of winning, especially in cases where the immigrant is seeking asylum in the U.S.
Addressing that issue, Attorney General Eric Holder has recently reversed a Bush-era order that said immigrants facing deportation do not have an automatic right to an effective lawyer. He said the government would appoint lawyers for immigrants contesting their deportation.
Contrary to widespread public misunderstanding, immigration offenses are civil, not criminal, matters.
ICE practices are currently attracting some attention in Congress. Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, a California Democrat – and the first woman of Mexican ancestry to be elected to the U.S. Congress -- has introduced legislation to help to ensure that detainees, especially unaccompanied children, are treated humanely, receive access to legal representation and obtain needed medical care.”
In the treatment of thousands of immigrants held in government detention, the actions of the Obama administration are falling far short of its promises of transparency and accountability.
That is the view of David M. Shapiro, Staff Counsel with the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He spoke with Truthout on the heels of a New York Times exposé of the secrecy surrounding the deaths of 107 immigrants while in detention.
The Times article by Nina Bernstein, which was published last week, alleged that officials of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), fearful of media scrutiny, conspired to conceal the deaths of a number of detained immigrants.
Bernstein wrote that “…it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.”
The documents were obtained by The Times and the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. They relate to most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by ICE October 2003, when the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security. The documents also revealed ten deaths in detention that had never been disclosed by the government.
Attorney Shapiro told Truthout that two issues play a major role in creating an environment in which death and deprivation in detention become inevitable. The first issue is the absence of any enforceable standards for the maze of 400 federal, municipal, county and private jails used by ICE to house immigrants. The second issue is a medical care regimen that allows the government such wide discretion that it can deny urgent care, including biopsies for suspected cancers and treatment of heart conditions.
The Obama administration has declined to produce system-wide enforceable standards for the prisons its uses to house immigrants. Shapiro declined to speculate on the administration’s rationale, but others have said that it is based on the wide differences between the various types of facilities used by the government. It has also failed to produce a medical care program that is binding on ICE personnel and its contractors. A number of the reported deaths in detention have been caused by ICE’s failure to provide timely medical interventions in emergency situations. Some observers believe that the rationale for deciding against providing “long term” medical care – for example, biopsies – is that ICE detention is largely short-term.
Yet ICE and its DHS parent department have acknowledged that many immigrants are held in custody for years. ICE has also admitted many of the deficiencies in its detention system and have vowed to initiate reforms. But Shapiro contends that the most recent documents obtained by the ACLU show that ICE’s culture of secrecy has not changed.
Bernstein’s New York Times article says that the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to “cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.”
The article details a litany of abuses. For example:
“As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told The Times that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity.”
“In another case that year, investigators from the agency’s Office of
Professional Responsibility concluded that unbearable, untreated pain had been a significant factor in the suicide of a 22-year-old detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, and that the medical unit was so poorly run that other detainees were at risk.”
“The investigation found that jail medical personnel had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee, a Salvadoran named Nery Romero, had been given Motrin. The fake entry was easy to detect: When the drug was supposedly administered, Mr. Romero was already dead.”
“Yet those findings were never disclosed to the public or to Mr. Romero’s
relatives on Long Island, who had accused the jail of abruptly depriving him of his prescription painkiller for a broken leg. And an agency supervisor wrote that because other jails were ‘finicky’ about accepting detainees with known medical problems like Mr. Romero’s, such people would continue to be placed at the Bergen jail as ‘a last resort’.”
The Times article describes a number of telephone conference calls among ICE officials in which they discussed one of the deaths and how to avoid public and media attention. It says, “Among the participants in the conferences was Nina Dozoretz, a longtime manager in the agency’s Division of Immigration Health Services who had won an award for cutting detainee health care costs. Later she was vice president of the Nakamoto Group, a company hired by the Bush administration to monitor detention. The Obama administration recently rehired her to lead its overhaul of detainee health care.”
Detainees include immigrants who have applied for asylum in the U.S. and others awaiting hearings before being deported. The number of people detained has soared to more than 400,000 a year.
As of today, there are no legally enforceable rules governing immigration detention, despite an order by a federal judge to create such rules. The Obama administration refused the judge’s order, which followed a petition filed in court by former detainees. Instead, ICE chose to follow an inspection system instituted during the administration of George W. Bush. That system relies in part on private contractors. Judge Denny Chin ruled that the agency’s failure to respond to the plaintiffs’ petition for two and a half years was unreasonable.
DHS contended that rule-making would be ”laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than the review process now in place. It said its current inspection system would “provide adequately for both quality control and accountability.”
According to Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs, the government’s decision “disregards the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees.” She claims that the absence of enforceable rules is the major cause of problems of mistreatment and medical neglect. “The department has demonstrated a disturbing commitment to policies that have cost dozens of lives,” she said.
ICE inherited its lack of transparency and accountability from its past, when it was called the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). For decades, INS was a dreaded word among immigrants. Its detention system then was essentially the one it operates today, though on a smaller scale. It was generally thought of as America’s most secretive prison system.
ICE has committed many of the same kinds of mistakes that contributed to INS’s poor reputation. Many of these mistakes have involved erroneous deportations. For example:
Duarnis Perez, a native of the Dominican Republic, became a U.S. citizen at 15 when his mother was naturalized. But he didn't know that meant he was also a citizen. He thought he was an illegal immigrant, and so did the authorities. He was deported and subsequently arrested trying to sneak back into the U.S. from Canada. Perez spent almost five years in prison for unlawful reentry. But when he was released in 2004, an ICE official reviewed his file and told him he had been a citizen all along.
The Perez case became one of a growing chamber of horrors coming under increasing scrutiny by Congress, the Courts, and civil liberties advocates.
ICE officials downplay the problem. "ICE does not detain United States citizens," said spokesman Richard Rocha, adding that agents thoroughly investigate people's claims of citizenship. "ICE only processes an individual for removal when all available facts indicate that the person is an alien," he said.
Another case involved Majed Chehade, a 64-year old German citizen whose wife, three children, and grandson are U.S. citizens. Chehade owns a home in Massachusetts and is the export director of a German manufacturing company. He was on his way to visit his daughter in December, 2006, when he was detained at Las Vegas Airport. He was taken to a local jail, where he was subjected to strip and visual cavity searches, denied access to medical care and his prescription medications, and told that if he wanted to return to the U.S., he would have to spy on behalf of the government.
In that case, a federal judge rejected the government's request to have the case dismissed, finding that strip searches of immigrants arriving in the country, including those housed at local detention facilities, are constitutional only if supported by reasonable suspicion. The court further held that the immigration agents' actions could be considered "extreme and outrageous conduct" and allowed an inquiry into the legality of the government's attempt to conscript a foreign national to spy to move forward.
Civil liberties organizations say these are not aberrations or isolated cases. They contend that they show a clear pattern of bureaucratic inefficiency, a lack of respect for the law, and the absence of clear guidelines for immigration officers.
A Washington Post investigation concluded that the system was “a hidden world of flawed medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost medical files and dangerous staff shortages.”
Last February, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed Dora Schriro as a Special Advisor on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Detention and Removal. The new position was created to focus exclusively on the significant growth in immigration detention over the last five years, and to focus on the arrest priorities at ICE.
In an April letter to Human Rights First, a legal advocacy group, Schriro said she was “dedicating these first months to the close examination of issues impacting detention and removal including arrest priorities, detention decisions and practices, and the utilization of alternatives to detention.”
But rights groups say little was heard from her following her letter, and she later resigned to accept a post with the New York City police department.
The ACLU has filed a public records request asking the Obama administration to make public changes it is making to a federal immigration enforcement program that allows local police to arrest and process illegal immigrants.
And Amnesty International (AI) has recommended that “Detention should only be used in extraordinary circumstances, be justified in each individual case and be subject to judicial review.” Nevertheless, AI says that in the U.S., immigrants can be detained for months or years without a judicial warrant.
The detention and deportation issue is further complicated by immigration judges, many of who were political appointees during the George W. Bush administration and who have little or no experience in immigration law.
Most immigrants who appeal their cases to the Board of Immigration Appeals can not afford lawyers, though reliable data concludes that legal representation significantly increases their chances of winning, especially in cases where the immigrant is seeking asylum in the U.S.
Addressing that issue, Attorney General Eric Holder has recently reversed a Bush-era order that said immigrants facing deportation do not have an automatic right to an effective lawyer. He said the government would appoint lawyers for immigrants contesting their deportation.
Contrary to widespread public misunderstanding, immigration offenses are civil, not criminal, matters.
ICE practices are currently attracting some attention in Congress. Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, a California Democrat – and the first woman of Mexican ancestry to be elected to the U.S. Congress -- has introduced legislation to help to ensure that detainees, especially unaccompanied children, are treated humanely, receive access to legal representation and obtain needed medical care.”
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Happy Birthday, GITMO
By William Fisher
As the world yesterday marked the beginning of the ninth year of detention at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a leading legal advocacy group filed suit against the Library of Congress for firing Guantanamo’s former chief prosecutor for writing articles criticizing the use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists.
Col. Morris Davis, who was employed at Library's Congressional Research Service (CRS), resigned as the military commissions' chief prosecutor in October 2007, and became an outspoken critic of the commissions, including writing articles, giving speeches, and testifying before Congress that the system is fundamentally flawed.
In the lawsuit, the brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that Davis was fired because he wrote articles critical of the commissions. The ACLU contends that the discharge violates Davis's rights of free speech and due process.
The ACLU lawsuit came as advocacy groups in several parts of the world conducted events to mark the eighth anniversary of the first detainees arriving for imprisonment without charge or trial at Guantánamo. The first batch of 20 prisoners arrived in Cuba in January 2002, after a 20-hour flight from Afghanistan, to be housed in what would grow into the controversial Guántanamo Bay detention center.
In Washington, human rights advocates and lawyers of the detained men held a rally, a march, and a public briefing to outline current issues related to Guántanamo. They demanded that the president make good on his pledge to close the prison, and declared their opposition to any plan for holding prisoners without charge or trial in the U.S.
Formerly detained men and detainee families addressed President Obama via a combination of video, audio, and written letters.
Lakhdar Boumediene called in to the briefing at the National Press Club from his home in France, and Omar Deghayes joined the briefing from his home in the United Kingdom. Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case of 2008, Boumediene v. Bush, in which the Court affirmed that Guantànamo detainees have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. federal courts. He was released on May 15, 2009. As a child, Omar Deghayes settled with his family in the U.K. as a refugee from Libia. Picked up in Pakistan and sent to Bagram and Guantánamo, he was blinded in one eye at the base in 2004. Deghayes was released from Guantanamo to the U.K. on December 19, 2007.
Detainee lawyers and human rights activists from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) spoke of “Obama’s Guantánamo,” addressing issues including “the continued and worsening lack of transparency, resettlement for men who cannot return to their home countries, the threat of indefinite detention schemes in the U.S., and the halt of transfers to Yemen and related responses to the recent terrorism attempt.”
CCR attorney Shayana Kadidal told IPS, “Right now, more than half of the detainees at Guantanamo – over 130 of the 198 left – are cleared for release, having spent eight years in detention. The most helpful thing President Obama can say now about the prison is simply that it is full of men who never should have been there in the first place.”
He said failure to admit error was “a hallmark of the Bush administration,” adding, “Obama’s failure to announce what everyone elsewhere in the world already understands -- that men are wrongfully detained at Gitmo – has allowed his opponents to claim that the men left are “suspected terrorists” representing the ‘hard core’ of the original population. Those claims are absurd but they serve to create resistance to resettling (at home and abroad) detainees who need asylum from home countries that torture, to sending innocent men back to Yemen because of the wrongful acts of others in that country, and to bringing the cases of the few who will be prosecuted into the federal courts for that purpose.”
“Obama’s failure to assert leadership by countering the other side’s misinformation and clearly saying that we have made mistakes in detaining men at Guantanamo has allowed the other side to spread misinformation and set the agenda, and has done incalculable damage to his efforts to close Guantanamo,” he declared.
Frida Berrigan, a Brooklyn, NY organizer with a group known as Witness Against Torture (WAT), said, “I do not relish the idea of fasting. But, President Obama’s promises of change have atrophied into empty rhetoric. Our Fast and Vigil for Justice is a small attempt to answer the ultimate question Guantánamo poses: how do we conquer fear and remain human?”
Earlier, WAT members held a rally in front of the White House to protest the lack of progress toward justice for detainees since Obama took office and demanded “true change” from the administration.
The ACLU lawsuit against on behalf Col. Morris Davis accuses the Library of Congress of violating Davis's rights of free speech and due process. The complaint says, “Col. Davis now brings this Complaint for violation of his First and Fifth Amendment rights, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, including reinstatement to his Assistant Director position, and damages.”
Aden Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, told IPS, "Col. Davis has a right to inform the public about his personal views on these issues of immense public concern, and the public has a First Amendment right to hear those opinions. The Library's actions in firing him for expressing those views in public violate the First Amendment and should not be permitted."
The ACLU wrote to the Library of Congress in December seeking Davis’s reinstatement. The Library denied the request.
Col. Davis, a United States Air Force officer and lawyer, served as the third Chief Prosecutor in the Guántanamo military commissions. He resigned from the position and retired from active duty in October 2008.
In resigning, Morris that the trials were “rigged from the start.” He charged that the process had been manipulated by Bush Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.
Davis submitted his resignation on October 4, 2007, just hours after he was informed that Haynes had been put above him in the commissions' chain of command. "Everyone has opinions," Davis says. "But when he was put above me, his opinions became orders."
On GITMO’s’eighth anniversary, 198 prisoners are still being held there. President Obama has released 42 men since taking office on January 20, 2009, but has already admitted that he will miss his self-imposed deadline for the prison's closure on January 22.
As the world yesterday marked the beginning of the ninth year of detention at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a leading legal advocacy group filed suit against the Library of Congress for firing Guantanamo’s former chief prosecutor for writing articles criticizing the use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists.
Col. Morris Davis, who was employed at Library's Congressional Research Service (CRS), resigned as the military commissions' chief prosecutor in October 2007, and became an outspoken critic of the commissions, including writing articles, giving speeches, and testifying before Congress that the system is fundamentally flawed.
In the lawsuit, the brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that Davis was fired because he wrote articles critical of the commissions. The ACLU contends that the discharge violates Davis's rights of free speech and due process.
The ACLU lawsuit came as advocacy groups in several parts of the world conducted events to mark the eighth anniversary of the first detainees arriving for imprisonment without charge or trial at Guantánamo. The first batch of 20 prisoners arrived in Cuba in January 2002, after a 20-hour flight from Afghanistan, to be housed in what would grow into the controversial Guántanamo Bay detention center.
In Washington, human rights advocates and lawyers of the detained men held a rally, a march, and a public briefing to outline current issues related to Guántanamo. They demanded that the president make good on his pledge to close the prison, and declared their opposition to any plan for holding prisoners without charge or trial in the U.S.
Formerly detained men and detainee families addressed President Obama via a combination of video, audio, and written letters.
Lakhdar Boumediene called in to the briefing at the National Press Club from his home in France, and Omar Deghayes joined the briefing from his home in the United Kingdom. Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case of 2008, Boumediene v. Bush, in which the Court affirmed that Guantànamo detainees have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. federal courts. He was released on May 15, 2009. As a child, Omar Deghayes settled with his family in the U.K. as a refugee from Libia. Picked up in Pakistan and sent to Bagram and Guantánamo, he was blinded in one eye at the base in 2004. Deghayes was released from Guantanamo to the U.K. on December 19, 2007.
Detainee lawyers and human rights activists from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) spoke of “Obama’s Guantánamo,” addressing issues including “the continued and worsening lack of transparency, resettlement for men who cannot return to their home countries, the threat of indefinite detention schemes in the U.S., and the halt of transfers to Yemen and related responses to the recent terrorism attempt.”
CCR attorney Shayana Kadidal told IPS, “Right now, more than half of the detainees at Guantanamo – over 130 of the 198 left – are cleared for release, having spent eight years in detention. The most helpful thing President Obama can say now about the prison is simply that it is full of men who never should have been there in the first place.”
He said failure to admit error was “a hallmark of the Bush administration,” adding, “Obama’s failure to announce what everyone elsewhere in the world already understands -- that men are wrongfully detained at Gitmo – has allowed his opponents to claim that the men left are “suspected terrorists” representing the ‘hard core’ of the original population. Those claims are absurd but they serve to create resistance to resettling (at home and abroad) detainees who need asylum from home countries that torture, to sending innocent men back to Yemen because of the wrongful acts of others in that country, and to bringing the cases of the few who will be prosecuted into the federal courts for that purpose.”
“Obama’s failure to assert leadership by countering the other side’s misinformation and clearly saying that we have made mistakes in detaining men at Guantanamo has allowed the other side to spread misinformation and set the agenda, and has done incalculable damage to his efforts to close Guantanamo,” he declared.
Frida Berrigan, a Brooklyn, NY organizer with a group known as Witness Against Torture (WAT), said, “I do not relish the idea of fasting. But, President Obama’s promises of change have atrophied into empty rhetoric. Our Fast and Vigil for Justice is a small attempt to answer the ultimate question Guantánamo poses: how do we conquer fear and remain human?”
Earlier, WAT members held a rally in front of the White House to protest the lack of progress toward justice for detainees since Obama took office and demanded “true change” from the administration.
The ACLU lawsuit against on behalf Col. Morris Davis accuses the Library of Congress of violating Davis's rights of free speech and due process. The complaint says, “Col. Davis now brings this Complaint for violation of his First and Fifth Amendment rights, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, including reinstatement to his Assistant Director position, and damages.”
Aden Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, told IPS, "Col. Davis has a right to inform the public about his personal views on these issues of immense public concern, and the public has a First Amendment right to hear those opinions. The Library's actions in firing him for expressing those views in public violate the First Amendment and should not be permitted."
The ACLU wrote to the Library of Congress in December seeking Davis’s reinstatement. The Library denied the request.
Col. Davis, a United States Air Force officer and lawyer, served as the third Chief Prosecutor in the Guántanamo military commissions. He resigned from the position and retired from active duty in October 2008.
In resigning, Morris that the trials were “rigged from the start.” He charged that the process had been manipulated by Bush Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.
Davis submitted his resignation on October 4, 2007, just hours after he was informed that Haynes had been put above him in the commissions' chain of command. "Everyone has opinions," Davis says. "But when he was put above me, his opinions became orders."
On GITMO’s’eighth anniversary, 198 prisoners are still being held there. President Obama has released 42 men since taking office on January 20, 2009, but has already admitted that he will miss his self-imposed deadline for the prison's closure on January 22.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
What to do with The UnderBomber
By William Fisher
Well, the underpants bomber has now pleaded “not guilty” to a bunch of charges stemming from his unsuccessful efforts to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas day.
The not guilty stuff is a legal formality he will use to try to negotiate some kind of plea deal. If he’s not successful, he’ll be tried, found guilty and, in light of the charges against him, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Just like the ‘shoe bomber’ – Richard Reid.
But let me be permitted to wonder aloud whether this is our wisest course. And to ask readers to tell me what they think.
This notion isn’t likely to win me any popularity contests, but there might just be a better way to for us to handle Mr. Abdulmutallab. A win-win way.
I know there are lots of folks who would just like to put Abdulmutallab away forever. Lock him up and throw away the key. Then we’d never have to think about him again. That’s certainly the conventional way we handle his kinds of crimes.
But, just for a minute, let’s take a step back and consider: We don’t yet know much about this guy. We know he’s 23 years old. And we know that, based on the sound of some of his Internet writings, he has been lonely, isolated, depressed. We know he is a deeply religious Muslim, but we don’t yet know why he set out to kill us. We don’t yet know what motivated him to become a jihadi.
But we probably can assume that once he gets a prison sentence that contains the words ‘without possibility of parole,’ he’ll be an even scarier jihadi with each passing year. And attempt to turn his fellow inmates into jihadis as well.
But what would happen if we tried to give him an incentive to not be a jihadi? What if we sentenced him to, say, 20 years to life with the possibility of parole? And what if we were able to marshal the resources to really work with this guy in the slammer? Teaching him about our people, our country, our values. Could we get him to give up on jihad? Could we turn him? Could he end up like us?
Well, the prospects are probably razor-thin. The re-education of Mr. Abdulmutallab would take a considerable time. And our Bureau of Prisons would have to do a lot of outside-the-box thinking to come up with and execute a plan. But do we have a lot to lose? Wouldn’t seem so.
After all, we as a people are supposed to believe in redemption, resurrection, rehabilitation. Our prison system is always saying they too believe in these values, but they do next to nothing to make them a reality. American prisons and Corrections don’t belong in the same sentence.
I wouldn’t even venture a guess about the odds, but there’s always a chance that Mr. Abdulmutallab might just end up as a poster child for civilized behavior.
And that tantalizing possibility might just present us with a rare opportunity. Hey, you never know!
What are your thoughts, readers?
Well, the underpants bomber has now pleaded “not guilty” to a bunch of charges stemming from his unsuccessful efforts to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas day.
The not guilty stuff is a legal formality he will use to try to negotiate some kind of plea deal. If he’s not successful, he’ll be tried, found guilty and, in light of the charges against him, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Just like the ‘shoe bomber’ – Richard Reid.
But let me be permitted to wonder aloud whether this is our wisest course. And to ask readers to tell me what they think.
This notion isn’t likely to win me any popularity contests, but there might just be a better way to for us to handle Mr. Abdulmutallab. A win-win way.
I know there are lots of folks who would just like to put Abdulmutallab away forever. Lock him up and throw away the key. Then we’d never have to think about him again. That’s certainly the conventional way we handle his kinds of crimes.
But, just for a minute, let’s take a step back and consider: We don’t yet know much about this guy. We know he’s 23 years old. And we know that, based on the sound of some of his Internet writings, he has been lonely, isolated, depressed. We know he is a deeply religious Muslim, but we don’t yet know why he set out to kill us. We don’t yet know what motivated him to become a jihadi.
But we probably can assume that once he gets a prison sentence that contains the words ‘without possibility of parole,’ he’ll be an even scarier jihadi with each passing year. And attempt to turn his fellow inmates into jihadis as well.
But what would happen if we tried to give him an incentive to not be a jihadi? What if we sentenced him to, say, 20 years to life with the possibility of parole? And what if we were able to marshal the resources to really work with this guy in the slammer? Teaching him about our people, our country, our values. Could we get him to give up on jihad? Could we turn him? Could he end up like us?
Well, the prospects are probably razor-thin. The re-education of Mr. Abdulmutallab would take a considerable time. And our Bureau of Prisons would have to do a lot of outside-the-box thinking to come up with and execute a plan. But do we have a lot to lose? Wouldn’t seem so.
After all, we as a people are supposed to believe in redemption, resurrection, rehabilitation. Our prison system is always saying they too believe in these values, but they do next to nothing to make them a reality. American prisons and Corrections don’t belong in the same sentence.
I wouldn’t even venture a guess about the odds, but there’s always a chance that Mr. Abdulmutallab might just end up as a poster child for civilized behavior.
And that tantalizing possibility might just present us with a rare opportunity. Hey, you never know!
What are your thoughts, readers?
Friday, January 08, 2010
W's Influence Continues...
By William Fisher
While the unsuccessful attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas day captured the headlines and put major political roadblocks in the path of prisoner release from Guantanamo Bay, the courts – far more quietly -- continued to play a major role in influencing the detention issue.
That influence was demonstrated by two cases this week.
In Washington, D.C., a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals minced its way toward fashioning new rules to govern habeas corpus decisions brought by three prisoners at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
And a decision by three different judges of the same court affirmed the government's authority to hold people taken prisoner in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban – thus making it more difficult for detainees to challenge the basis of their detention.
On Thursday, the DC Circuit court heard oral arguments in a case known as Maqaleh v. Gates -- the first legal challenge in U.S. courts on behalf of prisoners detained at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. The case was brought by the International Justice Network (IJNetwork) on behalf of two Yemenis and one Tunisian citizen, each seized outside of Afghanistan from third countries and held without charge or trial in U.S. custody for more than six years.
Evidence suggests that each man was shuttled through U.S.-run secret prisons (“black sites”) for torture and interrogation, prior to ultimately being transferred to Bagram—itself the site of well-documented human rights violations—where they continue to be subjected to indefinite detention under sole U.S. military custody.
During the entire six-year period while he has been in U.S. custody, Maqaleh has not been permitted to see his family, and has been denied any access to lawyers or a court of law. Because he is being held virtually incommunicado, his father authorized IJNetwork to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. court seeking his release. Though his case has now been pending for over three years, the government continues to refuse to allow Maqaleh to communicate with his attorneys.
In April 2009, Judge John D. Bates ruled that Maqaleh, and two other petitioners in the case, Amin al Bakri and Redha al Najar, have a Constitutional right to petition U.S. courts for a writ of habeas corpus.
Judge Bates’s decision was based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which established that detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo had a Constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts. But before any of the Bagram detainees could have his day in court, the Obama Administration appealed Judge Bates’ decision—arguing that none of the 600 detainees at Bagram have any rights under U.S. law.
As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, the IJNetwork, has called on the Obama Administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention, and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody — including Bagram.
Though President Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo, the Department of Justice continues to defend the Bush Administration’s position that individuals held at other U.S.-run military facilities have no legal rights. As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, IJNetwork has called on the Obama Administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention, and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody— including Bagram.
Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, arguing for the government, said the circumstances surrounding detention of prisoners at Bagram are unique and do not match the circumstances at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. Katyal noted that Bagram is in the middle of a war zone.
But Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network (IJN), who argued for the Bagram detainees, told IPS, “Our clients are three innocent men who have been imprisoned without charge for seven years and haven't even been told why. The fundamental question at issue in these cases is whether the United States government can seize individuals from peaceful countries anywhere in the world and imprison them without charge indefinitely, based solely on the location of the prison facility where the government decides to detain them.”
She added, “The position of the Obama administration is that it can do so, as long as it uses Bagram, instead of Guantanamo, as its legal black hole. This is an extreme position -- and one that allows the President to do exactly what the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional in the Guantanamo cases. We are very disappointed that this administration has failed to live up to its promise of living up to this country's great legal tradition and fidelity to the rule of law, but we are hopeful that the Court of Appeals will remedy this injustice.”
She said the Justice Department’s position is one where “Bumediene was never decided.” She said the government cannot be allowed to manipulate habeas through the selective movement of prisoners.
In the second case, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower court's decision in 2008 affirming the continued detention of a former cook for Taliban forces. He is Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani, a citizen of Yemen who was captured in Afghanistan. Held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since 2002, al Bihani carried an assault rifle for the 55th Arab Brigade, a paramilitary group allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but claims he never fired a shot in battle.
The court unanimously rejected Al Bihani's appeal. But two judges appointed by President George W. Bush went even further. Bush appointees Janice Rogers Brown and Brett Kavanaugh said detainees are not entitled to the same rights given criminal defendants who challenge their convictions.
In 2008, the Supreme Court said the Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to go into federal court to challenge their imprisonment. But the court did not spell out the extent of that right.
As a result, federal judges have reached often contradictory conclusions about the detainees' legal rights and whether the government has the power to continue holding them.
This decision can be appealed either to the full appeals court or to the
Supreme Court. If it is not challenged successfully, it could apply to every other detainee case filed in Washington and provide the government with a compelling basis to challenge any court order to release a detainee.
Legal authorities said the decision will make it more difficult for some detainees to win release through federal lawsuits challenging their confinements because it so robustly supports the government's authority, legal experts said.
The two Bush appointees rejected attempts by human rights groups and detainees' lawyers to have the courts apply principles from "the laws of war" to detention decisions.
This group of international laws, treaties and long-standing legal practices would probably curtail the government’s ability to detain people such as Bihani indefinitely, his defenders believe.
A large majority of the prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay is from Yemen. In the aftermath of the political backlash triggered by the disclosure that the would-be bomber of the Detroit-bound airliner was given his explosive device by Al Qaeda in Yemen, the Obama administration decided to suspend release of any Yemeni detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release.
While the unsuccessful attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas day captured the headlines and put major political roadblocks in the path of prisoner release from Guantanamo Bay, the courts – far more quietly -- continued to play a major role in influencing the detention issue.
That influence was demonstrated by two cases this week.
In Washington, D.C., a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals minced its way toward fashioning new rules to govern habeas corpus decisions brought by three prisoners at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
And a decision by three different judges of the same court affirmed the government's authority to hold people taken prisoner in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban – thus making it more difficult for detainees to challenge the basis of their detention.
On Thursday, the DC Circuit court heard oral arguments in a case known as Maqaleh v. Gates -- the first legal challenge in U.S. courts on behalf of prisoners detained at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. The case was brought by the International Justice Network (IJNetwork) on behalf of two Yemenis and one Tunisian citizen, each seized outside of Afghanistan from third countries and held without charge or trial in U.S. custody for more than six years.
Evidence suggests that each man was shuttled through U.S.-run secret prisons (“black sites”) for torture and interrogation, prior to ultimately being transferred to Bagram—itself the site of well-documented human rights violations—where they continue to be subjected to indefinite detention under sole U.S. military custody.
During the entire six-year period while he has been in U.S. custody, Maqaleh has not been permitted to see his family, and has been denied any access to lawyers or a court of law. Because he is being held virtually incommunicado, his father authorized IJNetwork to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. court seeking his release. Though his case has now been pending for over three years, the government continues to refuse to allow Maqaleh to communicate with his attorneys.
In April 2009, Judge John D. Bates ruled that Maqaleh, and two other petitioners in the case, Amin al Bakri and Redha al Najar, have a Constitutional right to petition U.S. courts for a writ of habeas corpus.
Judge Bates’s decision was based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which established that detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo had a Constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts. But before any of the Bagram detainees could have his day in court, the Obama Administration appealed Judge Bates’ decision—arguing that none of the 600 detainees at Bagram have any rights under U.S. law.
As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, the IJNetwork, has called on the Obama Administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention, and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody — including Bagram.
Though President Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo, the Department of Justice continues to defend the Bush Administration’s position that individuals held at other U.S.-run military facilities have no legal rights. As the organization representing the Bagram detainees, IJNetwork has called on the Obama Administration to end the practices of rendition, torture, and indefinite detention, and provide fundamental human rights to all individuals held in U.S. custody— including Bagram.
Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, arguing for the government, said the circumstances surrounding detention of prisoners at Bagram are unique and do not match the circumstances at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. Katyal noted that Bagram is in the middle of a war zone.
But Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network (IJN), who argued for the Bagram detainees, told IPS, “Our clients are three innocent men who have been imprisoned without charge for seven years and haven't even been told why. The fundamental question at issue in these cases is whether the United States government can seize individuals from peaceful countries anywhere in the world and imprison them without charge indefinitely, based solely on the location of the prison facility where the government decides to detain them.”
She added, “The position of the Obama administration is that it can do so, as long as it uses Bagram, instead of Guantanamo, as its legal black hole. This is an extreme position -- and one that allows the President to do exactly what the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional in the Guantanamo cases. We are very disappointed that this administration has failed to live up to its promise of living up to this country's great legal tradition and fidelity to the rule of law, but we are hopeful that the Court of Appeals will remedy this injustice.”
She said the Justice Department’s position is one where “Bumediene was never decided.” She said the government cannot be allowed to manipulate habeas through the selective movement of prisoners.
In the second case, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower court's decision in 2008 affirming the continued detention of a former cook for Taliban forces. He is Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani, a citizen of Yemen who was captured in Afghanistan. Held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since 2002, al Bihani carried an assault rifle for the 55th Arab Brigade, a paramilitary group allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but claims he never fired a shot in battle.
The court unanimously rejected Al Bihani's appeal. But two judges appointed by President George W. Bush went even further. Bush appointees Janice Rogers Brown and Brett Kavanaugh said detainees are not entitled to the same rights given criminal defendants who challenge their convictions.
In 2008, the Supreme Court said the Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to go into federal court to challenge their imprisonment. But the court did not spell out the extent of that right.
As a result, federal judges have reached often contradictory conclusions about the detainees' legal rights and whether the government has the power to continue holding them.
This decision can be appealed either to the full appeals court or to the
Supreme Court. If it is not challenged successfully, it could apply to every other detainee case filed in Washington and provide the government with a compelling basis to challenge any court order to release a detainee.
Legal authorities said the decision will make it more difficult for some detainees to win release through federal lawsuits challenging their confinements because it so robustly supports the government's authority, legal experts said.
The two Bush appointees rejected attempts by human rights groups and detainees' lawyers to have the courts apply principles from "the laws of war" to detention decisions.
This group of international laws, treaties and long-standing legal practices would probably curtail the government’s ability to detain people such as Bihani indefinitely, his defenders believe.
A large majority of the prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay is from Yemen. In the aftermath of the political backlash triggered by the disclosure that the would-be bomber of the Detroit-bound airliner was given his explosive device by Al Qaeda in Yemen, the Obama administration decided to suspend release of any Yemeni detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release.
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